Some Like It Hot
| Some Like It Hot | |
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theatrical poster |
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| Directed by | Billy Wilder |
| Produced by | Ashton Productions/Mirisch Company |
| Written by | Billy Wilder I. A. L. Diamond |
| Starring | Marilyn Monroe Tony Curtis Jack Lemmon George Raft Joe E. Brown |
| Music by | Adolph Deutsch |
| Cinematography | Charles Lang |
| Editing by | Arthur P. Schmidt |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
| Release date(s) | March 29, 1959 |
| Running time | 120 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $2,883,848 |
Some Like It Hot (1959) is a comedy film directed by Billy Wilder and starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon. The supporting cast includes George Raft, Joe E. Brown, Pat O'Brien, and Nehemiah Persoff. The film was adapted by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond from the story by Robert Thoeren and Michael Logan. Logan had already written the story (but without the gangsters) for a German film, Fanfaren der Liebe (directed by Kurt Hoffmann, 1951), so that Wilder's film is seen by some as a remake.
After the worldwide success of the French comedy La Cage aux Folles, United Artists re-released Some Like It Hot in cinemas in 1981. In 2000, the American Film Institute listed Some Like It Hot as the greatest American comedy film of all time.
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Plot
Two struggling musicians, Joe and Jerry (Curtis and Lemmon), witness what looks like the Saint Valentine's Day massacre of 1929. When the Chicago gangsters, led by 'Spats' Columbo (Raft) spot them, the duo flee for their lives. They escape and decide to leave town, only to find the sole out-of-town jobs available are in an all-girl band headed to Florida. The two disguise themselves as women, calling themselves Josephine and Geraldine (later Jerry changes his pseudonym to Daphne), join the band and board a train. Joe and Jerry both fall for "Sugar Kane" (Monroe), the band's sexy Polish-American vocalist and ukulele player, and fight for her affection while maintaining their disguises.
In Florida, Joe woos Sugar by assuming a second disguise as a millionaire named "Junior", the heir to Shell Oil, while mimicking Cary Grant's voice. An actual millionaire, Osgood Fielding III (Brown), falls for Jerry in his Daphne guise. One night Osgood asks Daphne out to his yacht. Joe convinces Daphne to keep Osgood ashore while he goes on the yacht with Sugar. That night Osgood proposes to Daphne who, in a state of excitement, accepts, believing he can finagle a large settlement from Osgood immediately following their wedding ceremony.
When the mobsters arrive at the same hotel for a conference honoring "Friends of Italian Opera", Spats and his gang spot Joe and Jerry. After several humorous chases (and witnessing yet another mob murder), Jerry, Joe, Sugar, and Osgood escape to the millionaire's yacht. Enroute, Sugar tells Joe that she's in love with him and not with "Junior". Jerry, for his part, tries to explain to Osgood that he cannot marry him, but Osgood is oblivious to all of Jerry's objections and remains determined—to the very end—to go through with the marriage; finally, Jerry removes the wig and yells, "I'm a man!", prompting Osgood to utter the movie's memorable last line: "Well, nobody's perfect."
Cast
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Production
The film was originally planned to be filmed in full color, but after several screen tests, it had to be changed to black and white because of a very obvious 'green tint' around the heavy make-up required by Curtis and Lemmon when portraying Josephine and Daphne. The Florida segment was filmed at the Hotel Del Coronado in Coronado, California.
Some Like It Hot received a "C" (Condemned) rating from the Catholic Legion of Decency. The film, along with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and several other films, led to the end of the Production Code in the mid-1960s. It was released by United Artists without the MPAA logo in the credits or title sequence, since the film did not receive Production Code approval.
Tony Curtis is frequently quoted as saying that kissing Marilyn Monroe was like "kissing Hitler." In a 2001 interview with Leonard Maltin, Curtis stated that he never made this claim.
The film's title is a line in the nursery rhyme "Pease Porridge Hot." It also occurs as dialogue in the film when Joe, as "Junior", tells Sugar he prefers classical music over hot jazz. The film's working title was "Not Tonight, Josephine".
Adaptations
In 1972, a musical play based on the screenplay of the film, entitled Sugar, opened on Broadway, starring Elaine Joyce, Robert Morse, Tony Roberts and Cyril Ritchard, with book by Peter Stone, lyrics by Bob Merrill, and (all-new) music by Jule Styne. A 1991 production of this show in London featured Tommy Steele and retained the original title.
In 2002, Tony Curtis performed in a stage production of the film. He portrayed the character originally played by Joe E. Brown.
Awards and honors
The film won an Academy Award for Best Costume Design, Black-and-White (Orry-Kelly) and was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Jack Lemmon), Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White, Best Director and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.
It won the Golden Globe for Best Comedy. Marilyn Monroe won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in Musical or Comedy, and Jack Lemmon for Best Actor in Musical or Comedy.
The film has been acclaimed worldwide as one of the greatest film comedies ever made. In 1989, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant," going in on the first year of voting.
In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted it the eighth greatest comedy film of all time. In 2002, Channel 4 ranked Some Like It Hot as the fifth greatest film ever made in their 100 Greatest Films Poll.
American Film Institute recognition
- 1998 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies - #14
- 2000 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs - #1
- 2005 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes:
- "Well, nobody's perfect." - #48
- 2007 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) - #22
Soundtrack
- "I'm Through With Love", by Gus Kahn, Matty Malneck, Jay Livingston. Performed by Marilyn Monroe.
- "I Wanna Be Loved By You", by Bert Kalmar, Herbert Stothart, Harry Ruby. Sung by Monroe.
- "Some Like It Hot", by Matty Malneck and I.A.L. Diamond. Performed by Monroe
- "Runnin' Wild", by A.H. Gibbs, Joe Grey, Leo Wood. Sung by Monroe.
- "Down Among the Sheltering Palms", by Olmar-Brockman.
- "Sugar Blues", by Williams-Fletcher.
- "By the Beautiful Sea", by Harry Carroll, Harold Atteridge.
- "Sweet Georgia Brown", by Ben Bernie, Maceo Pinkard, Kenneth Casey.
- "La Cumparsita", written by Gerardo Matos Rodríguez.
- "Stairway to the Stars", music by Matt Malneck and Frank Signorelli.
In popular culture
- A scene from the film where Monroe is talking to Curtis in a railway washroom ("My spine turns to custard, I get goose-pimply all over") was used and specially re-edited in a series of popular TV adverts in the UK for Holsten Pils in the early 1990s, featuring Griff Rhys Jones.
- In the Blackadder Goes Forth episode Major Star, Lieutenant George ends up in a similar situation when he is urged to dress as a woman. He looks similar to Daphne, and becomes the romantic persuit of General Melchett.
- In the Johnny Bravo episode "Some Like It Stupid" (the title itself an obvious parody), Johnny and Carl disguise themselves as female beauty pageant contestants and board a bus to escape a mobster. Johnny later falls for a fellow contestant, Norma (who repeats a paraphrase of Monroe's "goose-pimply" line multiple times), and at the end of the episode, every contestant is revealed to be a man.
"Nobody's perfect!"
The film's last line has frequently been parodied:
- In the Torchwood episode "To the Last Man", as "Gwen: He's a frozen soldier from 1918./Jack: [grinning] Nobody's perfect."
- In the film Independence Day, as "Albert Nimzicki: I'm not Jewish./Julius Levinson: Nobody's perfect."
See also
- Cross-dressing in film and television
External links
- Some Like It Hot at the Internet Movie Database
- Roger Ebert's review of Some Like It Hot
- Plot summary for Fanfaren der Liebe
- Literature
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