It’s easily one of the most recognized images in Hollywood history…even if the shot most people recall didn’t actually come from the movie. This week marks the 70th anniversary of director/co-writer Billy Wilder’s comic take on marital infidelity, The Seven Year Itch. Based on George Axelrod’s Broadway hit, the film stars Tom Ewell as Richard Sherman, a Manhattan publishing executive whose wife and son are away on summer vacation. Alone for the first time in years, Sherman’s solitude is shattered when he meets his gorgeous new neighbor (Marilyn Monroe). Referred to only as The Girl, Monroe’s character is an advertising model and would-be actress subletting the upstairs apartment. Her proximity–and his wife’s absence–kickstarts Richard’s libidinous imagination into overdrive.
Their relationship remains chaste despite Sherman’s lascivious daydreams and a clumsy attempt to make a play for The Girl while sharing a bottle of champagne one warm evening. As an apology, he takes her out for dinner and an “air-conditioned” movie, which turns out to be the 1954 Universal horror classic Creature from the Black Lagoon. On the walk home from the theater (the since-demolished Trans-Lux 52nd Street on Lexington Avenue), The Girl talks about how she felt sorry for the Gill-man. “He was kind of scary looking, but he wasn’t really all bad,” she explains. “I think he just craved a little affection, you know? A sense of being loved and needed and wanted.”
It’s at this moment that a subway train passes beneath them and The Girl steps onto the sidewalk grate. “Ooh, do you feel the breeze from the subway?,” she exclaims as the updraft lifts up her billowing white dress and reveals a healthy expanse of leg. “Isn’t it delicious?” “Sorta cools the ankles, doesn’t it?,” replies Sherman as he watches the display. Another train, and another breeze, catches her skirts before they continue on their way.
The iconic scene was actually filmed along the New York streets in September of 1954, with hundreds of onlookers seeing more of Marilyn than they ever imagined…well, those who didn’t catch her appearance in the first issue of Playboy magazine the year before, anyway. So much crowd noise could be overheard during the location shoot that director Wilder had to recreate it on a 20th Century-Fox stage in California. The footage that ultimately appeared in the final film was a lot less risqué than the many candid photos of Monroe and her airborne attire taken at the time.
One of the many onlookers–who was decidedly not happy with the scene–was Monroe’s husband, New York Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio. The actress and the retired ballplayer had only been married for about eight months at the time of the filming, and DiMaggio’s ire at his wife’s on-set display would be one of the deciding factors that led to Marilyn filing for divorce in October of that year. The couple would remain close after the break-up, though, and following her death in 1962 DiMaggio would regularly send roses to her grave for the next 20 years.
In the seven decades since The Seven Year Itch opened to critical and commercial success, the image of Marilyn and the subway grate has been copied, parodied, and paid homage to in all manner of media. There was the scene in Ken Russell’s 1975 filming of The Who’s rock opera Tommy, where guitar-strumming preacher Eric Clapton leads worshippers in a Monroe-themed church…
In 1994, director Quentin Tarantino tossed a shot of a waitress (Monroe look-alike Susan Griffiths) portraying Marilyn letting the air lift her spirits–and her skirt–at the nostalgia-themed nightspot Jackrabbit Slim’s into his film Pulp Fiction…
Even Amy Poehler got into the act, donning a familiar-looking white dress and hitting the ice in the 2007 skating comedy Blades of Glory…
You can take a picture of yourself next to a 26-foot-tall statue of Monroe in all her innocently sexy glory. Forever Marilyn, sculpted by New Jersey-born artist Seward Johnson, first went on display in Chicago in 2011. Since its unveiling the stainless steel and aluminum figure has been exhibited in various sites before eventually finding a home in Palm Springs, California…
Now, in case you ever get the “itch” to visit New York City and re-create the scene yourself, the Trans-Lux 52nd Street movie palace was torn down in the late 1960s, but the subway grate is still there along Lexington Avenue, near the 52nd Street intersection. And as for the iconic halter-top dress which The Girl let swirl around her as the subway breeze lifted it, after Monroe’s death it made its way back to the collection of costume designer William Travilla. It was later acquired by actress Debbie Reynolds for her wardrobe collection at the Hollywood Motion Picture Museum. And in June of 2011 the by-now ecru-tinted garment was auctioned off for an astronomical $4.6 million ($5.5 million once you tack on fees and taxes).