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December 5, 2008 |
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Created and Maintained by: The Photoimaging Information Council |
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by Frank Lovece |
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Movies move. That's how they got their name. Take a moment to think back on some of the movies' classic moments. Marilyn Monroe's billowing skirt above the subway grate in The Seven Year Itch, you'll see Cary Grant running from a murderous prop plane in North by Northwest, Jack Nicholson cheerily announcing, "Heeeere's Johnny" in The Shining. Chances are you'll find yourself picturing a single still image of Jack Nicholson's menacing grin.  here's johnny
learn more about her
Odd? Not really. Long after the specifics of a movie have faded into unreliable memory, the movie stills shot for publicity and promotion remain -- all over Web sites, books, newspapers, magazines and memory, transcending their commercial roots to become embedded in our cultural history. But ironically, movie stills virtually never come from movies -- that is, they're not individual frames blown up and printed from the actual film negative. They're shot separately and specifically by a movie crew-member called a unit photographer. It's a lucrative but often-thankless position that every movie needs yet few image-conscious actors and filmmakers want to have around. With their cameras' clicks and whirrs silenced within custom-made metal boxes called "blimps," unit photographers shoot 10 to 12 rolls of film daily as the performers rehearse and even as movie cameras roll. With only a fraction of these shots ever getting used (and since they're shot from a different angle as the movie cameras anyway), the chance that a published still is an actual shot from a movie is astronomical.
 smitten
the poster
That doesn't make them any less artful or evocative. In future columns, we'll look the work of such unit photographers as Brian Hamill (Tootsie, The Devil's Advocate, Woody Allen's movies from Annie Hall on) and Melinda Sue Gordon (Men in Black, most of the Coen Brothers and Jim Carrey films), and how they achieved their effects. We'll also tell the stories behind some of the movies' most famous stills.
 the poster
the press
For instance: This classic image of Tom Ewell and Marilyn Monroe from The Seven Year Itch. It's the shot that got Marilyn's panties aflutter and husband Joe DiMaggio's knickers in a twist. And it never appeared in the movie. Photojournalist Sam Shaw had been hired to shoot the film's poster. In the wee small hours of Sept. 15, 1954, Shaw had a privileged space amid the throngs of photographers and an estimated 2,000 or more fans at 52nd Street and Lexington Avenue next to the Trans-Lux movie theatre, where an on-location shoot/publicity stunt was being held. (Shaw also took this long shot of the crowd, which has become a famous poster in its own right.)
 the press
one of her most famous
For about two hours, director Billy Wilder shot 15 takes of the comedy's "subway grate" scene, in which Marilyn's naïve young sexpot (known only as "The Girl") and married neighbor Ewell (as publishing-house executive Richard Sherman) have gone to a movie. On that hot summer night before home air conditioning became common, The Girl cools off with the breeze shooting up from a sidewalk grating as a subway train rushes below. "Isn't it delicious?" she coos innocently, as the air whips her dress up. (In a line trimmed by censors before the final cut she adds obliviously, "Don't you wish you had a skirt? I feel so sorry for you in those hot pants."
some like it hot
In the movie scene -- which Wilder actually re-shot later in a studio lot, minus the crowds and noise -- Marilyn's dress never rises much past her mid-thigh, and you don't see her panties. In Shaw's photo (and in this equally famous newspaper photo by Associated Press photographer Matty Zimmerman) her modest short-shorts-style undies are visible.
 she likes it hot
wind
Equally visible to those standing near her husband of eight months was DiMaggio's anger and disgust at these cheesecakey antics. The couple had had problems -- returning from a USO tour of Korea, for instance, Marilyn had remarked of the greeting crowd, "Oh, Joe, you've never heard such cheering," to which baseball legend DiMaggio replied tersely, "Yes, I have." An argument ensued now after the subway-grate shoot, and continued back home in California, where the disagreement got physical. One month later, Marilyn filed for divorce.
 the divorce
a passing
Shaw passed away in 1999, but his image is still scratching a 47-year itch
 wind 2
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