Some Like It Wilder
Page 54
40. Curtis, interview.
41. Wilder, interview by Schlöndorff.
42. Ebert, Great Movies, 426; see also Diamond, “Day Marilyn Monroe Needed,” 135.
43. Churchwell, Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, 251.
44. Wilder, interview by Schlöndorff.
45. Schlöndorff, “Playing by His Rules,” 8.
46. Billy Wilder, interview by Art Buchwald, Herald Tribune (Paris), August 7, 1960, 4.
47. Billy Wilder, interview, Time, June 27, 1960, 75.
48. Gehman, “Charming Billy,” 90; see also Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 162.
49. Some Like It Hot, souvenir program, 1.
50. Douglas Gomery, “Adolph Deutsch,” in Pendergast and Pendergast, International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 4:208.
51. Richard Barrios, Screened Out: Playing Gay in Hollywood from Edison to Stonewall (New York: Routledge, 2003), 268.
52. Doherty, Hollywood’s Censor, 330.
53. Brode, Films of the Fifties, 283.
54. Cliff Rothman, “A 40-Year-Old Comedy That Hasn’t Grown Stale,” New York Times, August 1, 1999 (with correction appended September 5, 1999), http://www.nytimes.com/1999/08/01/movies/film-a-40-yearold-comedy-that-hasn-t-grown-stale.html; see also Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 203.
55. Cf. Wilder and Diamond, Some Like It Hot: A Screenplay, 71–72, for this scene, which was deleted from the release prints of the movie.
56. Armstrong, Billy Wilder, 88.
57. “Billy Wilder,” in Stevens, Conversations, 320; see also Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 221.
58. Richard Buskin, Blonde Heat: The Sizzling Screen Career of Marilyn Monroe (New York: Watson-Guptil, 2001), 218.
59. Helmut Dieter, “Marilyn Monroe: 30 Jahre nach Irem Tod” [Marilyn Monroe: 30 years after her death], Stern, August 6, 1992, 34. Robert Scheff translated the cited passages.
60. Curtis and Paris, Tony Curtis, 160.
61. Auiler, “Making of Some Like It Hot: Interviews,” 244, 304.
62. Marilyn Monroe’s copy of the screenplay, 94, private collection.
63. Armstrong, Billy Wilder, 93.
64. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 38.
65. Monroe’s copy of the screenplay, 116, 121.
66. Ebert, Great Movies, 428.
67. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 208–9.
68. Bernard Dick told me in a telephone conversation in October 2008 that in Going My Way Risë Stevens appears in a scene from Bizet’s opera Carmen, in which she dances with a rose in her teeth. That film was made at Paramount in 1944, when Wilder was there, so he was no doubt also reminded of Stevens’s dance.
69. Auiler, “Making of Some Like It Hot: Interviews,” 303.
70. Ibid.; see also “Billy Wilder,” in Stevens, Conversations, 315, 348.
71. Doug Tomlinson, “Some Like It Hot,” in Pendergast and Pendergast, International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 1:938.
72. Castle, introduction, 23.
73. Some Like It Hot, souvenir program, 3.
74. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 204.
75. Tomlinson, “Some Like It Hot,” 1:938.
76. “Dialogue on Film: Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond,” 124.
77. Barry Norman, The 100 Best Films of the Century (New York: Carol, 1993), 233.
78. Schlöndorff, “Playing by His Rules,” 8.
79. Tomlinson, “Some Like It Hot,” 1:939.
80. “Time’s All-Time 100 Movies,” Time, July 20, 2005, 60.
81. “The 50 Greatest Comedies,” Premiere, July–August 2006, 66.
82. “British Parliament Votes for Best Movies,” New York Times, December 29, 2006, B2. Skye Movies is a TV show.
13. LOVE ON THE DOLE
1. “Billy Wilder,” in Stevens, Conversations, 320.
2. Inside “The Apartment,” documentary (MGM Home Entertainment, 2008); see also Armstrong, Billy Wilder, 107.
3. “Billy Wilder: The Art of Screenwriting,” 1:419.
4. Portrait of a 60% Perfect Man.
5. “Dialogue on Film: Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond,” 112; see also Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 431.
6. Wilder quoted in Bruce Block, “Commentary,” The Apartment, DVD, directed by Billy Wilder (MGM Home Entertainment, 2008); see also Gehman, “Charming Billy,” 69.
7. Portrait of a 60% Perfect Man.
8. Inside “The Apartment.”
9. Neil Sinyard, Directors: The All-Time Greats (New York: Gallery Books, 1985), 94.
10. Lally, Wilder Times, 303.
11. “The Write Stuff: The 25 Greatest Screenplays of All Time,” Premiere, May 2006, 85.
12. Inside “The Apartment.”
13. Dick, Billy Wilder, 91.
14. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 135, 317.
15. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 432.
16. MacMurray, interview.
17. Andre Pozner, “Alexandre Trauner,” in Pendergast and Pendergast, International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 4:831.
18. Brownlow to author.
19. Wilder, interview by Schlöndorff.
20. Billy Wilder, introduction to Alexandre Trauner, décors de cinéma: Entretiens avec Jean-Pierre Berthomé (Paris: Jade, Flammarion, 1988), 5.
21. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 434; Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 226.
22. Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, The Apartment: Unpublished Screenplay (Los Angeles: United Artists, 1959), 1.
23. Portrait of a 60% Perfect Man.
24. Gerald Mast, The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973), 275.
25. Sinyard and Turner, Journey down Sunset Boulevard, 161.
26. Giannetti, Masters of the American Cinema, 311.
27. Lemon, “Billy Wilder’s Fortune Cookie,” 53.
28. Wilder and Diamond, The Apartment: Unpublished Screenplay, 50.
29. Armstrong, Billy Wilder, 105.
30. Alexandre Trauner, 152.
31. Portrait of a 60% Perfect Man.
32. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 147; see also Lally, Wilder Times, 302.
33. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 129.
34. Wilder, interview by Gehman, 64; see also Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 244.
35. Gehman, “Charming Billy,” 90.
36. Wilder, interview by Gehman, 64.
37. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 436.
38. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 279.
39. “The Apartment,” in Variety Film Reviews, vol. 10, n.p.; see also Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 270.
40. Lemon, “Billy Wilder’s Fortune Cookie,” 53.
41. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 58.
42. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 125.
43. Wilder and Diamond, The Apartment: Unpublished Screenplay, 56.
44. Wilder, interview by Schlöndorff.
45. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 61.
46. Block, “Commentary.”
47. Richard Lippe, “The Apartment,” in Pendergast and Pendergast, International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 1:57.
48. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 123.
49. “Entretien avec Billy Wilder,” interview by Michel Ciment, Positif, October 1970, 7. The translator of the cited passages is not named.
50. Douglas Brode, The Films of the Sixties (New York: Carol, 1993), 32.
51. Volker Schlöndorff, “The Apartment,” Premiere, April 1992, 127.
52. Dick, Billy Wilder, 94.
53. James Schamus, “Holiday Movies,” New York Times, November 4, 2007, sec. 2, p. 10.
54. Patrick Sullivan, news release, June 10, 1960, The Apartment file, Legion of Decency files; see also Gregory D. Black, The Catholic Crusade against the Movies, 1940–1975 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 214.
55. Patrick Sullivan, interview by author, New York, January 28, 1977.
56. “The Apartment,” in Variety Film Reviews, vol. 10, n.p.
57. Hollis A
lpert, “The Apartment,” Saturday Review, June 11, 1960, 24.
58. Dwight Macdonald, On Movies (New York: Berkeley, 1971), 312.
59. Sarris, American Cinema, 166; see also Staggs, Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard, 367.
60. Gehman, “Charming Billy,” 147; see also Lally, Wilder Times, xiii.
61. Wilder, interview by Gehman, 62.
62. Ibid.; see also Lally, Wilder Times, 14.
63. Gehman, “Charming Billy,” 148.
64. Sinyard, Directors, 44.
65. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 445.
66. Cukor, interview.
67. Portrait of a 60% Perfect Man.
68. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 65.
14. LOVE ON THE RUN
1. Kanin, Hollywood, 158.
2. Helmut Voss, “Billy Wilder hat Heimweh nach dem Kurfurstendamm,” Bonner Rundschau, February 7, 1973, 1. The translator of the cited passages is not named.
3. Billy Wilder, “Hallo, Herr Menjou?” Tempo, August 5, 1929, 7.
4. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 94.
5. Kanin, Hollywood, 158; see also Lally, Wilder Times, 312.
6. Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, One, Two, Three: Unpublished Screenplay (Los Angeles: United Artists, 1961), 1.
7. James Cagney, Cagney by Cagney (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), 154; see also Hopp, Billy Wilder, 136.
8. Harald Keller, “One, Two, Three,” in Movies of the Sixties, ed. Jürgen Muller (Los Angeles: Taschen/BFI, 2005), 20, 22.
9. Brode, Films of the Sixties, 52.
10. Dassanowsky-Harris, “Billy Wilder’s Germany,” pt. 1, 297.
11. Sarris, You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet, 72.
12. Lally, Wilder Times, 321.
13. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 147.
14. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 190.
15. Arlene Francis with Florence Rome, Arlene Francis: A Memoir (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), 169.
16. Tom Wood, “In Wilder’s Wilder West,” New York Times, July 16, 1961, sec. 2, p. 1.
17. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 190.
18. Wood, “In Wilder’s Wild West,” sec. 2, p. 1.
19. “Berlin Wall,” in Wright, Oxford Desk Encyclopedia of World History, 69; see also Glennon, Our Times, 452.
20. Wilder, interview by Gehman, 62.
21. I. A. L. Diamond, “ ‘One, Two, Three’: Timetable Test,” New York Times, December 17, 1961, sec. 2, p. 7; see also Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 133.
22. Wilder, interview by Schlöndorff.
23. Diamond, “ ‘One, Two, Three’: Timetable Test,” sec. 2, p. 7.
24. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 126.
25. Lally, Wilder Times, 312–13.
26. Cagney by Cagney, 154.
27. Keller, “One, Two, Three,” 22.
28. Cagney by Cagney, 155.
29. Ibid., 158.
30. Wilder, interview by Schlöndorff.
31. Dassanowsky-Harris, “Billy Wilder’s Germany,” pt. 1, 297.
32. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 460; see also Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 132.
33. Douglas Warren with James Cagney, James Cagney: The Authorized Biography (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), 192–93.
34. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 16; see also Lally, Wilder Times, 312.
35. Cagney by Cagney, 156; see also Bogdanovich, Who the Hell’s in It, 373.
36. Robert Dassanowsky-Harris, “Billy Wilder’s Germany,” pt. 2, Films in Review 41, nos. 6–7 (1990): 354.
37. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 241.
38. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 194.
39. Wilder, interview by Gehman, 62.
40. Brendan Gill, “Current Cinema,” New Yorker, January 6, 1962, 79.
41. “Bewildering Berlin,” Time, December 8, 1961, 60.
42. Sarris, You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet, 395.
43. Pauline Kael, I Lost It at the Movies: Film Writings, 1954–1965 (New York: Boyars, 1994), 150.
44. Portrait of a 60% Perfect Man.
45. Kael, I Lost It at the Movies, 153.
46. Wilder, interview by Gehman, 63.
47. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 27.
48. Dick, Billy Wilder, 70; see also Lemon, “Billy Wilder’s Fortune Cookie,” 42.
49. Keller, “One, Two, Three,” 24.
50. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 165.
51. Louella Parsons, “Jack Lemmon, A Multi-talented Trouper,” New York Journal-American, September 2, 1962, 3.
52. See summary in Irma la Douce file, Motion Picture Association of America Production Code Administration Records, Herrick Library.
53. Joe Hyams, “Poor Irma Left without a Song,” New York Herald Tribune, October 21, 1967, 7.
54. Gene D. Phillips, “Blanche’s Phantom Husband: Homosexuality on Stage and Screen,” Louisiana Literature 14, no. 2 (1997): 48.
55. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 470.
56. Kanin, Hollywood, 158–59.
57. Hyams, “Poor Irma Left,” 7.
58. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 131.
59. Kanin, Hollywood, 158.
60. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 243.
61. Tony Williams, “Irma la Douce,” in Video Versions: Film Adaptations of Plays, ed. James Welsh and Thomas Erskine (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005), 169.
62. Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies, 370.
63. Lally, Wilder Times, 330.
64. Wilder, introduction, 5.
65. Lally, Wilder Times, 331; see also Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 87.
66. Bogdanovich, Who the Hell’s in It, 132.
67. André Previn, No Minor Chords: My Days in Hollywood (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 118.
68. Williams, “Irma la Douce,” 169; see also Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 198.
69. Dawn Sova, Forbidden Films: Censorship (New York: Facts on File, 2001), 181.
70. Thomas Little, news release, July 15, 1963, Irma la Douce file, Legion of Decency files.
71. Sullivan, interview.
72. Hal Wallis to Geoffrey Shurlock, July 10, 1963, and Geoffrey Shurlock to Hal Wallis, July 15, 1963, both in Irma la Douce file, Motion Picture Association of America Production Code Administration Records.
73. Sova, Forbidden Films, 181.
74. “Billy Wilder,” in Stevens, Conversations, 128.
75. Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, Irma la Douce: Unpublished Screenplay (Los Angeles: United Artists, 1963), 1.
76. Heinz-Jürgen Köhler, “Irma la Douce,” in Muller, Movies of the Sixties, 161.
77. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 148.
78. Lally, Wilder Times, 331.
79. Dick, Billy Wilder, 102; see also Denis Saillard, “Le Théâtre de Boulevard,” Revue d’Histoire 93 (2007): 15–26.
80. Lally, Wilder Times, 332.
81. Staggs, Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard, 368, 370.
82. “Irma la Douce,” in Variety Film Reviews, vol. 10, n.p.
83. Nash and Ross, Motion Picture Guide, 77.
84. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 198.
85. Kanin, Hollywood, 159.
86. Wilder, interview by Prelutsky, 189.
87. Wilder, interview by Gehman, 59.
15. GRIFTERS
1. Gehman, “Charming Billy,” 69.
2. Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies, 399.
3. Billy Wilder, interview, Daily Mail (London), July 31, 1964, 3.
4. Dick, Billy Wilder, 109.
5. William Froug, The Screenwriter Looks at the Screenwriter (New York: Dell, 1972), 165; see also Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 249.
6. “Entretien avec Billy Wilder,” 1970, 10.
7. Dick, Billy Wilder, 106; see also Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies, 399.
8. Nick Tosches, Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 362.
9. Hopp, Billy Wilder, 149.
10. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 42.
11.
Lally, Wilder Times, 338.
12. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 138.
13. Roger Lewis, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (London: Century, 1994), 674.
14. Ibid., 673.
15. “An Open Letter from Peter Sellers,” Variety, clipping, n.d., Kiss Me, Stupid file, United Artists Collection, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison.
16. Wilder, interview by Prelutsky, 188.
17. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 139.
18. Jack Vizzard, See No Evil: Life inside a Hollywood Censor (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970), 303, 305.
19. “The Production Code of the Motion Picture Association of America,” reprinted in Doherty, Hollywood’s Censor, 359. This is the code as revised in 1956.
20. Joseph I. Breen to Irene Selznick, February 1, 1949, Motion Picture Association of America Production Code Administration Records.
21. Sullivan, interview.
22. Vizzard, See No Evil, 302; see also Walsh, Sin and Censorship, 315.
23. Harold Mirisch, interoffice memorandum, November 24, 1964, Kiss Me, Stupid file, United Artists Collection.
24. Raymond J. Haberski Jr., Freedom to Offend (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), 83–84.
25. Vizzard, See No Evil, 304.
26. Ibid., 305.
27. Doherty, Hollywood’s Censor, 325–26.
28. George Morris, “The Private Films of Billy Wilder,” Film Comment 14, no. 1 (1979): 34.
29. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 39.
30. Thomas Thompson, “Wilder’s Dirty-Joke Film Stirs a Furor,” Life, January 15, 1965, 55.
31. “Kiss Me, Stupid,” Time, January 1, 1965, 103.
32. “Kiss Me, Stupid,” in Variety Film Reviews, vol. 11, n.p.
33. Wyler, interview.
34. Joan Didion, “Kiss Me, Stupid: A Minority Report,” Vogue, March 1965, 97.
35. Dunne, “Old Pornographer,” 94.
36. Walsh, Sin and Censorship, 317.
37. Wilder, interview by Prelutsky; see also Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 156.
38. Morris, “Private Films of Billy Wilder,” 35.
39. Froug, Screenwriter Looks at the Screenwriter, 249, 165.
40. Billy Wilder, interview by Peter Bart, New York Times, November 7, 1965, sec. 2, p. 1.
41. Lemon, “Billy Wilder’s Fortune Cookie,” 40.
42. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 314.
43. Wilder, interview by Gehman, 65.
44. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 215.