FILM · 1955 · USA
The Seven Year Itch
51 archived facts 7 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (51)
- #001
Billy Wilder preferred to shoot in black and white, but Marilyn Monroe's contract with Fox required all of her films to be made in color. Monroe had always felt she looked far more attractive and glamorous in color than in black and white.
- #002
Marilyn Monroe's iconic white dress set an auction record in June 2011 when it sold for $4.6 million (rising to $5.5 million once taxes and fees were included), quintupling the previous record for a film costume (the $923,000 paid for Audrey Hepburn's "little black dress" from Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)).
- #003
Although it is one of the most iconic images in the history of American and international popular culture and one of Marilyn Monroe's most recognizable photographs, the famous full-length shot of Monroe standing with her dress billowing upward never actually appears in the film. The footage used in the film shows only her legs, cut off by reaction shots, and is never shown at full length.
- #004
Marilyn Monroe's nine-month marriage to Joe DiMaggio effectively, and ironically, ended during this shoot. DiMaggio was furious that the scene of his wife's dress blowing up was being filmed, and the next day Monroe reportedly had to wear makeup to cover bruises from the domestic fight that followed. Three weeks later he filed for divorce.
- #005
The classic shot of Marilyn Monroe standing over a subway grate with her dress flying around her legs was first filmed at 1:00 a.m. on September 15, 1954, at Lexington Avenue and 52nd Street in Manhattan. The shoot took place before a crowd of 5,000 onlookers who whistled and cheered at every take, which caused Monroe to fluff her lines repeatedly. Bill Kobrin, then 20th Century-Fox's East Coast correspondent, told the Palm Springs Desert Sun in 2006 that turning the shoot into a media circus was Billy Wilder's idea and that he even had bleachers set up. All of this happened in the presence of Monroe's then-husband, a mortified and furious Joe DiMaggio. The incident is reported to have hastened the end of Monroe and DiMaggio's marriage. The original footage was never shown on screen; the noise of the crowd made it unusable. Wilder restaged the scene on a Fox set replicating Lexington Avenue and got a more satisfactory result. Even so, it took Marilyn another 40 takes to get the famous scene.
- #006
The Seven Year Itch is one of several films to use footage of New York City's original Pennsylvania Station, which opened in 1910 and was demolished in 1963. Considered an architectural masterpiece, the Beaux-Arts station was modeled on Paris's great, naturally lit stations, and a brief glimpse of its glass ceiling can be seen when Richard takes his wife and son to board the train near the beginning of the film. The station's demolition, and the shock it produced in a city that had previously been indifferent, is largely credited with rapidly launching the historic landmark preservation movement.
- #007
Marilyn Monroe was eager to work with Billy Wilder, but she had to agree to appear in There's No Business Like Show Business (1954) before Fox would let her make this film.
- #008
In the 1970s, Billy Wilder said of the film: "It's a nothing picture, because a picture should be made without censorship today… There's nothing there unless the husband, left alone in New York while his wife and child are away for the summer, has an affair with the girl. But in those days you couldn't do that, so I was in a straitjacket. Not one bit of it came off, and there's nothing I can say about it except that I wish I hadn't done it. I wish I had that property now."
- #009
Carolyn Jones, the actress who played Nurse Finch in Richard's fantasy, said of Marilyn Monroe in 1982: "We talked at length. She was such a sad lady. She was just coming into the scene where she was afraid of losing her looks. It was an all-consuming fear."
- #010
According to George Axelrod, The Girl has no name because neither he nor Billy Wilder could think of one.
- #011
Billy Wilder believed he had found his leading man after seeing Walter Matthau's screen test for the role of Richard Sherman. But 20th Century-Fox did not want to take a risk on a newcomer. Wilder then turned to Tom Ewell, the actor who had originated the role on Broadway; Ewell was inexplicably billed as "Tommy Ewell" in the opening credits.
- #012
George Cukor was the original choice to direct the film. He turned the project down, and Billy Wilder eventually took the job after his contract with Paramount ended in 1954 (his last film at that studio was Sabrina (1954)).
- #013
Gary Cooper, James Stewart and William Holden were considered for the role of Richard Sherman, but Wilder was looking for a much more "ordinary man" as the male lead.
- #014
Marilyn Monroe's constant lateness and behavioral problems drove the film's budget up to $1.8 million, a high figure for the time. The film still managed to turn a handsome profit.
- #015
A major promotional campaign was launched for the film, including a 15-meter-tall cutout of Marilyn Monroe (from the billowing-dress scene) erected in front of the Loew's State Theatre in New York City's Times Square.
- #016
Adapted from George Axelrod's Broadway play, the film stars Tom Ewell and Vanessa Brown. After the project moved from Paramount to 20th Century-Fox, Marilyn Monroe replaced Brown. Not only were many of the risqué lines dropped because of the Hays Code, but over the objections of Axelrod and Billy Wilder, Sherman's affair with The Girl was turned into a product of his imagination.
- #017
In a 1999 interview with Cameron Crowe, Billy Wilder revealed that the crew argued over who would work the dress-blowing moment.
- #018
Saul Bass created the film's animated opening title sequence, the only title sequence he ever made for a Billy Wilder film.
- #019
When Richard is first seen entering his home from the street, an elevated train passes in the background. This was the IRT Third Avenue Line, which ended its Manhattan operation on May 12, 1955, three weeks before the film opened in New York City.
- #020
The moonlight swimming fantasy is a very clear, witty nod to the beach kiss in the 1953 film From Here to Eternity; the first two film versions of A Star Is Born (1937 and 1954) are regarded somewhat askance for the death of their lead character.
- #021
In the early 1980s, 20th Century-Fox (which owned the film rights) planned a remake of The Seven Year Itch. Al Pacino was reportedly to play Richard Sherman and Melanie Griffith to play The Girl. The project never came to fruition, however, and no remake has been made to this day.
- #022
Surprisingly, Marilyn Monroe's very tight stiletto heels do not get caught in or break on the subway grate she stands over in the film's most famous scene, even though this was a universal problem at the time for the countless women in New York who wore that very popular heel.
- #023
The spaceman Richard and his son argue about early in the film, Captain Video and His Video Rangers (1949), is a pop-culture enigma. It was an extremely popular series in the 1950s, a kind of forerunner of Star Trek (1966), and the subject of numerous references in other series, films and Dave Barry's humorous writing. It is also a lost show. Despite its popularity, the series' studio tapes were erased around 1970, and only eight complete episodes are known to exist, making Captain Video something like the Library of Alexandria of science-fiction television history.
- #024
The film's premiere was held on June 1, 1955, Marilyn Monroe's 29th birthday.
- #025
The film contains many references to things censors would certainly not have approved of. The two decorators upstairs (probably a well-known gay couple at the time) hint that Marilyn Monroe may have undressed when the plant fell from the balcony (the audience never knows), and the whole ongoing summer affair for men going into the city is left to filmgoers to imagine.
- #026
In one of Richard's fantasies, Helen says that Kruhulik is actually a private detective named Johnny Dollar. This is a reference to the radio drama "Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar," which aired on CBS from 1949 to 1962, with a hiatus from September 1954 to October 1955.
- #027
The New York cinema supposedly showing Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) was actually screening Leslie Caron's Lili (1953) at the time; on the side of the auditorium visible to the audience, the frame bore the title "Creature" (along with a monster-and-maiden standee), but the front of the theater frame (not visible) still listed "Lili." A photograph of the theater showing all the contradictory frames was kept in Fox's photo department for decades.
- #028
In Richard Sherman's first few glances at The Girl's photo in the "U. S. Camera" annual, his reaction implies that it is a nude photograph. When the photo is finally shown on screen, more than an hour into the film, she is wearing a white bikini with red polka dots. To imply nudity, however, Marilyn Monroe struck a pose similar to those in her famous 1949 red velvet photo shoot that appeared in the first issue of "Playboy" in 1953.
- #029
The discussion of the artistic photograph on the beach was also a real-life experience for Marilyn Monroe. She had her first beach photo shoot in 1946, when she was an unknown young woman, with photographer Joseph Jasgur. Over the course of her career she would appear in several more beach photo collections.
- #030
Many lines and scenes from the play were cut or rewritten because the Hays office deemed them improper. Axelrod and Wilder complained that the film was made under straitjacket conditions. This led to a major change in the plot: in the play Sherman and The Girl have sex; in the film the romance is reduced to innuendo, and Sherman and the Girl kiss three times — once while playing Sherman's piano together, once outside the cinema, and once near the end, before Sherman takes Ricky's paddle to him.
- #031
The air conditioners central to the film's plot were Emerson units from the 1954 model year: the Custom model for the living room and Compact models elsewhere. The Emerson logo was removed from the living-room unit for filming.
- #032
The Seven Year Itch was the last film of stage comedian and screen character actor Victor Moore.
- #033
The ultra-modern (for the time) metalite step stool Richard uses to get the hidden key from the bookshelf has since become a sought-after item for collectors in 2023. Even reproduction models cost more than $100.
- #034
Footage shot during a Indians-Yankees game on September 1, 1954, featuring Yankees catcher Yogi Berra and pitcher "Steady" Eddie Lopat, was intended as part of the gossip sequence in which Sherman imagines news reports about The Girl's activities spreading through New York City. The film's shooting began on a Wednesday afternoon. Twelve days earlier, Hedda Hopper had reported on the upcoming scene in her gossip column and added that the film's screenplay was "best I've ever read."
- #035
A study conducted in Finland concluded that the seven-year itch is in fact an occurrence that takes place in marriage.
- #036
Throughout the film, a variation of the 1945 song Sentimental Journey, popularized by Doris Day, can be heard.
- #037
The interior paint scheme of the apartment building represented the very popular monochrome style of the day, in which everything was painted exactly the same color — walls, upholstery, doors, stair banisters and so on. While the pale beige-gray look in this film is very subdued, an extremely exaggerated version of it can be seen five years later in the blue paint used in the country house in Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960).
- #038
This was the last film of longtime character actor Donald MacBride.
- #039
Nurse Finch was played by Carolyn Jones, with her brunette curls. The successful actress would become even better known for her raven-haired role as Morticia Addams in the original 1964 TV series The Addams Family.
- #040
The film rights to this film were first purchased by Paramount Pictures. After director Billy Wilder left Paramount, the project moved to 20th Century-Fox.
- #041
Marilyn Monroe, Tom Ewell and Evelyn Keyes were several years older than their characters. Monroe was 28 while her character was 22, Ewell was 45 while his character was 38-39, and Keyes was 38 during filming while her character was 31. Ironically, Ewell's character mentions the age of Keyes's character and implies she is no longer young, while in real life he falls in love with the young woman played by Monroe, who was only 3 years younger than Keyes's character.
- #042
Sonny Tufts, who played the smooth Tom MacKenzie, came from the Tufts family that founded Tufts University.
- #043
It ranked 51st on the American Film Institute's 2000 list of the 100 Funniest American Films.
- #044
Kathleen Freeman appears in a scene set in a vegetarian restaurant, but she has no lines.
- #045
This was the only film Billy Wilder made for 20th Century-Fox.
- #046
Actor Tom Nolan plays Ricky Sherman's son. He is not listed among the cast.
- #047
Robert Strauss, who plays Kruhulik in one of Sherman's fantasies and is imagined as a private detective, actually played a bumbling private detective in three episodes of the television program "Bewitched" in 1966.
- #048
"The Girl" asks whether she should also bring potato chips with the champagne, then dips her chip in the champagne and offers the same to Richard. This may seem strange, but the truth is that potato chips are strongly recommended as a pairing with champagne, since they balance each other and bring out the flavor of both.
- #049
In one scene, the Girl's toothpaste commercial is shown on color television at the lake where Helen and Ricky are staying. The NTSC standard for color television broadcasting was only introduced in 1953, and although some programs of the day were broadcast in color, most people still watched them on black-and-white televisions. In 1955 it would have been extremely rare for an average person to own a color television, especially one used only during a summer vacation.
- #050
In Nicolas Roeg's 1985 film "Insignificance," the unnamed actress played by Theresa Russell is clearly meant to remind us of Marilyn Monroe, and this appears to be the film she is seen shooting in New York. Although director Roeg looks nothing like Billy Wilder, he appears for a second or two as the director (uncredited).
- #051
Gina Lollobrigida visited Marilyn Monroe on set during filming.
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