Some Like it Hot

Last year saw the 65th anniversary of the premiere of Some Like it Hot, an immensely popular film now regularly seen during holidays on TV. The plot is fairly simple in that two male musicians witness the St Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago, and flee Illinois dressed as women in an all-female band headed for Miami, Florida, but then the complications set in. Directed by Billy Wilder and written by him with I A L Diamond, the film won an Oscar for Orry-Kelly for Costume Design and received nominations for Jack Lemmon as Best Actor (who won a BAFTA instead), Wilder as Director, Wilder & Diamond for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography & Best Art & Set Decoration; it was also nominated as a BAFTA Best Film; it also won Golden Globes as Best Comedy Film, for Lemmon as Best Actor and Marilyn Monroe as Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical. There were problems on the film, not least with Marilyn who required sometimes as many as 59 takes, but although highly frustrated Wilder later admitted that her talent on camera was undeniable. It also starred George Raft, Pat O’Brien & Nehemiah Persoff. The cross-dressing in the story disturbed some at the time and on original release it was banned in Kansas. The resort scenes were filmed at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, California. Raft spent ages teaching Lemmon to tango. In 2017 it was voted the best comedy film of all time in a BBC survey of critics. The railroad passenger car used in the film is now at the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The train station was filmed at the MGM Studio, Culver City, otherwise the studio filming was at the Goldwyn Studios, Formosa Avenue, West Hollywood. Has one of the most iconic lines in cinema with “Nobody’s perfect !”