Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder (
June 22,
1906 â€"
March 27,
2002) was a
screenwriter,
film director and
producer whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60
films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of
Hollywood's golden age. Many of Wilder's films achieved both critical and public acclaim.
Origins
Born
Samuel Wilder in
Sucha Beskidzka,
Austria-Hungary (now
Poland) to Max Wilder and Eugenia Dittler, Wilder was nicknamed Billy by his mother. After dropping out of the
University of Vienna to become a journalist, he moved to
Berlin,
Germany.
Berlin
While in Berlin, and before his writing career became more successful, Wilder also allegedly worked as a
taxi dancer. After writing crime and sports stories as a
stringer for local newspapers, he was eventually offered a regular writing job at a Berlin
tabloid. After gaining an interest in films, Wilder started working as a screenwriter. He worked with several other tyros (
Fred Zinnemann and
Robert Siodmak also worked with him on the
1929 feature
People on Sunday). Wilder, who was
Jewish, left for
Paris and then the
United States after the rise of
Adolf Hitler. Wilder's mother, grandmother, and stepfather all died at the
Auschwitz extermination camp.
Hollywood
After arriving in
Hollywood in 1933, Wilder shared an apartment with fellow
emigre Peter Lorre, and continued his career as a screenwriter.
Wilder's first significant success was
Ninotchka, a collaboration with fellow
German immigrant
Ernst Lubitsch. Released in
1939, this
screwball comedy starred
Greta Garbo (generally known as a
tragic heroine in film
melodramas), and was popularly and critically acclaimed. With the byline, "Garbo Laughs!", it also took Garbo's career in a new direction. The film also marked Wilder's first
Academy Award nomination, which he shared with co-writer
Charles Brackett. For twelve years Wilder co-wrote many of his films with Brackett, from
1938 through
1950. He followed
Ninotchka with a series of
box office hits in 1942, including his directorial feature debut,
The Major and the Minor, as well as
Hold Back the Dawn and
Ball of Fire.
Wilder's directoral choices reflected his belief in the primacy of writing. He avoided the exuberant cinematography of
Alfred Hitchcock and
Orson Welles because in Wilder's opinion, shots that called attention to themselves would distract the audience from the story. Wilder's pictures have tight plotting and memorable dialogue. He was skilled at working with actors, coaxing
silent era legends
Gloria Swanson and
Erich von Stroheim out of retirement for roles in
Sunset Boulevard. Wilder sometimes cast against type for major parts such as
Fred MacMurray in
The Apartment. MacMurray was famous as a wholesome family man from the television series
My Three Sons, yet played a womanizing villain in Wilder's film. Wilder mentored
Jack Lemmon and was the first director to pair him with
Walter Matthau. Wilder had great respect for Lemmon calling him the hardest working actor he had ever met. Wilder filmed in black and white whenever studios would let him. Despite this conservative directoral style, his subject matter often pushed the boundaries of mainstream entertainment.
Wilder established his directorial reputation after helming
Double Indemnity (
1944), an early film
noir he cowrote with mystery novelist
Raymond Chandler, with whom he did not get along.
Double Indemnity not only set conventions for the
noir genre (such as "venetian blind" lighting, and voice-over narration), but was also a landmark in the battle against Hollywood censorship. The original
James M. Cain novel
Double Indemnity featured two love triangles and a murder plotted for insurance money. The book was highly popular with the reading public, but had been considered unfilmable under the
Hays Code, because adultery was central to its plot.
Double Indemnity is credited by some as the first true film noir, combining the stylistic elements of
Citizen Kane with the narrative elements of
Maltese Falcon.
Two years later, Wilder earned the
Best Director and
Best Screenplay Academy Awards for the adaptation of a
Charles R. Jackson story
The Lost Weekend. This was the first major American film to make a serious examination of
alcoholism. Another dark and cynical film Wilder cowrote and directed was the critically acclaimed
Sunset Boulevard in
1950, which paired rising star
William Holden with
Gloria Swanson. Swanson played Norma Desmond, a reclusive silent film star who dreams of a
comeback; Holden is an aspiring screenwriter and becomes a
kept man, echoing Wilder's experience as a gigolo in Berlin. In 1959 Wilder introduced crossdressing to American film audiences with
Some Like It Hot. In this comedy
Jack Lemmon and
Tony Curtis play musicians on the run from a Chicago gang, who disguise themselves as women and become romantically involved with
Marilyn Monroe and
Joe E. Brown.
From the 1950s extending to the 1960's, Wilder made mostly comedies.
Among the classics Wilder produced in this period are the farces
The Seven Year Itch (
1955) and
Some Like It Hot (
1959), satires such as
The Apartment (
1960), and the romantic comedy
Sabrina (
1954). Wilder's humor is cynical and sometimes sardonic. In
Love in the Afternoon (1957), a young and innocent
Audrey Hepburn who doesn't want to be young or innocent wins playboy
Gary Cooper by pretending to be a married woman in search of extramarital amusement. Even Wilder's warmest comedy
The Apartment features an attempted suicide on Christmas Eve.
In
1959, Wilder teamed with writer-producer
I.A.L. Diamond, a collaboration that remained until the end of both men's careers. After winning three
Academy Awards for
1960's
The Apartment (for Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay), Wilder's career slowed. After the lesser films
Irma la Douce and
Kiss Me, Stupid, Wilder garnered his last Oscar nomination for his screenplay
The Fortune Cookie in 1966.
Later life
In
1988, Wilder was awarded the
Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. He has a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Billy Wilder died in 2002 at the age of 95 after battling health problems, including cancer, in
Los Angeles, California, and was interred in the
Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in
Westwood, Los Angeles, California.
Legacy
Wilder holds a significant place in the history of Hollywood censorship for expanding the range of acceptable subject matter. Film schools might not study Wilder's work in the comprehensive manner they approach other major directors such as
Orson Welles or
Alfred Hitchcock, because his varied work is not as conducive to examination by the
auteur theory. Nevertheless, the fact remains that he has made some of cinematic history's most enduring classics in the farthest possible range of genres. He is responsible for two of the film noir era's most definitive films in
Double Indemnity and
Sunset Boulevard, has made one of the best-rememebered romantic movies of the '50s with
Sabrina and he has written and/or directed some of the greatest comedies ever made. Along with Woody Allen, he leads the list of films on the American Film Institute's list of 100 funniest films with 5 films written and holds the honor of holding the top spot with
Some Like it Hot. Also on the list are
The Apartment and
The Seven-Year Itch which he directed and
Ball of Fire and
Ninotchka which he has writing credits for.
In addition, The
American Film Institute has ranked four of Wilder's pictures among the top 100 American films of the twentieth century. These are:
Sunset Boulevard number 12
Some Like It Hot number 14
Double Indemnity number 38
The Apartment number 93
*Wilder is often confused with director
William Wyler; the confusion is understandable, as both were German-speaking Jews with similar backgrounds and names. However, their output as directors was quite different, with Wyler preferring to direct epics and heavy dramas and Wilder noted for his comedies and
Film Noir type dramas.
*Billy Wilder's twelve Academy Award nominations for screenwriting were a record until 1997 when
Woody Allen received a thirteenth nomination for
Deconstructing Harry.
*Billy Wilder is one of only four people who have won three Academy Awards for producing, directing, and writing the same film (
The Apartment).
*Billy Wilder once said: "My English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop Tutu."
*Spanish filmmaker
Fernando Trueba said in his acceptance speech for the
1993 Best Non-English Speaking Film
Oscar "I'd like to thank God, but I don't believe in God, I just believe in Billy Wilder... so thank you, Mr. Wilder". According to Trueba, Wilder called him the day after and told him: "Fernando, it's God".
*He died the same day as
Milton Berle and
Dudley Moore.
*
*
Billy Wilder filmography*
List of film collaborations*
Chandler, Charlotte,
Nobody's Perfect. Billy Wilder. A Personal Biography (New York: Schuster & Schuster, 2002)
*
Crowe, Cameron,
Conversations with Wilder (New York: Knopf, 2001)
*
Hermsdorf, Daniel,
Billy Wilder. Filme - Motive - Kontroverses (Bochum: Paragon-Verlag, 2006)
*
Hopp, Glenn /
Duncan, Paul,
Billy Wilder (Köln / New York: Taschen, 2003)
*
Jacobs, Jérôme,
Billy Wilder (Paris: Rivages Cinéma, 2006)
*
Sikov, Ed,
On Sunset Boulevard. The Life and Times of Billy Wilder (New York: Hyperion, 1999)
*
Zolotow, Maurice,
Billy Wilder in Hollywood (Pompton Plains: Limelight Editions, 2004)
*
*
Billy Wilder - The German-Hollywood Connection*
Film Noir and Billy Wilder*
American Master - Billy Wilder*
Wilder Bibliography (via UC Berkeley)*
Billy Wilder Fanlisting*
Billy Wilder Tribute - from
NPR.org
