The Making of Some Like It Hot

by Tony Curtis

  Shearer’s article ended with a quote that was attributed to an actor in the film. I didn’t give it. I’m sure that Jack didn’t. I can’t imagine George Raft giving it. But there it was. “Marilyn is a dear, sweet, sincere, adorable girl,” said the unnamed actor. “I hope she settles down with Arthur Miller and has a half dozen children. I know she has made a wonderful wife, and she will make an even more wonderful mother. But a great actress she ain’t.”

  Looking back on the period that followed the filming, I don’t remember a lull. That would have been nicer than what we had. Billy was struggling with the cutting. His challenge was to find a take in which Marilyn was firing on all pistons and in which Jack and I didn’t look pooped. Imagine watching eighty-one takes of “Where’s that bourbon?”

  I hadn’t seen my family in a while. My father and mother had come to the set in August, but that was about it. Late on the night of Sunday, November 16, I got a call from my brother, Robert. He was living with my folks on South Reeves Drive in Beverly Hills. “Daddy has gone to sleep,” he said. I bolted to the car. When I got to their house, I found my father lying on the floor. He’d had a heart attack. We lost him. He was just fifty-eight. For the next two days my family and I sat shivah for him. The funeral was on Wednesday. I was in a daze. Then, on Friday, Janet went into labor. I rushed her to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. On Saturday morning our daughter Jamie Lee was born.

  No, I did not see Marilyn at the hospital. She was on her way to New York with Arthur Miller.

  While I was coping with real life, Billy was immersed in reel life. I didn’t find out until later, but he thought my Josephine voice had recorded too low; the other characters would have been suspicious of me. So he hired Paul Frees, who was a wonderfully versatile actor with an amazing variety of voices, and he dubbed all the lines I’d spoken in falsetto. As if that wasn’t enough, Paul also dubbed a couple of lines for Tito Vuolo, the funeral director. Billy didn’t like Tito’s voice. It sounded too New York and not enough Chicago, I guess.

  Billy reached back to his Berlin days for our musical score. Matty Malneck was the Whiteman band member who’d helped Billy communicate with the maestro in 1926. In the thirties Malneck was also writing hit songs. He cowrote “I’m Through with Love,” and “Park Avenue Fantasy,” which became “Stairway to the Stars.” Later he composed for movies. He scored Witness for the Prosecution. His music was a natural choice for Some Like It Hot. When Adolph Deutsch scored the film, he used “Stairway to the Stars” as Sugar’s motif, and Marilyn sang “I’m Through with Love” in the last musical number. Even though Matty’s songs came from the thirties, no one complained.

  Matty collaborated with Izzy Diamond on a title song for Some Like It Hot. Marilyn had not recorded it when she left for New York, so Matty flew there to coach her and get the song recorded. He found her quite cooperative, but for whatever reason the song was never used. While Matty was in New York, he and Marilyn had occasion to go to a restaurant. Sitting in the bar, Matty diplomatically suggested that Marilyn and Billy might mend fences. He thought that their feud was silly. He had an idea. The bartender brought a phone to the bar. Matty dialed Billy’s home number and handed the receiver to Marilyn. Audrey Wilder answered in Westwood.

  “Hello?”

  “Audrey? This is Marilyn.”

  “Well, hi, Marilyn.”

  “Is Billy there?”

  This photo captures the feeling that Jack and I had when we finished Some Like It Hot. We’d worked seventy-three days, from August 4 through November 11, 1958. We felt we’d done a good job, but we had no idea of the stature this movie would attain.

  “No, he’s not home yet. It’s four thirty here, you know.”

  “Oh. Well, when you see him, will you give him a message for me?”

  “Of course, Marilyn.”

  “Tell him to go fuck himself.”

  Silence.

  “And my warmest personal regards to you, Audrey.” Click.

  I never heard what Billy said when he got home and heard Marilyn’s message. I know that both he and Izzy were disgusted by the way Marilyn treated people whom she considered underlings, people who couldn’t fight back. Cursing out an assistant director was one thing. Insulting Billy’s wife was another. Marilyn had lit the fuse to a bomb. It wasn’t a question of whether it would go off. It was a question of when.

  32

  On December 16 news came from New York. Marilyn Monroe was in the hospital. She had been rushed there two days earlier. The news did not report that she’d taken Amytal on an empty stomach and—worse—had washed it down with sherry. It did report that she had miscarried. Although she and Arthur Miller knew that this was the result of an ectopic pregnancy, they told no one. On December 18 Miller’s mother told Earl Wilson, the gossip columnist at the New York Post, that Billy Wilder was responsible for Marilyn’s miscarriage. “She had to run upstairs about fourteen times in the picture,” said Mrs. Miller. “The temperature in San Diego was about 104. All the time she was not feeling well.”

  As I said, the temperature when we shot on the pier was around eighty. I didn’t see Marilyn do anything so strenuous that it would cause her to miscarry six weeks later. But that’s how legends are made, by prevarication. To tell you the truth, I didn’t care who caused the miscarriage. All that I cared about was that Marilyn’s child had died. I believed the child was mine.

  I had been contemplating what I would do when the child was born. I’d heard the stories about Clark Gable and Loretta Young, and how he handled a similar situation. Young was not married and, being Catholic, would not consider an abortion. She went to Europe to have Gable’s baby. Ten years or so later, Gable visited Young and met the little girl, whose name was Judy. He never told her he was her father, since she was being raised by Loretta’s husband, Tom Lewis. I thought this was sad. I did not relish the idea of my child being raised by Arthur Miller. I hoped that Marilyn and I could work something out. The miscarriage ended that hope.

  Coming on the heels of my father’s death, the news of the miscarriage hit me hard. It caused me to sink into a depression. It didn’t matter that I had two healthy children. It didn’t matter that in ten years I’d come from a $75-a-week contract player to a $1-million-a-year star. It didn’t matter that I’d just made one of the greatest films of my career or anyone else’s. I was deeply depressed. I stopped following the progress of Some Like It Hot.

  Billy was pushing for a March release. This meant previewing our picture in January. That way there’d still be time for changes. He was happy with the first cut of the film, but one scene bothered him, the one that ends the train sequence. This is the scene where I shake Jack “like a terrier shaking a rat.” Jack says, “You wouldn’t hit a girl, would you?” Fade out.

  Billy wondered if this little scene spoiled the effect of the previous one, where the girls tumble out of the berth. Our scene was cute, but coming where it did, it looked tacked on. The train sequence was super. Maybe it didn’t need anything after the party scene. And yet, Billy liked this scene for what it said about the friendship. Izzy didn’t feel strongly one way or the other. He couldn’t see fretting over it. Let the preview decide. Billy disagreed.

  “If it gets laughs,” said Billy, “I might be tempted to keep it in. No, Iz. We don’t need it.” As Billy prepared to cut the scene, he got a call. The production company had lined up a theater for the first sneak preview, but two weeks earlier than Billy had planned. Cutting the scene would mean that he’d have to edit, rescore, and remix an entire reel. There wasn’t time.

  In September Billy had told the press how funny he thought the film already was. “I may be the first to put English subtitles on an English-speaking movie,” he said. “Audiences will be laughing so hard that they won’t hear half of the dialogue.” He admitted that the premise was a bold one. “I think audiences are ready for it. Movies should be like amusement parks. People should go to them to have fun. There’s nothing but fun in our picture. It will be a fi
lm I won’t be worried about showing, either in the sticks or at the Cannes Film Festival.”

  The preview took place on Wednesday, January 28, 1959, at the Bay Theatre in Pacific Palisades, a bedroom community on the coast. Billy and Audrey attended, along with Jack and Felicia, Izzy and Barbara, and a number of Mirisch Company executives. Steve Allen was there. So was Joseph Mankiewicz. A lot was riding on this. The film had run up a negative cost of $2,883,848.

  There was a sign outside the theater that read “Major Studio Preview Tonight.” Apparently the theater’s eight hundred patrons didn’t realize that. Most of them thought they were going to see Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The crowd was typical Pacific Palisades, affluent and older. There were some families, too, which was odd, considering the Taylor film. Maybe they had come for the sneak preview.

  The lights dimmed. The credits rolled. If Billy had forgotten David Selznick’s prediction, he remembered it then. “Other than the musical score,” said Barbara Diamond, “there was nothing in the first few minutes of the film to tip off the audience that this was a comedy. There was a gangster car chase, a speakeasy behind a funeral parlor, and a police raid.” The audience sat there, taking the film very seriously. “That audience was skewed very old,” said Barbara. “These people weren’t ready to laugh. They’d come to see Liz Taylor.” Twenty minutes into the film, they hadn’t even seen Marilyn Monroe. Then Jack and I showed up in drag. “Children were hauled out of there by their parents,” said Jack. “They were muttering, ‘Now this is disgusting. What the hell is this?’ ” The rest of the audience sat with their arms folded.

  “Those that didn’t walk out sat in deathly silence,” said Barbara.

  “Nobody laughed except for a couple of our friends,” said Audrey.

  “It was unequivocally the worst preview of any film I have ever been in,” said Jack.

  “The worst preview in history,” said Barbara.

  After the film ended, Audrey nudged Billy. “Go mix with the crowd,” she told him. “Hear what they’re saying.” Billy went to the lobby. Audience members were filling out preview cards. “They didn’t know whether it was okay to laugh or not,” recalled Audrey. “They just didn’t know what to do.” Billy shook Steve Allen’s hand. Most of the guffaws had come from him. Joe Mankiewicz came up behind Billy, put his hand on his shoulder, and tried to reassure him. “It’s all right, Billy,” he said. “It happens to all of us.”

  The Mirisch brothers took Billy aside. “They started telling him what he had to do,” said Jack. “All that bullshit that heads of companies try to tell directors. Cut this. Cut that. Show more Marilyn.” The Mirisches had more advice. “You cannot have a farce or a comedy, whatever this is, that’s running two hours,” said one. “It can’t be done. You can’t go more than an hour and thirty-five minutes.”

  “Right,” nodded Billy. “Okay. Fine. Tomorrow Iz and I will start working on it.”

  Jack was concerned. He called Billy a couple of days later. Billy had just emerged from the editing room.

  “I made the cut,” he told Jack.

  “You made the what?”

  “Cut. Not ‘cuts.’ ”

  “What did you cut?”

  “The scene where you crawl up into Tony’s berth. The last scene in the train. That’s no longer there.”

  Billy explained that he’d managed to book a preview that night. It was at the Village Theatre in Westwood. So he cut the scene right out of the first answer print and hot spliced the ends together. There was no time to do anything else.

  “The Village had a much more sophisticated audience,” said Jack. “College kids, older people, young people, everything.” Billy had an idea. He put a sign up. It read, “Minor Studio Preview Tonight.” This time the audience was in on the joke.

  “This was a hip crowd,” said Audrey. “They laughed. And laughed. You couldn’t hear the dialogue.”

  The first scene of Jack and me got so many laughs that they missed the line about “Jell-O on springs.” And our scene with the maracas caused hysteria. “This was a scene of about two minutes,” said Billy, “but it was the biggest sustained laugh I had in any of my pictures.”

  “The entire audience was screaming,” said Jack. “It was an enormous success.”

  Part VII

  The Press

  33

  After the triumphant preview in Westwood, Billy Wilder added a few more angles of Jack Lemmon and me at the train station and a couple more angles of Jack with the maracas. This was to allow time for laughs. Then he sent our movie to the big city—and with it, an invitation to Marilyn Monroe.

  On February 5, 1959, she attended the New York Press Association preview. It was being held at the Loew’s Lexington Theatre, which was at that time located at 571 Lexington Avenue. Marilyn wore a new upswept hairdo, chandelier earrings, and a white silk gown. Accompanied by a tuxedoed Arthur Miller, she was stunning. “Monroe and Miller were literally mobbed by fans as they arrived,” recalled writer Warren G. Harris. “Once they’d been escorted safely inside the theater, the other patrons were considerate and left them alone. This was a huge theater. There was a capacity audience that night. Some Like It Hot nearly brought down the house with laughter.”

  After the film was over, police escorted Monroe and Miller out. Montgomery Clift was there, hoping to get a ride with them. He was caught in the uproar and pushed along the side of the limousine. He pounded on the roof, but they didn’t know it was him. They took off without him.

  The Variety review was as friendly as we’d hoped; maybe more so:Some Like It Hot, directed in masterly style by Billy Wilder, is probably the funniest picture of recent memory. It’s a whacky, clever, farcical comedy that starts off like a fire-cracker and keeps on throwing off lively sparks till the very end. Pictures like this, with a sense of humor that is as broad as it is sophisticated, come along only infrequently. . . . Even so, the film has its faults. It’s too long, for one, being a small joke milked like a dairy; one or two scenes skirt the limits of good taste. But who’ll care?

  After fifty years, it’s still exciting to read Variety’s description of how the audience reacted.

  Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon walking down the station platform dressed as girls, swinging their hips, bring the house down.

  The audience virtually explodes when, after being grabbed by Curtis in his bosomy disguise, Lemmon announces angrily: “I lost one of my chests!”

  Marilyn’s a comedienne with that combination of sex appeal and timing that just can’t be beat. If, at the time of the filming she was pregnant, and her tight dresses don’t fit very well, never mind.

  Alternating shots of Miss Monroe trying to stimulate Curtis on a couch, while Lemmon and Joe E. Brown live it up on the dance floor, rate as a classic sequence.

  It’s obvious that Tony Curtis enjoys the part of a comedian, and he makes the most of it.

  I was delighted to read this review. Marilyn was not. Back at her apartment, she and Miller compared impressions. He thought the film was excellent and that it proved her a skilled comedienne. She did not. “I don’t want to be funny,” cried Marilyn. “Everybody’s going to laugh at me. And not because of my acting. Because of how I look. I look like a fat pig. Those goddamned cocksuckers made me look like a funny fat pig!”

  At this point Billy felt it was time to clear the air. On February 10 the New York Herald Tribune published a few choice words. Billy said that his health had improved since he’d finished directing Marilyn. “I am eating better,” said Billy. “My back doesn’t ache any more. I am able to sleep for the first time in months. And I can look at my wife without wanting to hit her because she’s a woman. Would I direct Marilyn again? I have discussed this with my doctor and my psychiatrist and my accountant. They tell me that I’m too old and too rich to go through it again.” I guess he’d been pushed too far. The man was an artist. He had an ego. It was bruised. And his spouse had been insulted.

  When Marilyn read the article, she
called Earl Wilson. “Who says stars are temperamental?” she asked. “Now it’s directors who get that way!” Wilson oozed with sympathy as he wrote, “Marilyn wishes that Billy would remember that Some Like It Hot cost her the baby.”

  A telegram arrived at Billy’s office a day later. It was from Arthur Miller. It read:I cannot let your vicious attack on Marilyn go unchallenged. You were officially informed by Marilyn’s physician that due to her pregnancy she was not able to work a full day. You chose to ignore this fact during the making of the picture. . . . She went on with the picture out of a sense of responsibility not only to herself but to you and the cast and producer. Twelve hours after the last shooting day her miscarriage began. . . . [She] began this picture with a throat infection so serious that a specialist forbade her to work at all until it was cured. She went on nevertheless. Your jokes, Billy, are not quite hilarious enough to conceal the fact [that] you are an unjust man and a cruel one. My only solace is that despite you, her beauty and her humanity shine through as they always have.

  Miller’s claims about Marilyn’s health were unfounded. After all, a woman can have only one miscarriage in a pregnancy. And it had been duly reported in December. Not November. And certainly not twelve hours after Marilyn left the set. I never saw the slightest evidence of a “throat infection,” unless that thermos contained cough medicine. Amazing how a sane man could be pulled into his wife’s craziness. Billy responded:I am deeply sorry that she lost her baby but I must reject the implication that overwork or inconsiderate treatment by me or anyone else associated with the production was in any way responsible for it. The fact is that the company pampered her, coddled her, and acceded to all her whims. The only one who showed any lack of consideration was Marilyn, in her treatment of her costars and her coworkers right from the first day. Before there was any hint of pregnancy, her chronic tardiness and unpreparedness cost us eighteen shooting days, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and countless heartaches. This having been my second picture with Marilyn, I understand her problems. Her biggest problem is that she doesn’t understand anybody else’s problems. If you took a quick poll among the cast and crew on the subject of Marilyn you would find a positively overwhelming lack of popularity. Had you, dear Arthur, been not her husband, but her writer and director, and been subjected to all the indignities I was, you would have thrown her out on her can, thermos bottle and all, to avoid a nervous breakdown. I did the braver thing. I had a nervous breakdown.