On Sunset Boulevard

by Ed Sikov

  What with Judith, Victoria, Doris, Audrey, Willie, Charlie, and Y. Frank Freeman, Billy Wilder certainly had his hands full in the autumn of 1945. But his mood actually improved. The Lost Weekend was reviving. In fact, its commercial prospects suddenly looked very good. The film now featured a revised ending and a moody, unnerving new score. And it was getting great word of mouth. In the turn-on-a-dime minds of Paramount’s decision makers, The Lost Weekend transformed itself from bomb to blockbuster.

  Before leaving for Europe, Billy had tinkered with the film’s final sequences. Brackett spoke to Charles Jackson in the beginning of April, asking for suggestions for a new ending. Jackson submitted some ideas by mail from his farm in New Hampshire and was paid $500 for his work. The production reopened on April 10 to film a new final scene between Milland and Wyman; it closed again on the IIth, this time for good. More crucial was the film’s score. According to Miklós Rózsa, Rózsa told Brackett after one of the disastrous early previews that the only real problem was the temporary jazz track that had been laid onto the print for the sole purpose of filling in the silence. Brackett told him to go ahead and write the music he thought would work, however disturbing that music might be. Rózsa had something eerie in mind for the central motif. He planned to write music for the theremin, the electronic box he had just employed to great acclaim to express Gregory Peck’s strung-out mental state in Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound. Rózsa’s theremin would produce no light xylophone sounds, no upbeat Gershwinesque syncopation. Constructed out of vacuum tubes and antennae, the theremin emitted oscillating, otherworldly pitches, all the better to express Don Birnam’s own distortions. (The theremin was eventually used to produce the trippy background tones of the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” not to mention countless sci-fi soundtracks in the 1950s.)

  With the full support of Brackett and Wilder, Rózsa composed a dark-tempered score he thought was even better than Spellbound’s. Indeed, when Spellbound’s producer, David Selznick, discovered that Rózsa had also used a theremin for the score of The Lost Weekend, he fell into a rage. Rózsa responded that not only had he used a theremin in his new composition, he’d also used a trumpet, a piccolo, a triangle, and a violin.

  All this tinkering cost money. By June, The Lost Weekend was nearly $90,000 over budget. But by August, it looked as though the expense was worth it. Paramount screened a print of the revised, fully scored The Lost Weekend for industry people on August 9, and it was very well received. The film was also making its way through the Hollywood “projection circuit,” the select showings in private screening rooms, where it was earning great acclaim. “As things finally developed,” Brackett later recalled, “we found we had a hit on our hands.”

  Y. Frank Freeman and his idiotic opinions faded quickly into the background. Freeman’s boss, Barney Balaban, said after one of the wretched early previews, “Once we make a picture, we don’t just flush it down the toilet,” and he kept to his word. The liquor industry, meanwhile, decided to maintain a dignified silence and urged its own trade press not to run editorials against the picture. The individual members of both the Allied Liquor Industries and the Alcoholic Beverage Industries were asked to “take no steps that would in any way stir up a controversy about the picture.”

  The censors, however, weren’t quite as easily dispatched. As a matter of fact, they threatened to proliferate. The Production Code Administration was only the beginning. The PCA ultimately approved the film, once its objections had been met, but some states and cities had their own censor boards, each with a different set of requirements and objections. New York, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Virginia each had its own board; Atlanta, Chicago, Memphis, Kansas City (Missouri), Detroit, Portland, and Milwaukee censored films on a local basis. Canadian censorship occurred province by province. And as if that weren’t enough, the Legion of Decency ruled—or tried to rule—every practicing Roman Catholic in the United States.

  Given the disturbing nature of this film, Paramount was bracing itself to deal with the other states’ and cities’ censors as well as with that of the Legion of Decency. The studio’s sales representatives were the censors’ contacts in each locale, and these reps referred all questions and requests for cuts to Paramount’s home office in New York. “We of course battle all rejections,” the home office told Brackett and Wilder. But, the home office immediately went on to say that, if a request was small and seemed reasonable to the New York executives, they would grant it without a battle. There were exceptions: “In instances where the eliminations requested are substantial or unjustified, and particularly where they would seem to affect revenue, we go to bat.”

  To everyone’s surprise, The Lost Weekend passed almost everywhere without any deletions at all. In some cases the film even won special commendation from the censor boards. Only two boards objected. Pennsylvania demanded several cuts before The Lost Weekend could be screened in the state, including all views of the bat killing the mouse and the blood dripping down the wall. The most graphic of the hospital scenes had to be excised as well—this owing entirely to the opinion of the state’s three-member board, only two of whom had seen the picture. For its part, Ohio insisted that Bim’s critical view of Prohibition be removed from the film: “Good old Prohibition days. Say, you should have seen the joint then! This is nothing. Back then we really had a turnover, standing room only. Prohibition—that is what started most of these guys off.” Known for its popular support of temperance, Ohio also found one of Helen’s lines to Don objectionable: “I am just ashamed of the way I talked to you—like a narrow-minded insensitive small-town teetotaler.”

  Shrewdly, Paramount opened the film in England before trying it out at home. “London is on a praise binge for The Lost Weekend,” the Hollywood Reporter announced. “Even with the paper shortage it’s gotten more comment than any picture since Gone With the Wind.”

  Back in the States, the very people who had threatened to pull the plug on The Lost Weekend were now proclaiming themselves the film’s heroic champions. The studio released its ad campaign featuring a huge close-up of an eye, set on the diagonal, with the tag line “Paramount found the courage and daring to film this strange, powerful, and terrifying novel.” When the film was released in New York in November, the nation’s critics took over where Paramount’s writers of ad copy left off: “A milestone in moviemaking.… It is adult, off the beaten track, terrifyingly real, and every inch a cinematic masterpiece. The Brackett and Wilder script is a model of consummate screenwriting; the Wilder direction is infallibly imaginative, and the principals play way over their heads in interpreting the work.” “This is undoubtedly the best horror picture of the year.” “One of the best films of the past decade.” “One of the best motion pictures ever made in Hollywood …”

  The New York Times’s Bosley Crowther weighed in as well: The Lost Weekend, he wrote, had been brought to the screen “with great fidelity in every respect but one: the reason for the ‘dipso’s’ gnawing mania is not fully and convincingly explained. In the novel, the basic frustration which drove the pitiable ‘hero’ to drink was an unconscious indecision in his own masculine libido. In the film … the only cause given for his ‘illness’ is the fact that he has writer’s cramp.” Crowther evidently meant writer’s block.

  Paramount was now advertising the film they had nearly canned as “The Most Widely Acclaimed Motion Picture in the History of the Industry.” Suddenly even the House of Seagram’s was plugging The Lost Weekend: “Paramount has succeeded in burning into the hearts and minds of all who see this vivid screen story our own long-held and oft-published belief that … some men should not drink!, which might well have been the name of this great picture instead of The Lost Weekend.” For his part, Billy promoted the movie by making a cirrhosis joke: If To Have and Have Not established Lauren Bacall as “The Look,” he told the New York Times, then The Lost Weekend should certainly earn Mr. Milland fame as “The Kidney.” The Paramount publicist accompanyin
g Billy on the Times interview blanched, and only then did Billy agree to play the role of the typical director promoting his latest film. He didn’t keep up the charade for long though. When it came time to discuss his new movie idea, he told the Times that he wanted Paramount to let him make a story about life in Berlin, which he promptly described as Sodom and Gomorrah.

  Once again Wilder made a point of sticking it to David O. Selznick. Spellbound’s producer, capitalizing on Hitchcock’s reputation, was busily placing ads in the trades featuring a photo of Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman embracing, with Peck holding a straight razor behind Bergman’s back. Warner Bros., meanwhile, was pushing its pictures on the grounds of civic responsibility, using the line, “Good Citizenship with Fine Motion Picture Making.” So Billy and Charlie placed a little ad of their own. It showed the two famously squabbling collaborators hugging and holding knives behind each other’s backs. The caption read “Combining Good Citizenship with Good Cutlery.”

  By mid-December, Billy was getting used to life as a bachelor again, not that it took much readjustment. He was tooling around town in his new jeep—one of the first army vehicles to find civilian use in Southern California. He was seeing Doris, he was seeing Audrey, and he was buying art, including Picasso’s 1926 pencil-on-paper drawing “le récit.” He won the New York Film Critics’ Best Director award for The Lost Weekend. (The film also won for Best Picture, and Ray Milland won as Best Actor.) The Lost Weekend was poised to be a strong Oscar contender, though once again Paramount executives were nervous. They were worried about whether the Academy’s voters would go for such a depressing movie, so they considered rushing Ray Milland’s next film, a costume drama called Kitty, into the theaters at the very end of the year so it would be eligible for the Oscars. As a Hollywood columnist reported: “Paramount can’t decide whether Lost Weekend or Kitty will be their entry for picture of the year. Are they kidding?” After much hand wringing, Kitty was held back until 1946, and Billy, Charlie, and The Lost Weekend were in the clear.

  Still, trouble loomed again in the form of Leo McCarey. After the enormous commercial success of Going My Way, McCarey decided to stick with piety. His next film was The Bells of St. Mary’s. Not only did Der Bingle reprise his role as Father Chuck “Dial O For” O’Malley, but Ingrid Bergman now joined him as a lovable nun. Luckily, McCarey made The Bells of St. Mary’s for RKO, not Paramount, so there was no in-house competition between God and Bacchus. When the Oscar nominations were announced, The Lost Weekend earned seven. The Bells of St. Mary’s earned eight.

  Wilder and McCarey were the favorites for Best Director, The Lost Weekend and The Bells of St. Mary’s for Best Picture; Milland and Crosby for Best Actor. Billy told friends he planned in his acceptance speech to thank W. C. Fields.

  Double Indemnity was most decidedly not the kind of movie Academy voters favored, but The Lost Weekend, though equally dark tempered, didn’t have quite the same burden. For one thing, it had earnestness on its side. This was a social-problem drama, and in early 1946, with thousands of GIs returning home from the war with emotional as well as physical scars, the time was right for Wilder’s brand of realism. The Lost Weekend was also a good marketing tool for the industry. Sold by Paramount as daring and courageous, the film would also work as good public relations for Hollywood in general, since it proved—or tried to prove—that Tinseltown had some inkling of real people’s problems.

  The ceremony was held, as usual, at Grauman’s Chinese. William Wyler announced the winner of the Best Director award—Billy, who strode to the podium and said, “Thank you, Mrs. Miniver.” Wilder was immediately followed by Hollywood’s newly appointed chief censor, Eric Johnston, who had taken over from Will Hays. It was the censor who revealed the winner of the Best Picture award with what the Oscar historians Mason Wiley and Damien Bona call “little-boy enthusiasm”: “Oooooh! It’s The Lost Weekend!” Billy and Charlie then won the Best Screenplay award. And when Ingrid Bergman opened the envelope for Best Actor, she announced from the podium, “Mr. Milland, are you nervous? It’s yours!” It was a Lost Weekend sweep. Take that, Leo McCarey.

  Billy and the other winners sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” onstage at the close of the show, after which he, Charlie, and Ray Milland headed to Romanoff’s for drinks. The following morning when Brackett and Wilder returned to work, they were greeted by the sight of whiskey bottles hanging from every window in the Writers Building.

  Then it was back to the routine. Only now Brackett and Wilder were Oscar winners. Their price was going up, as was their ability to get what they wanted from the front office, but the team’s volatility hadn’t changed. The odd-couple nature of their relationship, the bickering, the constant threat of divorce—all of it had turned into a publicity device. Life reported that Billy was a “fervid New Dealer with leftish leanings,” while Brackett, of course, was a conservative Republican. “Brackett is an agoraphobe who jitters if the office door is left open. Wilder is a claustrophobe who can’t stand closed doors…. Wilder is galvanic, facile, prolific with ideas, endowed with visual imagination. Brackett is critical, contemplative, gifted with a graceful literary style and cultivated taste.” Both men, however, knew their joint health needed as much help as it could get, so each took a weekly injection of B-1. Cribbage in the morning, some writing, a good lunch (or maybe just lunch at Oblath’s), a nap, writing, drinks in the late afternoon, and a reclusive, alcoholic wife or either Doris or Audrey in the evenings—a fine routine.

  “So now we’re together again,” Billy said, referring to Charlie, “and we’re the happiest couple in Hollywood.”

  16. HOMESICK

  JOANNA (Joan Fontaine): His majesty is in no mood for a ball.

  EMPEROR (Richard Haydn): You’re quite right. I’m in the mood for a cemetery. Let us proceed to the ball.

  —The Emperor Waltz

  On February 17, 1946, Brackett and Wilder went on the radio as guests of Louella Parsons. They hadn’t yet won their Oscars, but they were still Hollywood’s best-known writing team. People called them the Gold Dust Twins. Or the Katzenjammer Kids. Even Hansel and Gretel. Usually, though, there was just one word used to describe them: “Brackettandwilder.” “I’m scared of columnists,” Billy admitted on the air, “and please don’t involve me in long explanations—I have an accent.” Charlie played the patriot he actually was: “Now stop that complex about your accent, Billy. We’ve all got accents! That’s what makes it a great country!” “Right you are, Charlie!” said Louella.

  Billy may actually have been worried about his intractable but sweet Viennese accent, an inflection more mellifluous than guttural-Germanic, but for whatever reason the loquacious director remained silent for much of the interview. He did manage to work in a few choice lines, though. First was his excuse for not having won an Oscar before. He blamed Charlie: “People know Brackett’s a Republican.” Then Louella asked what the team had in mind to follow The Lost Weekend. Charlie answered first. “This time we’re just having fun,” Brackett said. “It’s an operetta called The Emperor Waltz.”

  “And instead of the bat and mouse,” Billy chimed in, “we’re having Bing Crosby and Joan Fontaine.”

  Berlin was still such a dangerous wreckage in the spring of 1946, and its residents sufficiently unruly, that Wilder was forced to postpone his propaganda film. He’d told the army the previous summer that he could turn over a finished movie by the spring of 1946. It was now the spring of 1946, the script hadn’t been written, and since Berlin was still essentially off-limits and would remain so at least for the next year, there was no rush. As it turned out, the suicidal Fräulein whom Wilder met on the Kurfürstendamm would have to wait a long time to be cheered up by a Hollywood movie about postwar reconciliation.

  With A Foreign Affair on hold, Billy’s thoughts still turned to his own Austro-German heritage. Or better, they turned to a heritage that existed only in the imagination of someone who hadn’t been alive at the time. The Emperor Waltz was to be a lavish co
stume comedy-romance set in Vienna just after the turn of the century. Palaces, waltzes, courtiers, costumes, Technicolor, and the Emperor Franz Josef himself—Billy’s bright new comedy was going to cost a fortune.

  On the opening page of their new screenplay, which they completed at the very end of May, Billy and Charlie made clear their aesthetic goals:

  TO ALL CONCERNED IN THE PRODUCTION:

  1. This is not a fantasy, it is not an operetta. It is a comedy with a scattering of songs.

  2. Our action is not set in Graustark, Flausenthurm, or any other mythical kingdom. It is set in Vienna, 1901. It should be anchored to that time and place with good strong chains of reality.

  3. In casting, set-designing or costuming, let no one open his mouth too wide. No exaggerations, no conscious comicalities, please.

  4. Just because it plays in Vienna, don’t let’s have everyone talk like Herman Bing. And just because it’s in Technicolor, don’t let’s have the Emperor wear canary-yellow jaegers and a purple jock strap.

  And now, soldiers of Paramount: on to new glory,