TIME Marilyn Monroe - May 14, 1956

*** This NFT will be accompanied by the original, physical issue. *** “With a vibrant yellow star-filled background and a portrait that captured the beauty, artist Boris Chaliapin introduced TIME readers to Marilyn Monroe. Six years before her death, this 1956 cover was the first of three covers on the star.” – D.W. Pine, Creative Director of TIME The image served to illustrate an unbylined cover story, which was written by Hollywood reporter Ezra Goodman with the help of 33 reporters in 26 cities. TIME explored how Monroe’s troubled youth as Norma Jeane Baker affected her psyche as Marilyn Monroe. “Norma Jeane was trained for nothing except laying on paint; her education was so poor that she could not even fake a cultural conversation,” the cover story explained. “In public she was smothered by feelings of inferiority. In private she was swept by panics, anxieties and hallucinations. And yet, curiously, life in its deepest expressions was on Norma Jeane’s side—perhaps had always been on her side. The sensitivity which made her feel so deeply the shocks of her childhood was countered by a set of instincts as solid as an anvil. She took blows that would have smashed many people, and she cracked a little, but she did not fall apart. And always there was that traffic-jamming, production-stopping hunk of woman that the scared little girl inhabited.” Chaliapin was part of the golden age of TIME illustrated covers in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, called the “ABCs” - Boris Artzybasheff, Ernest Hamlin Baker and Chaliapin. The trio produced 900 TIME covers and created a style that gave the publication character, strength and personality. Chaliapin painted more than 400 covers over three decades – the most of any TIME artist in history.

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