Amalgamated Press editor Robert Lewis had launched the digest-sized Love Picture Library in 1950 and found an unexpected audience with older girls and young women.

A companion volume, True Life, joined it in 1952 and was again a strong seller, and in 1955 the company decided to publish Britain's first weekly romance comic.

[1][4] Lewis initially drew the contributors for Marilyn from the Picture Library staff,[3] with scripts written by the likes of Eileen Corduroy, Jim Edgar, Barbara Hale, Derek Long and Joan Whitford (who was also a hugely popular writer of Westerns for Sun, Comet and Knockout under the pen name Barry Ford[5]), and art contributed by Joan Riley and K. M.

[8] Sales reached 400,000 copies,[9] and Marilyn even sponsored a concert on Radio Luxembourg, featuring Ronnie Hilton backed by the Jackie Brown Orchestra.

[11] Later issues included celebrity columns, including "Trad Times" and "Jazz Mirror", purportedly edited by Mr. Acker Bilk and Kenny Ball respectively, and by 1964 "Beatlebox" saw The Beatles apparently answering readers' questions; the Fab Four's responses to poems, camera trickery in A Hard Day's Night and Ringo's real name were in fact from the pen of NEMS Enterprises press officer Tony Barrow.