“Despite being one of the most iconic images in American and international pop culture history, as well as one of the most recognizable photographs of Marilyn Monroe, the famous full-length image of Monroe standing with her dress being blown up never actually appears in the film. The classic shot of Marilyn Monroe’s dress blowing up around her legs as she stands over a subway grating was originally shot on Manhattan’s Lexington Avenue at 52nd Street on September 15, 1954, at 1:00 a.m. Filming took place in the presence of 5,000 onlookers, who whistled and cheered. The original footage never made it to the screen; the noise of the crowd had made it unusable. Wilder re-staged the scene on a Fox set replicating Lexington Avenue, and got a more satisfactory result. The shot used in the film is only of her legs, cut with reaction shots, and never shown full-length.”
The Seven Year Itch (1955) dir. Billy Wilder
