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A steaming New York City subway grate.
A billowing white dress.
Hollywood's most beloved, most tragically misunderstood, starlet.
It was a perfect formula.
And Sam Shaw, photographer and confidant to Marilyn Monroe, captured it all in a single picture that became one of the most iconic images of all time.
Little did Shaw know at the time in 1955, but Tinseltown executives would fall over themselves to steal the credit for what came to be known as 'the shot seen 'round the world.'
But now Shaw has set the record straight in the new book 'Dear Marilyn: The Unseen Letters and Photographs' curated by Shaw's daughters Meta and Edie after his death in 1999.
The archive of his works lays bare his personal correspondence with Monroe, private journals and previously unreleased photographs, charting the humble New York native's rise from magazine photog to the movie industry's go-to man for on-set stills.
Shaw wrote that the idea for his legendary picture of Monroe came to him in 1941, over a decade before he recreated the image for the film 'The Seven Year Itch,' starring Monroe and actor Tom Ewell.
During a photoshoot for the cover of Friday Magazine, Shaw instructed two models to stand over the subway grate in Coney Island, New York. The updraft sent her skirt flying, as googly-eyed sailors looked on.
'The cover image was a hit, and the issue sold out immediately,' wrote Shaw. 'I knew that someday I would repeat the same composition on a bigger scale when the opportunity arose.'
That chance came when Shaw was asked to work on the film adaption of Billy Wilder and George Axelrod's screenplay for 'The Seven Year Itch,' which is about a man tempted to betray his wife.
There was a scene involving Monroe and Ewell standing on a street corner in Manhattan. Instantly, Shaw knew he wanted to recreate his Friday Magazine cover image as an advertisement for the film.
'Producer Charles Feldman asked me to create a key photo and logo for promotion,' Shaw wrote.
'I told Feldman, Wilder, and Charles Einfeld, vice president in charge of advertising and publicity for 20th Century Fox, that I had an idea for the ad.'
'I would need extra time, and they would probably go into 'golden hours,' (a term in motion pictures meaning overtime). I told them to arrange for an additional number of police officers to handle the crowd that was sure to gather.'
The set's production manager cordoned off 51st street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, and a technician operated a wind machine under the makeshift grating grill to imitate a passing subway train to blow Monroe's skirt in the air.
Thousands of onlookers gathered to watch Monroe and Ewell shoot the scene.
'The police were completely off guard, more fascinated watching Marilyn, forgetting the mob. Not one person in the crowd broke through. They were too mesmerized by what they were seeing,' wrote Shaw.
Shaw's photo, undoubtedly daring for its time, was later dubbed 'the shot seen 'round the world' by Hollywood Reporter columnist Irving Hoffman.
Indeed, it was, so much so that Shaw claimed the studio's vice president of advertising attempted to take credit for it.
'From the top to the lower echelons in Los Angeles, it was a battle for credits. The worst in the lot was Einfeld. He tried to take credit for my skirt blowing photos, the LIFE magazine stories I placed, and the Harper's Bazaar photo layout by [Richard] Avedon that I arranged,' Shaw claimed.
'At the time I did not know about any of these executive suite battles at 20th Century Fox using me as a pawn – like Marilyn. Taking all the credits and trying to have me taken off the picture. I thought we were friends.'
'Dear Marilyn,' published by ACC Art Books, also includes a self-portrait Monroe gave to Shaw, as well as candid images of the actress at her home in New York and on the beach in Amagansett.
Six decades after her tragic death at just 36 years old, the question of 'Who was the real Marilyn Monroe?' persists today.
While unauthorized biographies and sensationalized biopics have attempted to answer that question, none have captured the enigma of Monroe quite as intimately as Shaw's camera.