Holden starred in the 20th Century Fox film Apartment for Peggy (1948). On February 7, 1955, Holden appeared as a guest star on I Love Lucy as himself. You murdered me. He was Judy Hollidays tutor in Born Yesterday (1950) and played a war correspondent in Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955). Joe Gillis is seen reading the book "The Young Lions" by Irwin Shaw, a best-selling World War Two novel of the time, Montgomery Clift, who was originally offered the part of Joe Gillis, later played one of the leads in the film adaptation of that book The Young Lions (1958), though it was not directed by Billy Wilder. She is still waving proudly to a parade which had long since passed her by. She refuses to believe that she's no longer remembered and will never make another movie. Erich von Stroheim could not drive in real life. When filming began, William Holden was 31 and Gloria Swanson was 50, the same stated age as her character. The undertaker, who appears for a few seconds early on with the white casket for Norma's deceased pet chimp, was veteran actor Franklyn Farnum, who played extras in over 1,000 films during his lengthy but unsung career. Talk! in West Hollywood. And gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (who appears in the movie as herself) wrote that "Billy Wilder was crazy about Evelyn Waugh's book The Loved One, and the studio wanted to buy it.". In 1969, Holden made a comeback when he starred in director Sam Peckinpah's graphically violent Western The Wild Bunch,[4] winning much acclaim. Some speculated it was because he was dating an older woman at the time (actress Libby Holman, 16 years his senior) and didn't want people to think the movie was a parody of that relationship. "[13] And Wilder commented "Bill was a complex guy, a totally honorable friend. Although they don't have a scene together in this film, Hedda Hopper and Buster Keaton had worked together in the 1932 comedy Speak Easily (1932), both were among the many stars appearing in the 1931 two-reeler The Stolen Jools (1931), and they both appeared in a 1958 episode of The Garry Moore Show (1958) that also featured Carol Burnett, who years later would spoof the Norma Desmond character regularly on her own variety show. LAS COSAS DEL QUERER", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sunset_Boulevard_(film)&oldid=1142173541, Best Overall New Extra Features Library Release. +10 More . Sands disappeared after the murder. 1851 Ivar Street was the address of the Alto Nido Apartments, where he lived, sometimes worked and, ultimately died in 1941. The movie was previewed with this opening, in Illinois, Long Island (NY) and Poughkeepsie (NY). Bogart was not especially friendly toward Hepburn, who had little Hollywood experience, while Holden's reaction was the opposite, wrote biographer Michelangelo Capua. [40], Holden had a daughter born in 1937 from his relationship with actress Eva May Hoffman. Oh, wake up, Norma. In those days there were no buttons on formal shirts. (as Arthur Schmidt) Wilder and Brackett told everyone at Paramount and the Production code that the screenplay was based on the story A Can of Beans by Wilder, Brackett, and D.M. Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder retained the term of endearment for the scene in which DeMille greets Norma Desmond at the door of the sound stage. The "fee" for renting the Jean Paul Getty mansion was for Paramount to build the swimming pool, which features so memorably. According to the DVD commentary by Wilder biographer Ed Sikov, this story was most likely invented/exaggerated by Billy Wilder. She can sense the hot spot of every light and has never lost the wonderment of movies. . Florabel Muir, the New York Daily News Hollywood correspondent, thought Peavey was the murderer and tried to ambush him into a confession. During the shopping excursion, Norma remarks that if Joe is not careful, he'll need a cutaway. Ironically, the last films that Gloria Swanson made for Paramount were not at this famous facility. She looks like a mannequin of a . but Holden's wife, Ardis (Brenda Marshall), who happened to be on set that day. Norma, the aging silent-movie star who ensnares down-at-the-heels screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden), is the vamp become vampire (look at those clawlike hands! Movie audiences in the nave early days of film sometimes didnt know that somebody had to sit down and write a movie. Billy Wilder also used Sheldrake as the last name of Fred MacMurray's character in "The Apartment". 10060 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, California, USA. The film is included on Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" list. "Sometimes he'd just get in his car and drive," the director told the AP. Sunset Boulevard (styled in the main title on-screen as SUNSET BLVD.) [48] He also has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. His body was found four days later. The California license plate on Gillis' Plymouth, 4D R 116, appears to be a legal and current registration for 1949. Fat Man: "A husky fellow like you?" Features the only Oscar-nominated performances of Erich von Stroheim and Nancy Olson. In 1998 the American Film Institute selected this as the 12th greatest film of the 100 Greatest American Movies of All Time. Norma's "gondola bed" was originally white, and was featured in Twentieth Century (1934) with Carole Lombard and John Barrymore. The two men never worked together again. So she lands his head on a golden tray, kissing his cold, dead lips. Gordon Cole was a real person in the art department for DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949) and later in The Ten Commandments (1956). For the opening shot of Joe Gillis floating face-down in the swimming pool, Billy Wilder wanted a shot from below that would show both the body and the police and photographers standing at the pool's edge looking down. [41], Holden was married to actress Brenda Marshall from 1941 until their divorce in 1971. For added meta-truthfulness, Wilder wanted to have that film's lead actress, Hedy Lamarr, be there too, so that DeMille could ask her to let Norma sit in her chair (you know, those behind-the-scenes chairs that have the star's name on them). The Tragic 1981 Death Of Sunset Boulevard Star William Holden. An ending for the film was cobbled together, but the movie was never shown in the U.S. This still goes on today. Swanson agreed to the audition, and won the role. Men bribed her hairdresser to get a lock of her hair. Her character's age was 22 but she was 21 at the time of filming. Despite that, von Stroheim "still managed to hit the gates, he had no co-ordination", said Billy Wilder in an interview for the book "Sunset Boulevard: From Movie to Musical". Gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, who plays herself in the movie, wrote that Billy Wilder was crazy about Evelyn Waughs book The Loved One, and the studio wanted to buy it.. Free Postage. Norma goes to visit Cecil B. DeMille, several of whose films Swanson had starred in. [39][46] He dictated in his will that the Neptune Society cremate him and scatter his ashes in the Pacific Ocean. (She liked it.). Swanson argued that a woman like Norma would have been obsessed with her appearance and would have done her utmost not to look old. Free shipping for many products! With the help of his partners, he created the Mount Kenya Game Ranch and inspired the creation of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation. Originally Billy Wilder wanted both of Hollywood's top gossip columnists--Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons--reporting from Norma's mansion at the end and fighting over the phone. If Gillis is accurate in stating that his meeting with Norma occurred some six months prior, the action of the film takes place between mid-November 1948 and mid- May 1949. In one week, she received 17,000 fan letters. From the right angle, the camera could shoot the reflected image in the mirror without ever going underwater itself. [2] His brother Robert ("Bobbie") became a U.S. Navy fighter pilot and was killed in action in World War II, over New Ireland, a Japanese-occupied island in the South Pacific. Wilder told the actors to kibbutz and let him shuffle. She worked closely with Gloria Swanson on Norma Desmond's wardrobe, as she figured Swanson would have had a better idea of what women of that time would have worn and what they would be wearing now. Wilder was no fan of improvisation and was very protective of his words. Universal bought it on her death in 1920 and it was used in several movies, most notably in The Phantom of the Opera (1925). And that young man who was found floating in the pool of her mansion, with two shots in his back and one in his stomach, was nobody important, really. During Norma Desmond's New Years' Eve party, the band begin to play the song 'Diane', the theme of the 1927 film 7th Heaven (1927). In fact,Bob Thomas, Holden's biographer, said that the actor's addiction counselor predicted his demise. Gloria Swanson played her final descent on the staircase barefoot, as she was terrified of tripping in high heels. The Den of Geek quarterly magazine is packed with exclusive features, interviews, previews and deep dives into geek culture. On Joe's and Betty's night walk through the Paramount backlot, his calling the false building fronts "Washington Square" would be an accurate reference, as that neighborhood in New York was full of brownstone houses, apartments, and other turn-of-the-century architecture. Kodak would discontinue to manufacture it altogether in 1953. But like so many of the female actors of the era, Holden soon realized it was his physical attributes and not his acting ability that the studio cared about. Confess, Peavey, he laughed in the ghosts face. Not long ago, he was divorced from the actress, Gloria Holden, but carried the torch after the marital rift. When producer Sheldrake offers to turn Gillis' script into a Betty Hutton story, the desperately poor writer inexplicably turns him down. The movie opens with a shot of a dead guy floating face down in a pool, and the dead man himself tells us that its Joe Gillis getting bloated in the chlorine. After his final film S.O.B., Holden declined to star in Jason Miller's film That Championship Season.[37]. He contributed to Altvariety, Chiseler, Smashpipe, and other magazines. He stayed at Paramount for The Remarkable Andrew (1942) with Brian Donlevy, then made Meet the Stewarts (1943) at Columbia. But when Sondheim pitched the idea to Billy Wilder at a party, Wilder said, "You can't write a musical about Sunset Boulevard. Sad as this may sound, to the day he died, Holden insisted Bogart was a bastard. Clift was also wary of appearing in the film because he, like the character of Joe, was having an affair with a wealthy older former actress, Libby Holman. This inter-positive was scanned at 2,000 lines of resolution and electronically restored for the 2002 DVD reissue. Saltar al contenido principal.com.mx. "[18] Rumors at the time had it that Hepburn wanted a family, but when Holden told her that he had had a vasectomy and having children was impossible, she moved on. The two stars had never expressed any hostility towards each other over the failure of Cecil B. DeMille and Stroheim made many recommendations to Wilder during the making of the film, including having his character write all of Norma Desmond's fan mail, and, more importantly, to use footage from "Queen Kelly" as an excerpt from one of Desmond's great silent films. Holden served as a second and then a first lieutenant in the United States Army Air Force during World War II, where he acted in training films for the First Motion Picture Unit, including Reconnaissance Pilot (1943). Nothing else! It would go on to be one of his most successful movies. Suratt believed that DeMille's epic, "The King of Kings" (released in 1927) was based on her screenplay and filed a $1,000,000 plagiarism suit which was settled out of court in 1930. Every time I go to L.A., which isn't too often, I look at these palm-bemused, once smart stucco facades, and wonder if a Norma Desmond from a later era might be hiding from the world inside them, buttressed by cable TV (AMC or TCM, no doubt), a poodle named FiFi or Sir Francis, walk-in closets full of leopard-print Capri pants that haven't fit in decades, and a world class liquor cabinet that has seen heads of state under the table on a good night. [4] They had two sons, Peter and Scott. This page was last edited on 28 February 2023, at 22:44. (1950), as a way of "art imitating life." Billy Wilder had worked on a script for a Swanson picture years earlier called "Music in the Air (1934)" and had forgotten about it. De Mille, and Max von Mayerling. )[19], He took third billing for The Country Girl (1954) with Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly, directed by George Seaton from a play by Clifford Odets. Garbo was once rumored to be engaged to the innovative Hollywood and Broadway director Rouben Mamoulian whose film Golden Boy (1939) made William Holden famous. Culture Editor Tony Sokol is a writer, playwright and musician. Although Gloria Swanson correctly states he is a Sagittarius, it is actually on the Sagittarius-Capricorn cusp. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357). Norma telling studio guard Jonesy that without her there would be no Paramount Studios is not a far-fetched notion. This was the last major Hollywood feature film to be shot on nitrate stock. West wanted to rewrite her dialogue. For the first industry screening, Paramount executives invited several silent-film stars. About 28:00 in, when Max is playing the organ, it is the same chords that Captain Nemo (James Mason) plays on his organ aboard the Nautilus in "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea." The pool was used in its empty condition in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Westmore and director Billy Wilder agreed with this so William Holden was made up to look younger than he was. To help promote the film, Gloria Swanson did a three-month tour of 36 cities in America and Canada. Every woman was in love with him. Both Mary Astor and Miriam Hopkins starred in TV versions of the film in 1955 and 1956, respectively. Fat Man: "You were murdered?" It was built in 1924 by William Jenkins, at a cost of $250,000. Swanson made the transition to talkies with The Trespasser in 1929. Marshman Jr. was hired to help batten down a script that was giving Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett great difficulty. Watch Sunset Boulevard: Centennial Collection, When Norma Desmond says to the guard at the "Paramount Studio" gates, "Without me there wouldn't be any 'Paramount Studio'" the words could apply to, When Max is telling Joe about directing Madam's first pictures, there is a bad dub of the word "sixteen". Sunset Boulevard (1950) 1950, 1h 50min - Drama Gloria Swanson, as Norma Desmond, an aging silent-film queen, and William Holden, as the struggling young screenwriter who is held in thrall by her madness, created two of the screen's most memorable characters in "Sunset Boulevard." Co-writer D.M. When Joe and Norma sit down to watch one of her old movies, Joe pulls out a cigarette and places the bottom end in his mouth. "I am big. 10 films that began filming without a finished script, Donald Trumps Bad Romance with Hollywood Began Before Parasite, Shazam! The director turned actor was still able to steer the expensive Italian car into the Paramount gate. While Hollywood Blvd. The forensics team rolled him over and saw he had been shot at least once in the back with a small-caliber pistol. April 17, 2019 6:00AM. In her private screening room, with butler Max running the projector, Norma cuddles up with Joe to watch one of her own films. One of his father's grandmothers, Rebecca Westfield, was born in England, while some of his mother's ancestors settled in Virginia's Lancaster County after emigrating from England in the 17th century. The young actor also got to work with George Raft and Humphrey Bogart in the gangsters on parole movie,Invisible Stripes. The film and actors was excellent and lived up to our expectations. This can be deduced from the fact that when he pulls one out of the pack he turns the bottom end up to his mouth. Wilder and his co-writers reversed several elements, and there was no official connection between the movie and Waugh's book. The movie's line "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up." Sunset Boulevard DVD (2007) William Holden, Wilder (DIR) cert PG Amazing Value. It was like that old woman in Great Expectations, Miss Havisham in her rotting wedding dress and her torn veil, taking it out on the world because shed been given the go-by. [43] Capucine and Holden remained friends until his death in 1981. That's a reference to the traditional grey morning suit worn by the groom at a formal wedding. In real life, when Swanson and DeMille had worked together, that was what they always called each other. (A few months later, Hepburn met Mel Ferrer, whom she later married and with whom she had a son Sean Hepburn Ferrer. In accordance with his wishes, no funeral or memorial services were conducted. His characters were always angling for something, whether it was silk stockings in a POW Camp in Stalag 17 from 1953, which won him a Best Actor Oscar, or to clear impersonation charges in in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) with Alec Guinness. Norma Desmond: I *am* big. But who could play the silent film diva? It is because of Sunset Blvd., for certain, that my mind could ever go there. The "Desmond mansion" was located not on Sunset Blvd. After the. are shown stenciled on the curb of that street. But trophies or not, Sunset Boulevard has stayed near the top of the list of great movies about moviemaking. One of the few showy bits of camerawork in the film is near the beginning, when the corpse floating in Norma Desmond's pool is seen from underneath. He received an eight-month suspended sentence for vehicular manslaughter. So in that scene, William Holden is driving over the future locations of Walk of Fame stars dedicated to the two people arguably most responsible for his success in Hollywood. and Crescent Heights Blvd. At the end, they stood and cheered for Gloria Swanson's return. In a case of life mirroring art, she outlived him. Betty is an idealist, more closely resembling Normas rose-colored outlook, but with darker shades she wants to bring to light. Included among the 25 films on the American Film Institute's 2005 list of AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores. The veteran actress particularly wanted to see what Mary Pickford felt and was disappointed to see that she had left. The actor-turned-director bitched about that goddamned butler role for the rest his life. Erich von Stroheim, who made the masterpiece Greed in 1924, directed Swanson in Queen Kelly (1928), the flick Holdens character cuddles up with Norma to watch in the dark screening room of the dark mansion. He would slay, "I have no idea! Norma Desmond promised she would never desert her audience again. The character of Joe Gillis was very much in tune with William Holden's standing at the time. Brackett and Wilder worked together on more than a dozen movies including The Lost Weekend. Film News. . William Holden movies: 15 greatest films, ranked worst to best, include 'Sunset Boulevard,' 'Network,' 'Stalag 17'. The restoration was performed at Lowry Digital by Barry Allen and Steve Elkin. He said hed already played a young kept man in the film The Heiresswith Olivia De Havilland, and in real life with his relationship with older singer Libby Holman. She burst into tears upon completion of the scene. He did another Western at Columbia, Texas (1941) with Glenn Ford, and a musical comedy at Paramount, The Fleet's In (1942) with Eddie Bracken, Dorothy Lamour, and Betty Hutton.[9].
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