Top 10 interesting things about SOME LIKE IT HOT

Rating: 10/10 (13 September 2010)

Billy Wilder was best known for dramas DOUBLE INDEMNITY, THE LOST WEEKEND & SUNSET BLVD. but taste where changing and he added a new partner I.A.L. Diamond. And he wanted to get back to his roots when he wrote screwball comedies like BALL OF FIRE, NINOTCHKA and MIDNIGHT.
Top 10 interesting things about SOME LIKE IT HOT
1) This is actually the third version of the story after the 1935 - French film and 1951 - German musical version. Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond changed it to 1920s gangster/prohibition setting and added St. Valentine's Day like massacre plot and cast 1930's actors Pat O'Brien, George E. Stone and George Raft as gangsters. Look for Edward G. Robinson Jr. (son of the Edward G. Robinson) to jump out of the cake near the end of the film!
2) Danny Kaye and Bob Hope or Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis where all considered to secure studio financing with Mitzi Gaynor as the girl. But when Marilyn Monroe heard about the film she wrote to Wilder asking if she could be in it after the success they had with 1955's THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH. So after she was signed for $200,000 and 10% of the gross Wilder was then able to cast the cheaper newcomers he really wanted, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as the male leads.
3) Lemmon and Curtis were afraid of their young careers getting damaged, of the make-up & costumes not working and especially walking in high heels... they did hire a trainer but fired him after they realized walking like men in heels was funnier!
4) George Raft who started his career as a coin tossing gangster in the original 1932 SCARFACE was originally a dancer and taught Jack Lemmon & Joe E. Brown to tango so well, watch closely, they even pass a rose between their teeth while dancing!
5) Supposedly when costume designer Orry-Kelly was measuring all three stars for dresses, he half-jokingly told Marilyn Monroe, "Tony Curtis has a nicer rear end than you," at which point Monroe pulled open her blouse and said, "Yeah, but he doesn't have a chest like this!" Film critic Roger Ebert notes: "she wears a clinging, see-through dress, with gauze covering the upper slopes of her breasts, the neckline scooping to a censor's eyebrow north of trouble."
6) In 2008, a Californian man (who found a little black dress in his closet) was stunned when appraisers for U.S. TV series "Antiques Roadshow" determined it once belonged to Marilyn Monroe. The frock - which Monroe was sewn into for SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959) - was estimated to be worth $250,000
7) Tony Curtis came up with the idea to having his character Shell Oil Jr. sound like Cary Grant, who upon seeing the film said "Nobody talks like that!"
8) Marilyn Monroe was famously fragile, shy, insecure and often late. Wilder said a scene that would normally take an hour to shoot took 3 days to get right. It required 47 takes to get "It's me, Sugar" correct. Another scene required Monroe to rummage through some drawers and say "Where's the bourbon?" After 40 takes, Wilder pasted the correct line in one of the drawers. After Monroe became confused about which drawer contained the line, Wilder had it pasted in every drawer. When she finally does say it, she has her back to the camera, leading some to wonder if Wilder finally gave up and had it dubbed.
The girls in the band tell the story of one day they couldn't get Marilyn out of her trailer so Wilder asked Monroe's stand-in to rehearse the song "Running Wild" with the crew. Before long Marilyn heard the music and someone else singing her song so she came out to see what was going on Wilder took one look at her and said, "OK everybody, now from the top" and Marilyn nailed it on the first take!
SOME LIKE IT HOT director Billy Wilder was once asked why he put up with Monroe's nonsense. He famously replied, "My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?"
9) RECOGNITION: 6 Oscar nominations for Writing, Director, Cinematography, Sets and Lemmon for Actor (unfortunately that year it was competing with BEN-HUR which in my opinion is not that funny and Charlton Heston wears an even shorter skirt! Not fair!) SOME LIKE IT HOT only won only one Academy Award for Best Costume (FOOTNOTE: for strategic engineering under substantial and natural monumental obstacles, I'm sure.) Golden Globe wins for Best Comedy, Actor Lemmon & Actress Monroe; the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency awarded it a "condemned" rating (it's now considered PG-13) and finally in the year 2000, the American Film Institute listed SOME LIKE IT HOT as the number one greatest American comedy film of all time. What's number two? TOOTSIE...
10) One last piece of trivia, about my favorite scene. When they previewed the movie they found a problem with one scene, the audience was laughing so hard they missed several jokes so Billy Wilder gave a pair of maracas to Jack Lemmon to shake between the punch lines and re- shot the scene to allow the audience time to get the laughs out of there system!