Films Of The 50's: Some Like It Hot

Rating: 10/10 (17 May 2006)

Some Like It Hot (1959): Starring Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Marilyn Monroe, Joe E. Brown,, Nehemiah Persoff,Billy Gray, George Stone, Dave Barry, Edward G. Robinson Jr. Director Billy Wilder, Screenplay Billy Wilder.
"So you play that fast music, that jazz ? Well, I guess some like it hot"..........
Billy Wilder directed 3 great films that begin with the letter "S", all dating from the 1950's: Sunset Boulevard (1950), Sabrina (1954) and Some Like it Hot (1959). This has long been regarded as the most hilarious comedy movie of the 50's. Filmed in black-and-white like the other Billy Wilder films of this decade, the movie has become an American classic. Marilyn Monroe is not only playing on the sexual icon angle she always uses, but is effectively funny (who knew she could do comedy ?) and is charming in every scene. Still, this film, despite the fact Marilyn Monroe was the draw, belongs to Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, portraying Joe and Jerry, two friends who get caught in the middle of the St Valentine's Day Massacre of the 1920's, the time this film is set. The mobsters are after them for being witnesses to the event and they must flee and take up new identities. They dress in drag and become Josephine and Daphne, join an all-girl jazz orchestra en route to Southern Florida where they will entertain the wealthy guests of a luxurious hotel. Posing as women is incredibly difficult for them, and their masculine habits (smoking, swearing, drinking, lusting after other women) are hard to break. Their chemistry together (and with Marilyn Monroe's character Sugar) is outstanding and the dialog is so witty, the jokes are genuinely humorous, if old-fashioned. There is a sense of fluidity in every scene. They are drinking alcohol during the "Prohibition" at a wild party in the beginning of the film, there's a massacre, they flee, they dress as women to hide from the baddies after them, board the train with the other female musicians, stay at a hotel by the beach, ride on a yacht, etc. Even the guys' transformation from male to female seems oddly natural, and they play the role of women in an over-the-top way. The film, in a haphazard sort of way, helped to promote the historic Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, California, where much of the movie was filmed, including scenes by the beach side which I find are really beautiful. Look for Edward G. Robinson's son, Ed Jr, in a small cameo role. This film, despite being comedic, also contains a very passionate (for the time) make-out scene between Marilyn and Jack Lemmon, hilariously juxtaposed with a tango dancing scene with Tony Curtis and Joe E. Brown. Marilyn Monroe's sexuality was not the kind of sexuality that say the women in Sex In The City possess. Far from being the overtly assertive girl who gets what she wants, Marilyn seduces men in a casual, almost blind manner. Although she is always depicted as a "dumb but sexy blonde" type, or moreover, the innocent sex kitten, she does appear to have a social-climbing agenda, and it's evident in this film. Joe E. Brown as Osgood Fielding III, a wealthy man who owns yachts - and most notably falls for Jack Lemmon's in-drag character Daphne - is originally the man Marilyn Monroe is after. But Tony Curtis' Joe character poses as him and gets Sugar ultimately. The use of mistaken identities in comedy is as old as Shakespeare and still works effectively in movies like this. The ending was abrupt and implied brief homosexuality (didn't anyone get that at the time ?): "I can't marry you because I'm a man", says Lemmon to Brown. "So," he replies, "nobody's perfect".