Seven Year Itch, The Original and Limited Edition Art (1955)

Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell) sends his wife Helen (Evelyn Keyes) and son Ricky (Butch Bernard) to Maine to escape the summer heat. When he returns home, he meets The Girl (Marilyn Monroe), a model who is renting the apartment upstairs while she is in town to make television spots for a toothpaste. That evening, while proofing a book by psychiatrist Dr. Brubaker (Oskar Homolka), claiming that a significant proportion of men have extra-marital affairs in the seventh year of marriage, he has an imaginary conversation with Helen, trying to "convince" her, in three fantasy sequences, that he is irresistible to women, but she laughs off his assertion. A tomato plant then crashes into his lounge chair; The Girl accidentally knocked it over, and apologizes. Richard invites her to come down for a drink.   As he waits for her to put on her underwear that she keeps cool in the refrigerator and gets dressed, Richard has a fantasy that The Girl is a femme fatale overcome by his playing of Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto. While playing Chopsticks (above), Richard, back in his fantasy, grabs The Girl in a bear hug, causing them to fall off the piano bench. She shrugs it off, but he is immediately contrite, and asks her to leave.   Over the next few days, they grow closer. His resolve to resist temptation in all of its many forms fuels his fear that he is succumbing to the 'Seven Year Itch'. He seeks out Dr. Brubaker for help, but to no avail. His imagination then kicks into overdrive: Helen and Ricky watch The Girl on TV as she warns the women of New York City about "this monster named Richard Sherman"; The Girl tells a plumber (Victor Moore) how Richard is "just like The Creature from the Black Lagoon"; the plumber repeats her story to the horrified patrons of the vegetarian restaurant Richard ate at; the Shermans' hunky neighbor, Tom McKenzie (Sonny Tufts), arranges for him and Helen to be alone on a hayride; a wronged Helen returns home to exact her revenge. The fantasies turn Richard into a paranoid wreck.   After a crazed confrontation with McKenzie, whom Helen has asked to drop by to pick up Ricky's canoe paddle, Richard comes to his senses. He tells The Girl she can stay at his apartment, then runs off to catch the next train to Maine.
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