Marilyn and the subway: the true story behind the most famous summer image of the 20th century
It belongs to 'The temptation lives upstairs', but the picture of the actress cooling her legs with the air that comes out of the ground has become much more famous than the movie
The image of Marilyn Monroe cooling her legs in the heat of a
New York summer night by taking advantage of the air that comes out of the
cracks in the subway's ventilation ducts has two curiosities. The first is
that its fame and durability have surpassed the film in which that scene
appeared, The Temptation Lives Upstairs (1955). Yes, the comedy is a classic
Billy Wilder, but more people around the world know the look of Marilyn and
her white dress than the movie.
The scene was shot twice. One on the street in New
York, at 586 Lexington Avenue, where the public that crowded to see Marilyn
made the sound of the scene unusable
The second is that this image –Marilyn with her skirt flying
while Tom Ewell watches her between curious and gallant– is never seen
exactly as it is in the film. The subway scene takes place, indeed, when the
two protagonists leave the cinema and face the heat of the New York night,
but the shots that narrate the moment are divided between medium shots of
the actress's legs and medium shots of her reacting to the wind ("Isn't it
delicious?"). If someone revisits Temptation Lives Upstairs today expecting
to find that iconic shot of Marilyn's full body with her skirt blowing in
the wind, they'll be left wanting.
The image has remained as a summer commonplace. It speaks of
beauty, of forbidden desire, of heat, of spending the hardest months in the
big city and it is also one of the most erotic and contained scenes left by
the 20th century. But it also has a lesser-known story behind it. The
photograph was taken by Sam Shaw, a still photographer (responsible for
taking publicity photographs on set) from the golden age of Hollywood. Sam
and Marilyn became friends in 1951 on the set of Viva Zapata. He was a still
from the film and she was the lover of the director, Elia Kazan, at the
time. Since Sam didn't know how to drive, they asked Marilyn to bring him to
and from the shoot every day. That's how they became friends.
A few years later, Sam was the still of The Temptation Lives
Upstairs. By then, his friend Marilyn was already a big star. Sam's family
has recounted that the idea for the skirt scene was his. When he read the
scene in the script (Marilyn and her neighbor leaving the theater and
feeling the heat of the city) he was reminded of a photo he had staged for
the cover of Friday magazine a decade earlier. It featured a sailor and a
young girl at Coney Island, playing in a wind tunnel. The wind moved the
girl's skirt, a quality that was reflected in the photograph and caused that
number to be sold out immediately. So he suggested to Wilder that they put
that image in the film.
The scene was shot twice. One on the street in New York, at 586
Lexington Avenue, where the public that crowded to see Marilyn made the
sound of the scene unusable. So it was repeated on a closed set in Los
Angeles. Apparently the scene in New York, with so many men admiring
Marilyn's legs, provoked an attack of jealousy in Joe DiMaggio, also present
on the set. The couple divorced shortly after.
Years later the scene has been reproduced and imitated
countless times. It is, perhaps, the most famous image of the most famous
woman in the world. One of those that, with very few elements, summarizes
how celebrity, eroticism and morality were understood for an entire
century.
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