MARILYN MONROE turned to the actor Marlon Brando in an attempt to seize control of her career and save herself from the depression that culminated in her death eight months later, according to a letter that has never before been made public.

Writing to her acting teacher Lee Strasberg in 1961, Monroe proposes to set up a film production company as she tries to find security from the “quicksand I have always been in”. She adds: “I have contacted Marlon on this subject . . . and he seems to be quite interested.”

The letter shows Monroe’s attempts at salvaging her life — the star was embroiled in a dispute with her studio over control of scripts and characters she played.

She was also undergoing psychoanalysis following her divorce from the playwright Arthur Miller. The following year, Monroe died of a drugs overdose at the age of 36. The inquest recorded “probable” suicide, although this has been widely disputed ever since.

The document is among a cache of letters and other papers being sold by the family of a late business associate of Monroe.

The papers include a short note to Brando, who was her occasional lover, about the studio project as well as his brief response.

Among the cache is a previously unseen snap of the star as an actress in her early twenties wearing a polka-dot bikini. There is also an intimate letter from her mother, writing to “My Dear Babe Norma Jeane”, Marilyn’s original name.

Margaret Barrett, director of the entertainment department at Bonhams & Butterfields, the Los Angeles auctioneers who will sell the papers in December, said the letter showed the star was still able to focus on her career, despite her psychological crisis.

“When she was writing about how she had always lived on quicksand, she was the most successful movie star in the world and yet she was still talking about how insecure she was,” said Barrett. “This shows the extent to which she was a woman with plans; this does not seem to me to be a woman who had come to the end of her life. She famously played the dumb blonde but that was not her at all.”

In addition to her business plans, Monroe confided in Strasberg about her psychotherapy.

“As you know, for years I have been struggling to find some emotional security with little success, for many different reasons,” she wrote. “It is true that treatment with Dr Greenson (Ralph Greenson, her psychoanalyst) has had its ups and downs, as you know. However, my overall progress is such that I have hope of finally establishing a piece of ground for myself to stand on, instead of the quicksand I have always been in. But Dr Greenson agrees with you, that for me to live decently and productively, I must work!” In her note to Brando — written on notepaper from the Los Angeles Institute for Psychoanalysis — Monroe urges him to help her persuade Strasberg to move from New York to Los Angeles to set up the company.

She wrote: “Dear Marlon, I need your opinion about a plan for getting Lee out here on more than a temporary basis. Please phone me as soon as possible. Time is of the essence, Marilyn.”

Strasberg, seen as the father of method acting in Hollywood, taught Brando — as well as James Dean, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman and Monroe.

Brando, who died in 2004, replied to Monroe’s note with a brief telegram saying: “Tried to reach you by fone (sic). Must leave city this weekend. Sorry. Marlon.”

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