MARILYN MONROE’S SUBWAY GRATE

My editor doesn’t generally approve of using Manhattan as a location for “Off the Beat” features. It’s understandable because NYC is dense with quirkiness - it’s expected there - and we can find plenty of unique surprises in other places where craziness is less predictable. But since many of us find ourselves pulled to New York City for various interests anyway, and it’s only about a three-hour trek from Binghamton, it is hard for me to resist the occasional departure.

So, there I am in the photo, standing on the site of one of the most iconic of American images. In a spot where neither plaque nor marker denotes any particular significance, the people trotting along the sidewalk behind me probably have no clue that they are passing by something so memorable.

There is virtually no one of any age in the United States - heck, probably no one of any age in any industrialized country in the world - who has not seen this iconic image: Hollywood’s luminous Marilyn Monroe in a floaty white dress standing over a subway grating while the breeze from a “passing train” billows her skirt into the air. I’m standing over that grate in the photo. Well, actually even George Zimbel (one of the original photographers, now 87 years old and still actively creating) told me in an email that he isn’t certain now, which was the exact grate.

The familiar black and white images were shot on that spot. There is little dispute that none of the location footage director Billy Wilder captured that night made it into the actual film, the 1955 rom-com The Seven Year Itch, wherein the character played by Monroe (as you will discover if you see it and pay close attention) was subtly and touchingly given no name. The film is in vivid color. The scene was definitely shot a second time on a Hollywood lot. The reason, so the story goes: the amount of noise coming from mostly male fans - stimulated by observing the New York shoot - made most, if not all, of that footage unusable. (It is widely reported, though it makes me sad to include, that Monroe and her husband, legendary Yankee player Joe DiMaggio, had a violent fight ignited by the filming that night, and divorced weeks later.)

The grates over the rectangular ventilation openings above the subway are not the original ones; those were replaced long ago, along with all the buildings that existed on that side of the street during the 1955 shoot. But for some New Yorkers and travelers alike, a little jolt of delight still comes up from the ground if they realize where they are.

The location is the southwest corner of Lexington Avenue and 52nd Street. Most likely, as determined by the exhaustive calculations of a YouTuber named Rob, it’s the middle grate in the group of nine in front of Le Relais de Venise L’Entrecôte restaurant. And I can say of my visit there, as Marilyn says in the movie when the cooling rush of air buoys her skirt for a few sustained seconds on a hot summer evening, “Isn’t it delicious?”