Billy Wilders birthday... Has there been a filmmaker more consistently excellent, commercially and artistically? More loved?

Sondheim and Burt Shevelove were writing a musical adaptation of Sunset Boulevard for Angela Lansbury. They got as far as a detailed outline for the whole show, and a musically complete first scene when Sondheim ran across Wilder at a party and described his latest project. Wilder replied that the story could only be an opera because it was about a fallen queen. I'm sure there were other reasons, but Sondheim and Shevelove abandoned their project.

Before Wilder became a director, he was a successful screenwriter with his writing partner I.A.L. Diamond. One of their most popular films was the wonderful "Midnight" starring Claudette Colbert as a chorus girl who has been successfully passing herself off as a Duchess. Directed by the fabulous Mitchell Leisen. At a grand ball, she sees someone enter who will end her charade and she laughs while dancing off with John Barrymore "Well, every Cinderella has her midnight!"

It's a very useful line.

Interesting article in today's Observer newspaper about his early years in Berlin and Austria and how it framed his later films.

Some Like It Hot

Comedy genius! Probably the movie I've rewatched more than any other. Brilliant script and story and wonderful performances by Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe.

Kiss Me Stupid is hard to figure. It's either very good or very bad and I'm still not sure which.

Billy WILDER's birthday. Bill Wilders is someone we don't know

J'adore Avanti. I know that's considered to be a lesser Wilder but that's the movie that inspired me to visit Campania and fall in love with that region. The only thing in that film I could live without is the sight of Jack Lemmon's saggy naked ass.

The only two of his films I hate with passion are Ace in the Hole (which is ruined by Douglas' smug performance) and the unbelievably dull and stagy The Seven Year Itch.

Ace in the Hole is among his best r7, so ahead of its time.

Irma la douce was like Avanti a wonderfully light romp. Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon were never better.

Kiss Me Stupid is wonderful if I recall. With Kim Novak?

Of course it’s Sunset Boulevard.

Both Sunset Boulevard and Some Like It Hot are among my desert island films, and Double Indemnity is an eternal favorite of mine as well.

As an Austrian, I also respect Wilder for not trying to add a "von" to his surname, like the Austrian expats Sternberg and Stroheim before him (although by the 1930s, that may have been harder to do than in Stroheim's time).

Double indemnity , great screenplay co-written by Raymond Chandler. Will have to watch Some Like It Hot. It always seemed extremely corny but should be worth watching for Tony Curtis’s Cary Grant impersonation.

Wilder made some wonderful films.

Some Like It Hot is a great film to watch at Christmas.

Some like it hot and sunset boulevard are the only two billy wilder films dl rubes know about.

Billy Wilder can never be forgiven for Buddy, Buddy.

Pure shite

And Fedora was godawful.

Thank God Marlene and Faye turned it down (or maybe I wish they had done it)

Wilder's brother-in-law would come tan in the West Hollywood establishment I worked at circa 1996-00. Snagged me an autographed copy of the book about Boulevard from Movie to Musical. Took fucking forever to get.

And then, Billy died.

I was gonna say Rich and Famous lol, but then I realized that was George Cukor.

Surely he's up there with Wilder since he has even more iconic films to his credit.

Some Like It Hot was inducted in 1989 into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. The Writers Guild of America ranked the film's screenplay the 9th greatest ever.

The screenplay was indeed brilliant, everything fits, great pacing, very funny dialogue. There is a 'making of' it's worth checking out too.

It's funny that the studio considered Sinatra for the Daphne role but Wilder thought Sinatra was too much trouble. He had worked with Monroe before on The 7 Year Itch, but didn't have a problem doing so again for Some Like It Hot.

No love for Best Picture, Best Director & Best Original Screenplay winner, THE APARTMENT??

Fedora is far from godawful. That crazy plot twist and the Greek scenery alone make it worth watching. But it would be great to see someone other than that bland Swiss chick in the title role.

Unfortunately Wilder was a major dickhead in real life. Apparently after Tony Curtis' son died of an overdose he sent Tony a telegram saying: "Like father, like son."

Did Tony Curtis tell this story R23? He was a known liar. He still insisted he didn't say 'Kissing Marilyn is like kissing Hitler' even though numerous people on the set confirmed he in fact did say it..

I thought "The Apartment" was beautifully directed and photographed, but the script was like an extended, middling sit-com. Fred McMurray was good, but the rest of the cast hammed it up.

I enjoyed Cold War era "One, Two, Three." with James Cagney as a Coca-Cola rep in divided Berlin.

"Otto spelled backwards is Otto!" And he was pretty hot.

The best part of Fedora was Holden's VO in the end. It was pure Wilder.

It's interesting that same director made one of the best comedies of all time and of the best dramas of all time. Incredible talent.

I legitimately hate Ace In The Hole, and I am rather cool on The Apartment his entire Jack Lemmon oeuvre because I cannot stand Jack Lemmon.

Sunset Boulevard and The Major And The Minor are the shit though.

The Apartment is pretty much a perfect film. Closely followed by Some Like It Hot, Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard. (Very closely followed.) And Ball of Fire is a great screenplay.

Double Indemnity is forever on my top 10 list, and Some Like It Hot is not far behind.

He was brilliant in so many ways, with both Brackets and Diamond.

Apart from his numerous masterpieces, I like "A Foreign Affair."

I avoid "Sabrina" and "Irma la Douche," both of which are tedious (not quite completely his fault), and the mid-1960s comedies after "The Apartment."

Even his second tier films like The Lost Weekend, Stalag 17, WItness for the Prosecution and A Foreign Affair (all of which would have been first tier for almost any other writer or director) are great. And Ace in the Hole would be right up there if it weren't for the insufferable Kirk Douglas.

Has anyone around here seen The Emperor Waltz (usually considered to be his weakest work)? Is it really THAT bad? The stills I've seen make it look like it at least has some very lush Technicolor cinematography.

For anyone interested there's a great biography of Billy Wilder called "Billy Wilder in Hollywood" by Maurice Zolotow. It's very insightful, funny and well written.

R26 Horst Buchholz was very sexy in it too!

R33, "The Lost Weekend" is first-tier, but just a little dated because of its "brave" expose tone in some spots. Interestingly, some of those spots and scenes include some for which the film is noted and admired.

ACE IN THE HOLE would have been better with Holden in the lead instead of hammy Kirk Douglas, but the film still packs a punch.

Wilder's film became more and more sour after THE APARTMENT. KISS ME STUPID is actually quite bad and overlong except for Dean Martin making fun of his public persona. Ray Walston is just too smarmy (Peter Sellers was originally going to play it, but he wisely backed out). IRMA LA DOUCE goes on forever and is badly miscast (though the film was a big hit). And then you get such debacles as THE FRONT PAGE and BUDDY, BUDDY.

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES has some wonderful sections and is worth seeing in spite of its being cut by the studio.

There are many stories of what an SOB Wilder could be, but some of them come from people who are pretty obnoxious themselves (e.g. Peter Bogdanovich).

I worked with many people who worked with Billy Wilder, and they all loved him. Honest.

Check out who he left his fortune to.

R40 Who? And if it's an odd answer, then also why?

Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity, Witness for the Prosecution, The Big Carnival aka Ace in the Hole, Some Like It Hot and Stalag 17.

So many good ones, but here are three, Sunset, Some Like It Hot and Double Indemnity

"I worked with many people who worked with Billy Wilder, and they all loved him. Honest."

Not everyone did. Charles Boyer, Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe were three who did not get on well with him. But that was because they were all difficult people. Wilder disliked them as much as they did him. But working with Marilyn Monroe was the worst. In Maurice Zolotow's bio of Wilder he said "Wilder experienced such agonies in the course of making two films with Marilyn that, in retrospect, not only Bogart but also Charles Boyer came to seem amiable human beings."

Peter Sellers also disliked working with Wilder. He was to have played Orville Spooner in "Kiss Me, Stupid"; he found out working with Wilder was very stressful for him. Wilder's movie sets were a free for all, there were always LOTS of people around. He welcomed onlookers and visitors. Sellers didn't go for that kind of atmosphere; it created a of tension for him. Jack Lemmon told him Wilder was a nice guy, just tell him what's going on and he'll understand. So he did. And Wilder told him to do what Jack Lemmon did to get ready for a scene: "he closes his eyes, and says "It's magic time!"Then he forgets everybody on the set." So Sellers did the "magic time" bit. Many times. I didn't work. He ended up "hating Wilder with the quiet intensity of a Dr. Strangelove." Sellers ended up have a massive coronary thrombosis. He would recover, but Wilder decided it would cost too much to wait for him to come back to the picture so he scrapped six weeks worth of filming. Seller's performance was sais to be "magnificent."