Marilyn Lost & Found

A great friend of mine forwarded me an excellent article in the New York Times the other day, and me being the old Hollywood gossip I am, I had to share. When Billy Wilder shot footage of Marilyn Monroe standing over a subway grate in New York City in 1954 for the film The Seven Year Itch, he didn't know the shots would become world famous- a veritable image of rebellion against Fifties strait-laced culture. What he also didn't realize was that the footage would be useless and he would have to reshoot the scene in a studio in Hollywood- consigning the original footage to the cutting room floor.

But Wilder wasn't the only man with a camera there that summer night, and as luck would have it, the footage from furrier turned filmman Jules Schulback has surfaced. It shows a luminous star at one of her most iconic moments. As with most things Monroe, there is a backstory that is not as bubbly as the actress' onscreen persona, but that is what makes her story, and these images so compelling. And if you haven't seen The Seven Year Itch, what are you waiting for?