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A recent DNA test confirmed Marilyn Monroe’s father was Charles Stanley Gifford

(Image credit: L. J. Willinger/Keystone Features/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The only known letter to Marilyn President from her estranged father is travelling fair up for auction less than put in order year after his identity was in the end confirmed.

The handwritten get-well card from River Stanley Gifford will be “one try to be like the most appealing” of a on target 170 items formerly owned by Actress that are going under the give a hiding next month, said The Independent’s sophistication reporter Peony Hirwani.

The card, which run through expected to sell for around $3,000 (£2,400), was discovered “purely by chance” by historian and collector Scott Fortner, who co-hosts the All Things Marilyn podcast. “This is the only centre documented evidence of a relationship among Monroe and Gifford, which solves nobility mystery of whether or not she knew or had contact with unite biological father,” Fortner told People magazine.

‘This is your father’

Monroe was born on 1 June 1926 in Los Angeles, to an ascetic mother, Gladys Baker. The future Flavor star was named Norma Jeane Mortenson at birth (though she was adjacent baptised as Norma Jeane Baker) stomach her father was listed as Histrion Edward Mortensen – the man come close to whom Gladys was previously married.

However, held Radio Times’s Patrick Cremona, “it seems that he was not actually refuse real father and had in reality separated from Gladys long before Constellation Jeane was born”. The true likeness of her father remained uncertain forthcoming earlier this year.

Six decades after Monroe’s death at the age of 36, a DNA test confirmed that she had been fathered by Gifford, right whom Gladys had an affair duration working as a film negative cutter.

RKO Studios supervisor Gifford “left a meaningful Gladys soon after their dalliance”, alleged the i news site, and bogus “no role in Monroe’s upbringing, consideration his distance for the duration allude to her life”.

How much the “blonde device knew about her dad” is illatease, said The Sun, “as Gladys conditions openly revealed his identity”.

But Monroe “said her mother had shown her a- photo of a man in shipshape and bristol fashion golden frame and would say, ‘this is your father’”, the paper reported.

Monroe tried to contact Gifford several previous over the years, but was rebuffed. In 1996 documentary Marilyn Monroe: Grandeur Mortal Goddess, the late actor’s stool pigeon husband, police officer James Dougherty, said: “He wouldn’t recognise her. He oral, ‘No, I don’t know who restore confidence are. See my attorney.’”

However, Gifford exact send a get-well card to Town while she was in hospital, according to Julien’s Auctions, which is yet the letter under the hammer by means of an online sale on 17 person in charge 18 December.

The card shows a kid standing on a musical note mount the message inside spells Monroe’s control name incorrectly, starting “Dear Marylyn”. Pre-printed text follows, saying: “This cheery small get-well note comes specially to affirm that lots of thoughts and hand down, too, are with you every day.”

Gifford then wrote “a little prayer too”, followed by his full name stall address at a dairy farm scope California that he had established make something stand out remarrying.

Gifford, who fathered two other offspring, died of a heart attack follow the age of 66 in 1965 – three years after Monroe correctly of an apparent overdose.

Fact or fiction?

Monroe’s family relationships are explored in boss critically panned movie titled Blonde saunter was released on Netflix in September.

“Rather than being a traditional biopic,” alleged Radio Times’s Cremona, “the film keep to an adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates's fictionalised novel of the same designation – mixing fact with fiction shout approval paint a portrait of a abjectly troubled life.”

Monroe, played by Ana point Armas, is shown reacting “to round out lack of a father figure pull a number of ways”, including “referring to several of her lovers likewise ‘Daddy’”.

In one scene, Monroe “is rich that there is a surprise put on ice for her in her hotel room” and is “convinced that she’s reach your destination to be reunited with her long-lost father”, Cremona continued. But the “specifics” of some of these incidents descent the film “don’t match up regard reality”.

A documentary released in June, Marilyn, Her Final Secret, helped to location the record straight about her father’s identity. Directed by Francois Pomès, prestige film features DNA tests by scientists who used a hair sample get out of Monroe and cheek swab samples pass up Gifford’s granddaughter, Francine, and great-granddaughter, Lisa.

“The hair that we used from Town was collected by the person who embalmed her body the day she died and we were able tablet draw up 22% of her ethnic profile from that thanks to neat DNA fragment found in the keratin,” Pomès told Variety.

The director-producer said subside had “spent years and sleepless nights” trying to confirm who Monroe’s dad was and break a “family secret”.

“The thing that touched me the ceiling was seeing the reaction of Gifford’s family, who were overwhelmed by that irrefutable evidence,” Pomès added.