Tag Archives: Dorothy Ford

The Seven Year Itch 1955

20th Century Fox

Most famously known as the movie that lifted Marilyn Monroe’s skirt, Seven Year Itch (or “Itch” as I call it), features COLOR footage of the old, original Pennsylvania Station in New York City. Itch is also a train movie without any physical trains seen — unless you want to count the elevated IRT Third Avenue Line seen briefly in a later scene.

What little we see of this palatial Beaux-Arts terminal is gorgeous though. This was the Pennsylvania Railroad’s masterpiece. It inspired me to purchase and research Paul Kaplan’s book “New York’s Original Penn Station — The Rise and Tragic Fall of an American Landmark”.

Of course, you can’t review this movie without a FEW screen caps of “Norma Jean” gassing it up with co-star Richard Sherman (played by Tom Ewell).

I’m not positive, but this MIGHT be the area of the station where Itch was filmed. The stairways and clock and overhead arches appear to line up. Photo credit: www.history101.nyc

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3 Godfathers 1948

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Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Southern Pacific Railroad #9, a 1909 narrow-gauge 4-6-0 from Baldwin, stars alongside John Wayne in this gritty, parched western directed by John Ford. Indeed, before the opening credits start to roll, we see SP #9 trundling along through the vastness of the western desert.

This movie will make you thirsty. Have plenty of water on hand before watching. The film features a great deal of stumbling through sand dunes and sagebrush as the 3 Godfathers continually search for water.

But that’s not why we’re here. The movie makers treat us to a wonderful little train led by SP #9 painted up for the fictitious “Rio Bravo Mogollon Railroad”. Sister locomotive SP #8 was previously seen/reviewed in my review of Sinister Journey 1948.

Come along and see how MGM used a boonie narrow gauge line in the Owens Valley of California to tell their story.

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SP #9 smokes it up coming into the God-forsaken water stop of Apache Wells. A white train? Hmmm….more about that later on in the review.

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