Tom Ewell and Marilyn Monroe in the classic subway-grate scene from *The Seven Year Itch,* 1955.

The Seven-Year Hitch

Director Billy Wilder wanted sex in Marilyn Monroe’s comedy about infidelity—but Hollywood’s prohibitive censorship rules wouldn’t allow it

By Scott Tobias

One of the patterns that emerges in Conversations With Wilder, a delightfully candid 1999 interview book that the director Cameron Crowe did with his film-making hero, Billy Wilder, is that Wilder tends to look more fondly on his hits than his misses. To him, commercial flops were rarely the result of audiences misunderstanding his work, but a regrettable failure on his part to connect with them.

So it’s notable that Wilder didn’t have kind things to say about the Marilyn Monroe comedy The Seven Year Itch, a box-office sensation that’s rightfully settled a few tiers below classics like Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, The Apartment, and Some Like It Hot, his brilliant second go-around with Monroe.