From Ninotchka to 'Well, Nobody's Perfect'

This Week
Billy Wilder From Vienna to Hollywood
Writers Notebook: Review

Billy Wilder of Vienna, Austria came to Hollywood by way of Berlin and Paris. Wilder's early writing career was that of a journalist. He became a filmmaker in Berlin and his first film was called People on Sunday. They did it on the cheap, with a total cost of about five hundred dollars.
When Wilder landed in Hollywood he bunked in with Peter Lorre. During those early days Billy spoke little English and wrote only in German relying on some of his pals to translate for him. He was never fluent in English, but was good enough to be about as funny as Sam Goldwyn, without Sam's Goldwyn-isms.
Billy's translation problems ended during his second year in Hollywood when he teamed up with Charles Brackett, one of Paramount’s best writers at the time. Brackett and Wilder became one of the most successful writing teams in Hollywood. Their first collaboration was on Bluebeard's Eighth Wife. Ernst Lubitsch was the director; Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert were the stars.
During the following year the team had three credits What a Life, Midnight and Ninotchka.
Wilder and Brackett's first award winning success was Ninotchka in 1939, the screwball comedy starred Greta Garbo and won popular and critical acclaim. The film marked the teams first Academy Award nomination, which was also shared with Walter Reisch. For a dozen years Wilder co-wrote most of his films with Brackett, from 1938 through 1950. Following Ninotchka was a series of box office hits in 1942, including his Hold Back the Dawn and Ball of Fire, as well as his directorial feature debut, The Major and the Minor.

But like most Hollywood teams Wilder and Brackett had their differences and eventually after a string of great successes Wilder said he didn't want to collaborate any more and walked away from his writing partner.
After the breakup Brackett worked for Twentieth Century Fox as a writer producer. He did Titanic, The King and I, Ten North Frederick, Journey to the Center of the Earth, State Fair and many others.
But somewhere down the line several Fox studio executives decided they had gotten the best out of Brackett and canceled his contract, which had two years remaining on the agreement. In an unwise decision Fox decided to stiff Brackett by refusing to pay him the remaining two years.
Billy Wilder heard the news, called a press conference and exposed what Fox was doing to Brackett. Fox argued, fumed and foamed for a while, but eventually due to the bad publicity, paid Brackett the two years remaining on his contract.
Billy Wilder proved that he was not only a talented filmmaker he was a loyal friend, a combination not often found in Hollywood.


More Billy Wilder Films

The success of Sunset Boulevard had a major impact, also his third film as director of Double Indemnity, a film noir. He was nominated for Best Director and Best Screenplay, which was co-written with mystery novelist Raymond Chandler. In this case the co-writers did not get along. The book was very popular with the reading public, but it had been considered unfilmable under the Hays Code, because adultery was central to its plot. Double Indemnity is credited by some as the first true film noir, combining the stylistic elements of Citizen Kane with the narrative elements of The Maltese Falcon.
Wilder was the Editors Supervisor in the 1945 US Army Signal Corps documentary film Death Mills.
Two years later, Wilder earned the Best Director and Best Screenplay Academy Awards for the adaptation of a Charles R. Jackson story The Lost Weekend, an examination of alcoholism, which proved to be another difficult theme under the Production Code.
In 1951 the Billy Wilder film was Ace in the Hole. It was a critical and commercial failure at the time, but its reputation has grown over the years. In the fifties, Wilder also directed two adaptations of Broadway plays, the prisoner of war drama Stalag 17 , and the Agatha Christie mystery Witness for the Prosecution. After that he made mostly comedies, which included The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot followed by The Apartment, then the romantic comedy Sabrina and Love in the Afternoon.
In Some Like it Hot Wilder introduced cross dressing to American film audiences. In this comedy Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis play musicians on the run from a Chicago gang, who disguise themselves as women and become romantically involved with Marilyn Monroe and Joe E. Brown.
In 1959, Wilder began to work with writer-producer I. A. L. Diamond, an association that continued until the end of their careers. After winning three Academy Awards for 1960's The Apartment, Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay Wilder's career slowed. His Cold War farce One, Two, Three (1961) featured a rousing comic performance by James Cagney, but was followed by the lesser films Irma la Douce and Kiss Me, Stupid. Wilder got his last Oscar nomination for his screenplay The Fortune Cookie (1966). His 1970 film The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes was badly cut by the studio and has never been fully restored. Later films such as Fedora (1978) and Buddy Buddy (1981) failed to impress critics or the public.

Billy Wilder's last two failures reminds me of the last line in one of his most popular films, Some Like Hot. Jack Lemmon says as he takes off his wig, 'We can't get married, I'm a man...I'm a man.' Joe E. Brown turns with a wide grin. 'Well, Nobody's perfect.'

Writers Notebook:
The Power of Positive Thinking – Reviewed by Tom Barnes author of Tungee's Gold.

The Power of Positive Thinking
Norman Vincent Peale, one of America’s most distinguished speakers was not born with that gift. As a child Norman was shy and retiring and had a terrible inferiority complex. Then to add to those feelings of inferiority, he was a preacher’s son and believed that he was expected to be perfect. Well, he didn’t want to be perfect he wanted to be hard-boiled and something else, he vowed never to become a preacher. He grew up in a religious family and as part of the church community from time to time they were all called upon to make public speeches. Norman was urged to join the others in their activities, but the thought of speaking in public scared him to death.
Eventually though, with the urging of his father, reading the Bible and interacting with other family members he began to shed those feelings of inferiority. Then once he got over his shyness and began to connect with an audience he became a very effective public speaker and writer. He also became a preacher, something that he had vowed earlier in life not to ever do.
After a number of years of interaction with church members as their minister he determined several simple truths about life. You must believe in yourself because, ‘without a humble and reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.’ Basil King once said, “Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid.” Emerson declared a tremendous truth. “They conquer who believe they can.”
Dr. Peale tells the story of a day on the golf course. It seems he hit the ball into some tall grass and when he finally located the almost hidden ball, he lamented about his chances of hitting it out. Well, his golf partner saw his dilemma and talked him through the problem. Dr. Peale took a swing, as instructed, and wound up hitting the ball near the green. He was delighted with the results and always remembered a comment made by his playing partner that day, ‘the rough is only mental.’
Now while The Power of Positive Thinking is based on Dr. Peale’s belief in God, he also says that belief in your own abilities play a large part in individual success or failure.
Self-confidence or the lack of it plays an important part in our lives. A survey of college students when asked to state their most difficult personal problem seventy five percent answered that it was a lack of confidence.
One of the ways to self-confidence is to expect the best. When you expect the best, you release a magnetic force in your mind, which by law of attraction tends to bring the best to you.
When you buy and read this remarkable book your attitude will change, and you’ll find success -- sometimes in the most unexpected places.

Tom's Books and Blogs:
Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels Tungee's Gold, The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.

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