At the end, they stood and cheered for Gloria Swanson's return. They had paired up in pictures since 1938. Gene Kelly was then approached, but MGM refused to loan him out. is directed toward his associate producer, Henry Wilcoxon, who had starred in his epics Cleopatra (1934), The Crusades (1935) and Unconquered (1947), later moving to a position behind the camera as DeMille's associate, which he held until the older man's death in 1959. Stanwyck went to bat for Holden when he was going to be replaced in Golden Boy (1939) and Wilder's collaboration with Holden in the 50s starting with Sunset Boulevard revitalized his career (including the Best Actor Oscar for Stalag 17 (1953). It was the same technique he had used to shoot Rudolph Valentino's tango in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921). They stayed that way even if the pictures got small. Joe Gillis: You're Norma Desmond. (She liked it.). 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! Culture Editor Tony Sokol is a writer, playwright and musician. Marshman Jr. was hired to help batten down a script that was giving Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett great difficulty. All I know is that she's meshuggah, that's all. With the help of his partners, he created the Mount Kenya Game Ranch and inspired the creation of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation. Also in 1969, Holden starred in director Terence Young's family film L'Arbre de Nol, co-starring Italian actress Virna Lisi and French actor Bourvil, based on the novel of the same name by Michel Bataille. Before he became a kept man for Norma Desmond, he was thinking of wrapping up the whole Hollywood deal and trying to get his old job back as a newspaperman in Dayton, Ohio. Well, they kissed, and kissed, and kept kissing, and the crew began to snicker, and finally Marshall's voice rang out: "Cut, dammit!" words "Sunset Blvd." [45], According to the Los Angeles County Coroner's autopsy report, Holden bled to death in his apartment in Santa Monica, California, on November 12, 1981, after lacerating his forehead from slipping on a rug while intoxicated and hitting a bedside table. 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. was better known as the seat of the film industry in 1950, the Los Angeles film industry actually began on Sunset Blvd. The young actor also got to work with George Raft and Humphrey Bogart in the gangsters on parole movie,Invisible Stripes. Swanson was told "She can't show herself, Gloria, she's too overcome. Swanson argued that a woman like Norma would have been obsessed with her appearance and would have done her utmost not to look old. The Pharmacy was filmed only 500 feet (150 meters) from a scene in Armed and Dangerous (1986) & Falling Down (1993), The parking lot behind Rudy's Shoeshine where Joe Gillis pulls his car out of is 1751 Vine Street - about a half a block North of Hollywood Blvd (you can tell by the scene's POV of the Taft building that sits on the corner of Hollywood and Vine). This ushered in the peak years of Holden's stardom. +10 More . When Gloria Swanson finished Norma's final scene, the mad staircase descent, she burst into tears and the crew applauded. But that wasnt good enough for Hollywood. Norma Desmond was the greatest of them all. Brenda Marshall, Holden's wife since 1941, was visiting the set when Holden and Nancy Olson had their kissing scene. In addition to the famous swimming pool, the studio also built sets to exactly duplicate Schwab's Drug Store in Hollywood and the Los Angeles County Morgue. Billy Wilder's 1978 Flop Fedora is less a worthy follow up to Sunset Boulevard than a sorry footnote. Glenn Close, who portrayed Norma Desmond on stage, also played a character who dramatically cut her wrists over a man she was in love with in the film "Fatal Attraction. read more: Can The Biblical Epic be Resurrected? For the clip of the vintage film that Norma was watching Paramount couldn't find anything suitable so Gloria provided it from her own collection. He had made Swanson a star by. The only extant film elements were 35mm inter-positives struck in 1952, which had undergone a great deal of decay. Kodak would discontinue to manufacture it altogether in 1953. - 65th Anniversary (25) Film Noir Through the Years (3) Movies Set in Hollywood (3) Our Favorite Male-Female Duos (1) The History of Golden Globe Winners for Best Actor and Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama (1) Our Favorite Stills From "The Movies" (1) Movies About Movies (1) 77 Years of Golden Globes Best Picture Winners (1) After a private screening for Hollywood dignitaries, Barbara Stanwyck knelt in front of Gloria Swanson and kissed the hem of her skirt. Norma's buying Joe a fine woolen topcoat would be mostly an affectation in sunny Los Angeles. And if you find it a little odd to hear dead men telling their own tales via narration, it is less strange than hearing it from a bunch of corpses with toe-tags talking it over in the LA county morgue, which was the way the movie was originally shot. Holdens last movie, Blake Edwardss S.O.B., was another masterpiece of Hollywood cynicism. About 10 minutes later, Holden passed out and died from blood loss. (1950), Cecil B. DeMille, who plays himself in the film, directed H.B. 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. Thirty-one years later, the actor who played Gillis, William Holden, met his end. Both suits were dismissed. 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.. Paramount was more than happy to be the subject of the film, and didn't ask for the studio to be disguised. . Holden's first film back from the services was Blaze of Noon (1947), an aviator picture at Paramount directed by John Farrow. To publicize the film, Paramount sent Gloria Swanson on a cross-country tour, paying her $1,000 a week for her services. Gordon Cole was a real person in the art department for DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949) and later in The Ten Commandments (1956). But Hollywood press has always had clout. He contributed to Altvariety, Chiseler, Smashpipe, and other magazines. Even though it wasn't the last scene filmed, Billy Wilder threw a party for her as soon as the shot was finished. Her character's age was 22 but she was 21 at the time of filming. American Film Institute On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder, by Ed Sikov, 2023 Minute Media - All Rights Reserved. Billy Wilder had worked on a script for a Swanson picture years earlier called "Music in the Air (1934)" and had forgotten about it. It would not be turned into a motion picture until: The Naked and the Dead (1958). Please, don't let it be true, it must be some mistake," per her memoir. She is still waving proudly to a parade which had long since passed her by. She felt that Wilder used her name in a past-tense context, and she was offended. It was named after a major street that runs through Hollywood, the center of the American film industry . It was meant to be slightly humorous in a morbid way, but the audience at the first test screening found it flat-out hysterical, setting the wrong mood for the rest of the picture. For the first industry screening, Paramount executives invited several silent-film stars. Swanson herself reportedly asked him to do it. 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). 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. Every woman was in love with him. The look of pain sustained two fine films 'The Wild Bunch' and 'Network' so that we rubbed our eyes to recall the fresh-faced enthusiast from Golden Boy. The character of Max Von Mayerling as a washed up silent film director was an homage paid by Wilder to Erich von Stroheim, who was an inspiration to Billy in his glory days as a notorious silent film director himself. At one point Norma mistakes Joe for a funeral director and asks for her coffin to be white, as well as specially lined with satin. Universal bought it on her death in 1920 and it was used in several movies, most notably in The Phantom of the Opera (1925). The actor-turned-director bitched about that goddamned butler role for the rest his life. (1966), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), Network (1976), Coming Home (1978), Reds (1981), Silver Linings Playbook (2012) and American Hustle (2013). When producer Sheldrake offers to turn Gillis' script into a Betty Hutton story, the desperately poor writer inexplicably turns him down. Wilder asked how much shed charge just to shoot the chair and Lamarr said $10,000. The first draft of the film was a straightforward comedy about a has-been actress making a comeback, and Wilder saw Mae West in the role. Free shipping for many products! Salome was a wonderful part for Norma Desmonds celluloid comeback. It was a big hit, as was The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954), a Korean War drama with Kelly.[20][21]. Oddly enough, the reclusive Greta Garbo granted permission to use her name, though when she saw the film itself she was sorry she had done so. Yes, this is Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. It always will be! Gloria Swanson and Nancy Olson also co-starred in Airport 1975 together. He earned an Oscar nomination for "Sunset Boulevard" and won an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1954 for his role in "Stalag 17," per IMDb. While in Italy in 1966, Holden was responsible for the death of another driver in a drunk-driving incident near Pisa. 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. of quiet desperation at the end of a relationship when nothing's really making sense and I sort of had the image of William Holden at the beginning of Sunset Blvd. Gloria Swanson brings sunshine into every room as silent screen idol Norma Desmond. The actor-turned-director-turned-actor-again, who had indeed been one of the great silent-filmmakers, winced at playing a character so self-referential and demeaning, but he needed the money.
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