Marilyn Monroe wasn't a material girl

Marilyn Monroe may have looked a million dollars in her movies but she was no material girl in real life.

The Evening Standard has been given an exclusive preview of a major exhibition of her personal possessions, which is set to come to London.
And the collection reveals that the screen goddess treasured humble objects filled with memories.

Glittering costumes from Some Like It Hot, The Prince And The Showgirl and other classic films show her glamorous side, but household objects
as mundane as her orange-juice squeezer will give an insight into the real Marilyn.

The well-used gadget was one of only two possessions she took from the home she shared with playwright Arthur Miller after their marriage broke up. The second was Cecil Beaton's famous photograph of her... she left the expensive silver frame behind.

Other objects she valued were from her childhood, however painful - a cheap ring from her mother and a brass dancing figure from her time in an orphanage after Gladys was incarcerated in a mental institution.

These are among more than 65 Monroe exhibits to get their first public display in "Marilyn - Hollywood Icon", on loan from former Londoner David Gainsborough Roberts, a retired investment banker living in Jersey. It opens at the American Museum In Britain in Bath next month, and exhibition curator Laura Beresford said discussions to bring it to London are being held with the Guildhall.

Mr Roberts began amassing Monroe material more than 20 years ago and now has the world's largest privately-owned collection.

This exhibition, which also features a previously unseen photograph of her mother Gladys as a pretty 13-year-old, is being shown in its entirety for the first time. Dresses in the collection include the pink "wiggle" dress from Niagara, the role that established her blonde bombshell image.

After seeing the film, the actress Constance Bennett quipped: "There's a broad with her future behind her."

There is also the iconic chiffon cocktail dress from Some Like It Hot, in which she crooned "I'm Through With Love" sitting on a piano, and one of the red sequinned dresses she and Jane Russell wore for a sexy dance routine in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.