I’ve posted this Times Square photo before. Snapped sometime prior to the 6.3.55 opening date of The Seven Year Itch, it’s about old, working-class, overall-wearing guys regarding a super-powerful, unreachable, untouchable sexual icon…zero opportunity…their youth and vitality gone with the wind.

Itch was the second of five ’50s films directed by the once-great Billy Wilder during his house-director phase, so-called because these films represented a creative hibernation for Wilder…a retreat from his usual cynical characters and stories, acid-tinged dialogue, third-act emotional turnarounds, etc.

The house phase also included Sabrina (’54), The Spirit of St. Louis (’57), Love in the Afternoon (’57) and Witness for the Prosecution (’57). Wilder finally returned to form in ’59 with Some Like It Hot.

The house phase began in the wake of the success of Wilder’s Stalag 17 (’53). It’s been speculated it may have partly been prompted by the failure of Wilder’s bitterly caustic Ace in the Hole (’51).

Wilder called The Seven Year Itch “a nothing picture because the picture should be done today without censorship…unless Tom Ewell, left alone in New York while the wife and kid are away for the summer, has an affair with Marilyn Monroe 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.”