Inside the fascinating - and macabre - auction of Marilyn Monroe's possessions, from her bra to a $9k used lipstick and even a $500k burial plot next to hers

At first glance, the simple black brassiere looks like something you might see on a hanger in M&S.

But don’t let initial appearances fool you: this lace and satin underwire bra has a rather different price point. Up for auction in Hollywood next week, it’s tipped to fetch thousands of pounds - thanks to its past owner being none other than Marilyn Monroe. It’s part of a sale which includes everything from the icon’s dramatic gowns to her fake eyelashes, used lipstick and even a chance to be interred near her tomb in an LA cemetery.

Indeed, some 62 years after her death, the lots of often highly intimate items reveal Marilyn Monroe is as much a subject of fascination - not to mention lucrative commodity - as she ever was.

For example, a black dress that Marilyn wore on the set of The Seven Year Itch in 1955 is predicted to make as much as $200,000.

While the frankly ghoulish opportunity to be laid to rest one row above and four spaces to the left of her crypt has an estimated sale price of $200,000 to $400,000.

Actress Marilyn Monroe poses for a publicity still for the 20th Century Fox film Some Like it Hot in 1958 wearing a lace and satin underwire bra

At first glance, the simple black brassiere looks like something you might see on a hanger in M&S, but it's up for auction in Hollywood next week tipped to fetch thousands of pounds

Marilyn, with pet dog Honey at the Beverley Hills Hotel in 1961, wears a beautiful pink long-sleeved silk jersey dress with a rope and crystal tassel belt created by the fashion designer Emilio Pucci

Again, it looks quite underwhelming on the auction house mannequin. Yet the dress comes to life in photos, perfectly showing off Marilyn’s shapely figure 

The black, cellophane-effect costume worn by Marilyn in the 1955 film The Seven Year Itch. Featuring a plunging neck, a left leg slit and a long train, it was created by costume designer Billy Travilla who also dressed the star for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

The black dress that Marilyn wore on the film set is predicted to make as much as $200,000

Ahead of the sale - held by celebrity auction house Julien’s Auctions and expected to attract worldwide attention - the Mail has been given an exclusive opportunity to view (no touching allowed) Marilyn’s possessions.

‘Marilyn is still relevant today,’ says Martin Nolan, co-founder of Julien’s Auctions, of the enduring obsession with the film star. ‘She died in tragic circumstances and didn’t get to be an old lady, so we have this vibrant blonde bombshell still vivid in our minds.

‘There’s a similarity to our ongoing interest in Princess Diana, because she also died at the height of her beauty and fame in sad circumstances.’

Scott Fortner, an historian and Marilyn Monroe collector, adds: ‘Marilyn still has this amazing energy and magnetism. She’s reached such a status in pop culture that she almost doesn’t seem real, so it’s nice to see these items like clothes and make-up that remind us that she was a real person.’

Looking at the auction lots, what strikes you immediately is how tiny Marilyn was in real life.

Although purported to be a big and busty blonde, she was 5ft and a half inches tall and weighed just 8st when she died, giving her a body mass index bordering on underweight.

As for that legendary hourglass figure, she measured up at just 36-24-34 - positively svelte by today’s standards.

It’s also very apparent that Marilyn had an extraordinary charisma that transformed anything she wore.

Take a hand-painted silk-jersey cocktail dress worn by the actress for a press conference for the film The Misfits in 1960. It may have an estimate of $40,000 to $60,000, but it looks quite ordinary on the mannequin.

Yet pictures of her wearing the dress, which had clearly been made to fit her curves, show her looking sensational as she sits alongside screen heartthrob and co-star Clark Gable.

Then there’s a beautiful pink long-sleeved silk jersey dress with a rope and crystal tassel belt created by the fashion designer Emilio Pucci.

Again, it looks quite underwhelming on the auction house mannequin. Yet the dress comes to life in photos, perfectly showing off Marilyn’s shapely figure.

‘Marilyn loved this style of dress and bought one in every colour. She was buried in a green version of this dress,’ says Nolan.

The black, cellophane-effect costume worn by Marilyn for The Seven Year Itch, however, is a lot more look-at-me.

Featuring a plunging neck, a left leg slit and a long train, it was created by costume designer Billy Travilla who also dressed the star for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and How to Marry a Millionaire (1953).

The actress attends a press conference for the film The Misfits in 1960. Pictures of her wearing the dress, which had clearly been made to fit her curves, show her looking sensational as she sits alongside screen heartthrob and co-star Clark Gable

The hand-painted silk-jersey cocktail dress may have an estimate of $40,000 to $60,000, but it looks quite ordinary on the mannequin

In reality, the frock didn’t even make it onscreen. Intended to be worn as part of a dream sequence in the Billy Wilder romantic comedy, the scenes ended up on the cutting room floor. Yet the auctioneers still anticipate the dress will achieve six figures.

Another costume in the auction is one worn by Marilyn for a 1958 shoot with famed photographer Richard Avedon. The lavender satin, boned leotard has a décolletage neckline trimmed with fabric flowers and has an estimated sales price of between $20,000 and $30,000.

The sale is a compelling - if sometimes macabre - insight into the minutiae of the actress’s life.

Boxes of Marilyn’s false eyelashes have astounding price estimates of $2,000 to $3,000, while a pink-tinged orange Elizabeth Arden lipstick is going under the hammer for $7,000 to $9,000.

Receipts, private papers and photographs are also on offer, with even the most mundane documents predicted to reach relatively vast sums. A signed Elizabeth Arden salon receipt dated 1961 for a $40 ‘after hours’ facial is up for an estimated $1,250.

This is all trivial memorabilia but seeing the film star’s brassiere - such an intimate item - framed in a glass box is unsettling.

Creepier still, the bra - which has no size or brand marked on it - was previously owned by Playboy impresario Hugh Hefner, who died in 2017 at the age of 91. He bought it in 2005 and kept it in the Playboy Mansion.

While its sales estimate is between $2,000 to $3,000, there are already eight online bids and the price is expected to go much higher.

Marilyn famously appeared on the cover of Hefner’s first issue of Playboy Magazine in 1953. Inside there were nude photos of her which had been taken in 1949, before she became famous.

A struggling young actress, she was paid $50 for the two-hour shoot, but extracted a promise from the photographer that she wouldn’t be recognisable in the photos, and signed the release form ‘Mona Monroe’ in a bid to protect her burgeoning career.

Yet four years later, with her fame burning brightly, Hefner bought the rights for $500 for his new men’s magazine and splashed Marilyn’s name on the cover with the words MARILYN MONROE NUDE.

A pink-tinged orange Elizabeth Arden lipstick is going under the hammer for $7,000 to $9,000

Marilyn was never consulted before publication, nor was she ever paid more than the original $50 fee.

But an edition of that Playboy magazine - originally sold for 50 cents a copy - is today up for sale for an estimated $2,000 to $4,000.

As ever, with all things Marilyn, there’s glamour tinged with deep sadness. Not only did she meet an early, tragic end - found dead at her home in a suburb of Los Angeles, apparently the victim of an overdose of sleeping pills - but the star, who was born in LA in 1926, had a difficult early life.

‘She didn’t know her father, her mother was committed to a psychiatric institution, and she was raised in multiple foster homes,’ says Nolan. Aged 16, when her foster parents decided to leave LA, she got married to avoid being placed in another foster home.

‘When she started modelling, the camera loved her and she loved the camera. After she went on to acting, she took it seriously and was always trying to improve because she was insecure about her acting skills,’ says Nolan.

That insecurity plagued her for the rest of her life, as another incredibly personal item in the sale reveals: pages torn from a notebook dated between 1955 and 1956, handwritten in pencil by the film star when she was undergoing therapy.

Although the notes are difficult to follow, the topics include examining Marilyn’s childhood need to lie to her teacher, her physical insecurities and self-conscious musings of what others thought of her drinking.

A troubling passage sees her talk about being punished in childhood because of the ‘bad part of her body’ that she should never touch or let anyone touch. This is believed to refer to a foster mother called Aunt Ida Martin who punished Marilyn as a child, possibly after a sexual abuse incident with someone called ‘Buddy’ mentioned in the notes.

It too has a price - estimates for these notes are $10,000 to $15,000.

Marilyn’s second husband, the famous baseball player Joe Di Maggio, is also represented in the sale with a 1954 image - estimate $10,000 to $20,000 - of the two prior to their departure for their honeymoon trip to Tokyo and goodwill tour of Korea, where Marilyn performed for American troops.

They had married earlier that year, but Marilyn filed for divorce after only nine months, citing mental cruelty.

Di Maggio is said to have remained in love with the actress for the rest of his life, arranging her burial and sending red roses to be laid at her crypt three times a week for 20 years.

Which comes to perhaps the most bizarre - and unnerving - item of all: the space in the same burial spot as Marilyn at Pierre Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and mortuary in Los Angeles.

It’s not the first time proximity to Marilyn’s final resting place has been monetised. Hefner, for example, purchased the crypt immediately to the left of Marilyn’s in 1992 for $75,000, later discussing the purchase saying: ‘Spending eternity next to Marilyn is an opportunity too sweet to pass up.’

The crypt immediately above the film star, meanwhile, is occupied by the remains of a businessman who died in 1986.

He insisted on being interred face down on top of Marilyn, apparently crudely telling his wife: ‘If I croak, if you don’t put me upside down over Marilyn, I’ll haunt you for the test of your life.’

In death, as in life, Hollywood’s most enduring sex symbol remained a prize to be fought over by lascivious men.

‘This is a sought-after piece of eternal real estate,’ says Nolan, who explains that - incredibly - a family who had buried their mother there realised the value of the crypt, then had their relative moved elsewhere before putting it up for sale.

‘It’s a prestige location - some people like the idea of being buried next to someone famous,’ he adds.

Even a small grave marker reading ‘Marilyn Monroe 1926-1962’ is on sale, with a estimated price of $9,000. Worn from constant touching by fans visiting her tomb, it has to be replaced - hence this sale.

While it’s testament to her star power that, long after her tragic death, people remain so fascinated by her, we can never know whether Marilyn herself would have liked such personal belongings to be bought and sold like this.

Amanda Konkle, an associate professor of English and Film Studies at Georgia Southern University, is author of the 2019 book Some Kind of Mirror; Creating Marilyn Monroe.

She says: ‘My instinct is that she would be flabbergasted. I think maybe she’d feel that these items are just the outward expression of the persona she created – and that she is someone else.’

Although many Marilyn Monroe admirers will turn up to see the items when they go on public view in LA this week, die-hard fans hoping for bargains are likely to disappointed.

Another costume in the auction is one worn by Marilyn for a 1958 shoot with famed photographer Richard Avedon

The lavender satin, boned leotard has a décolletage neckline trimmed with fabric flowers and has an estimated sales price of between $20,000 and $30,000

Scott Fortner is one who will be bidding in next week’s auction – though he won’t reveal which items he is after - but he believes Marilyn’s notes made during classes with her acting coach Lee Strasberg will be popular. Some of the items in the upcoming sale are from the estate of Strasberg who died in 1982 at the age of 83.

‘Marilyn wasn’t just a sex symbol and a model - she was a serious actress and she worked hard to perfect her craft,’ says Fortner.

‘There’ll be people bidding because they just want something that belonged to Marilyn and others will be bidding purely for investment purposes because the value of these items keeps going up.’

Nolan agrees the value of Marilyn memorabilia will only increase with time.

He claims Marilyn’s Happy Birthday Mr President Dress - which was controversially borrowed by Kim Kardashian for the Met Gala in 2022 - would fetch around $10m if it was on the auction block today. That’s a big increase on the already staggering sum of $4.81m which Julien’s Auctions sold it for in 2016, making it the most expensive dress in the world. It was bought by the American entertainment franchise Ripley’s Believe It or Not - who it loaned to Kim - and is now on display in Orlando, Florida.

Of course, Kim is a modern celebrity phenomenon, but it’s hard to imagine anyone putting her underwear in a glass case in 60 years.

Marilyn remains in a league of her own.

• The Marilyn Monroe, Playboy and Hugh Hefner Julien’s Auctions Exhibition takes place in Los Angeles from March 28 to 30. Items can be viewed online.