Some Like It Wilder

by Gene D. Phillips

  Once the courtroom is cleared, Christine approaches Sir Wilfrid and lapses into the Cockney accent she employed when she talked with him the night before, while she was disguised as the prostitute. Christine fabricated the documentation and then sold it to Sir Wilfrid so he could use it against her in court and win an acquittal for Leonard. Christine adds that she concocted the whole masquerade not because she thought Leonard was innocent but because she was certain of his guilt. While Sir Wilfrid is still reeling from Christine’s disclosure, Leonard casually announces that he is now free to leave Christine for a younger woman. Maddened with jealousy, Christine snatches a bread knife from the evidence table and stabs him to death right in the courtroom.

  Christie’s original short story ends with the revelation of Christine’s clever maneuvers to save Leonard from the gallows. In the play Christie engineered Christine’s “private retribution” on Leonard because she was no longer satisfied to allow Leonard to go unpunished for killing the hapless Emily French. The play ends with Christine declaring, “I shall be tried for the murder of the only man I ever loved.” Looking at the judge’s bench, she adds, “Guilty, my lord,” as the curtain descends.40 Bach reflects, “The result is the transformation of Christine Vole from calculating bitch to desperately wronged woman.”41 The ending of the play implies that Christine herself will go to the gallows for killing Leonard.

  Wilder was not completely satisfied with the play’s outcome. “Wilder could no more sentence Christine to death for murdering a bounder than he could send Erika off to the labor camp without implying that she would never get there,” Bernard Dick comments perceptively. So Wilder supplies an escape clause for Christine before the film’s final fade-out. Sir Wilfrid agrees to defend Christine, explaining that she did not murder Leonard; “she executed him.” Dick concludes, “So it was not murder, but retribution. Christine is meting out the sentence that the jury would have, if it had all the facts.”42 One knows that Sir Wilfrid will secure an acquittal for Christine. Paul Bergman and Michael Asimov write that it is “to Miss Plimsoll’s despair” that “Sir Wilfrid immediately volunteers to represent Christine.”43 On the contrary, Miss Plimsoll encourages Sir Wilfrid to defend Christine. Brandishing the thermos that Sir Wilfrid pretends contains cocoa, she calls out to him, “You forgot your brandy!”

  With Witness for the Prosecution, Wilder fashioned a film noir in the grand tradition of Double Indemnity. Indeed, Witness for the Prosecution resembles Double Indemnity in that it possesses the fascination of a hair-raising tale told by the tabloids; it is concerned with “the kind of people we read about so often in the less austere dailies.”44 Wilder was acclaimed for directing a film in which the courtroom is knee-deep in spirited argument, and suspense builds as witnesses reveal crucial details.

  Witness for the Prosecution played exclusive engagements in New York and Los Angeles in December 1957 to qualify for that year’s Academy Awards. When it was released in February 1958, it quickly became a box office sensation, ultimately accruing $8 million in domestic rentals alone. In the notices Laughton was singled out for praise: “Sage of the courtroom and cardiac patient, who’s constantly disobeying his nurse’s orders, . . . Laughton plays out the part flamboyantly and colorfully.”45

  More to the point were the critics who said that in this film Dietrich demonstrates that “she is a dramatic actress, as well as a still glamorous chanteuse.”46 This is precisely what Dietrich set out to prove when she lobbied for the role of Christine Vole. Christine sees herself as a victim when Leonard abandons her at film’s end, and Dietrich expertly locates the ache at the core of Christine’s character in the final scene.

  Since Laughton and Dietrich had showier roles than Power, his performance as the feckless, lazy, but adorable Leonard Vole was mostly overlooked in the reviews. Yet Jeanine Basinger quite rightly states in The Star Machine, “Perhaps the best performance Tyrone Power ever gave was in Billy Wilder’s 1957 Witness for the Prosecution, the one movie Power made in his postwar freelance period that really stands out today.” In the film, Power does not hesitate to use his celebrated sex appeal “to play a rotting seducer well on his way to full decay as a wicked old roué.”47

  Witness for the Prosecution received six Academy Award nominations, including best director, actor (Charles Laughton), supporting actress (Elsa Lanchester), and editor (Daniel Mandell). Marlene Dietrich was not nominated as best actress. There are two possible explanations. The first theory is that, as Malene Sheppard Skaerved says, “Many suspected that the Cockney voice had been dubbed” by another actress. Though this was not true, the doubts kept her from being nominated.48

  The other theory is that Wilder quietly spread the word around the studio that Dietrich should not be nominated because knowledge of her playing two roles had to be suppressed to keep from revealing the surprise ending to moviegoers who had not yet seen the film. Dietrich would not have been aware of Wilder’s alleged machinations because, by the time the Oscar nominations were in the works, she had been gone from Hollywood for several months.

  Maximilian Schell, director of the feature-length documentary Marlene (1983), favored the second theory. He told Dietrich that Wilder had discouraged her nomination and asked her whether she resented not being nominated for an Academy Award for her performance. She responded that an Oscar no longer mattered: “Rubbish! Garbo never got one either.” Referring to honorary Oscars, she concluded, “They give you one on your deathbed; then you know you are dying.”49 Wilder, of course, vehemently denied sabotaging Dietrich’s chances for an Oscar. He had told her after the picture wrapped that she deserved an Oscar (not that she would receive one for this movie) and he let it go at that.50

  Irene Atkins terms Witness for the Prosecution “a triumph for Christie, just as the play had been.”51 Asked if he thought the film should have been deemed a triumph for himself as well, Wilder responded, “Frankly, I have never been interested in what the critics say of my films. A good review means less to me than, for instance, a comment Agatha Christie made about Witness for the Prosecution.” Looking back, she called Witness the best film that had ever been derived from her mysteries.52 “That means a great deal more to me than anything a critic has ever said of one of my films.” Wilder noted.

  Witness for the Prosecution has worn well. Released on DVD in 2001, it is a shining example of how a combination of expert remastering and intelligent packaging can invigorate a classic film. On June 17, 2008, the AFI broadcast a TV special in which the ten greatest films in ten genres were selected. Witness for the Prosecution was chosen as one of the top courtroom dramas of all time.

  With the release of Witness for the Prosecution, Wilder had fulfilled his contract with Edward Small and was free to go to work for the Mirisch brothers again. He suggested to them that he make a comedy based on a 1932 German film. That in itself did not sound very promising to the Mirisches. Still, Love in the Afternoon had been derived from a 1931 German film, and that had turned out okay. So the Mirisches gave Wilder the go-ahead on a film that would turn out to be a milestone in his career.

  12

  The Gang’s All Here

  Some Like It Hot

  Producer David Selznick told me mixing gangsters and comedy wouldn’t work. In fact, it did.

  —Billy Wilder

  United Artists had an agreement with the Mirisch Company to distribute its films and serve as a financial backer. The Mirisch Company was based at the Samuel Goldwyn Studios, where UA had its offices. Walter Mirisch apprised Wilder of the company’s plans to produce its own pictures and to continue its working relationship with Wilder. He agreed to make his next picture, Some Like It Hot, for the Mirisch Company. That began a creative association between the Mirisches and Wilder, states Walter Mirisch, “that ultimately resulted in his making his next eight films for us. I think . . . that is a record for a relationship enduring in this industry” between a director and a production company.1

  “I. A. L. Diamond and I got the idea for Some
Like It Hot from an earlier German film, Fanfaren der Liebe [Fanfares of Love, 1932], which was set in Bavaria,” Wilder said. The original German film was cowritten by Robert Thoeren and Michael Logan, who were scriptwriters at Ufa in Berlin at the time. Thoeren was now working in Hollywood; he had repeatedly coaxed Wilder to do an American remake of the original picture. Wilder obtained a print of the German picture and screened it. (Thoeren did not live to see Some Like It Hot; he died in 1957.) Fanfaren der Liebe was about two starving musicians who don a number of disguises to get work; for example, they wear blackface to join an all-black jazz band. Only the film’s final episode caught Wilder’s attention. “When the two guys dressed as women and joined the girls’ band called the Alpine Violets,” he thought he had the makings of a farce.

  Gerd Gemünden writes in his monograph on Wilder that Wilder was influenced in remaking Fanfaren der Liebe by the successful German remake in 1951, directed by Kurt Hoffmann. But Wilder emphasized that his movie was derived from the original film.2 Wilder pitched the concept to Walter Mirisch, insisting that the premise of the two musicians in drag could be the basis for a classic screwball comedy. Mirisch had faith enough in Wilder to give him the go-ahead.

  In its original version, Wilder said, Fanfaren der Liebe was a low-budget, second-class German flick “with heavy-handed, Teutonic humor.” The two musicians are shown smoking cigars and shaving while in drag—rather crude jokes. Diamond pointed out that the sturdy Charley’s Aunt was the classic example of a hero dressing as a woman in American cinema. Jack Benny starred in Archie Mayo’s successful 1941 picture, playing an Oxford undergraduate in Victorian Britain impersonating an elderly dowager who chaperones young society ladies. Diamond was confident that, since Charley’s Aunt had been a hit, the general public would accept another farce about cross- dressing.3

  In brainstorming with Diamond about the plot, Wilder noted that Fanfaren der Liebe dealt with two guys who joined a girls’ band simply because they needed jobs. “When we talked about it, we decided that the two guys should join the girls’ band as an absolute question of life and death. Otherwise, it would seem that at any point in the picture they could simply remove their wigs and tell Sugar Kane, the band’s sexy vocalist and ukulele player, that they both love her and hence are rivals for her affections—then take it from there.” Wilder continued, “So we invented the fact that they had witnessed a gangland killing and had to disguise themselves to protect their lives. Then we set the story in the Roaring Twenties, in order to make this element of the plot more believable,” since mob warfare was rampant in the Prohibition era. “And so we brought in an actual gangland killing, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, as the killing which they had witnessed.” Wilder concluded, “So it was not that Mr. Diamond and I just sat down and said that we were going to do a satire on the old gangster pictures. That is just how the scenario developed. As Lubitsch used to say, ‘We began to have a picture.’ ” Like Lubitsch, Wilder loved what he lampooned. The America he depicts in the Roaring Twenties is gaudy and vulgar but also full of fun.

  Wilder discarded the English title Fanfares of Love and replaced it with Some Like It Hot at Diamond’s suggestion. The film is set in the Jazz Age, and the band caters to jazz lovers who “like it hot.” That title, however, had been used for a low-budget Paramount picture in 1939, with Bob Hope as a sideshow owner. Walter Mirisch had to get permission to use the title from Universal Pictures, which by that time had acquired Paramount’s pre-1948 films.

  Wilder initiated the casting process as soon as he and Diamond began working on the screenplay. He definitely wanted Tony Curtis to play Joe, a saxophone player. They had met while they were both working at Paramount, when Wilder was shooting Stalag 17 and Curtis was playing the title role in Houdini (1953). Curtis recalled, “Harold Mirisch used to show movies in his home on Lexington Drive.” One night, before a screening, Wilder took Curtis aside and offered him the part of Joe. Curtis, who very much wanted to work with Wilder, responded, “I’ll do it!”4

  UA wanted well-known actors in the leads to ensure that the film was commercially viable. Curtis was certainly a bankable star. The studio wanted Frank Sinatra to costar with Curtis as Jerry, a bass fiddle player, but Sinatra did not even respond to Wilder’s offer. Accordingly, Wilder decided on Jack Lemmon, who had won a best supporting actor Academy Award for playing the rambunctious Ensign Pulver in Mr. Roberts (1955). Wilder offered him the role of Jerry, explaining, “You’re going to be in drag for 85 percent of the picture. Do you want to do it?” Not wishing to lose out on a Wilder picture, he answered, “I’ll do it!” UA hedged about Lemmon, however, because it wanted a superstar for the part.

  Then, in early April 1958, Wilder unexpectedly received a letter from Marilyn Monroe, saying that she was in the market for a picture and would like to work with Wilder again. He immediately offered her the role of Sugar Kane. But Monroe’s accepting the part was not a foregone conclusion. Wilder promptly dispatched to Monroe a five-page précis of the scenario, and she was enraged when she read it. Monroe was sick to death of playing dim-witted blondes in pictures. After attending acting classes at the Actors Studio in New York in the fall of 1955, she was eager to play serious roles. She had already played a seedy saloon thrush in Bus Stop (1956) and proved that she could act. Hence she angrily threw the synopsis of Some Like It Hot on the floor, declaring that “she had played dumb characters before, but never this dumb!”5

  Monroe vehemently objected to playing a showgirl so stupid that “she can’t tell that the two women she is becoming friends with are men in drag.” But, as Sarah Churchwell writes, “Marilyn’s character is not the only one in the film who falls for the comically bad disguise; according to the conventions of farce, all the characters are fooled by it.”6 Playwright Arthur Miller, whom Monroe had married in June 1956, encouraged her to accept the part. The scenario, he perceptively pointed out, was well structured and had the makings of a solid screenplay. Wilder was delighted. For him, Monroe was like smoking, he explained; “I knew she was bad for my health, but I couldn’t give her up.”7

  Monroe finally signed for Some Like It Hot on April 21, 1958. She mentioned in passing that she was glad that Curtis had already signed for the picture; she had known him since 1949, when they were both new in Hollywood. Curtis remembered her as “a sweet kid” in those days, hoping for a break. They would make out in the back seat of his pale green Buick convertible. When they later met on the set of Some Like It Hot, Monroe inquired whether he still had the green convertible.8

  Now that Wilder had snagged both Curtis and Monroe, UA no longer had an objection to his hiring Lemmon. “I didn’t hear anything for two months” after the meeting with Wilder in the restaurant, Lemmon remembered. “I finally got a call from Billy, who said he would send me the first sixty pages of the script.” They were the funniest sixty pages he ever read; “I knew God had struck!”9

  Monroe signed for three hundred thousand dollars, plus 10 percent of the gross profit; Lemmon and Curtis would receive one hundred thousand dollars apiece, with Curtis also getting 5 percent of the gross. Wilder’s salary was two hundred thousand dollars for cowriting and directing the movie, plus a hefty 18 percent of the gross. Diamond received sixty thousand dollars as coauthor of the script.

  Wilder told me, “Once we set the film in 1929 for plot reasons, we decided to exploit the old gangster pictures by bringing in George Raft and Pat O’Brien,” since Raft had been stereotyped as the bad guy and O’Brien as the good guy in early gangster films. “Their presence helped to give our picture more of an authentic look.” Wilder had cast Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, and Cecil B. De Mille in Sunset Boulevard for a similar reason. Pat O’Brien said, “I always played a cop or a priest in gangster pictures like Angels with Dirty Faces [1938]. So in Some Like It Hot I was Inspector Mulligan, a sort of Eliot Ness character from The Untouchables, which was popular on TV at the time. Mulligan is pursuing bootlegger Spats Colombo, played by George Raft, my old friend.
Raft, who was raised in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, was typecast as a gangster after he played Guido Renaldo in Scarface [1932]. Billy also cast George E. Stone in Some Like It Hot,” O’Brien continued. “George Stone had played mobsters in movies like Little Caesar [1930], opposite Edward G. Robinson.”10

  Wilder had made jokes at Raft’s expense in interviews over the years, remarking, for example, that he was glad Raft had refused the role of Walter Neff in Double Indemnity, because that was when he knew he was going to make a good picture. Apparently none of Wilder’s jibes got back to Raft, because he was delighted to appear in Some Like It Hot. By his own admission, Raft was given his start in Hollywood “by friends in the underworld,” and he maintained close ties with racketeers during his career.11

  Wilder said, “I tried to get Edward G. Robinson too, but he wouldn’t do it. So I got his son to play a small part.” O’Brien said that Robinson refused to work with Raft, his old Warner Bros. stablemate, “after engaging in a fistfight with him on the set of A Bullet for Joey [1955].” Afterward Robinson vowed, “I’ll never work with that guy again,” O’Brien concluded, “and he never did.”12

  Raft’s character in Scarface perpetually flips a coin in the air. In Some Like It Hot, Raft’s Colombo notices a young hood (Edward G. Robinson Jr.) flipping a coin; he grabs the coin and snaps, “Where’d you pick up that cheap trick?” Little wonder that Wilder described Some Like It Hot as “Scarface meets Charley’s Aunt.” As Richard Armstrong notes, Raft was also obliged “to emulate his old rival James Cagney by threatening an associate with a grapefruit in the film, in a direct steal from Public Enemy [1931].”13

  In still another reference to the films of the 1930s, Wilder cast comedian Joe E. Brown, whose career had peaked in the 1930s with films like Elmer the Great (1933), in which he played an ace baseball player. Wilder got him to play lecherous millionaire Osgood Fielding in Some Like It Hot. Wilder had seen some of Brown’s pictures. He said to himself, “That’s the guy to play Osgood!” Wilder always had a canny eye for character actors. He tagged Joan Shawlee to play Sweet Sue, the benighted leader of Sweet Sue’s Society Syncopators, the all-girl band. Shawlee would reappear in later Wilder films.