Main Cast: Marilyn Monroe, Tom Ewell, Evelyn Keyes, Sonny Tufts, Robert Strauss
Release Year: 1955
Country: US
Run Time: 105 minutes
Plot
Like thousands of other Manhattanites, Tom Ewell annually packs his wife (Evelyn Keyes) and children off to summer vacation, staying behind to work at the office. This particular summer, the lonely Ewell begins fantasizing about the many women he'd foresworn upon getting married (in one of the fantasies, Ewell and Marguerite Chapman parody the beach rendezvous in From Here to Eternity). He is jolted back to reality when he meets his new neighbor--luscious model Marilyn Monroe. Inviting Monroe to dinner, Ewell intends to sweep her off her feet and into the boudoir. Things don't quite work out that way, thanks to Ewell's clumsiness (and essential decency) and Monroe's naivete. Still, Ewell becomes convinced that his impure thoughts will somehow be transmitted to his vacationing wife and to the rest of the world, leaving him wide open for scandal and ruination. In the original play, the husband and the next-door neighbor did have an affair, but both play and film arrived at the same happy ending, with Ewell and his missus contentedly reunited at summer's end. Featured in the cast of The Seven Year Itch are Robert Strauss as a lascivious handyman, Sonny Tufts as Evelyn Keye's former beau, Donald MacBride as Ewell's glad-handing boss, and veteran Broadway funny man Victor Moore in a cameo as a nervous plumber. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
A slick, stylized sex farce with echoes of 1947's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Seven Year Itch parodies images of conventional Hollywood romances. Writer-director Billy Wilder takes jabs at several popular films of the era, including From Here to Eternity (1953) and Brief Encounter (1945), as he plunders the absurdities of the male libido. Of course, there was no better epitome of 1950s male sexual fantasy than Marilyn Monroe, ideally cast as "The Girl." Itch is further proof of Monroe's underrated comic skills, particularly in parts which allowed her to poke fun at her own image. Best remembered for its skirt-blowing scene, the film was actually a toned-down version of an even bawdier stage play. Wilder still manages to retain some of the play's naughtier puns and innuendo. Monroe and Wilder would work together again, on 1959's classic Some Like It Hot. ~ Brendon Hanley, All Movie Guide
Seven Year Itch, The (1952), a comedy by George Axelrod. [Fulton Theatre, 1,141 perf.] Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell) is a nervous paperback book publisher who finds that his wild imagination leads to thoughts of infidelity when he becomes a summer bachelor. These thoughts are given a nudge by a flowerpot that nearly lands on him from a balcony above his. The flowerpot belongs to the girl (Vanessa Brown) upstairs and serves as an excuse for their meeting. But despite Richard's Walter Mittyish dreams of conquest, the voice of his conscience and his own comic apprehensions keep him on the straight and narrow. Brooks Atkinson hailed the Courtney Burr–Elliott Nugent production as “original and funny” and it had a long life in summer theatres, still revived today on occasion. The New York–born George AXELROD (1922–2003) wrote only one other popular play, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1955), a spoof of Hollywood told in terms of the Faust legend. He was also co‐producer of Visit to a Small Planet (1957) and later directed several comedies.
The Seven Year Itch is a three-act play by George Axelrod. The titular phrase, which refers to declining interest in a monogamous relationship after seven years of marriage, has been used by psychologists.[1] It premiered at the Fulton Theatre on November 20, 1952.[2]
The 1955 film version was co-written and directed by Billy Wilder, and starred Marilyn Monroe and Ewell, reprising his Broadway role. It contains one of the most iconic images of the 20th century–Monroe standing on a subway grate as her dress is blown above her knees by a passing train.[3]
Plot
Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell
Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell) sends his wife Helen (Evelyn Keyes) and son Ricky (Butch Bernard) to Maine to escape the summer heat. When he returns home, he meets The Girl (Marilyn Monroe), a model who is renting the apartment upstairs while she is in town to make television spots for a toothpaste. That evening, while proofing a book by psychiatrist Dr. Brubaker (Oskar Homolka), claiming that a significant proportion of men have extra-marital affairs in the seventh year of marriage, he has an imaginary conversation with Helen, trying to "convince" her, in three fantasy sequences, that he is irresistible to women, but she laughs off his assertion. A tomato plant then crashes into his lounge chair; The Girl accidentally knocked it over, and apologizes. Richard invites her to come down for a drink.
As he waits for her to put on her underwear that she keeps cool in the refrigerator and gets dressed, Richard has a fantasy that The Girl is a femme fatale overcome by his playing of Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto. While playing Chopsticks (above), Richard, back in his fantasy, grabs The Girl in a bear hug, causing them to fall off the piano bench. She shrugs off it, but he is immediately contrite, and asks her to leave.
Over the next few days, they grow closer. His resolve to resist temptation in all of its many forms fuels his fear that he is succumbing to the 'Seven Year Itch'. He seeks out Dr. Brubaker for help, but to no avail. His imagination then kicks into overdrive: Helen and Ricky watch The Girl on TV as she warns the women of New York City about "this monster named Richard Sherman"; The Girl tells a plumber (Victor Moore) how Richard is "just like The Creature from the Black Lagoon"; the plumber repeats her story to the horrified patrons of the vegetarian restaurant Richard ate at; the Shermans' hunky neighbor, Tom McKenzie (Sonny Tufts), arranges for he and Helen to be alone on a hayride; a wronged Helen returns home to exact her revenge. The fantasies turn Richard into a paranoid wreck.
After a crazed confrontation with McKenzie, whom Helen has asked to drop by to pick up Ricky's canoe paddle, Richard comes to his senses. He tells The Girl she can stay at his apartment, then runs off to catch the next train to Maine.
Production
The movie was filmed between September 1 and November 4, 1954, and was the only Wilder film released by 20th Century Fox.
The characters of Elaine (Dolores Rosedale), Marie, and the inner-voices of Sherman and The Girl were dropped; the characters of the Plumber, Miss Finch (Carolyn Jones), the Waitress (Doro Merande), and Kruhulik the janitor (Robert Strauss) were added. Many lines and scenes from the play were cut or re-written because they were deemed indecent by the Hays office. Axelrod and Wilder complained that the film was being made under straitjacketed conditions. This led to a major plot change: in the play, Sherman and The Girl become intimate; in the movie, the romance is all in his head.
The footage of Monroe's dress billowing over a subway grate was shot twice: The first take was shot at Manhattan's Lexington Avenue at 52nd Street and the second on a sound stage. The sound stage footage is what made its way into the final film, as the original on-location footage's sound had been rendered useless by the over excited crowd present during filming whistling over Monroe's see-through panties.
Footage of Walter Matthau and Ewell's screen tests for Sherman is featured in the DVD of the film. Nicolas Roeg's film Insignificance features a character based on Monroe and a re-enactment of the subway/dress scene.
