Some Like It Wilder

by Gene D. Phillips

  Looking back on The Spirit of St. Louis, Wilder confessed, “I’ve never done an outdoor picture before or since; I’m not an outdoors man.” He explained that his idea of an outdoor scene was “a balcony of the Paris Ritz built by Alexander Trauner in the studio.”37 Actually, for Wilder’s next film, a picture derived from Claude Anet’s 1920 French novel Ariane, Trauner would create the interior of Paris’s Ritz Hotel in the studio.

  Since at this point Wilder was still absorbed with The Spirit of St. Louis, he cast about for yet another promising screenwriter who could get started on the screenplay of Ariane. He had recently met a young writer named I. A. L. Diamond at a Writers Guild dinner. Diamond had written a hilarious sketch for the occasion about two benighted screenwriters fresh out of ideas. Wilder met with him afterward and found him a clever, bright young writer. He had no trouble obtaining Diamond’s services, since Diamond was freelancing and was interested in adapting Anet’s novel for film. With a cowriter in hand, Wilder negotiated a sweetheart contract for himself with the Mirisch brothers at Allied Artists to finance and distribute the picture with a budget of $2.1 million. Wilder would receive $250,000 for directing the picture and $100,000 for coauthoring the script, plus a 10 percent share of the gross profits.38

  Diamond was, like Wilder, Jewish and European. He was born Itek Dommnici in Ungheni, Romania, in 1920. When he was nine, he and his family relocated to Brooklyn, New York. He attended Boys High School in Brooklyn, where he was known as Isadore Diamond (which sounded more “American” to his parents) and was nicknamed “Iz.” He became a mathematics wizard in high school but majored in journalism at Columbia University. In college he called himself I. A. L. Diamond; the initials stood for “Interscholastic Algebra League,” of which he had been the champion in high school.

  After graduating from college in 1941, Diamond went to Hollywood, aiming to be a screenwriter. He worked on pedestrian pictures like Two Guys from Milwaukee (1946); the only screenplay of consequence that he collaborated on during this period was Howard Hawks’s Monkey Business (1952), which he cowrote with Ben Hecht.

  Wilder had failed to find a long-term replacement for Charles Brackett—until Diamond appeared on the horizon. Personality-wise, he was a diamond in the rough: a tall, taciturn, remote individual who reminded Wilder of Slim Lindbergh. Iz Diamond’s withdrawn, introverted personality “proved to be the perfect balance for Wilder’s extroverted nature,” writes Joanne Yeck.39 “My husband had absolute confidence in his own ability,” Barbara Diamond pointed out; consequently, he was not intimidated by Wilder’s caustic manner or sarcasm.40

  For one thing, Diamond admired Wilder because Wilder was first and foremost a screenwriter. Both of them, Diamond explained, firmly believed that “eighty per-cent of the creation of any movie lies in the writing. The other twenty per-cent is in the execution”: in putting the camera in the right place and in directing the actors.41

  Love in the Afternoon (1957)

  Wilder was prompted to make the present movie by his recollection of a German film version of Ariane (1931), which Paul Czinner directed when Wilder was a screenwriter at Ufa. The movie starred Elisabeth Bergner, whom Czinner married in 1933. The film was also released in an English version, The Loves of Ariane. Wilder remembered the movie as funny and touching.

  Wilder updated the time frame of his remake from the 1920s to the present; Diamond came up with a new title, Love in the Afternoon. Wilder left Diamond to continue working on Love in the Afternoon while he went off to Europe to shoot The Spirit of St. Louis. In due course Diamond composed a detailed screen treatment for the script, which he mailed to Wilder overseas. Wilder cabled him that he heartily approved it and authorized Diamond to set to work on the first draft of the script. When Wilder returned to Hollywood to complete the Lindbergh picture, he spent as much time as he could spare collaborating with Diamond on the screenplay of Love in the Afternoon. By the time Wilder delivered his director’s cut of The Spirit of St. Louis to Warner Bros. in June 1956, Love in the Afternoon was ready to go into preproduction.

  Most of Wilder’s dealings with Allied Artists were with the Mirisch brothers—Walter, Harold, and Marvin—who gave him a fairly free hand in making the movie. Nevertheless, they always kept Steve Broidy, the head of the studio, posted about their projects. So they set up a meeting in Broidy’s office with Wilder and Diamond.

  Wilder said that Broidy began by asking him, “What are we going to do about the title? It’s terrible!” Diamond had suggested the title because it implied love in the afternoon of life—that is, a mature man romancing a young girl—an implication totally lost on Broidy. Wilder responded to Broidy, “Tell me the best title you’ve ever heard of.” Broidy hesitated, then said, “Wichita—because it suggests the Wild West.” Allied Artists had released a Western with that title in 1955, which was well received. “Granted, Wichita is a good title; so is Oklahoma!” Wilder wisecracked. “Why not call our picture Meanwhile, Back at the Ritz?” Wilder added abrasively, “We have a title for this picture, and that’s the way it’s going to be!” Broidy said sheepishly, “Can’t you take a joke?” Wilder did not answer but said to Diamond abruptly, “Let’s go!”42

  In adapting Anet’s novel to the screen, Wilder retained only the kernel of its plot. Ariane, a student at a music conservatory, falls in love with a charming roué. She plays the cello; he plays the field. The lothario whom Ariane is smitten with is much more sophisticated and worldly-wise than she is. She cannot bear to admit to him that she is a virgin; instead, she boasts that she is as much a cosmopolitan lover as he is. Wilder also kept the novel’s ending, in which the lovers, after multiple misunderstandings, are reunited at a train depot.

  Wilder and Diamond invented the rest of the plotline. For example, they created the character of Ariane’s father. In addition, they modeled Frank Flannagan, the aging playboy in their script, after Howard Hughes, the rich tycoon who was often seen in the company of Hollywood actresses during the period in which he owned RKO Studios in the 1950s.

  Wilder said that he and Diamond were instantly compatible. There were never bitter quarrels between them, as there had been between Brackett and Wilder. If Wilder and Diamond did not agree on a line of dialogue, “we just went on to find something we were both nuts about.”43 Unfortunately, Diamond had already committed himself to write the script for a Danny Kaye vehicle at MGM, Merry Andrew (1958), before he got involved in Love in the Afternoon. But he promised Wilder to come back to work with him immediately afterward. When Diamond returned later on to work on Some Like It Hot, he became Wilder’s permanent writing partner.

  By the end of July 1956, Wilder decamped for Paris; he took up residence in the Hotel Raphael for the duration of the shoot. He planned to film exteriors in and around Paris and interiors at the Studios de Boulogne, just west of the heart of the city. The cameras were set to roll on September 1.

  Wilder had brought together an impressive cast and production crew. To begin with, Audrey Hepburn had jumped at the chance to appear in another Wilder movie after the enormous success of Sabrina. She was to play Ariane, who is in her late teens in the novel; although Hepburn was twenty-seven, she could easily pass for a girl who had just turned nineteen.

  Wilder had offered the role of Frank Flannagan, the graying libertine, to Cary Grant. But Grant refused the role for the same reason that he had rejected the part of Linus Larrabee in Sabrina. He felt uncomfortable romancing Hepburn, who was half his age and looked even younger. Wilder was keenly disappointed that Grant had turned him down yet again. To Wilder, Grant was “the best of the light comedians; . . . and I never made a picture with him—spilt milk!” What was the use of crying about it?44

  Wilder turned to Gary Cooper, who accepted the part, although there was a disparity of more than twenty-five years between Cooper and Hepburn. Cooper’s screen image in recent years had been that of a strong, silent man of integrity and honor. Nevertheless, Wilder was aware that Cooper was a lot more like Frank Flannagan in re
al life than he was like the upright heroes he usually played. Cooper was a confirmed womanizer; he had had affairs with several of his leading ladies, from Marlene Dietrich to Ingrid Bergman. Indeed, Cooper was “known throughout Hollywood as the actor who talked softly and carried a big prick.”45 Cooper, at this point in his career, liked to think of himself as playing “the fellow next door.” Wilder laughed at that notion; “Hell, if I want to see the guy next door, I go next door.”46 Wilder well knew that during the 1930s and 1940s Cooper had become one of the great romantic leads in films like Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife and Ball of Fire, both cowritten by Wilder. So Wilder was confident that Cooper could play high romantic comedy. Incidentally, the beautiful brunette who plays Flannagan’s date in the Paris opera sequence is none other than Wilder’s wife, Audrey.

  To play Ariane’s father, Claude Chavasse, a character not in the novel, Wilder chose sixty-eight-year-old Maurice Chevalier. Claude is a private detective specializing in cases of marital infidelity; he spends his time “popping flashbulbs in hotels,” as the saying goes. The suave, debonair Chevalier had starred in romantic comedies in Hollywood in the early sound era, including no fewer than five pictures directed by Ernst Lubitsch, among them The Merry Widow (1934). Wilder was interested in making a picture at last with a star who had worked so much with Lubitsch.

  Chevalier’s career had been endangered during World War II by suspicions that he was collaborating with the Nazi forces when he remained to entertain in occupied France. But after some months, he went into retirement until the end of the war, and his name was eventually cleared. Nevertheless, Chevalier had not appeared in a Hollywood film since before the war. He was particularly pleased to be costarring with Audrey Hepburn in Love in the Afternoon. He dispatched a telegram to her, stating, “How proud I would be, and full of love I would be, if I really had a daughter like you.”47 Chevalier continued to appear in American films after Love in the Afternoon, including Vincente Minnelli’s Gigi (1958).

  Behind the camera, Wilder had gathered a first-rate production crew. The director of photography was William Mellor, who had earned an Academy Award for photographing George Stevens’s A Place in the Sun (1951). Production designer Alexander Trauner was working on his first Wilder movie, but it would not be his last. Like Wilder, Trauner was a Viennese Jew, but he had worked primarily in France. During the Nazi occupation, he had gone into hiding but continued to work undercover, designing sets for such noteworthy pictures as Marcel Carné’s Les enfants du paradis (Children of Paradise, 1945). As an in-joke, Wilder has Trauner appear in the opening credits, posting a photo on an outdoor display board. Finally, Franz Waxman, who had scored Mauvaise graine, as well as many other Wilder films, was providing the music for another Wilder picture being filmed in France.

  When principal photography commenced on September 1, 1956, Wilder was concerned about Chevalier’s expression of joie de vivre; he had the twinkling, roguish eyes and lubricous swagger of a romantic rascal. Jeanette MacDonald, who costarred with Chevalier in The Merry Widow and other films, called Chevalier “the biggest bottom pincher I have ever come across.” For her part, Hepburn admired Chevalier professionally, but she did not appreciate “his brand of flirtatiousness.”48

  The cast and crew customarily gathered for drinks at the end of the shooting day, but Chevalier was never present. Hepburn assumed that Wilder had excluded him, just as he had done to Bogart during Sabrina. Actually, these cocktail hours were hosted by the French crew, who let it be known that they had not forgiven Chevalier’s willingness to entertain during the wartime occupation. Chevalier simply ignored the snub and never mentioned it.49

  Before filming began, Wilder was confident that, with the proper makeup and lighting, Cooper’s real age could be soft-pedaled on the screen. But when he was on camera, Cooper’s gaunt, lined features made him look even older than his fifty-six years. Alexander Walter assumed that Cooper’s haggard face suggested that “his propensity for philandering . . . in his declining years was taking a physical toll.”50 But that was not entirely the case. What was known to only a few of Cooper’s intimates was that he had been diagnosed with incurable cancer. This was certainly a contributing factor to his appearing to be a man over sixty on the screen. As a matter of fact, he had only a few years left to live.51 In any case, Wilder instructed Mellor to photograph Cooper in close-up in soft focus and shrouded in shadows, to disguise the wrinkles on his face. Cameron Crowe defends Cooper’s performance: “His is an underrated and selfless performance, always serving Audrey Hepburn, who dazzles from beginning to end.”52

  Principal photography wrapped in December 1956, and Wilder moved on to postproduction. He had two composers working on the score: Waxman was to create the incidental music, and Matty Malneck was to write the title song for the movie, “Love in the Afternoon.” Wilder had met Malneck in 1926 when the latter was a member of Paul Whiteman’s orchestra.53 Malneck, who served as musical adviser on the movie, said Wilder’s knowledge of hit songs of the 1920s and 1930s was encyclopedic; moreover, he knew how to integrate a song into the action, so that it heightened a moment. One such song was “Fascination,” one of Wilder’s favorite songs from his student days in Vienna. Walter Mirisch writes in his memoirs that one day Wilder said to him, “Come back to the office. I want you to listen to a record; it’s very old and scratchy, but I think it would be wonderful” in the film. Mirisch continues, “This was the first time I heard ‘Fascination.’ It was incredible. The song was used in the film and is now always identified with it.”54 Wilder had Waxman work this haunting waltz into the background music for the love scenes between Ariane and Frank.

  Wilder prepared the final edit of the movie with film editor Leonid Azar and supervising editor Doane Harrison. After he submitted it to the industry censor, he was notified that Geoffrey Shurlock found the film’s ending unacceptable. Shurlock insisted that, instead of the lovers’ merely “galloping off into the sunset,” it should be made clear that they are headed for the altar.55 The Legion of Decency, with which Wilder had had a run-in over The Seven Year Itch, objected to the ending on the same grounds and threatened to classify the movie in its category of condemned films. Allied Artists worried that the legion’s denunciation would earn the film an unjustified reputation with the public at large as a salacious movie. The studio prevailed on Wilder to insert a brief declaration at film’s end, stating firmly that Frank and Ariane were soon married. So Wilder commandeered Chevalier to record a bit of voice-over narration for the U.S. prints of the movie. Chevalier remarks that the happy couple “are now serving a life sentence in New York.”

  Shurlock was satisfied with this resolution of the problem, but Wilder’s concession only partially mollified the Legion of Decency. The legion merely raised its rating of Love in the Afternoon from condemned to its still disapproving objectionable category, “films that can be a moral danger to spectators,” explaining that the film “tends to ridicule the virtue of purity by reason of undue emphasis on illicit love.” Wilder was livid when he got the news: “I do not have the reputation of ever having been connected with pictures of a lascivious character.”56

  Chevalier’s voice-over at the end of the movie bookends his narration during the movie’s prologue. Wilder later told an interviewer that the opening narration was voiced by Louis Jourdan, but Wilder’s memory played him false—the voice speaking the opening and closing narration in the movie is clearly Chevalier’s. As Dick points out, when the prologue ends, Chevalier’s voice as the narrator “meshes with that of the character he is playing, Claude Chevasse.”57 (Jourdan, a French actor who appeared in Hollywood pictures like Gigi [1958], does narrate the prologue of Wilder’s film Irma la Douce [1963].)

  The prologue of Love in the Afternoon is a brisk tour of Paris, punctuated by Claude’s rakish commentary as he presents lovers embracing passionately all over town: “In Paris,” he proclaims, “people make love—well perhaps not better than anywhere else—but certainly more often.” There follo
ws a montage of kissing couples. “They do it on the Left Bank, and on the Right Bank; they do it anytime, anywhere: the butcher, the baker, and the friendly undertaker. Even poodles do it”—a shot of two dogs smooching is perhaps a reference to the amorous canines in The Emperor Waltz. “There is married love,” Claude concludes, “and illicit love; that is where I come in.” He is a private eye specializing in tracking down straying spouses.

  Donald Spoto notes that “Wilder’s stated intention with Love in the Afternoon was to honor his mentor, Ernst Lubitsch,” by making a soufflélight picture, suffused with Lubitsch’s sophisticated Continental grace and wit.58 In Love in the Afternoon Cooper plays a part similar to his role in Lubitsch’s Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, that of a much-married, wealthy cad who carries on a never-ending series of love affairs with mostly married women. Frank is an executive with the Pepsi-Cola Company; a rendezvous with him is sometimes described as “the pause that refreshes” (which was actually Coca-Cola’s motto).

  One scene that is certainly touched by the spirit of Lubitsch occurs when Claude has Frank’s hotel suite under surveillance at the behest of a woman’s jealous husband. Claude observes a stream of waiters pushing carts laden with food and drink into the suite. The waiters are followed by the gypsy quartet that Frank always has on hand to establish the mood for his seductions. Impeccably clad in tuxedos, they serenade the couple with “Fascination.” Soon the waiters file out of the suite, pushing the empty carts, with the gypsy musicians close behind them. The last musician shuts the door and hangs the “Do not disturb” sign on the doorknob. Wilder here employs one of Lubitsch’s favorite tricks to get around the censors: he suggests that Frank and his lady of the moment are indulging beyond the closed doors in outrageous behavior, which is never shown. “If Lubitsch was an inspired ‘director of doors,’ ” Kevin Brownlow says, “then Wilder paid him homage in this scene.”59