Trivia / The Seven Year Itch

• Banned in China: The film was banned in Ireland, due to the fact it was "indecent and unfit for general exhibition". Society was very entrenched in Catholicism in Ireland back then, so a film about adultery fantasies wasn't welcome there.
• Channel Hop: The film rights had originally been bought by Paramount. After Billy Wilder left Paramount, the project moved to 20th Century Fox. Wilder wanted to film it for Fox because he wanted the services of Marilyn Monroe, who was under contract with Fox.
• Creator Backlash: In The '70s, Billy Wilder called the movie "a nothing picture because the picture should be done today without censorship... Unless the husband, left alone in New York while the wife and kid are away for the summer, has an affair with that girl there's nothing. But you couldn't do that in those days, so I was just straitjacketed. It just didn't come off one bit, and there's nothing I can say about it except I wish I hadn't made it. I wish I had the property now".
• Creator-Chosen Casting: Marilyn Monroe was the only ever choice for The Girl.
• Dawson Casting: Marilyn Monroe was 28 playing The Girl, who is 22 years old. In the original play, however, The Girl is only 16 years old. The Girl's Age Lift was a consequence of The Hays Code.
• Deleted Scene:
  • Censorship led to the trimming of a few scenes.
    • Originally, the Imagine Spot of the Girl bathing went on to show the plumber dropping his wrench into the tub. As he reaches into the suds for it, the Girl doesn't seem to mind him invading her space (then again, it's Richard's imagination).
    • This dialogue the Girl delivers to Richard after having her skirt blown by the subway also never made it to theaters:
      The Girl: This one's even cooler! Must be an express. Don't you wish you had a skirt? I feel so sorry for you in those hot pants.
    • The Marilyn Maneuver doesn't show as much as the advertising does, this was also censored.
  • A scene was written, but probably never filmed, involving Richard's housekeeper finding a hairpin on his pillow, implying that he and the Girl slept together.
  • There was a segment spoofing 1930s gangster movies that got left on the cutting room floor for some reason.
• Development Hell: An attempted remake in The '80s came to nothing after Al Pacino turned down the Richard Sherman role in favor of another movie. The movie that Pacino chose over? Scarface (which, actually, was itself a remake, but that's neither here nor there).
• Executive Meddling: The act of adultery (consummated in the play) was removed by the censors, as were a few profanities and a few other bits considered risqué in 1955.
• Fake Nationality: There's a whole tribe of fake Manhattan Indians at the beginning (as a narrator explains the anthropological origins of adultery).
• Follow the Leader: At the time, very few movies opened with Artistic Title sequences. Saul Bass supplied the zany credits sequence here, and its success with audiences pretty much made his career. And in the 1960s and '70s, it seemed like every movie comedy opened with a cartoonish sequence of some sort, as did some Spaghetti Westerns.
• The Pete Best: Vanessa Brown played The Girl in the stage version alongside Ewell, but was apparently not asked to reprise the role for the movie. Then again, Ewell was almost not asked to reprise his role, and Marilyn was already a massive unrivaled draw.
• Referenced by...: In Here Today, a statue of Marilyn Monroe as The Girl is seen in Madame Tussauds.
• Wag the Director: The Seven Year Itch was meant to be shot in black and white, but Marilyn's contract stated that all her movies should be shot in color.
• What Could Have Been: Walter Matthau did a screen test for the role of Richard Sherman, but the studio thought he was too risky an investment because he was still an "unknown". Gary Cooper, William Holden and James Stewart were also considered.

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