Why is Monroe image so enduring

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Q.� But why is it so popular

A.� It's simple. Marilyn Monroe is still a sex-bomb, even though she has been dead nearly 40 years. This year she was voted greatest sex symbol of all time. She was gorgeous, funny, peroxide blonde, voluptuous, sizzling and submissive: most men's idea of heaven. Since her death in August 1962 - probably suicide, possibly murder - her life has been constantly dissected. There are very few Marilyn stones unturned. (The AnswerBank has even been asked what her bra size was: click here for a feature about MM's D-cups).

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Q.� And The Seven-Year Itch

A.� It was one of her sexiest films. Or rather, it should have been before the censors hacked it apart.

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Q.� Remind me of the plot.

A.� Richard Sherman (played by Tom Ewell) is a 38-year-old whose wife and child have gone away for the summer. He fancies himself as a ladykiller who can resist all feminine advances. Then he meets the girl who lives upstairs (Monroe); he discovers he may be experiencing the phenomenon of the film title: that men�are tempted to have an affair in their seventh year of marriage.

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Q.� And that marvellous moment when her skirt flies up!

A.� You're quite mistaken: that doesn't actually happen. The film sequence is quite tame and you'll see only a modest shot of Marilyn's legs -�the poster shows a�more revealing image.

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Q.� Censored

A.� By both the studio and the Hays Office (an American film watch group). The plot of Seven-Year Itch was essentially an immoral one for that era. Director Billy Wilder wanted Walter Matthau to play Sherman but was persuaded to use Ewell, a much more lightweight (although better-looking) actor. It caused something of a sensation at the time, although the film hasn't aged that well - even if the sexy image has. Even Wilder, in an interview, once said of the film: 'I never liked it.'

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Q.� What happened to the co-star

A.� For many film fans, he's still frozen in time, a bemused look on his face, hands stuffed in his pockets, watching the billowing skirt. He was talented and popular, but never a top box-office draw, although successful with that other sexpot, Jayne Mansfield, in The Girl Can't Help It. He died, aged 85, in 1994.

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Q.� But the image endures

A.� Yep. We all recognise it and all admire it; the poster image brought her public fame; a film (Lady in Red) pays homage to it; Elton John wrote songs about her (Candle in the Wind). But the skirt scene did nothing for her private life.

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Q.� How so

A.� The scene was too much for her strait-laced husband Joe DiMaggio. He was outraged that his wife could show her underwear in public and they soon divorced. They remained close friends, though, and for 20 years after Monroe's death, DiMaggio faithfully sent roses to be put on her grave three times a week. She was some woman.

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By Steve Cunningham