Founded in 1932, Sight & Sound is a UK magazine owned by the British Film Institute (BFI.) For many years it was a quarterly publication, with Marilyn getting her first cover exactly 70 years ago in the January-March 1954 edition – a fact noted in the back pages of the current issue (dated March 2024, with Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan on the cover.)
Following its US release in November 1953, How to Marry a Millionaire had reached British shores in January 1954. However, vintage magazine collectors may be disappointed to find that neither Marilyn or the movie were featured inside. It was reviewed separately in Monthly Film Bulletin, a supplementary publication sent to subscribers in February.
Sight & Sound has sometimes been accused of elitism, and that may have been a fair criticism back in 1954. How to Marry a Millionaire, like most of Marilyn’s films from this period, was dismissed as mere Hollywood fluff. Incidentally, biblical epic The Robe – the second film made in CinemaScope, but released before Millionaire – was deemed worthy of a feature (but not the cover.)
By Summer 1957, when The Prince and the Showgirl put Marilyn back on the cover, editor Penelope Houston had seemingly warmed to her. Some Like It Hot (Summer-Autumn 1959) earned a mostly positive review; while in Autumn 1960, Let’s Make Love gave Marilyn her last cover.
The American critic Arlene Croce’s rather scathing essay on The Misfits (Summer 1961) spared Marilyn the worst, saving her venom for Arthur Miller. And finally, Marilyn’s untimely death was noted in Houston’s editorial for Autumn 1962.
Thanks to the Internet Archive
The Marilyn Report 