Paramount was more than happy to be the subject of the film, and didn't ask for the studio to be disguised. Although it can get chilly by the ocean, a light jacket or sweater would be plenty. Suratt was reportedly obsessed with the fact that she was the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary, and after her career ended commissioned the leader of the U.S. Reform Bah' Movement to co-write a script on the life of Mary Magdalene. When filming began, William Holden was 31 and Gloria Swanson was 50, the same stated age as her character. Paramount always labeled that studio as its Long Island Studios. 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. A screenwriter develops a dangerous relationship with a faded film star determined to make a triumphant return. He just didnt have what it takes. For the cover photo of the very first issue, in April 1951, of what many consider the most important film magazine of all time, the Paris-based "Cahiers du Cinema, " the editors chose the image of Gloria Swanson and William Holden in her screening room. Hola, identifcate . Swanson herself reportedly asked him to do it. Sad as this may sound, to the day he died, Holden insisted Bogart was a bastard. When filming began, William Holden was 31 and Gloria Swanson was 50, the same stated age as her character. This ushered in the peak years of Holden's stardom. They had faces. Warner (one of the four "Waxworks" at the bridge party) in The King of Kings (1927). When crew members asked Billy Wilder how he was going to shoot the burial of Norma's monkey, one of the film's most bizarre scenes, he just said, "You know, the usual monkey-funeral sequence.". Rudy's shoeshine stand at the parking lot where Gillis hides his car from the creditors was inspired by Oscar Smith's shoeshine stand located just inside the Bronson Gate at the old Paramount Studios, which was a popular hangout for gossip and socializing while Billy Wilder was building his career there. Sunset Boulevard DVD Special Collector's Edition William Holden Gloria In 2007 the American Film Institute ranked this as the #16 Greatest Movie of All Time. 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. The car with the massive chrome grill that the repo men drive is a 1948 DeSoto Custom Club Coupe. Oscar and Emmy winner William Holden was one of Hollywood's biggest stars for decades, with his performances as cynical, conflicted men winning acclaim and awards. She offered Peavey 10 dollars to identify Taylors grave in the Hollywood Park Cemetery and had someone wait there in a white sheet to scare it out of him. We were close friends for many years. Sunset Blvd. While in Italy in 1966, Holden was responsible for the death of another driver in a drunk-driving incident near Pisa. [14], Holden made a third film with Wilder, Sabrina (1954), billed beneath Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. [42][citation needed]. 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. Despite the 19 year gap in their ages, Holden and Swanson died just 2 years apart from each other- Holden in 1981 at age 63 and Swanson in 1983 at age 84. He rejects her. According to both versions of the morgue prologue script, Gillis' body is admitted on 5/17/49 (as indicated by a toe tag). Newspapers printed love letters between 19-year-old former child star and screen idol Mary Miles Minter and Taylor. Culture Editor Tony Sokol cut his teeth on the wire services and also wrote and produced New York CitysVampyr Theatreand the rock operaAssassiNation: We Killed JFK. His Mount Kenya Safari Club in Nanyuki (founded 1959) was popular with the international jet set. In the penultimate scene, as Max tells Norma that "the cameras have arrived," the high strings in composer Franz Waxman's Oscar-winning score quote a chord from Richard Strauss's "The Dance of the Seven Veils" from his opera "Salome". Marshman Jr. was hired to help batten down a script that was giving Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett great difficulty. According to the DVD commentary by Wilder biographer Ed Sikov, this story was most likely invented/exaggerated by Billy Wilder. Haines, whose career had ended because of his homosexual off-screen life, was too happy in his new profession as an interior decorator to want to call attention to his past as an actor. It is one of the most indelible films you will ever see. Holden's first film back from the services was Blaze of Noon (1947), an aviator picture at Paramount directed by John Farrow. In the movie, an aide tells Cecil B. DeMille "Gordon Cole has been trying to reach you". William Holden, Gloria Swanson and 'Sunset Boulevard' at the Metropolitan Sunset Boulevard (film) - Wikipedia The moment he discovers that life could be beautiful, Norma slits her wrist with Joes razor. Billy Wilder was frustrated with people assuming that the ending was meant to be ambiguous and asking him what happens to Norma after the final dissolve. All I know is that she's meshuggah, that's all. Film debut (uncredited) of Yvette Vickers. Von Stroheim didnt know how to drive, and the scene where hes driving the exotic leopard-upholstered Isotta-Fraschini was shot as the car was being towed. [23][24] Picnic was his last film under the contract with Columbia. Was the inspiration for Metallica's 1997 song "The Memory Remains". Well, in the end, he got himself a poolonly the price turned out to be a little high, so Paramount paid to have one installed on the condition that if Mrs. Getty didnt like it, theyd remove it after filming was over. In 1973, Holden starred with Kay Lenz in a movie directed by Clint Eastwood called Breezy, which was considered a box-office flop. On the basis of this film and largely due to his continuing association with director Billy Wilder, Holden would reach the zenith of his career from 1950-'57. It's kind of sweet, actually. [2] He had two younger brothers, Robert Westfield Beedle and Richard Porter Beedle. The Homicide Squad, complete with detectives and newspapermen, are responding to a call about a murder from one of those great big houses in the ten thousand block of Sunset Boulevard, a 22-mile block that stretches from Figueroa Street in downtown LA to the Pacific Ocean. 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". SUNSET BOULEVARD: The Making of the Billy Wilder Classic ), a woman who trades on charms that have . Getty Mansion aka Norma Desmond's home in "Sunset Boulevard" midway The name was then changed to Millman and finally to Sheldrake and was played by Fred Clark. They reportedly began a two-year affair, which is alleged to have ended due to Holden's alcoholism. It's not possible to shoot through water and get a clear image beyond. [16] Holden recalls their romance:.mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}, Before I even met her, I had a crush on her, and after I met her, just a day later, I felt as if we were old friends, and I was rather fiercely protective of her, though not in a possessive way. Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor, Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie, Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie, New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor, Venice Film Festival Special Award for Ensemble Acting, Laurel Award for Top Male Dramatic Performance, BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor, Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie, "When Alcoholics drink themselves to death", "William Holden Dead at 63; Won Oscar for 'Stalag 17', "Barbara Stanwyck's Honorary Award: 1982 Oscars", "The Screen Strand Shows 'Invisible Stripes', "30 Days, 30 Classics Day 17: Sabrina (1954) starring Audrey Hepburn, William Holden and Humphrey Bogart", "Screen: Crosby Acts in 'Country Girl'; Film Based on Odets Drama Makes Bow", "The Screen in Review; 'Bridges at Toko-ri' Is Fine Film of War", "Han Suyin dies at 95; wrote 'Many-Splendored Thing', "13 Fascinating Facts About 'The Bridge on the River Kwai', "Columbia Earns as It Holds Coin Due Bill Holden on 10% of 'Kwai', "The Towering Inferno Movie Review (1974)", "Network Movie Review & Film Summary (1976)", "William Holden Gave His All Even "When Time Ran Out", "William Holden's Unscripted Fall From Grace", The William Holden Wildlife Education Center, "West Holden: More than just the son of William Holden", Image of William Holden and Brenda Marshall, Academy Awards, Los Angeles, 1951, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_Holden&oldid=1142631715, Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie Primetime Emmy Award winners, United Service Organizations entertainers, Articles with dead external links from December 2019, Short description is different from Wikidata, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Pages using infobox person with multiple partners, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2022, TCMDb name template using numeric ID from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, episode: "William Holden/Frances Bergen Show", This page was last edited on 3 March 2023, at 14:28. The 49-year-old film directors body was found on the morning of Feb. 2, 1922, inside his bungalow at the Alvarado Court Apartments in Westlake, Los Angeles. Getting the role was a lucky break for Holden, as Montgomery Clift was initially cast but backed out of his contract. Florabel Muir, the New York Daily News Hollywood correspondent, thought Peavey was the murderer and tried to ambush him into a confession. Movie audiences in the nave early days of film sometimes didnt know that somebody had to sit down and write a movie. Even though it wasn't the last scene filmed, Billy Wilder threw a party for her as soon as the shot was finished. The truth of the matter was that Bing Crosby was one of the very few actors to whom Billy Wilder had borne a grudge, mainly because Crosby had done the unthinkable during filming of The Emperor Waltz (1948), and ad-libbed dialog, something he and Bob Hope had done for years as standard operating procedure in their breezy "Road" pictures. Wilder was no fan of improvisation and was very protective of his words. Montgomery Clift was originally cast as Joe Gillis but quit the production two weeks before filming began because he had already played the kept man of a wealthy older woman in The Heiress (1949). De Mille at Paramount, the director is shooting the film Samson and Delilah, which he was actually shooting at the time. Both Keaton and Hopper died the same day, on February 1, 1966, at the ages of 70 and 80 respectively, both in Los Angeles. The writer was almost all washed up, one step ahead of the finance company, parking his car in a lot behind the shoeshine parlor run by Rudy, a guy who never asked any questions about finances because he could just look at the peoplesr heels and know the score. Part of the dialogue goes: Fat Man: "Where did you drown? Her Stockholm Syndrome is positively infectious. 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. And so tonight, my golden boy, you got your wish". The antique car used as Norma Desmond's limousine is an 1929 Isotta-Fraschini Tipo 8A, a luxury car made in Italy, and once belonged to 1920s socialite Peggy Hopkins Joyce. American Film Institute On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder, by Ed Sikov, 2023 Minute Media - All Rights Reserved. The script (which was to be a vehicle for her comeback) was submitted to Cecil B. DeMille who sent it back. New York-born novelist and screenwriter Brackett was head of the Screen Actors Guild in the late 1930s, and president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1949 to 1955. Billy Wilder wanted Hedy Lamarr to appear in a cameo in the scene where Norma and Joe visit Cecil B. DeMille at Paramount. A few years later, Stephen Sondheim became interested in writing a musical version of his own, working with writer Burt Shevelove (with whom he ended up writing A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum). According to reports, Taylor went to the feds for help filing charges against Normands cocaine suppliers. The last name of the studio executive played by Fred Clark is Sheldrake. Joes voice even starts to take on more and more of her theatrical flourish after too much exposure. When he drives Norma to Paramount Pictures at the studio gates, the car was pulled with a rope by off-camera grips. Holden's films after that time had not impressed Wilder (in the 1940s Holden's movies were decidedly mediocre). Erich von Stroheim, who directed Swanson in Queen Kelly (1932), plays Max the butler, who serves as the projectionist in the scene. 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. In the fall of 1981, the television actor Stefanie Powers, who was dating William Holden, was in Hawaii filming the ABC show "Hart to Hart" when Holden stopped answering his phone. When Joe tells Betty that next time he will write "The Naked and the Dead", he is referring to the best-seller written by Norman Mailer and published in 1948. Because all three audiences inappropriately found the morgue scene hilarious, the film's release was delayed six months so that a new beginning could be shot. He received an eight-month suspended sentence for vehicular manslaughter. [4] They had two sons, Peter and Scott. Sunset Boulevard - Paramount Originals (includes Limited Edition The only addition was the swimming pool, which wasn't equipped with a means of circulating the water so it was useless after filming. Director Billy Wilder Writers Charles Brackett Billy Wilder D.M. But it wasn't a bullet from the gun of an aging movie queen that tragically ended his life, but rather, a rug, per The New York Times. Test audiences at the time couldnt let go of the joke, which was why it was re-edited this way. Oh, wake up, Norma. Although she had long before ruled out the possibility of a movie comeback, she was nevertheless highly intrigued when she got the offer to play the lead. Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die," edited by Steven Schneider. Neither did Toward the Unknown (1957), the one film Holden produced himself. Also, the house didn't have a pool, so Paramount paid to have one installed on the condition that if Mrs. Getty didn't like it, they'd remove it after filming was over. But before that happened, it appeared in Rebel Without a Cause as the abandoned mansion in which the kids hang out. This page was last edited on 28 February 2023, at 22:44. "No, don't let it be true. "Lux Radio Theater" broadcast a 60-minute radio adaptation of the movie on September 17, 1951, with Gloria Swanson and William Holden reprising their film roles. The original nitrate negatives for the film have long disappeared. Make-up designer Wally Westmore found that Gloria Swanson's face belied her age and wanted to make her look older. Such extravagances were so commonplace that when Wilder was planning to shoot the funeral of Normas chimpanzee, the director told the crew to just set-up the usual monkey-funeral sequence.. You used to be in silent pictures. William Holden movies: 15 greatest films, ranked worst to best, include 'Sunset Boulevard,' 'Network,' 'Stalag 17'. Ready? After graduating from South Pasadena High School, Holden attended Pasadena Junior College, where he became involved in local radio plays. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the film Stalag 17 (1953) and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for the television miniseries The Blue Knight (1973). 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.