Billy Wilder granted the author an extended interview in his Hollywood office on September 30, 1975, and the present book was developed from that interview. From time to time over the years, the interview was updated by telephone. All quotations from Wilder that are not attributed to another source are from this interview.
1. Kevin Lally, Wilder Times: The Life of Billy Wilder (New York: Holt, 1996), 1. Wilder’s first name was spelled Billie until he went to Hollywood, when he changed the spelling to Billy because Billie was used for females there, e.g., Billie Burke. But I use the spelling Billy throughout this book for the sake of consistency.
2. Hellmuth Karasek, Billy Wilder: Eine Nahaufnahme [Billy Wilder: A close-up] (Hamburg: Hoffman und Campe, 1992), 29–30. This book has the most complete treatment of Wilder’s youth; it has not been published in an English translation. Robert Scheff translated the cited passages. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are in the Billy Wilder file, National Film Archive, British Film Institute, London.
3. Geoffrey Macnab, “Gold Leaf and Shadow-Play: Vienna in Films,” Sight and Sound, n.s., 16, no. 9 (2006): 32.
4. Karasek, Billy Wilder, 34–35.
5. Maurice Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, rev. ed. (New York: Limelight, 1987), 341–42; Billy Wilder, “Going for Extra Innings,” interview by Joseph McBride and Todd McCarthy, Film Comment 13, no. 1 (1979): 42.
6. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 26.
7. Daniel Johnson, “On the Wilder Side of Freud,” Times (London), September 30, 1995, 2.
8. Tom Wood, The Bright Side of Billy Wilder, Primarily (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970), 164; see also Karasek, Billy Wilder, 53–55.
9. Billy Wilder, interview by Richard Gehman, Playboy, June 1963, 58.
10. Fred Zinnemann, interview by author, London, May 15, 1994.
11. Peter Bogdanovich, Who the Devil Made It: Conversations with Film Directors (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998), 565.
12. Fred Zinnemann, A Life in the Movies: An Autobiography (New York: Scribner, 1992), 16.
13. Billy Wilder, “Wir von Filmslude” [We of the Film Studio], Tempo, June 23, 1929, 2. Robert Scheff translated the cited passages. Wilder and his partners called their film unit the Film Studio—an ironic title, since they were not associated with any film studio.
14. “People on Sunday,” Sight and Sound, n.s., 15, no. 6 (2005): 86; see also Jeffrey Meyers, introduction to The Lost Weekend: A Screenplay, by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, ed. Jeffrey Meyers (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), vii.
15. Zinnemann, interview.
16. Kevin Brownlow to author, July 14, 2006.
17. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 174.
18. Karasek, Billy Wilder, 94.
19. Glenn Hopp, Billy Wilder: The Cinema of Wit (Los Angeles: Taschen, 2003), 10.
20. Garson Kanin, Hollywood: Moviemakers and Moneymakers (New York: Viking, 1974), 152.
21. Michael Blowen, “The Art of Billy Wilder,” Boston Globe, October 22, 1989, 81.
22. Wilder, interview by Gehman, 58.
23. Gene D. Phillips, Fiction, Film, and F. Scott Fitzgerald (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1986), 14.
24. Lincoln Barnett, “The Happiest Couple in Hollywood,” Life, December 11, 1944, 104, 102.
25. John Gregory Dunne, “The Old Pornographer: Billy Wilder,” New Yorker, November 8, 1999, 90.
26. Billy Wilder, “One Head Is Better Than Two,” in Hollywood Directors, 1941–1976, ed. Richard Koszarski (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 270.
1. Ernst Lubitsch, “Film Directing,” in Hollywood Directors, 1914–1940, ed. Richard Koszarski (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 273–74.
2. Scott Eyman, Ernst Lubitsch: Laughter in Paradise (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), 259.
3. Ibid., 257.
4. “Billy Wilder,” in Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the American Film Institute, ed. George Stevens Jr. (New York: Knopf, 2006), 302; see also Michiko Kakutani, “Ready for His Close-Up,” New York Times Magazine, June 28, 1996, 14.
5. Jürgen Muller and Jorn Hetenbrugge, “Chaos and Illusion: Notes on the Movies of the Thirties,” in Movies of the Thirties, ed. Jürgen Muller (Los Angeles: Taschen/BFI, 2005), 17; see also David Freeman, “Sunset Boulevard Revisited,” New Yorker, June 21, 1993, 74.
6. Barry Paris, Garbo: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 1995), 361.
7. Ibid., 363.
8. Jay Nash and Stanley Ross, eds., The Motion Picture Guide, 1927–1983 (Chicago: Cinebooks, 1985), 2171.
9. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 39–40.
10. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 69.
11. Louis Giannetti, Understanding Movies, 11th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2008), 419.
12. David Chierichetti, Hollywood Director: Mitchell Leisen (Los Angeles: Photoventures Press, 1995), 123.
13. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 65.
14. Manohla Dargis, “Film,” New York Times, April 15, 2007, sec. 2, p. 4.
15. “David Kipen Picks Five Great Screenplays,” Chicago Tribune Book Review, February 26, 2006, 8.
16. Eyman, Ernst Lubitsch, 257.
17. Freeman, “Sunset Boulevard Revisited,” 74.
18. “Billy Wilder,” in Stevens, Conversations, 305–6.
19. Billy Wilder, foreword to Emeric Pressburger: The Life and Death of a Screenwriter, by Kevin Macdonald (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1994), xiii.
20. Stephen Silverman, “Billy Wilder and Stanley Donen,” Films in Review 47, nos. 3–4 (1996): 35; see also Hopp, Billy Wilder, 28.
21. Lally, Wilder Times, 103–4.
22. Howard Hawks, interview by author, Chicago, November 11, 1973.
23. Ibid.
24. Andrew Sarris, “From the Kaiser to the Oscar,” New York Times Book Review, December 27, 1998, 5.
25. Hawks, interview.
26. Todd McCarthy, Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood (New York: Grove Press, 1997), 327.
27. “Billy Wilder,” in Stevens, Conversations, 315–16.
28. Richard Corliss, Talking Pictures: Screenwriters in the American Cinema (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1988), xxi.
29. “Billy Wilder,” in Stevens, Conversations, 317.
30. Charlotte Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect: Billy Wilder, a Personal Biography (New York: Applause Books, 2004), 103.
31. John Russell Taylor, Strangers in Paradise: The Hollywood Émigrés, 1933–1950 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983), 205–6.
1. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 107.
2. Billy Wilder, interview by Burt Prelutsky, in Billy Wilder: Interviews, ed. Robert Horton (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001), 185.
3. Leslie Halliwell, Who’s Who in the Movies, rev. ed., ed. John Walker (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 488.
4. Lally, Wilder Times, 112.
5. Dunne, “Old Pornographer,” 90.
6. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 104.
7. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 103.
8. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 73–74.
9. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 107.
10. Ibid., 104.
11. Lally, Wilder Times, 114.
12. Richard Armstrong, Billy Wilder: American Film Realist (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), 20.
13. William K. Everson, Hollywood Bedlam: Classic Screwball Comedies (New York: Carol, 1994), 212.
14. Herbert Luft, “A Matter of Decadence,” in “Two Views of a Director: Billy Wilder,” Quarterly of Film, Radio, and Television 7, no. 1 (1952): 67.
15. Armstrong, Billy Wilder, 17.
16. Bernard Dick, Billy Wilder, rev. ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1996), 35.
17. Ibid., 34.
18. The Graham Greene Reader: Reviews, Essays, and Interviews, ed. David Parkinson (New York: Applause Books, 1995), 481.
19. Ed Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder (New York: Hyperion, 1998), 189.
20. On Rommel’s African campaign, see Joseph Roquemore, History Goes to the Movies (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 186–90.
21. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 52.
22. Arthur Lennig, Stroheim (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000), 419; see also Michel Ciment, Passport pour Hollywood (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1987), 71.
23. Richard Koszarski, Von: The Life and Times of Erich von Stroheim (New York: Limelight, 2001), 286.
24. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 188.
25. Cameron Crowe, Conversations with Wilder (New York: Knopf, 2001), 268.
26. Ibid., 108.
27. James Ursini, “John F. Seitz,” in Film Noir Reader 3, ed. Alain Silver, James Ursini, and Robert Porfirio (New York: Limelight, 2002), 101.
28. Lennig, Stroheim, 420.
29. Kurt Richter, interview by author, Berlin, May 20, 1977.
30. Miklos Rozsa, Double Life (New York: Winwood, 1989), 131.
31. Andrew Sarris, You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet: The American Talking Film, 1927–1949 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 327.
32. Lennig, Stroheim, 420.
33. Lally, Wilder Times, 121.
1. William Hare, Early Film Noir (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003), 24.
2. John Allyn, “Double Indemnity: A Policy That Paid Off,” Literature/Film Quarterly 6, no. 2 (1978): 120.
3. Richard Schickel, Double Indemnity (London: British Film Institute, 1993), 31.
4. Murray Schumach, The Face on the Cutting Room Floor (New York: Da Capo, 1975), 64. The code was composed in 1930 but did not go into action until 1934.
5. Gaylyn Studlar, “Hard-Boiled Film Noir: Double Indemnity,” in Film Analysis, ed. Jeffrey Geiger and R. L. Rutsky (New York: Norton, 2005), 383.
6. “James M. Cain: Tough Guy,” interview by Peter Brunette and Gerald Perry, in Backstory: Interviews with Screenwriters of Hollywood’s Golden Age, ed. Pat McGilligan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 127.
7. Frank Walsh, Sin and Censorship: The Catholic Church and the Motion Picture Industry (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 187.
8. Roger Ebert, The Great Movies (New York: Broadway Books, 2002), 144.
9. John Irwin, Unless the Threat of Death Is behind Them: Hard-Boiled Fiction and Film Noir (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 70.
10. John McCarty, Thrillers: Classic Film Suspense (New York: Carol, 1992), 50.
11. Jeffrey Meyers, introduction to Double Indemnity: A Screenplay, by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler, ed. Jeffrey Meyers (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), x.
12. Al Clark, Raymond Chandler in Hollywood (Los Angeles: Silman-James, 1996), 98.
13. Frank MacShane, The Life of Raymond Chandler (New York: Dutton, 1976), 112; see also Woody Haut, Heartbreak and Vine: Hardboiled Writers in Hollywood (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2002), 30.
14. Billy Wilder, “On the Fourth Floor at Paramount,” interview by Ivan Moffat, in The World of Raymond Chandler, ed. Miriam Gross (New York: A and W, 1978), 45.
15. Schickel, Double Indemnity, 35.
16. Philip Kiszely, Hollywood through Private Eyes: The Screen Adaptation of the Hard-Boiled Private Detective Novel in the Studio Era (New York: Lang, 2006), 136.
17. “James M. Cain: Tough Guy,” 125.
18. Wilder, “On the Fourth Floor at Paramount,” 47.
19. Billy Wilder, interview by Robert Porfirio, in Silver, Ursini, and Porfirio, Film Noir Reader 3, 109.
20. Lally, Wilder Times, 130; see also Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 114.
21. William Nolan, “Marlowe’s Mean Streets: The Cinematic World of Raymond Chandler,” in The Big Book of Noir, ed. Ed Gorman, Lee Server, and Martin Greenberg (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1998), 30.
22. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 115.
23. MacShane, Life of Raymond Chandler, 107; see also “James M. Cain: Tough Guy,” 127.
24. “James M. Cain: Tough Guy,” 127; see also The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Non-fiction, ed. Tom Hiney and Frank MacShane (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000), 28.
25. Wilder, “On the Fourth Floor at Paramount,” 48.
26. James M. Cain, Double Indemnity (New York: Vintage, 1992), 23–24.
27. Andrew Sarris, “Billy Wilder, Closet Romanticist,” Film Comment 12, no. 4 (1977): 8.
28. Dunne, “Old Pornographer,” 91.
29. Alan Woolfolk, “The Horizon of Disenchantment,” in The Philosophy of Film Noir, ed. Mark Conrad (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006), 120.
30. Mark Conrad, “The Meaning and Definition of Noir,” in Conrad, Philosophy of Film Noir, 11; see also Paul Schrader, “Notes on Film Noir,” in American Movie Critics: An Anthology from the Silents until Now, ed. Phillip Lopate (New York: Library of America, 2008), 457.
31. Foster Hirsch, The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir, rev. ed. (New York: Da Capo, 2009), 117.
32. Shadows of Suspense, documentary, directed by Jonathan Gaines (New Wave Entertainment, 2006).
33. Nino Frank, “The Crime Adventure Story: A New Kind of Detective Film,” trans. Barton Palmer, in Perspectives on Film Noir, ed. Barton Palmer (New York: Twayne, 1994), 21–22.
34. Jason Holt, “A Darker Shade,” in Conrad, Philosophy of Film Noir, 27.
35. Alain Silver, James Ursini, and Paul Duncan, Film Noir (Los Angeles: Taschen, 2004), 37; see also Wilder, interview by Porfirio, 104.
36. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 117.
37. Irwin, Unless the Threat of Death, 53.
38. Axel Madsen, Billy Wilder (London: Secker and Warburg, 1968), 91.
39. “Dialogue on Film: Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond,” in Horton, Billy Wilder: Interviews, 127. This is an edited transcript of a seminar that Wilder and Diamond gave at the American Film Institute.
40. Fred MacMurray, interview by author, Beverly Hills, CA, July 10, 1987.
41. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 118.
42. Wilder, interview by Porfirio, 116.
43. Richard Schickel, “Commentary,” Double Indemnity, DVD, directed by Billy Wilder (Paramount Home Video, 2006).
44. Rozsa, Double Life, 142.
45. Robert Horton, “Music Man: Miklos Rozsa,” Film Comment 31, no. 6 (1995): 3.
46. Schickel, Double Indemnity, 39.
47. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 357.
48. Peter Evans, “Double Indemnity,” in The Book of Film Noir, ed. Ian Cameron (New York: Continuum, 1992), 127.
49. Cain, Double Indemnity, 80.
50. Ibid., 3.
51. Evans, “Double Indemnity,” 169.
52. Ibid., 168; see also James A. Paris, “Murder Can Sometimes Smell like Honeysuckle: Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity,” in Film Noir Reader 4: The Crucial Films and Themes, ed. Alain Silver and James Ursini (New York: Limelight, 2004), 21.
53. Frank Krutnik, In a Lonely Street: Film Noir, Genre, Masculinity (New York: Routledge, 1991), 253.
54. Mark Bould, Film Noir: From Berlin to Sin City (Irvington, NY: Columbia University Press, 2006), 37.
55. MacMurray, interview.
56. “James M. Cain: Tough Guy,” 125; see also Alain Silver and James Ursini, The Noir Style (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2003), 142.
57. Wilder and Chandler, Double Indemnity: A Screenplay, 109.
58. Dick, Billy Wilder, 48.
59. “James M. Cain: Tough Guy,” 125.
60. Dick, Billy Wilder, 43.
61. Meyers, introduction to Double Indemnity: A Screenplay, xiii.
62. “James M. Cain: Tough Guy,” 126.
63. Schickel, “Commentary.”
64. Lally, Wilder Times, 137; Meyers, introduction to Double Indemnity: A Screenplay, xiv.
65. “Billy Wilder,” in Stevens, Conversations, 331.
66. Wilder and Chandler, Double Indemnity: A Screenplay, 120. This is the original screenplay, which includes the execution scene, 120–23. Jeffrey Meyers claims that the execution scene is “now published for the first time” in his edition. Meyers, introduction to Double Indemnity: A Screenplay, xiv. As a matter of fact, the execution scene is included in the version of the script published in Sam Thomas, ed., Best American Screenplays (New York: Crown, 1995), 302–4.
67. James Naremore, More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts, rev. ed. (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008), 91.
68. Hare, Early Film Noir, 45.
69. Double Indemnity scripts, Paramount Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, CA; cf. Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler, Double Indemnity: A Screenplay, in Raymond Chandler, Later Novels and Other Writings, ed. Frank MacShane (New York: Library of America, 1995), 970–72. The latter is the final version of the screenplay, which has the ending as it appears in the release prints of the movie, so it does not include the execution scene.
70. Thomas Leitsch, “Double Indemnity,” in Encyclopedia of Novels into Film, ed. James Welsh and John Tibbetts (New York: Facts on File, 2005), 104.
71. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 230; see also Schickel, Double Indemnity, 68.
72. Studlar, “Hard-Boiled Film Noir,” 397.
73. Kanin, Hollywood, 152.
1. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 87.
2. Lally, Wilder Times, 143.
3. Ibid., 143–44.
4. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 128.
5. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 88.
6. Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg, The Celluloid Muse: Hollywood Directors Speak (Chicago: Regnery, 1969), 249.
7. Lally, Wilder Times, 115.
8. Preface to The Lost Weekend, by Charles Jackson (New York: Time, 1963), xi.
9. Ibid., ix, xii.
10. Wilder, interview by Porfirio, 110. The staff of the Rush Medical Center in Chicago likewise assured me that Wilder’s portrait of an alcoholic is an accurate one.
11. Harry Benshoff and Sean Griffin, Queer Images: A History of Gay and Lesbian Films in America (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), 35.
12. Jackson, Lost Weekend, 48–49.
13. Lally, Wilder Times, 145.
14. Ibid., 144.
15. Armstrong, Billy Wilder, 41.
16. Hirsch, Dark Side of the Screen, 191–92.
17. Nash and Ross, Motion Picture Guide, 1738.
18. Chris Columbus, “Wilder Times,” American Film, March 1968, 27.
19. Ray Milland, Wide-Eyed in Babylon (New York: Morrow, 1974), 211.
20. Sarris, You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet, 329.
21. Lawrence Quirk, Jane Wyman: The Actress and the Woman (New York: Dembner Books, 1986), 79.
22. Eileen Creelman, “Doris Dowling Discusses Her First Movie,” New York Sun, November 24, 1945, 11.
23. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 26.
24. Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies (New York: Holt, 1991), 437.
25. John F. Seitz, interview by James Ursini, in Silver, Ursini, and Porfirio, Film Noir Reader 3, 207.
26. Milland, Wide-Eyed in Babylon, 224.
27. Nash and Ross, Motion Picture Guide, 1738.
28. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 221.
29. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 131; see also Madsen, Billy Wilder, 32.
30. Armstrong, Billy Wilder, 41.
31. Ibid., 39.
32. Judy Cornes, Alcohol in the Movies, 1898–1962: A Critical History (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), 125.
33. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 125.
34. Cornes, Alcohol in the Movies, 135.
35. Jackson, Lost Weekend, 277.
36. Stephen Farber, “The Films of Billy Wilder,” Film Comment 7, no. 1 (1971–1972): 10; see also David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, rev. ed. (New York: Knopf, 2004), 962.
37. Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968, rev. ed. (New York: Da Capo, 1996), 166.
38. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 269; see also Lally, Wilder Times, 150.
39. Rozsa, Double Life, 148.
40. Richard Ness, “Miklos Rozsa,” in International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, ed. Tom Pendergast and Sara Pendergast (Detroit: St. James Press, 2000), 4:724; see also Michael Walsh, “Running Up the Score,” Time, September 11, 1995, 78.
41. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 253; see also Lally, Wilder Times, 534.
42. Lally, Wilder Times, 144; see also Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 222.
43. Mason Wiley and Damien Bona, Inside Oscar: The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), 150.
44. Lars Penning, “The Lost Weekend,” in Movies of the Forties, ed. Jürgen Muller (Los Angeles: Taschen/BFI, 2005), 271–72.
45. James Agee, Film Writing and Selected Journalism, ed. Michael Sragow (New York: Library of America, 2005), 215; see also Clive James, “How to Write about Film,” New York Times Book Review, June 6, 2006, 38.
46. Wiley and Bona, Inside Oscar, 150.
47. “Lost Weekend’s Author Loves the Movie,” P.M. New York, November 25, 1945, 3.
48. Sarris, You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet, 127.
49. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 67–68.
50. Wilder, interview by Prelutsky, 186.
51. Nash and Ross, Motion Picture Guide, 1738.
52. Lally, Wilder Times, 142; see also Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 14.
53. Lally, Wilder Times, 156.
54. A copy of Die Todesmühlen, along with an English translation of the narration, is in the Records of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer, RG 111, National Archives, College Park, MD.
55. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 249.
56. Freeman, “Sunset Boulevard Revisited,” 75.
57. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 141.
58. Richard Lemon, “Billy Wilder’s Fortune Cookie,” in Horton, Billy Wilder: Interviews, 50.
59. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 279.
60. Lemon, “Billy Wilder’s Fortune Cookie,” 50.
61. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 313.
62. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 259.
1. Sarris, “Billy Wilder, Closet Romanticist,” 8.
2. Kanin, Hollywood, 153.
3. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 70, 256, 340.
4. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 134.
5. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 263–64.
6. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, memorandum to all concerned with the production, May 31, 1946, Paramount Collection.
7. Karasek, Billy Wilder, 340.
8. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 73; see also Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 94.
9. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 152.
10. Billy Wilder, notice posted on bulletin board in production office, n.d., Paramount Collection; see also Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 152.
11. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 134–35.
12. Roger Osterholm, Bing Crosby: A Bio-bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), 34.
13. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 138.
14. Osterholm, Bing Crosby, 265.
15. Dick, Billy Wilder, 126.
16. Kanin, Hollywood, 153–54.
17. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 170; see also Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 135.
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.
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.
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.
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.
23. Goodman, Fifty-Year Decline, 266.
24. Thomas, Golden Boy, 86.
25. Meyers, Bogart, 284.
26. Spoto, Enchantment, 109; see also Ian Woodward, Audrey Hepburn (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984), 117.
27. Meyers, Bogart, 284.
28. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 159.
29. David Hofstede, Audrey Hepburn: A Bio-bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), 75; see also Spoto, Enchantment, 110–11.
30. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 173; see also Bogart, In Search of My Father, 179–81.
31. “Ernest Lehman,” in Stevens, Conversations with the Great Moviemakers, 486.
32. Lally, Wilder Times, 237; see also Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 253.
33. Goodman, Fifty-Year Decline, 266.
34. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 185.
35. Ibid., 156; see also Lally, Wilder Times, 235.
36. Hopp, Billy Wilder, 91.
37. Schickel, “Appreciation,” 72, 76.
38. Karasek, Billy Wilder, 385.
39. Walker, Audrey, 97.
40. Lally, Wilder Times, 240; see also Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 140.
41. Barbara Leaming, Marilyn Monroe (New York: Random House, 1998), 114.
42. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 14.
43. Wilder, interview by Gehman, 60.
44. George Axelrod, interview by Patrick McGilligan, Film Comment 31, no. 6 (1995): 14.
45. Ibid., 12.
46. Wilder, interview by Brown; see also Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 85.
47. Erich Stahl, “The Seven Year Itch,” in Movies of the Fifties, ed. Jürgen Muller (Los Angeles: Taschen/BFI, 2005), 225.
48. Billy Wilder and George Axelrod, The Seven Year Itch: Unpublished Screenplay (Los Angeles: Twentieth Century–Fox, 1954), 77.
49. Axelrod, interview, 12.
50. Rebecca Epstein, “The Seven Year Itch,” in Welsh and Tibbetts, Encyclopedia of Stage Plays into Film, 266.
51. Pat Kirkham, “Saul Bass and Billy Wilder in Conversation,” Sight and Sound, n.s., 5, no. 6 (1995): 20.
52. Armstrong, Billy Wilder, 79.
53. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 230.
54. Gene D. Phillips, Major Film Directors of the American and British Cinema, rev. ed. (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1999), 107.
55. “Entretien avec Billy Wilder,” interview by Michael Ciment, Positif, August 1983, 20. Bridgette Chandler translated the cited passages.
56. Douglas Brode, The Films of the Fifties (New York: Carol, 1993), 136.
57. “Entretien avec Billy Wilder,” 1983, 21.
58. Leaming, Marilyn Monroe, 128.
59. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 344.
60. Anthony Summers, Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe (New York: Macmillan, 1986), 118.
61. Fred Lawrence Guiles, Norma Jean: The Life of Marilyn Monroe (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), 157.
62. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 180.
63. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 111.
64. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 180.
65. Leaming, Marilyn Monroe, 128; see also Sarah Churchwell, The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe (New York: Holt, 2006), 47.
66. Wilder and Axelrod, Seven Year Itch: Unpublished Screenplay, 77.
67. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 366.
68. “The Seven Year Itch,” Backstory, AMC, August 26, 2000.
69. Hawks, interview.
70. “Billy Wilder,” in Stevens, Conversations, 312.
71. Leaming, Marilyn Monroe, 33; see also Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 110.
72. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 255.
73. Lally, Wilder Times, 243.
74. Bernard Dick, Forever Mame: The Life of Rosalind Russell (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006), 79.
75. Wilder and Axelrod, Seven Year Itch: Unpublished Screenplay, 66.
76. “Dialogue on Film: Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond,” 124.
77. Philip Kemp, “Saul Bass,” in Pendergast and Pendergast, International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 4:67.
78. Churchwell, Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, 37; see also Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 180.
79. Louis Giannetti, Masters of the American Cinema (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1981), 324.
80. François Truffaut, The Films of My Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975), 159.
81. Churchwell, Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, 59–60; see also Dick, Billy Wilder, 80.
82. Marilyn Monroe, interview by Edward R. Murrow, Person to Person, CBS-TV, April 8, 1955.
83. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 368; see also Leaming, Marilyn Monroe, 137.
84. Ephraim Katz, The Film Encyclopedia, ed. Fred Klein and Ronald Nolen, rev. ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 989.
85. Hopp, Billy Wilder, 95.
1. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 183.
2. Volker Schlöndorff, “Playing by His Rules: Billy Wilder,” Los Angeles Times Calendar, June 18, 2006, 8; see also Armstrong, Billy Wilder, 80.
3. “Air Force,” in Oxford Desk Encyclopedia of World History, ed. Edmund Wright (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 126; see also Lorraine Glennon, ed., Our Times (Atlanta: Turner, 1995), 144.
4. Roquemore, History Goes to the Movies, 363.
5. Kyla Dunn, “Death Defying,” New York Times Book Review, October 7, 2007, 36; see also Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 186.
6. Roquemore, History Goes to the Movies, 263–64.
7. The Dawn of Sound: How Movies Learned to Talk, documentary (Warner Bros., 2007).
8. Stark Smith, Jimmy Stewart, Bomber Pilot (St. Paul, MN: Zenith Press, 2005), 23.
9. Ibid.; see also Nash and Ross, Motion Picture Guide, 3070.
10. Roy Pickard, Jimmy Stewart: A Life in Film (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 29–30.
11. See Steve Seidman, The Film Career of Billy Wilder (Pleasantville, NY: Redgrave, 1977), 89.
12. Allen Eyles, James Stewart (London: Allan, 1984), 131.
13. Marc Eliot, Jimmy Stewart: A Biography (New York: Random House, 2006), 298; see also Jhan Robbins, Everybody’s Man: A Biography of Jimmy Stewart (New York: Putnam, 1985), 250.
14. Gary Fishgall, Pieces of Time: The Life of James Stewart (New York: Scribner, 1997), 258; see also Higham and Greenberg, Celluloid Muse, 251.
15. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 379; see also Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 185.
16. Fishgall, Pieces of Time, 258; see also Eliot, Jimmy Stewart, 299.
17. Fishgall, Pieces of Time, 257.
18. Arthur Rowan, “Making the Aerial Shots for The Spirit of St. Louis,” American Cinematographer, June 1957, 367.
19. Leland Hayward to Jack Warner, September 9, 1955, The Spirit of St. Louis file, Warner Bros. Archives, Cinematic Arts Library, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
20. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 376–77.
21. Leland Hayward to Jack Warner, [early September 1955?], The Spirit of St. Louis file, Warner Bros. Archives.
22. Leland Hayward to Jack Warner, September 25, 1955, The Spirit of St. Louis file, Warner Bros. Archives; see also Rowan, “Making the Aerial Shots,” 385.
23. Rowan, “Making the Aerial Shots,” 381.
24. Leonard Mosley, Lindbergh: A Biography (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), 351.
25. Armstrong, Billy Wilder, 85.
26. Interim report, n.d., The Spirit of St. Louis file, Warner Bros. Archives.
27. Dick, Billy Wilder, 129; see also Hopp, Billy Wilder, 101, and Rowan, “Making the Aerial Shots,” 385.
28. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 378; see also Lally, Wilder Times, 253.
29. Dick, Billy Wilder, 129–30.
30. Neil Sinyard and Adrian Turner, Journey down Sunset Boulevard: The Films of Billy Wilder (Ryde, Isle of Wight: BCW, 1979), 353.
31. “The Spirit of St. Louis,” in Variety Film Reviews, 1907–1996 (New Providence, NJ: Bowker, 1997), vol. 9, n.p.
32. Dunne, “Old Pornographer,” 92.
33. Jack Warner, My First Hundred Years in Hollywood (New York: Random House, 1964), 320.
34. Pickard, Jimmy Stewart, 136.
35. Mosley, Lindbergh, 351; see also Scott Berg, Lindbergh (New York: Putnam, 1998), 503.
36. Roquemore, History Goes to the Movies, 364.
37. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 187.
38. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 323.
39. Joanne Yeck, “I. A. L. Diamond,” in Pendergast and Pendergast, International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 4:210.
40. Murray Schumach, “Bright Diamond,” New York Times Magazine, May 26, 1963, 80–81.
41. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 117–18.
42. Wilder, interview by Schlöndorff. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 390, erroneously states that the title that Broidy mentions is Omaha, which is not the name of an Allied Artists film.
43. Wilder, interview by Prelutsky, 188.
44. Lally, Wilder Times, 259.
45. Eliot, Jimmy Stewart, 341.
46. Wilder, “Going for Extra Innings,” 47.
47. Walker, Audrey, 139–40.
48. Ibid., 142; see also Halliwell, Who’s Who in the Movies, 95.
49. Walker, Audrey, 141–42; see also Lally, Wilder Times, 260.
50. Walker, Audrey, 140.
51. Katz, Film Encyclopedia, 299.
52. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 345.
53. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 397.
54. Walter Mirisch, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), 81.
55. Thomas Doherty, Hollywood’s Censor: Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 109. The book covers Shurlock’s tenure as industry censor as well.
56. Love in the Afternoon file, Legion of Decency files, in the author’s possession; Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 369.
57. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 108; Dick, Billy Wilder, 82.
58. Spoto, Enchantment, 149.
59. Brownlow to author.
60. Wilder, “Wilder Seeks Films with Bite,” 15.
61. “Love in the Afternoon,” in Variety Film Reviews, vol. 9, n.p.
62. Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies, 438.
63. Dick, Billy Wilder, 85; see also Hopp, Billy Wilder, 110.
64. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 191.
65. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 179.
66. Brownlow to author.
67. Thomson, New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 903.
68. Barson, Hollywood Directors, 457.
69. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 396.
70. Eileen Whitaker, Pickford: A Biography (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997), 491.
71. Portrait of a 60% Perfect Man: Billy Wilder, documentary, directed by Annie Tresgol (Action Films, 1980).
72. Gehman, “Charming Billy,” 61, 70.
1. Charles Osborne, The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), 268–69.
2. Edward Small, interview by author, Los Angeles, July 5, 1977.
3. Jon Tuska, In Manors and Alleys: The American Detective Film (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 320; see also Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 403.
4. Wilder, interview by Gehman, 58–59.
5. Farber, “Films of Billy Wilder,” 17.
6. Small, interview.
7. Ibid.
8. Halliwell, Who’s Who in the Movies, 382.
9. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 69.
10. Tuska, In Manors and Alleys, 320.
11. Dick, Billy Wilder, 138.
12. Bach, Marlene Dietrich, 384.
13. Dassanowsky-Harris, “Billy Wilder’s Germany,” pt. 1, 294.
14. Wood, Dietrich, 299; see also Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 185.
15. Harry Kurnitz, “Billy the Wild,” Holiday, June 1964, 93, 95.
16. Staggs, Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard, 272; see also Hector Arce, The Secret Life of Tyrone Power (New York: Morrow, 1979), 254.
17. John Baxter, “Russell Harlan,” in Pendergast and Pendergast, International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 4:349.
18. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 111.
19. Riva, Marlene Dietrich, 681–82.
20. Ibid., 648.
21. Wood, Dietrich, 299.
22. Bach, Marlene Dietrich, 386.
23. Schlöndorff, “Playing by His Rules,” 8.
24. Riva, Marlene Dietrich, 681.
25. Simon Callow, Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor (New York: Grove Press, 1987), 242.
26. Riva, Marlene Dietrich, 680, 682; see also Skaerved, Dietrich, 142–43.
27. Dietrich, Marlene, 127.
28. Staggs, Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard, 366; see also Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 346.
29. Philip Scheuer, “Outcome of Christie Play Kept Dark for Film,” Los Angeles Times, July 14, 1957, V2.
30. Charles Higham, Charles Laughton (New York: Doubleday, 1976), 204.
31. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 30, 153.
32. Callow, Charles Laughton, 242.
33. Nash and Ross, Motion Picture Guide, 3889.
34. Bach, Marlene Dietrich, 385.
35. Nash and Ross, Motion Picture Guide, 3889.
36. Riva, Marlene Dietrich, 687.
37. Bach, Marlene Dietrich, 385.
38. Osborne, Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie, 270.
39. Patricia Hanson, “Daniel Mandell,” in Pendergast and Pendergast, International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 4:528.
40. Agatha Christie, Witness for the Prosecution, in The Mousetrap and Other Plays (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1978), 422.
41. Bach, Marlene Dietrich, 387.
42. Dick, Billy Wilder, 139.
43. Paul Bergman and Michael Asimow, Reel Justice: The Courtroom Goes to the Movies (Kansas City, MO: Andrew and McMeel, 1996), 185.
44. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 184.
45. “Witness for the Prosecution,” in Variety Film Reviews, vol. 11, n.p.; see Lally, Wilder Times, 274.
46. Homer Dickens, The Complete Films of Marlene Dietrich (New York: Citadel, 1992), 207.
47. Jeanine Basinger, The Star Machine (New York: Knopf, 2007), 174–75.
48. Skaerved, Dietrich, 143.
49. Marlene, documentary, directed by Maximilian Schell (Bayerischer Rundfunk, 1984). Schell was, like Dietrich, a German actor who worked in Hollywood; he won an Oscar for Judgment at Nuremberg (1961).
50. Donald Spoto, Blue Angel: The Life of Marlene Dietrich (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 264.
51. Irene Atkins, “Agatha Christie and the Detective Film,” Literature/Film Quarterly 3, no. 3 (1973): 206.
52. G. C. Ramsey, Agatha Christie: Mistress of Mystery (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1967), 220. One commentator smirked that Wilder only claimed that Christie made this statement; obviously her statement is documented.
1. Dan Auiler, “The Making of Some Like It Hot: Interviews,” in Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, Some Like It Hot: A Screenplay, ed. Alison Castle (New York: Taschen, 2001), 236.
2. Gerd Gemünden, A Foreign Affair: Billy Wilder’s American Films (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 110–11; see also Lally, Wilder Times, 277.
3. I. A. L. Diamond, “The Day Marilyn Monroe Needed 47 Takes to Remember to Say, ‘Where’s the Bourbon?’ ” California, December 1985, 132.
4. Auiler, “Making of Some Like It Hot: Interviews,” 236.
5. Leaming, Marilyn Monroe, 303; see also Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 202.
6. Churchwell, Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, 60.
7. Leaming, Marilyn Monroe, 303.
8. Auiler, “Making of Some Like It Hot: Interviews,” 278.
9. The Making of “Some Like It Hot,” documentary, directed by Mike Thomas (Sony, 2006). Unless specifically noted otherwise, all quotations from the members of the cast and crew in this chapter are from this source.
10. Pat O’Brien, interview by author, Columbus, OH, June 14, 1965.
11. Jerry Vermilye, The Films of the Thirties (New York: Carol, 1993), 131.
12. O’Brien, interview.
13. Armstrong, Billy Wilder, 89.
14. Some Like It Hot, souvenir program (MGM Home Entertainment, 2006); see also Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 38.
15. “Billy Wilder,” in Stevens, Conversations, 305–6.
16. Auiler, “Making of Some Like It Hot: Interviews,” 246.
17. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 201; see also Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, xv.
18. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 43.
19. Ibid., 114; see also Gehman, “Charming Billy,” 147.
20. Auiler, “Making of Some Like It Hot: Interviews,” 160.
21. Dan Widener, Lemmon: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1975), 169.
22. Tony Curtis, interview by Leonard Maltin, Some Like It Hot, DVD, directed by Billy Wilder (MGM Home Entertainment, 2006).
23. Chris Lemmon, A Twist of Lemmon: A Tribute to My Father (New York: Algonquin Books, 2006), 43; see also Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 211.
24. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 114.
25. James Thomas, “Wilder’s Winning Ways,” Daily Express (London), April 19, 1961, 1.
26. Blowen, “Art of Billy Wilder,” 83; see also “Dialogue on Film: Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond,” 113.
27. Norman Mailer, Marilyn: A Biography (New York: Grosset and Dunlop, 1973), 17.
28. Churchwell, Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, 251.
29. Leaming, Marilyn Monroe, 313; see also Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 257.
30. Leaming, Marilyn Monroe, 314.
31. Alison Castle, introduction to Wilder and Diamond, Some Like It Hot: A Screenplay, 18.
32. Leaming, Marilyn Monroe, 316; see also Castle, introduction, 18.
33. Auiler, “Making of Some Like It Hot: Interviews,” 279.
34. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 261.
35. Castle, introduction, 18.
36. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 156.
37. Tony Curtis and Barry Paris, Tony Curtis: The Autobiography (New York: Morrow, 1993), 162.
38. Diamond, “Day Marilyn Monroe Needed,” 135.
39. Leaming, Marilyn Monroe, 318.
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.
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 Alpert, “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.
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.
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.
45. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 322.
46. Lally, Wilder Times, 354.
47. Joe Baltake, Jack Lemmon: His Films and Career (New York: Citadel, 1986), 167.
48. I. A. L. Diamond, interview by Adrian Turner, Films and Filming, May 1982, 18.
49. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 251.
50. Portrait of a 60% Perfect Man.
51. Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, The Fortune Cookie, in The Apartment and The Fortune Cookie: Two Screenplays (London: Studio Vista, 1966), 123.
52. Lemmon, Twist of Lemmon, 113.
53. Morris, “Private Films of Billy Wilder,” 36.
54. Lally, Wilder Times, 360.
55. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 62.
56. Wilder and Diamond, Fortune Cookie, 115.
57. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 50; see also Lemon, “Billy Wilder’s Fortune Cookie,” 56.
58. Todd McCarthy, “AFI Lauds Jack Lemmon,” Variety, March 16, 1988, 6.
59. Mirisch, I Thought We Were, 236.
60. Lally, Wilder Times, 360; see also Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 243.
61. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 147; see also Lemon, “Billy Wilder’s Fortune Cookie,” 59.
62. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 142.
63. Morris, “Private Films of Billy Wilder,” 36.
64. Wilder and Diamond, The Fortune Cookie, 131.
65. Frieda Lockhart, “Meet Whiplash Willie,” Signpost (London), February 15, 1967, 4.
66. Seidman, Film Career of Billy Wilder, 72.
67. Lockhart, “Meet Whiplash Willie,” 4.
68. Farber, “Films of Billy Wilder,” 11; see also Armstrong, Billy Wilder, 122.
69. Giannetti, Masters of the American Cinema, 322.
70. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 51–52.
71. Seidman, Film Career of Billy Wilder, 32.
72. Dick, Billy Wilder, 112.
73. Farber, “Films of Billy Wilder,” 16.
74. Richard Schickel, “The Fortune Cookie,” Life, November 18, 1966, 18.
75. Walsh, Sin and Censorship, 318.
76. Sullivan, interview.
77. Doherty, Hollywood’s Censor, 334.
78. Jack Vizzard, interview by author, Berlin, May 19, 1977.
1. “Sherlock Holmes Stories,” in Head, Cambridge Guide to Literature, 1020.
2. Allen Eyles, Sherlock Holmes: A Centenary Celebration (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), 111.
3. Eyles, Sherlock Holmes, 39, 116.
4. Doherty, Hollywood’s Censor, 324. Breen, Shurlock’s predecessor, had blipped the line about the needle in the U.S. release prints of The Hound of the Baskervilles, but the words were restored when the movie was rereleased in the United States in 1975.
5. Charles Higham, The Adventures of Conan Doyle: The Life of the Creator of Sherlock Holmes (New York: Norton, 1976), 206, 267; see also Andrew Lycett, The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes: The Life and Times of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008), 175.
6. Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Bruce-Partington Plans,” in The Complete Sherlock Holmes (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 1076.
7. Dick, Billy Wilder, 142.
8. Ibid., 145.
9. Arthur Conan Doyle, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” in Complete Sherlock Holmes, 194.
10. Jeremy McCarter, “Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes,” New York Times Book Review, December 30, 2007, 15.
11. Mark Shivas, “Yes, We Have No Naked Girls,” New York Times, October 12, 1967, sec. 2, p. 4. The title of the article is a joking reference to the “wild party” in Kiss Me, Stupid.
12. Mirisch, I Thought We Were, 295, 296. Some sources say the budget was $10 million, but Walter Mirisch would know the correct sum.
13. Eyles, Sherlock Holmes, 111.
14. Chris Steinbrunner and Norman Michaels, The Films of Sherlock Holmes (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel, 1978), 216.
15. Shivas, “We Have No Naked Girls,” sec. 2, p. 4.
16. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 232.
17. Shivas, “We Have No Naked Girls,” sec. 2, p. 4.
18. Bernard Cohn, “Billy Wilder,” Positif, October 1969, 49–50.
19. Shivas, “We Have No Naked Girls,” sec. 2, p. 4; see also Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 150.
20. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 325.
21. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 134.
22. Steinbrunner and Michaels, Films of Sherlock Holmes, 218.
23. “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes,” in Variety Film Reviews, vol. 12, n.p.
24. Doug McClelland, Hollywood Talks Turkey: The Screen’s Greatest Flops (London: Faber, 1981), 279.
25. Stephen Bourne, Brief Encounters: Homosexuality in British Cinema (London: Cassell, 1996), 221; see also Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 301, and Lally, Wilder Times, 372.
26. Richard Valley, Sherlock Holmes: Classic Themes from 221B Baker Street, CD liner notes (Studio City, CA: Varese Sarabande, 1996), 4.
27. Steinbrunner and Michaels, Films of Sherlock Holmes, 217.
28. Wood, Bright Side of Billy Wilder, 180.
29. Shivas, “We Have No Naked Girls,” sec. 2, p. 4.
30. The Making of “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes,” documentary (MGM Home Entertainment, 2003).
31. Robert Stephens with Michael Coveny, Knight Errant: Memories of a Vagabond Actor (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1995), 96, 98.
32. Ibid., 101.
33. Shivas, “We Have No Naked Girls,” sec. 2, p. 4.
34. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 301.
35. Making of “The Private Life.”
36. Rozsa, Double Life, 208–9.
37. Tony Thomas, Music for the Movies (New York: Barnes, 1973), 96–97.
38. Rozsa, Double Life, 208–9.
39. Horton, “Music Man: Miklos Rozsa,” 4.
40. Gene D. Phillips, Stanley Kubrick: A Film Odyssey (New York: Popular Library, 1975), 178.
41. Mirisch, I Thought We Were, 298.
42. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 350, 98.
43. Mirisch, I Thought We Were, 299; see also Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 328.
44. Steinbrunner and Michaels, Films of Sherlock Holmes, 220.
45. Dick, Billy Wilder, 147.
46. Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of the Four, in Complete Sherlock Holmes, 173.
47. Jonathan Rigby, “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes,” in Sherlock Holmes on Screen: The Complete Film and TV History, ed. Alan Barnes (London: Reynolds and Hearn, 2008), 139.
48. Vincent Canby, “ ‘The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes,’ ” New York Times, October 30, 1970, 15.
49. Pauline Kael, Deeper into Movies (New York: Bantam Books, 1974), 236.
50. Making of “The Private Life.”
51. Eyles, Sherlock Holmes, 112.
52. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 328.
53. Lally, Wilder Times, 373.
54. Michael Pointer, “Holmes Lives!” American Film, November 1975, 69.
55. Morris, “Private Films of Billy Wilder,” 38.
56. Eyles, Sherlock Holmes, 112.
57. Wilder, “Going for Extra Innings,” 98.
1. Nora Sayre, “Falling Prey to Parodies of the Press,” New York Times, January 1, 1974, 8.
2. Ben Hecht, “The Front Page Now and Then,” November 18, 1961, Ben Hecht Papers, Newberry Library, Chicago.
3. Ben Hecht, the Shakespeare of Hollywood, documentary, directed by David O’Dell (Lucasfilm, 2007); see also Roquemore, History Goes to the Movies, 161.
4. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., “The Front Page,” in Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies, ed. Mark Carnes (New York: Holt, 1995), 202.
5. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 94; see also Wilder, interview by Prelutsky, 190.
6. Hawks, interview.
7. Joseph McBride, “Shooting The Front Page,” Boston Real Paper, July 31, 1974, 13.
8. Ibid., 15.
9. Joseph McBride, “In the Picture: The Front Page,” Sight and Sound 43, no. 3 (1974): 212. There is considerable overlap between this article and McBride, “Shooting The Front Page.” I quote the Sight and Sound version only when it contains material not included in the Boston Real Paper version.
10. Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, The Front Page: Unpublished Screenplay (Los Angeles: Universal, 1974), 9.
11. Gemünden, Foreign Affair, 152.
12. John Baxter, “Henry Bumstead,” in Pendergast and Pendergast, International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 4:173.
13. Deutsch, Me and Bogie, 161.
14. McBride, “Shooting The Front Page,” 132.
15. Morris, “Private Films of Billy Wilder,” 38.
16. Michael Wilmington, “Saint Jack,” Film Comment 29, no. 2 (1993): 14, 15.
17. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 283–84.
18. Dick, Billy Wilder, 118; see also Doherty, Hollywood’s Censor, 334.
19. Richard Heffner, interview by author, New York, June 13, 1975.
20. Morris, “Private Films of Billy Wilder,” 38.
21. Ibid.
22. McBride, “In the Picture: The Front Page,” 212.
23. Dick, Billy Wilder, 119.
24. Pauline Kael, Reeling (New York: Warner Books, 1977), 362.
25. Joseph Morgenstern, “The Front Page,” Newsweek, December 23, 1974, 79.
26. Andrew Sarris, “The Front Page,” Village Voice, December 25, 1974, 8.
27. Andrew Sarris, “Billy Wilder Reconsidered,” in Lopate, American Movie Critics, 307.
28. Armstrong, Billy Wilder, 124.
29. Hopp, Billy Wilder, 169.
30. “Julius J. Epstein: A King of Comedy,” interview by Pat McGilligan, in McGilligan, Backstory, 187.
31. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 271.
32. “Entretien avec Billy Wilder sur Avanti!” interview by Michel Ciment, Positif, January 1974, 7. Bridgett Chandler translated the cited passages.
33. Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, Avanti! Unpublished Screenplay (Los Angeles: United Artists, 1971), i.
34. “Entretien avec Billy Wilder sur Avanti!” 5.
35. Ibid., 8.
36. Ibid., 5.
37. Ibid.
38. Wilder and Diamond, Avanti! Unpublished Screenplay, i.
39. “Entretien avec Billy Wilder sur Avanti,” 6.
40. Ibid., 8.
41. Dick, Billy Wilder, 97.
42. Staggs, Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard, 369.
43. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 351.
44. Mirisch, I Thought We Were, 301.
45. “Entretien avec Billy Wilder sur Avanti,” 5, 6.
46. Ibid., 8.
47. Ibid.
48. Dick, Billy Wilder, 97.
49. David Sanjek, “Avanti!” in Welsh and Erskine, Video Versions, 17.
50. Seidman, Film Career of Billy Wilder, 110.
51. Dick, Billy Wilder, 98.
52. Zolotow, Billy Wilder in Hollywood, 332.
53. Seidman, Film Career of Billy Wilder, 110.
54. Geoff Brown, “A Bite as Fierce as His Bark,” Times (London), June 18, 1996, 34.
55. Jay Cocks, “Avanti!” Time, December 25, 1972, 109.
56. Jon Bradshaw, “I Am Big. It’s the Pictures That Got Small,” New York, November 24, 1975, 40.
57. “Avanti!” in Variety Film Reviews, vol. 13, n.p.
58. Sarris, “Billy Wilder Reconsidered,” 307.
59. Morris, “Private Films of Billy Wilder,” 38.
60. “Dialogue on Film: Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond,” 125.
61. Sinyard, Directors, 44.
62. McBride, “Shooting The Front Page,” 15.
63. Bradshaw, “I Am Big,” 40.
64. McBride, “Shooting The Front Page,” 15.
65. Mirisch, I Thought We Were, 302.
1. Bradshaw, “I Am Big,” 39.
2. Ibid., 43.
3. “Dialogue on Film: Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond,” 130.
4. Bradshaw, “I Am Big,” 43.
5. Blowen, “Art of Billy Wilder,” 52.
6. Zinnemann, interview.
7. Rex McGee, “The Life and Hard Times of Fedora,” American Film, February 1979, 18.
8. Stephen Farber, “A Cynic ahead of His Time,” New York Times, December 6, 1981, C21.
9. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 552.
10. Morris, “Private Films of Billy Wilder,” 39.
11. Mary Blume, “Fedora: Walking on the Wilder Side,” Los Angeles Times Calendar, October 2, 1977, 39.
12. Hirsch, Dark Side of the Screen, 119.
13. Vincent Canby, “Wilder’s ‘Fedora,’ ” New York Times, May 6, 1979, sec. 2, p. 15.
14. Wilder, “Going for Extra Innings,” 44.
15. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 291.
16. Wilder, “Going for Extra Innings,” 42.
17. McGee, “Life and Hard Times,” 18.
18. Karasek, Billy Wilder, 482; see also Wilder, “Going for Extra Innings,” 44.
19. Riva, Woman at War, 154.
20. Dan Yakir, “Fedora: Another ‘Uneasy’ Role for Marthe Keller,” New York Post, April 13, 1979, 27.
21. Verina Glaessner, “Gerry Fisher,” in Pendergast and Pendergast, International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 4:256.
22. McGee, “Life and Hard Times,” 31.
23. Blume, “Walking on the Wilder Side,” 39.
24. McGee, “Life and Hard Times,” 32.
25. Ibid., 31–32.
26. Miklos Rozsa, audio interview by Rudy Behlmer, 1974, Spellbound, DVD, directed by Alfred Hitchcock (Criterion, 2002).
27. Ness, “Miklos Rozsa,” 724.
28. McGee, “Life and Hard Times,” 31–32.
29. Ibid., 32.
30. Wilder, “Going for Extra Innings,” 42.
31. Andrew Sarris, “Fedora,” Village Voice, April 16, 1979, 12.
32. McGee, “Life and Hard Times,” 32.
33. Hopp, Billy Wilder, 171.
34. Aljean Harmetz, “At 73, Billy Wilder’s Bark Still Has Plenty of Bite,” New York Times, June 29, 1979, C12.
35. Morris, “Private Films of Billy Wilder,” 39.
36. Staggs, Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard, 373.
37. Lally, Wilder Times, 399.
38. Richard Schickel, “Old Hat: Fedora,” Time, May 21, 1979, 86.
39. “Dialogue on Film: Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond,” 112.
40. McGee, “Life and Hard Times,” 18.
41. Vincent Canby, “Wilder’s Fedora,” New York Times, May 6, 1979, sec. 2, pp. 15, 35.
42. “Billy Wilder: Obituary,” Times (London), March 30, 2002, 1.
43. Crowe, Conversations with Wilder, 352.
44. Morris, “Private Films of Billy Wilder,” 39.
45. “William Holden: An Untamed Spirit.”
46. “Death of William Holden,” New York Times, November 18, 1981, 1. Martin Sopocy is at work on a book on Holden that deals in more detail with Holden’s last years. It will be the first book on Holden in twenty years.
47. Farber, “Cynic ahead of His Time,” C21.
48. Kenneth Geist, Pictures Will Talk: The Life and Films of Joseph Mankiewicz (New York: Scribner, 1978), 195.
49. Wilder, “Going for Extra Innings,” 45, 41; see also Geist, Pictures Will Talk, 195.
50. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 299.
51. Gene D. Phillips, Beyond the Epic: The Life and Films of David Lean (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006), 383; see also Farber, “Cynic ahead of His Time,” C21.
52. Madsen, Billy Wilder, 60.
53. Karasek, Billy Wilder, 467; see also Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 300.
54. Lemmon, Twist of Lemmon, 117.
55. Lally, Wilder Times, 407.
56. Klaus Kinski, Kinski Uncut, trans. Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Viking, 1996), 299.
57. Lally, Wilder Times, 408.
58. Richard Hadley Jr., “Billy Wilder and Comedy: An Analysis of Buddy Buddy” (PhD diss., University of Southern California, 1989), 186.
59. Barton Palmer, “Lalo Schifrin,” in Pendergast and Pendergast, International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 4:743.
60. Diamond, interview, 21.
61. Hopp, Billy Wilder, 177.
62. Vincent Canby, “ ‘Buddy Buddy,’ ” New York Times, December 11, 1981, C12.
63. Kevin Thomas, “ ‘Buddy Buddy,’ ” Los Angeles Times Calendar, December 11, 1981, 1.
64. David Ansen, “Some Like It Not,” Newsweek, December 14, 1981, 124.
65. I screened the film for some of the staff of Rush Medical Center, Chicago, on September 10, 2008.
66. Baltake, Jack Lemmon, 255; see also Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 301.
67. MacMurray, interview.
68. Wilder, interview by Porfirio, 107; see also Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 248.
69. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 301, 2.
1. Gerald Mast and Bruce Kawin, A Short History of the Movies, rev. ed. (New York: Longman, 2008), 191.
2. Portrait of a 60% Perfect Man.
3. Yeck, “I. A. L. Diamond,” 4:210.
4. Billy Wilder, “Movies Forever!” New Republic, June 9, 1982, 23. This is a transcript of Wilder’s speech when he accepted the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
5. Wilder, interview by Schlöndorff.
6. Freeman, “Sunset Boulevard Revisited,” 79.
7. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 301, 303.
8. Richard Corliss, “The King of Comedy: Billy Wilder,” Time, April 8, 2002, 70.
9. Kirkham, “Saul Bass and Billy Wilder,” 21.
10. Sikov, On Sunset Boulevard, 575–78.
11. Corliss, “King of Comedy,” 70.
12. Kakutani, “Ready for His Close-Up,” 14.
13. Aljean Harmetz, “Billy Wilder: The Storyteller,” Modern Maturity, February–March 1993, 31.
14. Roger Ebert, “International Poll,” Chicago Sun-Times, August 11, 2002, A25.
15. Chandler, Nobody’s Perfect, 324.
16. “Write Stuff,” 82.
17. Gene D. Phillips, Creatures of Darkness: Raymond Chandler, Detective Fiction, and Film Noir (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000), 199.
18. Stephen Frears, interview by Lester Freedman and Scott Steward, in Reviewing British Cinema, ed. Wheeler Dixon (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 237.