Dear TIME-Reader:
IAIHEN Walter Winchell confided "to his public recently that Marilyn Monroe was to be a TIME cover subject, he added this understandably skeptical comment: "I can't imagine them digging up anything people haven't read before." TIME'S readers can decide whether Winchell was too skeptical.
Around the world, 33 reporters in 26 cities sought out playwrights, directors, actors, producers, andmost significantthe all-but-forgotten principals in our subject's earliest years. TIME'S Hollywood reporter, Ezra Goodman, scribbled his way through 65 notebooks (see cut)one for each person interviewedand had enough energy left for a note to me.
Altogether, Goodman reports, our Los Angeles bureau staffers...
