The marriage certificate for Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio’s nine-month marriage in 1954 sold for nearly $123,000 at auction Sunday.
Goldin Auctions founder and CEO Ken Goldin told ABC News he acquired the document from a private collection. The collector had bought it in 2006 from an auction of the DiMaggio estate.
The couple were married at City Hall in January 1954. Their marriage lasted just nine months before Monroe filed for divorce citing “mental cruelty.”
The New York Post wrote in 2014 that DiMaggio wanted control over Monroe’s future films, how she dressed, and even whether she “outshined” him. When he didn’t get his way, he would give her the silent treatment and reportedly beat her more than once during their marriage.
Despite the divorce, they remained friends until her death in 1962 from a drug overdose, and DiMaggio had roses delivered to her grave every week after her death until he died in 1999, according to the Post.
“It is a historic document that ties together the golden age of Hollywood and baseball Royalty,” Goldin old ABC. “It is an important piece of American history showing the marriage of the most popular baseball player of the era to the most popular actress perhaps of all time.”
The document was in very good condition, according to the auctioneers, with “just light toning to the edges,” ABC reported.
Goldin Auctions has sold other DiMaggio items, including a 1942 Yankees uniform.
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