The Seven Year Itch

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The Seven Year Itch

The Seven Year Itch is a three-act play by George Axelrod

George Axelrod

George Axelrod was an United States screenwriter, Film producer, playwright and film director.Axelrod was born in New York City, New York, the son of Beatrice Carpenter, a silent film actress, and Herman Axelrod, who worked in real estate....
. The titular phrase, which refers to declining interest in a monogamous relationship after seven years of marriage, has been used by psychologists. It premiered at the Fulton Theatre

Fulton Theatre/Helen Hayes Theatre

File:Fulton Theater, New York City.jpgThe Fulton Theatre was a Broadway Theatre located at 210 W. 46th Street in New York which was opened in 1911 and subsequently re-named the Helen Hayes Theatre in 1955....
on November 20, 1952.

1955 film version

Film adaptation

Film adaptation is the transfer of a written work to a feature film. It is a type of derivative work.A common form of film adaptation is the use of a novel as the basis of a film, but film adaptation includes the use of non-fiction , autobiography, comic book, scripture, Play , and even other films....
was co-written and directed by Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder was an Austrian-United States journalist, filmmaker, screenwriter, and film producer, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films....
, and starred Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe

Discussion

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Quotations

Richard Sherman - Wouldn't you like to know! Maybe it's Marilyn Monroe!

Richard Sherman- You know why, because now I'm going to kiss you, very quick and very hard.

The Girl - It shakes me! It quakes me! It makes me feel goose-pimply all over!

The Girl - Oooooooohhhh! This feels just elegant!

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.

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. Really quite extraordinary.

Encyclopedia

The Seven Year Itch is a three-act play by George Axelrod

George Axelrod

Fulton Theatre/Helen Hayes Theatre

Opening Night Broadway cast

Tom Ewell
Tom Ewell

Tom Ewell was an United States Tony Award-winning actor.Born Samuel Yewell Tompkins in Owensboro, Kentucky, Ewell began acting in Summer Stock in 1928 with Don Ameche, before moving to New York, New York in 1931....
as Richard Sherman
Vanessa Brown
Vanessa Brown

Vanessa Brown was an Austrian actor who was successful in United States radio, film, theater and television. Born Smylla Brynd in Vienna, Austria to Jewish parents, Brown and her family fled to Paris, France in 1937 to escape persecution with the rise of Nazism....
as The Girl
Neva Patterson
Neva Patterson

Neva Patterson is an American character actress who has starred in movies, on television, and on Broadway theatre.In 1952, she created the role of the wife, "Helen", in the original cast of The Seven Year Itch at the Fulton Theatre/Helen Hayes Theatre, New York City....
as Helen Sherman
Marilyn Clark as Miss Morris
Joan Donovan as Elaine
Robert Emhardt
Robert Emhardt

Robert Emhardt was an American stage, film, and television actor. He typically played villains.Emhardt studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London....
as Dr. Brubaker
Pat Fowler as The Voice of The Girl's Conscience
George Ives as The Voice of Richard's Conscience
George Keane as Tom Mackenzie
Johnny Klein as Ricky Sherman
Irene Moore as Marie What-Ever-Her-Name-Was

Film

The 1955 film version

Film adaptation

Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder was an Austrian-United States journalist, filmmaker, screenwriter, and film producer, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films....
, and starred Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model, and a sex symbol.After spending much of her childhood in foster homes, Monroe began a career as a model, which led to a film contract in 1946....
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.

Plot

Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell

Tom Ewell

Tom Ewell was an United States Tony Award-winning actor.Born Samuel Yewell Tompkins in Owensboro, Kentucky, Ewell began acting in Summer Stock in 1928 with Don Ameche, before moving to New York, New York in 1931....
) sends his wife Helen (Evelyn Keyes

Evelyn Keyes

Evelyn Keyes was an American film actor....
) and son Ricky (Butch Bernard) to Maine

Maine

The State of Maine is a U.S. state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America, bordering the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast, New Hampshire to the southwest, the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast....
to escape the summer heat. When he returns home, he meets The Girl (Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model, and a sex symbol.After spending much of her childhood in foster homes, Monroe began a career as a model, which led to a film contract in 1946....
), 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

Psychiatrist

A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry and is certified in treating mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy....
Dr. Brubaker (Oskar Homolka), claiming that a significant proportion of men have extra-marital affairs

Affair

For other uses, see Love Affair or ScandalAn affair may refer to a form of forms of nonmonogamy, to infidelity or to adultery. Where an affair lacks both overt and covert sexual behaviour and yet exhibits intense or enduring emotional intimacy it is called an emotional affair....
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

Tomato

The Tomato is an herbaceous, usually sprawling plant in the Solanaceae or nightshade family, as are its close cousins Nicotiana, potatoes, aubergine , chilli peppers, and the poisonous Atropa belladonna....
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

Femme fatale

A femme fatale is an alluring and Seduction woman whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations....
overcome by his playing of Rachmaninoff

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conducting. He was one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, the last great representative of Russian late Romantic music in classical music....
's Second Piano Concerto

Piano Concerto No. 2 (Rachmaninoff)

Piano Concerto No. 2, Opus number. 18, is a work in C minor for piano accompanied by orchestra, composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff between the autumn of 1900 and April 1901....
. While playing Chopsticks

Chopsticks (music)

Chopsticks is a simple, extremely well-known waltz for the piano. It was written in 1877 by the British composer Euphemia Allen under the pseudonym "Arthur de Lull" ....
(above), Richard, back in his fantasy, grabs The Girl in a bear hug

Bear hug

In wrestling, the bear hug is a grappling term for a grappling hold#Clinch hold and grappling position#Stand-up grappling position where the arms are wrapped around the opponent, either around the opponent's chest, midsection, or thighs; sometimes with one or both of the opponents arms pinned to the opponent's body....
, 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

Plumber

The word plumber dates from the Roman Empire. In Roman times, some roofs were made of lead, or in Latin . Lead roofs were waterproof, and the workers on such roofs were what are now called "plumbers"....
(Victor Moore

Victor Moore

Victor Moore was a star of stage and screen.He appeared in over 58 films and 21 Broadway theatre shows. He first appeared on Broadway in Rosemary ....
) 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 neighbour, Tom McKenzie (Sonny Tufts

Sonny Tufts

Sonny Tufts was a United States film actor. He attained some fame during World War II, principally because he was one of the few handsome male actors not serving overseas in the war....
), arranges for he and Helen to be alone on a hayride

Hayride

A hayride is a pleasure Amusement ride in an open truck, wagon or sleigh which has been decorated with hay or straw and similar farmlife paraphernalia....
; 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

Canoe

A canoe is a small narrow boat, typically human-powered, though it may also be powered by sails or small electric or gas motors. Canoes usually are pointed at both bow and stern and are normally open on top, but can be covered....
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

Carolyn Jones

Carolyn Sue Jones was an United States actress.Jones began her film career in the early 1950s, and by the end of the decade had achieved recognition with a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Bachelor Party and a Golden Globe Award as one of the most promising actresses of 1959....
), the Waitress (Doro Merande

Doro Merande

Doro Merande was an actress who appeared in Hollywood films, on the Broadway theatre stage, and on television. She frequently portrayed "sour, witchy old women" with her abundant talent as a character actress....
), and Kruhulik the janitor (Robert Strauss

Robert Strauss (actor)

Robert Strauss was a gravel-voiced United States actor.Strauss began his career as a classical actor, appearing in The Tempest and Macbeth on Broadway theatre in 1930....
) 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 straitjacket

Straitjacket

A straitjacket is a garment shaped like a jacket with overlong sleeves. The ends of these can be tied to the back of the wearer, so that the arms are kept close to the chest with possibility of only little movement....
ed 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

Manhattan

Manhattan is one of the five borough of New York City, located primarily on Manhattan Island at the mouth of the Hudson River.With a United States Census of 1,620,867 living in a land area of 22.96 square miles , Manhattan, coextensive with New York County, is the most population density county in the United States, w...
's Lexington Avenue

Lexington Avenue (Manhattan)

Lexington Avenue, often abbreviated by New Yorkers as "Lex," is an avenue on the East Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City that carries southbound one-way traffic from East 131st Street to Gramercy Park at East 21st Street....
at 52nd Street

52nd Street (Manhattan)

52nd Street is a long One-way traffic street traveling west to east across Midtown Manhattan....
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.

Footage of Walter Matthau

Walter Matthau

Walter John Matthau was an United States award-winning actor best known for his role as Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple and his frequent collaborations with fellow Odd Couple star Jack Lemmon....
testing for Sherman is featured in the DVD

DVD

DVD, also known as "Digital Versatile Disc" or "Digital Video Disc,"is a popular optical disc data storage device media format. Its main uses are video and data storage....
of the film. Nicolas Roeg

Nicolas Roeg

'Nicolas Jack Roeg', British Society of Cinematographers is an England film director and cinematographer. Contributing to the visual look of Lawrence of Arabia and Roger Corman's The Masque of the Red Death , and co-directing Performance , he would later become the guiding force behind such landmark films as Walkabout , Don'...
's film Insignificance
Insignificance (film)

Insignificance is a 1985 in film motion picture drama/comedy directed by Nicolas Roeg, produced by Jeremy Thomas and Alexander Stuart , and adapted by Terry Johnson from his play....
features a character based on Monroe and a re-enactment of the subway/dress scene.

Cast

Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model, and a sex symbol.After spending much of her childhood in foster homes, Monroe began a career as a model, which led to a film contract in 1946....
as The Girl
Tom Ewell
Tom Ewell

Tom Ewell was an United States Tony Award-winning actor.Born Samuel Yewell Tompkins in Owensboro, Kentucky, Ewell began acting in Summer Stock in 1928 with Don Ameche, before moving to New York, New York in 1931....
as Richard Sherman
Evelyn Keyes
Evelyn Keyes

Evelyn Keyes was an American film actor....
as Helen Sherman
Sonny Tufts
Sonny Tufts

Sonny Tufts was a United States film actor. He attained some fame during World War II, principally because he was one of the few handsome male actors not serving overseas in the war....
as Tom MacKenzie
Robert Strauss
Robert Strauss (actor)

Robert Strauss was a gravel-voiced United States actor.Strauss began his career as a classical actor, appearing in The Tempest and Macbeth on Broadway theatre in 1930....
as Kruhulik
Oscar Homolka
Oscar Homolka

Oskar Homolka was an Austria film and theatre actor. Homolka's strong European accent, stocky appearance, bushy eyebrows and rather Slavic-sounding name led many to believe he was Eastern European or Russian, but he was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary....
as Dr. Brubaker
Marguerite Chapman
Marguerite Chapman

Marguerite Chapman was an United States actress.Born in Chatham, New York, New York, she was working as a telephone switchboard operator in White Plains, New York when her good looks brought about the opportunity to pursue a career in model ing....
as Miss Morris
Donald MacBride
Donald MacBride

Donald MacBride , was an American film actor. He appeared in nearly 140 films between 1914 in film and 1955 in film.He was born in Brooklyn, New York, and died in Los Angeles, California....
as Mr. Brady
Victor Moore
Victor Moore

Victor Moore was a star of stage and screen.He appeared in over 58 films and 21 Broadway theatre shows. He first appeared on Broadway in Rosemary ....
as the Plumber
Carolyn Jones
Carolyn Jones

Carolyn Sue Jones was an United States actress.Jones began her film career in the early 1950s, and by the end of the decade had achieved recognition with a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Bachelor Party and a Golden Globe Award as one of the most promising actresses of 1959....
as Miss Finch
Doro Merande
Doro Merande

Doro Merande was an actress who appeared in Hollywood films, on the Broadway theatre stage, and on television. She frequently portrayed "sour, witchy old women" with her abundant talent as a character actress....
as the Waitress in the vegetarian restaurant

Critical response

The original 1955 review in Variety
Variety (magazine)

Variety is a weekly entertainment trade newspaper founded in New York in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Hollywood, was founded by Silverman in 1933....
was largely positive, but expressed disappointment that Sherman remains chaste.

Awards

The film was listed at number 51 on the American Film Institute

American Film Institute

The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B....
's list of the top 100 American comedy films

AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs

Part of the AFI 100 Years... series, AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs is a list of the top 100 comedy movies in American cinema. The list was unveiled by the American Film Institute on June 14, 2000....
of the past 100 years. Ewell won a Golden Globe Award

Golden Globe Award

The Golden Globe Awards are presented annually by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association to recognize outstanding achievements in the entertainment industry, both domestic and foreign, and to focus wide public attention upon the best in film and television program....
for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy

Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy

The Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy was first awarded by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association as a separate category in 1951 in film....
. Wilder was nominated for a Directors Guild of America Award.

American Film Institute
American Film Institute

The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B....
recognition

2000: AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs

Part of the AFI 100 Years... series, AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs is a list of the top 100 comedy movies in American cinema. The list was unveiled by the American Film Institute on June 14, 2000....
#51

Sources

External links

.
at Variety.com
Variety (magazine)

Variety is a weekly entertainment trade newspaper founded in New York in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Hollywood, was founded by Silverman in 1933....