What a work of art and nature is Marilyn Monroe. She hasn't aged into an icon, some citizen of the past, but still seems to be inventing herself as we watch her. She has the gift of appearing to hit on her lines of dialogue by happy inspiration, and there are passages in Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot" where she and Tony Curtis exchange one-liners like hot potatoes.
Poured into a dress that offers her breasts like jolly treats for needy boys, she seems totally oblivious to sex while at the same time melting men into helpless desire. "Look at that!" Jack Lemmon tells Curtis as he watches her adoringly. "Look how she moves. Like Jell-O on springs. She must have some sort of built-in motor. I tell you, it's a whole different sex."
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Consider her solo of "I Wanna Be Loved by You." The situation is as basic as it can be: a pretty girl standing in front of an orchestra and singing a song. Monroe and Wilder turn it into one of the most mesmerizing and blatantly sexual scenes in the movies. She wears that clinging, see-through dress, gauze covering the upper slopes of her breasts, the neckline scooping to a censor's eyebrow north of trouble. Wilder places her in the center of a round spotlight that does not simply illuminate her from the waist up, as an ordinary spotlight would, but toys with her like a surrogate neckline, dipping and clinging as Monroe moves her body higher and lower in the light with teasing precision. It is a striptease in which nudity would have been superfluous. All the time she seems unaware of the effect, singing the song innocently, as if she thinks it's the literal truth. To experience that scene is to understand why no other actor, male or female, has more sexual chemistry with the camera than Monroe.
The movie is really the story of the Lemmon and Curtis characters, and it's got a top-shelf supporting cast (Joe E. Brown, George Raft, Pat O'Brien), but Monroe steals it, as she walked away with every movie she was in. It is an act of the will to watch anyone else while she is on the screen. Tony Curtis' performance is all the more admirable because we know how many takes she needed--Curtis must have felt at times like he was in a pro-am tournament. Yet he stays fresh and alive in sparkling dialogue scenes like their first meeting on the beach, where he introduces himself as the Shell Oil heir and wickedly parodies Cary Grant. Watch his timing in the yacht seduction scene, and the way his character plays with her naivete. "Water polo? Isn't that terribly dangerous?" asks Monroe. Curtis: "I'll say! I had two ponies drown under me."
Watch, too, for Wilder's knack of hiding bold sexual symbolism in plain view. When Monroe first kisses Curtis while they're both horizontal on the couch, notice how his patent-leather shoe rises phallically in the mid-distance behind her. Does Wilder intend this effect? Undoubtedly, because a little later, after the frigid millionaire confesses he has been cured, he says, "I've got a funny sensation in my toes--like someone was barbecuing them over a slow flame." Monroe's reply: "Let's throw another log on the fire."
Bassist John Taylor said on the creation of the song: "What we really wanted to do was put this drummer out there in a way that we felt he deserved, so that song particularly was sort of designed to really showcase Tony. I flew to Nassau in the Bahamas, which was where Robert Palmer lived at the time, and played him the demo that Andy and I had written and said, 'We've got this idea that we're calling "Some Like It Hot."' And he just looked at me and said, 'And some sweat when the heat is on.' I was, like, 'Yes! That'll do...'"[3]
Some Like It Hot. And some like it wilder. Billy Wilder, that is. There are some really good reasons that this is considered one of Billy Wilder's best movies ever. Jack Lemmon, Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis to name just three. You won't get the fuzzy end of the lollipop in our Tribute to Some Like It Hot.
Some Like It Hot (Collector's Edition) , - this special DVD offers great extras including two documentaries and an audio commentary that includes compiled comments by Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. Some Like It Hot MP3's AmazonMP3 has Some Like It Hot movie songs available to purchase and download. Click the arrow below to start browsing: Amazon.com Widgets
This extremely funny film, very much unlike director Wilder's darker films Double Indemnity (1944) and Sunset Boulevard (1950), was advertised with the tagline: "The movie too HOT for words" - vaguely referring to either sex, jazz, or the skimpy costumes. It was released at the end of the repressive 1950s at a time when the studio system was weakening, the advent of television was threatening, and during a time of the declining influence of the Production Code and its censorship restrictions. However, the Catholic League of Decency strongly complained about the film, calling it "seriously offensive to Christian and traditional standards of morality and decency" due to its subject of transvestism, double-entendre dialogue, and intimations of homosexuality and lesbianism.
Jerry: Look at that! Look how she moves. That's just like Jell-O on springs. She must have some sort of built-in motor, or somethin'. I tell you, it's a whole different sex! Joe: What are you afraid of? Nobody's asking you to have a baby.
Billy Wilder being as daring as he could with Code still firmly in place decides to stretch all the gender boundaries he could with this comedy in drag. The results some say resulted in the funniest film ever made.Some Like It Hot concerns a couple of jazz age musicians in 1929 witnessing the murder of informant George E. Stone. Of course the head doer George Raft spots our intrepid duo and Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are forced to flee Chicago.The getaway plan. Take a gig with an all woman orchestra going south to Florida. The orchestra has Marilyn Monroe as a singer so the trip will have its pleasant diversity.After the trouble Wilder had with Monroe on The Seven Year Itch he swore he wouldn't do another film with her. But United Artists wanted a big name for box office guarantee before he could get the financing and Curtis and Lemmon weren't big enough. So Monroe was signed and by all accounts the picture was another trial to make for all concerned.Tony Curtis's feelings were well known about Monroe, he didn't like her. Yet his scenes with her were very funny indeed both with him in drag and doing a spoof of his idol, Cary Grant. Jack Lemmon was far more philosophical. I saw him in an interview once simply say that Marilyn was a girl with a whole lot of problems and unrealized talent when she died. That's what you would expect from Lemmon, one of the nicest people ever in the film industry.Jack Lemmon also got an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. But Some Like It Hot ran into the year of Ben-Hur sweeping all the Oscars that year. It wasn't even nominated for Best Picture. Billy Wilder lost for Best Director. The only Oscar it did win was for Orry-Kelly for costume design for those recreations from the Twenties and the special costumes that Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis wore.Billy Wilder sprinkled his cast with a lot of people identified with the gangster genre. Who more than George Raft who really lived the part in real life. And others like George E. Stone, Mike Mazurki, and Nehemiah Persoff. Pat O'Brien plays the federal man on the trail of the mobsters and in his memoirs O'Brien thanked Billy Wilder profusely for giving him a part in a classic film when his career hit the skids in the Fifties.Of course the real daring here was Joe E. Brown as the dissolute playboy and his infatuation with Jack Lemmon in drag. Today Brown's character would be really a gay guy who's into drag queens and Lemmon after some initial misgivings might just decide that gay for pay pays a lot better than playing the bull fiddle. But the Code while not broken was stretched a might in Some Like It Hot.A film that didn't get into the top five in 1959 is now considered the funniest comedy of all time. You won't get any argument from me over that one.
This is a wonderfully entertaining film that has to have one of the best final scenes in movie history--seeing Joe E. Brown and Jack Lemmon in this scene is truly delightful. However, I do wonder if perhaps, maybe, the film is a tiny bit overrated--especially since it is now ranked relatively high on IMDb's Top 250 list. It's an exceptional film...I just don't see it as quite THAT exceptional.Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon stumble upon a mob hit. And, since mobsters really DON'T like witnesses, they know they'd better hide--and quick. So they hit upon the idea of hiding in an all-ladies' band, as they, too, are musicians. There, Tony falls in love with Marilyn Monroe--and it's hard for him to balance his female persona with the bookish guy he also pretends to be to impress her. As for Jack, he becomes the focus of a rich older man's attentions (Joe E. Brown). So how do they both balance these relationships with a strong desire NOT to be killed by the mob? The film has some nice supporting acting by George Raft and Pat O'Brien-and it's nice to see them return to films. As for the acting, it's generally very good, though I think Curtis' acting is a bit broad at times--but oddly charming as well.Overall, there's a lot to enjoy and it's fun throughout. 2ff7e9595c
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