It may have been the year of one of her classic films, Some Like It Hot, but a home movie found after 50 years in an attic apparently demonstrates that Marilyn Monroe may have enjoyed pot too.

A silent reel-to-reel colour film, dating probably from the late 1950s, shows a relaxed star taking a quick puff from what is alleged to have been a joint of marijuana while sitting on a couch with at least two other people.

But, as President Bill Clinton and other politicians might put it later, she did not inhale, not much anyway.

The film shows Monroe, smiling widely, with a cigarette in hand, and then seemingly self-absorbed in the contemplative pleasure of the moment, taking a drag, eyes closed, her head of trademark golden curls resting on the back of the sofa.

The person who shot the film at a private house in New Jersey insists the cigarette contained marijuana. The moviemaker is remaining anonymous but insisted the pot "was mine".

US collector Keya Morgan, who recently paid £275,000 for the movie and is putting the copyright of an image from it up for sale on eBay later this week, dates it to 1958 or 1959, based on Monroe's appearance.

He is making a documentary about the actor, whose final years were to see her turn increasingly to drugs of another sort, barbiturates and alcohol. She died from an overdose, probably self-inficted, although murder conspiracy theories abound.