Some Like It Wilder

by Gene D. Phillips

  16. Eyman, Ernst Lubitsch, 257.

  17. Freeman, “Sunset Boulevard Revisited,” 74.

  18. “Billy Wilder,” in Stevens, Conversations, 305–6.

  19. Billy Wilder, foreword to Emeric Pressburger: The Life and Death of a Screenwriter, by Kevin Macdonald (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1994), xiii.

  20. Stephen Silverman, “Billy Wilder and Stanley Donen,” Films in Review 47, nos. 3–4 (1996): 35; see also Hopp, Billy Wilder, 28.

  21. Lally, Wilder Times, 103–4.

  22. Howard Hawks, interview by author, Chicago, November 11, 1973.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Andrew Sarris, “From the Kaiser to the Oscar,” New York Times Book Review, December 27, 1998, 5.

  25. Hawks, interview.

  26. Todd McCarthy, Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood (New York: Grove Press, 1997), 327.

  27. “Billy Wilder,” in Stevens, Conversations, 315–16.

  28. Richard Corliss, Talking Pictures: Screenwriters in the American Cinema (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1988), xxi.

  29. “Billy Wilder,” in Stevens, Conversations, 317.

  30. Charlotte Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect: Billy Wilder, a Personal Biography (New York: Applause Books, 2004), 103.

  31. John Russell Taylor, Strangers in Paradise: The Hollywood Émigrés, 1933–1950 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983), 205–6.

  3. NEW DIRECTIONS

  1. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 107.

  2. Billy Wilder, interview by Burt Prelutsky, in Billy Wilder: Interviews, ed. Robert Horton (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001), 185.

  3. Leslie Halliwell, Who’s Who in the Movies, rev. ed., ed. John Walker (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 488.

  4. Lally, Wilder Times, 112.

  5. Dunne, “Old Pornographer,” 90.

  6. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 104.

  7. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 103.

  8. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 73–74.

  9. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 107.

  10. Ibid., 104.

  11. Lally, Wilder Times, 114.

  12. Richard Armstrong, Billy Wilder: American Film Realist (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), 20.

  13. William K. Everson, Hollywood Bedlam: Classic Screwball Comedies (New York: Carol, 1994), 212.

  14. Herbert Luft, “A Matter of Decadence,” in “Two Views of a Director: Billy Wilder,” Quarterly of Film, Radio, and Television 7, no. 1 (1952): 67.

  15. Armstrong, Billy Wilder, 17.

  16. Bernard Dick, Billy Wilder, rev. ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1996), 35.

  17. Ibid., 34.

  18. The Graham Greene Reader: Reviews, Essays, and Interviews, ed. David Parkinson (New York: Applause Books, 1995), 481.

  19. Ed Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder (New York: Hyperion, 1998), 189.

  20. On Rommel’s African campaign, see Joseph Roquemore, History Goes to the Movies (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 186–90.

  21. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 52.

  22. Arthur Lennig, Stroheim (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000), 419; see also Michel Ciment, Passport pour Hollywood (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1987), 71.

  23. Richard Koszarski, Von: The Life and Times of Erich von Stroheim (New York: Limelight, 2001), 286.

  24. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 188.

  25. Cameron Crowe, Conversations with Wilder (New York: Knopf, 2001), 268.

  26. Ibid., 108.

  27. James Ursini, “John F. Seitz,” in Film Noir Reader 3, ed. Alain Silver, James Ursini, and Robert Porfirio (New York: Limelight, 2002), 101.

  28. Lennig, Stroheim, 420.

  29. Kurt Richter, interview by author, Berlin, May 20, 1977.

  30. Miklos Rozsa, Double Life (New York: Winwood, 1989), 131.

  31. Andrew Sarris, You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet: The American Talking Film, 1927–1949 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 327.

  32. Lennig, Stroheim, 420.

  33. Lally, Wilder Times, 121.

  4. THE RISE OF FILM NOIR

  1. William Hare, Early Film Noir (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003), 24.

  2. John Allyn, “Double Indemnity: A Policy That Paid Off,” Literature/Film Quarterly 6, no. 2 (1978): 120.

  3. Richard Schickel, Double Indemnity (London: British Film Institute, 1993), 31.

  4. Murray Schumach, The Face on the Cutting Room Floor (New York: Da Capo, 1975), 64. The code was composed in 1930 but did not go into action until 1934.

  5. Gaylyn Studlar, “Hard-Boiled Film Noir: Double Indemnity,” in Film Analysis, ed. Jeffrey Geiger and R. L. Rutsky (New York: Norton, 2005), 383.

  6. “James M. Cain: Tough Guy,” interview by Peter Brunette and Gerald Perry, in Backstory: Interviews with Screenwriters of Hollywood’s Golden Age, ed. Pat McGilligan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 127.

  7. Frank Walsh, Sin and Censorship: The Catholic Church and the Motion Picture Industry (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 187.

  8. Roger Ebert, The Great Movies (New York: Broadway Books, 2002), 144.

  9. John Irwin, Unless the Threat of Death Is behind Them: Hard-Boiled Fiction and Film Noir (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 70.

  10. John McCarty, Thrillers: Classic Film Suspense (New York: Carol, 1992), 50.

  11. Jeffrey Meyers, introduction to Double Indemnity: A Screenplay, by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler, ed. Jeffrey Meyers (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), x.

  12. Al Clark, Raymond Chandler in Hollywood (Los Angeles: Silman-James, 1996), 98.

  13. Frank MacShane, The Life of Raymond Chandler (New York: Dutton, 1976), 112; see also Woody Haut, Heartbreak and Vine: Hardboiled Writers in Hollywood (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2002), 30.

  14. Billy Wilder, “On the Fourth Floor at Paramount,” interview by Ivan Moffat, in The World of Raymond Chandler, ed. Miriam Gross (New York: A and W, 1978), 45.

  15. Schickel, Double Indemnity, 35.

  16. Philip Kiszely, Hollywood through Private Eyes: The Screen Adaptation of the Hard-Boiled Private Detective Novel in the Studio Era (New York: Lang, 2006), 136.

  17. “James M. Cain: Tough Guy,” 125.

  18. Wilder, “On the Fourth Floor at Paramount,” 47.

  19. Billy Wilder, interview by Robert Porfirio, in Silver, Ursini, and Porfirio, Film Noir Reader 3, 109.

  20. Lally, Wilder Times, 130; see also Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 114.

  21. William Nolan, “Marlowe’s Mean Streets: The Cinematic World of Raymond Chandler,” in The Big Book of Noir, ed. Ed Gorman, Lee Server, and Martin Greenberg (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1998), 30.

  22. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 115.

  23. MacShane, Life of Raymond Chandler, 107; see also “James M. Cain: Tough Guy,” 127.

  24. “James M. Cain: Tough Guy,” 127; see also The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Non-fiction, ed. Tom Hiney and Frank MacShane (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000), 28.

  25. Wilder, “On the Fourth Floor at Paramount,” 48.

  26. James M. Cain, Double Indemnity (New York: Vintage, 1992), 23–24.

  27. Andrew Sarris, “Billy Wilder, Closet Romanticist,” Film Comment 12, no. 4 (1977): 8.

  28. Dunne, “Old Pornographer,” 91.

  29. Alan Woolfolk, “The Horizon of Disenchantment,” in The Philosophy of Film Noir, ed. Mark Conrad (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006), 120.

  30. Mark Conrad, “The Meaning and Definition of Noir,” in Conrad, Philosophy of Film Noir, 11; see also Paul Schrader, “Notes on Film Noir,” in American Movie Critics: An Anthology from the Silents until Now, ed. Phillip Lopate (New York: Library of America, 2008), 457.

  31. Foster Hirsch, The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir, rev. ed. (New York: Da Capo, 2009), 117.

  32. Shadows of Suspense, documentary, directed by Jonathan Gaines (New Wave Entertainment, 2006).

  33. Nino
Frank, “The Crime Adventure Story: A New Kind of Detective Film,” trans. Barton Palmer, in Perspectives on Film Noir, ed. Barton Palmer (New York: Twayne, 1994), 21–22.

  34. Jason Holt, “A Darker Shade,” in Conrad, Philosophy of Film Noir, 27.

  35. Alain Silver, James Ursini, and Paul Duncan, Film Noir (Los Angeles: Taschen, 2004), 37; see also Wilder, interview by Porfirio, 104.

  36. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 117.

  37. Irwin, Unless the Threat of Death, 53.

  38. Axel Madsen, Billy Wilder (London: Secker and Warburg, 1968), 91.

  39. “Dialogue on Film: Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond,” in Horton, Billy Wilder: Interviews, 127. This is an edited transcript of a seminar that Wilder and Diamond gave at the American Film Institute.

  40. Fred MacMurray, interview by author, Beverly Hills, CA, July 10, 1987.

  41. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 118.

  42. Wilder, interview by Porfirio, 116.

  43. Richard Schickel, “Commentary,” Double Indemnity, DVD, directed by Billy Wilder (Paramount Home Video, 2006).

  44. Rozsa, Double Life, 142.

  45. Robert Horton, “Music Man: Miklos Rozsa,” Film Comment 31, no. 6 (1995): 3.

  46. Schickel, Double Indemnity, 39.

  47. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 357.

  48. Peter Evans, “Double Indemnity,” in The Book of Film Noir, ed. Ian Cameron (New York: Continuum, 1992), 127.

  49. Cain, Double Indemnity, 80.

  50. Ibid., 3.

  51. Evans, “Double Indemnity,” 169.

  52. Ibid., 168; see also James A. Paris, “Murder Can Sometimes Smell like Honeysuckle: Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity,” in Film Noir Reader 4: The Crucial Films and Themes, ed. Alain Silver and James Ursini (New York: Limelight, 2004), 21.

  53. Frank Krutnik, In a Lonely Street: Film Noir, Genre, Masculinity (New York: Routledge, 1991), 253.

  54. Mark Bould, Film Noir: From Berlin to Sin City (Irvington, NY: Columbia University Press, 2006), 37.

  55. MacMurray, interview.

  56. “James M. Cain: Tough Guy,” 125; see also Alain Silver and James Ursini, The Noir Style (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2003), 142.

  57. Wilder and Chandler, Double Indemnity: A Screenplay, 109.

  58. Dick, Billy Wilder, 48.

  59. “James M. Cain: Tough Guy,” 125.

  60. Dick, Billy Wilder, 43.

  61. Meyers, introduction to Double Indemnity: A Screenplay, xiii.

  62. “James M. Cain: Tough Guy,” 126.

  63. Schickel, “Commentary.”

  64. Lally, Wilder Times, 137; Meyers, introduction to Double Indemnity: A Screenplay, xiv.

  65. “Billy Wilder,” in Stevens, Conversations, 331.

  66. Wilder and Chandler, Double Indemnity: A Screenplay, 120. This is the original screenplay, which includes the execution scene, 120–23. Jeffrey Meyers claims that the execution scene is “now published for the first time” in his edition. Meyers, introduction to Double Indemnity: A Screenplay, xiv. As a matter of fact, the execution scene is included in the version of the script published in Sam Thomas, ed., Best American Screenplays (New York: Crown, 1995), 302–4.

  67. James Naremore, More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts, rev. ed. (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008), 91.

  68. Hare, Early Film Noir, 45.

  69. Double Indemnity scripts, Paramount Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, CA; cf. Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler, Double Indemnity: A Screenplay, in Raymond Chandler, Later Novels and Other Writings, ed. Frank MacShane (New York: Library of America, 1995), 970–72. The latter is the final version of the screenplay, which has the ending as it appears in the release prints of the movie, so it does not include the execution scene.

  70. Thomas Leitsch, “Double Indemnity,” in Encyclopedia of Novels into Film, ed. James Welsh and John Tibbetts (New York: Facts on File, 2005), 104.

  71. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 230; see also Schickel, Double Indemnity, 68.

  72. Studlar, “Hard-Boiled Film Noir,” 397.

  73. Kanin, Hollywood, 152.

  5. THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

  1. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 87.

  2. Lally, Wilder Times, 143.

  3. Ibid., 143–44.

  4. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 128.

  5. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 88.

  6. Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg, The Celluloid Muse: Hollywood Directors Speak (Chicago: Regnery, 1969), 249.

  7. Lally, Wilder Times, 115.

  8. Preface to The Lost Weekend, by Charles Jackson (New York: Time, 1963), xi.

  9. Ibid., ix, xii.

  10. Wilder, interview by Porfirio, 110. The staff of the Rush Medical Center in Chicago likewise assured me that Wilder’s portrait of an alcoholic is an accurate one.

  11. Harry Benshoff and Sean Griffin, Queer Images: A History of Gay and Lesbian Films in America (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), 35.

  12. Jackson, Lost Weekend, 48–49.

  13. Lally, Wilder Times, 145.

  14. Ibid., 144.

  15. Armstrong, Billy Wilder, 41.

  16. Hirsch, Dark Side of the Screen, 191–92.

  17. Nash and Ross, Motion Picture Guide, 1738.

  18. Chris Columbus, “Wilder Times,” American Film, March 1968, 27.

  19. Ray Milland, Wide-Eyed in Babylon (New York: Morrow, 1974), 211.

  20. Sarris, You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet, 329.

  21. Lawrence Quirk, Jane Wyman: The Actress and the Woman (New York: Dembner Books, 1986), 79.

  22. Eileen Creelman, “Doris Dowling Discusses Her First Movie,” New York Sun, November 24, 1945, 11.

  23. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 26.

  24. Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies (New York: Holt, 1991), 437.

  25. John F. Seitz, interview by James Ursini, in Silver, Ursini, and Porfirio, Film Noir Reader 3, 207.

  26. Milland, Wide-Eyed in Babylon, 224.

  27. Nash and Ross, Motion Picture Guide, 1738.

  28. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 221.

  29. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 131; see also Madsen, Billy Wilder, 32.

  30. Armstrong, Billy Wilder, 41.

  31. Ibid., 39.

  32. Judy Cornes, Alcohol in the Movies, 1898–1962: A Critical History (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), 125.

  33. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 125.

  34. Cornes, Alcohol in the Movies, 135.

  35. Jackson, Lost Weekend, 277.

  36. Stephen Farber, “The Films of Billy Wilder,” Film Comment 7, no. 1 (1971–1972): 10; see also David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, rev. ed. (New York: Knopf, 2004), 962.

  37. Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968, rev. ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1996), 166.

  38. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 269; see also Lally, Wilder Times, 150.

  39. Rozsa, Double Life, 148.

  40. Richard Ness, “Miklos Rozsa,” in International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, ed. Tom Pendergast and Sara Pendergast (Detroit: St. James Press, 2000), 4:724; see also Michael Walsh, “Running Up the Score,” Time, September 11, 1995, 78.

  41. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 253; see also Lally, Wilder Times, 534.

  42. Lally, Wilder Times, 144; see also Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 222.

  43. Mason Wiley and Damien Bona, Inside Oscar: The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), 150.

  44. Lars Penning, “The Lost Weekend,” in Movies of the Forties, ed. Jürgen Muller (Los Angeles: Taschen/BFI, 2005), 271–72.

  45. James Agee, Film Writing and Selected Journalism, ed. Michael Sragow (New York: Library of America, 2005), 215; see also Clive James, “How to Write about Film,” New York Times Book Review, June 6, 2006, 38.

  46. Wiley and Bona, Inside Oscar, 150.

  47. “Lost Wee
kend’s Author Loves the Movie,” P.M. New York, November 25, 1945, 3.

  48. Sarris, You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet, 127.

  49. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 67–68.

  50. Wilder, interview by Prelutsky, 186.

  51. Nash and Ross, Motion Picture Guide, 1738.

  52. Lally, Wilder Times, 142; see also Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 14.

  53. Lally, Wilder Times, 156.

  54. A copy of Die Todesmühlen, along with an English translation of the narration, is in the Records of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer, RG 111, National Archives, College Park, MD.

  55. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 249.

  56. Freeman, “Sunset Boulevard Revisited,” 75.

  57. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 141.

  58. Richard Lemon, “Billy Wilder’s Fortune Cookie,” in Horton, Billy Wilder: Interviews, 50.

  59. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 279.

  60. Lemon, “Billy Wilder’s Fortune Cookie,” 50.

  61. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 313.

  62. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 259.

  6. WUNDERBAR

  1. Sarris, “Billy Wilder, Closet Romanticist,” 8.

  2. Kanin, Hollywood, 153.

  3. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 70, 256, 340.

  4. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 134.

  5. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 263–64.

  6. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, memorandum to all concerned with the production, May 31, 1946, Paramount Collection.

  7. Karasek, Billy Wilder, 340.

  8. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 73; see also Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 94.

  9. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 152.

  10. Billy Wilder, notice posted on bulletin board in production office, n.d., Paramount Collection; see also Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 152.

  11. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 134–35.

  12. Roger Osterholm, Bing Crosby: A Bio-bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), 34.

  13. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 138.

  14. Osterholm, Bing Crosby, 265.

  15. Dick, Billy Wilder, 126.

  16. Kanin, Hollywood, 153–54.

  17. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 170; see also Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 135.