CONVERSATIONS WITH BILLY WILDER: Film’s Fearless Social Satirist Liked It Hot

My profile of Billy Wilder and the program for “An Afternoon With” the legendary filmmaker that I moderated, an event sponsored by the San Diego Film Society and part of the city’s “Some Like It Hot Weekend” celebrating the 25th anniversary of the film.

“No actor can act better than the audience can imagine.” 〜Billy Wilder

By Gregory N. Joseph

BILLY WILDER, the monumentally gifted writer, director and legendary Hollywood wit, film’s greatest social satirist in whom critics found traces of Mark Twain, Bertolt Brecht, Erich von Stroheim and Ernst Lubitsch, the movies’ ultimate outsider despite being one of its most respected and honored insiders, was 77 years old when I visited him in April 1984 at his elegantly disheveled second-floor cubbyhole of an office in the famous Writers and Artists Building on the chic, bustling corner of South Santa Monica Boulevard and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

The recent awards season, highlighted by films such as the Academy Award-winning “Anora,” “Emilia Perez,” “The Brutalist,” “The Substance,” “Conclave,” “Dune: Part II” and “Wicked,” are testament to how prescient he was about the direction in which the movies were heading, as he discussed film censorship, the depiction of violence and sex on the screen, reliance on remakes at the expense of risk and innovation, how studios were spending more time worrying about business than art, and not giving audiences the credit they deserved.

After our meeting at his office for a profile I was writing, I was to serve as moderator of “An Afternoon with Billy Wilder” sponsored by the San Diego Film Society later that month at the city’s historic downtown Spreckels Theatre, where we were joined onstage by I.A.L Diamond, his second writing partner following Charles Brackett.

The theatre’s history was palpable, an especially appropriate venue for welcoming Wilder. Promoted as “the first modern commercial playhouse west of the Mississippi” with one of the largest stages ever constructed when it was built in 1912 for philanthropist John D. Spreckels to mark the opening of the Panama Canal, its Baroque-style auditorium had 1,915 seats, a number chosen to correspond with the Panama-California Exposition year, 1915. The theatre had hosted the superstars of its day, performers like Enrico Caruso, John Barrymore, Al Jolson and Will Rogers, before being converted to a movie house in 1931. Now it was jam-packed for Wilder. The audience was keenly aware of this puckish genius, celebrated as much for his unbridled wit as his landmark movies. They hung on his every word as he shared anecdote after fascinating anecdote punctuated by brusque asides that transfixed the audiences, lightning-fast verbal tsunamis that never failed to elicit prodigious gasps and surprised guffaws, rocking that grand old building to its foundation. I won’t lie: It was a challenge keeping up with him. At times like being an unsuspecting passenger in a demolition derby without a seatbelt. But what a ride.

Four years earlier, in 1980, Diamond and Wilder had been given the Writers Guild of America’s Laurel Award for career achievement in screenwriting — Wilder had previously received the Laurel Award in 1957 for his screenwriting partnership with Brackett.

Two years after our meeting, in 1986, Wilder would be awarded the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award, then in 1988 came the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, followed by Kennedy Center honors in 1990 and the National Medal of Arts in 1993.

In all, he won six Oscars, three of them for “The Apartment” — the first time anyone had won as producer, director and screenwriter on the same film.

He directed 14 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances.

The AFI has ranked four of Wilder’s works among the top 100 American films of the 20th century: “Sunset Boulevard” (№12), “Some Like It Hot” (№14), “Double Indemnity” (№38) and “The Apartment” (№93). For the tenth anniversary edition of their list, the AFI moved “Sunset Blvd” to 16, “Some Like it Hot” to 22, “Double Indemnity” to 29, and “The Apartment” to 80.

With Woody Allen and the Marx Brothers, he shares the most number of films on AFI’s 100 funniest American films list with five films written, and owns the top spot with “Some Like It Hot.”

In 1989, two of his films, “Sunset Boulevard” and “Some Like It Hot,” were among the first 25 motion pictures selected by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry, deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” and worthy of preservation. As of 2019, seven of his films graced the National Film Registry.

In 2022, Variety listed three of Wilder’s films among the 100 greatest ever made: “The Apartment” at №23, “Double Indemnity” at №29, and “Some Like It Hot” at №39.

Recently, yet another revival of a musical stage version of “Sunset Boulevard” opened on Broadway (the first time was in 1993), an Andrew Lloyd Webber take with pop vocalist Nicole Scherzinger following the likes of Glenn Close and Patti LuPone in the lead role of the dark, dangerous has-been silent-film actress Norma Desmond fixated on making a comeback at any cost, a part originated on screen by real-life silent-film megastar Gloria Swanson for whom the film ironically represented a stunning comeback of her own (her line “Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my closeup” is probably the most-remembered piece of dialogue of Swanson’s career, ” etched in cinema history and a surefire bet to be included in every classic-film retrospective).

Our “An Afternoon with Billy Wilder” was intended to be part of a 25th anniversary celebration being held in San Diego feting his classic 1959 screwball comedy, “Some Like It Hot,” which was partially shot in the area, a moment the town still, all these years later, points to with great pride.

The film’s unlikely plot revolves around two musicians (played by Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis) during the Prohibition era who disguise themselves as women and join an all-female band to escape from the mafia after stumbling across a gangland shooting (inspired by the infamous Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre). Along the way, in gender-bending turns for the ages, they become enamored of the band’s luscious singer — and should we say, ukulele player — portrayed by none other than Marilyn Monroe, in one of her best comedic performances, high satire at its best with Monroe out-Monroe-ing herself. The band’s train ride from Chicago to Miami with Lemmon-Curtis-Monroe aboard in all their splendor is itself worth the price of admission (no wonder this film is said to have helped usher the industry’s creaky Production Code out the door).

Wilder co-wrote the screenplay with Diamond. It was based on a screenplay by Robert Thoeren and Michael Logan from the 1935 French Film “Fanfare of Love.”

San Diego’s claim to fame came when the Hotel del Coronado, an iconic wooden, red-roofed Victorian beachfront hotel and resort in the city of Coronado across the bay with a glamorous reputation of its own, stood in for Miami in the story.

Opened in 1888, the “Hotel del,” as its known to locals, has been revered in books and movies and boasts a guest list featuring some of the most famous people on the planet, including presidents, royalty and a wide swatch of celebrities.

Now, during our special weekend, locals were rolling out the red carpet in an effort to fondly recall one of the most glittering moments in the hotel’s, and San Diego’s, histories.

The head of the San Diego Film Society and I anxiously trekked to Wilder’s Beverly Hills office in hopes of convincing him to take part. If he agreed, he would be the crown jewel of the entire celebration, the hands-down star attraction.

“I von’t have to dance vit the mayor’s mudder and all of that (bleep), will I — God, der von’t be speeches, vill der?” asked Wilder, a tough dervish in owl-shaped glasses, stylish beige sweater and brown slacks, as he chewed, as ever, on an eternal cigar stub as he spoke.

Once assured the mayor’s mother and daughter would be nowhere in sight and that there would be only discussion of filmmaking, he relaxed, carefully sliding a new cigar from the glass jar on his desk and revealing a fascinating side of himself, part professor, part avuncular drinking companion and that true anomaly, a great moviemaker who could slice and dice Hollywood, corporate America and even the Mob, and keep his job.

This was no ordinary filmmaker who feared rocking the boat and splashing invective on whomever might be in it.

Samuel Wilder was born on June 22, 1906, to Polish Jews in Sucha Beskidzka, a small town which at the time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was nicknamed “Billie” by his mother, who was reportedly inspired by the Buffalo Bill Wild West Shows she saw during a brief stay in New York, and he changed the spelling to “Billy” upon his arrival in America.

Billy’s parents owned a cake shop in Sucha’s train station that spun off into a chain of railroad cafes. His father moved the family to Krakow to accept a job managing a hotel, then to Vienna. He died when Billy was 22 years old, and Billy, uninterested in following the family business or attending the University of Vienna, became a journalist.

In 1926, Wilder met and interviewed Paul Whiteman, an immensely popular American band leader of the day, who liked the young writer enough that he took him with the band to Berlin, where Wilder made more contacts in entertainment.

At first working as a stringer writing crime and sports articles, Wilder next landed a regular job with a Berlin tabloid. He then became interested in the movies (his older brother was a filmmaker) and found work as a screenwriter, from 1929 to 1933 producing a dozen short German films.

When Hitler rose to power, he moved to Paris and made his directorial debut with the 1934 film “Mauvaise Graine” (Wilder’s mother, grandmother and stepfather perished in the Holocaust). He relocated to Hollywood in 1933 before the film’s release, and found work as a screenwriter.

His first real success came with “Ninotchka,” a romantic comedy starring Greta Garbo made in collaboration with fellow German immigrant Lubitsch, who was known for his elegance and refinement (not to mention his deft way of circumventing the censors with sophisticated innuendo).

Lubitsch was an enormous influence on Wilder, so much so that for years after Lubitsch’s death in 1947 at the age of 55, a sign reading “How would Lubitsch do it?” famously hung on the wall of Wilder’s office.

Using the tagline “Garbo laughs” as playful counterpoint to the actress’ prior screen persona in somber melodramas, “Ninotchka” changed the course of her career and brought Wilder his first Academy Award nomination (shared with co-writer Brackett, with whom Wilder would work from 1938 to 1950).

After this film came a string of successes for Wilder, then in 1942, he made his American directorial debut with “The Major and the Minor,” a farcical romantic comedy starring Ray Milland and Ginger Rogers (fresh off her Oscar-winning Best Actress performance in the drama “Kitty Foyle” and eager for a change of pace). It was a critical and box office success hailed for its playfulness, effervescence and style.

Wilder’s third American directorial effort, 1944’s “Double Indemnity,” was something diametrically different: a dark, deadly serious crime film noir. Co-written by Wilder and novelist Raymond Chandler, a founder of the hard-boiled-detective literary movement, it starred Fred MacMurray as an insurance salesman and Barbara Stanwyck as a conniving wife who methodically plan (and carry out) her husband’s murder.

A landmark in the film noir genre, establishing a number of cinematic conventions now taken for granted, it was extremely bold for its day and an enormous box office hit. It earned seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Director, Screenplay and Actress, and is now considered a classic. Interestingly, the contentious writing collaboration between Wilder and the uber-idiosyncratic Chandler, in which they battled Hollywood censors and frequently each other to bring the controversial story to the screen, spawned a 2014 off-Broadway comedy, “Billy and Ray.” (The play, directed by Garry Marshall — who created the television sitcom “Happy Days” and directed films such as “Pretty Woman” and “The Princess Diaries” — was widely panned.)

Then, in 1945, Wilder, with characteristic boldness, changed course yet again. This time, he confronted a subject society all too often preferred to make light of, shrug off, or ignore altogether: alcoholism. “The Lost Weekend,” directed by Wilder from a screenplay by him and his writing partner Brackett based on Charles R. Jackson’s novel of the same name, was the first major American film to deal seriously with the subject.

Starring Milland and Jane Wyman, it was raw and hard-hitting, and a critical and box-office success. It not only shared the top prize at the first Cannes Film Festival, the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film, and won the festival’s Best Actor award for Milland, it also captured Academy Awards for Best Picture, Director, Screenplay and Actor (once again, for Milland). (In 2011, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry for “its uncompromising look at the devastating effects of alcoholism” that “melded an expressionistic film-noir style with documentary realism to immerse viewers in the harrowing experience of an aspiring New York writer willing to do almost anything for a drink.”)

Wilder was now solidly part of the Hollywood firmament, known for his wit, innovation — and courage. No subject, including Hollywood itself, was off-limits.

One famous story exposing his rich vein of contempt for power and anything approaching censorship involved a private screening Paramount had arranged for “Sunset Boulevard,” the 1950 black comedy noir Wilder co-wrote and directed that exposed the dark underbelly of Hollywood that Tinseltown preferred be left unacknowledged and undiscussed.

In attendance was the feared and often loathed MGM co-founder Louis B. Mayer, who reportedly blurted to anyone within earshot after the closing credits, “You have disgraced the industry that made and fed you! You should be tarred and feathered and run out of Hollywood!”

Upon learning of the slight Wilder didn’t hesitate, searching out Mayer and offering an unmistakable response that required little interpretation: “I am Mr. Wilder, and go f*** yourself!”

When Wilder began his Hollywood ascent as a writer, he came up the hard way, initially residing in what amounted to a broom closet at the Chateau Marmont Hotel, an establishment (still) located on, appropriately enough, Sunset Boulevard (which perhaps had something to do with his 1950 black-comedy film of the same name lambasting Hollywood).

By the time of his confrontation with Mayer, he was a respected, and busy, filmmaker of the first rank. During our conversations, he lamented that Hollywood now was a different kettle of fish, and not in a good way.

“When we did films, we just did them — it was no big deal, it was no big thing to make two, three, four movies a year,” Wilder explained. “Now all of Hollywood is making 50 a year. Now you have to guarantee financing — you spend more time writing the contract than the script. I never talked about money in those days. You worked at MGM, for example, and there was all the money in the world.”

Wilder had another bone or two to pick with filmmakers of the day. He thought the Hollywood in which we now sat not only had misread, but was abusing, the concept of artistic freedom, crossing the lines of good taste and social responsibility with frequency. He also found it lacking in original product.

“I’m against any form of censorship,” he stressed, “but it’s being taken advantage of. We’ve lifted the cycle of violence. Instead of crashing a car once, we do it 114 times per film. We show everything when someone dies.

“We make pictures about people taking the law in their own hands, and if you continue to remake all the hits of yesterday, you’re standing still. What’s important in making film is what you leave to the audience’s imagination.”

Then he offered an example that he himself had used in depicting a murder, one of the most famously wrenching such scenes ever committed to celluloid — achieved without showing a thing.

“In ‘Double Indemnity,’” he said, “I focused on Barbara Stanwyck’s face while Fred MacMurray is in the back seat of her car strangling her husband. I will tell you it’s better to film the back of a person’s head when some human crisis is taking place. Let the audience think what is going on — they know, they know. No actor can act better than the audience can imagine.”

Wilder believed filmmakers would do well to borrow a page from his mentor Lubitsch, with whom he collaborated not only on Garbo’s “Ninotchka” but also “Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife,” the latter a romantic comedy starring Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert. He co-authored the scripts for both.

“Lubitsch was the first filmmaker who could subtly make a point — he didn’t hit you over the head with something,” Wilder said, puffing on his cigar with the assured elegance of a Hollywood legend who had paid the price.

“He supposed the audience was intelligent, and everything he did was innuendo. He played a game with the audience. They loved that and played along with him. His movies were more fun and more erotic than all the movies with nudity now.”

After I finished my visit with Wilder, I drove to the nearby office of “Some Like it Hot” co-star Lemmon, an Academy Award-winning actor who, with absolutely no prompting at all, not only described but hilariously re-created the serendipitous moment in 1958 that he ran into Wilder and wound up with a role in the film.

“I was having dinner with my future wife (actress Felicia Farr) at Dominick’s (a popular West Hollywood restaurant and celebrity haunt) one Sunday evening and Billy happened to be there,” Lemmon recounted while seated behind his desk, effortlessly slipping into character as the jauntiest and most skilled kind of anecdotalist, his two Oscars gleaming in the bookcase over his shoulder, the first as Best Supporting Actor for 1955’s “Mister Roberts” and the second as Best Actor for 1973’s “Save the Tiger” — making him the first person to pull off victories in both categories.

Considered one of the great tragicomic performers of his era with enormous range, Lemmon starred in more than 60 films and was nominated for an Academy Award a stunning eight times, winning twice. Two of those nominations, as Best Actor, came in films directed by Wilder — “Some Like It Hot” and “The Apartment.”

Lemmon’s storytelling was the highest form of performance art, and in this instance, it was clearly dedicated to a friend for whom he palpably had great respect. He relished telling of that chance meeting that led to “Some Like It Hot,” an account he would repeat, word for word, six year later to a packed auditorium and a television audience numbering in the millions in beginning his introduction of Wilder when the director received Kennedy Center honors.

“I didn’t know Billy very well then,” Lemmon continued to me, warming to the occasion as if an unseen director had shouted “Action!” He went on: “I had seen him at various functions and said hello, that was about all, but was very impressed with his work.

“Well, Billy happened to be there at the same restaurant and saw me and asked me to stop by his table on the way out, that he had something to ask me. So I drop by his table, and Billy says in that thick German accent of his, ‘Gunna do dis film about two guys who dress up as women and join an all-girls band to hide out because dey’ve seen da St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. You’d be von of the two guys in drag — vanna do it?’ In 20 seconds, I had the whole plot!

“I’d never taken a picture without seeing a script first, but I did then. When I got the script a week or so later, it was just a beautiful thing. Just perfect.”

It was a momentous decision for Lemmon.

In all, “Some Like it Hot” was nominated for six Academy Awards: for Lemmon, Wilder (as both director and screenwriter, the latter with Diamond), cinematography, art direction and costume design, winning for the latter. It’s now considered a classic.

Lemmon ultimately worked on seven films with Wilder over the course of 32 years in what is now regarded as one of the screen’s most productive and memorable actor-director collaborations. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the chance restaurant encounter with Wilder changed the trajectory of Lemmon’s career.

Later, onstage with me, Wilder lived up to his reputation as one of Hollywood’s great raconteurs and piercing wits. At one point during our onstage chat, he gently if firmly interrupted me, addressing me with the tone of a favorite but affectionally annoyed uncle who utters the truth so you won’t further embarrass yourself: “By da vay — yer French is terrible!” (Duly noted. And full disclosure: It is.)

One of the anecdotes Wilder told (Lemmon’s imitation of the great director was spot on) involved his idea in “The Seven Year Itch” to have Marilyn Monroe’s skirt blown up by a gust of air from a New York street grating, a scene that transcended Hollywood and become a defining image of American culture in the 1950s.

Monroe’s then-husband, baseball great Joe DiMaggio, Wilder remembered, was on the set at the time the scene was shot.

I inquired as to what DiMaggio’s reaction was. “Vat vould yur reaction be if I blew up yer wife’s skirt?” Wilder shot back. DiMaggio, he confided, was infuriated and “slapped Marilyn around that night at home.”

That filming took place on Sept. 15, 1954. Monroe and DMaggio divorced just weeks later, in October. Their marriage had lasted all of 274 days.

Wilder was surprisingly protective of Monroe, even as he described having problems working around her infamous tardiness and myriad psychological issues to produce an acceptable performance.

“Tony Curtis told me kissing Monroe was like kissing Hitler — dat vasn’t very nice, I didn’t think,” Wilder said quietly, his voice trailing off. (Monroe died in 1962 of a barbiturate overdose. Whether it was suicide, unintentional — or something more sinister — remains a subject of debate. Conspiracy theories abound.)

After our stage presentation concluded, dignitaries and fans jammed the theatre’s green room.

Much to my surprise, the legendary filmmaker wended his way through the crowd and sought me out as I stood in a corner talking to one of the event’s organizers. I had my back turned, and Wilder tapped me politely on the shoulder. As I swiveled around slowly and recognized him, he leaned forward on his cane, looked at me through trademark thick glasses that magnified his eyes into warm, penetrating saucers, and chirped brightly, “Dat vas fun! Let’s do it again some day!” I wish I had taken him up on it.

Billy Wilder died a generation later, on March 27, 2002. He was 95.

Fittingly enough, a frisky, Wilderesque quip is etched just below his name on the square, dark green marble tombstone that marks his final resting place at Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

You can almost hear the legendary filmmaker’s thick dialect, the one his friend and sometime muse Jack Lemmon was so fond of good-naturedly mimicking, as he uttered the words: “I’m a writer — but then, nobody’s perfect.”

It echoes, of course, the famous line delivered with cheerful gusto by Joe E. Brown at the conclusion of “Some Like it Hot” after Jack Lemmon’s frantic character in drag reveals he’s really a man, a storied denouement widely regarded as one of the finest payoff moments in all of movie history.

Billy Wilder went out in style. Close to perfection.

Billy Wilder’s wit and gift for keen social commentary were on full display early. In this June 1927 article, Wilder writes about his experiences as a dancing assistant for hire at a hotel. He was just shy of his twenty-sixth birthday.

Billy Wilder’s listing in the lobby of the famous Writers and Artists Building, where his office was located on the chic, bustling corner of South Santa Monica Boulevard and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

Billy Wilder had this sign in his office asking, “How would Lubitsch do it?” — a reminder of how his mentor used a deceptively light touch in his films to get his point across.

The 1939 romantic comedy “Ninotchka” was Billy Wilder’s first real success. Co-produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch, who would become an enormous influence on Wilder, it was co-written by Wilder, Charles Brackett and Walter Reisch from a story idea by Melchior Lengyel (“Russian girl saturated with Bolshevist ideals goes to fearful, capitalistic, monopolistic Paris. She meets romance and has an uproarious good time. Capitalism not so bad, after all.”). It starred Great Garbo in the title role alongside an exquisitely elegant Melvyn Douglas. Her first comedy, its ad line was “Garbo laughs,” a play on the one used for her first talkie film, 1930’s “Anna Christie” (“Garbo talks”). The film was nominated for four Academy Awards (Outstanding Production, Best Actress for Garbo — her third and final Oscar nomination — and Best Story and Best Screenplay). It became the basis of the 1955 Broadway musical “Silk Stockings” and the 1957 film version of the same name starring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charrisse. Receiving rave reviews upon its release and since hailed as one of the greatest films of all time, cited as a favorite by many noted filmmakers, it was selected for the National Film Registry in 1990.

“Double Indemnity,” a 1944 film directed by Billy Wilder about a crooked life insurance salesman who conspires with a woman to kill her husband, has a screenplay written by Wilder and novelist Raymond Chandler from James M. Cain’s novel of the same name. The film, which helped set the standard for film noir and is considered one of the greatest films of all time, was nominated for seven Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress [Barbara Stanwyck], Best Screenplay, Best Black and White Cinematography, Best Score, and Best Sound). Wilder cited the scene in which the insurance salesman (played by Fred MacMurray) kills the husband in the backseat of a car driven by Stanwyck’s character as an example of not showing grisly acts on the screen but letting the audience use their imagination. “They know, they know,” he said. “No actor can act as well as the audience can imagine.” This scene (below), where Stanwyck and MacMurray plan the murder while standing in the baby food section of a grocery store, is pure Wilder in its biting sense of irony.

In 2014, the play “Billy and Ray” explored the tense relationship between Billy Wilder and novelist Raymond Chandler when they collaborated in 1943 to bring the crime drama “Double Indemnity” to the screen. The play, written by Mike Bencivenga and directed by Garry Marshall, got points for seizing on a fascinating bit of Hollywood history — “Double Indemnity” is widely acknowledged as classic film noir — but received negative reviews overall, with critics pointing to the writing and acting.

Billy Wilder, at right, with novelist Raymond Chandler while they working on “Double Indemnity.” The look on Wilder’s face says it all.

“The Lost Weekend” (1945), directed by Billy Wilder from a screenplay he co-wrote with Charles Brackett from Charles R. Jackson’s novel of the same name, is about an alcoholic writer (played by Ray Milland) that was an unusually frank look at disease for the time that holds up remarkably well. Nominated for seven Academy Awards, it won four: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Milland) and Best Adapted Screenplay. The film shared the Grand Prize at the first Cannes Film festival, one of only four films (along with 1955’s “Marty,” 2019’s “Parasite” and 2024’s “Anora”) to win both Best Picture at the Academy Awards and at Cannes. In 2011, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

“Sunset Boulevard,” a pitch-black 1950 dark comedy-drama directed by Billy Wilder and co-written by him with Charles Brackett and D.M. Marshman Jr., unflinchingly explores the ugly underbelly of Hollywood in telling the story of a screenwriter (played by William Holden) fighting to get his big break who is drawn into the web of an unbalanced former silent-film star (brilliantly portrayed by Gloria Swanson, who was actually a silent film star). With a head-spinning supporting cast that included Cecil B. DeMille, Erich von Stroheim, Buster Keaton, H.B. Warner, Hedda Hopper, Jack Webb, Nancy Olson and Fred Clark, the film was so frank in its depiction of Hollywood that it — and Wilder — drew the ire of MGM film mogul Louis B. Mayer. Nominated for 11 Academy Awards (including Best Picture, Best Director and all four acting categories), it won three (for Best Screenplay, Best Black-and-White Art Direction, and Best Scoring). In 1989, it was selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry, and in 1998, The American Film Institue ranked it on its list of the 100 best American films of the 20th century, placing it at №12.

Billy Wilder on the set of “Sunset Boulevard” looking at a piece of film with Gloria Swanson and, among others, Erich von Stroheim (standing, far left) and William Holden (standing just behind him),

Billy Wilder produced, directed and co-wrote the 1951 film “Ace in the Hole” (also known as “The Big Carnival”), a drama about media exploitation far ahead of its time that starred a never-better Kirk Douglas as a down-at-the-heel newspaper reporter who exploits a tragedy in which a man is trapped in a cave as a way of trying to win back his job on a big paper. It marked the first time Wilder served as writer, producer and director on a film project, and his first after splitting with writing partner Charles Brackett. Although it was Wilder’s first critical and commercial failure, he often cited it as a favorite. It’s easy to see why: Its remarkable prescience anticipated a trend toward media exploitation in society that is all too evident today, which in turn has been a contributing factor in its growing stature over the years, culminating with its being chosen for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2017. Paramount Pictures changed the title of the film to “The Big Carnival” without Wilder’s knowledge or approval in an effort to help its box office appeal, a name under which it occasionally appears. As a footnote, the film brought a plagiarism lawsuit against Wilder, which he brought up himself at our stage presentation and was anxious to discuss, an allegation he vehemently denied.

“Stalag 17” was a 1953 comedy-drama produced and directed by Billy Wilder based on the 1951 Broadway play of the same name focusing on a group of American POWs held by the Germans in World War II who suspect one of their own to be an informant. The film brought Academy Award nominations for Wilder as Best Director, William Holden as Best Actor and Robert Strauss as Best Supporting Actor, with Holden winning. The film — with an exceptionally deep and eclectic supporting cast including Otto Preminger, Don Taylor, Harvey Lembeck, Peter Graves and Neville Brand — was a showcase for Wilder’s brilliance in interweaving character and plot in a sharp, believable way framed by biting insight into human nature under duress. That Wilder himself had fled the Nazis gave it an unmistakable edge.

“Sabrina” was a 1954 romantic comedy produced, directed and co-written by Billy Wilder (with Samuel Taylor and Ernest Lehman, based on Taylor’s 1953 play “Sabrina Fair”) starring Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn and William Holden. It was Wilder’s last film with Paramount Pictures after 12 years with the studio. The film, an elegant reminder of Wilder’s gift for wit and using the “Lubitsch touch,” was nominated for six Academy Awards (including for Wilder as director and co-screenwriter and Hepburn as Best Actress), winning for Best Costume Design (Black and White) for Edith Head. A popular and critically praised film upon its release, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2002.

Billy Wilder directs Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in a scene for “Sabrina.”

“The Seven Year Itch,” a 1955 romantic film comedy starring Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell about a husband who has a wandering eye after seven years of marriage, had a screenplay co-written by Wilder and George Axelrod from Axelrod’s 1952 play of the same name. The scene in the movie when Monroe has her white skirt blown up as she stands over a New York street grating transcended the film and became one of the most iconic images of the 1950s, defining American culture at the time. During our conversations, Wilder confided that Monroe’s husband at the time, baseball star Joe DiMaggio, was standing off-camera watching it being shot and was furious. “He slapped her around at home that night,” Wilder said. Monroe and DiMaggio divorced weeks later, after just nine months of marriage.

The 1957 courtroom drama “Witness for the Prosecution,” based on a 1953 play of the same name by Agatha Christie, featured a script by Wilder and Harry Kurnitz, with an adaptation by Larry Marcus. The film — starring Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich and Tyrone Power (pictured below with Wilder) — was a huge box office and critical success, bringing six Academy Award nominations, including for Best Picture. It also earned five Golden Globe Awards nominations, winning Best Supporting Actress for Elsa Lanchester. The American Film Institute named the film the sixth-best courtroom drama ever.

Billy Wilder’s 1957 romantic comedy “Love in the Afternoon,” which he produced and directed, was a fascinating flop starring Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn and Maurice Chevalier. The screenplay by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond (the first of their 12 screenplays together) from Claude Anet’s 1920 novel “Ariane, jeune fille russe” (“Ariane, Young Russian Girl”), is about a middle-aged playboy-business magnate (Cooper), known for his philandering ways, who winds up in a relationship with the 20ish daughter (Hepburn) of a French private detective (Maurice Chevalier) who has been hired to investigate him. One of the most glaring problems was that Cooper was too old for Hepburn, and looked it. Audiences were unconvinced. Still, it’s a charming movie, punctuated by the usual Wilder wit, location shooting in Paris, and a hauntingly beautiful score that includes “Fascination,” “C’est si bon” and the title theme with lyrics by the legendary Johnny Mercer. Chevalier recorded a voiceover-ending narration for American audiences letting them know that the Cooper-Hepburn characters had married after running off together. Still, even Wilder’s rare flops are better than most so-called hits.

The 1959 screwball comedy “Some Like It Hot” — produced, directed and co-written by Billy Wilder — is about two musicians (played by Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis) who witness a murder during the Prohibition era and disguise themselves as women, joining an all-female band to escape Chicago mobsters — a band featuring a sexy vocalist and ukulele player (Marilyn Monroe) with whom they become obsessed. The screenplay, written with Wilder’s collaborator at the time, I.A.L. Diamond, was based on a screenplay by Robert Thoeren and Michael Logan from the 1935 French Film “Fanfare of Love.” A critical and box-office success, the film earned six Academy Award nominations, including for Best Actor (Lemmon), Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, winning for Best Costume design. In 1989, it was chosen for preservation by the National Film Registry. Wilder, though acknowledging the difficulties of working with Monroe, who was known for her insecurities and tardiness, was surprisingly protective of her. “Tony Curtis said kissing her was like like kissing Hitler,” Wilder told me. “I didn’t think that was very nice.” During filming, Wilder arranged for her to stay at the Hotel del Coronado, the iconic hotel near San Diego where they were shooting, as a hedge against her backstage challenges (Wilder and Monroe are pictured below on the beach near the hotel during a break in filming as the crew sets up).

Billy Wilder produced, directed and co-wrote (with I.A.L. Diamond) the romantic 1960 comedy-drama “The Apartment,” a biting satire about corporate life starring Jack Lemmon as an insurance clerk who lets his superiors use his apartment for their trysts. The film — also starring Shirley MacLaine (as an elevator operator in his office building with whom he falls in love, unaware she is having an affair with the head of personnel at his company [played with icy nonchalance by Fred MacMurray]). The film was a commercial success that drew praise from some critics, but was attacked by others for its depiction of infidelity and adultery. One of the top grossing films of the year, it was nominated for a whopping 10 Academy Awards (including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor [Lemmon], Best Actress [MacLaine] and Best Supporting Actor [Jack Kruschen]). It won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Art Direction and Best Editing (Wilder became the first person to win the award as producer, director and screenwriter on the same film). Lemmon and MacLaine won Golden Globe Awards for their performances. The hit 1968 Broadway musical “Promises,” Promises” by Burt Bacharach, Hal David and Neil Simon was based on the film. Regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, in 1994 it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Billy Wilder’s 1961 film “One, Two, Three” was a “political comedy” set in West Berlin during the Cold War that he directed from a screenplay he co-wrote with I.A.L. Diamond from the 1929 one-act Hungarian play “Egy, ketto, harom” by Ferenc Molnar (with shades of the 1939 film “Ninotchka,” which was co-written by Wilder, thrown in). The fast-paced dialogue and James Cagney’s skill at delivering it are much of the show and, truth to tell, drew much of the attention (and audiences). The story is about an ambitious Coca-Cola executive (Cagney) hoping for a huge promotion who is assigned to West Berlin, where he is saddled with looking after the boss’s flaky teenage daughter (beautifully played by Pamela Tiffin). Cagney’s last film until he appeared in “Ragtime” 20 years later, it’s worth watching for the acting master-class put on by this all-time screen great, still very much on his game at a later stage in his career (Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman cited Cagney and his energetic approach to roles as a chief influence on his own acting style). Cagney “was the whole picture,” Wilder later admitted, and his lightning-fast performance was intended to make up for lapses in the humor. An interesting footnote: The movie was shot in Germany, and filming actually was taking place in Berlin when the Berlin Wall was constructed. “One, Two, Three,” caused international ripples and brand jockeying by Coke and rival Pepsi Cola.

“Irma La Duce,” a 1963 romantic comedy directed by Billy Wilder from a screenplay that he co-wrote with I.A.L. Diamond, adapted from the French stage musical of he same name, re-teamed “The Apartment” co-stars Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, who played the title character (the film was originally intended for Marilyn Monroe in that role, which would have reunited her with Wilder and Lemmon after their hit “Some Like It Hot,” but after her death in 1962, MacLaine was cast). A farce about a policeman who falls in love with a prostitute, the film boasts a wonderfully zany mix of supporting players as well as some recognizable future stars in uncredited bit parts. The fifth-highest grossing film of 1963, it pulled in over $25 million at the North American box office against a $5 million budget, and brought three Academy Award nominations (Best Original Score, Best Color Cinematography, and Best Actress for MacLaine), with Andre Previn winning for his score. MacLaine won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical. The film earned mostly positive reviews, for Wilder’s clever satire and the performances of Lemmon and MacLaine whose continued onscreen chemistry was undeniable.

Actor William Holden and Billy Wilder were dear friends, with Holden starring in four of Wilder’s films over the course of his career — “Sunset Boulevard” (1950), “Stalag 17” (1953, which brought Holden the Academy Award as Best Actor and established him as a top-ranked star), “Sabrina” (1954), and “Fedora” (1978). Holden died in 1981 at the age of 63. According to the Los Angeles County Coroner’s office, he slipped on a rug while drunk and bled to death after hitting his head on a bedside table. “I didn’t think Bill Holden would be killed by a nightstand,” Wilder said to me during one of our conversations.

Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis helping Billy Wilder celebrate his American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award in 1986.

Billy Wilder died of pneumonia at the age of 95 on March 27, 2002, and was buried at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary, located at 1218 Glendon Avenue in the Westwood area of Los Angeles. The inscription on his tombstone (“I’m a writer — but then, nobody’s perfect”) and the headline of his front-page obituary in the French newspaper Le Monde (“Billy Wilder is dead. Nobody is perfect”) both referred to the famous closing quip uttered by Joe E. Brown in “Some Like it Hot,” considered one of the greatest last lines in film history.