Our manager always got a little giddy to hear we scheduled a Billy Wilder picture
Kiss-Me-Stupid Fortune Cookies:
When Billy Wilder
Sold Out The House
by Jamie Jobb
As Lowe’s Riviera ushers, our job was to get people safely into their seats and keep them comfortable until the movie ended and they left the theater. We were mostly high school students, associated through our “fraternity”, the Brotherhood of Bucks. We had flexible schedules and sporadic hours at minimum wages, so there was lots of turnover, although some of us worked there two or three years before leaving Miami to start careers.
Movie theaters in 1962 were still huge operations – in terms of house size and sustained box office. And crowds snaked in long lines around the block. Audiences then were chronologically closer to Vaudeville crowds than they were to today’s smartphone-solo-movie-screen-on-the-street. Going to a movie then was no afterthought. It was a group activity, a national pastime.
By nature Marvin Reed, our manager, was not an excitable man. But everyone who worked for him knew he relied on us to help him find replacement ushers, which we did. In return for our loyalty, Marvin gave us sets of four comp tickets (enough to “double date”) for new movies all over Miami.
And he told us dumb "dirty jokes" (Q: What do moles smell? A: Molasses.) No other adult authority we knew took that liberty with us, so we looked up to him as one cool albeit older cat, and we all respected his low-key approach to fairly working out our tough schedules.
Three words, however, would always send our mellow manager into orbit! We all knew those three words would certainly sell out the house for many weeks to come and we’d be very very busy, with lots of “double shifts”.
Those three words: “Billy Wilder Picture”.
Marvin knew a Billy Wilder Picture meant Big Box Office, lines around the building, full usher crews, two doormen, overtime for everybody. Our theater had one screen and fifteen hundred seats. Sometimes a film would play there several months, selling out the house two or three times a day! Imagine that kind of sustained crowd in today’s world of Multiplex Galore and Amazon-Hulu-Netflix-on-demand.
Billy Wilder always delivered a great crowd ready for a fun movie, usually a wacky latter-day screwball romantic comedy. Any funny farce he directed would quadruple ticket sales, as it was “a double-date flick”. Back then not every suburban teen had a vehicle, so couples “double dated”.
Wilder’s movies, now widely available on line, have held up very well over time; he wrote his first film ninety-three years ago! Wilder’s “Some Like It Hot” (1959) remains atop most listings of all-time American comedies. His biggest hit, “Irma La Douce” (1963), played our theater several months the year we graduated.
Serving one short stint as an usher in our theater was our fellow student Jonathan Demme, who also wrote movie reviews for the local paper. Jonathan went on to make a few brilliant comedies himself (“Married to the Mob,” “Melvin and Howard,”) which bear the beauty-marks of a Billy Wilder picture: great script, memorable characters, snappy dialogue, firecracker plot, luscious settings and exquisite attention to period details.
We should note that Billy Wilder was first a writer, often a co-writer or adaptor. Eventually his highest-and-best-use in Hollywood evolved as a director. That is certainly true for Demme as well. Certainly, Wilder was Marilyn Monroe’s best director, evoking her most robust comic turns. Despite what Joe Dimaggio may have thought.
Indeed, as far as Marvin Reed and his ushers knew at the time, nobody made funnier pictures than Billy Wilder. Here are short looks at ten of his major comedies, so you may see for yourself that the man created a lot of ridiculously wonderful works that still deserve plenty of audience attention to this day:
Ten Screwball Billy Wilder Comedies
* * *
Tibor Czerny comforts Eve Peabody in true “screwball” script by Wilder
Midnight (1939)
“I need a taxi to find myself a job, and I need a job to pay for the taxi. No taxi, no job – no job, no soap.” Paris cab-driver Tibor Czerny (Don Ameche) has “three handkerchiefs, two shirts, one tie, no worries” ...until he meets “famous American blues singer” with “bathtub voice” Eve Peabody (Claudette Colbert). Eve, who later adopts Czerny “title”, realizes she’s “been a fool too long”.
Actually, All-American Eve is Continental gold-digger dressed in gold lame who arrives penniless in Paris from Monte Carlo where “the roulette system I was playing collapsed under me.” Eve believes “No woman ever found peace in a taxi. I’m looking for a limousine.” After ditching cabby Czerny, she snares not only her limo but also its driver, suite at Ritz, full wardrobe and fifty-thousand-franc account. “She made me think she felt the same way about me until she remembered she had other fish to fry … fish like you. Goldfish!”
Bankrolling Eve’s rescue-mission is jilted millionaire Georges Flammarion (John Barrymore) who “always had a weakness for size twelve” and is out to save wife Helene (Mary Astor) from clutches of playboy Jacques Picot (Francis Lederer) whose family “makes a very superior income from a very inferior champagne.”
Directed by Mitch Leisen, written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett. Breezy Depression-era Classic-Screwball Cinderella yarn mixes Paris Ritz taxi-jam, “the reconciliation room”, Versailles villa conga line and “one rattlesnake covered in thousand island dressing” to serve “The Secret of the Pink Pawn Ticket or the Case of the Mysterious Baroness”. Great example of Hollywood licking its studio chops. “From the moment you looked at me, I had an idea you had an idea.” (USA)
* * *
Phoebe Frost monitors Capt. Pringle and Erika Von Schluetow
A Foreign Affair (1948)
“Oh Johnny, what does it matter about a woman’s politics?” On five-day fact-finding mission to study GI morale, properly prim spinster American Congresswoman Phoebe Frost (Jean Arthur) is far from Iowa right after WWII in partitioned Berlin. “How is good old Iowa?” “Sixty-two percent Republican, thank you.”
War-hardened German chanteuse Erika Von Schluetow (fearless Marlene Dietrich) tolerates black-market advances of brash Yank Captain Johnny Pringle (John Lund) as long as the cad brings her cigarettes and nylons. “Let’s go up to my apartment. It’s only a few ruins away from here.”
Col. Rufus J. Plummer (Millard Mitchell) should have his “brakes relined” for he knows an international triangle when he sees one. “So you fly off back home and wash your hands. Why, surely … you’ve got so much soap in the United States.”
“If you give a hungry man a loaf of bread, that’s democracy. If you leave the wrapper on, that’s imperialism.” Directed by Wilder, written by Wilder, Charles Brackett, Richard L. Breen. Wry and cynical post-war document of black romantic comedy was a tough project for Dietrich and himself as former Germans who escaped Hitler to tell this story. “Now, you’re one of us.” (USA)
* * *
Wilder directs Marilyn in scene that drove DiMaggio nuts
The Seven-Year Itch (1955)
“I mean, would I be lying on the floor in the middle of the night in a man’s apartment drinking champagne if he weren’t married?” Ex-model Dazzledent-hawker aka the “Tomato from Upstairs” (terrific Marilyn Monroe) lives “in a Turkish bath”, admits she drinks “like a fish” and keeps her undies “in the icebox” as she’s “not made for this heat”.
Home-alone associate pulp-fiction editor, “Manhattan husband” and “married-bachelor” Richard Sherman (over-the-top Tom Ewell) is “such a nice man” who has “a lot of imagination” and understands “no man is an island” but knows that with his AC as bait “this may be a little too savage!”
“They have a word for this. They call it blackmail!” Directed by Wilder, written by Wilder and George Axelrod based on his popular stage farce. Fabulous fantasy sequences built on “a stairway to nowhere” elevates picture to classic status with Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto, potato chips and champagne, chopsticks duet, Tom Collins hootenanny and famous subway-wind-up-the-skirt shot that drove DiMaggio wild enough to force a divorce, according to Joe’s biographer Richard Ben Cramer (link below). “It’s simply a matter of pressure … and counter-pressure.” (USA)
The notorious “subway scene” (2:34) https://youtu.be/fIh6HDeXKGY
* * *
Joe and Jerry try to fit into Sugar Kane’s all-sister band
Some Like It Hot (1959)
“If I were a girl – and I am – I’d watch my step.” Deadbeat speakeasy sax-man Joe (terrific Tony Curtis), aka “Josephine” and “Shell Oil Junior”, may “personally prefer classical music” while his deadbeat bassist buddy Jerry (Jack Lemmon), aka “Daphne”, has “an empty stomach and it’s gone to his head.”
Both Roaring Twenties wise guys find themselves on lam together from Chicago to Miami, touring on train with Sweet Sue (Joan Shawlee) and Her Society Syncopators. “Every girl in my band is a virtuoso, and I intend to keep it that way.”
Syncopator lead singer Sugar Kane Kowalczyk (Marilyn Monroe) certainly “doesn’t have much of a voice” for a girl from Sandusky Ohio, but she’s “always getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop”. Could it be because she moves “just like Jello on springs”?
Among those lusting after them all at “Miami’s” massive Del-Seminole-Ritz is hyper-fortunate Osgood Fielding, III (Joe E. Brown) who “invests in showgirls”. Also dogging their tail is polite Chicago mob-boss Spats Colombo (George Raft) who may be Tough Guy until he learns “there was something in that cake that didn’t agree with” him. “They shrink when they’re marinated.”
Directed by Wilder, written by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond. Chock-a-block with zingy slang, Wilder’s most famous farce now shows its gay old age a bit in don’t-ask-don’t-tell drag, despite its naughty bits of Toothpick Charlie, 86-proof coffee, too-late type-O blood, Friends of Italian Opera conventioneers and one funny fake Cary Grant accent. “Yes, we have to be very careful whom we pick for a roommate.” (USA)
* * *
To get away from the office, Jeff heads for Baxter’s "pad"
The Apartment (1960)
“As a matter of fact, you must be an iron man all around. From what I hear through the walls, you got something goin’ for you every night … sometimes it’s a twinight doubleheader!” Despite getting lost in the crowd at his desk, mild-mannered Consolidated Life cooperative loyal employee C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon), aka “Buddy Boy”, wants his rung up the corporate ladder some day. “Would you mind leaving your body to the University?”
“How can I be efficient at the office, if I don’t get enough sleep at night?” Bud has what every Manhattan man desires: a Central Park West apartment close to the office. “I’m in this joint on Sixty-First, and I think I got lucky!”
“I don’t mind in the summer … but on the rainy nights.” “Just leave the key under the mat, and clear out.” Baxter loans the apartment to office execs for trysts. One of them, Al Kirkeby (David Lewis) knows “those things don’t run on schedule, like a Greyhound bus.”
“Normally it takes years to work your way up to the twenty-seventh floor, but it only takes thirty seconds to be out on the street again. Ya’ dig?” Personnel director Jeff D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) monitors the situation closely with local elevator girl Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine). Directed by Wilder, written by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond. “Why can’t I ever fall in love with somebody nice, like you?” (USA)
“Slow Down, Kid” scene (1:31) https://youtu.be/8gGPt8Eg5lw
* * *
Cola CEO Mac McNamara (Cagney, center) up against Berlin Wall
One, Two, Three (1961)
“Is old Russian proverb: Go west young man.” West Berlin soft-drink CEO Mac McNamara (James Cagney) considers home-office Atlanta “Siberia with mint juleps” so he sets sights on “three-hundred million thirsty comrades” behind Iron Curtain.
Despite new Berlin Wall in background, Mac accepts challenge to pour some European culture into stateside boss’ dizzy debutante daughter, Scarlett Hazeltine (Pamela Tiffin). “All the women in our family are sorta hot-blooded.” Soon Scarlett is Gone With The Red when she hops Wall to fall for anti-Yank Otto Ludwig Piffle (Horst Buchholz). “He’s not a Communist. He’s a Republican. He comes from the Republic of East Germany.”
Directed by Wilder; written by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, based on Ferenc Molnar farce. Wilder’s cold cola war gushes at breakneck screwball pace, a la Howard Hawks. “It’s not anti-American. It’s anti-Yankee. And where I come from everybody’s against the Yankees!” Mac must act fast after Scarlett turns ripe and Red Otto “confesses” as American spy. “You mean I’ve been a capitalist for three hours, and already I owe ten thousand dollars?” “That’s what makes our system work: everybody owes everybody.” (USA)
Full feature:
(1:43:58)
* * *
Nestor and Irma La Douce outside Hotel Casanova
Irma la Douce (1963)
“Once you’ve been dishonorably discharged, they won’t even let you clean the sewers.” Honestly inept Paris “flic” and fishmonger Nestor Patou (Jack Lemmon), aka “Officer Petunia,” “Tiger,” “Old Goat,” and England’s insatiable “Lord X”, has fallen head-over-poodles for popular Parisian “poole” Irma La Douce (Shirley MacLaine, in role Marilyn Monroe desperately wanted). “You don’t understand: I don’t want anybody to make love to her except me!”
Widely known for her lush puppy Coquette and her honesty in green tights, Irma is a lady-of-the-night in the-City-of-Light. “And another thing, according to the law, you’re supposed to keep it on a leash!” Her tough-guy “mac” Hippolyte (Bruce Yarnell) pimps her Hotel Casanova prime spot by the door. “Sometimes I wish you were twins.”
“It’s a God-given talent that’s meant to be shared with the public.” Kiki The Cossack, Amazon Annie, Lolita, Suzette Wong, Mimi the Mamou and The Twins work the streets of Les Halles la Nuit. “They all started at the bottom. But they had perseverance and drive and vision. Now they’ve got it made. They’re retired. They let their girls work for them.”
Chez Moustache bistro owner (Lou Jacobi), aka “Moustache”, is former Romanian chicken thief, foreign legion colonel, Monte Carlo croupier, bank-robber, head litigator, economics professor and chief obstetrician for East Equatorial Africa ...“but that’s another story”. Moustache helps Nestor develop and maintain his disguise for monogamy. “What do you mean ‘he’. There is no ‘he’ … it’s YOU!” “Of course, it’s ME! But she doesn’t know that. And she doesn’t know that I KNOW! But I know that she likes him better than she likes me, see!?!”
“It’s a hard way to earn an easy living.” Directed by Wilder, written by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, based on Alexandre Breffort’s popular musical farce. Wilder’s non-musical remake finds “two people in the gutter … reaching for the stars” with cat-fight seltzer spray, speed-Latin, peppermint tea, shrink seduction and church birth. “Maybe he forgot, maybe he changed his mind.” (USA)
* * *
Sit, Dino, sit: Polly the Pistol lets Orville have it
Kiss Me, Stupid (1964)
“If you’ve got what it takes, sooner or later somebody will take what you got, baby!” World-famous Vegas crooner Dino (Dean Martin in delicious self-parody) gets diverted on way back to Hollywood only to end up deliberately stranded in small desert town when his limited-edition Dual-Ghia roadster “breaks down”. “All it takes is one hit! Just one hit: ‘How Much Is That Doggie In The Window’ -- three million records!”
“Let’s not monkey around with Beethoven, shall we?” Smelling their one-way meal-ticket out-of-town, songwriting mechanic Barney Millsap (Cliff Osmond) and “nobody” church-organist piano-teacher Orville J. Spooner, aka “Beethoven”, (Ray Walston, in role originally meant for Peter Sellers!) conspire to keep Dino around long enough to hear just a few of their sixty-two tunes: “I’m a poached egg / without the piece of toast / Yorkshire pudding / without a beef to roast … ”
Wildly-suspicious Orville of course suspects his frisky wife Zelda (Felicia Farr), aka Lamb Chop, who was “president … and secretary/treasurer” of Deno fan club. “Orville, have you been reading Playboy again?” So he spirits her home to Mother (hilariously warbling Doro Merande in only one scene).
“I got the distinct impression that there’s love-for-sale on the premises.” So Orville hires hot-to-trot Belly-Button Roadhouse cocktail waitress Polly-the-Pistol (terrific Kim Novak) “who’s gone back to being a blonde again” as replacement-wife who hankers for more than surrogacy on love-seat-for-three in Climax Nevada (pop. 2,147).
Directed by Wilder, written by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, based on Anna Bonacci’s farce. “Tender gums! That’s a hell of a thing to say to a married woman!” (USA)
* * *
Boom-Boom, Hapless Harry and Whiplash Willie (L-R)
The Fortune Cookie (1966)
“There’s nothing wrong with my back if you’d just get off it!” CBS-TV cameraman Harry Hinkle (Jack Lemmon) was “always so brittle” and known as “a guy who jumps off roofs with a closed umbrella”. So when Cleveland Brown Luther “Boom-Boom” Jackson (Ron Rich) returns punt out of bounds to knock him “mangled and helpless”, loopy Harry ends up in St. Mark’s Hospital where nurse “Sister Veronica wants fourteen points”
Harry’s shyster-in-law William H. “Whiplash Willie” Gingrich, Esq. (fantastic Walter Matthau) is “so full of angles, gimmicks, twists” that he “starts to describe a donut and it comes out a pretzel!” Opposing counsel believe he could “find a loophole in the Ten Commandments.” But with thirty million Sunday afternoon witnesses, lawyer Willie convinces hapless Harry to remain “paralyzed”enough to sue CBS, the Browns, and Municipal Stadium for one million bucks. “Whiplash nothing! We’re going after ALL the marbles!”
Meanwhile Consolidated Insurance seeks a second opinion. “In the old days we used to do these things better. The man says he’s paralyzed, we simply throw him in the snake pit. If he comes out, then we know he’s lying.” “And if he doesn’t come out?” “Then we have lost the patient, but we have found an honest man.”
Although she always considered Harry spineless, his ex-wife – and Willie’s sister – Sandy Hinkle (Judi West) rushes to his wheelchair with visions of windfall verdict. “If you can annul a marriage, why can’t you annul a divorce?” Meanwhile guilt-ridden Boom-Boom befriends Harry only to hit the bottle big time after Sandy arrives to mother Harry. “I don’t wanna love somebody dumb.”
Directed by Wilder, written by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond. First time Lemmon-Matthau teamed up in this chiaroscuro tale and rough racial portrait of coon-Mustang convertible, bed-pan ashtray and Abe Lincoln’s you-can’t-fool-all-the-people Chinese-takeout prognostication. “Now look Sister, I asked you to pray for him, but we don’t want any miracles.” (USA)
* * *
Carlo Carlucci has Wendell Junior buried behind dozens of roses in “Avanti!”
Avanti! (1972)
“They were not the Unknown Soldiers. They were the Unknown Lovers!” Armbruster Industries Vice-President Wendell Armbruster, Jr. (Jack Lemmon) hustles from Baltimore golf course to Mediterranean resort Isle of Ischia to claim body of suddenly deceased father Wendell, Sr.
Junior slowly learns Senior “did not suffer toward the end.” In truth while cavorting with annual summer mistress named Piggott, Dad drove off cliff into Gulf of Naples vineyard. “If it had to happen, it was more or less ideal: warm night, full moon, island in the Mediterranean.” “At the height of The Season, what more could anyone ask!?!”
Grand Hotel Excelsior manager Carlo Carlucci (magnificent Clive Revill) steps up to help confused Junior sort through his Willie/Kate consortium conundrum, i.e. locate zinc-lined coffins, certify disease-free embalming, obtain “mortuary passport”, settle Trotta vineyard damage claim … then find missing corpse(s). “A coroner, he eats very well. He knows all the widows.”
Junior certainly didn’t bargain for daughter of dad’s mistress, London boutique clerk Pamela Piggott (exquisite Juliet Mills). “I’ve been called plump, I’ve been called pudgy, I’ve been called chubby. But I’ve never been called fat-ass!”
Taking matters into his own hands, State Department’s J.J. Blodgett (Edward Andrews) invades Ischia at “lunchtime”, only to join the isle’s waiting line. “And all the time we thought he was getting cured, he was getting laid?!?”
Directed by Wilder, written by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, based on Samuel Taylor’s farce. One of Wilder’s best later comedies – full of hilarious characters and completely in tune with curious times of Hello Dolly, Love Story, Future Shock and black socks for mourning sunrise. “It doesn’t look like a Hilton.” “I accept the compliment.” (USA)
Montage of scenes (8:49): https://youtu.be/UmkyzIg_W8w
* * *
FURTHERMORE:
Eyes on Cinema: Essential Billy Wilder Collection
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbFbLvJse3mqLmOUTijFNzf3u1mZhEDFf
Billy Wilder clips on You Tube’s auto-generated “video discovery” bot:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC37CzU5o9UurEIwBtsv2NTQ
Criterion Collection page dedicated to Wilder (only two titles currently):
https://www.criterion.com/people/1309-billy-wilder
Netflix link to Wilder films:
http://dvd.netflix.com/RoleDisplay/Billy_Wilder/99326?lnkce=mdp-award
Directors Guild of America tribute page:
https://www.dga.org/Craft/DGAQ/All-Articles/1001-Spring-2010/Books-Some-Like-It-Wilder.aspx
Paris Review interview: The Art of Screenwriting:
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1432/the-art-of-screenwriting-no-1-billy-wilder
“The Writer Speaks” (one hour and five minutes):
https://youtu.be/tOjDuaLBl9c
Turner Classic Movies page dedicated to Wilder:
http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/person/206104%7C22099/Billy-Wilder/
“Where to start with the films of Billy Wilder”
http://www.avclub.com/article/where-start-films-billy-wilder-218396
A long look at The Seven-Year Itch:
http://pearcaster.com/2014/04/12/the-seven-year-itch/
(clip, under four minutes)
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/238388/Fortune-Cookie-The-Movie-Clip-Accident.html
Joe DiMaggio story about the subway “wind” (p 366-368):
“Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life” by Richard Ben Cramer, New York: Simon & Schuster (2000)
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