User:Georgiawilliams94/sandbox
Pre-Production
[edit]Billy Wilder wrote the script for the film Some Like it Hot.[1] The plot is based on a screenplay by Robert Thoeren and Michael Logan from the French film Fanfares of Love. (fr)(1935)[2]. However, the original script for Fanfares of Love was untraceable so, Walter Mirisch found a copy of the German remake Fanfaren der Liebe. He bought the rights to the script and Wilder worked with this to produce a new story.[3] Some Like It Hot is often seen as a remake of Fanfares of Love, as both films follow the story of two musicians in search of work. [4]
Some Like It Hot was not the first time that Wilder worked with costume comedy: His first American movie was The Major and the Minor, where Ginger Rogers dressed as a 12-year-old to get a cheaper train ticket.[2]
Marilyn Monroe worked for 10% of the gross in excess of $4 million, Tony Curtis for 5% of the gross over $2 million and Billy Wilder 17.5% of the first million after breakeven and 20% thereafter.[3]
The Florida segment, at the fictitious "Seminole Ritz", was filmed at the Hotel Del Coronado in Coronado, California.[4]
The studio hired famed aerialist and female impersonator Barbette to coach Lemmon and Curtis on gender illusion for the film.[5]
Tony Curtis is frequently quoted as saying that kissing Marilyn Monroe was like "kissing Hitler". However, during a 2001 interview with Leonard Maltin, Curtis stated that he had never made this claim.[6] In his 2008 autobiography, Curtis notes that he did make the statement to the film crew, but it was meant in a joking manner.[7] During his appearance at the Jules Verne Festival in France in 2008, Curtis claimed on the set of Laurent Ruquier's TV show that he and Monroe were lovers in the late 1940s when they were first struggling for recognition in films.
Joe E. Brown was not the original choice for the role of Osgood. It was not until Wilder and Diamond heard him at a Los Angeles Dodgers game that the idea entered their minds. As Wilder remembers, "There was a loudspeaker on the field behind home plate, and people talking, and now comes the next speaker and it's Joe E. Brown. And I said, 'That's our guy, that's our guy!' Nobody ever thought of him."
The famous final line of the film, "Well, nobody's perfect," was suggested by Diamond, and was supposed to be a placeholder until Wilder and Diamond could come up with what they hoped would be a much better line. As revealed in "Conversations with Billy Wilder", a book of interviews between Billy Wilder and Cameron Crowe, Wilder said to Diamond, "Look, let's go back to your line, 'Nobody's perfect.' Let's send it to the mimeograph department so that they have something, and then we're going to really sit down and make a real funny last line."