Trudy Gold
Hollywood: Billy Wilder
Trudy Gold | Hollywood: Billy Wilder | 02.22.24
Visuals and videos played throughout the presentation.
- Okay, shall we start? Can we have the first slide, please? Thank you. There is the genius. So, who was Billy Wilder? I’m just going to go through some of his great films. This is the man who directed and wrote, or wrote… These are the ones he directed, “Sunset Boulevard”, “The Apartment”, “Some Like It Hot”, most people’s favourite comedy, though it’s very dark, “Double Indemnity”, “Ace in the Hole”, “Stalag 17”, “Sabrina”, “The Lost Weekend”, “Witness for the Prosecution”, “Irma la Douce”, “The Seven Year Itch”, “Five Graves to Cairo”. That is Billy Wilder, and I’ve just chosen some of my favourite films. Of my favourite top 10, five of them are Billy Wilder films. And if you haven’t watched the films that I’m going to show extracts from tonight, or you haven’t watched them for years and years and years, you are in for such a treat. Most of these films are available. I’ve still got a lot of DVDs, and the trouble is, you can’t buy good DVD players and I’ve been having a wallow, first with Otto Preminger and now with Billy Wilder. And frankly, I was up till about five in the morning watching his movies, I’m naughty. But anyway.
So, what’s the story of this incredibly restless genius? And this is a quote from Charles Higham. “Every now and then, the impatient, brilliant mind, coldly disillusioned and tough, showed itself in its cleverest colours.” This was a man who wrote the screenplays for all these great hits, sometimes co-written, and in fact, nearly always co-written, but he was best with a partner. But remember, he’s not writing in his first language. Think how many languages he’s had. So let’s look at his background. Let’s have a look at that little shtetl where he was born. That Sucha is about 20 Ks from Krakow. He was born Samuel Wilder. His parents, Eugenia and Max Wilder. His mother called him Billy, why? Because as a young girl, she’d gone to stay with an uncle in New York City and she actually went to a performance of “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West” show and she loved the name. And she used to say, “Willie is my American boy.” So basically, he’s called Willie. He spent his first years in Krakow. Let’s have a look at Krakow. Now, that is the main area. That’s the main Jewish area in Krakow.
It’s absolutely, if you haven’t been, it’s a city, it’s complicated, of course, because it’s so near Oswiecim Auschwitz, but if you haven’t been, if you go to the Jewish area, you can get a smell of what life once was in that world. So, he spent his first years in Krakow, where his father, who started out as Hersch Mendel before he kind of cleaned his name up. He started as a waiter and then managed a small chain of railway cafes on the main Vienna Lemberg railway line. You know, I have to be dark. One of the reasons Oswiecim was chosen was because it was on the main railway line from Vienna. And then, this failed. So the father opened a small hotel. It was called Hotel City, near the incredibly imposing Wawel Castle. We know that because his parents wrote about it and he’s talked about, he wrote his own autobiography. He was a hyperactive child. And his second wife, Audrey, remarked, “Long before Billy Wilder was Billy Wilder, he behaved like Billy Wilder.” He was restless, he had an extraordinary mind. He was always on the go, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. The family then moved to Vienna. Shall we see the next slide, please.
Of course, think of his age. They moved to Vienna, this is just before the First World War. They move across the Danube from Leopoldstadt, and of course, it was the hub. Even then it was, look, it passed its peak. I would say 1890s to 1905 is the absolute peak of Vienna. But just think of who lived there and what kind of incredible city it was. It was 10% Jewish, and it was the artistic, intellectual, and the creative centre of the old Habsburg empire. What his father wants for him, he wants him to study law. Now, we know that when he went to school, there was a rather seedy hotel next to the school where people rented by the hour. And evidently, he would prefer to watch that. And later on, so many of these memories and so many of the things that happened to him are going to appear in his movies. And he becomes addicted to the movies. And this is the point, his father wants him to study, his father wants him to become a lawyer. Didn’t Preminger’s father have exactly the same dream? So many of the characters who are going to finish up in Hollywood, they’re meant to or do study law.
In fact, Billy spent three days at a university. He had other dreams. He fights with his father. His first step, he wants to be a newspaper man. He hustled, he hustled, he hustled from paper to paper, he’s a kid, until finally, he got himself a job. And that put him as part of the… That pushed him into the kind of intellectual circles in Vienna with all the characters who trained with Max Reinhardt, the incredible Max Reinhardt, in the cafe, Herrenhof. He met Joseph Roth there, and also a young actor called Laszlo Lowenstein. Later, he was known to the world as Peter Lorre, and later on, he and Billy Wilder became very close. And later on, they’re going to live together for a while. And what he did for the papers, he made up crosswords. Later on when he was a big star, one of the greatest things that happened to him was seeing his name as clues in crosswords, because he made up crosswords, which also gives you a sort of inkling of the kind of brain of the man. He wrote lots of different articles, short, sharp. And he also met a man called Felix Salten, who I shall bring to your attention. He is a man you should study. He was the grandson of a rabbi. The family later relocate to Vienna. And what happens to him, he becomes part of the young Vienna circle of artists and writers. He wrote novels, books, plays. He was the chairman of the Austrian PEN.
So for Billy Wilder, the young Billy Wilder, to meet him, it’s quite incredible. He’s best remembered because he wrote a story called “Bambi”. He actually sold the rights to an American, who sold it to Disney for a thousand dollars. And of course, 1942, that very, very famous film. All his books were banned, all of Salten’s books were banned in Germany in ‘36. And of course, Salten was lucky because he managed to get to Switzerland, where of course, tragically he died quite young. But the point is, this is the milieu. So Billy Wilder, the young Billy Wilder, think about what languages that he would have. He would’ve had Polish, he would’ve had German. Later on, he’s going to have French and English. How much Yiddish did the family use? The grandparents were religious, so his parents probably had Yiddish. This is very much part of the central European milieu. Anyway, so he’s in Vienna, he’s a hustler, and he has the most incredible chutzpah. It meant that he would interview all sorts of visiting celebrities. We know people who lived there that he interviewed. He interviewed Freud and Adler one day, he interviewed Schnitzler, he interviewed Richard Strauss. And also, when the Tiller Girls came to town, that’s a troop of English dancers, he interviewed them.
But he got his huge break when he met Paul Whiteman. Now, Paul Whiteman, can we see the next slide, please? Paul Whiteman, yes. He came from a musical background, an American. His early skill was the viola, which got him a place in the Denver Symphony Orchestra and then in the San Francisco orchestra. And during the war, World War I, he conducted a 12-piece band to kind of entertain the troops. Later on, he forms the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. He becomes the most successful band leader in America. He moved to New York. It’s the most successful dance band of the decade. And in 1926, he’s on a tour in Vienna where he meets this young hustler who’s a young, ambitious newspaper man. He liked him, he liked Billy Wilder. He liked him enough to take him with him to Vienna so that he could actually write about Paul Whiteman’s tour in Vienna. So basically, this is according to what… This is Billy Wilder. “If you’re eager,” he said to him, “If you’re eager to hear the big band, you can come with me to Berlin.” Basically, he said goodbye to the city of Vienna and he never ever went back. He reviewed Paul Whiteman’s concert, he reviewed him playing “Rhapsody in Blue”, and he begins to make contacts in the business. Eventually, think, he works for a Berlin tabloid, and that’s when he begins to meet up in the cafes of Berlin with other young novices.
Now, many of those young novices were beginning to write for UFA. UFA, and I mentioned this when I talked about Otto Preminger, UFA is the great German film industry under a man called Fritz Pommer. They are producing, as we’ve already discovered, the most incredibly experimental films. And who on earth did he pal up with? Well, he paled up with some characters who are going to become very important in Hollywood. One of them, can we go on and have a look at some faces? There you see Fred Zinnemann. He’d been born in the Habsburg Empire, that area that had been returned to Poland in 1919 after all the divisions of the empires. You know, in 1939, there were 14,000 Jews in this particular village. And at the end of the war, there were under 600 survivors, mainly those who had fled into the Soviet Union. And all of them left the country. Zinnemann’s family were murdered in the Holocaust. And I’m telling you this because these characters are the characters who, later on, they learn their craft in UFA, but later on, they’re going to slice the soft underbelly of Hollywood and come out with some of the greatest films ever.
So, they wanted their boy to succeed. He finishes up at the University of Vienna, studying law, but he’s interested in film and he managed to persuade his parents to allow him to study in Paris. And he worked in Germany with so many of the other important characters, like Robert Siodmak and Billy Wilder. And all three of them worked on a very important silent film called “People On Sunday”, the film without actors. It was released February, 1930, and it portrays daily life in Berlin. It was directed by Siodmak and Zinnemann and the screenplay was by Billy Wilder. He pulled the whole thing together. Now, he’s very aware of the deep crisis in Germany, the polarisation of politics, and so, he’s not sure what he should do next. Just going back to Zinnemann, I’m just going to give you an inkling. He makes it to Hollywood. I probably should have done a whole session on him, but just to give you a notion of the film, he made 65 films, 24 of them won Oscars. “High Noon” is his, “From Here to Eternity”, “Oklahoma!”, “The Nun’s Story”, the incredible “Man For All Seasons”, “The Day of the Jackal”, “Julia”.
Unfortunately, as I said, his parents did go back to Poland after leaving Vienna and they died. And this is what Zinnemann wrote about “High Noon”, because I want you to get the impression of the sort of alienation of these characters and how, somehow, what happened to them affected their work. And “High Noon”, of course, is the story of the sheriff. He’s just married the beautiful Grace Kelly, and it’s James Stewart, but he has to do his duty. And this is what Zinnemann said. “To me, it was the story of a man who must take a decision according to his conscience. His town, symbol of a democracy gone soft, faces a horrendous threat of its people’s way of life. Determined to resist and in deep trouble, he moves all over the place looking for support but finding there is no one who will help him. Each has a reason of his own for not getting involved. In the end, he must meet his chosen fate by himself, his town doors and windows firmly locked against him. It is a story that still happens everywhere and every day.” So, important to remember what happened to them in Europe. They took that consciousness with them right in to their movies. Can we turn to the next slide, please?
This is Robert Siodmak, another very important character. He later on made some great film noir in Hollywood. He directed Burt Lancaster, and Ava Gardner in her first important film, “The Killers”. It’s a great, great film noir. “The File on Thelma Jordon” with Barbara Stanwyck. He was very much known as the actor’s director. And he was close to some of the most interesting people in the Hollywood, like Charles Laughton. So the point is, these three young men meet. They actually meet in Vienna. He’s already made some interesting contacts in Berlin. They all meet in Vienna, and the world they live in, there’s no censorship in UFA, remember. They talk in the cafes with all these other young intellectuals. It’s interesting, when societies are completely under threat, quite often, there’s a huge cultural outpouring. What I find interesting at the moment, and I’m making a very personal comment here, we’re living in a society under threat, but where’s the culture? Isn’t that interesting? Maybe those writers who said that after the Shoah, can anything really interesting come out of Europe? That’s a big question, that’s a big comment. I’m just throwing it into the atmosphere for you. Anyway, all of their ideas, it’s going to be great work, great ideas for their future work.
And then in 1929, he profiled Erich von Stroheim and he develops this friendship with him that’s going to manifest itself in Hollywood. Now, 1933, Hitler comes to power in Germany. So what does a young Jew on the make do? A guy who’s been mixing in this underground world of Berlin, the Berlin cabarets, the Jewish intellectuals. As he said, “I got the last train to Paris.” Can we turn to the next slide, please? Wonderful shots of Paris in the thirties. Wonderful, wonderful Paris. You know, as I wander around the great cities of Europe, and I’m very lucky living in London that I can do that quite easily, I often use my historic imagination to go back to that world before the war, to go to the cafes of Paris where all the people met. We know which cafes they sat in, the ideas they exchanged, and how soon it’s all going to be completely savaged by totalitarianism. And that’s what worries me at the moment. I think that we are losing the power to think for ourselves. As I said, I’ve made two statements now.
Anyway, in Paris, he’s already got a reputation and he makes Mauvaise Graine". Let’s see the next. This is his first important French film. This is quite a new… Danielle Darrieux, very important French film star. And he’s becoming part of the French world. But at the same time, he manages to sell a screenplay to Hollywood. So on January, 1934, he goes to America. But he hasn’t got the right entry visa. So what he does, he’s en route for America, he goes to Mexico where he links up with his old friend Peter Lorre. And the problem was, he was a salaried employer at UFA, he’d been earning money, and he arrives in Mexico with $20. And as he said, “A hundred English words.” He paced across the Atlantic, he said. “And soon”, I’m quoting now, “I would pace my way onto the lot of MGM and then onto Paramount and many, many other studios, joining all these wonderful middle Europeans who are going to completely change the face of Hollywood.” This is what the German film critic Claudius Seidel said. “Words”, quote, he had an interview with Billy Wilder and this was the interview. “Words are what gives films the very buoyancy and elegance and their characteristic shape, since words can be faster, glide more elegantly, and spin more than any camera.”
That great quote of Gloria Swanson in one of his greatest films, “Sunset Boulevard,” “Words, words, more words.” And remember, he is the master of the word. Now, of course, in his early days, he collaborates with writers who could translate his contribution. And let’s see the next slide, please. And in 1937, Paramount assigned this bright young screenwriter to work with Charles Brackett. And if ever there were two completely polar opposite characters, it was those two. It all begins. They collaborate on “Lost Weekend”, “Sunset Boulevard”. This is what Brackett wrote of Wilder. “The thing to do was suggest an idea, having it torn apart and despised. In a few days, it would be apt to turn up slightly changed as Wilder’s idea. Once I got adjusted to that way of working, our lives was simple.” His diaries were edited. 1932 to… He actually wrote it all down, Brackett. And of course, one of his great lines, which also appears in “Sunset Boulevard”, was the title of his edited version of his diaries. “It’s The Pictures That Got Small”, Billy Wilder and Hollywood’s Golden Age. You should read it, it’s wonderful.
Now, let’s give you a bit of background to understand the opposite. Billy Wilder is the son of a guy who was a waiter, then worked in station cafes, and then owned a small hotel in Krakow. Charles Brackett, the family’s roots go back to a man called Richard Brackett, who was part of the Massachusetts Bay Company of 1629. This is the pilgrim father. He did law at Harvard. He was part of the Allied Expeditionary Force. World War I, he was given the Legion of Honour. He became a journalist for The Saturday Evening Post, for Vanity Fair, for Colliers. He becomes the drama critic of the New Yorker. He wrote five novels, he was a very clever man. In '38 to '39, he was President of the Screenwriter’s Guild, and later on, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts. He wrote and produced over 40 films. And his wife was a descendant of Stephen Hopkins of the Mayflower. They had two children. When she died, he married her sister, that’s a very Jewish thing to do. And they loathed each other, but they do collaborate on some of the great films of Hollywood. So can you imagine this very restless, incredibly clever mercurial Jew with the WASP Aristocrat. Also very clever. And the clash that must have happened, it must have been absolutely extraordinary. Can we see the next slide, please?
This is “Ninotchka”. And on “Ninotchka”, he collaborates with his hero, Ernst Lubitsch. It stars the Jewish, Melvyn Douglas, Melvyn Hesselberg, and Garbo. And the headline for this, and of course, she plays a Russian agent, and let’s see the headline of it. Just let’s have a little look at this clip. In this one, it’s with Ernst Lubitsch. Garbo the Great. All right, we’ll stop that there. That was really big stuff in Hollywood. But the film that was his most personal film at that period was “Hold Back The Dawn”, because I should have mentioned to you, he did team up with Peter Lorre in Mexico, waiting to get his visa to America. And they had absolutely no money and they lived on a sort of can of soup. And “Hold Back The Dawn” is about… It stars the extraordinary Charles Boyer, who plays a suave European refugee stranded in Mexico, who entices an American school teacher, played by Olivia de Havilland, to marry so that he can get into America. And because Wilder had been in Mexico, desperate to reach the American shores, that, I think, is the film which is most personal.
So, by 1942, he and Brackett entered a new arrangement. Wilder would direct and Brackett would produce and then get on with the subsequent project. And out of it came “Double Indemnity”. He wrote the screenplay for that, and he directed. It’s one of the great film noirs. And he wrote the screenplay in collaboration with the brilliant Raymond Chandler. And it stars Fred MacMurray completely out of role. Usually, he played the big amiable lumbering guy. And of course, the femme fatale, Barbara Stanwyck. And the plot, if you don’t know the plot, Fred MacMurray is an insurance salesman. He conspires with the seductive wife of a prospective client to kill her husband. And it also stars the wonderful Edward G. Robinson. And it’s told in something that’s going to be really a hallmark of Wilder and was very much a hallmark of UFA. They do a lot of it in flashback. So, let’s have a look at “Double Indemnity”, which is certainly in my top 10. Here, you see the extraordinary Barbara Stanwyck.
[Clip plays]
You’re a smart insurance man, aren’t you, Mr. Neff?
Well, I’ve been at it 11 years.
[Phyllis] Doing pretty well?
Mm, it’s a living.
You handle just automobile insurance or all kinds?
All kinds. Fire, earthquake, theft, public liability, group insurance, industrial stuff, and so on, right down the line.
Accident insurance?
Accident insurance? Sure, Mrs. Dietrichson. Wish you’d tell me what’s engraved on that anklet.
Just my name.
As for instance?
Phyllis.
Phyllis, eh? I think I like that.
[Phyllis] But you’re not sure.
Oh, I’d have to drive it around the block a couple of times.
Mr. Neff, why don’t you drop by tomorrow evening around 8:30, he’ll be in then.
Who?
My husband. You were anxious to talk to him, weren’t you?
Yeah, I was, but uh, I’m sort of getting over the idea, if you know what I mean.
There’s a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff, 45 miles an hour.
How fast was I going, officer?
I’d say around 90.
Suppose you get down off your motorcycle-
[Clip ends]
Stop that there. You get the dialogue, how extraordinary it is. You’ve got to watch these films if you haven’t, and if you have, refresh, because the dialogue is snappy, snappy, snappy. So, let’s go on to the next film. Another huge success. Now, let me just talk a little bit about it. This is “The Lost Weekend”, and it’s a subject that perhaps only a middle European will be prepared to deal with because it is about alcoholism. It’s about a man who is destroying himself because of alcoholism. It was nominated for seven awards and Billy Wilder won, of course, for him as Best Director. They won four, nominated seven, won four. That makes him the hottest director in Hollywood. Can we have a clip, please?
[Clip plays]
Nat, weave me another.
Better take it easy.
Oh, don’t worry about me, just let me know when it’s a quarter of six.
Okay.
Come on, Nat, join me. One little jigger of dreams, huh?
No, thanks.
[Don] You don’t approve of drinking?
Not the way you drink.
It shrinks my liver, doesn’t it, Nat? It pickles my kidneys, yes. But what does it do to my mind? It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly, I’m above the ordinary. I’m competent, supremely competent. I’m walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. I am one of the great ones. I’m Michelangelo, moulding the beard of Moses. I’m Van Gogh, painting pure sunlight. I’m Horowitz, playing the “Emperor Concerto”. I’m John Barrymore before the movies got him by the throat. I’m Jesse James and his two brothers, all three of them. I’m W. Shakespeare. And out there, it’s not Third Avenue any longer, it’s the Nile, Nat, the Nile, and down it moves the barge of Cleopatra. Come here. Purple the sails, and so perfumed that the winds were love-sick with them. The oars were silver, which to the tune of flutes kept stroke.
[Clip ends]
Can we stop there? Isn’t that not brilliant? The dialogue, the direction, this man is a pure genius. Now, though he’s the hottest director in Hollywood, he puts his career on hold to serve in the army. He becomes a colonel in the Psychological Warfare Division in Berlin after the war. And one of his duties, tragically, was to cut footage from the camps. He also screened lots of films for the entertainment of the American forces. And there was an extraordinary incident. Anton Lang, who had always played Christ in the “Oberammergau Passion Play”, and then, when the Nazis came to power and took over in Austria, he joined the SS. He goes to Wilder, remember he’s a colonel, and he asked permission to take up his role again. And Wilder said, “On condition we use real nails.” On a much more tragic subject, he found out that his father had died, that his mother, his stepfather and his grandmother had all perished in the Holocaust. He later talked to an interviewer, Charles Cameron, about the Holocaust, and he talked about Holocaust revisionism. He said, “If the camps didn’t exist, where, oh, where is my mother?”
It went very, very, very deep. And later on in his career, right towards the end when the rights had been bought for Thomas Keneally’s book, “Schindler’s Ark”, as it was called, it was given to Spielberg. And at one stage, Wilder did want to direct it, but Spielberg wanted it. And in the end, he admired the film. But one never knows just how deep the cynicism, I mean the writing, it’s so clever, it’s so tight. But on the other hand, so much pain behind it. Can we go on, please? Now, this of course, is one of his greatest films and it stars Gloria Swanson. He wrote the film with Charles Brackett, and Gloria Swanson, of course, she plays a faded movie star who is living with her butler and who is played by Erich von Stroheim. And it begins with William Holden, who is a young writer, face down in a swimming pool, he’s been killed. And he had become her secretary, then her lover. And it’s really the story of loss, but it’s a very caustic black comedy and it has one of the greatest lines in the movies.
When it’s realised that she’s the murderess, she’s brought outside by the police and she smiles, she’s completely crazy, and she says, “I’m ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille.” Now, he uses, as an actor in it playing the butler, Erich von Stroheim. Can we see the next slide, please? It’s Erich, not Joseph, I’m sorry. This was a mistake that my colleague made, so let’s go away from it, please. I don’t know that. So, let me just talk a little bit about Erich von Stroheim. He was another fascinating character. He had previously worked with… He was both an actor and a filmmaker and he actually had previously worked with Gloria Swanson. He’d been a director back in Germany. And Stroheim, in this film, he plays the Butler, her former husband, and Stroheim had previously directed Swanson in an incomplete film called “Queen Kelly”.
A segment of it is sometimes used in film schools. They couldn’t finish it because he wanted more money to complete his lavish sets, and her lover of the time was Joseph Kennedy and there was a big quarrel. And it’s fascinating, only Billy Wilder, who knew the story, would bring it together. And he said the two people who most influenced him were actually Lubitsch and Stroheim. So, important to remember. Another film he went on to was “Stalag 17”, again, with William Holden. And now, this is a very interesting film because it’s about a group of prisoners of war. And have a look at who is playing the Nazi Commandant. It’s good old Otto Preminger with his friend.
[Clip plays]
[Bagradian] Gesundheit, everything is gesundheit!
[Schulz] Gentleman, attention!
Heil, Hitler!
Heil, Hit… Droppen Sie dead!
Quiet! We are indoctrinating! Is you all indoctrinated?
[POWs] Jawohl!
Is you all good little Nazis?
[POWs] Jawohl.
Is you all good little Adolfs?
[POWs] Jawohl!
Then we will all salute Feldwebel Schulz! About face! Sieg heil!
[All] Sieg heil!
Sieg Heil!
[All] Sieg Heil!
Sieg Heil!
[POWs] Sieg Heil!
Ah, one Fuehrer is enough! Now please, gentlemen, take off those moustaches. Or do you want me arrested by the Gestapo?
[POWs] Jawohl!
You would be very sorry to get a new Feldwebel. Somebody without a sense of humour.
[Clip ends]
Okay, we’ll stop that there. That raises a big question that I’m going to be talking about next week when I’m looking at films in the twenties and thirties, forties and fifties. Can you use humour to mock horror? And perhaps only a character like Billy Wilder and Otto Preminger. By the way, they were what we would call frenemies. I think I mentioned last week that when Preminger was playing poker with a bunch of people, he was speaking in Hungarian and Wilder said, “We’re in Hollywood now, speak German!” Anyway, can we go on, please? He then goes on to make another beautiful light film with Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn and William Holden. It was quite a complicated set. This, “Sabrina”, it’s going to be his last film for Paramount, ending a 12-year relationship. He directed it and he co-wrote it with Samuel Taylor.
Now, originally, Cary Grant was offered Humphrey Bogart’s role. He couldn’t take it. And also, there was a love affair going on between Holden and Hepburn. Bogart had wanted his wife to play Sabrina, so he was very put out about it and it was a very, very unhappy set. And whilst he’s shooting, another one of his co-writers, a man called Ernest Lehman, would write the next scene as it was going along. And again, he’s nominated for Best Director and Screenplay. He actually won the Golden Globe for the Best Screenplay. But the point was, it was an absolutely huge financial success. Now, of course, I’ve had to choose which films… I’ve had to make choices, and unfortunately, they are my choices, but if you go through the whole cannon of Billy Wilder, I think you’ll be amused. You’ll be able to amuse yourselves for a long, long time. He finds himself another co-writer. Can we go on, please?
And that co-writer is I.A.L Diamond. I don’t seem to have a picture of him, but he’d studied journalism at Columbia and he had dreamt of Hollywood, the whole dream. And he begins collaborating in 1957 in “Love in the Afternoon”. And he’s going to have a very interesting relationship with Wilder. They worked together quite well and Diamond never told him that he was dying of cancer. He went on writing all the way to the end. Now this is definitely one of my favourite films, “Witness for the Prosecution”. He writes it with his new partner. It’s an homage to Lubitsch. And again, it’s a courtroom drama. Remember, law is a fascinating theme, perhaps more for Preminger. But remember, he was interested in law, but he’d only spent three days at the University of Berlin. Isn’t it interesting? Wilder, Zinnemann and Preminger all at some stage, Wilder for three days, were at the University of Berlin, all in the same faculty. Somebody should do a PhD on it. Anyway, Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich and the incredible Charles Laughton and his wife, Elsa Lanchester.
It’s a black comedy, it’s also got elements of film noir. Wilder directs it and writes the screenplay with Diamond based on an Agatha Christie play. Marlene only agreed to be in it if Wilder was the director. He said of her, “She liked to play a murderess but was a little bit embarrassed when playing love scenes.” And the bar is named The Blue Lantern. It’s a flashback for her to “The Blue Angel”. And in fact, Agatha Christie considered it to be the finest film ever made from one of her stories. And again, he was nominated for Best Director. It is a very, very popular film. It’s a complicated plot. The Tyrone Power figure is accused of murdering this very rich woman, and it looks like he’s guilty. And in the end, this character played by Marlene Dietrich gives him an alibi that is completely watertight. And it’s only at the end she reveals to Laughton that, in fact, she’s done it because she loves him. The Tyrone Power figure is acquitted, and then when she sees him going off with his real girlfriend, she shoots him. And it’s absolutely, it’s so Wilder. It’s a brilliant, brilliant sequence. So let’s have a tiny little clip. And Charles Laughton, who is quite ill in the film, his character is quite ill, he’s being henpecked by his nurse, his actual wife, Elsa Lanchester, and he is in this brilliant courtroom scene. So let’s have a little glimpse.
[Clip plays]
Mrs. Vole, or Mrs. Helm, which do you prefer to be called?
[Christine] It does not matter.
Does it not? In this country, we are inclined to take a rather more serious view of marriage. However, Frau Helm it would appear when you first met the prisoner in Hamburg, you lied to him about your marital status.
I wanted to get out of Germany, so-
[Wilfrid] You lied, did you not? Just yes or no, please.
Yes.
Thank you. And subsequently, in arranging the marriage, you lied to the authorities?
I, um, did not tell the truth to the authorities.
[Wilfrid] You lied to them?
Yes.
And in the ceremony of marriage itself, when you swore to love and to honour and to cherish your husband, that too was a lie?
[Christine] Yes.
And when the police questioned you about this wretched man who believed himself married and loved, you told them-
I told them what Leonard wanted me to say.
You told them that he was at home with you at 25 minutes past nine, and now you say that that was a lie.
Yes, a lie.
And when you said that he had accidentally cut his wrist, again, you lied.
[Christine] Yes!
And now, today, you’ve told us a new story entirely. The question is Frau Helm, were you lying then? Are you lying now? Or are you not, in fact, a chronic and habitual liar?!
[Clip ends]
Well, let’s stop it there. It’s, again… There you see Elsa Lanchester. Later on, she’s going to star in some very strange horror films. If you haven’t seen it, or if you haven’t seen it for years, it’s a wonderful, wonderful film. Now, very, very popular, and then we come to the film that I think is so many people’s favourite black comedy. He directed it, he co-produced it, he produced it and he co-wrote it with, of course, Diamond. Now, I’m sure you all know the plot. It’s a very controversial film. They’re breaking all the codes now. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis are musicians who witness the Valentine’s Day Massacre and the gangsters see them. To escape, there’s an all-female band going off to Miami, so they join it. And on the train journey, they meet the singer, played, of course, by Marilyn Monroe. And she’s come to Miami to find a millionaire. And of course, she falls in… Tony Curtis tries to seduce her, it’s the most extraordinary, incredible, incredible scenes. And this is the final scene where finally she realises he’s a man. And by the way, Jack Lemmon is being courted by the wonderful Joe E. Brown, and you’re going to hear what is probably the best last line of any movie, which was actually written by Diamond, not by Billy Wilder. So, let’s see the end of the film, the denouement. Thank you.
[Clip plays]
Sugar, what do you think you’re doing?
I told you, I’m not very bright.
Let’s go!
You don’t want me, Sugar. I’m a liar and a phoney , a saxophone player. One of those no-goodnicks you keep running away from.
I know, every time.
Sugar, do yourself a favour, go back to where the millionaires are. The sweet end of the lollipop, not the coleslaw in the face, the old socks and the squeezed-out tube of toothpaste.
That’s right, pour it on, talk me out of it.
I called Mama, she was so happy, she cried. She wants you to have her wedding gown, it’s white lace.
Osgood, I can’t get married in your mother’s dress. She and I, we are not built the same way.
We can have it altered.
Oh, no you don’t! Osgood, I’m going to level with you, we can’t get married at all.
Why not?
Well, in the first place, I’m not a natural blonde.
Doesn’t matter.
I smoke, I smoke all the time.
I don’t care.
I have a terrible past. For three years now, I’ve been living with a saxophone player.
I forgive you.
I can never have children.
We can adopt some.
You don’t understand, Osgood! Oh! I’m a man.
Well, nobody’s perfect.
[Clip ends]
- Right, can we go on? Oh, there we have a picture of Diamond, his indefatigable partner who… Wilder couldn’t have been that easy to work with, but I think he managed better than Brackett. Now, he’d made a previous film with Marilyn Monroe back in 1955, “The Seven Year Itch”. Let’s have a look at that. Yeah. Another one of the most famous films. Remember, he writes these scripts.
[Clip plays]
Didn’t you just love the picture? I did, but I just felt so sorry for the creature at the end.
Sorry for the creature? What, did you want him to marry the girl?
He was kind of scary-looking, but he wasn’t really all bad. I think he just craved a little affection. You know, a sense of being loved and needed and wanted.
That’s a very interesting point of view.
Oh, do you feel the breeze from the subway? Isn’t it delicious?
Sort of cools the ankles-
[Clip ends]
Shall we stop there? Now, that’s one of the most famous shots in the movies. And of course, it’s Wilder, it’s just genius. And that becomes the poster for so many other films. But do you know what he said after making two films with Marilyn Monroe? “I’ve discussed this with my doctor and my psychologist. They tell me I’m too old and too rich to go through this again.” His next great film is “The Apartment”. Again, he wrote it with Diamond. He produced, directed and co-wrote it. It’s Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, and Fred MacMurray. Again, insurance clerk played by Jack Lemmon. He wants to work his way up the ladder. And he has an apartment and he allows all his executives to use it for their extra marital affairs.
It’s a very controversial subject matter. Think of the things he’s talking about. He’s prepared to deal with adultery, he’s prepared to deal with cross-dressing, and gradually, the code is being altered. Now, it’s interesting, back in the forties, he’d wanted to make “Brief Encounter”. Do you remember that film? The very sanitised British film with Trevor Howard? And he couldn’t because of the code. I always think that “Brief Encounter” without the sexuality is very peculiar. It was remade in the seventies with Sophia Loren and Richard Burton. It was a terrible film because, as one of the critics said, you couldn’t imagine those two not being able to get a room. But anyway, let’s have a look at a clip from “The Apartment”, which was certainly one of his favourite films.
[Clip plays]
Merry Christmas.
Thank you. I thought you were avoiding me.
What gave you that idea?
Well, in the last six weeks you’ve only been in my elevator once, and you didn’t take off your hat.
Well, as a matter of fact, I was rather hurt that night you stood me up.
I don’t blame you, it was unforgivable.
I forgive you.
Well, you shouldn’t.
You couldn’t help yourself. I mean, when you’re having a drink with one man, you can’t suddenly walk out on him because you’re having another date with another man. You did the only decent thing.
I wouldn’t be too sure. Just because I wear a uniform, that doesn’t make me a Girl Scout.
Miss Kubelik, one doesn’t get to be a second administrative assistant around here unless he’s a pretty good judge of character. And as far as I’m concerned, you’re tops. I mean, decency-wise and otherwise-wise. Cheers.
Cheers.
Cor, one more.
Oh, I shouldn’t drink while I’m driving.
You’re so right. By the power vested in me, I herewith declare this elevator out of order. Shall we join the natives?
Why not? They seem friendly enough.
Don’t you believe it. After a while, there’ll be human sacrifices, white collar workers tossed into their computing machines and punched full of those little square holes.
How many drinks did you have?
Three. Wait a minute, I think I hear the sound of running water. I’ll be right back.
I’ll be right here.
[Clip ends]
The quickfire dialogue again. Now, all right, we’ll stop there. Another one of his great films was “Irma la Douce”. Now, just one or two of his interesting quotes. Hello? Can you still hear me?
[Moderator] Yeah, that’s just the end of the slideshow. Do you want me-
Okay, so, all right, I’ll just talk now. Now, this is also what he said about Marilyn Monroe. “She’s so sexy.” You know, in the beginning of “Some Like It Hot”, where she walks to the train and the steam goes and her skirts go up, even the train had to goose her. And he said, “Marilyn was completely discombobulated. There were sometimes 40 or 50 takes, but she was incredible.” Now, some of the lines in “The Apartment”, where the girl finally says, “I love you.” And he says, “Shut up and deal.” Again, it’s this quickfire language. I think most of the people who’ve written about Wilder, what they think is he grew up in another world, which gave him the ability… And also, in a very sad world, but a world of culture. And it gave him the opportunity to actually see America very, very clearly. And he was the voyeur.
He also was an incredible art collector. Like so many of them, you know, sometimes when you come from that kind of world, he became very rich, he collected art. He said it was absolutely a compulsion for him. So, his career begins to go onto the skids, having had this incredible, incredible career. He was making films up to the age of 80. And as I said, his partner Diamond dies. He was younger than Wilder, but he dies before him. One of the characters in “Irma la Douce”, he put into his mouth, “I love to irritate everybody, communists, capitalists.” And you get a sense of that with Wilder. He married a couple of times. He had two children by his first wife. I’m just going to read you a couple of his quotes because I think it gives you an idea of the man he was. He said, “If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they will kill you.”
It’s really worth listening very, very carefully to his dialogues. And as I said, I marvel at them. I know they brought him Brackett to help him with his English, but I marvel at the sort of… It’s a sort of Weltschmerz, it’s a world-weariness in his dialogue. He said, “A director must be a policeman, a midwife and a psychologist, a sycophant, and a real bastard.” And he also said of Hollywood in his golden age, “In the past we made pictures, not deals. Today, we spend 80% of the time making deals and 20% making films.” When he died, the great headline, of course, was in Le Monde, where of course, the headline was, “Billy Wilder is dead. Nobody’s perfect.” One of the greats. I hope you’ve managed to take down most of the films I’ve mentioned.
Q&A and Comments
Oh, this is Maya. “You can buy an external DVD which connects to a PC and it’s not expensive. I know because I inquired from a computer shop. I wish I knew because you can’t buy new DVDs in England anymore.” Oh, sorry Brenda, of course it was Gary Cooper, I’m crazy. Thank you. Oh yes, Ron. Hi, Ron. Ron knows so much about what this world of showbiz. “Zinnemann’s "Day of the Jackal”, one of my favourites, very European, on plot to assassinate Charles de Gaulle.“ Yes, maybe we should do a session on Zinnemann. He was so good. And I think the one with Robert Bolt screenplay. Oh, "A Man for All Seasons”, that is just beyond gorgeous. Sandy, “I love 'Ninotchka’. We still refer to the time they complain to the hotel because of the Persian carpet which wouldn’t fly.” You see, this is the dialogue, it’s unbelievable. They don’t make films like this before.
Oh, yes, Jerry’s saying a very underrated comedy by Billy Wilder was “Kiss Me, Stupid”. Kim Novak and Dean Martin. You see, he made so many films. I mean, I think I gave you the title, I think I gave you the list. I mean, he won seven Oscars and he had 21 nominations, and he made about 70 films. And I’ve only, look, I admit it, I brought out my favourites. Oh, yes, Ron, “Please do a programme on Sidney Lumet. Great films with a Jewish consciousness.” “I came in late, you may have covered this. Otto Preminger verbally brutalised his actresses, causing them to cry.” “Billy Wilder holds the record for the director with the greatest number of actors and actresses who won Academy Awards because of his developing his actors and actresses.” Yes, but he was a bit of a tyrant as well, I think. But yes, he understood talent, he got it. I think he was probably… Were any of them… I think they were complicated people, Ron, frankly. I think they were very, very complicated. Look, I’m going to be mentioning Sidney Lumet because what I’ve decided to do next week, all my sessions, my next four sessions, I’m going to look at the films of the twenties, the thirties, the forties, the fifties, the sixties, and the seventies, as gradually, there is more awareness of Jewish topics. And also, the studio system collapses, far more independent producers. So I will be bringing Lumet in. But you know, we could, look, as we go through the various courses, of course we can bring in more film.
Oh, this is Dennis. “My favourite scene in "The Lost Weekend” is where Ray Milland goes out to pawn his typewriter, bought booze. All the pawn shops are closed because of Yom Kippur.“ Yes, yes! "The ultimate of horror music is ‘The Producers’, the movie and the musical.” Actually, when I look at the films of the sixties, I am going to address Mel Brooks’ “The Producers”. And I very much value your reactions to it because Mel Brooks did it deliberately. He was with the Liberation Forces in Dachau, you know? He didn’t do it for fun. He did it because he believed he could ridicule horror. Now, I can’t go there, I don’t. I remember when “Life Is Beautiful” came out, I went with a group of survivors. You know, the film about the comic in the camps who tried to hide all the pain from his son. It’s a very controversial film. And I got a letter from one of the group, and he said, “I will never forget the pain in my father’s eyes when he couldn’t hide the truth from me.” It’s a very, very difficult thing. And who knows what’s right?
Yes, Joe DiMaggio hated the scene of Marilyn Monroe in her dress. Yes, of course, David, he was very, very jealous of her. But interestingly, of all the men in her life, even though they divorced, he was the one who sorted her funeral out. Yeah, she had a tragic life. Oh, Arlene Nash, “‘The Apartment’ was banned in Quebec so my mom and a friend went to Ottawa to see it. She adored Jack Lemmon.” Jack Lemmon was adorable, and he was one of the few gentiles that would be invited to the Jewish Country Club. “Vincent Price was also an avid art collector. Thank you for reminding me how much I love Billy Wilder.” Yes! “Sidney Lumet pronounced his name Lu-met.” Thank you. “Highly recommend ‘The Fortune Cookie’, which first teamed Matthau and Lemmon. Also ‘One, Two, Three’ with James Cagney as a Coca-Cola executive.” Yes, they are all wonderful films. I hope I haven’t rushed it. What I did, I wanted to give you a glimpse because I know…
Look, I can tell from what you’re telling me, so many of you know so much about this period. It’s interesting because this is our generation. There’s a huge difference in taste in cinema today. I’ve been a bit of a tyrant with my children and now with my grandchildren. My daughter, when she was a student at university, one of her colleagues said to her, one of the girls she was rooming with, “How on earth can you watch films in black and white?” It’s fascinating, isn’t it, how things have changed? And now I have a grandson who’s only 13, but he can quote from the movies. “‘Major and Minor’, though not very PC,” says Lorna. “At a dinner hosted by Wilder and his wife, she stopped the conversation to say it was their wedding anniversary. He interrupted with the words, ‘Please, dear, not while we’re eating.’” “Years later, Gene Wilder repeated the Marilyn scene in white dress with the red dress in ‘Woman in Red’ with Kelly LeBrock.” Yes, yes, yes. They all kind of fed off each other, didn’t they? Will we ever see their like again? Different kind of films now. Anyway, I will leave it there.
Hannah, thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed that session. I’m trying to lighten the darkness a little bit. Having said that, of course, he himself, he was so trapped by it, wasn’t he? Fascinating, these outsiders who changed the course of American film history. God bless, everyone. Keep safe, it’s very strange what’s going on in London. Just as it’s strange and odd what’s going on all over the Jewish world. So keep safe, huh? God bless.