Billy Wilder (22 June 1906 –
27 March 2002) was an Austrian
-American
journalist, filmmaker, screenwriter and producer, whose career spanned more than 50
years and 60 films. He is regarded as one
of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood
's golden age.
Life and career
Origins
Born
Samuel Wilder in Sucha Beskidzka
, Austria-Hungary
(now Poland
) to Max
Wilder and Eugenia Dittler, Wilder was nicknamed Billie by his
mother, because she was fascinated with Billy the Kid when she had
visited the United States in her younger days (he changed that to
"Billy" after arriving in America). His parents had a
successful and well-known cake shop in Sucha Beskidzka's train
station and unsuccessfully tried to convince their son to inherit
the business.
Soon the family moved to Vienna
, where
Wilder attended school. After dropping out of the University of
Vienna
, Wilder became a journalist. To advance his career
Wilder decided to move to Berlin
, Germany
.
Berlin
While in Berlin, before achieving success as a writer, Wilder
allegedly worked as a
taxi dancer. After
writing crime and sports stories as a
stringer for local newspapers, he was
eventually offered a regular job at a Berlin
tabloid. Developing an interest in film, he began
working as a screenwriter. He collaborated with several other tyros
(with
Fred Zinnemann and
Robert Siodmak on the 1929 feature
People on Sunday).
After the
rise of Adolf Hitler, Wilder, who was
Jewish, left for Paris
, where he
made his directorial debut with the 1934 film Mauvaise Graine. He relocated to
Hollywood prior to its release.
His mother, grandmother, and stepfather
perished at the Auschwitz concentration camp
.
Hollywood career
After
arriving in Hollywood
in 1933, Wilder continued his career as a
screenwriter. He became a
naturalized citizen of the United States in
1934.
Wilder's first significant success was
Ninotchka in 1939, a collaboration with fellow German immigrant
Ernst Lubitsch. This
screwball comedy starred
Greta Garbo (generally known as a
tragic heroine in film
melodramas), and was popularly and critically
acclaimed. With the byline, "Garbo Laughs!", it also took Garbo's
career in a new direction (although he and Brackett had already
written
Bluebeard's Eighth
Wife and
Midnight to great acclaim). The
film also marked Wilder's first
Academy
Award nomination, which he shared with co-writer
Charles Brackett. For twelve years Wilder
co-wrote many of his films with Brackett, from
1938 through
1950.
He followed
Ninotchka with a series of
box office hits in 1942, including his
Hold Back the Dawn and
Ball of Fire, as well as his
directorial feature debut,
The Major and the Minor.
Wilder established his directorial reputation after helming
Double Indemnity
(
1944), a
film
noir he co-wrote with mystery novelist
Raymond Chandler, with whom he did not get
along.
Double Indemnity not only set conventions for the
noir genre (such as "venetian blind" lighting and
voice-over narration), but was also a landmark in the battle
against Hollywood censorship. The original
James M. Cain
novel
Double Indemnity featured two love triangles and a
murder plotted for insurance money. The book was highly popular
with the reading public, but had been considered unfilmable under
the
Hays Code, because adultery was
central to its plot.
Double Indemnity is credited by some
as the first true film noir, combining the stylistic elements of
Citizen Kane with the
narrative elements of
The Maltese
Falcon.
Two years later, Wilder earned the
Best Director and
Best Screenplay
Academy Awards for the adaptation of
a
Charles R. Jackson story
The Lost Weekend, the first
major American film to make a serious examination of
alcoholism, another difficult theme under the
Production Code. In
1950, Wilder
co-wrote and directed the dark and cynical and critically acclaimed
Sunset Boulevard,
which paired rising star
William
Holden with
Gloria Swanson.
Swanson played Norma Desmond, a reclusive silent film star who
dreams of a
comeback; Holden is
an aspiring screenwriter who becomes a
kept
man.
In 1951, Wilder followed
Sunset Boulevard with
Ace in the Hole
(a/k/a
The Big Carnival), a tale of media exploitation of
a caving accident. It was a critical and commercial failure at the
time, but its reputation has grown over the years. In the fifties,
Wilder also directed two adaptations of Broadway plays, the POW
drama
Stalag 17 (1953), which
resulted in a Best Actor Oscar for
William Holden, and the
Agatha Christie mystery
Witness for the Prosecution
(1957).
From the mid-1950s on, Wilder made mostly comedies. Among the
classics Wilder created in this period are the farces
The Seven Year Itch (
1955) and
Some
Like It Hot (
1959), satires
such as
The Apartment
(
1960), and the romantic comedy
Sabrina (
1954). Wilder's humor is sometimes sardonic. In
Love in the Afternoon
(
1957), a young and innocent
Audrey Hepburn who doesn't want to be young
or innocent with playboy
Gary Cooper, by
pretending to be a married woman in search of extramarital
amusement.
In 1959 Wilder introduced crossdressing to American film audiences
with
Some Like It Hot. In
this comedy
Jack Lemmon and
Tony Curtis play musicians on the run from a
Chicago gang, who disguise themselves as women and become
romantically involved with
Marilyn
Monroe and
Joe E.
Brown.
In
1959, Wilder began to collaborate
with writer-producer
I.A.L. Diamond, an association that continued until
the end of both men's careers. After winning three
Academy Awards for
1960's
The
Apartment (for Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay),
Wilder's career slowed. His
Cold War farce
One, Two, Three (1961)
featured a rousing comic performance by
James Cagney, but was followed by the lesser
films
Irma la Douce and
Kiss Me, Stupid. Wilder
garnered his last Oscar nomination for his screenplay
The Fortune Cookie in 1966. His 1970
film
The Private
Life of Sherlock Holmes was intended as a major
roadshow release, but was heavily cut by the studio
and has never been fully restored. Later films such as
Fedora and
Buddy Buddy failed to impress critics or
the public.
After that Wilder never ceased to complain that Hollywood was
making a big mistake by not giving him any films to direct. He did
so at film festivals, in interviews, on television, and whenever
else he had the chance. He often hinted that he was being
discriminated against, due to his age. His complaining didn't help:
for whatever reason, Hollywood simply wouldn't hire him, and his
directorial career ended.
One "consolation" which Wilder had in his later years, besides his
art collection (see "Trivia," below), was the Andrew Lloyd Webber
musical stage version of "Sunset Boulevard." The musical itself had
an uneven success and is generally considered to be one of the
least of Webber's musicals. However, the huge amount of money and
energy thrown into the musical was definitely a tribute to Wilder's
work.
Directorial style
Wilder's directorial choices reflected his belief in the primacy of
writing. He avoided the exuberant cinematography of
Alfred Hitchcock and
Orson Welles because, in Wilder's opinion,
shots that called attention to themselves would distract the
audience from the story. Wilder's pictures have tight plotting and
memorable dialogue. Despite his conservative directorial style, his
subject matter often pushed the boundaries of mainstream
entertainment.
Wilder was skilled at working with actors, coaxing
silent era legends
Gloria Swanson and
Erich von Stroheim out of retirement for
roles in
Sunset
Boulevard. For
Stalag
17, Wilder squeezed an Oscar-winning performance out of a
reluctant
William Holden (Holden
wanted to make his character more likeable; Wilder refused). Wilder
sometimes cast against type for major parts such as
Fred MacMurray in
Double Indemnity and
The Apartment. Many today
know MacMurray as a wholesome family man from the television series
My Three Sons, but he played
a womanizing schemer in Wilder's films.
Humphrey Bogart shed his tough guy image to
give one of his warmest performances in
Sabrina.
James Cagney, not usually known for comedy, was
memorable in a high-octane comic role for Wilder's
One, Two, Three. Wilder coaxed a very
effective, and in some ways memorable performance out of
Marilyn Monroe in
Some Like It Hot.
In total, he directed fourteen different actors in Oscar-nominated
performances:
Barbara Stanwyck,
Ray Milland,
William Holden,
Gloria Swanson,
Erich von Stroheim,
Nancy Olson,
Robert
Strauss,
Audrey Hepburn,
Charles Laughton,
Elsa Lanchester,
Jack
Lemmon,
Jack Kruschen,
Shirley MacLaine and
Walter Matthau. Milland, Holden and Matthau
won Oscars for their performances in Wilder films.
Wilder mentored
Jack Lemmon and was the
first director to pair him with Walter Matthau, in
The Fortune Cookie (
1966). Wilder had great respect for Lemmon,
calling him the hardest working actor he had ever met. Lemmon
starred in seven of Wilder's films.
Wilder's work has had to meet some critical challenges. Although he
is widely admired by critics and filmgoers, he has not won approval
from noted critic
David Thomson,
author of "A Biographical Dictionary of Film," and other works.
Thomson summarizes his attitude toward Wilder by saying, "I remain
skeptical." Thomson emphasizes that, although Wilder created some
brilliant films, he also directed some poor ones, especially at the
end of his career. Thomson notes that critic
Andrew Sarris did not approve of Wilder for a
long time but then changed his attitude much later.
Wilder's films often lacked any discernible political tone or
sympathies, which was not unintentional. He was less interested in
current political fashions than in human nature and the issues that
confronted ordinary people. He was not affected by the Hollywood
blacklist, and had little sympathy for those who were. Of the
blacklisted '
Hollywood Ten'
Wilder famously quipped, "Of the ten, two had talent, and the rest
were just unfriendly".
Later life
Billy Wilder was recognized with the
AFI Life
Achievement Award in 1986.
In
1988, Wilder was awarded the
Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.
He has a
star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
.
Wilder
died in 2002 of pneumonia at the age of 95
after battling health problems, including cancer, in Los
Angeles
, California
and was interred in the Westwood
Village Memorial Park Cemetery
in Westwood, Los Angeles,
California
next to Jack
Lemmon. Marilyn Monroe's
crypt is located nearby.
Wilder died the same day as two other comedy legends:
Milton Berle and
Dudley
Moore. The next day, French top-ranking newspaper
Le Monde titled its first-page obituary,
"Billy Wilder is dead. Nobody is perfect." This was a reference to
the famous closing line of his film
Some Like it Hot
spoken by
Joe E. Brown after
Jack Lemmon reveals he is not female.
Legacy
.jpg/180px-Billy_Wilders_grave_(978339409).jpg)
Wilder's gravestone
Wilder holds a significant place in the history of Hollywood
censorship for expanding the range of acceptable subject matter. He
is responsible for two of the film noir era's most definitive films
in
Double Indemnity
and
Sunset
Boulevard. Along with
Woody
Allen, he leads the list of films on the
American Film Institute's list of
100 funniest American films with 5 films written and holds the
honor of holding the top spot with
Some Like it Hot. Also on the list are
The Apartment and
The Seven Year Itch
which he directed, and
Ball of
Fire and
Ninotchka which
he co-wrote. The
AFI has
ranked four of Wilder's films among their
top 100 American films of the 20th
century:
Sunset Boulevard (no. 12),
Some Like It
Hot (no. 14),
Double Indemnity (no. 38) and
The
Apartment (no. 93).
Filmography
Trivia
- Wilder reveled in poking fun at those who took politics too
seriously. In Ball of Fire, his burlesque queen 'Sugarpuss' points at her sore
throat and complains "Pink? It's as red as the Daily Worker and twice as sore." Later,
she gives the overbearing and unsmiling housemaid the name "Franco."
- Wilder is sometimes confused with director William Wyler; the confusion is
understandable, as both were German-speaking Jews with
similar backgrounds and names. However, their output as directors
was quite different, with Wyler preferring to direct epics and
heavy dramas and Wilder noted for his comedies and film noir type dramas.
- Wilder's 12 Academy Award
nominations for screenwriting were a record until 1997 when
Woody Allen received a 13th nomination
for Deconstructing
Harry.
- Wilder is one of only five people who have won three Academy
Awards for producing, directing and writing the same film (The
Apartment).
- Wilder once said: "My English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop Desmond
Tutu."
- Wilder once told Billy Bob
Thornton that he was too ugly to be an actor and he should
write a screenplay for himself in which he could exploit his less
than perfect features. This encouraged Thornton to write the
screenplay for Sling Blade, a script he
would win an Oscar for.
- Spanish filmmaker Fernando
Trueba said in his acceptance speech for the 1993 Best
Non-English Speaking Film Oscar: "I
would like to believe in God in order to thank him. But I just
believe in Billy Wilder... so, thank you Mr. Wilder." According to
Trueba, Wilder called him the day after and told him: "Fernando,
it's God."
- Wilder was the Editors Supervisor in the 1945 US Army Signal
Corps documentary/propaganda film Death
Mills.
- Wilder became well known for owning one of the finest and most
extensive art collections in Hollywood, mainly collecting modern
art. A few years before he died, he agreed to a sale of most of the
collection at an auction, netting a very large sum of money. He
said that he was not selling the art to make money, but that he had
enjoyed it as much as he could; he wanted others to have a chance
to own it.
- In the mid 1950s, Wilder became interested in doing a film with
one of the classic slapstick comedy acts of the Hollywood Golden
Age. He first considered, and rejected, a project to star Laurel and Hardy. He then held discussions
with Groucho Marx concerning a new
Marx Brothers comedy, tentatively
titled "A Day at the U.N." This project was abandoned when Chico Marx died in 1961.
Awards
With eight nominations for
Best Director, Wilder is the
second most nominated director in the history of the Academy
Awards, behind
William Wyler. Out of
these nominations, Wilder won two Oscars.
Academy Awards
Notes
See also
References
Literature
- Armstrong, Richard, Billy
Wilder, American Film Realist (McFarland & Company, Inc.:
2000)
- Dan Auiler, "Some Like it Hot"
(Taschen, 2001)
- Chandler, Charlotte,
Nobody's Perfect. Billy Wilder. A Personal
Biography (New York: Schuster & Schuster, 2002)
- Crowe, Cameron, Conversations
with Wilder (New York: Knopf, 2001)
- Guilbert,
Georges-Claude, Literary Readings of Billy Wilder
(Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007)
- Hermsdorf, Daniel, Billy
Wilder. Filme - Motive - Kontroverses (Bochum:
Paragon-Verlag, 2006)
- Hopp, Glenn, Billy Wilder
(Pocket Essentials: 2001)
- Hopp, Glenn / Duncan, Paul, Billy Wilder (Köln / New
York: Taschen, 2003)
- Horton, Robert, Billy
Wilder Interviews (University Press of Mississippi, 2001)
- Hutter, Andreas / Kamolz, Klaus,
Billie Wilder. Eine europäische Karriere (Vienna,
Cologne, Weimar: Boehlau, 1998)
- Gyurko, Lanin A., The
Shattered Screen. Myth and Demythification in the Art of
Carlos Fuentes and Billy Wilder (New Orleans: University Press
of the South, 2009)
- Jacobs, Jérôme,
Billy Wilder (Paris: Rivages Cinéma, 2006)
- Lally, Kevin, Wilder Times: The
Life of Billy Wilder (Henry Holt & Co: 1st ed edition, May
1996)
- Sikov, Ed, On Sunset
Boulevard. The Life and Times of Billy Wilder (New
York: Hyperion, 1999)
- Neil Sinyard & Adrian Turner, "Journey Down Sunset
Boulevard" (BCW, Isle of Wight, UK, 1979)
- Wood, Tom, The Bright Side of Billy
Wilder, Primarily (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc,
1969)
- Zolotow, Maurice, Billy
Wilder in Hollywood (Pompton Plains: Limelight Editions,
2004)
- Hellmuth Karasek, Billy
Wilder, eine Nahaufnahme (Heyne, 2002)
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