Some Like It Wilder Read online

  18. Eyman, Ernst Lubitsch, 350.

  19. Otto Preminger, interview by author, New York, April 22, 1979.

  20. William Wyler, interview by author, Hollywood, CA, March 24, 1976.

  21. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 74.

  22. Michael Barson, Hollywood Directors of the Sound Era (New York: Noonday Press, 1995), 455.

  23. Agee, Film Writing and Selected Journalism, 358.

  24. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 278.

  25. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 340.

  26. Steven Bach, Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend (New York: Morrow, 1992), 329.

  27. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 137.

  28. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 249.

  29. David Shaw, “Love in the Air,” May 1947, 1, Paramount Collection.

  30. Hopp, Billy Wilder, 62.

  31. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 155.

  32. “Dialogue on Film: Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond,” 114.

  33. Marlene Dietrich, Marlene (New York: Avon, 1990), 238.

  34. Maria Riva, Marlene Dietrich (New York: Knopf, 1993), 195.

  35. Ibid.

  36. Ean Wood, Dietrich: A Biography (London: Sanctuary, 2002), 255–56; see also Bach, Marlene Dietrich, 332.

  37. Volker Schlöndorff, interview by David Riva, in A Woman at War: Marlene Dietrich Remembered, ed. David Riva (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2006), 24. This book is a companion to David Riva’s documentary about his grandmother, Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Song (2001).

  38. Robert Dassanowsky-Harris, “Billy Wilder’s Germany,” pt. 1, Films in Review 41, no. 5 (1990): 293.

  39. Oliver Kuch, “A Foreign Affair,” in Muller, Movies of the Forties, 437.

  40. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 80.

  41. Bach, Marlene Dietrich, 329.

  42. Schlöndorff, interview, 24.

  43. J. M. Woodstock, “The Name Dropper,” American Cinemeditor 39, no. 4 (1990): 15.

  44. “The Production Code of the Motion Picture Association of America,” reprinted in Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 308.

  45. See A Foreign Affair file, Paramount Collection.

  46. Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Song, documentary, directed by David Riva (APG, 2001); see also Maria Riva, interview, in Riva, Woman at War, 133.

  47. Giannetti, Understanding Movies, 483.

  48. Wood, Dietrich, 258.

  49. Schlöndorff, interview, 24.

  50. Wood, Dietrich, 258; see also Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 74.

  51. Corliss, Talking Pictures, 145.

  52. Sarris, American Cinema, 166.

  53. Sarris, “Billy Wilder, Closet Romanticist,” 9.

  54. Dassanowsky-Harris, “Billy Wilder’s Germany,” pt. 1, 294.

  55. Karasek, Billy Wilder, 394.

  56. Dassanowsky-Harris, “Billy Wilder’s Germany,” pt. 1, 296.

  57. Farber, “Films of Billy Wilder,” 14; see also Robert McLaughlin and Sally Parry, We’ll Always Have the Movies: American Cinema during World War II (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006), 296.

  58. Taylor, Strangers in Paradise, 201.

  59. Malene Sheppard Skaerved, Dietrich (London: Haus, 2003), 132.

  60. Farber, “Films of Billy Wilder,” 13.

  61. Stuart Schulberg, “A Communication: A Letter about Billy Wilder,” Quarterly of Film, Radio, and Television 7, no. 4 (1952): 434.

  62. Kuch, “Foreign Affair,” 435.

  63. Lally, Wilder Times, 184.

  64. Kuch, “Foreign Affair,” 435; also see Skaerved, Dietrich, 132.

  65. Sam Staggs, Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003), 20.

  7. DARK WINDOWS

  1. Billy Wilder, “Wilder Seeks Films with Bite,” interview by Philip Scheuer, in Horton, Billy Wilder: Interviews, 127.

  2. “Billy Wilder,” in Stevens, Conversations, 306.

  3. “Dialogue on Film: Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond,” 119.

  4. Charles Brackett, “Putting the Picture on Paper” (lecture, n.d.), 1–3, Paramount Collection.

  5. Ibid., 3.

  6. Armand Deutsch, Me and Bogie (New York: Putnam, 1991), 155–56.

  7. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 82.

  8. Thomson, New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 656.

  9. Lally, Wilder Times, 187.

  10. Wilder, interview by Porfirio, 112; see also “Billy Wilder,” in Stevens, Conversations, 326.

  11. Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, and D. M. Marshman Jr., “Sunset Boulevard: Draft Script,” December 21, 1948, Paramount Collection.

  12. Staggs, Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard, 61.

  13. Agee, Film Writing and Selected Journalism, 467.

  14. Joseph I. Breen to Billy Wilder, May 24, 1949, Sunset Boulevard file, Paramount Collection.

  15. George Cukor, interview by author, Los Angeles, August 18, 1980.

  16. “Billy Wilder: The Art of Screenwriting,” interview by James Linville, in The Paris Review Interviews, ed. James Gourevitch (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006), 1:418.

  17. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 146.

  18. Scott Eyman, Mary Pickford: America’s Sweetheart (New York: Fine, 1990), 282.

  19. Wilder, interview by Gehman, 65.

  20. “Billy Wilder,” in Stevens, Conversations, 303.

  21. Cukor, interview.

  22. Gloria Swanson, Swanson on Swanson (New York: Pocket Books, 1981), 494; see also Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 160.

  23. Lennig, Stroheim, 445; see also Koszarski, Von, 289.

  24. Lennig, Stroheim, 445.

  25. Seitz, interview, 209.

  26. Bob Thomas, Golden Boy: The Untold Story of William Holden (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), 59.

  27. Milt Machler, Libby (New York: Tower, 1980), 12.

  28. “William Holden: An Untamed Spirit,” Biography, A&E, April 27, 1999; see also Thomas, Golden Boy, 61.

  29. Thomas, Golden Boy, 228.

  30. Dunne, “Old Pornographer,” 91; see also Staggs, Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard, 72.

  31. Swanson on Swanson, 498.

  32. Staggs, Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard, 67.

  33. Freeman, “Sunset Boulevard Revisited,” 77.

  34. Ibid.; see also Staggs, Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard, 67, 103.

  35. Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, and D. M. Marshman Jr., Sunset Boulevard: A Screenplay, ed. Jeffrey Meyers (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999), 43.

  36. Gloria Swanson, interview, Queen Kelly, DVD, directed by Erich von Stroheim (Kino Video, 2003).

  37. Swanson on Swanson, 499.

  38. Seitz, interview, 208.

  39. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 98.

  40. Katelin Trowbridge, “The War between Words and Images: Sunset Boulevard,” Literature/Film Quarterly 30, no. 4 (2002): 296.

  41. Swanson on Swanson, 499.

  42. Ibid., 499–500.

  43. John Meehan, “Sunset Boulevard,” Society of Motion Picture Art Directors Bulletin, May–June 1951, 2.

  44. Herb Lightman, “Old Master, New Tricks,” American Cinematographer 31, no. 9 (1950): 318.

  45. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 293.

  46. Swanson on Swanson, 220.

  47. Ibid., 501.

  48. Daniel Brown, “Wilde and Wilder,” PMLA 119, no. 5 (2004): 1218.

  49. Christopher Ames, Movies about Movies: Hollywood Reflected (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997), 200–201.

  50. Wilder, Brackett, and Marshman, Sunset Boulevard: A Screenplay, 98.

  51. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 164.

  52. Staggs, Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard, 147.

  53. Tony Thomas, Film Score: The View from the Podium (London: Yoseloff, 1979), 57.

  54. John Caps, “Movie Music,” Film Comment 39, no. 6 (2003): 37.

  55. Freeman, “Sunset Boulevard Revisited,” 77.


  56. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 214.

  57. Karasek, Billy Wilder, 354; see also Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 150.

  58. Seitz, interview, 210; cf. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 301.

  59. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 255.

  60. Avrom Fleishman, Narrated Films: Storytelling Situations in Cinema History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 96.

  61. Brown, “Wilde and Wilder,” 1217.

  62. Swanson on Swanson, 500.

  63. Staggs, Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard, 110.

  64. Freeman, “Sunset Boulevard Revisited,” 77.

  65. Jeffrey Meyers, introduction to Wilder, Brackett, and Marshman, Sunset Boulevard: A Screenplay, xi.

  66. Morris Dickstein, “Sunset Boulevard,” in The A List: 100 Essential Films, ed. Jay Carr (New York: Da Capo, 2002), 282.

  67. Steffen Haubner, “Sunset Boulevard,” in Muller, Movies of the Forties, 543.

  68. Higham and Greenberg, Celluloid Muse, 250.

  69. Billy Wilder and Rudy Behlmer, audiotape of dialogue, November 8, 1976, Paramount Collection; see also Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 100.

  70. Billy Wilder, interview by Richard Brown, Reflections on the Silver Screen, AMC, 1993.

  71. Swanson on Swanson, 501–2.

  72. Louis Giannetti and Scott Eyman, Flashback: A Brief History of Film, rev. ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006), 197.

  73. Staggs, Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard, 158.

  74. Agee, Film Writing and Selected Journalism, 468–69.

  75. Staggs, Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard, 185.

  76. Axel Madsen, Stanwyck (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 286.

  77. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 35.

  78. Kanin, Hollywood, 153.

  79. Ibid.

  80. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, xv.

  81. Wilder, interview by Prelutsky, 185.

  8. BARBED WIRE SATIRE

  1. Manny Farber, “Underground Films,” in Lopate, American Movie Critics, 223–24.

  2. Hirsch, Dark Side of the Screen, 83.

  3. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 37.

  4. Wilder, interview by Prelutsky, 184; see also Wilder, “Wilder Seeks Films with Bite,” 16.

  5. Robert Murray and Roger Brucker, Trapped! The Story of Floyd Collins (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 74, 170, 172.

  6. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 103; see also Wilder, “Wilder Seeks Films with Bite,” 171.

  7. Billy Wilder, Walter Newman, and Lesser Samuels, “Ace in the Hole: Draft Script,” May 31, 1950, Paramount Collection.

  8. J. P. Telotte, Voices in the Dark: The Narrative Patterns of Film Noir (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 83.

  9. Billy Wilder, Walter Newman, and Lesser Samuels, “Ace in the Hole: Unpublished Screenplay,” Paramount Collection.

  10. Wilder, “Wilder Seeks Films with Bite,” 16; see also Armstrong, Billy Wilder, 56.

  11. Joseph I. Breen to Billy Wilder, July 15, 1950, Ace in the Hole file, Paramount Collection.

  12. Armstrong, Billy Wilder, 57.

  13. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 93.

  14. Breen to Wilder, July 15, 1950.

  15. Kirk Douglas to Billy Wilder, June 19, 1950, Kirk Douglas Collection, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison.

  16. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 166.

  17. Kirk Douglas, interview, 1984, Ace in the Hole, DVD, directed by Billy Wilder (Criterion, 2007).

  18. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 315.

  19. Ace in the Hole press book, Paramount Collection.

  20. Murray and Brucker, Trapped, 247–48.

  21. Staggs, Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard, 251.

  22. Lemon, “Billy Wilder’s Fortune Cookie,” 54–55; see also “Billy Wilder,” in Stevens, Conversations, 327.

  23. Farber, “Underground Films,” 231.

  24. Tony Thomas, “Hugo Friedhofer,” in Pendergast and Pendergast, International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 4:285.

  25. Thomas, Film Score, 213–14.

  26. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 93; see also Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 166.

  27. Kirk Douglas, The Ragman’s Son: An Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 178.

  28. Dick, Billy Wilder, 60.

  29. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 205.

  30. Lally, Wilder Times, 212; see also Sarris, You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet, 333.

  31. Nash and Ross, Motion Picture Guide, 190.

  32. Guy Maddin, “Chin Up for Mother,” in Ace in the Hole, souvenir program (Criterion Collection, 2007), 4.

  33. Douglas, interview.

  34. Wilder, interview by Porfirio, 111; see also Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 106.

  35. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 185; see also Wilder, interview by Porfirio, 111.

  36. Maddin, “Chin Up for Mother,” 4.

  37. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 165. The film was repackaged for TV as The Big Carnival, but history repeated itself. When the movie was a flop on TV, the original title was once more restored for reruns. Surprisingly, a few film historians still refer to the movie as The Big Carnival, even though the original title was permanently reinstated.

  38. Wilder, interview by Gehman, 59; see also Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 176.

  39. Lemon, “Billy Wilder’s Fortune Cookie,” 49.

  40. Luft, “Matter of Decadence,” 65.

  41. Charles Brackett, “A Matter of Humor,” in “Two Views of a Director,” 66.

  42. Luft, “Matter of Decadence,” 65.

  43. Brackett, “Matter of Humor,” 69.

  44. John J. O’Connor, “A Salute to Kirk Douglas for His Life,” New York Times, May 23, 1991, C32.

  45. Manohla Dargis, “The Listings,” New York Times, January 12, 2007, B31; see also “Movies,” New Yorker, January 15, 2007, 6.

  46. Stephen Cahir, “Stalag 17,” in The Encyclopedia of Stage Plays into Film, ed. James Welsh and John Tibbets (New York: Facts on File, 2001), 279; see also “Screen Rights to Stalag 17,” Variety, August 29, 1951, 5.

  47. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 179.

  48. Stalag 17: From Reality to Screen, documentary (Paramount Home Video, 2006). Unless specifically noted otherwise, all quotations from the cast members and Bevan in this chapter are from this source.

  49. Preminger, interview.

  50. Taylor, Strangers in Paradise, 67.

  51. Thomas, Golden Boy, 80.

  52. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 22.

  53. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 167.

  54. Armstrong, Billy Wilder, 65.

  55. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 338.

  56. Billy Wilder and Edwin Blum, Stalag 17: A Screenplay, ed. Jeffrey Meyers (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999), 25.

  57. Joseph I. Breen to Billy Wilder, February 19, 1956, Stalag 17 file, Paramount Collection; see also Dick, Billy Wilder, 69.

  58. Wilder and Blum, Stalag 17: A Screenplay, 113–14.

  59. Jeffrey Meyers, introduction to Wilder and Blum, Stalag 17: A Screenplay, xi.

  60. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 301.

  61. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 42.

  62. Ibid., 305.

  63. John Gallagher, “Ernest Laszlo,” in Pendergast and Pendergast, International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 6:485.

  64. Foster Hirsch, Otto Preminger (New York: Knopf, 2007), 403.

  65. Preminger, interview.

  66. Bogdanovich, Who the Devil Made It, 606.

  67. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 97.

  68. Thomas, Golden Boy, 80.

  69. Nash and Ross, Motion Picture Guide, 3098; see also Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 168.

  70. Billy Wilder to Franz Waxman, April 5, 1957, Stalag 17 file, Paramount Collection.

  71. Cahir, “Stalag 17,” 280.

  72. Sarris, American Cinema, 166.

  73. Nash and Ross, Motion Picture Guide, 3098
.

  74. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 344.

  75. Staggs, Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard, 186.

  76. Thomas, Golden Boy, 82–83.

  77. Billy Wilder, interview by Volker Schlöndorff, 1988, in Billy Wilder Speaks, documentary, directed by Gisela Grischow and Volker Schlöndorff (Bioskop Film, 2006). The documentary, created for German TV, aired on TCM in 2006 with English subtitles.

  78. See Stalag 17 file, Paramount Collection.

  79. Alan Andres, “Anti-hero: William Holden Gambles on Stalag 17,” American Movie Classics, December 1993, 1–2.

  9. FASCINATION

  1. Dominic Head, ed., The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 231.

  2. Donald Spoto, Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn (New York: Harmony Books, 2006), 112.

  3. Ibid., 99.

  4. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 237.

  5. Philip Kemp, “Ernest Lehman,” in Pendergast and Pendergast, International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 4:990.

  6. Lally, Wilder Times, 237.

  7. Ezra Goodman, The Fifty-Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961), 271; see also Alexander Walker, Audrey: Her Real Story (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 86.

  8. Lally, Wilder Times, 237.

  9. Peter Bogdanovich, Who the Hell’s in It: Conversations with Hollywood’s Legendary Actors (New York: Ballantine Books, 2006), 437; see also Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 174.

  10. Jeffrey Meyers, Bogart: A Life in Hollywood (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 282.

  11. Richard Schickel, “Appreciation: The Genuine Article,” in Bogie: The Life and Films of Humphrey Bogart, by Richard Schickel and George Perry (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006), 21.

  12. Spoto, Enchantment, 112.

  13. Richard Gehman, “Charming Billy,” Playboy, December 1960, 90; see also Walker, Audrey, 97.

  14. Spoto, Enchantment, 108.

  15. Stephen Bogart, foreword to Schickel and Perry, Bogie, 11.

  16. Meyers, Bogart, 282.

  17. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 9, 173–74.

  18. Thomas, Golden Boy, 85.

  19. Meyers, Bogart, 283.

  20. Goodman, Fifty-Year Decline, 265.

  21. Stephen Bogart, Bogart: In Search of My Father (New York: Dutton, 1995), 179.

  22. See Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 314, for a slightly different version of Wilder’s insult to Bogart.