Court action over Monroe letter

Press, 30 January 1984, Page 15

Court action over Monroe letter

NZPA-PA New York The widow of Lee Strasberg, head of Actor’s Studio, has obtained a court order preventing the auction of a letter from Marilyn Monroe to her husband, saying it might have been stolen. Anna Strasberg obtained a show-cause order in Surrogate Court preventing an autograph dealer, Charles Hamilton, from auctioning Miss Monroe’s letter. The letter was consigned to Hamilton by Robert Crivell, of Stamford, Connecticut, who said he is its legal owner. Crivell, a codefendant in the court action, threatened to sue Mrs Strasberg for over $1.54 million for defamation of character, libel and slander. Crivell said he bought the letter for $1540 two years ago from Edward Ransom, a Connecticut collector. He said Mr Ransom got it from a friend of Mr Strasberg

many years ago, before Anna Strasberg married him. The letter was written to Mr Strasberg 23 years ago, when Miss Monroe was in Payne Whitney psychiatric clinic in Manhattan.

Miss Monroe begged Mr Strasberg to get her out, complaining that she was being kept under lock and key by two idiot doctors. She died a year later. “You haven’t heard from me because I’m locked up with all these poor nutty people,” Miss Monroe wrote. “I’m sure to end up a nut if I stay in this nightmare — please help me Lee! ... I do not belong here! I’m on the dangerous floor. It’s like a cell. Can you imagine — cement blocks.” The two-page letter is believed to be the only one Miss Monroe was able to smuggle out of the clinic, according to Hamilton. Mrs Strasberg said the letter might have been stolen in a 1978 theft at the couple’s apartment in Manhattan. “Lee was a very private person and would never have released it,” she said. Her husband died in 1982 at the age of 80,