Billy Wilder

At 95 years old, Billy Wilder has this physical status:

Billy Wilder (German: vld); born Samuel Wilder (June 22, 1906 – March 27, 2002) was an Austrian-American film producer, editor, and screenwriter. His career in Hollywood spanned five decades, and he is known as one of Classic Hollywood cinema's most innovative and versatile filmmakers. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director eight times, twice, and for a screenplay Academy Award 13 times, winning three times.

When living in Berlin, Wilder became a screenwriter. He went to Paris after the rise of the Nazi Party and antisemitism in Germany. In 1933, he, Charles Brackett, and Walter Reisch wrote the screenplay for the Academy Award-nominated film Ninotchka (1939). Wilder forged his directorial career and received his first nomination for Academy Award for Best Director with the film noir version of the novel Double Indemnity (1944), for which he co-wrote the screenplay with Raymond Chandler. Wilder received the Best Director and Best Screenplay Academy Awards for his film adaptation of the novel The Lost Weekend (1945), which also received the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Wilder directed and co-wrote a number of critically acclaimed films in the 1950s, including the Hollywood thriller Sunset Boulevard (1950), for which he received his second screenplay Academy Award, which was released in 1990. In 1957, Wilder produced and co-wrote three films, including The Spirit of St. Louis, Love in the Afternoon and Witness for the Protest. The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Some Like It Hot (1959), Wilder's two films, directed Marilyn Monroe. Wilder co-wrote, directed, and produced the critically acclaimed film The Apartment in 1960. Best Picture, Best Producer, and Best Original Screenplay were among the awards from the Wilder Academy of Film and Television. He made seven films with Jack Lemmon, four of which co-starred Walter Matthau; the threesome's first collaboration was The Fortune Cookie (1966). One, Two, Three (1961), Irma la Douce (1963), Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), and Avanti are among Wilder's notable films. (1972). In an Oscar-nominated performance, Wilder directed fourteen actors.

Wilder's distinguished career from the 1980s to 1990s earned several awards. He received the British Academy Film Award Fellowship, the Directors Guild of America's Lifetime Achievement Award, the Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement, and the Producers Guild of America's Lifetime Achievement Award. In the AFI's best American films of all time, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, and The Apartment are among the AFI's best American films of all time. Seven of his films have been preserved in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, or visually significant" as of 2019.

Early life

Samuel Wilder (Yiddish: Shmuel Vildr) was born in June 22, 1906 in Sucha Beskidzka, a small town that then belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time. He would refer to it as being "Half an hour from Vienna" years later in Hollywood. "By telegraph," says the author. Eugenia (née Dittler) and Max Wilder were his parents. He was called "Billie" by his mother (he changed this to "Billy" after arriving in America). Eugenia Wilder has characterized her young son as a "rambunctious boy" and has been inspired by the Buffalo Bill's Wild West Shows, which she saw while living briefly in New York. W. Lee Wilder, his elder brother, was also a filmmaker. His parents owned a flourishing and well-known cake shop in Sucha's train station, which later developed into a chain of railroad cafes. Eugenia and Max Wilder were unable to convince their son to join the company. Max Wilder then migrated to Kraków to run a hotel before heading to Vienna. Billy died when he was 22 years old. Wilder, who had been moved to Vienna, became a writer rather than attending the University of Vienna. In 1926, jazz band leader Paul Whiteman was on tour in Vienna when he met and was interviewed by Wilder, a fan of Whiteman's band. As a kid, the Whiteman adored young Wilder enough that he brought him with the band to Berlin, where Wilder had more exposure in the entertainment industry. He was a taxi dancer in Berlin before he was discovered as a writer.

Personal life and death

On December 22, 1936, Wilder married Judith Coppicus. Victoria and Vincent (born 1939), but Vincent died soon after birth. In 1946, the couple divorced. While filming The Lost Weekend, Wilder met Audrey Young. They were married on June 30, 1949.

On March 27, 2002, Wilder died of pneumonia. He was buried at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary. The front-page obituary is the subject of a French newspaper named Le Monde: "Billy Wilder is dead," a French newspaper announced. Nobody is flawless, a remark made in the case of Some Like It Hot's last row.

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Career

He was eventually offered a regular job at a Berlin tabloid after writing crime and sports news as a stringer for local newspapers. He began writing as a screenwriter after becoming a film enthusiast. He made twelve German films from 1929 to 1933. On Sunday, he collaborated with many other beginners (Fred Zinnemann and Robert Siodmak) on the 1930 film People. People on Sunday were regarded as a pioneering example of Neue Sachlichkeit or New Objectivity in German cinema, recalling 1920s German Expressionism cinematic styles of F. W. Murnau and Fritz Lang. In addition, this Strassenfilm ("street film") style pioneered Italian neorealism and the French New Wave. He wrote screenplays for Erich Kästner's book The Man in Search of His Murderer (1931), Film Screenplays (1932), and the comedy A Blonde Dream (1932), both of which were produced in Potsdam near Berlin. Wilder collaborated with writer and researcher Felix Salten on the screenplay for "Scampolo" in 1932. Wilder went to Paris, where he made his first film Mauvaise Graine (1934), after Adolf Hitler's ascension to power. He moved to Hollywood prior to its unveiling. The Holocaust claimed the mother, grandmother, and stepfather of Wilder's son. It was thought that it happened at Auschwitz Concentration Camp for decades, but his Austrian biographer Andreas Hutter discovered in 2011 that they were murdered in various locations: his mother, Eugenia "Gitla" Siedlisker, died in 1942 in Plaszow, and his grandmother, Balbina Baldinger, were killed in 1943 in the ghetto in Nowy Targ.

Wilder, who arrived in Hollywood in 1933, went back to work as a screenwriter. After his six-month card expired in 1934, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1939, having spent time in Mexico waiting for the government. Ninotchka, a project with fellow German immigrant Ernst Lubitsch, was Wilder's first major success. Greta Garbo, who was traditionally portrayed as a tragic heroine in film melodramas, was prominently and critically acclaimed in this romantic comedy.

With the byline, "Garbo Laughs!

"Garbo's career was also pushed in a new direction." Wilder's first Academy Award nomination, which he shared with co-writer Charles Brackett, was acknowledged (although their collaboration on Bluebeard's Eighth Wife and Midnight had been well received). Wilder co-wrote several of his films with Brackett from 1938 to 1950. "The thing to do was to have an idea but have it broken and despised," Brackett wrote of it. It will be expected to turn up in a few days, slightly modified as Wilder's prediction. Our lives were simpler once I was accustomed to that way of working." "Wilder followed Ninotchka with a string of box office hits in 1942, including Hold Back the Dawn, Ball of Fire, and his directorial debut film The Major and the Minor."

Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and Edward G. Robinson's third film as director was a big hit. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, and Actress, and Wilder co-wrote it with Raymond Chandler. The film is not only set out rules of the noir genre (such as "venetian blind" lighting and voice-over narration), but it is also a landmark in the fight against Hollywood censorship. It was based on James M. Cain's book Two love triangles and a murder plot for insurance money. Although the book was popular with the reading public, it was still unfilmable under the Hays Code because adultery was central to the story.

Wilder's Psychological Warfare Department of the US Department of War produced an American documentary film in 1945. Death Mills, or Die Todesmühlen, was intended for German audiences to inform them of the Nazi regime's atrocities. Die Todesmühlen, Hanu Burger, is listed as the writer and director of the German version, while Wilder oversaw the editing. Wilder is credited with the English-language version.

Wilder converted Charles R. Jackson's book The Lost Weekend into a film of the same name two years later. It was the first major American film with a serious discussion of alcoholism, which was another difficult subject under the Production Code. It comes from an alcoholic writer (Ray Milland) who condemns his mother's (Jane Wyman) protests the exiles of his body (Jane Wyman). Since premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and competed in the main competition, where it was awarded the Festival's top award, the Palme d'Or, and four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, the film received critical acclaim. Best Director and Best Screenplay were two Oscar winners, and Milland received Best Actor. The film remained to be one of the three films to win both the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d' Or, alongside Marty and Parasite.

Wilder co-wrote and directed the cynical dark noir comedy film Sunset Boulevard in 1950. It follows a reclusive silent film actress (Gloria Swanson), who dreams of returning from a bygone era with delusions of her greatness. William Holden, a young screenwriter, joins her as her gigolo partner. Wilder's last film collaboration with Brackett was this critically acclaimed film. The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards; Wilder and Brackett received the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay together.

Wilder, a.k.a. Wilder, in 1951, directed Ace in the Hole (a.k.a. Kirk Douglas appears in a tale of media exploitation of a caving tragedy (The Big Carnival). Victor Desny's secretary had a phone call with Wilder's secretary about the possibility. Desny filed a lawsuit against Wilder vs. Desny, a California copyright lawsuit, resulting in a settlement of $14,350. Although initially regarded as a period of vulnerability and commercial failure, the company's name has risen over the years. Wilder produced two revivals of Broadway plays, Stalag 17, again starring Holden, and Agatha Christie's enthralling Witness for the Prosecution. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for both films, as well as a nomination for Best Screenplay for the latter. He was planning to film with one of the best slapstick comedy performances of the Hollywood Golden Age. He first considered, then turned down, a proposal for actress Laurel and Hardy. He held talks with Groucho Marx about a new Marx Brothers play, tentatively titled A Day at the United Nations. Since Chico Marx died in 1961, the initiative was shelved.

He released the romantic comedy Sabrina in 1954. The film revolves around a young chauffeur's daughter (Audrey Hepburn), who has a crush on a playboy (Holden), until she discovers a friendship with her older brother (Humphrey Bogart). Hepburn was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her appearance. When winning the Golden Globe Award and Writers Guild of America Awards for his screenplay, Wilder was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director. In Love in the Afternoon (1957), the Wilder reunited with Hepburn. A young and innocent (Hepburn) does not want to be young or innocent with playboy Gary Cooper, and instead pretends to be a married woman in search of extramarital amusement. This was Wilder's first film collaboration with screenwriter I. A. L. Diamond.

Wilder's first writing and directing comedy films, as well as his first appearance with Marilyn Monroe in the comedy The Seven Year Itch (1955), ranging from mid-fifties to present day. As he is approached by a charming neighbor played by Monroe, the film revolves around a faithful husband (Tom Ewell) with an overactive imagination. It features one of the twentieth century's most iconic images: Monroe standing on a subway grate as her white dress is blown higher by a passing train.

Wilder reunited with Monroe in 1959's Uncensored Film Some Like It Hot, a Prohibition-era farce film. However, it was not released with a Production Code seal of approval, which was withheld due to the film's unashamed sexual parody, as well as a central cross-dressing theme. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis were musicians disguised as women in order to avoid being pursued by a Chicago cartel. Curtis' character is a singer (Monroe), while Lemmon is wooed by Joe E. Brown, setting up the film's final joke in which Lemmon announces that his character is a man, and Brown musess "Well, no one's flawless." Despite receiving six Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Screenplay, during the film's initial release, the film was only seen by film critics, but it did receive six Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Screenplay. However, its critical success grew; in 2000, the American Film Institute selected it as the best American comedy ever produced. The British Film Institute's centennial Sight and Sound survey of the world's film critics rated it as the 43rd best movie ever made in 2012 and the second-highest-ranking comedy in the world.

Wilder directed The Apartment, a 1960 comedy romance film. It follows an insurance clerk (Lemmon), who encourages his coworkers to use his apartment to conduct extra-marital affairs until he meets an elevator woman (Shirley MacLaine). With Bosley Crowther, a film critic who called the film "gleeful, tender, and even sentimental," Wilder's direction was a critical success. The film received ten Academy Awards and five honors, including three for Wilder: Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay.

Wilder produced One, Two, Three (1961), starring James Cagney, which received critical praise from Variety, "Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three" is a fast-paced, high-pitched, lighthearted farce crammed with topical gags and spiced with satirical overtones. Some of its wit is snarled and smothered in confusion, as the tale is so tense." It was followed by Lemmon and MacLaine's romantic comedy Irma la Douce (1963). The film was the year's fifth highest-grossing film. Wilder's screenplay was recognized by the Writers Guild of America Award for his screenplay. Wilder wrote and directed the sex comedy film Kiss Me, Stupid, starring Dean Martin, Kim Novak, and Ray Walston, who was a last-minute replacement for ailing Peter Sellers. Some commentators had chastised the film for vulgarity, with Bosley Crowther blaming the film for "deliberate and degenerate corruptors of public taste and morals." The film was described as "completely unfunny" by A. H. Weiler of the New York Times. For the screenplay of The Fortune Cookie, Wilder received his final Academy Award nomination and a Writers Guild of America Award nomination. It was the first film starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. (In the United Kingdom, the film was called Meet Whiplash Willie.) In 1970, he directed The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, which was supposed to be a big roadshow revival, but the studio was severely cut off by Wilder's dismay.

He directed Avanti!, which follows a businessman (Lemmon) who is trying to retrieve the body of his deceased father from Italy. Best Director and Best Screenplay, as well as a Writers Guild of America Award nomination, were given to Wilder for two Golden Globe Awards. Wilder produced The Front Page, based on a Broadway play of the same name. It was a huge financial success with a low budget. Fedora and Buddy Buddy, his last films, failed to please critics or the general audience, but Fedora has since been re-evaluated and is now considered favorably. Wilder had hoped to make Schindler's List his last film, adding, "I wanted to do it as a kind of homage to my mother and grandmother and my grandfather, and my stepfather," who had all been killed in the Holocaust.

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