Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder
1942 publicity still of Wilder
Born	Samuel Wilder (1906-06-22)22 June 1906 Sucha, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (present-day Sucha Beskidzka, Poland)
Died	27 March 2002(2002-03-27) (aged 95) Beverly Hills, California, United States
Occupation	Film director, producer and screenwriter
Years active	1929–1995
Spouse(s)	Judith Coppicus (1936–1946; divorced) Audrey Young (1949–2002; his death)
Children	Victoria & Vincent Wilder

Billy Wilder (22 June 1906 – 27 March 2002) was an Austrian-born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age. Wilder is one of only five people to have won Academy Awards as producer, director, and writer for the same film (The Apartment).^{[citation needed]}

Wilder became a screenwriter in the late 1920s while living in Berlin. After the rise of the Nazi Party, Wilder, who was Jewish, left for Paris, where he made his directorial debut. He relocated to Hollywood in 1933, and in 1939 he had a hit when he co-wrote the screenplay to the screwball comedy Ninotchka. Wilder established his directorial reputation with Double Indemnity (1944), a film noir he co-wrote with mystery novelist Raymond Chandler. Wilder earned the Best Director and Best Screenplay Academy Awards for the adaptation of a Charles R. Jackson story The Lost Weekend (1945), about alcoholism. In 1950, Wilder co-wrote and directed the critically acclaimed Sunset Boulevard.

From the mid-1950s on, Wilder made mostly comedies. Among the classics Wilder created in this period are the farces The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Some Like It Hot (1959), satires such as The Apartment (1960), and the drama comedy Sabrina (1954). He directed fourteen different actors in Oscar-nominated performances. Wilder was recognized with the American Film Institute (AFI) Life Achievement Award in 1986. In 1988, Wilder was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. In 1993, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. Wilder has attained a significant place in the history of Hollywood censorship for his role in expanding the range of acceptable subject matter.

Life and career

Austria and Germany

Born Samuel Wilder to a Jewish family in Sucha Beskidzka, Austria-Hungary (now Poland) to Max Wilder and Eugenia Dittler, Wilder was nicknamed Billie by his mother (he changed that to "Billy" after arriving in America). He had an elder brother, William Lee Wilder (1904-1982), who also became a screenwriter, film producer and director. His parents had a successful and well-known cake shop in Sucha Beskidzka's train station and unsuccessfully tried to persuade their son to join the family business. Soon the family moved to Vienna, where Wilder attended school. Instead of attending the University of Vienna Wilder became a journalist. To advance his career Wilder decided to move to Berlin, Germany. While in Berlin, before achieving success as a writer, Wilder allegedly worked as a taxi dancer.

After writing crime and sports stories as a stringer for local newspapers, he was eventually offered a regular job at a Berlin tabloid. Developing an interest in film, he began working as a screenwriter. He collaborated with several other tyros (with Fred Zinnemann and Robert Siodmak on the 1929 feature People on Sunday). He wrote the screenplay for the 1931 film adaptation of a novel by Erich Kästner, Emil and the Detectives. After the rise of Adolf Hitler, Wilder, a Jew, left for Paris, where he made his directorial debut with the 1934 film Mauvaise Graine. He relocated to Hollywood prior to its release.

For decades it was assumed that Wilder's mother, grandmother and stepfather died at Auschwitz, but while researching Polish and Israeli archives, his Austrian biographer Andreas Hutter found out in 2011 that this was not the case: Mother Gitla Siedlisker was murdered in 1943 in the Plaszow concentration camp (known from Schindler's List), stepfather Bernard (Berl) Siedlisker died in 1942 in the Belzec concentration camp, grandmother Balbina Baldinger in 1943 in the ghetto of Nowy Targ.

Hollywood career

After arriving in Hollywood in 1933, Wilder continued his career as a screenwriter. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1934. Wilder's first significant success was Ninotchka in 1939, a collaboration with fellow German immigrant Ernst Lubitsch. This screwball comedy starred Greta Garbo (generally known as a tragic heroine in film melodramas), and was popularly and critically acclaimed. With the byline, "Garbo Laughs!", it also took Garbo's career in a new direction. The film also marked Wilder's first Academy Award nomination, which he shared with co-writer Charles Brackett (although their collaboration on Bluebeard's Eighth Wife and Midnight had been well received). For twelve years Wilder co-wrote many of his films with Brackett, from 1938 through 1950. He followed Ninotchka with a series of box office hits in 1942, including his Hold Back the Dawn and Ball of Fire, as well as his directorial feature debut, The Major and the Minor.

With Gloria Swanson during filming of Sunset Boulevard

His third film as director, Double Indemnity (1944) was a major hit. A film noir, nominated for Best Director and Screenplay, it was co-written with mystery novelist Raymond Chandler, although the two men did not get along. Double Indemnity not only set conventions for the noir genre (such as "venetian blind" lighting and voice-over narration), but was also a landmark in the battle against Hollywood censorship. The original James M. Cain novel Double Indemnity featured two love triangles and a murder plotted for insurance money. While the book was highly popular with the reading public, it had been considered unfilmable under the Hays Code, because adultery was central to its plot. Double Indemnity is credited by some as the first true film noir, combining the stylistic elements of Citizen Kane with the narrative elements of The Maltese Falcon (1941).

During the liberation of concentration camps in 1945, the Psychological Warfare Department (PWD) of the United States Department of War produced an American propaganda documentary film directed by Billy Wilder. The film known as Death Mills, or Die Todesmühlen, was intended for German audiences to educate them about the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. For the German version, Die Todesmühlen, Hanuš Burger is credited as the writer and director, while Wilder supervised the editing. Wilder is credited with the English-language version.

Two years later, Wilder earned the Best Director and Best Screenplay Academy Awards for the adaptation of a Charles R. Jackson story The Lost Weekend (1945), the first major American film to make a serious examination of alcoholism, another difficult theme under the Production Code. In 1950, Wilder co-wrote and directed the dark and cynical Sunset Boulevard, which paired rising star William Holden with Gloria Swanson. Swanson played Norma Desmond, a reclusive silent film star who dreams of a comeback; Holden is an aspiring screenwriter who becomes a kept man. It was critically acclaimed.

In 1951, Wilder followed Sunset Boulevard with Ace in the Hole (aka The Big Carnival), a tale of media exploitation of a caving accident. The idea for the film was pitched over the phone to Wilder's secretary by Victor Desny. Desny successfully sued Wilder for breach of an implied contract in the influential California copyright case Wilder v Desny. Though a critical and commercial failure at the time, its reputation has grown over the years.

In the fifties, Wilder also directed two adaptations of Broadway plays, the prisoner of war drama Stalag 17 (1953), which resulted in a Best Actor Oscar for William Holden, and the Agatha Christie mystery Witness for the Prosecution (1957). In the mid-1950s, Wilder became interested in doing a film with one of the classic slapstick comedy acts of the Hollywood Golden Age. He first considered, and rejected, a project to star Laurel and Hardy. He then held discussions with Groucho Marx concerning a new Marx Brothers comedy, tentatively titled "A Day at the U.N." This project was abandoned when Chico Marx died in 1961.

From the mid-1950s onwards, Wilder made mostly comedies. Among the classics Wilder created in this period are the farces The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Some Like It Hot (1959), satires such as The Apartment (1960), and the romantic comedy Sabrina (1954). Wilder's humor is sometimes sardonic. In Love in the Afternoon (1957), a young and innocent Audrey Hepburn does not wish to be young or innocent with playboy Gary Cooper, and pretends to be a married woman in search of extramarital amusement. The film was Wilder's first collaboration with writer-producer I. A. L. Diamond, an association that continued until the end of both men's careers.

In 1959, United Artists released Wilder's Prohibition-era farce Some Like It Hot without a Production Code seal of approval, withheld due to the film's unabashed sexual comedy, including a central cross-dressing theme. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis play musicians who disguise themselves as women to escape pursuit by a Chicago gang. Curtis's character courts a singer played by Marilyn Monroe, while Lemmon is wooed by Joe E. Brown—setting up the film's final joke in which Lemmon reveals that his character is a man and Brown blandly replies "Well, nobody's perfect". The film's box-office success, record-breaking for a comedy, is widely considered to be one of the final nails in the coffin of the Hays code. After winning three Academy Awards for 1960's The Apartment (for Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay), Wilder's career slowed. His Cold War farce One, Two, Three (1961) featured a rousing comic performance by James Cagney. It was followed by apparently lesser films that now are of cult status, such as Irma la Douce and Kiss Me, Stupid. Wilder gained his last Oscar nomination for his screenplay The Fortune Cookie (UK: Meet Whiplash Willie) (1966). His 1970 film The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes was intended as a major roadshow release, but was heavily cut by the studio and has never been fully restored. Later films such as Fedora (1978) and Buddy Buddy (1981) failed to impress critics or the public.

After that Wilder never ceased to complain that Hollywood was making a big mistake by not giving him any films to direct. He did so at film festivals, in interviews, on television, and whenever he had the opportunity. He often hinted that he was being discriminated against, due to his age. His complaining did not help: for whatever reason, the studios were unwilling to hire him. One "consolation" which Wilder had in his later years, besides his art collection (see "Later Life," below), was the Andrew Lloyd Webber stage musical version of Sunset Boulevard.^{[citation needed]}

Directorial style

Wilder's directorial choices reflected his belief in the primacy of writing. He avoided, especially in the second half of his career, the exuberant cinematography of Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles because, in Wilder's opinion, shots that called attention to themselves would distract the audience from the story. Wilder's pictures have tight plotting and memorable dialogue. Despite his conservative directorial style, his subject matter often pushed the boundaries of mainstream entertainment. Once a subject was chosen, he would begin to visualize in terms of specific artists. His belief was that no matter how talented the actor, none were without limitations and the end result would be better if you bent the script to their personality rather than force a performance beyond their limitations. Wilder was skilled at working with actors, coaxing silent era legends Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim out of retirement for roles in Sunset Boulevard. For Stalag 17, Wilder squeezed an Oscar-winning performance out of a reluctant William Holden (Holden wanted to make his character more likeable; Wilder refused). Wilder sometimes cast against type for major parts such as Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity and The Apartment. MacMurray had become Hollywood's highest-paid actor portraying a decent, thoughtful character in light comedies, melodramas, and musicals; Wilder cast him as a womanizing schemer. Humphrey Bogart shed his tough guy image to give one of his warmest performances in Sabrina. James Cagney, not usually known for comedy, was memorable in a high-octane comic role for Wilder's One, Two, Three. Wilder coaxed a very effective, and in some ways memorable performance out of Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot.^{[citation needed]}

In total, he directed fourteen different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity, Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend, William Holden in Sunset Boulevard and Stalag 17, Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, Erich von Stroheim in Sunset Boulevard, Nancy Olson in Sunset Boulevard, Robert Strauss in Stalag 17, Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, Charles Laughton in Witness for the Prosecution, Elsa Lanchester in Witness for the Prosecution, Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, Jack Kruschen in The Apartment, Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment and Irma la Douce and Walter Matthau in The Fortune Cookie. Milland, Holden and Matthau won Oscars for their performances in Wilder films. Wilder mentored Jack Lemmon and was the first director to pair him with Walter Matthau, in The Fortune Cookie (1966). Wilder had great respect for Lemmon, calling him the hardest working actor he had ever met. Lemmon starred in seven of Wilder's films.

Wilder's work has had to meet some critical challenges. Although he is admired by many critics and filmgoers, he has not won approval from noted critic David Thomson, author of A Biographical Dictionary of Film, and other works. Thomson summarizes his attitude toward Wilder by saying, "I remain skeptical." Thomson emphasizes that, although Wilder created some brilliant films, he also directed some poor ones, especially at the end of his career. Thomson notes that critic Andrew Sarris did not approve of Wilder for a long time but then changed his attitude much later.

Wilder's films often lacked any discernible political tone or sympathies, which was not unintentional. He was less interested in current political fashions than in human nature and the issues that confronted ordinary people. He was not affected by the Hollywood blacklist, and had little sympathy for those who were. Of the blacklisted 'Hollywood Ten' Wilder famously quipped, "Of the ten, two had talent, and the rest were just unfriendly". Wilder reveled in poking fun at those who took politics too seriously. In Ball of Fire, his burlesque queen 'Sugarpuss' points at her sore throat and complains "Pink? It's as red as the Daily Worker and twice as sore." Later, she gives the overbearing and unsmiling housemaid the name "Franco". Wilder is sometimes confused with director William Wyler; the confusion is understandable, as both were German-speaking Jews with similar backgrounds and names. However, their output as directors was quite different, with Wyler preferring to direct epics and heavy dramas and Wilder noted for his comedies and film noir type dramas.

Later life

Wilder was recognized with the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1986. In 1988, Wilder was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. In 1993, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Wilder became well known for owning one of the finest and most extensive art collections in Hollywood, mainly collecting modern art. As he described it in the mid 80s, “It’s a sickness. I don’t know how to stop myself. Call it bulimia if you want – or curiosity or passion. I have some Impressionists, some Picassos from every period, some mobiles by Calder. I also collect tiny Japanese trees, glass paperweights and Chinese vases. Name an object and I collect it.” Wilder's artistic ambitions led him to create a series of works all his own. By the early 90s, Wilder had amassed a beguiling assortment of plastic-artistic constructions, many of which were made in collaboration with artist Bruce Houston. In 1993, art dealer Louis Stern, a long time friend, helped organize an exhibition of Wilder's work at his Beverly Hills gallery. The exhibition was entitled Billy Wilder’s Marché aux Puces and the Variations on the Theme of Queen Nefertete segment was an unqualified crowd pleaser. This series featured busts of the ravishing Egyptian queen wrapped a la Christo or splattered a la Jackson Pollock or sporting a Campbell's soup can in homage to Warhol.

Personal life

Wilder married Judith Coppicus on 22 December 1936. The couple had twins, Victoria and Vincent (born 1939), but Vincent died shortly after birth. They divorced in 1946.

Wilder met Audrey Young at Paramount Pictures on the set of The Lost Weekend in 1945 and they married on 30 June 1949.

Death

Wilder died in 2002 of pneumonia at the age of 95 after battling health problems, including cancer, in Los Angeles, California and was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, Los Angeles, California near Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Marilyn Monroe's crypt is located in the same cemetery. Wilder died the same day as two other comedy legends: Milton Berle and Dudley Moore. The next day, French newspaper Le Monde titled its first-page obituary, "Billy Wilder dies. Nobody's perfect", quoting the final gag line in Some Like It Hot.

Legacy

Wilder's gravestone

Wilder holds a significant place in the history of Hollywood censorship for expanding the range of acceptable subject matter. He is responsible for two of the film noir era's most definitive films in Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard. Along with Woody Allen and the Marx Brothers, he leads the list of films on the American Film Institute's list of 100 funniest American films with 5 films written and holds the honor of holding the top spot with Some Like it Hot. Also on the list are The Apartment and The Seven Year Itch which he directed, and Ball of Fire and Ninotchka which he co-wrote. The American Film Institute has ranked four of Wilder's films among their top 100 American films of the 20th century: Sunset Boulevard (no. 12), Some Like It Hot (no. 14), Double Indemnity (no. 38) and The Apartment (no. 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.

Spanish filmmaker Fernando Trueba said in his acceptance speech for the 1993 Best Non-English Speaking Film Oscar: "I would like to believe in God in order to thank him. But I just believe in Billy Wilder... so, thank you Mr. Wilder." According to Trueba, Wilder called him the day after and told him: "Fernando, it's God." French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius also thanked Billy Wilder in the 2012 Best Picture Oscar acceptance speech for The Artist by saying "I would like to thank the following three people, I would like to thank Billy Wilder, I would like to thank Billy Wilder, and I would like to thank Billy Wilder." Wilder's 12 Academy Award nominations for screenwriting were a record until 1997 when Woody Allen received a 13th nomination for Deconstructing Harry.

Filmography

Main article: Billy Wilder filmography

Awards

With eight nominations for Academy Award for Best Director, Wilder is the second most nominated director in the history of the Academy Awards, behind William Wyler. Out of these nominations, Wilder won two Oscars.

• Writers Guild of America west (WGA/W) - Laurel Award, 1957 (with Charles Brackett) and 1980 (with I.A.L. Diamond). In addition to the career awards, Wilder was nominated 15 times for WGA Screenplay awards, winning five times, despite the fact that the award was not offered until 1948.

• Directors Guild of America (DGA) - D.W. Griffith Award, 1985 (renamed the DGA Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999). In addition to the career award, Wilder was nominated eight times for the DGA Screen Director award, winning for 1960's The Apartment.

• WGAw/DGA - Preston Sturges Award, 1991

• Golden Globes: Wilder won five Golden Globes after the awards started in 1944: twice as the producer of Best Picture winners (Some Like It Hot and The Apartment); twice as a director (The Lost Weekend and Sunset Boulevard), and once as a screenwriter (Sabrina, but this award wasn't presented from 1955 to 1965, during Wilder's most successful years).

• Honorary Golden Bear at the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival (1993)."Prizes & Honours 1993". Berlinale. Retrieved 2013-01-03. </ref>

Academy Award Nominations

Year	Award	Film	Result
1939	Best Writing, Screenplay	Ninotchka	Sidney Howard – Gone with the Wind
1941	Best Writing, Screenplay	Hold Back the Dawn	Sidney Buchman and Seton I. Miller – Here Comes Mr. Jordan
	Best Writing, Original Story	Ball of Fire	Harry Segall – Here Comes Mr. Jordan
1944	Best Director	Double Indemnity	Leo McCarey – Going My Way
	Best Writing, Screenplay		Frank Butler and Frank Cavett – Going My Way
1945	Best Director	The Lost Weekend	Won
	Best Writing, Screenplay		Won
1948	Best Writing, Screenplay	A Foreign Affair	John Huston – The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
1950	Best Director	Sunset Boulevard	Joseph L. Mankiewicz – All About Eve
	Best Writing, Story and Screenplay		Won
1951	Best Writing, Story and Screenplay	Ace in the Hole	Alan Jay Lerner – An American in Paris
1953	Best Director	Stalag 17	Fred Zinnemann – From Here to Eternity
1954	Best Director	Sabrina	Elia Kazan – On the Waterfront
	Best Writing, Screenplay		George Seaton – The Country Girl
1957	Best Director	Witness for the Prosecution	David Lean – The Bridge on the River Kwai
1959	Best Director	Some Like It Hot	William Wyler – Ben-Hur
	Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium		Neil Paterson – Room at the Top
1960	Best Motion Picture	The Apartment	Won
	Best Director		Won
	Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen		Won
1966	Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen	The Fortune Cookie	Claude Lelouch – A Man and a Woman
1987	Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award		Won

Directed Academy Award performances

Year	Performer	Film	Result
Academy Award for Best Actor
1945	Ray Milland	The Lost Weekend	Won
1950	William Holden	Sunset Boulevard	Nominated
1953	William Holden	Stalag 17	Won
1957	Charles Laughton	Witness for the Prosecution	Nominated
1959	Jack Lemmon	Some Like It Hot	Nominated
1960	Jack Lemmon	The Apartment	Nominated
Academy Award for Best Actress
1944	Barbara Stanwyck	Double Indemnity	Nominated
1950	Gloria Swanson	Sunset Boulevard	Nominated
1954	Audrey Hepburn	Sabrina	Nominated
1960	Shirley MacLaine	The Apartment	Nominated
1963	Shirley MacLaine	Irma la Douce	Nominated
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
1950	Erich von Stroheim	Sunset Boulevard	Nominated
1953	Robert Strauss	Stalag 17	Nominated
1960	Jack Kruschen	The Apartment	Nominated
1966	Walter Matthau	The Fortune Cookie	Won
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
1950	Nancy Olson	Sunset Boulevard	Nominated
1957	Elsa Lanchester	Witness for the Prosecution	Nominated

Major Awards for Directed Films

Year	Film	Academy Award Noms.	Academy Award Wins	Golden Globe Noms.	Golden Globe Wins (beg. 1943)	DGA Award (beg. 1948)	WGA Award (beg. 1948)
1934	Mauvaise Graine
1942	The Major and the Minor
1943	Five Graves to Cairo	3		*
1944	Double Indemnity	7		*
1945	The Lost Weekend	7	4	*	3
1948	The Emperor Waltz	2		*			Nominated
	A Foreign Affair	2		*			Nominated
1950	Sunset Boulevard	11	3	7	4	Nominated	Won
1951	Ace in the Hole	1
1953	Stalag 17	3	1	*		Nominated	Nominated
1954	Sabrina	4	1	*	1	Nominated	Won
1955	The Seven Year Itch			*	1	Nominated	Nominated
1957	The Spirit of St. Louis	1
	Love in the Afternoon			3		Nominated	Won
	Witness for the Prosecution	6		5	1	Nominated
1959	Some Like It Hot	6	1	3	3	Nominated	Won
1960	The Apartment	10	5	4	3	Won	Won
1961	One, Two, Three	1		2			Nominated
1963	Irma la Douce	3	1	3	1		Nominated
1964	Kiss Me, Stupid
1966	The Fortune Cookie	4	1	1			Nominated
1970	The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes						Nominated
1972	Avanti!			6	1		Nominated
1974	The Front Page			3			Nominated
1978	Fedora
1981	Buddy Buddy

• -- Only Golden Globe winners reported in these years

See also

Media related to Billy Wilder at Wikimedia Commons

• Ruth Chatterton
• Billy Wilder filmography
• List of film director and actor collaborations
• David Niven
• Laurence Olivier

Literature

• Phillips, Gene D., "Some Like it Wilder" (The University Press of Kentucky: 2010)
• Armstrong, Richard, Billy Wilder, American Film Realist (McFarland & Company, Inc.: 2000)
• Dan Auiler, "Some Like it Hot" (Taschen, 2001)
• Chandler, Charlotte, Nobody's Perfect. Billy Wilder. A Personal Biography (New York: Schuster & Schuster, 2002)
• Crowe, Cameron, Conversations with Wilder (New York: Knopf, 2001)
• Guilbert, Georges-Claude, Literary Readings of Billy Wilder (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007)
• Hermsdorf, Daniel, Billy Wilder. Filme - Motive - Kontroverses (Bochum: Paragon-Verlag, 2006)
• Hopp, Glenn, Billy Wilder (Pocket Essentials: 2001)
• Hopp, Glenn / Duncan, Paul, Billy Wilder (Köln / New York: Taschen, 2003)
• Horton, Robert, Billy Wilder Interviews (University Press of Mississippi, 2001)
• Hutter, Andreas / Kamolz, Klaus, Billie Wilder. Eine europäische Karriere (Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Boehlau, 1998)
• Gyurko, Lanin A., The Shattered Screen. Myth and Demythification in the Art of Carlos Fuentes and Billy Wilder (New Orleans: University Press of the South, 2009)
• Jacobs, Jérôme, Billy Wilder (Paris: Rivages Cinéma, 2006)
• Lally, Kevin, Wilder Times: The Life of Billy Wilder (Henry Holt & Co: 1st ed edition, May 1996)
• Sikov, Ed, On Sunset Boulevard. The Life and Times of Billy Wilder (New York: Hyperion, 1999)
• Neil Sinyard & Adrian Turner, "Journey Down Sunset Boulevard" (BCW, Isle of Wight, UK, 1979)
• Tom Wood, The Bright Side of Billy Wilder, Primarily (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1969)
• Zolotow, Maurice, Billy Wilder in Hollywood (Pompton Plains: Limelight Editions, 2004)
• Hellmuth Karasek, Billy Wilder, eine Nahaufnahme (Heyne, 2002)

External links

• Billy Wilder at the Internet Movie Database
• Billy Wilder at the Internet Broadway Database
• Billy Wilder at the TCM Movie Database
• Billy Wilder Accepts the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1986 video, 6 min.
• The Films of Billy Wilder, video, 8.5 min.
• American Master - Billy Wilder
• Wilder Bibliography (via UC Berkeley)
• Billy Wilder Tribute at NPR
• Lifetime Honors - National Medal of Arts.
• Writers Guild of America, west - Laurel Award Recipients
• Directors Guild of America