‘The Seven Year Itch’ at 70

The Seven Year Itch had its world premiere 70 years ago this week, on June 1, 1955 – which just happened to be Marilyn’s 29th birthday. She attended the screening at Loew’s State Theatre on Times Square, NYC, with ex-husband Joe DiMaggio.

This is interesting for two reasons: firstly, a giant cutout of Marilyn in the famous ‘skirt-blowing scene’ dominated the Loew’s facade. The rowdy shooting of this scene was said to have enraged DiMaggio, and the couple split soon afterwards. But if there was any bitterness, it didn’t show at the premiere as Joe chatted happily with the press. Which leads to my second point: when a reporter asked how old Marilyn was, Joe said 27 – chopping two years from her real age.

The Seven Year Itch came at the zenith of her career, and its box-office success upped her bargaining power amid an ongoing battle with Twentieth Century-Fox. Even one of her toughest critics, the New York Times‘ Bosley Crowther, had to admit she stole the show.

“The primal urge in the male animal–particularly one who has been married for seven years when he finds himself left alone for the whole summer in the hot city, with a voluptuous young lady in the apartment upstairs–is one of the principal topics of The Seven Year Itch at Loew’s State. The other, equally assertive and much more tangible, is Marilyn Monroe.

As the aforesaid voluptuous young lady who comes into close proximity with the highly susceptible male animal, adroitly played by Tom Ewell, Miss Monroe brings a special personality and a certain physical something or other to the film that may not be exactly what the playwright ordered but which definitely convey an idea.

From the moment she steps into the picture, in a garment that drapes her shapely form as though she had been skilfully poured into it, the famous screen star with the silver-blond tresses and the ingenuously wide-eyed stare emanates one suggestion. And that suggestion rather dominates the film. It is–well why define it? Miss Monroe clearly plays the title role.

In a way, this is out of kilter. For George Axelrod, who wrote the stage play from which the picture is taken and collaborated with Director Billy Wilder on the script, obviously meant that the dominating interest should be the comical anxieties of the character played by Mr. Ewell … But the simple fact is that Mr. Wilder has permitted Miss Monroe, in her skin-fitting dresses and her frank gyrations, to overpower Mr. Ewell. She, without any real dimensions, is the focus of attention in the film.

Also here is a further factor: In the play, as we recall, the wishful thoughts of the fellow toward the lady were finally realised. In the picture there is no such fulfillment. The rules of the Production Code have compelled a careful evasion that makes his ardour just a little absurd.

Thus it is that the undisguised performance of Miss Monroe, while it may lack depth, gives the show a caloric content that will not lose her any faithful fans. We merely commend her diligence when we say it leaves much–very much–to be desired.”

There’s a lot more to The Seven Year Itch than Marilyn’s billowing skirt, but that brief sequence continues to entice. A ReMIND magazine article marking the film’s 70th anniversary suggests that Sam Shaw – who shot the most iconic photos of the moment – may have had some input (although I suspect George Axelrod and Billy Wilder would beg to differ!)

“Neither the subway scene nor a bathtub scene in which Monroe’s character gets her toe caught in the faucet were part of Axelrod’s original script … According to Melissa Stevens, granddaughter of photographer Sam Shaw, who was both Monroe’s friend and the still photographer on Seven Year Itch, the scene evolved from her grandpa’s previous photo.

‘The idea originated from an earlier photoshoot that Sam orchestrated in the 1940s for Friday magazine,’ Stevens told Biography. ‘It featured a sailor and a young girl at Coney Island playing in a wind tunnel. A playful photograph showing the girl’s skirt moving from the wind appeared on the cover and the magazine sold out immediately. Over a decade later, when Sam read the script for The Seven Year Itch, he saw a chance to revisit this ‘skirt-blowing’ idea and turned it into one of the most memorable images ever created.’ Little did they know the full scope of the drama the image would create.

Depending on who you ask, either Wilder, Twentieth Century-Fox, or perhaps both leaked the where and when of the sexy scene’s shoot. Because of that, hundreds of reporters and photographers, and thousands of whooping spectators, showed up on the corner of New York’s Lexington Avenue and East 52nd Street … and got an eyeful.

Wilder admitted he shot the scene over and over again, not because it was necessary, but because it was a successful publicity stunt. Crew members fought over who would work that night. ‘I had guys fighting as to who was going to put the ventilator on, in the shaft there, below the grille,’ Wilder told fellow filmmaker Cameron Crowe in a 1999 Vanity Fair interview.

Monroe’s friend and eventual Misfits costar, Eli Wallach, recalled having coffee with Marilyn the day workers put up a giant cutout of her with her billowing skirt in Times Square. ‘You see that?’ Monroe asked Wallach. ‘That’s all they think of me now. That’s how they think of me.’

But Marilyn took the upper hand. After Seven Year Itch, she demanded and received script and director approval on each of the films she made next.”

On what would have been Marilyn’s 99th birthday, The Seven Year Itch had a 70th anniversary screening at the historic Hollywood Theatre in Portland, Oregon.

Part of an ongoing ‘Dress the Part’ film series, the event was hosted by Lore Noir, wearing a facsimile of the famous dress designed by Travilla for Marilyn’s role as The Girl. Writing for Grunge under her own name, Lauren Kershner further explored the film’s defining scene.

“Amidst thousands of spectators and 100 camera lenses from male photographers, the film crew shot 14 takes of the famous ‘flying skirt scene’ in New York City. However, due to the noise emitted by the roaring crowd, the footage was unusable and had to be re-shot on a Fox soundstage in Los Angeles. Clearly, the images captured in New York didn’t go to waste, and many were used for promoting the film. Perhaps the most brazen promotional display was a giant billboard looming outside Loew’s State Theatre, in which the laughing starlet and her exposed legs towered over Times Square for all to see.

Though the famed full body image is so deeply embedded in pop culture history, only Monroe’s legs made the final cut … The camera focuses on Monroe’s bare legs for no more than five seconds before abruptly cutting to a shot of her blissfully oblivious smile contrasting with Ewell’s ogling open-mouthed expression.

Regardless of what made it into the movie or how it was received, the iconic image continues to captivate and inspire. The storied subway grate on Lexington Avenue and 52nd Street in New York City draws in fans from around the globe, many mimicking Monroe’s signature pose in tribute … The skirt itself — which is actually a pleated halter dress – sold at auction in 2011 for a staggering $4.6 million, proving that seven decades later, audiences are still itching for Marilyn Monroe.”

And finally, a broader look at how The Seven Year Itch plays out today, from Sabina Stent at Bright Wall Dark Room.

“The film—essentially about one man’s mid-life crisis in the height of summer—has always struck me as interesting in part because of its overall tone of seediness. Tom Ewell (reprising the part he originally played in the stage production) portrays Sherman as a predatory leech very successfully … This is the clincher: all the men in The Seven Year Itch come across as, to put it bluntly, desperate. Monroe is a manifestation of all of their heat-induced fantasies, almost as though the high temperatures and male desperation have summoned her like a genie from a lamp.

Monroe may look like a bombshell, but the role—essentially constructed around her image—is that of a sweet, largely naïve girl who is oblivious to her married neighbour’s predatory advances. Always polite and courteous—she continues to ask about his family—the only thing she desires from Sherman is his air conditioning. I doubt that he would act as highly strung (or as lustfully) in the winter months, but the height of summer emphasises everything. Sherman is a cliché, contemplating his life’s malaise … She is the itch in his marriage and he only wants to scratch it more.

There are fewer things more fantastic than watching an incredibly sexually potent woman make a man crumble without any flirtation. Every single word that Monroe utters is a turn-on for Sherman and, while she remains oblivious, he finds all of her actions incredibly seductive. Monroe was actually a wonderful comedian, something she is rarely given enough credit for, and perfectly uses her ‘kooky’ blonde image to maximum effect. Her aforementioned tip for keeping cool is an absolute scream. She thinks that she is having the most regular, run-of-the-mill conversations, but everything she does and says gets Sherman increasingly hot under the collar.

The Girl? An illusion, a product of fantasy caused by one man’s sexual lust, rising temperatures and irrepressible sex appeal. Even her costume is telling. Clad in virginal all-white or blush-pink she is a stereotypical apparition, a figment of the male imagination. Then we reach that scene—yes, that iconic moment: white dress billowing out from her body as she stands over the subway vent, momentarily exposing her legs, and gleefully exclaiming ‘isn’t it delicious?’ What I always find curious about this scene is its striptease element: it is extremely brief, we do not see much, and it is all implied and left to our imagination. Due to censorship, a huge portion of the film was toned down for sexual content, and we remember the moment as more risqué than it really was.

The Seven Year Itch is a summer film, but it is Marilyn Monroe’s summer film. It is an exploration of the male fantasy—his ego, his tendency to crumble when an attractive women looks at him during the height of summer. Manhattan is Summer Camp for men, the City turning into a bunch of lecherous overheated randy business men with Monroe as the beacon of good behaviour and decency.”

More stories on the 70th anniversary of The Seven Year Itch here