Old Movie Review

Some Like It Hot

Produced and directed (and partly written) by Billy Wilder, Some Like It Hot is an iconic 1959 film which stars Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemon. It’s the kind of movie that only Billy Wilder could have made: efficient, well-paced, well-cast, and, well, odd. Odd and perfect. Imagine a movie so cast with thoroughbreds that Edward G. Robinson has a bit part.

Billy Wilder was born in Austria and learned the trade of screenwriting working in Berlin. (If not for Hitler, the world center for film might very well have been Berlin with its Ufa studio system, early film technology, breakthrough films, and stars like Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings). Born to Jewish parents, Samuel Wilder fled Berlin in 1934 (some of his family did not and perished in the Holocaust). After a couple of years in Paris, Wilder manage to emigrate to the United States where he changed his first name to Billy, learned English, and launched one of the most spectacular film careers in history. Nominated 21 times for an Academy Award, Wilder took home 7 Oscars. He got 10 Golden Globe nominations and he won 3 Directors’ Guild awards, 3 Producers’ Guild awards, and 3 Writers’ Guild awards. He was the triple threat: writer, director, and producer although he did not always wear all three hats in every movies. He also made a lot of money and amassed a lot of respect. His list of film credits includes Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, The Seven Year Itch, The Apartment, and many others. Several of his films are preserved in the Library of Congress as being significant American films.

Released in 1959, Some Like It Hot is set in the 1920s in Chicago when mobsters ruled, Prohibition was in full force, and guys unabashedly chased girls, who were often called dames. The sound track has a lot of that great old 1920s jazz feel along with a few numbers performed by Marilyn Monroe’s character Sugar. Sugar is a ukulele player and lead singer of the band. Marilyn manages viewer expectations with her line, “I’m not much of a singer, but then again, this isn’t much of a band.”

A great delight of this film is that nobody knows what to do with it. It’s not that it’s bad—quite the contrary, it’s extraordinarily good. It’s just different.

First, Billy Wilder called this film a “crime comedy” and early in the story, the audience witnesses a machine-gun style mass murder. Not normally the stuff of comedy. In fact, it is a little shocking to sit down to a comedy and see a massacre. The crime is inadvertently witnessed by two down-on-their-luck musicians, Joe and Jerry, who are then chased by the mobsters. They overhear that the mob boss does not like to leave any witnesses, so the two musicians—running out of options as to how to leave town—sign on to play in an all-girl band leaving for a tour to Florida.

Remember this is 1959. In order to Joe and Jerry to get this life-saving gig, they have to be women, so they get wigs, high heels, and take on alter egos. Jerry/Daphne is played by Jack Lemon (he was a rising star about to come into his own when this film was made) and Joe/Josephine is played by Tony Curtis, already a big name in his own right. In the film, they meet Sugar, who is played by Marilyn Monroe in what would become one of her signature parts. It was a surprise to Wilder that a big star like Monroe would accept this role; he never dreamed of asking her. She sent out word by the Hollywood grapevine she wanted the part and being at the apex of her career, she got it, no questions asked. When Joe/Josephine becomes powerfully attracted to Sugar, he adopts yet a third alter ego: Junior, a millionaire playboy heir to Shell Oil who pretends to be disinterested in females.

Wilder makes efficient comedies and those words do not really go together. The comedy is efficient because the plot is perfect, the pacing is fast, and the jokes land. Everything is both unexpected and yet plausible, the winning combination for comedy. The script, the acting, the music, the images… it is close to flawless. The film appears on many lists of the greatest films of all times. It is hard to find anything wrong with it, and that’s part of what makes it a little bit weird. Most comedies are edgy, uneven, sometimes off-paced, and not all of the jokes work. You won’t find that in a Wilder comedy. At times it seemed odd to me. I have no frame of reference for this kind of comedy.

But what really makes the film odd is the subject matter. In 1959, cross-dressing was not the sort of stuff for comedies. When the film first came out, it was considered so far beyond risqué that the Production Code of Hollywood refused to give the film an approval because of the alleged sexual innuendos in the film. The Catholic Church’s National League of Decency condemned the film as “morally objectionably” and even argued it promoted homosexuality (there are no overtly homosexual scenes or characters in the movie). Ironically, it was banned in Kansas not for the cross-dressing but for a love scene between Curtis (playing the male character Junior) and Monroe that involved some kissing. Critical approval ranged from tepid to enthusiastic, but the film got six Oscar nominations and earned newcomer Jack Lemon a Best Actor nod.

There’s no deodorant like success, Liz Taylor once said, and Some Like it Hot was an unmitigated box office success. The film has lost no appeal in the ensuing years; if anything, it’s better loved in this century than when it was made. In 2000, the American Film Institute said it was the “best American comedy ever made.” In 2012, the British Film Institute counted it among the best 100 films ever made anywhere.

At the time, the great scandal of the film was its theme of cross-dressing. Most of the plot of this comedy is lightweight but durable; it holds together well. But the two lead actors are almost always seen in drag. Cross-dressing and transsexuality are ubiquitous themes today, but this was racy stuff in the 1950s. A drag queen—back then they were called “female impersonators”—was hired to coach Lemon and Curtis as to how to best act as females. They were even given a trial by fire once they had clothes, wigs, and make-up. Billy Wilder sent Lemon and Curtis in full female regalia into a public women’s restroom at the studio. Lemon recalled that the test was horrifying and embarrassing. Wilder wanted to be sure Lemon and Curtis could pass as females. The first test was a success; no one noticed them. Wilder then tried a different and far more glamorous look for the actors and, this time, they were booted out of the ladies’ room because they were perceived as cross-dressing men. That was how Wilder determined how his two leading men should look. Although some of Hollywood’s best designers and stylists were hired to glam up the two actors, Wilder said the comedy worked better with Lemon and Curtis as “ugly women.”

This is not a film about gender-bending or transsexual identities. The plot seems harmless by today’s standards since neither Joe/Josephine nor Jerry/Daphne wanted to be women; they just wanted to avoid being murdered. They were not tortured by being in the wrong body or confused about gender roles.

The film was realistic enough to show the men as they wobbled in their high heels, tugged on their skirts, fiddled with their wigs, and struggled with proper placing of their padding. Both Joe/Josephine and Jerry/Daphne swooned over the Sugar and delighted in being surrounded by girls. In fact, Joe/Josephine is so taken with Sugar that he has to craft a third phony identity to pursue her. To this end, Jerry/Daphne helped his pal win the girl by being his wing-man or, in this case, his wing-woman.

The casting in this film is a hoot. Look for Easter Eggs. George Raft (Scarface) is Spats, the gangster chasing the musicians. Among the gangsters, George E. Stone (Little Caesar) and Edward G. Robinson, Jr. (Little Caesar, Double Indemnity) make an appearance. There are also some film riffs: Spats tries to smash a grapefruit into the face of one of his men (Public Enemy) and one of the thugs is standing around flipping a coin (Scarface).

While Tony Curtis got the role right away, casting for Jerry/Daphne was a little more circuitous. Jerry Lewis, Danny Kaye, and Frank Sinatra declined the part of Jerry/Daphne, which opened the door to relative newcomer Jack Lemon. The big surprise in casting was Marilyn Monroe, at the height of her stardom in 1959. When she wanted the role, no one else was even considered.

At first, getting Monroe seemed like a major win, and Wilder worked with her later on another film (The Seven Year Itch) but she was difficult and caused innumerable problems in the film. Monroe was what was called back them “a pill popper” but what today we would call a person with substance use disorder. Her concentration was frazzled and she often took 40 or 50 takes to get a line right. It was so bad that Tony Curtis and others on the set took bets as to how many tries it would take Monroe to get a line out. In one scene, she has to say to Tony Curtis this simple line, announcing her presence: “It’s me, Sugar.” According to Tony Curtis and film lore, it took 47 takes to get the line right, because Monroe kept transposing the words, even delivering lines like, “It’s Sugar, me.” She could also be unpleasant and frazzled.

Marilyn Monroe was married at this time to Arthur Miller who frequently visited her on the set and tried to “help” Billy Wilder make the movie. His advice was not appreciated.

True to her Hollywood reputation, Monroe was chronically late, frequently held up production, and cost the studio a fortune due to her delays. Wilder found her behavior exasperating, but once said, “My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see Aunt Minnie?” Wilder did credit Marilyn with turning in a great performance and noted that she often found it easier to deliver complicated lines than simple ones.

“I think there are more books on Marilyn Monroe than there are on World War II,” Billy Wilder observed once, “and there’s a great similarity.” The animosity between Wilder and Monroe—and indeed between Monroe and the crew—was legendary. Despite playing the leading role in the film, Monroe was not invited to the wrap party.

While the two male leads play typical Billy Wilder characters—guys in a jam who muddle their way through with wild antics and a lot punchlines—Marilyn Monroe more or less plays herself. In this film, she is the star attraction of this little traveling band, but she is desperately unhappy, she drinks, she’s been hurt in a series of unfortunate romances, and her only real appeal is that she’s the best-looking woman in the band. A couple of times in film, Sugar announces to Joe/Josephine/Junior that, “I’m not very bright.” It’s the whole Marilyn Monroe persona: a beautiful, unhappy woman who is somewhat talented but not very bright. Yet Monroe sparkles when she has to and the beautiful but buried theme of this movie is that Monroe is a desperately lonely woman “cross-dressing” as the happy party girl.

Part of the reason I was drawn to this film was its theme. I often look at brilliant films that have been relegated to (temporary) obscurity because our cultural sensibilities have left them in the dust. Just think of Gone with the Wind, a marvelous film that is offensive today in its very premise. Or Holiday Inn, a song-and-dance Christmas film that is unwatchable today because of a blackface routine. Even the Home Alone franchise caught flack for cameos with Donald Trump when Donald Trump fell out of favor with the Hollywood left. (Donald Trump does get better looking every day, I must add.) So what about Some Like It Hot? Is it watchable today?

First of all, Some Like It Hot is not about men who identify as women. It’s about men so desperate to outwit mobsters that they are willing to go so far as to pretend to be women. Despite the crime aspect, there is something innocent and amusing about this ploy. It’s not transsexuality, at all, it’s slapstick. It’s a wild way out of a tough spot.

The characters of Joe and Jerry are clearly men. In fact Joe is so strongly attracted to Sugar that he has to create a new male persona to act on his desires. Jerry has an eye for Sugar, too, but he gracefully bows out to play wing-woman. As wing-woman, Jerry/Daphne is wooed by a wealthy but weird millionaire named Osgood (played by Joe E. Brown) who interprets her disinterest and smart-alecky remarks as playing hard to get. Osgood falls in love and the surprise of the film is that Jerry/Daphne is thrilled at the prospect of being wed to a millionaire, but realizes he has to come clean to his new beau that marriage will not work because he is a man.

Some Like It Hot is not a film about men usurping the roles of women, it’s a story of a couple of hapless musicians willing to put on wigs and make-up to avoid getting machine-gunned down on a Chicago street. If you’re looking for a discussion of gender roles or men being trapped in a woman’s body, this is not the film for you. Would a movie like this be made today? I doubt it, because the director and writers would probably get too heavy-handed with cultural issue of gender roles. In 2024, the world has grown very, very serious.

Billy Wilder made his mark with clever movies, and Some Like It Hot is a very clever comedy. The movie moves rapidly through plausible albeit outlandish plot points so that we come to understand why these two musicians had to join a girls’ band. The story moves quickly, the jokes land, but in the end, it’s all lightweight stuff. But that’s good. No one wants to watch Schindler’s List every night after work. We all want—we need—efficient lightweight comedies from time to time … now more than ever.

When it was first released, Some Like It Hot was pushing boundaries and flouting convention. In today’s era of RuPaul’s Drag Race and Drag Queen Story Hours at the public library, those conventions seem quaint.

For Lemon and Curtis, they not only had to pass as women, they had to develop a female persona. Lemon took it over the top being ditzy, bubbly, and talking in a falsetto. His voice in the movie is sometimes dubbed by a female, since doing 40 takes for every scene with Miss Monroe, he could not maintain a high-pitched voice over the course of a long day. To play against the effervescent Daphne, Tony Curtis took a more regal approach, with perfect posture and a more haughty attitude. The comedy that Curtis so adeptly brought to the role was less his portrayal of stuffy Josephine and more his back-and-forth trading places from grand-dame Josephine to the roguish millionaire Junior.

This is a movie from back in the day when a funny movie was a funny movie. It’s worth a watch, particularly if you want a day off from the culture wars.