26-foot Monroe sculpture raises eyebrows in Chicago

As dozens of people watched yesterday, a 26-foot-tall sculpture of Monroe in her famous pose from the “The Seven Year Itch’’ was unveiled on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. In the movie, a draft catches Monroe’s dress as she passes over a subway grate.

Many in the crowd that descended on the plaza throughout the day - including a tuxedo-clad wedding party - wasted little time positioning themselves under the movie star’s dress to catch a subway-level view and take pictures with their cellphone cameras. Not that Monroe, her eyes closed and a sublime smile on her face, seemed to notice.

Some of those who took pictures of the sculpture called “Forever Marilyn’’ were surprised when they came around the side and back of the sculpture and saw honest-to-goodness lace panties on the movie icon. The film scene and photographs taken from it left much more to the imagination than artist Seward Johnson’s sculpture.

“I would have expected to see something flat there, and we wouldn’t see her undergarments,’’ said Trisha Feely, 41, who lives in the Chicago suburb of Naperville. “It’s a little intrusive.’’

“It reveals what everybody was always thinking,’’ said her husband, Terry Feely, 42.

Chicago has a history of public art displays, including a herd of fiberglass cows that lined Michigan Avenue some years back. The plaza where Monroe will be stationed until next spring was the home a few years ago to another Johnson sculpture: the equally iconic, though far less glamorous, “American Gothic.’’

The Monroe sculpture isn’t even the first piece of public art that people can stand under and look up at - though nobody who visits the Picasso a few blocks away quite knows what they’re seeing.

Marilyn, though, is a different story.

“Thank God, she has panties,’’ said Wanda Taylor, voicing the relief of a mother who wouldn’t have to answer questions from her 9-year-old son, Kendall Sculfield. “They’re clean and white, so I’m happy.’’

Pam Jennelle, of Orlando, Fla., couldn’t understand how anyone could be offended or uncomfortable with the sculpture.

“They’re perfectly proper white lace panties,’’ she said.

Besides, she said, the sculpture, particularly the look on Monroe’s face, captured the magic that people still feel a half century after the movie star’s death.

“She’s beautiful,’’ she said. “How can you not love Marilyn Monroe?’’