The Chris Moeller Archives

The 50 Great American Films 41

The next film, alphabetically, on the Chris Moeller Top 50 list...


SOME LIKE IT HOT directed by Billy Wilder (1959)

In the language of jazz, music can be played two ways. It can be played 'straight,' which means playing it as it was written without modification. Or it can be played 'hot'-- like great jazz is played-- sexy, dirty, and improvisational. For Billy Wilder, this distinction was a way of looking at life.
As a young newspaper reporter, Wilder had first ventured from his native Austria in 1926 with the traveling party of American jazz pioneer Paul Whiteman. (Whiteman and his orchestra are most famous for having introduced Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue.") Wilder traveled with Whiteman from Vienna as far as Berlin, where he would begin his career in film.
Thirty years later, Wilder was at the top of his game in Hollywood. He had the idea to make a comedy based on a heavy German film about two jazz musicians who have to don disguises to get work. Wilder's version would take advantage of the death of the Production Code by combining what would have previously been two untouchable subjects-- the St. Valentines' Day Massacre in 1929 Chicago and cross-dressing. Wilder's script (co-written by I.A.L. Diamond) contained the director's typically dirty jokes, gangsters, bootleggers, Florida millionaires, and at its center, a sexy female role.

Roger Ebert believes that Marilyn Monroe's greatest gift is in appearing to have just stumbled onto her lines of dialogue by happy inspiration. She had a love affair with the camera. "Pouring into a dress that offers her breasts like jolly treats for needy boys," Ebert writes, "she seems totally oblivious to sex while at the same time melting men into helpless desire."
Her seemingly effortless performance in "Some Like It Hot" was anything but for her director and co-stars Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. The stories are now famous of how she would show up hours late for filming each day. Wilder, who had already worked with Monroe in her star-making turn, "The Seven Year Itch," joked at the time that he would never do so again. "In the United States, I'd hate it," he said, "In Paris, it might not be so bad. While we were waiting we could all take painting lessons on the side."
When she did arrive on set, she would often flub her lines badly. The line "It's me, Sugar," caused multiple takes. "It's Sugar, me." Cut. "It's Sugar, me." Cut. After finally yelling "Print," Wilder tried to soothe her, "Don't worry about it." "Worry about what?" she responded.
In another scene she was to walk into the room, open a drawer, and say "Where's the bourbon?" By Diamond's account, it took 42 takes to finish the scene. When she couldn't remember the line, it was written for her on a tiny card and placed in the drawer. Then she opened the wrong drawer. They had to place a card in every drawer.
It was obvious that Monroe had tried the patience of Curtis after he famously remarked that kissing her "was like kissing Hitler." Mutual jealousy may have been a factor. With her two co-stars dressed in women's clothing, the costume designer, Orry-Kelly, pointed out to Monroe that "you know, Tony's ass is better-looking than yours." "Oh yeah," she replied, "Well he doesn't have tits like these," whereupon she unbuttoned her blouse and proved her point before the assembled cast and crew.

As "Josephine" and "Daphne," Curtis and Lemmon are equally sublime. Curtis' endurance and spontaneity are especially evident when you consider how difficult his scenes with Monroe must have been. Originally intended for Frank Sinatra, his role gets the girl, and it was Curtis' brilliant idea to impersonate Cary Grant when his character is pretending to be a millionaire. ("Nobody talks like that!" Lemmon declares.)
Lemmon's character is left with what Sugar would call "the fuzzy end of the lollipop." Still in his female get-up, he winds up in the secondary plotline lusted after by an old millionaire coot played by Joe E. Brown. (Brown gets the honor of reciting the movie's legendary curtain line.) Lemmon's "Daphne" becomes flattered by the attention of her wealthy pursuer. In the movie's funniest scene, he tells "Josephine" that he plans to marry. Lemmon punctuates all of his lines in the scene by shaking a pair of maracas. Wilder knew the scene would get big laughs and put the maracas in to prolong the conversation and make sure the audience heard all the jokes.

The latter half of the film taking place in Florida was filmed at the beautiful Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, built in 1888 and designated a historic landmark in 1977. Its website advertises its connection to the famous film.

"Some Like It Hot" was voted the funniest film of all-time several years ago by the American Film Institute, but like most comedies, didn't get it's due at the time of its release. It received six Oscar nominations, but won only for costume design. (I defy you to argue the merits of that one after watching the scene in which Monroe sings "I Want to Be Loved By You.") "Ben-Hur" walked away with Best Picture in 1959 with "Some Like It Hot" shut out of the nominations in that category.
Wilder's picture, though, was one of the top grossing movies of the year (behind only "Auntie Mame" and "The Shaggy Dog.") After a successful open, the producers, the Wilders, the Diamonds, and Jack Lemmon traveled by boat to Europe. Their fellow passengers were the duke and duchess of Windsor. The movie was screened on board and the royals got up to leave before it had ended. An obviously American crewmate told them they wouldn't want to miss the ending and they gingerly sat back down. At dinner, the film's cast and crew were seated at a table next to the Windsors. The duchess whispered to her husband, "I think one of the actors from the picture is seated at the next table." "The one I liked?" asked the duke within earshot of the next table. "No dear," said the duchess-- "the other one."


Other CM Top 50 films were posted on Dec. 18, 23, 30, Jan. 9, 16, 23, and Feb. 1 and 5.

posted by CM @ 6:52 PM