Monday, March 2, 2009

THE GRATE DEBATE!


On our recent New York trip - John, Carol and BOFUS attempted to find and photograph the grate made famous by Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch. A map we had listed the site, but it wasn't very precise.



We asked 5 different people and got five different answers. The most credible of which turned out to be pretty close. (When I say WE asked - I mean that I was ordered to and complied!)



As you can see in the picture above, the address is clearly 590 Lexington Avenue.

The video below starts where I was standing when I took the pictures of what we hoped would be the grate - and ends on where the grate actually was. Obviously, the original building is either gone or was completely remodeled.



This is the picture I took of Carol - our very own Marilyn - re-enacting the scene from the film.



So it turns out we came pretty darn close - (thanks to John).

NOTE: The city shoot was never actually used in the film. Turns out the crowd was so noisy the footage was unusable so they rebuilt the whole street on the sound lot and reshot it at the studio. BUT - the famous picture itself was shot here. The movie doesn't show much above her knees (censors).

Here is the scene from the movie (The hot pants comment was cut by the censors):



And this is a montage of the actual photo shoot:



Also notable: Reputedly, Joe DiMaggio became so upset seeing his wife flaunting her hoo-ha at the crowds of men the incident eventually led to their divorce.

Next up: Streisand, the Winter Garden Theater and the most spectacular surprise of the trip!

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