Some Like It Wilder

by Gene D. Phillips

  Audrey Hepburn was not going out every night, as Bogart charged, but she did spend some nights with William Holden, with whom she was having an affair. They would meet in a small apartment that Holden had rented for their secret trysts. When the picture wrapped, Holden offered to divorce Ardis and marry Audrey. “When Audrey learned that Holden was no longer able to have children, her affection cooled,” writes David Hofstede. She wanted to be a mother as well as a wife; she ended the affair immediately.29 Wilder claimed that he was not aware of their love affair while he was shooting the picture; Holden and Hepburn made every effort to conceal it from him.30

  Bogart’s “list of bastards” also included Ernest Lehman, since Bogart resented that Wilder spent more time conferring with his writing partner than with the actors. One day Lehman rushed onto the set to distribute the new script pages that he and Wilder had finished rewriting only that morning. He did not bring enough copies, however, and he ran out before he got to Bogart. “Where’s mine?” Bogart demanded. “I don’t have another copy,” Lehman mumbled sheepishly. Bogart hollered, “Get that City College bum out of here and send him back to Monogram [a Poverty Row studio] where he belongs!”31

  Lehman, still a young screenwriter, was devastated by Bogart’s vicious outburst. Wilder called a halt to the rehearsal: “There will be no further shooting on this picture until Mr. Bogart apologizes to Mr. Lehman.” Bogart walked over to Lehman and said, “Come on into my dressing room for a drink later, kid.” The rehearsal resumed.32 Like Holden, Wilder acknowledged that Bogart was “a tremendously competent actor.” Nevertheless, Bogart was also a boor; “his barbs were uncouth.” Wilder continued, “I learned from the master, Erich von Stroheim”; compared to him, Bogart’s needling “was just child’s play. You have to be much wittier than Bogart to be that mean.”33

  Not surprisingly, the pressure of reworking the screenplay under the gun was getting to be too much for Lehman. During one story conference, he collapsed from nervous exhaustion and began sobbing uncontrollably. Wilder put his arm around him and whispered, “Nobody’s ever worked harder than you, Ernie.” He told Lehman to grab a cab, go home, and rest; he then closed down production for a couple of days. Lehman’s physician, Raymond Spritzler, ordered bed rest for his patient. But the irrepressible Wilder sneaked over to Lehman’s house one evening to confer about the script. Soon the doctor arrived at the front door for a house call, and Wilder scrambled into the nearest closet before Spritzler entered the bedroom. After the doctor pronounced Lehman fit enough to return to work, Lehman said, “Well, Doc, I guess I can tell Mr. Wilder to come out now.”34 Wilder said casually that doctors simply did not understand the demands of the picture business.

  In late November, production chief Don Hartman instructed Wilder that, since he was already over schedule, shooting must be completed by the end of the week. Wilder still had one scene that had not been revised yet. It contained a long speech, full of fatherly advice, delivered by Fairchild the chauffeur (John Williams) to his daughter Sabrina as he drives her to the pier to board the Liberté for her sojourn in Paris. Wilder saved the unfinished scene for the final day of filming, December 5. He and Lehman started reworking it during their lunch hour and completed it around dinnertime. Fairchild’s speech was lengthy and complex, and Williams could not get it right. Legend has it that Wilder filmed seventy-two takes before Williams got his lines down; Wilder remembered only about half that many. At 9:30 P.M. Williams at last got the speech perfect, and Wilder exclaimed, “Cut! Print! That’s a wrap!”35 Wilder ended up eleven days behind schedule, with a final budget of $2,238,813, close enough to the original budget to elicit no complaints from the suits in the front office.

  The picture begins with Audrey Hepburn as Sabrina introducing the film, in Wilder fashion, in a voice-over on the sound track. This prologue has the flavor of a fairy tale, prefiguring Sabrina as a Cinderella who is transformed into a graceful fairy princess by the time she returns from Paris: “Once upon a time, on the north shore of Long Island, some twenty miles from New York, there lived a small girl on a large estate. There was a chauffeur named Thomas Fairchild, who had a daughter named Sabrina. The Larrabees were giving a party . . .” The elflike Sabrina is perched in a tree, gazing dreamily at the couples waltzing on the Larrabees’ terrace to the strains of “Isn’t It Romantic?” Sabrina yearns to be a part of the Larrabees’ high life, but she is an outsider, watching their elegant ball from afar.

  Later in the picture, David Larrabee whistles “Isn’t It Romantic?” as he encounters Sabrina on her return from Paris, just as Captain Pringle whistles the same tune when he is on his way to a rendezvous with Erika in A Foreign Affair.

  A full moon shines above Sabrina as she sits on a tree branch, foreshadowing her father’s repeated warning, “Don’t reach for the moon, child.” But Sabrina is doing just that, since she is mooning over David Larrabee, the younger of the two Larrabee sons. David, however, is little more than a feckless playboy; he is annually listed on his brother Linus’s tax return as a six-hundred-dollar deduction. This is Sabrina’s last night on the Larrabees’ palatial estate; the following day she departs for Paris and a two-year course in a cooking school, arranged by her father.

  By the time Sabrina returns from Paris, Cinderella has blossomed into a fairy princess, and David notices her; she is an intriguing mixture of sex appeal and innocence. She has eyes only for David, who is a jaunty, devil-may-care chap. By contrast, Linus appears to be a stuffy, conservative businessman. He carries an umbrella even on a sunshiny day, indicating that he is overcautious, afraid to take a chance even on the weather.

  Sabrina wonders if she stands a chance in marrying David. “It’s like a Viennese operetta,” she reflects. “The young prince falls in love with a waitress in a cabaret, and his family tries to buy her off.” As a matter of fact, Linus, ever the hardnosed businessman, endeavors to railroad David into marrying Elizabeth Tyson, heiress to a sugarcane fortune, which is overseen by her father, played by silent film star Francis X. Bushman (Ben Hur, 1925). This lucrative marriage would prove beneficial to a Larrabee Industries business venture. Linus pretends to court Sabrina, ostensibly to get her mind off David. But Linus’s plan backfires when he begins to fall for Sabrina himself, and Sabrina eventually reciprocates his affection.

  Wilder and Lehman agonized over the pivotal scene in which Sabrina meets Linus in the board of directors’ conference room late one night and they realize that they are genuinely falling in love. Wilder arrived on the set after lunch one Friday with only a page and a half of dialogue ready for this crucial scene. He nonchalantly sauntered over to Hepburn and asked her to stall the filming of the scene “by feigning a headache and fumbling her lines.”36 Hepburn was even willing to play the prima donna in front of the cast and crew by retreating to her dressing room for a nap. Her apparently erratic behavior enabled Wilder and Lehman to revise the scene over the weekend.

  Billy Wilder on the set. (Author’s collection)

  Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas in Ninotchka, which Wilder cowrote. It was directed by Ernst Lubitsch, Wilder’s mentor. (Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, New York)

  Don Ameche, Claudette Colbert, and John Barrymore in Midnight, which Wilder cowrote. It was directed by Mitchell Leisen, with whom Wilder clashed over script changes. (Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, New York)

  Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck in Ball of Fire, which Wilder cowrote. It was directed by Howard Hawks, a director whom Wilder admired. (Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, New York)

  Ginger Rogers as Susan Applegate in The Major and the Minor, Wilder’s first film as a Hollywood director. Rogers in the course of the story had to disguise herself as twelve-year-old Sue-Sue and later as Sue-Sue’s mother. (Larry Edmunds Bookshop, Los Angeles)

  Wilder, Erich von Stroheim, Anne Baxter, and Franchot Tone rehearsing Five Graves to Cairo. (Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, New York)

  Erich von Stroheim (center) as Field Marshal
Erwin Rommel, who was still leading the Nazi Afrika Korps when Five Graves to Cairo was made. (Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, New York)

  Miles Mander (Colonel Fitzhume), Wilder, Stroheim, and Ian Keith on the set of Five Graves to Cairo. Cinematographer John F. Seitz is behind Stroheim. (Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, New York)

  Writer Raymond Chandler and Wilder at work on Double Indemnity. Despite their fierce creative differences, they turned out a superior screenplay. (Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles)

  Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity, a classic film noir. (Film Stills Archive, Museum of Modern Art, New York)

  Femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson (Stanwyck) eavesdrops on Walter Neff (MacMurray) and Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) in Double Indemnity. (Film Stills Archive, Museum of Modern Art, New York)

  MacMurray and Robinson in the scene that replaced the original ending of Double Indemnity. (Film Stills Archive, Museum of Modern Art, New York)

  Phillip Terry, Jane Wyman, and Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend. Milland won an Academy Award for playing an alcoholic. Wilder received Academy Awards for directing the film and coauthoring the screenplay. (Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, New York)

  Wilder clowning on the set of his Viennese musical, The Emperor Waltz. As for the film, critics were not amused. (Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, New York)

  Marlene Dietrich as Erika Von Schluetow, the former mistress of a Nazi officer in A Foreign Affair. Wilder had known Dietrich in Berlin in the 1920s. (Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, New York)

  Dietrich and John Lund (Captain John Pringle) in A Foreign Affair. (Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, New York)

  Cecil B. De Mille plays himself in Sunset Boulevard; Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond is seated behind him. (Movie Star News, New York)

  Erich von Stroheim as Max von Mayerling in Sunset Boulevard, the role for which he is most remembered. (Film Stills Archive, Museum of Modern Art, New York)

  Stroheim and Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. (Film Stills Archive, Museum of Modern Art, New York)

  Kirk Douglas as Chuck Tatum, an opportunistic reporter, in Wilder’s exposé of “cheesy tabloids,” Ace in the Hole. (Larry Edmunds Bookshop, Los Angeles)

  William Holden won an Academy Award for his portrayal of J. J. Sefton, an inmate in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp, in Stalag 17. (Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, New York)

  Colonel von Scherbach (Otto Preminger, center) views the corpse of a prisoner who attempted to escape from the POW camp in Stalag 17. (Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, New York)

  Wilder directs Otto Preminger, another director, as the commandant of the POW camp in Stalag 17. (Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, New York)

  Humphrey Bogart (Linus Larrabee) shares a toast with Audrey Hepburn (Sabrina Fairchild) in Sabrina. The tension between Bogart and Wilder was not evident in Bogart’s performance. (Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, New York)

  This legendary photo of Marilyn Monroe with her dress billowing over a subway grating in The Seven Year Itch has been called “the shot seen round the world.” Tom Ewell looks on. (Larry Edmunds Bookshop, Los Angeles)

  Audrey Hepburn (Ariane Chavasse) and Gary Cooper (Frank Flannagan) at the climax of Love in the Afternoon. (Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, New York)

  Sir Wilfrid Robarts (Charles Laughton) addresses the court on behalf of his client, Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power, far right), in Witness for the Prosecution. (Larry Edmunds Bookshop, Los Angeles)

  Marlene Dietrich as Christine Vole in Witness for the Prosecution, testifying in court. (Larry Edmunds Bookshop, Los Angeles)

  Tony Curtis as Joe/Josephine and Jack Lemmon as Jerry/Daphne in Some Like It Hot. (Cinema Book Shop, London)

  Curtis and Lemmon in disguise as Society Syncopators. Marilyn Monroe (center) crowned her career with her performance in Some Like It Hot. (Film Stills Archive, Museum of Modern Art, New York)

  George Raft (center) as racketeer Spats Colombo is confronted by Pat O’Brien as federal agent Mulligan in Some Like It Hot. Raft often played gangsters and O’Brien cops in gangster films of the 1930s. (Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, New York)

  Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment, the peak of Wilder’s career. Wilder received Academy Awards for directing the film, coauthoring the screenplay, and producing the best picture of the year. (Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, New York)

  Fred MacMurray discusses his role in The Apartment with the author. (Long Photography, Los Angeles)

  J. D. Sheldrake (MacMurray) discovers that his secretary (Edie Adams) has been gossiping about his love affairs with the office staff in The Apartment. (Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, New York)

  James Cagney (second from left) retired from the screen after making One, Two, Three. He is shown here with Horst Buchholz (right). (Larry Edmunds Bookshop, Los Angeles)

  Wilder reteamed Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in Irma la Douce, his most commercially successful movie. (Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, New York)

  Dino (Dean Martin), Orville (Ray Walston), and Polly (Kim Novak) in Kiss Me, Stupid look over a ditty that Orville has composed. It was actually an unpublished song written by George and Ira Gershwin. (Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, New York)

  Walter Matthau won an Academy Award as Willie Gingrich, a crooked lawyer, in The Fortune Cookie. Here he badgers Ned Glass as Doc Schindler and Jack Lemmon as Harry Hinkle. (Larry Edmunds Bookshop, Los Angeles)

  Sherlock Holmes (Robert Stephens) and Dr. Watson (Colin Blakely) in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, which was substantially cut before its release. This still is from one of the missing episodes. (Author’s collection)

  Holmes pretends to be homosexual to fend off the Russian ballerina’s demand that he father her child. The ballet company’s impresario (Clive Revill) looks on. (Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, New York)

  Pat O’Brien as Hildy Johnson and Adolphe Menjou as Walter Burns (left photo) in the first film version of The Front Page (1930);

  Jack Lemmon as Hildy and Walter Matthau as Walter (right photo) in Wilder’s remake (1974). (National Center for Film Study, Chicago)

  Wilder, on the set of The Front Page, analyzes a comedic point for Matthau and Lemmon. (National Center for Film Study, Chicago)

  Wilder gives Lemmon the proper nuance for an upcoming scene in The Front Page. (National Center for Film Study, Chicago)

  I. A. L. Diamond (left) on the set of Avanti! with Wilder. Diamond and Wilder cowrote a dozen films. (Film Stills Archive, Museum of Modern Art, New York)

  Marthe Keller, in the title role of Fedora, confers with William Holden as Barry Detweiler, a failure in the picture business, recalling his role in Sunset Boulevard. (Larry Edmunds Bookshop, Los Angeles)

  Walter Matthau ponders Wilder’s direction on the set of Buddy Buddy, Wilder’s last film. (Bennett’s Bookstore, Hollywood, California)

  Wilder received the coveted Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, one of the several life achievement awards bestowed on him in his later years, at the Academy Awards ceremony in 1988. (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California)

  When Monday rolled around, Wilder was prepared with the script pages, and the scene came off very smoothly. Bogart played Linus as the self-sufficient, middle-aged bachelor who is forced to acknowledge his need for love, and Hepburn brought out the charm and gentleness in Sabrina that attracted Linus. The important scene was written and acted with exceptional finesse.

  Linus is ashamed that he initially romanced Sabrina for an ulterior motive. Consequently, he encourages her to return to David. Sabrina, however, decides that she is fed up with both of the Larrabee brothers and opts to take the Liberté back to Paris. At the finale, David confronts Linus in the conference room and insists that he will not take Sabrina back because sh
e is a gold digger who has plotted to marry into the Larrabee fortune. Outraged, Linus slugs David, who falls backward and somersaults all the way down the long conference table. “You are in love with her!” David proclaims; “I was just helping you to make up your mind!” Linus’s kayoing David is a nod to Bogart’s screen image as a tough guy. David hands Linus his hat and cane and tells him to rush down to the dock and board the Liberté before the ocean liner sets out for the open sea. Once on board, Linus joins Sabrina on deck and tells her the ocean voyage will be their honeymoon. As for his taking David’s place in her life, he reflects, “It’s all in the family.”

  By the time Sabrina premiered in September 1954, Audrey Hepburn had collected an Academy Award. Hence the cast of Sabrina was headlined by three Oscar winners: Holden for Stalag 17 (1953), Hepburn for Roman Holiday (1953), and Bogart for The African Queen (1951). Sabrina was hailed by the critics as a charming and hugely entertaining love story; Frederick Hollander’s dreamy score and Charles Lang’s slick visuals were the icing on the cake. Hepburn was toasted as the alluring Sabrina that the story was waiting for.