Call her Mary-Jane Monroe.
A newly unearthed home movie shows the legendary Marilyn Monroe starring in a private version of “Reefer Madness” as she puffs on a joint some 50 years ago.
The silent color film was shot in either 1958 or 1959 at a private home in New Jersey, and had been stored in an attic for years.
But it recently emerged when collector Keya Morgan purchased the footage for $275,000 from the person who shot it.
Morgan, a collector of historical photos, manuscripts and autographs, is working on a documentary about Monroe’s death in 1962. He plans to put the copyright of the image up for sale on eBay next week.
“This is the late ’50s, so she is already very famous, but this is a personal side of her we’ve never seen before,” Morgan said.
While it is not 100 percent clear from the image that Monroe is actually puffing on wacky-tobaccy, the man who shot the footage confirms that it is, indeed, the evil weed.
“I got it [the pot]. It was mine. It was just passed around,” he said, asking that his identity not be revealed. “It was just a get-together. You know, come over and hang out.”
The footage captures the blond bombshell taking a shallow drag on the joint. Later, when the mind-bending effects of the drug had taken effect, she appears to take a whiff of her own armpit and breaks into hysterical laughter.
Morgan said he caught wind of the footage and tracked down the owner, who had kept it as part of his personal archives for all these years.
As her career rose to stratospheric levels, following massive hits like, “Some Like it Hot” and “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” Monroe battled depression through increasingly heavy drug use.
A few months before she died, she sang “Happy Birthday” to President John F, Kennedy at Madison Square Garden, in one of the most iconic moments of her life.
Monroe died at age 36 from a prescription-drug overdose. She was later interred in a crypt in Los Angeles’ Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery. The crypt space to her left has been bought by Playboy magazine guru Hugh Hefner, but the one on her right was recently put up for sale on eBay.