The Seven Year Itch

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The Seven Year Itch is a comedy film starring Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell. The 20th Century Fox film was an adaptation of the Broadway play of the same name by George Axelrod. It was directed by Billy Wilder and presented in DeLuxe Color Cinemascope. Often cited as one of the great comedies of its time, it won critical acclaim and became the biggest box office hit in the summer of 1955. It contains one of the most iconic images of the 20th Century in which Marilyn Monroe's dress is blown up above her waist by a passing train underneath a subway grate she is standing on.

Plot

After sending his wife and son to Maine to escape the sweltering summer, Richard Sherman meets a nameless 22-year-old blonde television model, who is renting the apartment upstairs. Despite recent paranoia about being unfaithful (he is reading a book his company is going to publish about a "7-Year Itch" that claims a significant proportion of men have extra-marital affairs after seven years of marriage) Richard invites the girl downstairs for a drink. However, his over-active imagination works overtime to the point where he imagines his wife carrying on in Maine with their hunky neighbor, Tom McKenzie. He is torn between silly fantasies of seduction, and horrible thoughts of his wife catching (and, in one fantasy sequence, shooting) him.

Left: Tom Ewell (Richard Sherman), Right: Marilyn Monroe (The Girl). A famous scene from the film The Seven Year Itch, in which Monroe's character has her skirt blown upwards revealing her underwear. This has grown to become another icon of Marilyn Monroe

Memorable quotes

Richard Sherman - This thing about women and me. I walk into a room. They sense it instantly. I arouse something in them. I bother them. It's a kind of animal thing I've got. It's really quite extraordinary.
The Girl - When it's hot like this, you know what I do? I keep my undies in the icebox!
Tom McKenzie - What blonde in the kitchen?
Richard Sherman - Wouldn't you like to know! Maybe it's Marilyn Monroe!
The Girl - Don't you feel the breeze from the subway? Isn't it delicious?
The Girl - Ooohhh! This feels just elegant!

Quotes from Fantasy Sequences:

The Girl - Rachmaninoff!
Richard Sherman - The Second Piano Concerto!
The Girl - It isn't fair!
Richard Sherman - Not fair? Why?
The Girl - Every time I hear it, I go to pieces!... It shakes me! It quakes me! It makes me feel goose-pimply all over! I don't know where I am or who I am or what I'm doing! Don't stop! Don't stop! Don't ever stop! (Sherman stops playing the piano) Why did you stop?
Richard Sherman - You know why I stopped.
The Girl - Why?!
Richard Sherman - Because! Because now I am going to take you into my arms and kiss you. Very quickly and very hard!
The Girl - So he lured me down to his apartment. He made me sit on his piano bench. Then he made me play Chopsticks. Then suddenly he turned at me. His eyes bulging. He was frothing at the mouth. Just like The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Trivia

Footage of Monroe's dress blowing over her waist was shot twice. The first take was shot at Manhattan's Lexington Avenue at 52nd Street. The second time it was shot on a sound stage studio. The footage filmed in studio is what made its way to the final film, because the original location footage's sound had been rendered useless by the over excited crowd present during filming.
Many lines and scenes had to be cut because they were deemed to be unsuitable by the Hayes office. A frustrated Wilder complained that the film was being made under straight-jacketed conditions. This also led to a key change: in the play, Sherman and The Girl become intimate, but in the movie, their romance is all in his head.
Although they were used in print ads for the film, footage showing Monroe's dress blowing clear above her waist had to be removed from the final movie because authorities of the time considered it to be inappropriate.
Filmed between 1st September 1954 and 11th January 1955.
This is the only Wilder film released by 20th Century Fox.
A remake was intended to be released in 1983, starring Al Pacino as Richard Sherman, but he turned down the role in order to play Tony Montana in another film remake, Scarface. As a result, the remake was never filmed.

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