Secrets of Marilyn Monroe's hourglass figure revealed

As the world's most famous sex goddess, Marilyn Monroe had to look after both her complexion and her hourglass figure.

Now the dietary habits of the screen legend whose death is still shrouded in mystery after 46 years have surfaced in a clutch of grocery store and meat market receipts.

The seven bills are dated May, 1962 – the month she gave her rendition of "Happy Birthday Mr President" to John F Kennedy and less than three months before Monroe's housekeeper found her body nude and lifeless on her bed.

The receipts, all written out to "Marilyn Monroe" or "M Monroe" and from either Beekman Market or A. Fitz & Sons Meat Market, based three blocks her New York apartment, show what Hollywood's brightest star was eating.

Purchases include artichokes, eggs, English muffins, cucumber, radishes, strawberry jam, cheddar cheese, corn-on-the-cob, strawberries, endive, steaks, milk, lamb chops and chicken.

A nutrition expert said yesterday: "The deliveries show a diet of salads, fruit and meat, indicating plenty of protein, which is good. But she obviously allowed a few treats for herself, such as the English muffins and jam."

The receipts are to be sold by an anonymous source at an Bonhams and Butterfields entertainment memorabilia sale in Los Angeles on December 21, when they are estimated to fetch a modest £470.

A Bonhams spokeswoman said: "One substantial delivery was made two days before her big event of singing Happy Birthday to JFK. It's interesting to speculate why Monroe was buying so much food at this time, especially when she knew she had to be sewn into the gown she'd be wearing. Perhaps she was entertaining or maybe she just kept a well-stocked kitchen."

At the same sale, the draft of a letter to her ex-husband, baseball star Joe DiMaggio, is set to fetch up to £10, 000.

Believed to have been penned in 1962, it reads: "Dear Joe, If I can only succeed in making you happy I will have succeeded in the biggest and most difficult thing there is – that is to make one person completely happy." The unfinished letter ends with the word "Joe" Said the spokeswoman: "Frustratingly for us, Monroe never finished this note, so we'll never know what her intentions were. However, many Monroe experts have speculated that she and DiMaggio were getting back together and that she may even have been composing this letter on the last day of her life. "

Also for sale – for an estimated £335 – are a set of 1960 United Airlines tickets for Monroe and husband, Arthur Miller, for a trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco then Reno. She divorced Miller in January, 1961, a week before the opening of The Misfits. -- Telegraph.uk