Line: Wilder Though Wilder arrived in this country from Europe in 1934 with minimal knowledge of English, his use of the language on and off screen became legendary for its pithiness and its sharp wit. By telegraph. This information is based on a Page of Testimony submitted on 12-May-1957 by her brother, a Shoah survivor, The Wilder Family with a portrait of Billy Wilder in background. following a stem cell transplant and chemotherapy. Pushing the Boundaries Wilder's colorful entry into screenwriting, as told by biographer Maurice Zolotow, occurred one night in Berlin when he agreed to help his landlady's daughter Lulu out of a jam. Long before the award-winning Hollywood screenwriter and director Billy Wilder spelled his first name with a y, in faithful adherence to the ways of his adopted homeland, he was knownand widely published, in Berlin and Viennaas Billie Wilder.At birth, on June 22, 1906, in a small Galician town called Sucha, less than twenty miles northwest of Krakw, he was given the name Samuel in . . hotel suite. [13] In 1932 Wilder collaborated with the writer and journalist Felix Salten on the screenplay for "Scampolo". away because there wasn't any reason for them any more." As he described it in the mid-80s, "It's a sickness. He donated it to a It was released without however, a Production Code seal of approval, withheld due to the film's unabashed sexual comedy, including a central cross-dressing theme. As his health declined over the last few years, Wilder began lumping his various physical problems and frailties of old age into what he called his "malady." A stem-cell transplant has He was also out of time. Decades before the rise of the "antihero" in popular culture, Wilder's protagonists frequently came across as opportunistic, hard-boiled heels: Fred MacMurray, for example, cast against type as a man driven by lust into a murder plot in "Double Indemnity" (1944), or William Holden as the failed screenwriter who cynically agrees to become the kept man of a faded silent-screen star in "Sunset Boulevard" (1950). ''I don't like the audience to be aware of camera tricks,'' he told one interviewer. In 1945, the Psychological Warfare Department of the United States Department of War produced an American documentary film directed by Wilder. Blazing Saddles (1974) couldn't, wouldn't. During the war she was in Lodz, Poland. afterwards with odd jobs such as driving a limousine and teaching 14), Double Indemnity (no. His personality, his career, even his sexual Billy Wilder (June 22, 1906 - March 27, 2002) was an Austrian-born, Jewish-American journalist, screenwriter, film director, and producer whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. Billy Wilder Austrian-American director Birthday: June 22, 1906 Birthplace: Sucha, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now Sucha Beskidzka, Poland) Death Date: March 27, 2002 Age at death: 95 years old Sign: Cancer About Billy Wilder Billy Wilder was an award-winning American filmmaker who was very popular during the 1940s. State (Year) SSN issued: He lasted three months. Would the marriage last? Film: The Hollywood giant's use of the language on and off screen became legendary for its pithiness and its sharp wit. "There is never a day I don't write something. #ILoveYou #YouL, Hey, friends! On September 8, 1991, Wilder married Karen Webb (nee Boyer), whom he "For a few Wilder won three of his six Oscars for "The Apartment," as director, producer and co-writer. The film was the fifth highest-grossing film of the year. The White House (Broadway, 1964) [9] He wrote the screenplay for the 1931 film adaptation of a novel by Erich Kstner, Emil and the Detectives, also screenplays for the comedy The Man in Search of His Murderer (1931), the operetta Her Grace Commands (1931) and the comedy A Blonde Dream (1932), all of them produced in the Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam near Berlin. The American Film Institute has ranked four of Wilder's films among their top 100 American films of the 20th century: Sunset Boulevard (no. Why the Viennese didn't like Galicia Sucha, Billy Wilder's birthplace, was in the southwest portion of Poland, then Galicia. He served in the United Born in a part of the Austrian Empire that is now Hungary, Wilder was a writer-director who fled the Nazis to become one of Hollywood's most celebrated directors. The house intended to be a sizeable modular structure made of industrial off-the-shelf steel parts. View the Champlain in the 'Passenger Ships and Images' database But it was already too late. This was home. he asks. | At 18 he found himself a job on a tabloid that put a premium on punchy reporting and celebrity interviews. He left in 1954 but not before making the romantic comedy "Sabrina" with Audrey Hepburn, Holden and Humphrey Bogart. had a better chemistry with Pryor as a co-star than with anyone else In the film, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play Prohibition-era musicians who witness a mob slaying and, to escape the bad guys, masquerade as women in an all-girl band that features Marilyn Monroe on the ukulele. . Wilder's first big part was in Bonnie and Clyde where he played an romantic story, and I thought, 'When I go back to New York I am going She began to cry. Better, he explains, ''Pam-Pam'' was a musical about a gang of counterfeiters who masquerade as theatrical producers. Mother Courage and Her Children (Broadway, 1963) Published: March 29, 2002 (New York Times) was trying to atone for his mother's suffering. He first considered, and rejected, a project to star Laurel and Hardy. man came in and knelt in front of the screen, praying. gently, unexpectedly. It was the sort of antihero role that a half dozen male stars rejected and the kind of morally ambiguous subject that Hollywood's production code considered unsuitable for a movie in 1944, and it won Mr. Wilder the first of eight Oscar nominations as a director. later, this clearly still hurts. When this morally ambiguous film was named the best picture of 1960, Mr. Wilder became the first person to win three Oscars in a single night -- as director, producer and co-author of the screenplay. And it's very difficult to make a picture in Hollywood about Hollywood. May this day, week, and the, Hey! wouldn't have wanted me to. However, Wilder later admitted He died in 2002 at . Writer and director Billy Wilder was the man behind some of Hollywood's most beloved films -- Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Double Indemnity and many more. Many of Wilder's films achieved both critical and public . 1972 to 1977. of the dramatic is impeccable. Diamond, who, like Wilder himself, was an emigrant to America from eastern Europe (in Diamond's case, Romania). The duo also addressed sexual hypocrisy in "Irma la Douce" and Cold War relations in "One, Two Three," with James Cagney as a Coca-Cola executive in Berlin. His mother, who was in love with all things American, nicknamed him Billie in honor of the Buffalo Bill Wild West show. wife does in My French Whore. Columbia offered a one-way ticket and $150 a week. In early 2007 Wilder published his first novel, set during Estimated birth year: abt 1902 realised what was going on with my mother, the demons started to fade Wilder co-wrote many of his films with Brackett from 1938 to 1950. 113 min Lucian Baldinger was born in Lodz in 1925 to Mikhael and Miriam. Even critics who later accused Mr. Wilder of compromising the acidity of his films with sugar found no fault with the hardness of ''Double Indemnity.'' my life," he says. to fiction, producing his first novel - My French Whore. Wilder, a young screenwriter struggling to make a name amid the bohemian decadence of pre-War Berlin, heard a tap on his window. Film historian David A. Cook cites this movie for being on the cusp of the social consciousness drama of the late 1940s, which tackled formerly taboo moral issues and often shunned Hollywood sets in favor of location shooting. [18][19] Although a critical and commercial failure at the time, its reputation has grown over the years. I was always a one-woman man." Most of Wilder's films since the mid-1960s were not successful, popularly or critically: from "Kiss Me, Stupid" (1964), with Dean Martin as a sex-starved singer, to "Buddy Buddy," about the friendship of a hit man and a suicidal television censor. His work often focused on subjects that had previously been considered unacceptable screen material, including alcoholism (The Lost Weekend, 1945), prisoner-of-war camps (Stalag 17, 1953), and prostitution (Irma La Douce, 1963). Wilder was ranked 6th in director's poll on Sight & Sound's 2002 list of The Greatest Directors of All Time. In 1959, Wilder reunited with Monroe in the United Artists released Prohibition-era farce film Some Like It Hot. Many of the German-speaking refugees from Hitler -- among them Fritz Lang, Peter Lorre, Otto Preminger and Douglas Sirk -- prospered in Hollywood, but they were actors, directors, producers and composers. Through the 1960s and 1970s, Wilder worked on several more films, although none was as successful as his previous ones. Wilder came to refer to his cynical 1951 drama "Ace in the Hole," starring Kirk Douglas as a ruthless reporter, as "the runt of my litter." For much of that era, directors were virtually unknown to the general filmgoing public. But I knew I Victoria A Wilder Writer, Creator, Candlestick Melter Reviews & Stuff Fiction Stuff Read My Book Reviews (& Stuff) Read More Review of Sylvester Barzey's Stitches Ready for a little horror? After dropping out of the University of Vienna, Wilder became a journalist. ''Some Like It Hot'' (1959), with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as hapless musicians who escape gangsters by dressing as women, endures as a great American farce, while ''Sabrina'' (1954) sparkles as a sophisticated romantic comedy in which a chauffeur's daughter (Audrey Hepburn) is wooed by a captain of industry (Humphrey Bogart) and his playboy brother (Holden). The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards; together Wilder and Brackett won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He also received Academy Awards for directing and co-writing "The Lost Weekend" and for co-writing "Sunset Boulevard.". In 1936, Paramount hired Wilder and teamed him with Brackett, a novelist and former New Yorker drama critic. | A turning point in his career came in 1938 when he began a long and succesful collaboration with screenwriter Charles Brackett which was expanded into a producer-director one in 1942. Interview with Wilder on NPR's Fresh Air (March 16, 2005) She wouldn't answer. Max died when Billy was 22 years old. | The bigger they get, the more powerful we get. County: New York I did. [38] A French newspaper, Le Monde, titled the front-page obituary: Billy Wilder is dead. The Lady In Question (1999) It's not tough to make a picture. Some anti-Communists wanted those in the cinema industry to take oaths of allegiance. Wilder refused and said he would leave if the studio failed to apologize. A sad tale, I say. Wilder, who had been in failing health for some time, died at 11 p.m. Wednesday of pneumonia at his home in Beverly Hills. Ship Name: Despite his conservative directorial style, his subject matter often pushed the boundaries of mainstream entertainment. himself, at first, with unemployment insurance and some savings, and university for students to study his development as a writer. State: New York She was needy then? indeed have loved her enormously to feel that way. He was proud of pushing the boundaries of good taste, but he lived to see his efforts eclipsed as the old Production Code collapsed and Hollywood's list of onscreen do's and don'ts vanished. But the Berlin of the Weimar era was the most exciting city east of Paris, and Mr. Wilder had no intention of returning to Vienna. struggle with ovarian cancer. 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