Itching for a Seventh Year
an extract from Robert Cettl's book Film Tales: Movie Trivia in the Age of DVD (on sale now in print and soon in e-book)
Director Billy Wilder's hit film of The Seven Year Itch contains the ultimate Marilyn Monroe scene – the one where she steps over the subway grating and the air raises her skirt above her waist, exposing her underwear. Although intended to be shot on location, word somehow spread and over 4,000 people turned up to see the sex symbol, including her then husband, who was not impressed with the scene at all. Wilder could not get the large crowd to keep quiet enough to film the scene, until Monroe merely raised her finger and put it to her lips. Such was the popular power of the sex symbol in America at that time. The shot still had to be done later in a studio. At some point in her dressing room when alone, Monroe realized that under the bright cinema lights it was possible to see through her underwear. Her solution was simply to double-up: to put on a second pair of underwear. The classic shot, the most iconic image of Monroe and one of the most celebrated erotic images in film, is now referred to by director Wilder as a "two-panty shot". Apparently the existing "see-through" test footage soon disappeared. Soon on Ebay?
Wider Screenings DVD Attractions Trailer
(courtesy of YouTube embedded video)