When Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon first put on the female makeup and costumes for "Some Like It Hot" (1959), , they walked around the Goldwyn Studios lot to see if they could "pass" as women. Then they tried using mirrors in public ladies rooms to fix their makeup, and when none of the women using it complained, they knew they could be convincing as women. There is a scene on the train recreating this moment.
Lemmon got along with Marilyn Monroe and forgave her eccentricities. He believed Marilyn simply couldn't go in front of the camera until she was absolutely ready. "She knew she was limited and goddamned well knew what was right for Marilyn," he said. "She wasn't about to do anything else." He also said that although she may not have been the greatest actor or singer or comedienne, she used more of her talent, brought more of her gifts to the screen than anyone he ever knew.
Lemmon wrote that the first sneak preview had a bad reaction with many audience walkouts. Many studio personnel and agents offered advice to Billy Wilder on what scenes to reshoot, add and cut. Lemmon asked Wilder what he was going to do. Wilder responded: "Why, nothing. This is a very funny movie and I believe in it just as it is. Maybe this is the wrong neighborhood in which to have shown it. At any rate, I don't panic over one preview. It's a hell of a movie." Wilder held the next preview in the Westwood section of Los Angeles, and the audience stood up and cheered.
Many years after the film's release, a movie reviewer asked Curtis why his Josephine was so much more feminine than Lemmon's Daphne. A laughing Curtis explained that he was so scared to be playing a woman (or a man pretending to be one) that his tightly wound body language could be read as demure and shy, traditionally feminine traits, whereas Lemmon, who was completely unbothered, and "ran out of his dressing room screaming like the Queen of the May," kept much more of his masculine body language...
One of my all-time favorite comedies was the classic Some Like It Hot. My 11 year old daughter also loves the film. Here are some great behind the scenes photos from the making of this 1959 classic...
Jack Lemmon has always been one of my favorite actors. He made so many great movies in the late 1960s and 1970s, but I wanted to take a look and learn more about his early years in Hollywood. He had made movies for years before he got the fame that he deserved.
In the 1940s, Lemmon became a professional actor, working on radio and Broadway. His film debut was a bit part as a plasterer in the film The Lady Takes a Sailor (1949), but he was already appearing in television shows, which numbered about 400 from 1948 to 1953.
Lemmon believed his stage career was about to take off when he was appearing on Broadway for the first time in a 1953 revival of the comedy Room Service, but the production closed after two weeks. Despite this setback, he was spotted by talent scout Max Arnow, who was then working for Columbia, and Lemmon's focus shifted to films and Hollywood. Columbia's head Harry Cohn wanted to change Lemmon's name, in case it was used to describe the quality of the actor's films, but he successfully resisted.
His first role as a leading man was in the comedy It Should Happen to You (1954), which also featured the established Judy Holliday in the female lead. Bosley Crowther in his review for The New York Times described Lemmon as possessing "a warm and appealing personality. The screen should see more of him." The two leads soon reunited in Phffft (also 1954). Kim Novak had a secondary role as a brief love interest for Lemmon's character. "If it wasn't for Judy, I'm not sure I would have concentrated on films", he told The Washington Post in 1986 saying early in his career he had a snobbish attitude towards films over the stage. He managed to negotiate a contract with Columbia allowing him leeway to pursue other projects, some of the terms of which he said "nobody had gotten before". He signed a seven-year contract, but ended staying with Columbia for ten years. Lemmon's appearance as Ensign Pulver in Mister Roberts (1955), with James Cagney and Henry Fonda, for Warner Bros. gained Lemmon the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Director John Ford decided to cast Lemmon after seeing his Columbia screen test, which had been directed by Richard Quine. At an impromptu meeting on the studio lot, Ford persuaded the actor to appear in the film, although Lemmon did not realize he was in conversation with Ford at the time.
In the military farce Operation Mad Ball (1957) set in a U.S. Army base in France after World War II, Lemmon played a calculating private. He met comedian Ernie Kovacs, who co-starred, and they became close friends, appearing together in two subsequent films, as a warlock in Bell, Book and Candle (1958, a film he apparently disliked),and It Happened to Jane (1959), all three under the direction of Richard Quine. Lemmon starred in six films directed by Quine. The others were My Sister Eileen (1955), The Notorious Landlady (1962) and How to Murder Your Wife (1965). Lemmon also began his collaboration with director Billy Wilder in with Some Like It Hot (1959), with Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe. His role required him to perform 80% of the role in drag. People who knew his mother, Millie Lemmon, said he had mimicked her personality and even her hairstyle.The critic Pauline Kael said he was "demoniacally funny" in the part.
Lemmon first role a film directed by Blake Edwards was in Days of Wine and Roses (1962) portraying Joe Clay, a young alcoholic businessman. The role, for which he was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar, was one of Lemmon's favorite roles. By this time, he had appeared in 15 comedies, a western and an adventure film. "The movie people put a label attached to your big toe — 'light comedy' — and that's the only way they think of you", he commented in an interview during 1984. "I knew damn well I could play drama. Things changed following Days of Wine and Roses. That was as important a film as I've ever done." Days of Wine and Roses was the first film where Lemmon was involved with production of the film via his Jalam production company. Lemmon's association with Edwards continued with The Great Race (1965), which reunited him with Tony Curtis. His salary this time was $1 million, but the film did not return its large budget at the box-office, but some of his biggest roles would be in his future...
Let's face it, Valentine’s Day, more than just about any other day with a title, is a mass marketing scheme playing lovers for suckers, a bonanza for Hallmark Cards and Whitman’s Samplers and one that probably creates as much heartbreak as romantic goodwill. I’m not the sentimental type, but I do have an enormous fondness for one movie in which Valentine’s Day plays a prominent role.
It’s not about mass marketing, but mass murder, and based in fact.
In the early scenes of Some Like it Hot, the 1959 Billy Wilder masterpiece that is consistently chosen by critics and film people as the best comedy ever made, a pair of itinerant Depression Era musicians witness the gangland execution of seven men in a Chicago garage and spend the rest of the movie on the run from the mob.
In real life, the massacre resulted from a territorial feud between the Italian mob led by Al Capone and the Irish gang of Bugs Moran. In the movie, the shooting is carried out by the gang of Spats Colombo (George Raft), who coincidentally encounters the two witnesses, now undercover and in drag in an all girls’ band at a beachside resort in California.
Some Like it Hot received six nominations, including two for Wilder’s script and direction and one for Jack Lemmon as the bass player who gets all too comfortable in high heels. Tony Curtis, equally hilarious as the band member smudging his lipstick on the saxophone, should have received one, as well.
In fact, If time could actually fly, it would go back to 1960 and right the wrongs done to both Curtis and Marilyn Monroe, who is wonderful as Sugar Kane Kowalczyk, a singer hoping to marry well but falling instead for Curtis’ Cary Grant-impersonating phony billionaire.
Wilder did get nominations for both his direction and the screenplay, and the movie won for costume design. I’m guessing it was for the dresses worn by Monroe and not those on the men. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre may not be the best reason to watch Some Like It Hot on Valentine’s Day, but it’s got more romance and fun than any other movie associated with the holiday...
Now we are approaching the truly classic time in Hollywood when the studio system was in full force. However, the popularity of television made the movie industry really change how they made movies. A lot of good movies were made in the decade of the 1950s, but here are my five favorite:
5. LIMELIGHT (1952)
One of the biggest crimes against a single human being by a country was when the United States deported actor Charlie Chaplin. He was deported after he filmed Limelight. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had it out for Chaplin since the 1920s, and decades later he got his revenge. Limelight was the last movie Chaplin ever filmed in the United States, and the movie told the story of a fading vaudeville star. This film was the most biographical film that Charlie Chaplin ever did. The story is emotional, funny, and sad - but the best part of the movie is when Chaplin appears with Buster Keaton. Chaplin and Keaton were icons of the silent screen era, and they worked well together in this film. I wish this movie would be remembered more though.
4. NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)
I think that by far one of the greatest directors of all time was Alfred Hitchcock. His mind was so full of these suspenseful and twisted tales. Cary Grant stars as a business man who was mistaken for someone else. Unfortunately, that someone else was involved in espionage and crime. Trying to clear his name and not get killed in the process, Grant literally travels throughout the country. On the way he tries to out run a crop dusting plane bent on killing him, and in the great Hitchcock finale he wrestles on the top of Mount Rushmore. Adding to the cast and intrigue is Eva Marie Saint in one of the greatest roles she ever made. I never thought of Saint as a sex symbol except for this movie. She played the spy that fell in love with Grant so perfectly. The movie is long but the roller coster ride of suspense is worth it.
3. SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959)
This movie is by far one of the greatest comedies of all-time. Directed by Billy Wilder, I never get tired of seeing Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis running around as women. The movie takes place in the roaring 1920s, when liquior was outlawed, but seemingly the Mafia was not. Lemmon and Curtis witness a mob killing, so they have to go on the run. The only way to get away is if they masquarade was women - which they do in a woman's band. The cast of characters they cross paths with are equally great: big band singer (Marilyn Monroe), old millionaire (Joe E. Brown), gangster (George Raft), and old school cop (Pat O'Brien). The ending of the film with Joe E. Brown and Jack Lemmon is among the funniest moments ever caught on screen.
2. VERTIGO (1958)
Another Alfred Hitchcock film, this is one of my favorite movies he directed. The film stars James Stewart as former police detective John "Scottie" Ferguson, who has been forced into early retirement due to disabilities (vertigo and clinical depression) incurred in the line of duty. Scottie is hired as a private investigator to follow a woman, Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak) who is behaving peculiarly. The film was shot on location in San Francisco, California, and at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. It popularized the dolly zoom, an in-camera effect that distorts perspective to create disorientation, to convey Scottie's acrophobia. As a result of its use here, the effect is often referred to as "the Vertigo effect". The film received mixed reviews upon initial release, but has garnered acclaim since and is now often cited as a classic Hitchcock film and one of the defining works of his career. Attracting significant scholarly criticism, it was named the best film of all time in the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll. While I think Vertigo is a great film, I do not think it is the best movie of all-time. I do think that this is the best role Jimmy Stewart ever had, and it showed a great range of emotions and acting that he had.
1. THE COUNTRY GIRL (1954)
I think this choice will probably surprise people more than anyone. I do not see it on anyone's favorites list from the 1950s, and I think that is unfortunate. The movie, the story, and the casting made this really a triumph I think. The film stars Bing Crosby, in his best dramatic role, as a faded singer who has lost his career and pretty much his wife, played very plainly by Grace Kelly. Crosby is given one more chance for a comeback by a hot shot director (William Holden). Adapted by George Seaton from Clifford Odets' 1950 play of the same name, the film is about an alcoholic has-been actor struggling with the one last chance he's been given to resurrect his career. Seaton won the Academy Award for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay and Grace Kelly won for Best Actress. During one of the most intense scenes where Bing Crosby is drunk and hung over in jail, he had his sons keep him up all through the night to make his look more realistic. Given the period of its production, the film is notable for its realistic, frank dialogue and honest treatments of the surreptitious side of alcoholism and post-divorce misogyny. I wish Bing Crosby would have made more dramas, and even though some of the subject matter is hard to watch (death of a child), I recommend this film to anyone.
Of course it is nearly impossible to do a top five list, and there are a lot of movies I would like to include. Here are some honorable mentions to the list as well: Harvey (1950), Rear Window (1954), Love Me Or Leave Me (1955), Twelve Angry Men (1957), and Paths Of Glory (1957).
One of the most rewarding and gratifying moments in my life have been as a father. I do not think there is anything more special for a man than the bond between a father and his child. On this Father's Day, I wanted to salute a few of the famous classic Hollywood fathers through some of the pictures of them with their children:
The movie Some Like It Hot (1959) is one of the great classic comedies of all-time, so it almost pointless to write a review of the film. However, I recently watched it on TCM, and even though this film is over fifty years old it is still one of the finest comedies Hollywood ever produced. I watched the film as I was going to sleep in bed, and needless to say I stayed up to the very end of the movie. I just had to!
The film is a remake by Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond of a 1935 French movie, Fanfare d'Amour, from the story by Robert Thoeren and Michael Logan, which was itself remade in 1951 by German director Kurt Hoffmann as Fanfaren der Liebe. However, both the French and German films were without the gangsters that are an integral part of the plot of Some Like It Hot. Wilder's working title for his film was Fanfares of Love, then Not Tonight, Josephine before he decided on Some Like It Hot as its release title.
Two struggling musicians, Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon), witness what looks like the Saint Valentine's Day massacre of 1929. When the Chicago gangsters, led by "Spats" Colombo (George Raft), see them, the two flee for their lives. They escape and decide to leave town, taking a job that requires them to disguise themselves as women, playing in an all-girl musical band headed to Florida.
Calling themselves Josephine and Geraldine (later Jerry changes his pseudonym to Daphne), they join the band and board a train. Joe and Jerry both become enamored of "Sugar Kane" (Marilyn Monroe), the band's vocalist and ukulele player, and struggle for her affection while maintaining their disguises. In Florida, Joe woos Sugar by assuming a second disguise as a millionaire named "Junior", the heir to Shell Oil, while mimicking Cary Grant's voice. An actual millionaire, Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown), becomes enamored of Jerry in his Daphne guise. One night Osgood asks Daphne out to his yacht. Joe convinces Daphne to keep Osgood ashore while he goes on the yacht with Sugar. That night Osgood proposes to Daphne who, in a state of excitement, accepts, believing he can receive a large settlement from Osgood immediately following their wedding ceremony.
When the mobsters arrive at the same hotel for a conference honoring "Friends of Italian Opera", Spats and his gang see Joe and Jerry. After several humorous chases (and witnessing yet another mob murder, this time of Spats himself and his crew), Jerry, Joe, Sugar, and Osgood escape to the millionaire's yacht. Enroute, Joe reveals to Sugar his true identity and Sugar tells Joe that she's in love with him regardless. Joe tells her that he is not good enough for her, that she would be getting the "fuzzy end of the lollipop" yet again, but Sugar loves him anyway. Jerry, for his part, tries to explain to Osgood that he cannot marry him, launching into a range of objections from insisting that he can't get married in his mother's dress ("We are not built the same way,") to the tearful confession that he can "never have children." Osgood dismisses them all and remains determined to go through with the marriage. Finally, exasperated, Jerry removes his wig and shouts, "I'm a man!", only for Osgood to override this final revelation by uttering the film's memorable last line, "Well, nobody's perfect."
That last line not only makes the movie, but is one of the greatest lines in cinema history. The whole cast was out of this world. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon do look a lot like women, but you almost forget they are men when they are dressed in drag. Marilyn Monroe was a little heavier in this film, and sadly she would be dead three years later, but she was wonderful in it. The supporting cast of Pat O'Brien and George Raft also gives the movie an authentic feel of the 1930s to it. All in all there is nothing bad I can say about this film. Even though I have it on DVD, I am so happy I caught it again on television...
It's time to see what goodies TCM (Turner Classic Movies) will be showing in the month of October. Here are my top ten picks of what is on:
OCTOBER 2 11:00 AM
The Time Machine(1960) - SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY
A turn-of-the-century inventor sends himself into the future to save humanity. I have always loved this movie of time travel. The Morlocks in the movie still scare me! (Cast: Rod Taylor, Alan Young, Yvette Mimieux)
OCTOBER 12 3:00 PM
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House(1948) - COMEDY
A New York businessman's dream of a country home is shattered when he buys a tumbledown rural shack. Next to Arsenic And Old Lace, this is the best Cary Grant comedy! (Cast: Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, Melvyn Douglas)
OCTOBER 19 1:00 AM
Tea And Sympathy(1956) - DRAMA
A faculty wife risks her marriage to help a troubled teen tormented by his fellow students. I saw this movie back when TNT showed classic movies, and I'd love to see it again. (Cast: Deborah Kerr , John Kerr , Leif Erickson)
OCTOBER 20 10:00 AM
State Fair(1945) - MUSICAL
An Iowa family finds romance and adventure at the yearly state fair. This musical was one of my grandfather's favorite movies. It brings back memories of me going to the fairs with him too. (Cast: Jeanne Crain, Dana Andrews, Dick Haymes)
OCTOBER 25 11:00 AM
The Days of Wine and Roses(1962) - DRAMA
A husband and wife fight to conquer alcoholism. This is one of those classic movies that I have never seen - but I want to! (Cast: Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick, Charles Bickford)
OCTOBER 26 5:45 PM
The Bad Seed(1956) - HORROR
A woman suspects that her perfect little girl is a ruthless killer. This is what a classic horror should be. No blood or guts are needed to show true terror! (Cast: Gage Clarke, Jesse White, Joan Croyden)
OCTOBER 27 4:45 PM
April Showers (1948) - DRAMA
A family vaudeville act is torn apart by the father's drinking problem. I have never heard of even seen this movie, but from the description, I want to now. (Cast: Jack Carson, Ann Sothern, Robert Alda)
OCTOBER 30 12:00 PM
Berserk (1967) - HORROR
A lady ringmaster milks the publicity from a string of murders. Joan Crawford of the late 1960s was definitely not the Crawford of the MGM years. It's a great camp movie. (Cast: Joan Crawford, Ty Hardin, Diana Dors)
OCTOBER 30 8:00 PM
In The Good Old Summertime(1949) - MUSICAL
In this musical remake of The Shop Around the Corner, feuding co-workers in a small music shop do not realize they are secret romantic pen pals. This is the last great Judy Garland of the old years at MGM. (Cast: Judy Garland, Van Johnson, S. Z. "Cuddles" Sakall)
OCTOBER 31 8:00 PM
Village Of The Damned (1960) - HORROR
After a mysterious blackout, the inhabitants of a British village give birth to emotionless, super-powered offspring. Another classic horror movie that does not need blood to scare the heck out of people!
(Cast: George Sanders, Barbara Shelley, Martin Stephens)
LAS VEGAS – Tony Curtis, the Bronx tailor's son who became a 1950s movie heartthrob and then a respected actor with such films as "Sweet Smell of Success," "The Defiant Ones" and "Some Like It Hot," has died. He was 85.
The actor died about 9:25 p.m. PDT Wednesday at his Las Vegas area home of a cardiac arrest, Clark County Coroner Mike Murphy said Thursday.
In 1958, "The Defiant Ones" brought him an Academy Award nomination as best actor for his portrayal of a white racist escaped convict handcuffed to a black escapee, Sidney Poitier. The following year, he donned women's clothing and sparred with Marilyn Monroe in one of the most acclaimed film comedies ever, Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot."
His first wife was actress Janet Leigh of "Psycho" fame; actress Jamie Leigh Curtis is their daughter.
In later years, he returned to film and television as a character actor after battling drug and alcohol abuse. His brash optimism returned, and he allowed his once-shiny black hair to turn silver.
"I'm not ready to settle down like an elderly Jewish gentleman, sitting on a bench and leaning on a cane," he said at 60. "I've got a helluva lot of living to do."
He also became a painter whose canvasses sold for as much as $20,000.
"He was a fine actor ... I shall miss him," said British actor Roger Moore, who starred alongside Curtis in TV's "The Persuaders."
"He was great fun to work with, a great sense of humour and wonderful ad libs," Moore told Sky News. "We had the best of times."
He first attracted critical notice as Sidney Falco, the press agent seeking favor with a sadistic columnist, played by Burt Lancaster, in the 1957 classic "Sweet Smell of Success."
Other prestigious films followed: Stanley Kubrick's "Spartacus," "Captain Newman, M.D.," "The Vikings," "Kings Go Forth," "Operation Petticoat" and "Some Like It Hot." He also found time to do a voice acting gig as his prehistoric lookalike, Stony Curtis, in an episode of "The Flintstones."
"The Defiant Ones" remained his only Oscar-nominated role.
In 2000, an American Film Institute survey of the funniest films in history ranked "Some Like It Hot" at No. 1. Curtis — famously imitating Cary Grant's accent — and Jack Lemmon play jazz musicians who dress up as women to escape retribution after witnessing a gangland massacre.
Monroe was their co-star, and he and Lemmon were repeatedly kept waiting as Monroe lingered in her dressing room out of fear and insecurity. Curtis fumed over her unprofessionalism. When someone remarked that it must be thrilling to kiss Monroe in the film's love scenes, the actor snapped, "It's like kissing Hitler." In later years, his opinion of Monroe softened, and in interviews he praised her unique talent.
In 2002, Curtis toured in "Some Like It Hot" — a revised and retitled version of the 1972 Broadway musical "Sugar," which was based on the film. In the touring show, the actor graduated to the role of Osgood Fielding III, the part played in the movie by Joe E. Brown.
After his star faded in the late 1960s, Curtis shifted to lesser roles. With jobs harder to find, he fell into drug and alcohol addiction.
"From 22 to about 37, I was lucky," Curtis told Interview magazine in the 1980s, "but by the middle '60s, I wasn't getting the kind of parts I wanted, and it kind of soured me. ... But I had to go through the drug inundation before I was able to come to grips with it and realize that it had nothing to do with me, that people weren't picking on me."
One role during that era of struggle did bring him an Emmy nomination: his portrayal of David O. Selznick in the TV movie "The Scarlett O'Hara War," in 1980.
His health remained vigorous, though he did get heart bypass surgery in 1994.
He also had five other children. Daughters Kelly, also with Leigh, and Allegra, with second wife Christine Kaufmann, also became actresses. His other wives were Leslie Allen, Lisa Deutsch and Jill VandenBerg, whom he married in 1998.
He had married Janet Leigh in 1951, when they were both rising young stars; they divorced in 1963.
Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz in the Bronx in 1925, the son of Hungarian Jews who had emigrated to the United States after World War I. His father, Manny Schwartz, had yearned to be an actor, but work was hard to find with his heavy accent. He settled for tailoring jobs, moving the family repeatedly as he sought work.
"I was always the new kid on the block, so I got beat up by the other kids," Curtis recalled in 1959. "I had to figure a way to avoid getting my nose broken. So I became the crazy new kid on the block."
His sidewalk histrionics helped avoid beatings and led to acting in plays at a settlement house. He also grew to love movies. "My whole culture as a boy was movies," he said. "For 11 cents, you could sit in the front row of a theater for 10 hours, which I did constantly."
After serving in the Pacific during World War II and being wounded at Guam, he returned to New York and studied acting under the G.I. Bill. He appeared in summer stock theater and on the Borscht Circuit in the Catskills. Then an agent lined up an audition with a Universal-International talent scout. In 1948, at 23, he signed a seven-year contract with the studio, starting at $100 a week.
Bernie Schwartz sounded too Jewish for a movie actor, so the studio gave him a new name: Anthony Curtis, taken from his favorite novel, "Anthony Adverse," and the Anglicized name of a favorite uncle. After his eighth film, he became Tony Curtis...
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