Search results
Mar 11, 2003 · Take a trip down Sunset Blvd as we reveal what happened during the making of a scabrous Hollywood classic... * Co-writer Charles Brackett conceived the idea as an exuberant Hollywood comedy...
- Review
Welcome re-release of Billy Wilder's masterpiece, about a...
- It's a Wonderful Life
"It's a Wonderful Life" needs another five star review like...
- Review
Jan 10, 2015 · A new book of his diaries from 1932 to ‘49, “It’s the Pictures That Got Small: Charles Brackett on Billy Wilder and Hollywood’s Golden Age,” edited by Anthony Slide, offers not only rare...
- Writer
- Mae West Was Billy Wilder's First Choice to Star.
- Montgomery Clift Was The First Choice For Joe Gillis.
- It Was Partly Inspired by An Evelyn Waugh Novel.
- Gloria Swanson and Cecil B. Demille Used Their Real Pet Names For Each other.
- The Opening Scene Had to Be Scrapped Because The Audience Found It Too Funny.
- The Underwater Shot Was Not Filmed Underwater.
- William Holden's Wife Didn't Appreciate That Kiss.
- Hedy Lamarr Wanted $25,000 to Do A Cameo.
- The Silent Film Norma Watches Had Great Behind-The-Scenes significance.
- Erich Von Stroheim Resented The Movie.
Initially, writer-director Wilder envisioned the movie as a straightforward comedy, and the famously saucy West seemed like a perfect fit. But she wanted to rewrite her dialogue (as was her custom)—a nonstarter for Wilder, who seldom let his actors change their lines even slightly from what was on the page. It's probably just as well, since the dar...
The much sought after but highly finicky leading man accepted the role, then backed out. Some speculatedit was because he was dating an older woman at the time (actress Libby Holman, 16 years his senior) and didn't want people to think the movie was a parody of that relationship. Clift's biographers say it was because he had a strong following amon...
The British author's satirical The Loved One was published in 1948, after Waugh had spent time in Hollywood observing the film industry and, of all things, the funeral industry. (The book is about a failed screenwriter who works for a cemetery and lives with a forgotten silent-film star.) Wilder and his co-writers reversed several elements, and the...
When Norma Desmond visits her old friend at Paramount, she affectionately calls him "Mr. DeMille" (not Cecil or C.B.), and he calls her "young fellow." In real life, when Swanson and DeMille had worked together, that was what they always called each other. It's kind of sweet, actually.
Sunset Boulevard now begins with police cars racing to Norma Desmond's house, where a dead body is floating in the pool. But it originally beganin the L.A. county morgue, with toe-tagged corpses—including Joe's—speaking to each other (in voiceover) about how they died. It was meant to be slightly humorous in a morbid way, but the audience at the fi...
One of the few showy bits of camerawork in the film is near the beginning, when the corpse floating in Norma Desmond's pool is seen from underneath. But it was too difficult to put a camera underwater to get the shot, so Wilder and cinematographer John Seitz came up with an ingenious solution: they put a mirror on the bottom of the pool and filmed ...
Brenda Marshall, Holden's wife since 1941, was visiting the set when Holden and Nancy Olson had their kissing scene. Wilder, ever the merry prankster, told Holden and Olson to keep kissing until he called "cut": he was going to fade out at the end of the scene, and he needed to make sure the kiss didn't end prematurely. Well, they kissed, and kisse...
When Norma visits DeMille at Paramount, he's in the midst of shooting Samson and Delilah, which really is what he was up to at the time. For added meta-truthfulness, Wilder wanted to have that film's lead actress, Hedy Lamarr, be there too, so that DeMille could ask her to let Norma sit in her chair (you know, those behind-the-scenes chairs that ha...
In her private screening room, with butler Max running the projector, Norma cuddles up with Joe to watch one of her own films. The footage we see is from Queen Kelly (1929), which starred Gloria Swanson and was directed by Max himself, Erich von Stroheim. Queen Kellynearly ruined both of their careers: von Stroheim was replaced as director midway t...
The actor-turned-director-turned-actor-again, who had indeed been one of the great silent-filmmakers, winced at playing a character so self-referential and demeaning, but he needed the money. He called it "that goddamned butler role" for the remaining seven years of his life.
Mar 16, 2021 · Interestingly, Wilder and Brackett wanted future Academy Award Best Actor winner Jose Ferrer for Birnam, but Paramount executives rejected Ferrer because of his lack of film experience. Meyers, “Introduction,” x.
- John Thomas McGuire
- 2021
Less well known is the fact that it was Charles Brackett who was savvy enough to see the importance of that moment and recommend that the line be re-shot in close-up, probably also sensing how it foretold the devastating final close-up of that magnificent film.
Billy Wilder and his reliable writing partner Charles Brackett, who had been called the happiest union in Hollywood, had been toying with the idea of making a film about Hollywood for a number of years. The story was originally conceived as a light-hearted comedy about a silent screen star coming out of the darkness of her obscurity to triumph ...
People also ask
Did Charles Brackett work with Billy Wilder?
Did Wilder and Brackett shape the people in their film?
Did Billy Wilder make a movie about Hollywood?
What happened to Brackett & Wilder's houses?
Who is Donald Brackett?
Are there any sources on Charles Brackett?
Ironically, Wilder and Brackett at first wanted to make a film adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s 1948 novel The Loved One, about a failed screenwriter who lives with a silent film star and works in a cemetery, but they couldn’t obtain the rights. Tony Richardson would film it about fifteen years later.
