Mary Pickford, Pola Negri, and Greta Garbo turned down the role. Highly unusual at the time, Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder had Joe Gillis narrate, from beyond the grave, the sad tale of the final months of his life, while the film simultaneously depicts the still living Gillis experiencing those events unaware of the fate his dead self already knows. Haines, whose career had ended because of his homosexual off-screen life, was too happy in his new profession as an interior decorator to want to call attention to his past as an actor. Hedda Hopper: at the top of the stairwell as Norma descends toward the cameras. Included among the 25 films on the American Film Institute's 2005 list of AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores. The ocean?' Oh, and while were at it, Wilder didnt submerge any cameras to get that underwater shot. Taylor had $78 in his wallet, a silver cigarette case, a Waltham pocket watch, and a two-carat diamond ring on his finger when his body was found, so cops quickly ruled out robbery as the motive. The murder made it to the late editions, radio, and television because one of the biggest old-time stars was involved. [4] He made a sex comedy with David Niven for Otto Preminger, The Moon Is Blue (1953), which was a huge hit, in part due to controversy over its content. "[18] Rumors at the time had it that Hepburn wanted a family, but when Holden told her that he had had a vasectomy and having children was impossible, she moved on. He made two more films with Olson: Force of Arms (1951) at Warner Bros. and Submarine Command (1951) at Paramount. We'll hear two of his visits to Suspense, beginning with the New Orleans jazz . Warner (one of the four "Waxworks" at the bridge party) in The King of Kings (1927). On the last day of shooting, Swanson drove back to the house she, her mother and daughter shared during production, announcing "there were only three of us in it now, meaning that Norma Desmond had taken her leave.". cynical Hollywood survivor played by William Holden. Sunset Blvd. He was perfection on- and off-screen. These actors were bigger than life. The Academy Award-winning actor William Holden, born William Beedle Jr., on April 17, 1918, in O'Fallon, Illinois, began his career with 1939s "Golden Boy," per Britannica. "Lux Radio Theater" broadcast a 60-minute radio adaptation of the movie on September 17, 1951, with Gloria Swanson and William Holden reprising their film roles. And that young man who was found floating in the pool of her mansion, with two shots in his back and one in his stomach, was nobody important, really. Eventually it wasn't Wilder who shouted "Cut!" Sands had forged Taylors name on checks and wrecked his car the summer before and left footprints on Taylors bed after a burglary. William Holdens Joe Gillis helps a timid soul named Norma Desmond cross a crowded street on Paramounts back lot. Warner took the part. The studio needed an actor who the audience could believe wrote a story about Okies in the Dust Bowl that played on a torpedo boat by the time it hit the screen. The film originally opened and closed the story at the Los Angeles County Morgue. It was not particularly successful. Well, they kissed, and kissed, and kept kissing, and the crew began to snicker, and finally Marshall's voice rang out: "Cut, dammit!" . Paramount always labeled that studio as its Long Island Studios. Von Stroheim didnt know how to drive, and the scene where hes driving the exotic leopard-upholstered Isotta-Fraschini was shot as the car was being towed. That's a reference to the traditional grey morning suit worn by the groom at a formal wedding. Billy Wilder also used Sheldrake as the last name of Fred MacMurray's character in "The Apartment". It was meant to be slightly humorous in a morbid way, but the audience at the first test screening found it flat-out hysterical, setting the wrong mood for the rest of the picture. On the advice of Libby Holman, Montgomery Clift, who had signed to play the part of Joe Gillis, broke his contract just two weeks prior to the start of shooting. Unsurprisingly, he was largely self taught, spending countless hours with instruction manuals and newspaper clips, playing all four hands simultaneously until he became an expert. Holden was still an unknown actor when he made Golden Boy, while Stanwyck was already a film star. It was largely from his association with Wilder that Holden would enjoy the greatest acting successes of his career in the 1950s. Being born on 17 April 1918, William Holden was 63 years old at the time of his death. On the Columbia lot is an assistant director and scout named Harold Winston. In the movie when a cop tries to call in to the coroners office, he cant get an open line because Hedda Hopper is on the phone in Normas room, talking to the Times City Desk and that is more important. A screenwriter develops a dangerous relationship with a faded film star determined to make a triumphant return.A screenwriter develops a dangerous relationship with a faded film star determined to make a triumphant return.A screenwriter develops a dangerous relationship with a faded film star determined to make a triumphant return. The silent comedian had a reputation as one of Hollywoods best bridge players. You see, this is my life, she promised. Not long ago, he was divorced from the actress, Gloria Holden, but carried the torch after the marital rift. Wilder, ever the merry prankster, told Holden and Olson to keep kissing until he called "cut": he was going to fade out at the end of the scene, and he needed to make sure the kiss didn't end prematurely. Gloria Swanson was paid $50,000 plus $5,000 per week for any time over schedule. She offered Peavey 10 dollars to identify Taylors grave in the Hollywood Park Cemetery and had someone wait there in a white sheet to scare it out of him. She felt that Wilder used her name in a past-tense context, and she was offended. Location scenes at Norma Desmond's mansion were shot not on Sunset Boulevard but on Wilshire Boulevard. Normand made movies with the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle, and lived like life was one Wild Party. Betty is an idealist, more closely resembling Normas rose-colored outlook, but with darker shades she wants to bring to light. Montgomery Clift was originally cast as the writer but dropped out two weeks before the shoot. 25 on AFI's list of all-time great leading men. Oscar and Emmy winner William Holden was one of Hollywood's biggest stars for decades, with his performances as cynical, conflicted men winning acclaim and awards. An iconic sequence in that earlier film sees the character of Diane ascending a long staircase to a seventh-story apartment (hence the film's title). The producer in the film was originally called Kaufman and was to be played by Joseph Calleia. Paramount reunited Bracken and him in Young and Willing (1943). But attempts to turn the movie into a stage musical began almost immediately, spearheaded by none other than Gloria Swanson. White, pink, or maybe bright flaming red. But when Sondheim pitched the idea to Billy Wilder at a party, Wilder said, "You can't write a musical about Sunset Boulevard. This page was last edited on 28 February 2023, at 22:44. He rose to prominence with his role in the movie "Sunset Boulevard" (1950), which landed him his first Best Actor Oscar nomination. Men bribed her hairdresser to get a lock of her hair. William Haines turned down an offer to appear in the film but attended the Hollywood premiere with Joan Crawford. 1851 Ivar Street was the address of the Alto Nido Apartments, where he lived, sometimes worked and, ultimately died in 1941. But in 1957, Paramount formally asked Desmond to stop, the studio bosses having decided not to grant permission after all. Sunset Boulevard, one of Hollywood's most cruelly accurate depictions of itself, is now 65 years oldolder, even, than its main character, who's washed up at 50. But who could play the silent film diva? But before you hear it all distorted and blown out of proportion, before those Hollywood columnists get their hands on it, maybe youd like to hear the facts, the whole truth. The magnifying glass in Normas beauty makeover scene shows the skin of a young ingnue, not an aging crone. . A second film with Seaton did not do as well, The Proud and Profane (1956), where Holden played the role with a moustache. Wilder was, well, the wilder of the two, often bawdy and crass, while Brackett was genteel. If anything, its observations on the greedy machinations of Tinseltown are truer now than they were in 1950. The death was just one of many infamous Hollywood scandals of the 1920s, which included the Roscoe Arbuckle bottle rape trial, the death of Olive Thomas, the mysterious death of Thomas H. Ince, and the drug-related deaths of Wallace Reid, Barbara La Marr, and Jeanne Eagels. I instantly fell in love - both with the movie itself and with its handsome 32-year old male lead, William Holden. Joe Gillis' typewriter is a portable manual Remington Rand Noiseless Model 7. LAS COSAS DEL QUERER", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sunset_Boulevard_(film)&oldid=1142173541, Best Overall New Extra Features Library Release. Seleccionar el departamento en el que deseas buscar. Norma Desmond promised she would never desert her audience again. [2] He had two younger brothers, Robert Westfield Beedle and Richard Porter Beedle. When Peavey heard the moans I am the ghost of William Desmond Taylor. From the right angle, the camera could shoot the reflected image in the mirror without ever going underwater itself. It gives them an opportunity to write really good acceptances speeches. Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard is one of his three or four masterpieces, a seminal Hollywood black comedy-satire, which unlike most films keeps improving with the passage of time.. Benfiting from a glorious and iconic cast, the film concerns a faded silent film star, played by Gloria Swanson (in a variation of her own onscreen persona), who lives in the past with her butler (and former . Sunset Boulevard mixed fiction with the realities of filmmaking. Billy Wilder was one of the ultimate Hollywood insiders and he grew with film. [39][46] He dictated in his will that the Neptune Society cremate him and scatter his ashes in the Pacific Ocean. [38], Holden maintained a home in Switzerland and also spent much of his time working for wildlife conservation as a managing partner in an animal preserve in Africa. For purposes of authenticity Erich von Stroheim and Nancy Olson wore their own clothes in the film. On the night of November 12, 1981, Holden consumed somewhere between eight and 10 drinks in a short amount of time, according to "William Holden: A Biography." That's the end.". It was a big hit, as was The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954), a Korean War drama with Kelly.[20][21]. The film's narrative structure bears a marked resemblance to that of American Beauty (1999). Suratt believed that DeMille's epic, "The King of Kings" (released in 1927) was based on her screenplay and filed a $1,000,000 plagiarism suit which was settled out of court in 1930. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett almost came to blows over the montage depicting Norma's preparations for her comeback. But she wanted to rewrite her dialogue (as was her custom)a nonstarter for Wilder, who seldom let his actors change their lines even slightly from what was on the page. A screenwriter develops a dangerous relationship with a faded film star determined to make a triumphant return. He worked on dramas like The Key (1958), Westerns like John Fords The Horse Soldiers (1959) opposite John Wayne, and comedies like The Moon is Blue which so famously challenged the Production Code in 1953 that Hawkeye and BJ insisted it get shown at M*A*S*H 4077 to break the monotony of the Korean War. [4] They had two sons, Peter and Scott. Movie audiences in the nave early days of film sometimes didnt know that somebody had to sit down and write a movie. So funny that it took away from the rest of the picture. Westmore and director Billy Wilder agreed with this so William Holden was made up to look younger than he was. [46] Rumors existed that he was suffering from lung cancer, which Holden had denied at a 1980 press conference. (Gloria Swanson's TV star - she has one for TV and one for film - is very near by at 6301 Hollywood Blvd). "I am big. She was nominated for the first Academy Award in the Best Actress category. but Holden's wife, Ardis (Brenda Marshall), who happened to be on set that day. Make-up designer Wally Westmore found that Gloria Swanson's face belied her age and wanted to make her look older. [22] The golden run at the box office continued with Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), from a best-selling novel, with Jennifer Jones, and Picnic (1955), as a drifter, in an adaptation of the William Inge play with Kim Novak. Getty always wanted a pool, the poor dope. Swanson was told "She can't show herself, Gloria, she's too overcome. Billy Wilder was actually friendlier with the other leading gossip columnist of the day, Louella Parsons. Norma is at the edge of insanity through the whole movie, but that doesnt mean shes not fun. Originally Billy Wilder wanted both of Hollywood's top gossip columnists--Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons--reporting from Norma's mansion at the end and fighting over the phone. He did another Western at Columbia, Texas (1941) with Glenn Ford, and a musical comedy at Paramount, The Fleet's In (1942) with Eddie Bracken, Dorothy Lamour, and Betty Hutton.[9]. His height was 1.8 m tall and weighed 89 kg. The "Desmond mansion" was located not on Sunset Blvd. The film is openly referenced in Soapdish (1991), The Player (1992), Gods and Monsters (1998), Mulholland Drive (2001), Inland Empire (2006) and Be Cool (2005) while the closing scene of Cecil B. Demented (2000) is a direct parody of the final scene of the 1950 classic. Holden's first film back from the services was Blaze of Noon (1947), an aviator picture at Paramount directed by John Farrow. Bogart was not especially friendly toward Hepburn, who had little Hollywood experience, while Holden's reaction was the opposite, wrote biographer Michelangelo Capua. They had to have the ears of the old place, too. "[13] Paramount reunited him with Nancy Olson, one of his Sunset Boulevard costars, in Union Station (1950). The mundane accident that took the Hollywood actor's life was made even worse by the fact that nobody found his body for a week afterward, according to the Associated Press. Director Billy Wilder Writers Charles Brackett Billy Wilder D.M. She puts on a show playing a Max Sennett bathing girl and Charlie Chaplins Tramp character, though Maxs bad timing is a little too on the nose. For television roles in 1974, Holden won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his portrayal of a cynical, tough veteran LAPD street cop in the television film The Blue Knight, based upon the best-selling Joseph Wambaugh novel of the same name.[31][4]. (1949), and "Father Is a Bachelor" (1950). Rudy's shoeshine stand at the parking lot where Gillis hides his car from the creditors was inspired by Oscar Smith's shoeshine stand located just inside the Bronson Gate at the old Paramount Studios, which was a popular hangout for gossip and socializing while Billy Wilder was building his career there. In the movie, an aide tells Cecil B. DeMille "Gordon Cole has been trying to reach you". [35] Holden starred in The Earthling,[36] as a loner dying of cancer at the Australian outback and accompanying an orphan boy (Ricky Schroder). In 1998 the American Film Institute selected this as the 12th greatest film of the 100 Greatest American Movies of All Time. Wilder wanted Hedy Lamarr to sit in for a cameo, but she wanted $25,000. Glenn Close, who portrayed Norma Desmond on stage, also played a character who dramatically cut her wrists over a man she was in love with in the film "Fatal Attraction. They reportedly began a two-year affair, which is alleged to have ended due to Holden's alcoholism. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett met with Greta Garbo and tried to convince her to make a comeback in the role of Norma Desmond. Cecil B. DeMille had a pet name for Gloria Swanson: "Young Fellow". There were no shortage of suspects. The name "Norma Desmond" was chosen from a combination of silent-film star Norma Talmadge and silent movie director William Desmond Taylor, whose still-unsolved murder is one of the great scandals of Hollywood history. Queen Kelly nearly ruined both of their careers after Joe Kennedy, JFKs dad who produced the film, replaced von Stroheim as director because Swanson complained about the racy material. Wilder's version is the one they went with (he was the director, after all), but the argument marked a turning point for him, and he decided never to work with Brackett again. Louis B. Mayer's reaction is well documented but Mae Murray also found the film offensive. The forensics team rolled him over and saw he had been shot at least once in the back with a small-caliber pistol. Billy Wilder wanted Hedy Lamarr to appear in a cameo in the scene where Norma and Joe visit Cecil B. DeMille at Paramount. Gloria Swanson and Nancy Olson also appeared in Airport 1975. The older actor prided himself on needling people and he needled the shit out of Holden on the first movie, and the second movie was worse because Holden started dating Audrey Hepburn during filming. Costume designer Edith Head found working on the film to be one of her greatest challenges. Peavey died in a San Francisco asylum, where he was being treated for syphilis-related dementia, in 1931. Microphones would catch the last gurgles, and Technicolor would photograph the red, swollen tongues. They swore each other off over the montage where Norma struggles to lose weight for her comeback. For the first industry screening, Paramount executives invited several silent-film stars. Holden's films continued to struggle at the box office, however: Paris When It Sizzles (1964) with Hepburn was shot in 1962 but given a much delayed release, The 7th Dawn (1964) with Capucine and Susannah York, a romantic adventure set during the Malayan Emergency produced by Charles K. Feldman, Alvarez Kelly (1966), a Western, and The Devil's Brigade (1968). Marshman was a journalist but both Wilder and Brackett had been impressed by the critique he had given of their earlier film, The Emperor Waltz (1948). Initially, writer-director Wilder envisioned the movie as a straightforward comedy, and the famously saucy West seemed like a perfect fit. This indicates that he is smoking filterless cigarettes, which was the norm for that era until filters became the standard after the mid-'50s. [43] Capucine and Holden remained friends until his death in 1981. In fact,Bob Thomas, Holden's biographer, said that the actor's addiction counselor predicted his demise. She declined the offer. (1950) in Australia? The actor's second major breakthrough occurred when Wilder cast him in the lead of the. Less popular was Satan Never Sleeps (1961), the last film of Clifton Webb and Leo McCarey; The Counterfeit Traitor (1962), his third film with Seaton; or The Lion (1962), with Trevor Howard and Capucine. The two stars had never expressed any hostility towards each other over the failure of Cecil B. DeMille and Stroheim made many recommendations to Wilder during the making of the film, including having his character write all of Norma Desmond's fan mail, and, more importantly, to use footage from "Queen Kelly" as an excerpt from one of Desmond's great silent films. On Joe's and Betty's night walk through the Paramount backlot, his calling the false building fronts "Washington Square" would be an accurate reference, as that neighborhood in New York was full of brownstone houses, apartments, and other turn-of-the-century architecture. At Paramount, he did another Western, Streets of Laredo (1949). The writer was almost all washed up, one step ahead of the finance company, parking his car in a lot behind the shoeshine parlor run by Rudy, a guy who never asked any questions about finances because he could just look at the peoplesr heels and know the score. The exteriors of Norma Desmond's home on Sunset Boulevard were filmed at 641 South Irving Boulevard. They thought the actors made it up as they went along. For the opening shot of Joe Gillis floating face-down in the swimming pool, Billy Wilder wanted a shot from below that would show both the body and the police and photographers standing at the pool's edge looking down. (1950), as a way of "art imitating life." H.B. When Joe Gillis and Norma Desmond watch one of Norma's old silent movies, they are watching a scene from Queen Kelly (1932), starring a young Gloria Swanson. He was Judy Hollidays tutor in Born Yesterday (1950) and played a war correspondent in Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955). At Columbia, he starred in film noirs, The Dark Past (1948), The Man from Colorado (1949) and Father Is a Bachelor (1950).