Image Above: Sam Shaw’s 1954 photograph of Marilyn Monroe taken for a set-piece poster image in New York © sam shaw inc
More than 50 years after Marilyn Monroe’s death in 1962, she remains a potent sex symbol and cultural icon. Her beauty, glamour and vulnerability were captured by a number of major photographers, including Richard Avedon, Eve Arnold, Milton Greene, Bert Stern and Cecil Beaton. However, perhaps the most famous image of Monroe – and the one that confirmed her international stardom – was created by her close friend, Sam Shaw.
Born in New York in 1912, Shaw had been an artist before taking up photography in the 1940s. He initially worked as a photojournalist for Collier’s magazine and carried out documentary assignments on subjects including jazz musicians, coal miners and sharecroppers.
In the early 1950s, Shaw was working in the film industry as a stills photographer. While on the set of biopic Viva Zapata! in 1951, he met Monroe, who at the time was a struggling actress employed on contract at the 20th Century Fox studios. Shaw couldn’t drive and Monroe, then the girlfriend of the film’s director Elia Kazan, was asked to give him a lift to the film set every day.
Shaw and Monroe developed a close friendship. She called him ‘Sam Spade’, a reference to the fictional private detective created by Dashiell Hammett. Soon he began photographing her in informal portraits that captured her playful personality. Shaw said, ‘I just want to show this fascinating woman, with her guard down, at work, at ease off-stage, during joyous moments in her life and as she often was – alone.’
By 1954, when Monroe was chosen for the lead role in Billy Wilder’s comedy The Seven Year Itch, she was on the way to becoming a major star. She was 28 years old and had played lead roles in films such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire (both released in 1953). She had married her second husband, baseball star Joe DiMaggio, in January that year
In The Seven Year Itch, Monroe played the glamorous neighbour with whom middle-aged publishing executive Richard Sherman, played by Tom Ewell, becomes infatuated. At one point in the script, Monroe and Ewell stroll through a New York street and walk over a subway grate.
When reading the dialogue for this scene, Shaw saw the opportunity to use an idea he’d had several years earlier. He had been visiting the amusement park on Coney Island when he saw women exiting a ride and having their skirts blown upwards by a blast of air coming from below ground. He suggested to producer Charles Feldman that this scene could provide a set-piece poster image for the film, with a blast of air from the grate blowing Monroe’s dress in the air.
The movie scene was originally shot outside the Trans-Lux Theatre on Lexington Avenue, at around 2am. Despite the shoot’s timing, a crowd gathered to watch. Monroe was wearing a white pleated halterneck dress. A wind machine underneath the grate sent the dress billowing up above her waist, revealing her legs. As the scene was re-shot, the crowd became increasingly boisterous.
After the filming had finished, Shaw arranged for the moment to be recreated in a press photocall. Photographers including Magnum’s Elliott Erwitt stood around her as the dress was again blown upwards. Shaw, having organised the event, secured himself the best position to record it. As Monroe posed with her dress flying high, she turned to face him and said, ‘Hey, Sam Spade!’ He pressed the shutter on his Rolleiflex.
Image Right: Sam Shaw and Marilyn Monroe backstage during the filming of The Seven Year Itch in Los Angeles, California, 1954 © sam shaw inc
Shaw’s picture, with Monroe looking provocatively into his camera, is the best of the images from that shoot. The shots taken that night were published the next day in newspapers and magazines around the world. They not only brought great publicity for the film, but also cemented Monroe’s image as one of the sex symbols of the era.
However, one of the onlookers at the shoot was Joe DiMaggio, and the sight of a crowd of men ogling and whistling at his wife sent him into a jealous rage. He left the set, angrily saying, ‘I’ve had it!’ The incident led directly to the couple’s divorce in October 1954, after just nine months of marriage.
Ironically, the filming done that night couldn’t be used as there was too much noise on set. The scene was later re-shot on a closed studio set in Los Angeles, with Shaw the only photographer present.
The scene went on to become one of the most famous in cinema history. Its importance was demonstrated in 2011 when the original white dress worn by Monroe was sold at auction for $4.6 million.
Shaw and Monroe often worked together in the following years and remained close friends until she died aged 36, in August 1962. As a mark of respect, he refused to publish any of his Monroe photographs for ten years after her death.
Shaw went on to photograph many more actors, artists and musicians, and became a movie producer in the 1960s. He had a long and productive career, but the experience of knowing Monroe remained an important part of his life.
To Shaw, she always remained ‘a contemporary Aphrodite… a beautiful, almost otherworldly creature who left behind some of that beauty’.
Books
Books Lorie Karnath’s book Sam Shaw: A Personal Point of View gives a good overview of Shaw’s career, illustrated by his most important images. Shaw himself wrote books on his work, including The Joy of Marilyn: In the Camera Eye.
Websites
Sam Shaw’s official website is www.shawfamilyarchives.com. It includes a selection of Shaw’s images, biographical information and video interviews with his friends.
News is posted on the Shaw Family Archives’ Facebook page www.facebook.com/ShawFamilyArchives
and Twitter page www.twitter.com/ShawFamArchives
Image Above: Actor Tom Ewell and Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, 1954. The
original image of Marilyn posing above a grate with her dress flying
high had to be re-shot for the film, as there was too much noise on set. © sam shaw inc
Events of 1954
- 25 January Two months after the death of poet and playwright Dylan Thomas, his radio play Under Milk Wood is first broadcast
- 13
February Doctors at Britain’s Medical Research Council publish the
first paper that suggests a link between smoking and lung cancer - 6 May British athlete Roger Bannister becomes the first person to run a mile in under four minutes
- 29 May British athlete Diane Leather becomes the first woman to run a mile in under five minutes
- 6 June First publication of JRR Tolkien’s epic fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings
- 4 July Meat rationing, which had been introduced during the Second World War, finally comes to an end
- 13
October British athlete Christopher Chataway sets a new world record
for the 5,000-metre race. It is five seconds faster than the previous
record - 19 October The British government agrees to end its military occupation of Egypt’s Suez Canal
- 30 November Winston Churchill becomes the first British Prime Minister to reach his 80th birthday while still in office
