Billy Wilder dead.

CNN

[Greybird]

This makes me far sadder than losing Berle and Moore, and the loss this week by "Moulin Rouge" of the best picture and best actress Oscars, combined. And with how I love brilliant comedy and musicals, that is saying one helluva lot.

Before I put on my tape of "The Apartment" once again, I relate -- and I'm afraid I don't have Mr. Wilder's own words -- what he said was the moment of the greatest gratitude he'd ever felt, and the best piece of encouragement he'd ever received. (This was in accepting one of those innumerable awards he'd earned that crowded his mantel, probably the AFI lifetime achievement award.)

Wilder had been a successful screenwriter at UFA in Berlin for many years, but that (and the demand for him in Hollywood) didn't necessarily cut much ice with U.S. immigration officials, when he saw the handwriting on the political wall and attempted to emigrate to the U.S. in the mid-'30s.

When he was applying for an immigration visa at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, he had a nervous time with the official who was silently perusing his papers, with Wilder knowing that his future and his freedom hung in the balance.

The official finally bent forward and said, "You write movies, is that it?"

"Yes."

After a long pause: "Well, write some good ones."

STAMP STAMP STAMP KER-CHUNK! Wilder had his visa and was on his way.

"Ninotchka," "Double Indemnity," "Some Like It Hot," "The Apartment," "One, Two, Three" ... I'd say he wrote some good ones. Some friggin' immortal ones. Directed most of 'em, too. Rest in peace, Billy.

[Rastus]

Thanks, tictoc. I'll do my best to track it down. I love Cagney, and I've liked every Wilder film I've seen.

[Charles Henrickson]

Wilder directed such diverse works as Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, A Foreign Affair, Sunset Blvd., Stalag 17, Sabrina, Witness for the Prosecution, Some Like It Hot and The Apartment (to name just a few).

What a filmography! (And that's "just a few"!) Red-hot during the post-war baby-boom years (late '40s-early '60s). Several great collaborations each with Bill Holden and Jack Lemmon. Definitely a top-ten (maybe a top-five) director of all time.

[Fiddlstix]

Bump

[andysandmikesmom]

I think you are wise in that regard...those 'film noir' from the 1940s and maybe the early 1950s were grand movies indeed...with a great cast, script, director and producer, one could relay so much, with so little dialogue, and left much to the viewers imagination...great filmaking at its best..

[aristeides]

Wilder put the feelings of people waiting on the Mexican border for U.S. visas in Hold Back the Dawn (1941), for which he wrote the script.

[Atlas Sneezed]

Billy Wilder directed Some like it Hot, in which appeared...

George Raft, who also appeared in Casino Royale with...

Peter Sellers, who appeared in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with...

Dudley Moore, who appeared in Wholly Moses with...

Dom DeLuise, who appeared in The Muppet Movie with...

Milton Berle, who appeared in Let's Make Love! with...

Marilyn Monroe, who starred in Some Like It Hot which was directed by...

Billy Wilder!

Can anyone go full circle by using less than the four other people I used?

[andysandmikesmom]

Witness for the Prosecution...one of my all time favorites...a little short mundane mystery, written by Agatha Christie, was turned into a most remarkable movie...and what a grand cast...Tyrone Power, as the defendant, Marlene Deitrich, as his wife, Charles Laughton as the lawyer, and Elsa Lanchester(or is it Lancaster)as Laughtons nurse...Laughton and Lanchester went over the edge in that one, and turned in some really great performances in that one...

Do you know if Laughton and Lanchester were real life husband and wife while starring in that film?

Lanchester and Laughton also starred together in 'The Big Clock', he as some murderous executive, and she as some sort of flighty artist...I dont know who directed 'The Big Clock', but sure enjoyed that movie, because of great performances...

[DugwayDuke]

The three thing happens all at once because folks look for it. Since they look for it, they find it and remember it. Just think about the times only one plane crashed. People won't remember that. They won't remember when two crash. But they will remember for years when three crash. Sometimes, things do happen in threes when three random events happen in close proximity. People remember that because they are looking for threes.

[Greybird]

Oh, I can see the editorial cartoon right now that I'd like somebody to draw:

Striding toward the gates through the clouds are a short, stubby, perpetually smiling and jowlly owl of a man in rumpled shirt and slacks, carrying a can of movie film and a megaphone.

A tall, wizened guy with a smile covering half his face, dressed in an outrageously ill-fitting dress, and smoking an enormous cigar.

And a little guy in a tuxedo with tousled hair sticking out from under his top hat, carrying an open bottle of wine as he's giggling.

And St. Peter having looked up from his book, turning his head behind him, and saying: "Open the theater up, boys -- it's comedy tonight!"

... No charge. ~rueful grin~

[Calvin Locke]

Absolutely no idea. Listening to the radio, and their *new* deathpool, asking if the drummer counted as
part of the "rule of 3's". That was as far a they got.

This was a half-hour or so before the newsbreak mentioned Wilder.

[andysandmikesmom]

Ah, so it was Betty Grable that was Animals favorite...I just could not remember for sure...

And you are right about Peter Graves...he looked to young, so boyish, well, so clean cut American, that it was quite the surprise when he turned out to be the Nazi

That scene where they gag him, and tie tin cans around him, and throw him out of the cabin to be shot up by the Nazi guards, still gives me the chills...

[ActionNewsBill]

I'll second that. I myself am entering the film industry and have always looked to pre-1960s filmmaking for inspiration (not that post-1960s films weren't great), as they could show an actress as being sexy or relay to the audience that sort of attraction without having to resort to cheap nude scenes or softcore romps.

Hope you make it to the big time someday....I'd like to see some of your movies.

[ActionNewsBill]

Double Indemnity is a great introduction to the non-TV Fred MacMurray. He's so wonderfully evil - it's like watching Mr. Rogers playing Jack the Ripper.

I'll have to rent that one if I can find it....it sounds interesting.

"The Big Carnival" was probably one of his under rated films....stars Kirk Douglas as a small time newspaper reporter who stumbles across a dramatic story of a man trapped in a mine cave in, and ends up......

Well, I don't want to spoil the ending. But it's definitely worth watching if you can find it.

[Diojneez]

And, the fourth one was .... ?

Whoopie Goldberg.

[Snake65]

And Septon turns out to be quite the hero (once the odds are in his favor). I love the little smile and salute he gives the guys in the barrack.

"One Fuhrer is enough."

[veronica]

Definitely a top-ten (maybe a top-five) director of all time.

Absolutely. PLUS...he lived an amazing life.

PLUS he was a superb screenwriter who only became a director because the studios kept mucking up the material he wrote. Becoming in the process a superb director...

[andysandmikesmom]

Ah, you are correct...he goes down the hole in the floor, to rescue the POW hidden in the water tower, and then he pops back up...and salutes...Todays movies by and large, just cannot compare...

[Reagan Man]

I heard something today, that Alfred Hitchcock was suppose to have said many years ago. I believe it went like this, Hitchcock said, 'the two greatest words in motion picture history were, Billy Wilder'. Thats something coming from "The Master" himself. Hitchcock might be the greatest director of all time. Definitely in the top five. Billy Wilder probably belongs up there, in the top ten for sure. Directors like Hitchcock, Wilder, Ford, Hawks and Capra were great storytellers. They didn't need special effects to make a great film. There are some outstanding technical directors working today. Steven Spielberg is among the best ever. In recent years, Coppola and Scorsese have proven to be two of the best. But looking back, you've got to place directors like Billy Wilder and his contemporaries, in a class of their own. At least, I do.