Some Like It Hot

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I just love this.

I didn't think we were going to get to butt chugging and some like it hot, but we do.

And action.

Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast, Full Stop, that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a great one, may I say.

Big fan of today's film.

As always, I'm Chris Winnerbauer, joined by Lizzie Bassett.

Lizzie, how you doing today?

And also, thank you for picking this movie.

Sure, I'm doing great.

I'm very excited to talk about this.

We are covering Some Like It Hot today, which is a movie that I certainly grew up watching.

quite a bit.

Before we dive in, I do want to say a big thank you to Naomi Lind, friend of the show, for helping write and research this episode.

As you all know, we are backlogging some Es so that I can go have a baby, and she's been a huge help.

So thank you, Naomi.

And we had a lot of fun going through this one.

Chris, had you seen Sun Like It Hot before?

Yes, I saw Sun Like It Hot when I was pretty young.

I believe I watched it with my grandma for the first time, who I think really liked it.

I didn't appreciate it because it was in black and white.

I didn't appreciate it because I was young and I did not understand the rhythms of screwball comedy.

So I thought very little of Something Like It Hot.

And then I actually re-watched it in film school, believe it or not, because it's such an impeccably structured and written movie.

And we were watching it for a screenwriting class, and I really fell in love with it.

And I've watched it a few times since.

And

I just think the performances are exceptional.

I think the timing is outstanding.

It's a type of movie that isn't really made anymore.

And it does a great job, I think, of balancing a lot of tones and a lot of characters

very well.

I agree.

I watched this a lot when I was young.

I watched also Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and some other Marilyn Monroe movies.

I don't think I ever appreciated how funny she really is.

She's very funny.

Although, as we will see in this episode, it was not without difficulty to get the performance in this movie.

But I also just think this movie does an incredible job of balancing comedy and action,

which we'll talk about a little bit, but like really had not been done in the way that you see it in this.

And listeners, if you haven't seen this movie, the opening sequence is like an amazing action sequence.

It's really impressive.

It feels like Shane Black, for example,

takes a lot from this movie with eventually lethal weapon, kiss, kiss, bang, bang, et cetera, right?

A couple of schmucks in over their heads

dealing with actually violent people.

Yeah, I think this actually sets the mold for like a lot of action comedies to come in the future.

And I totally did not recognize that in the first few times that I saw it.

We have a lot to cover today.

A lot of time is going to be spent on Marilyn because this is the first time we've really talked about her on the podcast, which is crazy.

So I'm just going to dive right in.

Here is the basic information.

It was released March 29th, 1959.

directed by Billy Wilder, co-written by Billy Wilder and IAL Diamond, starring Jack Lemon, Tony Curtis, Marilyn Monroe, and many more who we'll talk about.

And as always, the IMDb log line is, after two male musicians witness a mob hit, they flee the state in an all-female band disguised as women, but further complications set in.

That's true.

That's it.

It's great.

It's a great log line.

Very simple.

Promise of the premise.

That's right.

It delivers.

Main sources for today are a documentary called Nobody's Perfect about the making of Some Like It Hot, which you can see all of on YouTube.

It's very good.

Marilyn Monroe, the biography by Donald Spodo.

There are a lot of biographies of her.

This is kind of the main one that we went off of.

And then Tony Curtis, the autobiography, though, as we will see, I don't know that he is a reliable source.

That's fine.

It's fine.

Yeah, we are going to listen to Tony quite a bit in this episode.

So briefly, let's talk about the landscape of late 1950s Hollywood.

Just a brief reminder, we touched on this in our episode about Cleopatra quite a bit, bit and then more recently in The Godfather.

But after a major 1948 antitrust lawsuit, studios began losing their power because the suit really focused on breaking down the vertical integration.

Chris gave a really good explanation of this in our Godfather episode just a couple weeks ago.

Now, more and more prestige actors, directors, and screenwriters broke away from the studio system to work either on their own production companies or with newly established independent production companies that had private investors.

One of these was the Mirish Company, founded in 1957 by three brothers, all Mirishes, and it had signed a 12-picture distribution deal with United Artists.

The biggest thing that they were promising was creative freedom to their directors.

Like they were not going to get involved.

Stark contrast to what we discussed on The Godfather.

Yes.

Right.

Where Paramount's effectively saying, like, our directors do as they're told.

Which is a pushback, I think, to this era that's kind of beginning here, where they're starting to get this level of creative freedom.

Yeah.

Billy Wilder is one of their first contracted directors.

He signed a two-picture deal with the Mearish Company in 1957, which gave him approval over literally everything: a story, script, casting, directing, final cut, plus 25% of the net profits.

Wow.

25 points on the back end.

That is crazy.

Insane.

Yeah.

Well, there's a reason for that.

He was one of the most in-demand directors in 1957.

He, I mean, go look at his IMDb page.

He had a wild string of hits.

Double Indemnity, the Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard.

He did Seven Year Itch with Marilyn before this, right?

Yes, he did.

He did Sabrina and the Seven Year Itch all before this.

Of course, he would go on to have many more hits after this as well.

But crazy run.

Just such an incredible writer and director of actors.

Yes.

An interesting man.

That's what people get to.

Billy Wilder was born in Austria, Hungary to a Jewish family and began his career as a screenwriter while living in Berlin around 1929.

He worked on several German films in the late 20s and early 30s before fleeing when Hitler came into power in 1934.

After relocating to work as a screenwriter in Hollywood, he started directing his own films.

And this was apparently because he was extremely frustrated with how much other directors had changed his work when he was writing it.

So he wanted to be able to control both writing and directing moving forward.

He co-wrote a lot, if not most, of his screenplays.

And by the time his contract started with the Mearish Company, he had really found his writing partner in IAL Diamond.

They had just written 1957's Love in the Afternoon, which was distributed by the Mearish brothers, but not at their company.

It's while they were still execs at Allied Artists.

So they were all familiar with each other.

So Wilder is set up at the Mearish Company, and he and IAL Diamond need to deliver their first of three contracted films and that ends up being Sun Like It Hot.

Now this is only the third film since the Mearish brothers had founded their company and the first two were absolute box office stinkers.

So they desperately need him to deliver a hit.

Chris, as we discussed in our episode on A Star is Born, what does Hollywood love the most?

Sexy stars?

So I don't, I don't know.

That's a hard and ambiguous question to answer.

They love a remake.

A reboot, yes.

A reboot, yes.

So in fact, Some Like It Hot is a reboot.

It is actually maybe a third iteration.

Wilder got the idea for the story from a film he had seen several years before, a 1935 French comedy called Fanfaire d'Amour.

The Mirish company could not track down the original French screenplay, so they instead bought the rights for the 1951 German remake, Fanfaren d'Alib,

which sounds just as hot, but also means fanfares of love.

Got it.

Well, the French, you know, there are so many good screwball comedy adaptations of French films.

Like The Bird Cage was originally a French film.

Yes.

Later.

La Caja Fole.

Technically, I think True Lies is a French comedy.

Really?

Originally a French comedy that was adapted by James Cameron.

I just, I wonder how funny the German one.

The German one was.

So the basic story of both of these films follows two broke musicians who disguise themselves to work in various bands.

They dress as women in order order to work in an all-female band, and I believe also perform in Blackface in another.

So didn't keep that.

Thankfully, Billy Wilder did not keep that.

Aside from the leads being musicians that dress in drag, that is basically where the similarities end.

A big part of that is because Wilder knew that a 1950s American audience is not going to be as on board with young men and drag as they clearly were in Germany and France.

Remember, he grew up in Austria-Hungary.

He spent time working in clubs in Berlin in the 20s.

If you've seen Cabaret, he probably was pretty comfortable with this.

So his thought was in order to justify the drag, it needs to be life or death stakes for the two musicians, which I think is very smart.

And he wanted to make it a period piece.

Why do you think he did that, Chris?

I mean, you could, does it further heighten the stakes in this instance?

And also just distances you, I think, enough.

Yeah, and it helps having the prohibition, you know, era politics of the mob and whatnot kind of work in your favor, I think, here too.

Yes.

And also the 20s, sort of notoriously debauched.

It feels like you can point a finger at that.

And this is like kind of the height of McCarthyism and the Red Scare.

And you probably don't want your actors saying, like, in the 50s, I'm dressed as a woman.

And also.

No, you sure don't.

Yeah.

I don't have time to get to this in the full episode, but I will mention they did have some ratings issues with a, I believe, a Catholic entity connected to the ratings board who were very not happy about the pure smut that was in this movie.

I was going to say the Hayes Code, which I'm not sure if we've actually given a full explanation of yet.

So really briefly,

put into place in 1934, it was an evolving set of decency guidelines and regulations that was implemented by Will Hayes, who was the chairman of the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America at the time.

And it was really pushed for by the Catholic League of Decency, which was later renamed the National League of Decency and kind of dominated Hollywood for 30 years and shifted Hollywood away from the more transgressive films pre-1934 and then toward a more sanitized set of stories during the decades following.

So yeah, I would imagine Catholics who had pushed for films not to show anything that would lower the moral standards of their viewers would not be super happy about the cross-dressing and kind of gender-swapped implications of Some Like It Hot.

Yes, that is exactly who it was.

They didn't get very far, fortunately, but they did pitch a little bit of a fit on this one.

So, this brings us to his third idea: have the two musicians witness the infamous Chicago St.

Valentine's Day massacre and go on the run to escape a mob hit that's placed on their heads.

So, in case anyone doesn't know, the mob hit in the parking garage that you see at the beginning of the movie, that is a real event.

Those are real people.

What is it?

Toothpick Charlie and Spats.

Goodbye, Charlie.

Yes.

Very funny callbacks.

So people thought that he was crazy for this because, as we said at the top, mixing genres, kind of unheard of.

And in fact, according to Tony Curtis, producer David O.

Selznick, who we talked about a lot in Gone with the Wind, said to Wilder, my God, you start with that bloody scene and go to men and drag?

Oh, no, you can't have machine guns and dead bodies and wigs and gags all in the same picture.

I I disagree.

It works wonderfully.

So did Billy Wilder.

Billy Wilder was like, I don't care.

I'm going to do it.

So with the general story outlined, Wilder begins to assemble his cast, but without a completed script.

And this is intentional.

It's apparently something that he and IAL Diamond did very frequently, which is that they wanted to keep the scripts flexible enough that they could write and finish them based on who they cast.

Lizzie, this is probably a dumb question.

Is IAL Diamond a man or a woman?

I'm assuming it's a man, but I wasn't sure.

Definitely a man, a wrinkly Romanian American man.

They also both knew that things would change while they were shooting, and they actually had it worked into their schedule basically that they would write every night after shooting to be able to continue the script.

And you can watch interviews with Jack Lemon too, and he's just like, yeah,

I didn't read more than like, you know, a few pages because I knew that they were going to write it for me and that was fine.

So on the major casting decisions for the film, film, Billy Wilder was pretty decisive and he didn't waste time trying to get them on board.

His top two choices were always Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon.

But despite the amount of creative control he had been promised, the Mirishes did not approve of this pairing.

They were fine with Tony Curtis because Tony Curtis was a relatively big star at the time.

Jack Lemon, however, was not.

He was on the rise.

He had won an Academy Award for best supporting actor in 1956, but he still wasn't like a huge box office draw.

So they were, they wanted someone bigger than Tony Curtis build with him, basically.

That's so funny.

I would have assumed the opposite.

I know, I think because Jack Lemon had a more enduring career.

Yeah, but

I guess, yeah, Curtis, but Curtis's career basically started in like 1950.

So he'd only been working for like, what, eight years or something like that?

Yeah.

And then, and like, he had like Spartacus, the Defiant ones.

Those were huge yeah well yeah i know but i guess tony and i guess maybe it's just jack lemon it's not until the the apartment and then you know what i mean later that things really blow up for him this i think that really blows him up and i guess i'm just projecting jack lemon had such a long

and consistent career versus tony curtis yes i think we think of jack lemon as the much bigger star because in the long run he is yeah but also you have to remember tony curtis was married to janet lee by this point who was a huge star from psycho the two of them were a big Hollywood couple.

So like he was a big deal.

And he was the hunkier heartthrob of the two, not that Jack Lemmon's not a handsome man, but he's more of the, you know, the comedy king, I feel like, at the time.

It's funny you should mention that, you know, Tony Curtis was a heart throb at the time because he said in his autobiography that Wilder took him aside before a party, told him the plot, and offered him the role because he was, quote, the best-looking kid in Hollywood.

Tony?

He was very, like, because he was very handsome, but he had very pretty eyes.

It's a unique combination.

He is very handsome.

So as big a star as he was, he hadn't really worked with a prestige director like Billy Wilder.

So an offer like this was a very big deal to him.

And Billy Wilder had big news.

Chris, he was going to star opposite Frank Sinatra.

Wow.

No nightmare.

What a treat.

Yes.

Yeah.

The Mirishes had asked for a star, so he was like, fine, how about Frank Sinatra?

In this pairing, Curtis would have been the Daphne role that Jack Lemon takes on, and then Frank Sinatra as Josephine.

Can you see this?

I think Curtis actually could probably do it.

He's funnier than I remember.

Sinatra, I think the era would have been sucked out of the comedy.

Frank Sinatra is amazing at what he does, but it's not this, in my opinion.

He's not funny

at all.

Yeah, this would have been rough.

But Wilder had already approached Sinatra about this, and he's like, it's in the bag.

I'm sealing the deal with Sinatra at lunch later this week.

Except Billy Wilder shows up to lunch and Frank Sinatra never does, just doesn't come.

Bullet dodged?

Yes, bullet dodged.

But just listeners, to give you an example of like stature in terms of this, this would be like Ryan Gosling just ghosting Greta Gerwig for Barbie.

I think it's even bigger.

He was like a five-time Oscar winner slash nominee at this point.

It would be that's true.

It's like Martin Scorsese.

It's like turning down Martin Scorsy or Spielberg or something like that.

It's that's pretty wild, pun intended.

Yeah.

So Wilder allegedly told Tony Curtis he was glad Sinatra bowed out.

It was better than him deciding not to show up to set at the last minute.

But bad news for Billy.

He's about to cast someone with a reputation for doing exactly that.

So for the role of Sugar, whose original name in the script was Stella Kowalchik, Wilder wanted Mitzi Gaynor, but they lost Sinatra.

There went their big star power.

She's not big enough.

To replace Sinatra, Wilder approached the comedian and singer Jerry Lewis, but Jerry Lewis thought that drag was not funny and he just turned it down outright.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Okay.

Not what I would have expected from Jerry Lewis, but to each their own.

This one would have been bizarre.

Anthony Perkins was allegedly considered.

Look, I can only,

remember we talked about the creep, the creep factor?

What was it?

The Perkins effect.

The Perkins effect.

You can't unsee the Perkins effect, especially with Anthony Perkins, obviously.

Also, like, he was dressed as his mother at the end of Psycho, and you're going to put him in drag in this.

They could have done it as a prequel, but yeah, it wouldn't have worked otherwise.

That would be an amazing prequel.

So Wilder comes back to his original pairing of Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis, and he decides, I'm going to make a different concession.

In order to cast Jack Lemon, he agrees to cast the role of Sugar with an actress that he had sworn he would never work with again, which is Marilyn Monroe.

You mentioned this, but she starred in Wilder's The Seven Year Itch in 1955.

That gave us the iconic, what I believe is actually a promo shot of her standing over the subway grate in the white dress.

Wilder thought her performance in that movie was great.

but he had a terrible time working with her.

He said, quote, she had trouble concentrating, there was always something bothering her, and directing her was like pulling teeth.

But at 32 years old, and despite a two-year hiatus from Hollywood, she was still one of the biggest stars in the world.

Unfortunately, she was not interested.

She was done playing the dumb blonde and had her own taste of creative freedom outside the studio system after founding Marilyn Monroe Productions, where she had produced and started more substantive roles in Bus Stop and The Prince and the Showgirl.

So he sends her an outline for the script, because remember, they don't have a full script, and he's like, I promise you're not going to be playing just a dumb blonde.

Sugar is more than that.

Yada, yada, yada.

And it seems like that may have convinced her, but it was not the only reason.

She was at the time the sole earner in her household, and she desperately needed cash.

Her husband, Arthur Miller, this is her third husband, which we'll get to, was a big-time playwright, most famous at this point for Death of a Salesman, All My Sons, and The Crucible.

But Chris, you mentioned that this is the time of anti-communist Red Scare agendas.

He had some hefty legal bills from his trial with the House Un-American Activities Committee, so they were pretty hard up for cash.

I don't think there's a ton of money in writing plays, you know, even.

But those were huge.

I mean, yes, obviously.

But

it's just how many butts and seats can you get?

I mean, really, that's what.

movies and then ultimately television did was they allowed for the commodification of something that had never really been able to scale, you know, in the way that it eventually did.

Marilyn Monroe, I'm sure, out-earned him 10, 100, 1,000 times to one.

Yeah, she was footing his bill for pretty much everything.

Also, I think it was the crucible that pissed the House on American Activities Committee off in the first place.

So that probably ended up costing him money.

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So, with Marilyn on board, they finally approved Jack Lemmon, and now they're good to go.

For the supporting roles, Billy Wilder liked the combo of George Raft and Edward Robinson as Spatz Colombo and Little Bonaparte, since they'd starred in Manpower Together back in 1941.

More on that in a little bit.

And then for the role of Osgood, Wilder saw Joe E.

Brown at the opening ceremonies for the LA Dodgers' inaugural season and recognized him from his earlier films.

And apparently he said, This is the guy, Osgood, the crazy guy, Joey Brown.

He's great.

He's great.

He's maybe my favorite character at the end of the film.

I just love the back and forth between him and Lemon on the motorboat.

Like, it's incredible.

It's so funny.

He's so funny.

I love that.

So, with that, Wilder has his cast and the Mirishes submit a budget of $2.3 million to United Artists, who is distributing the film.

That's a lot.

Yeah, I just did some really quick napkin math, and I think that's around $25 million

in today's dollars, which actually does make sense.

That's what I think like an appropriate adult screwball comedy, if they really made them anymore, would cost nowadays.

But it's certainly a healthy budget, especially for an independent company that's not under the umbrella of a major studio.

So before we get into the rest of production, I do want to stop now and talk about Marilyn Monroe, since, as we said, this is the first time that we are covering her, and I think she deserves some context given what we're going to get into on this movie.

Marilyn Monroe was born as Norma Jean Mortensen, later Baker, in Los Angeles in 1926 to a single mother who was named Gladys Baker.

Gladys, unfortunately, made almost no money, so she was not able to afford child care, but she was working in Hollywood as a film cutter.

Chris, could you explain what that is?

Yeah, so there were film joiners, film cutters.

This is all of the menial tasks associated with editing the film, right?

Splicing it, cutting it back together, assembling the reels, even screening dailies, rushes, right, for the studio.

Those jobs were considered so undesirable that actually I think they were mostly held by women during the silent era, like working class women.

Some obviously rose through the ranks, and I don't even think the term editor was used very commonly at the time because it was considered such a manual labor job.

And I think Marcia Lucas, if I'm getting this correct, began her career arguably doing exactly this work as an assistant editor effectively when she came into the union.

Which is literally physically cutting the film reels.

Physically cutting the film, exactly.

Yep.

So because she wasn't making enough money, two weeks after Norma Jean was born, she was placed in foster care, where she she remained with the same family for seven years, which was the longest stretch of time that she ever lived in one home in her entire childhood.

She did eventually leave her first foster family to live with her mother, again, and her mom's friend, Grace Goddard, but that was short-lived.

Her mother suffered from severe mental health issues.

She was institutionalized for most of Norma Jean's life.

And at this point, Grace became Norma Jean's legal guardian.

Norma Jean was very shy, very quiet, did not have very many friends, and for better or worse, probably the most influential adult on her was Grace Goddard.

For more on Marilyn Monroe's early days, please go listen to the excellent, you must remember this, three-part series on her as part of Greena Longworth's Dead Blonde series.

It's great.

From an early age, she started telling Norma Jean she was going to be a big movie star, just like Jean Harlow, who was, of course, one of Hollywood's first platinum blonde bombshells and someone that Marilyn maybe did emulate a bit over her career.

Grace would take her to the movies, treat her like a little doll, she would dress her up, put makeup on her, get her hair curled, sort of like a 1930s Jean-Bonet Ramsey situation.

She was shuffled around to various homes of Gladys and Grace over the years.

Neither of them were ever really able to completely take her.

At some point during this time, she was either assaulted or there was an attempted assault.

There's a lot of information that differs across all the biographies about this.

It also differs who committed the assault, but it was a much older man.

By some accounts, Grace's husband, by others, an older cousin.

It happened.

I've seen anything from when she was eight or nine years old to 11 years old.

So very, very young.

But there's no reason to doubt that it happened.

Then a few years later at 16, she's about to be moved out of Grace's care to an orphanage again when Grace gets an idea.

Why doesn't Norma Jean just get married to the boy next door?

So in what is essentially an arranged marriage, Norma Jean marries her first husband, Jim Doherty, who is 21 and she had literally just turned 16.

This is really sad, but she literally asked before they got married, like, is it possible to get married and not have sex?

And Grace was like, you'll figure it out.

Yeah.

It's awful.

So as the story goes, Jim enlists in the Merchant Marines during World War II, and she gets a job at the radio plane plant, a photographer of Yank Magazine, which was the number one magazine for the boys in the service.

And yes, that is an intentional double entendre, although it was not a pornographic magazine, visits the plant to photograph the women who worked there.

I'm not even going to get into this, but somehow Ronald Reagan is involved.

Like he sent the photographer.

He was like a captain.

And someone at the radio plane plant was like, you got to see my girls.

And Ronald Reagan was like, here's my photographer.

Take pictures of these girls.

I don't know.

Anyway, he's in there somewhere.

Ronald Reagan was also in Die Hard and I didn't get into it.

You know what?

Maybe it's a rule.

We don't get into it.

It's just like Ronald Reagan touches everything and we're never going to give him any credit here.

So we'll keep going.

So her photograph makes it to print and it is a pretty big splash.

She begins working as a model, but her entire world changes when a producer at 20th Century Fox sees her photograph and calls her in for a screen test.

Jim comes back home.

I believe he comes back on like leave and he she like barely has time to see him.

She's running around all over town.

He really resents the newfound independence and also is kind of just like, this is not the woman that I married.

Excuse me, this is not the 16-year-old girl that I married.

This is not the stranger that I married.

There you go.

This is not the stranger next door 16-year-old child who I married.

Although in his defense, I do think he was doing it.

to try and give her a stable place to live.

So in 1946, when she was about 20, she ditches Jim and signs her first contract with 20th Century Fox, but they had one condition, which is that she had to change her name.

Norma Jean doesn't scream bombshell.

So she chose Monroe, which is her mother's maiden name.

And I think the only name that she could really confirm she was biologically connected to due to, again, her mother having potentially too good of a time.

And then Marilyn, just because it was, you know, blonde bombshelly.

Good alliteration.

Yeah.

She's cast in a few bit parts and she works incredibly hard to hone her craft.

She's taking acting classes, singing, dance.

She asks a lot of questions about how various cameras work to better understand filmmaking, but the studio does not renew her contract at the end of the first term.

She goes back to modeling.

During this time, she officially files for divorce from Jim and begins an affair with a producer named Johnny Hyde, who really does seem to love her, genuinely believes in her talent, and also paid for a lot of plastic surgeries.

Really?

She had a ton of plastic surgery.

I think I knew that.

I didn't know it was this early in her career.

I assumed it was later.

No, because I mean, what we're about to talk about is he gets her two small but really critical roles in the asphalt jungle and one of my favorites, All About Eve.

Right.

And if you look at her in All About Eve, like she looks like Marilyn Monroe by that point.

Got it.

Marilyn was apparently so nervous about working with Betty Davis that she forgot her lines, showed up late, and barfed from anxiety when she messed up takes.

So it's seeded as early as this, unfortunately.

Yeah, the hat trick.

Still, after seeing the rushes of her performance in All About Eve, which if you've never seen, she's very funny, and 20th Century Fox realized that they had made a huge mistake, and so she signs a new contract with them.

She starts working pretty subtly in like small comedic supporting roles, but her career is almost thrown off the rails when a nude photo that she had taken in 1949 was included in a 1952 Playboy spread.

The studio's response was like, you need to bury this.

You need to deny this and say that it wasn't you.

But she does not do that.

She does something interesting where she kind of has an on-the-record, off-the-record conversation with a reporter where she's basically just like, yeah, it's me.

It's me.

I really needed the money.

And I did it and I don't regret it.

Kim Kardashian took it from Marilyn Monroe.

You know what I mean?

In a a sense.

Yeah.

Lean into it.

Well, that ended up being a stroke of genius.

People loved her for it.

They loved that she didn't deny it.

And also, it made her a huge, huge sex symbol and star.

Sex symbol plus relatable due to hardship, which is also something that I think stars feel so inaccessible,

especially back then.

Exactly.

And then you realize, oh, she had a checkered past.

She had a difficult time.

You know, she's a real person.

Yes.

So she starts getting leading roles in 20th century Fox films, including three of her most well-known films, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire, both in 1953.

And then, as we've said, The Seven Year Itch in 1955 with Billy Wilder.

Have you ever seen Gentlemen Prefer Blondes?

I have.

I have not seen How to Marry a Millionaire.

I haven't either.

I do love Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

It's great, and it has some incredible choreography, too.

Yes, it's amazing.

That's the amazing sequence featuring Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend on the bright red staircase with the beautiful pink dress and everything.

But there was one person who did not love her newfound stardom, and it is yet again her husband, but this time that husband is Joe DiMaggio, because she married him at some point during this time.

He really hated how sexualized her persona had become in public.

He was extremely jealous of other men, and he almost certainly became emotionally and physically abusive to her during this time.

So as her career grew, so did her anxiety, which was only exacerbated by the press and gossip columnists.

She had a reputation for being difficult to work with because she would ask for multiple takes, arrive late, and often forget her lines.

She was also frequently in pain because she suffered from endometriosis, which I just want to point out is an under-researched and underdiagnosed disease in 2025, even though one in 10 people with uteruses have it.

So, imagine how hard it was for Marilyn in the 50s.

By the way, for the people who do finally get diagnosed, it can take seven to 10 years to figure out what's going on.

Anyway, it's fascinating and upsetting.

And if you want to learn more about period pain and endometriosis, definitely check out the podcast, Cramped.

It's an investigative look into how this is treated in this country.

It's really well done, very personal and moving, and I just can't recommend it enough.

So to cope with her anxiety that caused her to develop insomnia, she was prescribed barbiturates.

as one does in the 1950s.

This actually is a pretty common prescription back then because they had not really studied how addictive it was.

And also, I guess, fairly commonplace for people to take it with booze to make it more effective.

A little seven and seven and a shoot-up, and you're good to go.

Yep.

And the doctor's like, sounds good, hun, as they're lighting up their 90th cigarette for the day.

She was also getting really tired of being forced into Ditzy Blonde roles at this point, and she actually refused to do one of her contracted roles in the girl in pink tights.

Around this time, she formed her own production company called Marilyn Monroe Productions with photographer Milton Green.

Fox sued her for breach of contract.

They eventually smooth things over.

She gets a better deal with them, but they were pissed.

And what was more important to her than fame suddenly was to be taken seriously both as an actor and as a person.

So at this point, she really ditches Hollywood, puts on the turtleneck and jeans, moves to New York City, divorces Joe DiMaggio after nine months of marriage.

Now,

in New York, Chris, she meets Lee Strasberg.

Do you know who that is?

Famous acting teacher, right?

That's correct.

Famous acting teacher and his wife, Paula, and begins studying under them at the actor's studio.

By the way, one of his most devout disciples was Marlon Brando.

And fun fact, Lee Strasberg plays Hyman Roth in The Godfather Part II, which potentially he booked on his own merits, or perhaps he rode the coattails of his famous students, as we will discuss a little bit.

bit.

Although he is very good in it, I will say.

The idea behind the method is that an actor should fully immerse themselves in their character by conjuring their own past experiences to elicit a quote-unquote real emotion.

So the actor studio gave her a sense of belonging that she had obviously been seeking since she was a child.

And because of this, it was very, very easy for her to become extremely influenced by the Strasbourgs.

She had private coaching sessions with Lee five days a week with exercises where she would have to relive traumatic events from her childhood.

And because the method delved so deep into her psyche, Lee encouraged Marilyn to see a therapist who she also saw five days a week, which also consisted of unpacking her childhood.

All of this emotional exhaustion leads to more sleepless nights, which caused her to depend on pills even more.

I'm not against therapy.

I'm not against method acting, but.

I am against your acting teacher forcing you into therapy.

Well, it's like, you know, if you were going to go, if you had not exercised your entire life and then somebody said, you're going to run five marathons a week and that's how we're going to get you into shape, you're going to get hurt.

It's just not a healthy way to approach introducing yourself into something new.

No, and she also seems like somebody who just throws herself completely into whatever she's doing.

So obviously, like she's very susceptible to them, and she becomes extremely attached to Lee Strasberg.

So much so that he actually advised her quite a bit on career decisions.

And biggest red flag of the bunch, she kept them financially afloat by bankrolling most of their operation.

It reminds me of Carl Weathers in Arrested Development with Tobias Yunke, where he keeps getting him to pay for acting classes.

It's very similar.

So, Strasberg's wife, Paula, also became Marilyn's on-set acting coach because, according to Lee, Marilyn was too emotionally weak to perform on her own.

They get really icky across the course of this.

By the way, Paula was paid $1,500 a week for bus stop and $2,500 a week for the Prince and the Showgirl.

That's good money for today.

Yes.

She was paid more than like editors, composers, people on the film.

Probably everybody below the line, honestly, minus maybe the cinematographer.

Like that's crazy.

Yeah.

While in New York, Marilyn meets her third husband, playwright Arthur Miller.

Now, he thinks he's found his muse in Maryland, but he also is pretty condescending and tends to look down on Hollywood quite a bit, which of course was her entire experience in life up to this point.

They got married in 1956.

She got pregnant very shortly thereafter, but very quickly she suffered an early miscarriage.

By all accounts, she had always wanted kids, even as early as her first husband.

It's something that was very important to her.

Now, like the Strasbourgs, Arthur Miller was controlling her in his own way.

He kind of treated her like a child, and again, also was heavily influencing her business decisions.

In 1957, she was pregnant for a second time, but this pregnancy was ectopic, and she miscarried again.

Actually, part of the reason Miller encouraged her to take some like it hot was to get her mind off of this miscarriage because she was so upset.

She really struggled with mental health after this and retreated from Hollywood even further.

This is sort of the two-year gap that I mentioned.

Instead of chasing her down, studios kind of just started churning out Marilyn Monroe replicas like Jane Mansfield.

They were kind of like, we don't really need you.

We can just replace you.

So when she accepts the role of sugar in Sun Like It Hot, it is a really big deal.

The press jumps on the narrative that Sun Like It Hot would be her great comeback and the pressure was really, really on.

So the pre-production period begins around the third week of July, 1958.

And to prepare Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon to be leading ladies, Billy Wilder hired a professional female impersonator that he knew from his days in Berlin.

Her name was Barbette.

Great name, Barb.

Great name.

Tony Curtis, excellent pupil, really takes to it, really wants to like learn the ways of being a lady.

Jack Lemon, not at all.

You can kind of tell in the film, like Jack Lemon feels like he's trying to make fun of it.

And Tony Curtis is like, no, I'm a woman now because my life depends on it.

Yes.

Well, Jack Lemon also just seems genuinely terrible at it.

Like there's, which I think both are true.

He actually butted heads with Barbette so much that after only two or three days, Barbette quits and told Billy Wilder, Tony is wonderful, Billy.

He'll be perfect.

But this Lemon, he is totally impossible.

He refuses to do what I tell him.

I wash my hands of it.

Amazing.

And Billy Wilder bought Barbette a ticket back to Europe where she belongs.

I bet you Tony Curtis was like, I'm going to be the hottest chick here, too.

You know what I mean?

Literally.

Yeah.

That's literally true.

Also, in Jack Lemon's defense, the reason he was butting heads with Barbette so much was he was saying, we shouldn't be good at this.

We're not professional impersonators.

Yes.

I think he's right.

And it works that Tony Curtis is and he is not.

I agree.

The contrast is perfect.

So then it came time for makeup and wardrobe fittings and tests.

They were originally put in dresses from a costume house that had been used in another 1920s period film.

And Tony Curtis hated them.

He said they were extremely ill-fitting.

And as he mentions many times in his book, his father was a tailor.

So he knew what he was talking about.

And he didn't want to dress in those sacks.

He asked who was designing Marilyn's dresses and Billy Wilder told him it was renowned costume designer Ori Kelly.

And so Curtis is like, to your point, Chris, I would also like to be hot and asked that Jack Lemon and his dresses were also designed by Ori Kelly.

So Ori Kelly took all their measurements and he told Marilyn Monroe to watch out because Tony Curtis had a bigger ass than she did, to which she replied, but he doesn't have tits like these.

And he doesn't.

He doesn't.

But he did have kind of a big butt.

And in Tony Curtis's defense, if I was going to be cross-dressing on screen in the late 1950s, I would also want only the best dressing me.

I guess, but I love that Jack Lemon just looks like he has been dumped out of a potato sack.

He does.

He does not look good.

Looks like a particularly manly grandma in her nighttime slip as she walks down the hallway.

Yeah.

Yes.

He does not make a beautiful woman.

He did say that he started to look more and more like his mother in a way that was very disturbing to him.

So the makeup artists arrived at more or less their final looks, and Jack and Tony decide that it's time to test their drag.

So they do what anyone would do, Chris, go to the studio commissary bathroom, the women's bathroom, of course, and they stand there at the mirror and start messing with their makeup to see if any of the women walking in spot them.

And allegedly, no one did.

They said hi to all of them.

Tony Curtis is like, I think it's because we were too ugly to pay attention to.

I'm like, you may have also been disturbing the women enough that they didn't want to.

I was going to say, like, meanwhile on the switchboard, you guys hear about the men doing their makeup in the women's room today?

Yeah.

A hundred percent.

I find it very hard to believe that every single woman didn't know that was Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon.

Tony Curtis is a big guy.

Like he has a big chest.

You know, and they're both big.

Jack Lemon's not small.

Like he plays kind of small, you know what I mean?

But he's

anywhere.

No way.

There's no way.

Yeah.

But they showed Billy Wilder and he was like, great, don't change it.

Now, when it comes time for their screen test, something important goes missing.

Jack Lemon's dress.

Apparently, Marilyn had been walking by the the wardrobe racks on set and saw a black dress that she liked and she just took it to her trailer.

So when Lemon arrived on set, and I must explain, Ori Kelly was an Australian gay man, Ori Kelly exclaimed to him, she took your dress.

The bitch has pinched your dress.

Apologies to all of our gay friends in Australia.

I'm so sorry, but I do.

I love that.

He was pissed.

The bitch pinched your dress.

The bitch has pinched your dress.

When the tests come back, Curtis and Lemon, thrilled with how they looked.

However, Marilyn was not, mostly because everything was in black and white, and she had thought it was going to be in Technicolor.

That was actually a stipulation in all of her contracts at that point.

Billy Wilder, though, insisted on it being in black and white.

He's like, it needs to be that way because the boy's makeup will look way too garish if it's in color.

That's also how he sold it to the Mirishes.

I think he's right.

It makes everything look softer and it looks great.

So production began on August 4th, 1958.

Most of the film was shot on the Goldwyn lot, but their first day was over at MGM to use the train station set.

But the press absolutely swarmed MGM on the first day.

Everyone assumed Marilyn's going to be late, but she proved them all wrong, showed up ready to work.

And that's something that Billie Wilder did make sure to point out to the press.

She also showed up with quite an entourage.

Her makeup artist, assistant, choreographer, and a woman dressed in all black who was always holding an umbrella, even while indoors.

And that was Paula Strasberg, Marilyn's acting coach, or as the rest of the crew would refer to her, the bat.

Now,

things go well on the first day of shooting, but there is a problem.

It became clear immediately that the person Marilyn was listening to and looking to for approval after each take was not Billy Wilder, but was the bat Paula Strasberg.

Wilder noticed right away, Paula was always directly in in Marilyn's eye line, right behind him, and she would look past him for her reaction.

And by the way, this was an extremely simple scene.

She's walking down the train platform holding her ukulele.

That's it.

That's all they're doing.

So eventually Wilder turned around after a take, looked right at Paula and said, how was that for you, Paula?

She got the memo and excused herself to another part of the lot.

But That didn't really stop her because instead of coaching Marilyn directly on set, she would now coach Marilyn in her dressing room and any other places that she could get a hold of her.

And she was not the only unwelcome member of Marilyn's Entourage, Chris, because Arthur Miller would also stop by quite a bit.

With thoughts on the screenplay?

Oh, you betcha, buddy.

Oh, great.

Just what you want.

Just what you want.

Hilarious comedian Arthur Miller.

Known satirist.

Notoriously salutary.

Manister of yucks.

Death of a salesman.

Funniest play I've ever seen.

So, as I mentioned before, he really looked down on Hollywood and he did not consider Billy Wilder and IAL Diamond to be on his level as a writer.

Apparently during a dinner before filming began, he went up to them to talk about the script, attempting to explain the difference between comedy and tragedy to them.

I bet that was fun.

It's just, I mean, I went to these, I went to film school with a lot of Arthur Miller types, but without his talent.

Right.

He's very good at what he did, but he has no business giving them any advice on how to make this movie.

No.

So Marilyn sees the dailies at the train station sequence the next afternoon, and she really was not very happy with her entrance.

Billy Wilder knew he needed to keep her happy, so he's like, fine, we'll do a reshoot.

They decide to make a callback to the famous Subway Great bit in the seven-year itch that they referenced.

So that's why you see the bit with the steam blowing out as she's walking down the train.

And she had another issue with the dailies from the first day, specifically with one of the other actresses' hair color, Joan Shawley, who plays the band's leader, Sweet Sue.

Joan's shade of blonde was really very similar to Marilyn's platinum coloring.

And so Marilyn told Wilder, she needs to stand out more.

Sugar should look different from the other girls.

So poor Joan Shawley had to have her hair dyed nine bleaches and four color experiments later.

She had lost most of her hair.

She had something like an inch or two of hair left, and she had to wear a wig.

Why wouldn't you just give her a wig from the beginning?

This poor lady, they probably dyed her hair in the first place.

Poor Joan.

I know.

It's terrible.

So all in all, the first few weeks of shooting on the lot actually went somewhat smoothly, but there were a few cracks that were starting to show.

Before they could even start filming Marilyn's song Running Wild, they ran into an issue, which is that she would not come out of her trailer.

Wilder had been through this before and he was very smart.

So he was like, hey, come over here, you other girl in the band whose name I can't remember.

Why don't you go ahead and sing along to the track and I'm gonna crank the sound all the way up so she can hear it.

And sure enough, as soon as she heard somebody else singing the song, boom, she's out of the trailer.

But while filming the song and her accompanying dance, she couldn't time the sequence right with all the physical beats.

She had a choreographer behind the camera doing all the dance moves, but even as she messed up, she did not go to the choreographer or Wilder.

Who do you think she went to, Chris?

The bat.

The bat.

That's right.

Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon, by the way, are standing around in their heels, which they're completely miserable in.

And they had to do so many takes that Wilder breaks everyone for the day, but asks Marilyn to try one more time, and she beefs it.

They come back the next day to resume shooting.

She still can't get it.

So he just grabs an insert shot of the flask falling out because she literally, she just couldn't do it.

Yeah.

But despite this, it seems like when she is on her game, she's really on her game.

For instance, the scene where she's with Jack Lemmon and the birth, that was all in one take and she absolutely nailed it, as did he, obviously.

But as the shoot goes on, they do start to notice a pattern with her.

She does really well in wide shots and group scenes.

When the camera is just on her for close-ups, she really starts to falter.

It seems like she has major stage fright.

Also, Billy Wilder, I think, shot a lot in master shots.

So if someone, if she was in a master shot scene and she messed up, it messed up the whole take for everybody as well.

And by the way, he didn't just struggle with Marilyn to get takes right.

During the Valentine's Day massacre scene, George Raft, who plays Spatz Columbo, was supposed to kick a toothpick out of Georgie Stone's mouth, but Raft didn't want to do it.

And Wilder wouldn't let him off the hook, So Raft just walked off the set.

As we'll learn, he's a bit of a notorious pain in the ass as well.

But Wilder still wanted the shot.

So he's like, I'm going to put on pants and spats, and I'm just going to do it myself.

You want to guess how that went, Chris?

Kicked him in the mouse.

That is correct.

He kicked him in the face, and they had to call an ambulance.

Now, it's a toothpick, so I'm going to have to kick it pretty hard.

Now, during the sixth week of production, they moved the shoot on location to the famous Hotel Coronado called the Seminole Ritz in the film, but this is actually off the coast of San Diego in California.

This means it's time for Tony Curtis to unveil his third character in the film, Mr.

Shell Oil Jr.

One of my favorite.

And his absurd mid-Atlantic cockney Bronx accent is amazing.

Well, do you know who he's emulating with that?

No.

Who is he emulating?

He's doing like a really bad carry Grant.

Oh, it's really bad.

It's really bad.

It's really bad.

That's amazing.

It's so funny.

He did.

He brought the accent to Billy Wilder, and Billy Wilder was like, if I'd wanted Carrie Grant to play the part, I would have gotten Carrie Grant, but also don't change it.

And apparently he showed the film to Carrie Grant later, who said, I don't talk like that.

I don't talk like that.

He does a little bit, especially in a Philadelphia story.

Yeah.

But problems began in San Diego on day one.

The word had spread that the film would be shooting in the area.

And for their first day of filming on the beach, hundreds of onlookers, including the press, came to the set, most likely to try and see Marilyn Monroe.

All anyone seemed to want to talk about at that point was Marilyn's body and how she looked curvier than usual, which, of course, began to spark pregnancy rumors.

Allegedly, Billy Wilder did ask her if she would lose weight, and she brushed it off.

She basically was like, no, my husband likes me like this.

You know, I like me like this.

And you're going to want your audience to distinguish me from Tony and Jack.

So no, I'm not going to.

Also, she looks great in this.

Now, it's around this time that Tony Curtis says in his book that he had a one-night affair with Marilyn Monroe.

I think someone, I had heard about this claim, maybe in film school when I, we were covering this film.

I just want to say, I really do not think that this is true.

It's been floating around since his book was published in 2009, which is, of course, 47 years after she died.

His account of events make it sound like Marilyn Monroe fan fiction.

And at one point, he does describe her as having hips like a Polish washerwoman, which I think he meant as a compliment.

I don't know.

Yes, you're welcome, Poland.

Then on Friday, September 12th, the day after Curtis's alleged night with Marilyn, she was two hours late to set.

They were shooting on the beach again, and by the the time she arrived, the sun was too high for them, so it pushed everything back even further.

When they came back, the sun was too low, so they couldn't do the master shots, and they moved to close-ups.

And as we learn with Marilyn, what happens in close-ups?

She freezes up.

Yes.

Also, that evening, a draft of a Life magazine profile shot by famous photographer Richard Aveden is sent to Marilyn.

Arthur Miller had written inserts and an article to go along with the photos entitled My Wife Marilyn, and she was very upset by what he wrote.

I cannot figure out what set her off about this exactly.

I was only able to find the article.

I couldn't find the insert commentary.

So that night, she accidentally takes too many pills along with champagne, and she becomes violently ill.

Paula Strasberg takes her to the hospital where she remained for the weekend, and Arthur Miller flew out to be with her.

But then she's discharged a few days later, and instead of going back to set, she went back to New York to see her regular doctor.

So they cancel the schedule for a week, and they go back to the lot to film other scenes that were set for later.

They can't film anything in San Diego without her, basically.

At this point, the Mirishes allegedly did discuss replacing her with another actress because they were very concerned.

Wilder does mostly stand by her in the press, but behind closed doors, it kind of seems like he didn't disagree.

Allegedly, Mitzi Gaynor, Doris Day, and Natalie Wood were all floated as replacements.

But Marilyn put in a personal call to Walter Mirish, and she did manage to convince him to let her stay on the project.

Now issues continued to pile up for Wilder, including other feuding actors, Chris.

Who else feuded?

George Raft and Edward G.

Robinson, also known as Eddie Jr.

George Raft plays Spatz.

Yes.

Eddie Jr.

plays the guy who jumps out of the birthday cake and kills him.

The guy holding the machine gun for two lines?

Yeah.

Remember that I mentioned that they had starred in a movie together previously?

Yes, you did.

Well, they hated each other on that, too.

It was called Manpower, and it was because they both had a thing for their co-star, Marlena Dietrich.

And the rivalry came to a head when they got into a fist fight, which was apparently captured by a Life magazine photographer who had been visiting Seth that day.

So when it came time to shoot Eddie Jr.'s scenes, he apparently refused to work with George Raft.

Don't know how Wilder did it, but he does convince him to stay on the project.

And poor Billy Wilder at this point is having such terrible back pain that he is like laying prostrate on the floor beside Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis to direct them under the table during this scene.

I love how like Bob Evans is on a stretcher getting wheeled into daily.

Like everybody's on their back at this point in American history.

A hundred percent.

And everyone's on drugs.

Yeah.

Also during this scene, to boost morale, Tony Curtis hired a stripper to pop out of the cake in a take to surprise Billy Wilder.

And when a topless lady came out of the cake instead of Eddie Jr., Billy Wilder just stood there in shock.

He did not like it.

Honestly, look, is it appropriate in a modern workplace?

No.

Do I kind of like Tony Curtis for it?

Maybe.

I think it's funny.

But can you imagine Billy Wilder is literally like flat on the floor in horrible back pain, certainly on some kind of painkillers.

And he just needs to get these two characters in the room together.

Just needs it done.

Yeah.

And Tony's like, and Tony Curtis is like, how do you like a topless lady?

Oh, boy.

I bet you Jack Lemon was absolutely losing it.

Just for sure.

He was having a great time, I think.

Yeah.

So despite George Raft, who plays Spats, being kind of a pain to work with, it turns out he was an excellent choreographer and dancer.

And apparently the onset choreographer wasn't really working out that well.

And so George Raft actually stepped up to the plate and choreographed one of the dances in the film.

Can you guess which one?

Is it Jack Lemon and Joey Round, the Osgoode Daphne dance?

Yes, it is.

I love that scene.

It's great.

Yeah.

Yes.

That was originally supposed to be between Osgood and Sugar, but because Marilyn was gone, they changed it to Jack Lemon, which of course is like so funny.

I was going to say, like, the whole end of the movie kind of hinges, I feel like, on as such a callback to that dance, you know, because that's where they you, it's funny, you can see Jack Lemon kind of like him in that scene, even though he's such a cad.

It's great, they actually have believable chemistry.

Yeah, I think Jack Lemon starts to get on board during that.

I agree,

and again, this is where it was valuable that Wilder and Diamond did not fully write the scripts before they were doing this because they were able to adjust for all of that.

So, Marilyn came back to set about two weeks after her hospitalization.

And at this point, they're running a few days behind schedule.

But you know who doesn't give a rip?

Arthur Miller, who starts to stick his nose into the production even more.

He called up Billy Wilder and told him that for health reasons, he only wanted Marilyn to work in the morning.

And Wilder is like, What do you mean?

She doesn't show up until after 12.

Bring her to me at 9.

You can have her back at 11.30.

Like, I don't care.

She just needs to show up.

Arthur Miller apparently was not aware that she had been late to set.

And when he found that out, Marilyn felt very judged by him, which again, that added to her stress.

Wilder said of Miller and Marilyn's dynamic, there were days I could have strangled Marilyn.

There were wonderful days too.

But with Arthur Miller, it all seemed sour.

In meeting him, I at last met someone who resented Marilyn more than I did.

Yeah, which is a gnarly quote because he's speaking to about her husband.

Yeah.

They go back to San Diego to finish filming the rest of the hotel scenes.

And for the first shot back at the beach, they're ready to go.

First thing in the morning, per Arthur Miller's request, Marilyn doesn't show up.

She made excuses that she was studying lines and fixing her hair.

She finally comes to set at 2.30.

And at this point, there's another huge crowd of people gathered to watch the film.

So when Wilder called action, she could not remember her line.

On another take, she looked in the wrong direction.

Every time he called cut, she would ask what she did wrong.

He would give her direction for the next cycle.

She would try it again.

And even when she did a good take, it wasn't good enough for her.

And she would ask to do it again.

60 takes later, Chris, they got the shot.

And Stanley Kubrick was in that crowd taking notes.

Yeah, seriously.

But still, Wilder does defend Marilyn's behavior in an interview to the press, saying, I'll tell you, she may have no respect for time.

She may get sick frequently.

She may insist on bringing along her drama teacher.

She may hold up production.

But when you finally get her in front of a camera, she has a certain indefinable magic, which no other actress in this business has.

Which honestly, it sounds like a backhanded compliment, but really what he's saying is she's actually so good, she is worth.

every inconvenience that she brings, of which there are many.

Of which there are going to be more.

So all the delays are taking their toll on Wilder, who is still up at night writing more of the screenplay, by the way.

He too is prescribed sleeping pills.

And when Tony Curtis mentioned

everybody's just medicating.

Just wait.

When Tony Curtis mentioned that he's also having trouble sleeping, Wilder offered him a few pills saying, quote, slip one in your tuhis and you'll sleep all night.

I just love this.

I didn't think we were going to get to butt-chugging until Mike It Hop.

Yeah, Tony Curtis taking sleep aid suppositories trying to get through this movie.

It's great.

Oh my God.

When they go back to the lot to film the interior hotel scenes with Marilyn, Wilder braces himself and prepares Lemon and Curtis, basically saying, you need to get it right every time from the first take because the first time she gets it right.

That's the one.

That's it.

Exactly.

That's the one.

So every day their first week back has issue after issue.

The first day she arrives at a somewhat reasonable time, meaning she is one hour late instead of three hours late.

But as they start filming, she has trouble and goes back to her trailer to consult with the bat, Paula Strasberg.

Then she wants her makeup fixed, which is apparently something she would always ask to do to buy herself more time.

But when she finally comes back, she does nail the scene.

Then they move to the next scene.

Exact same thing happens.

The following day, doesn't come out of her trailer.

Day after that, too sick to work, loses the full day.

And the next day, during her close-up for the scene with Tony Curtis in the bathtub, she starts and stops the scene over and over.

It takes the entire day to shoot the two-minute scene.

Now,

on Friday, they're supposed to shoot, I want to be loved by you, and she didn't show up on the lot until 5 p.m.

saying she got lost on the way there.

Then, at a dinner party, Then at a dinner party hosted by Tony Curtis and his wife, Janet Lee, Billy Wilder seizes up in pain, couldn't walk, his back has gone out completely.

When he comes back to set, he has to be given a hardback chair instead of his canvas chair, but it's okay.

He didn't have to do much directing because Chris, she doesn't come out of her dressing room until after he leaves for the day.

Two days later, she didn't show up at all.

I'm having an anxiety attack listening to this description.

Billy Wilder is physically falling apart.

As we know, he is jamming pills up his butt.

It's he's walking with a cane, Chris.

He is vomiting from stress.

He couldn't get out of bed in the morning without the help of his therapist.

Of course, the Mirish brothers are pissed.

United Artist is very concerned about all the added shoot days, and they are hemorrhaging money to the point where the production is on the verge of being uninsurable.

So they decide to have their publicist come out in the press and put all of the blame publicly on Marilyn.

Quote, everybody connected with the film is burned up.

Marilyn didn't even call in today.

She just didn't show up.

That seems like it maybe lit a bit of a fire under her butt.

She does come back to set and is on point for the entire day, the next shoot day.

But once again, with this, whispers about her weight gain and pregnancy rumors start to swirl.

So Hedda Hopper, do you know who that is?

She's the gossip rag.

columnist.

That's right.

Extremely influential gossip columnist.

We'll call her Old Hollywood's Perez Hilton, if you will, began following this lead and tried to get the tea from people on the production, including Tony Curtis, who she happened to have some dirt on.

At first, he refused to give her any info, so she said, I know about the girl in Laurel Canyon.

Tony Curtis was a serial womanizer, Chris, and pretty regularly had affairs with other women during his marriage to Janet Lee.

So he decided to give her this gem.

Marilyn's tits are enlarged.

That's all I can tell you.

Thanks, Tony.

Great.

According to Tony in his autobiography, this was just enough for Hedda to publish the following in her column.

Marilyn Monroe's closest friends believe she's pregnant.

If true, I hope she'll be able to carry this baby.

Oh,

wow.

That is

next level muckraking.

Especially because they knew she had miscarried twice prior to this.

Yeah.

And here's the thing, Chris.

Marilyn was pregnant and had been trying desperately to keep it a secret.

She wanted very, very badly to be a mother, but after her two previous miscarriages, she was uncertain if she would ever be able to carry a pregnancy due to term.

We don't know what the deal was here.

It could have been due to endometriosis.

It could have been due to her dependency on alcohol and barbiturates, but regardless, she was having a horrible time.

I can't imagine the amount of stress that she would have been under to be in an early pregnancy dealing with this kind of public pressure, especially because I think it's only now becoming more acceptable for women to talk about pregnancy earlier than like 12 weeks.

That was, you know, even a thing that we talked about.

I don't know if you all probably talked about it too, but there's so much uncertainty, even if you're doing everything right early in a pregnancy that you could lose it, that often women feel like they can't share it.

And so to have a gossip columnist coming out and saying something like that is like absolute worst nightmare.

After Hopper's article comes out, Marilyn was so upset that she doesn't come out of her dressing room all day until 3 p.m.

When they began filming the scene where Sugar comes up to Josephine and Daphne's hotel room to knock on the door, she has one line, Chris.

That line is, it's me, Sugar.

But this is a clip of Billy Wilder talking about the moment from the documentary Nobody's Perfect.

You will hear him speaking partially in German and partially in English.

Sugar, it's me.

No, it's me, Sugar.

This is over

There's enough to dress this now, but I mean, look, we're going to put that on the door, written down with an emerisnage.

It's me, sugar.

Just a minute.

Sugar, it's me.

Marilyn, come on, relax.

He said,

don't worry.

He said, worry about what?

After she had blown the it's me, sugar, she was supposed to open the door, come in, and say, where's the bourbon?

And she's looking in the drawer of a of a chest and they finally put the line on a piece of paper in each of the drawers so she kept seeing it and she kept not being able to remember it she's so in her own head at this point and it seems like she she

i who knows you know diagnosing someone 50 years down the line but some sort of

ADD avoidant, you know what I mean, self-destructive streak or something.

She's has this tendency of putting things off, you know what I mean, in a way that feels like she's delaying these moments.

And so they get built up to be so much more than they are as a result.

Right.

And she's also getting so much input from so many outside sources, whether it's Paula Strasberg or, you know, Lee Strasberg, who knows who else, Arthur Miller.

And she's also seems like she's surrounding herself with these very like erudite,

very sort of highfalutin people, which I think probably put an additional amount of pressure on her and also was not necessary for a role like this that she could have done in her sleep.

Like, she knew how to do this.

They finally got to the last two weeks of production, and Chris, they don't have an ending.

They first wrap up with all the girls in the band.

They take press photos for the posters, but due to Marilyn's pregnancy, she no longer fits in the dresses for the promos.

So they decided to use one of the girls from the band to be her body double.

And they paste Marilyn's head on it.

So it comes time to shoot the seduction scene on the yacht, Chris.

And Marilyn doesn't want to rehearse the kiss for the shot.

This seems like it's because she wanted it to feel organic.

It goes back to the method acting thing.

I don't think it is anything beyond that.

When they go to shoot it, she does great.

And according to Tony Curtis in his book, a little too great,

because he claims she intentionally pressed into him in such a way that it gave him, quote, an erection that would have killed an ordinary man.

Tony, stop.

I don't even know what that means.

I don't, neither does he.

But it seems like her refusal to kiss him before cameras rolled may have pissed off Tony.

Yeah.

Let's listen to Jack Lemon from the documentary recounting what Tony said after watching back the rushes of the kiss scene on the yacht.

But when we were in the rushes, and Tony denies this today, because I would too, I probably, if I had said it, because he didn't really mean it, of course.

but when the rushes ended

of the scene and the lights went on Tony stood up and as he was standing up he said it's like kissing Hitler

well Jesus I said did he he didn't really say that did he yeah he did whoo

What's interesting too about that we haven't talked about this but is Tony Curtis's real name Bernard Schwartz he's like a New York-based Jew is my understanding and also Billy Wilder obviously fled Nazis.

No, this is a stunning thing to say in 1958.

Yeah.

Wow.

Now, Curtis changed his story over the years, saying that he was being sarcastic.

Hitler was a great kisser.

Yes.

I will let Marilyn have the final word on this.

She commented on Hitler Gate in a letter to a friend, saying,

There's only one way he could comment on my sexuality, and I'm afraid he has never had the opportunity.

Sorry, Tony.

I don't think you did.

So Wilder and Diamond now finally write the final scene, but they aren't sure about one key item, the final line, which is, of course, nobody's perfect.

Diamond likes it.

Wilder does not.

They think it's weak.

Wilder figures that they'll just take it to set and change it once they find something that works better, but Diamond stands by it.

And I'm very glad that they did because that line is so funny when, of course, Jack Lemon reveals, I'm a man, and Osgood said, nobody's perfect.

You know, I

like it,

broadly speaking.

I do think that that final back and forth

breaks the reality of the movie a little bit.

Like, I felt like the movie does a good job playing by its established rules until that point.

And then I, I, I, I have always just kind of felt like it almost got a little too clever by a half, but only by the standard that it had set up until that moment, which is so high.

Well, Chris, someone else who's not happy with that last scene was Marilyn Monroe because she wasn't in it.

So, with that, she packed up and never returned to set.

They used her body double for the remaining pickup shots.

Wow.

Yeah.

After over three months of shooting, by the way, they ran at least 22 days over.

Principal Photography wrapped on November 11th, 1958.

$500,000 over budget.

How much do you think that is today with inflation, Chris?

$7 million.

$5.5 million.

Pretty good guess.

Pretty good guess.

Pretty bad number for them.

Well, yeah, 25% of the budget is maybe a more charitable way of putting it, right?

Wasn't it budgeted at $2.3 million?

It's definitely an overage.

It's not good.

But also, as I'm sure you'll get to, I'm fairly certain it comes out in the wash once this movie gets released.

Yeah.

It does.

Now, thankfully, post-production is pretty smooth.

Wilder completes the first cut of the film in only two weeks.

I've also seen in some places he had it done in a couple of days.

There is a reason for that, which is that he cut as he rolled camera.

So he didn't roll any additional footage.

Chris, why would a director do this?

Well, Alfred Hitchcock famously did something not dissimilar because he did not want the studio to be able to interfere with the way that he edited the film.

Bingo.

So if you cut as you go, they cannot change the order of shots in an edit, for example, because they don't have sufficient footage on either end of that shot to mix it up.

Right.

There's no additional coverage.

There's no additional time.

You can't play with it at all.

He did realize that Tony Curtis's falsetto as Josephine was still too low.

So that's actually a totally different actor dubbing all of his lines when he is dressed as a woman.

Wow.

That

fact literally blew my mind.

So for any of our audience who are unfamiliar, when you're doing a dialogue replacement in film, also called ADR or automated dialogue replacement, you can bring the actor in and typically they're replacing their own dialogue, right?

So they're re-watching their own performance.

And either for creative reasons or technical reasons, they need to replace their own dialogue.

That's very difficult for a lot of actors to do to get into the same headspace, to recreate the same emotion, but you have the advantage of your own natural cadence for your own speaking voice.

So you're not having to impersonate somebody else, for example.

You're not having to match the rhythms of somebody else's breathing or the way that they emphasize specific syllables.

To do that for another actor and make it look so seamless in this instance,

that's amazingly impressive technical and creative achievement.

Hats off to everybody involved in making that happen.

That is truly an impressive feat.

It's really good.

So, the final cut, they do a sneak preview.

It came in in about two hours.

The Mirishes are like, This is too long.

Wilder is like, Let's just see how this goes.

It does not go great.

In fact, it goes very, very poorly.

Nobody laughed, but apparently, they were told they were seeing suddenly last summer or a cat on a hot tin roof.

So, they were not prepared for a comedy romp about two men in drag who witness a mass murder.

Okay,

yeah.

So, the mirrors go back to Billy.

They tell him you have to cut more.

He cuts 60 seconds.

And he goes to do another sneak preview in a younger neighborhood near university.

It is a huge hit.

Unfortunately, though, the animosity between him and Marilyn had only grown since the film wrapped.

After the previews, Billy Wilder did some press.

He was asked if he would ever work with Marilyn again, and here is what he said.

I'm eating better.

My back doesn't ache anymore.

I'm able to sleep for the first time in months, and I can look at my wife without wanting to hit her because she's a woman.

Would I direct Marilyn again?

I have discussed this with my doctor, my psychiatrist, and my accountant.

They tell me that I'm too old and too rich to go through it again.

All right.

An allusion to wife beating is its own issue and likely more a testament to this time period and Mr.

Wilder's sense of humor than anything else.

That controversy noted, I will say, having directed two tiny movies,

dealing with somebody who is chronically late is so,

so ridiculously stressful.

And I only dealt with it in a very minor way.

I cannot imagine what it was like showing up to set and not knowing if and when your lead actress would arrive.

And even if she did,

how successful she would be at delivering the day's material when the cameras started rolling.

It's always said that the one thing you cannot get more of when you are making a film is time.

It is the most valuable resource that you have, and to watch it be squandered on a daily basis would be truly maddening, as this quote obviously illustrates.

Yeah.

One person who did not find Billy Wilder's comments funny in any way was Arthur Miller.

He found them especially cruel considering that Marilyn's third pregnancy had sadly ended in miscarriage again, which of course was widely reported by the press.

Miller sent a very heated telegram to Wilder in defense of Marilyn, blaming Wilder for the miscarriage because he had her work full days on set despite knowing she was pregnant.

And he ended the message with, your jokes, Billy, are not quite hilarious enough to conceal the fact that you are an unjust man and a cruel one.

My only solace is that despite you, her beauty and humanity shine through as they always have.

Wilder fired back with a long message, but the quote that stands out to me is, this having been my second picture with Marilyn, I understand her problems.

Her biggest problem is that she doesn't understand anyone else's problems.

Some Like It Hot premiered on March 29th, 1959.

It got very positive reviews, especially regarding the performances of the leading trio.

The box office numbers didn't start out that strong, but popularity grew over time.

And Chris, to your point, it grossed between $12.7 million and $14 million worldwide on its $2.8 million budget.

It did great.

It won multiple Golden Globes, including Best Actor and Actress for Jack Lemon and Marilyn Monroe, and Best Musical or Comedy for the film.

It was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Costumes, and a Best Actor nomination for Jack Lemon.

But only our friend, The Bitch Stole My Dress, Ori Kelly, was the winner that night for best costumes.

Good for him.

Well deserved.

So let's talk a little bit about where they are now.

This was, of course, a huge hit for the Mearish company.

It kicked off a streak of films, including The Magnificent Seven, The Apartment, and West Side Story.

Also, a little fun fact that I hadn't mentioned yet, but future massive composer John Williams actually plays piano on the score for this movie.

Interesting.

Very young John Williams.

Billy Wilder and I.A.L.

Diamond continued as writing partners for many years, including, of course, 1960s, The Apartment.

Jack Lemon, who wasn't a huge star before Some Like It Hot, definitely was after.

He apparently sent Jerry Lewis chocolates every year for turning down the film until he died in 2001.

Jack, what a move.

What a move.

Toni Curtis, like you said, had a pretty successful career through the early to mid-60s, but it does kind of end up dwindling after that point.

Some Like Like It Hot seemed to lift everyone's careers except for Marilyn's.

She went back to fulfill her contract with 20th Century Fox with the film Let's Make Love, which was pretty lackluster, and completed her final film, John Houston's The Misfits, which had been written for her by Arthur Miller sometime around 1960.

It is considered one of her strongest performances, but it was another famously troubled production.

She and Arthur Miller did divorce afterwards.

And she found herself in another dispute with 20th Century Fox over the film Something's Gotta Give.

She was actually held liable for the issues on production, and that film was never completed.

On August 5th, 1962, Marilyn was found dead in her home from a drug overdose at the age of 36.

Now, her death, as I'm sure you know, has been the subject of conspiracy theories for many, many years involving the FBI, potential murder, the Kennedys.

Truthfully, we don't know exactly what happened.

There is a lot of weirdness around it.

But I think based on what we know about addictions and prescription medications, this was potentially what it sounded like, which was a very tragic overdose.

Now, Chris, if you had to guess, who do you think she left her entire estate to?

One of her caretakers from earlier in our story, whose names are escaping me.

Lee and Paula Strasberg.

Oh, no.

Whole thing.

Yeah.

I would like to learn more about that dynamic and how much like coercive control they had over her because it sure seems like a lot.

And I will also say there are wonderful acting teachers, most of them I'm sure are, but you're in a very vulnerable position with those people.

You are often revealing

secrets, you know, childhood traumas.

Like that's not uncommon.

That's not uncommon in acting school.

And I think that

it is very easy for them to cross over the line.

And I think they absolutely did with her.

Yeah.

Joe DiMaggio, who she reconnected with in her last year of life, arranged her funeral, which was reserved for close friends and family only.

And of course, Lee Strasberg gave the eulogy.

Her mother, Gladys, who was at this point still institutionalized, never even knew that her daughter had died.

Just eight months before Marilyn died, she wrote a letter to Lee Strasberg.

She had big plans to launch a production company with Marlon Brando.

And she, of course, wanted Strasberg to be a part of it, especially since both he and her doctor seemed to have continued to urge her to keep working despite her mental health issues.

And again,

they both had monetary gains involved in that.

I want to end with this quote from her letter.

As you know, for years, I have been struggling to find some emotional security with little success for many different reasons.

Only in this,

I can't not cry.

Only in the last several months, as you detected, do I seem to have made a modest beginning.

It is true that my treatment with Dr.

Greenson has had its ups and downs, as you know.

However, my overall progress is such that I have hopes of finally establishing a piece of ground for myself to stand on instead of the quicksand I have always been in.

It just makes me so sad because I think she was heavily manipulated by so many people.

And just from a very early age, she wanted

some kind of, you know,

she wanted some kind of steady ground and she just never got it.

And I get that she was a pain in the ass.

I totally understand that.

But I also completely understand why.

Yeah, I mean, I think

in a perfect world, your marriage can be your steady ground from which it never was.

Exactly.

If anything, you know, work became quicksand, like you said, her marriage was quicksand.

You know, I'm sure we'll cover her much more as we hit more of her other films, but certainly a tragic life with

remarkable highs and performances that obviously belied the turmoil underneath.

Not unlike so many of our favorite performers from Belushi to so many others.

Anywho.

Well, Chris, what went right?

So many things in this movie, despite what a disaster it sounds like it was to make.

It really is amazing.

And

so I'm going to give it to,

and this is going to be a very weird, I guess, what went right because it's to like a specific component of the film, the blocking.

And so the choreography of the scenes, not just the dance.

But I think that as camera, as the camera has gotten more sophisticated, and I know Billy Wilder really felt like the camera should never draw attention to itself.

The camera is just a neutral observer.

And I think that there's been so much focus on innovative ways to move the camera, which are amazing using all the technologies that we have, you know, obviously beginning with like the Dolly and then the SETI cam and so many more now and drones and whatever, that as a result, so many things now remain static around the camera.

Whereas at this time, you mentioned the scene in the birth and the train, right?

Where they're all inside of Daphne's little bed area.

And there's like nine women shoved in there doing this complicated choreography with Jack Lemon.

And they're all great.

And the timing is spot on.

And they're just doing it in this wide shot.

Yeah.

And they never cut as a result.

And it's fantastic.

And there's a pitter-patter quality to this type of movie and to this dialogue that I actually think works best without a lot of edits.

And we've, with the advent of digital technology, et cetera,

editing seems to have no price.

whereas it once you know did and as a result i think we've lost um

some of the magic of how humans can move through a frame as opposed to how a frame can move through people.

Move around to people.

Yeah.

So I'll give it to the blocking and this type of film and the actors, Tony Curtis, Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemon, you know, Joey Brown, that could pull it off because they all do a remarkable job.

Well, I think.

Yeah, I mean,

Marilyn obviously was pretty hit or miss when she was on.

She was really on.

I do think a lot of credit goes to Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon because they truly had to be on at 100% in every single take because they were working with someone who was so unreliable.

I think they absolutely went right as annoying as Tony Curtis was in some of those quotes.

He is wonderful in this.

Jack Lemon is wonderful in this.

I think for my what went right, I will give it to Billy Wilder because this was an absolute shit show of a production.

And I just think in almost anyone else's hands, it literally wouldn't even have been a movie.

Like, I don't think it would have been any kind of cohesive story.

And instead, it is one of the greatest comedies ever made.

And the fact that he was able to pull that together with what he had, obviously he got frustrated.

Obviously, he said some stuff he should not have said.

And who knows what it was like, you know, working with him in terms of working with Marilyn on set.

But I think he pulled off kind of an incredible feat with this.

He is so good with the timing.

And that is all him.

Because as we know, he cut as the cameras rolled.

So it's not like somebody from the studio came in and was able to give a bunch of notes.

This is his vision.

It's what he wanted.

And it's great.

So I will give it to Billy Wilder.

And you mentioned the balance of tone, right, that Osalznick was reacting to.

And I do think one of the points you made earlier is so key, which is that he he grew up, right, in, or he's coming up in Berlin, which has, I think it's easy to forget, Berlin pre-World War II and post-World War II had such a vibrant, underground, non-mainstream, I guess is the way to put it, right?

Community.

A big artist community, a huge community.

A big artist community, a big sexual community, like a big alternate lifestyle community.

And so he could see humor and cabaret and vibrance and drag and cross-dressing in the face of rising violence and fascism and see how they're not only not incompatible with one another, they're actually responses to one another.

And there is a call and response element to the humor in this film and that really matches that.

And I think it's such a mistake to assume that audiences cannot handle that clash of tones because we are our funniest when things are their most tragic.

And so I agree.

I think Billy, and I can't wait, especially Sunset Boulevard is one of my favorite movies of all time.

And I can't wait until we cover that one.

I just would have loved to hear Arthur Miller explaining the difference between comedy and tragedy to poor Billy Wilder.

Yeah.

And Billy Wilder is like, yeah, tragedy is having to listen to you talk right now.

And comedy is watching you fall through a manhole and die.

Right.

Also, to a man who had literally escaped Hitler.

Exactly.

Thank you, Arthur Miller.

Yeah.

All right.

Blizzy, thank you so much for walking us through Some Like It Hot.

Such a fun film.

And guys, this is actually a film that I believe right now is available for free on Pluto, which is one of the free streaming services.

So if you don't want to pay for it, it's actually available online for free.

If you have enjoyed this podcast and we have thoroughly enjoyed making it for you, there are...

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And I'm thinking we need Shell Oil Jr.

to give these shout-outs.

Sure.

Now, even though I'm a millionaire, we appreciate everything that you've done for us.

And I don't expect that you're going to sue us for three-quarters of a million dollars.

So this shout-out goes to Caleb Simmons, Scary Carrie, the Provost family.

The O's sound like O's as if they'd sound any other way.

Zach Everton, Galen, David Friscalanti, Adam Moffitt.

Film it yourself.

I like your can-do attitude.

That's how I made my millions with Shell Oil.

My father, Shell Sr., he didn't give me a leg up.

He didn't give me anything.

I'm not an Epo baby.

Chris Zaka, Kate Elrington, M.X Sodia, C.

Grace B,

Jen Mastromarino.

You may have read about me in the newspapers or magazines.

Christopher Elner, Blaise Ambrose, Jerome Wilkinson, Lauren F.

Lance Stater, please step away, you're blocking my view.

Nate the Knife, Lenna, Andrea, Ramon Villanova Jr., Half Grey Hound, Lauren Dunn, Brittany Morris, Darren and Dale Conkling, Ashley, Richard Sanchez, who I'm guessing would have to agree that it'd be irresponsible to own a yacht that holds more than a dozen people given everything that's happening in the world.

Jake Kellen, Andrew McFagelbagel.

If you're interested in whether I'm married or not, I am.

So back off.

Matthew Jacobson, Grace Potter, Ellen Singleton, J.J.

Rapido.

Unfortunately, the stock market is slow, slow, slow.

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Even though none of you could really afford to be in my company, we do appreciate your donations.

Wow.

What a treat hearing from Shell Oil Jr.

himself.

He can be a little condescending, but he does appreciate everything that you guys have done for this podcast.

We will be back in two weeks for a Get to the Java special action-packed episode.

That's right.

John McTiernan is back.

We're talking Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Mussels from Brussels.

We're talking Predator, and we'll have a very special guest, Dan Merle, film critic, who is stepping in as Lizzie attempts to keep her baby from killing her and David through sleep deprivation.

Not anything malicious, don't worry.

Until then, nobody's perfect.

That's right.

Bye.

Go to patreon.com/slash what went wrong podcast to support what went wrong and check out our website at whatwentwrongpod.com.

What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer.

Editing and music by David Bowman.

This episode was written by Naomi Lind.