by Tony Curtis
Billy walked over to her. We held our breath.
“Marilyn,” he said, “if you were just possibly to—”
“Don’t talk to me now,” said Marilyn, holding up her hand. “I’ll forget how I want to play it.”
Jack and I stared at each other. We could not believe what we’d just heard. Neither could Billy. “I have never seen a director stopped so cold,” Jack said later. “Billy Wilder, the fastest mind on earth. He was absolutely stunned, and he just shook his head and walked back to the camera.” Jack and I were like two bad little kids in school. We wanted to laugh out loud so badly, but we had to turn away and do it into our hands. It was fucking outrageous. Next, Billy tried putting cue cards inside the drawers. Even that didn’t help. But he had to get the shot. There was no way to cut around it.
I wish I’d bet a thousand dollars on eighty takes. It took eighty-one. “I swallowed my pride,” recalled Billy. “If she showed up, she delivered, and if it took eighty takes, I lived with eighty takes, because the eighty-first was very good.” Cut. Print. Faint.
26
Marilyn was out sick the next day. Arthur Miller was with her. Billy stayed home, too. His back was bothering him—and his stomach. It had to be pretty bad to keep him home. Jack and I shot publicity that day. We resumed shooting on Thursday. Or, I should say, we tried to. Marilyn was ensconced in her dressing room and wouldn’t come out. Walter Mirisch came to the set. He was joined by Harold. They were quite nice, asking us how we were handling the situation. Jack was honest. “I’ve been having this nightmare,” he said. “I wake up in the middle of the night in a sweat. I’m dreaming that we’re on take fifty-five. Marilyn’s finally gotten her line right. But I’ve blown it.” The Mirisches laughed, but the reality wasn’t funny. The film’s insurance might not cover the losses that these delays were causing.
Finally Marilyn came out. Billy needed the other angle of the scene that had caused so much trouble on Tuesday. “The whole idea is a laugh,” said Jack. “We were called for the first shot this morning, so we arrived at 7:00 a.m. Here it is, noon, and we still haven’t been in front of the cameras. They’ve been retaking Marilyn’s scenes. How long is this gonna go on?” It was apparent to all and sundry that the production was in crisis.
“Monroe demanded take after take after take,” recalled Billy. “The Strasbergs had taught her to do things again and again until she felt she got them right. Well, now she had us doing things again and again. Our nice sane budget was going up like a rocket. Our cast relations were a shambles. I was on the verge of a breakdown. She was no longer just difficult. She was impossible.”
To complicate matters, Miller decided to get involved. He came to the set on Friday afternoon and took Billy aside. They adjourned to Billy’s office.
“My wife is pregnant,” said Miller. “Would you go easy with her, Billy, please? Could you let her go at four-thirty every day?”
“Arthur, I don’t get my first shot of her until three o’clock. She has an eight o’clock call. What does she do in the mornings?”
“I was under the impression that she leaves the hotel at seven.”
“She may leave the hotel at seven, but she does not arrive on this lot until eleven-thirty. She isn’t ready to work until after one.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Look, Arthur. It is now four o’clock. I haven’t gotten a take.”
“I’m concerned about her health in any case.”
“I tell you this, Arthur. You get her here at nine o’clock, ready to work, and I’ll let her go. Not at four-thirty. At noon.”
Miller couldn’t answer that one. Marilyn was going to do what Marilyn wanted to do, regardless of what her husband, her director, or her coworkers needed. Miller went to her dressing room. I could hear them through the door.
“You’re trying the gentleman’s patience,” he said to her.
“What about my patience?” she screeched.
Again, Miller couldn’t formulate an effective answer. How do you reason with the unreasonable? “She tried to be real,” Miller wrote later. “To face enemies as enemies—Wilder was at the time an enemy—and it simply was tearing her to pieces.”
Maurice Chevalier visited Jack and me on the set of Some Like It Hot.
When my mother, Helen Schwartz, visited the set, she naturally gravitated to the most important chair.
Here’s a picture of me with my mother, Helen, and my father, Emmanuel (“Manuel”) Schwartz.
Jack Lemmon was never idle between setups.
I wasn’t idle,either.
When’s the last time you saw a drag queen playing softball?
The notion of Billy being an ogre like, say, Otto Preminger was a little hard to take. There were temperamental directors, yes, but not as many as there were actors. “I don’t think Marilyn was temperamental,” Jack said later. “She was just selfish. It was totally about her.” This, from a guy who never said a negative thing about anyone. Not even about me!
I overheard Billy talking to Izzy Diamond on the set one day. The crazy hours were interfering with their evening writing sessions. “I heard there’d be days like this,” Billy said. “I never heard there’d be weeks like this. I tell you, Iz, I will never work with that woman again. As long as I live.”
The end of production was about two weeks off, and Billy and Izzy had no ending for Some Like It Hot. They knew where they wanted it to finish, but they weren’t sure how they were going to get there. Having Marilyn tango there with George Raft was not an option. Yet, in spite of everything, Billy and Izzy were crafting amazing scenes. When we rehearsed them, we sometimes broke up. He didn’t like that. He wanted to listen to the rehearsal so he could decide if the line of dialogue, the joke, worked. If it did, he would minimize the action to make the line stand out. He knew that the wrong gesture could ruin it.
On Monday, October 27, Billy tried to finish the scenes involving Marilyn and the girls in the band. One reason for the budget overrun was that so many cast members were on call—and on salary. Joan Shawlee was particularly pleased. “Everyone else was infuriated by the delays,” said Joan. “I didn’t mind. Marilyn’s working habits bought me a new car, a new house, furniture, and some new dresses. Besides all that, I watched her like a hawk and learned more things than I could in a drama school. The secrets of her success are her whispering voice, her helplessness, and her lack of underwear.”
If Marilyn had underwear in her wardrobe from the beginning of the picture, it no longer fit. She was zaftig and then some. Her costumes had to be let out. There was also the question of poster art. It was customary for the stars of a film to pose for photographs at the completion of a film to provide images for poster design. The weight that Marilyn was gaining would make it impossible for her to fit in her costumes when she posed with me and Jack for the art. Arthur Jacobs had an idea. “Get one of the girls in the band—whoever has the same measurements as Marilyn—to pose with Tony and Jack. Then we’ll cut out pictures of Marilyn’s face and paste them on the girl’s body.” That week Jack and I posed for Floyd McCarty with Sandy Warner. Jacobs would have to worry about scheduling a photo session with Marilyn later.
As the end of production approached, Marilyn seemed to grow more skittish. Having Miller there hadn’t helped. She wrote a letter to his friend Norma Rosten on the twenty-seventh. “Thank you for your Halloween wishes,” she began. “It’s too bad we can’t be together. I might scare you. I haven’t been writing anyone, let alone poems—it’s so spooky here! Arthur looks well, though weaker—from holding me up. I need something to hold on to.”
This was the human being that a $2 million venture was holding on to. An unnerving thought. It’s a good thing that no one saw this letter. We may have suspected how fragile she was, but we wouldn’t have wanted our suspicions confirmed. Not with what we had to accomplish in the next two weeks.
27
Billy Wilder had two important sequences to shoot before Some Like It Hot was in the
can. The first was a love scene on board a yacht. The second was the last scene in the film, the denouement. The scene on the yacht has Joe dressed in a yachting cap, a blazer, and flannel slacks, pretending to be Mr. Shell Oil Jr., the owner of the yacht. Joe wants to impress Sugar. And that ain’t all. He wants to seduce her. The only problem is that after masquerading as a female, the first male identity that he assumes takes on a life of its own, sort of the way that Jerry is taken over by Daphne. To Joe’s chagrin, Junior is an oil millionaire, but not a robust Texas type. Junior is an effete Ivy League type.
Billy and Izzy had set it up so that Junior takes Sugar to the yacht, but they weren’t sure what was going to happen when they got them there. Who is sure what’s going to happen on a first date? No one. That’s why the boy-meets-girl scenario is worth caring about. If you knew what was gonna happen, would you watch?
Billy wanted a sex scene. At least the implication of one. You couldn’t have anything approaching a sex scene in 1958 because of the Production Code. But Billy knew how to imply one. You know those devices. Door closes. Lights dim. Slow fade-out. There were all kinds of ways to convey that idea. That wasn’t the problem.
“I woke up in the middle of the night,” said Billy. “I was thinking, It’s all set up. They’re alone. Now there’s going to be sex. No. This is no good. This is what’s expected.” So far Some Like It Hot had been totally unpredictable. Billy didn’t want to lose that. Then he thought of something: Marilyn had been such a colossal pain. He had to make her involvement in this thing worth the trouble. The men who were coming to see her in this film, what was their fantasy? “To be subdued, seduced, and screwed by Marilyn Monroe! What could be better than that?” Nothing, except that most men would have hopped on her before she could do those things. Aha! “Most men.” What if this man is more than effete? What if he’s—impotent? “That’s it!” said Billy. “Junior plays it impotent! And she suggests the sex. And she fucks him.”
The next morning he went to his office and confronted Izzy. “Look, Iz,” he said. “We are now at the situation where he takes her to the boat. There’s nothing new here. But how about this?” This was a pivotal scene, the plot point of act two. As a plot contrivance in a Hollywood film, an impotent character was unusual. The only ones I’d ever heard of were in Marie Antoinette, The Barefoot Contessa, and The Sun Also Rises. But those weren’t comedies. Once again, Billy Wilder was breaking ground.
Marilyn knew this scene was important. She wanted to be extra sexy. She’d be wearing the gown she wore in the nightclub scene. Orry-Kelly had given it a see-through top using the sheer silk known as nude soufflé. He’d outlined Marilyn’s breasts in sequins but used sequin appliqué and extra cloth to cover her nipples. Marilyn wanted more exposure, but Orry-Kelly resisted, saying, “Sugar Kane will go only so far.” Even so, the soufflé was revealing. In the shot where Marilyn is singing “I Wanna Be Loved by You,” Charles Lang was using an ellipsoidal spotlight as Marilyn’s key light. This was motivated by the plot: singers in 1920s bands had this kind of spotlight aimed at them. But it showed too much breast. So Lang had to narrow the beam of the spotlight and make a discreet shadow. It worked. I know there are people who write about movies and say things like “Wilder caressed Monroe’s breasts with incandescent light.” If that’s what you think, okay. I think that all you had to do was look at her and you were caressing her. That’s what eyeballs are for. We had a saying back then: “Dogs sniff. Men look.”
The mood in the studio changed on the day we began to shoot the seduction scene. Marilyn was only one hour late. I was in my dressing room, made up and costumed. I heard people coming and going. Then May Reis knocked on my door and told me that Marilyn would like to invite me to her dressing room. Hmm, I thought. Interesting. I took myself over there. I was pleasantly surprised. She was smiling and relaxed. May left us alone. Marilyn asked how I was doing. There was a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket. Marilyn offered me a glass. She said we should get a little loose before we did our scene. I had one glass of champagne. It was just enough. Marilyn told me to have another if I liked, but I thought better of it. This was work, and this scene was very important.
I noticed her gown. It was really revealing. Then I realized that it looked different than it had in the ballroom scene. She had removed the pieces of cloth that covered her nipples.
“Isn’t that gonna be a problem with the censor guys?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” she said. “It’s more . . . more organic.” She was sipping another glass of champagne. “Have another one, Tony.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. I feel fine. How about you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I think about things.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, about you.”
Through it all I retained my native dignity. Yeah, right.
Here’s a picture of me in my dressing room. The photo was taken though my door, which was always open.
Alan Ladd visited me in my dressing room one day.
Matty Malneck was a musical director on Some Like It Hot. He’d known Billy from Berlin in the 1920s. He coached me and Jack.
Matty coached the girls, too. He’d been a violinist with Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra when Billy met him.
“About me? Really?”
“If only it could be like . . . like what we had before.”
“You mean like at the hotel?”
“Yes.”
I got up, leaned over her, and gave her a long, intimate kiss. She relaxed even more. Which was good, because we had quite a day’s work ahead of us.
We reported to the set. It was an elaborate structure. There was the promenade deck of the yacht on one part of the stage. It had a pool of water next to it so that there would be highlights sparkling on us. The interior of the salon was on another part of the stage. We shot the short scene on the deck first. It was one long tracking shot done without close-ups. Marilyn had no problem with it. Then we went to the other set. This was the salon interior. It had mahogany paneling and breakaway walls so that the camera could roam around during the scene. The champagne there was not real; it was ginger ale.
In this part of the scene, Marilyn takes off her white fox stole. Charles Lang immediately saw that she’d altered her gown. He consulted with Billy, who then spoke to Paula Strasberg, who came over to Marilyn and whispered in her ear. Marilyn shook her head. Paula began to look nervous. She went back to Billy and told him that Marilyn did not want the extra cloth behind the nude soufflé. Billy called Charles, who called for some black net scrims to be placed in front of Marilyn’s key light. A combination of these and a hand-cut piece of black cardboard threw strategic shadows on Marilyn’s bosom. Even though Marilyn’s breasts were noticeably larger than when we started the film, the scene would get by the censors. Well, that aspect of it.
To our surprise, Billy elected to shoot the kissing scene first. At the time this seemed odd. Why not shoot the script pages leading up to it first? Wouldn’t it make sense to warm us up to the horizontal lovemaking? In retrospect, I can see what Billy was thinking. Marilyn had become erratic. She was unstable. He wanted to make sure that he got the most important scene in the can. Just in case. The other reason was that Arthur Miller was not visiting the set that day. Maybe he didn’t want to watch what we were going to do. Maybe he had business in town. I was glad that he wouldn’t be there. Try doing a love scene with Abe Lincoln watching you.
Billy cleared the set before we started. There was a reporter from Time magazine visiting. Even he had to go. He waved at me from the door as they were escorting him out. “Tony! Tony! Give me a quote!”
“Okay,” I said, and put my hands on my hips. “Gee! Marilyn Monroe makin’ love to me! Can ya feature it?!” I never thought they’d print it. They did. Time always was a snotty magazine.
The stage was set. I was lying back on the plush banquette. Marilyn was leaning over me. The scene called for her to kiss me. She did. She really did. Then the scene called for her
to get on top of me. She did. Billy decided to let us play the scene in real time, even though the script called for it to crosscut with another scene, the one in which Jerry is on a date with Osgood doing the tango to “La Cumparsita.” Billy would decide where to cut later. While we were on that banquette, he wanted us to live the scene we were doing. No interruptions. No distractions. No censors. Just two movie stars having sex—and enjoying it.
Well, what happened was that I got an erection, an erection that would have killed an ordinary man. And there was no way that Marilyn wouldn’t notice it. She was lying on me. She hadn’t expected that. It titillated her. It excited her. And it helped her do the scene. Billy kept shooting, straight through. Marilyn was pushing her mouth against mine and her tongue through my teeth. She was grinding her body against me, feeling everything. She was enjoying it. She was loving it. And Billy allowed us the privilege of doing the scene with those physical things unfolding.
When he finally in a soft and gentle voice said, “Cut,” Marilyn slowly pulled away from me. She pushed herself up, looked me in the eye, and smiled. A big, satisfied smile. Like, “I got you this time, didn’t I?”
28
Our next day of shooting in the salon should have been a little less exciting, a little less strenuous. You can’t have fireworks every day. I didn’t expect what we got. The day started quietly enough. We had a distinguished visitor. Maurice Chevalier was working on a picture with Deborah Kerr across town, but Billy wanted him to stop by now and then. Maurice had become a star in early sound pictures directed by the great Ernst Lubitsch. That man was Billy’s idol. In his office, over his desk, there was a sign that read, “What Would Lubitsch Do?” Billy had cowritten screenplays for two Lubitsch films, Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife and Ninotchka. He told me that he’d learned more from working with Lubitsch on those two films than from all the other directors combined. Having a Lubitsch alumnus visit the set was a thrill. And Chevalier’s latest film, Gigi, was a hit, so we welcomed him to our set more than once.