It's a night out in New York City in 1954.

You could be doing, well, anything.

There are movies, theaters, parties, bars, restaurants.

You could be at the opera or the ballet.

You could be dancing among the young and beautiful at El Morocco, the

Stork Club, or the Copa Cabana. Instead, you're standing on a street corner, elbow to elbow

with strangers, just waiting, because in just a few minutes, you've been promised you're about to get the best show in town.

And so you shove your hands in your pockets to warm them and try not to get elbowed by an overly aggressive photographer next to you.

You watch as burly men carrying equipment set up for a movie scene

they're about to shoot. Maybe you get a glimpse of the actor Tom Ewell, but everyone knows that

despite his recently celebrated turn on Broadway, he's not the one who anyone is here to see.

Finally, you get a glimpse of white fabric, a flash of a blonde bob, a smile that sets the world sideways.

The crowd comes to life with shouts and cheers around you.

Marilyn Monroe is here to shoot what will become the most iconic scene in her career.

Today, there's nothing extraordinary about the corner of Lexington and 52nd Street.

In 26, there are three lanes of fast-moving traffic. There's a halal cart on the sidewalk and a Paris baguette at the intersection where, in a pinch, you can get a fairly generic sandwich. On the sidewalk, on the southwestern side of the intersection, there's a mundane-looking office building.

It's the site of a moment that redefined celebrity a few decades earlier, and there's not even a

plaque. Even if you've never seen the Billy Wilder movie, The Seven-Year Itch, I can almost guarantee

you're aware of its most indelible image, immortalized on the movie's poster, and in recreations

and parodies in the decades since. In the movie, Marilyn Monroe, playing the character credited only as The Girl,

leaves the trans-lux movie theater on 52nd Street with Tom Ewell's character, Richard Sherman,

after seeing the creature from the Black Lagoon. And then, Monroe's character, in a white halter dress with accordion

...