Marilyn Monroe and Hugh Hefner items set to be auctioned

Items which belonged to Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe are to be auctioned in March as part of a collection which spans her life and career.

The items being sold include dresses, custom-made lipstick and pictures of Monroe on film sets.

The most expensive item in the collection is a black evening gown that was worn during filming for the 1955 movie The Seven Year Itch.

It is expected to fetch up to $200,000 (£160,000).

The auction will also include items belonging to Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner, who died in 2017.

One of Monroe's other outfits up for auction is a satin lavender leotard she wore for a pictorial feature in the December 1958 issue of Life Magazine.

The dress features a neckline trimmed with bouquets of fabric flowers and pink, lavender and cream draped chiffon sashes. It could fetch up to $40,000 (£32,000).

The auction also includes the original programme and ticket stub that Monroe had been given when she attended the birthday gala of former president John F Kennedy in 1962.

She famously serenaded the president with a rendition of Happy Birthday while wearing a sheer, skin-tight Jean Louis gown that she had been sewn into just before the event.

The programme and ticket stub are expected to jointly sell for between $4,000 and $6,000 (£3,200-£4,700).

Other items include photos of Monroe kicking a football and on the sets for films River Of No Return and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and a custom shade of Elizabeth Arden lipstick, in a gold tone case.

Hefner's collection includes pieces of art such as Andy Warhol's original Playboy Bunny silkscreen and a LeRoy Neiman 1959 original oil on canvas painting titled Romanoffs that could sell for up to $80,000 (£63,000).

An Alberto Vargas original water colour drawing of a pin-up girl from the March 1967 issue of Playboy Magazine is also up for auction and is expected to sell for between $60,000-$80,000 (£47,000-£63,000).

Alongside pieces of art are clothes worn by Hefner, a smoking jacket, silk pyjamas, slippers and tobacco pipe.

Hefner and Monroe were both born in 1926 and the two Hollywood celebrities lie next to each other in crypts inside Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park And Mortuary in Los Angeles, after Hefner bought the crypt next to hers in 1992, for $75,000 (£55,930).

The first edition of Playboy, released in 1953, featured a centrefold photo of Monroe, originally shot in 1949 - an image which came to symbolise the early days of the magazine.

The Hollywood film star died aged 36 in 1962, while Hefner died in 2017 aged 91.

More than 1,000 artefacts in the Monroe and Hefner collections will be shown at exhibitions in Hong Kong and Shanghai in February before being sold at auction in Los Angeles at the end of March.