Marilyn Monroe Lets Loose on Lexington Avenue

A new look at The Girl and the scene.

The New York Times has scratched a 63-year-old itch.

It’s a well-known fact that early on the morning of Sept. 15, 1954, around 1 a.m., photographers, passers-by and others gathered near a subway grate on the Upper East Side of Manhattan to watch Billy Wilder film a version of the famous scene in The Seven Year Itch when Marilyn Monroe’s character (The Girl) unconventionally cools herself on a hot summer night. As some new coverage in this Sunday’s New York Times reminds, the fanned subway-grate shoot turned out to be calamitous for Monroe on a personal level:

Gathered at that late hour were hundreds of gawkers, almost all men, who catcalled and yelled things like, “Higher! Higher!” as Monroe’s dress blew up over her head.

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