The Seven Year Itch (1955). Based on a 3 act play by George Axelrod. The film was co-written and directed by Billy Wilder. Cast: Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell.
One hot summer day in Manhattan, Richard Sherman takes his wife Helen and son to the crowded train station, to send them off on their summer vacation. Then, Richard returns to his office at Brady & Co., where he designs covers of paperbacks.
After dinner, Richard goes home and is about to start working on a new manuscript, Of Man and the Unconscious by Dr. Ludwig Brubaker, when he hears someone at the door. A sexy blond tells Richard that she is his new neighbor, Richard, can not believe his eyes and watches her walk up the stairs.
Richard, trying not to think about the new neighbor, returns to Brubaker's book. Richard begins thinking about Helen's plans to call him at 10:00 PM and decides that she must not trust him. He imagines Helen sitting on the patio with him and hears her laugh when he says that other woman find him attractive.
Helen calls early and Richard is not to pleased to hear that she ran into Tom MacKenzie, another writer, on the train to Maine, yet promises that everything is fine at home. After hanging up, Richard gets up just in time before a huge tomato plant from the upstairs patio crashes into his chair.
The Girl, who was watering the plants, apologizes for knocking over the plant, and Richard invites her over for a drink. During the hot Summer days to follow, he spends a lot of time with the girl, but ...does he give into his vivid imagination?
I thought Marilyn was wonderful in this film. My favorite scene in the movie is when Richard imagination takes over and he sees: Helen and Ricky watching The Girl on TV as she warns the women of New York City about "this monster named Richard Sherman" and how Richard is "just like The Creature from the Black Lagoon".
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After a handful of "B" movies at Paramount Pictures, she landed her most notable role, that of Scarlett O'Hara's sister Suellen in Gone with the Wind (1939).
Columbia Pictures signed her to a contract. In 1941, she performed in the film, Here Comes Mr. Jordan.
She spent most of the early 1940's playing leads in many of Columbia's "B" dramas and mysteries.
She performed with Larry Parks in the film, The Jolson Story (1946).
She landed the role as Kathy Flannigan in Mrs. Mike(1949).
Keyes' last major film role was the vacationing wife in, The Seven Year Itch (1955), which starred Marilyn Monroe.
Keyes officially retired in 1956, but continued to act.
She was married to Barton Oliver Bainbridge Sr. from 1938 until his death in 1940. Later, she married and divorced director Charles Vidor (1943–1945), actor/director John Huston (23 July 1946 – February 1950) and bandleader Artie Shaw (1957–1985). While married to Huston, the couple adopted a Mexican child, Pablo, whom Huston had discovered while on the set of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Her autobiography, Scarlett O'Hara's Younger Sister: My Lively Life In and Out of Hollywood, was published in 1977.
Keyes thought that Mrs. Mike was her best film. She also wrote of the personal cost she paid by having an abortion just before Gone with the Wind was to begin filming. The experience left her unable to have children. Among the many Hollywood affairs she recounted in "Scarlett O'Hara's Younger Sister" were those with producer Michael Todd (who left Evelyn for Elizabeth Taylor), Glenn Ford, Sterling Hayden, Dick Powell, Anthony Quinn, David Niven and Kirk Douglas.
