Ballard, who used to impersonate Norma descending the stairs. As day breaks. But she fits it like a round peg in a square hole. Men bribed her hairdresser to get a lock of her hair. Sunset Boulevard mixed fiction with the realities of filmmaking. Norma's "gondola bed" was originally white, and was featured in Twentieth Century (1934) with Carole Lombard and John Barrymore. So she lands his head on a golden tray, kissing his cold, dead lips. He said it was because she was braver than any man. Her character's age was 22 but she was 21 at the time of filming. According to Cameron Crowe, who shadowed Billy Wilder in his twilight years, a typical day in his office would consist of him answering numerous phone calls from people requesting to remake this film, and he would inform them that he didn't own the rights and promptly hang up. As DeMille was directing Lamarr at the time in Samson and Delilah (1949), this would have been no problem. was better known as the seat of the film industry in 1950, the Los Angeles film industry actually began on Sunset Blvd. The part was only Nancy Olson's third film appearance. It made him a true front ranked star after years of being an actor slogging through a series of largely forgottable films (and performances). The exterior shots were of a house located not on Sunset but Irving Boulevard, near the corner of Wilshire, owned by the J. Paul Getty family. This ushered in the peak years of Holden's stardom. This was the actual set of Samson and Delilah (1949), which de Mille was making at the time. 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. They are singing a parody of their song "Buttons and Bows," from The Paleface (1948), for which they won an Oscar in 1949, the year this film was made. The two starred in the films The Lion (1962) and The 7th Dawn (1964). Part of the dialogue goes: Fat Man: "Where did you drown? Warner, who appears as one of "The Waxworks", had been Gloria Swanson's leading man in Zaza (1923). Holden's films after that time had not impressed Wilder (in the 1940s Holden's movies were decidedly mediocre). Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! 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. But it was too difficult to put a camera underwater to get the shot, so Wilder and cinematographer John Seitz came up with an ingenious solution: they put a mirror on the bottom of the pool and filmed the reflection from above. Principal photography took place from 11 April to 18 June 1949. Well, they kissed, and kissed, and kept kissing, and the crew began to snicker, and finally Marshall's voice rang out: "Cut, dammit!" This dynamic served them well for years, each man's extreme tendencies being balanced by the other's, but during Sunset Boulevard it finally became unworkable. Fat Man: "You were murdered?" (1950) was plagiarized from other scripts. 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. Florabel Muir, the New York Daily News Hollywood correspondent, thought Peavey was the murderer and tried to ambush him into a confession. 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. He was Judy Hollidays tutor in Born Yesterday (1950) and played a war correspondent in Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955). De Mille, and Max von Mayerling. Gloria Swanson was paid $50,000 plus $5,000 per week for any time over schedule. It always will be! William Holden (born William Franklin Beedle Jr.; April 17, 1918 November 12, 1981) was an American actor and one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1950s. He was a genuine star. The first-floor set of Norma Desmond's mansion was also used in the western comedy Fancy Pants (1950) starring Bob Hope and Lucille Ball, giving fans a chance to see it in full color. According to Billy Wilder, it was von Stroheim's idea to use a clip from Queen Kelly (1932) in Sunset Blvd. There were three young directors who showed promise in those early days of silent film, D.W. Griffith, Cecil B. The 2014 book by William J. Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood, names Ross Blackie Madsen Sheridan as the killer, based on a death bed confession from actress Margaret Gibson, who beat a 1917 rap on prostitution and opium dealing. 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. The film is openly referenced in Soapdish (1991), The Player (1992), Gods and Monsters (1998), Mulholland Drive (2001), Inland Empire (2006) and Be Cool (2005) while the closing scene of Cecil B. Demented (2000) is a direct parody of the final scene of the 1950 classic. Mary Pickford lived in seclusion, away from the public eye, while both Mae Murray and Clara Bow had well documented struggles with mental illness. When filming began, William Holden was 31 and Gloria Swanson was 50, the same stated age as her character. These actors were bigger than life. Microphones would catch the last gurgles, and Technicolor would photograph the red, swollen tongues. [43] Capucine and Holden remained friends until his death in 1981. [28] Columbia would not meet Holden's asking price of $750,000 and 10% of the gross for The Guns of Navarone (1961); the amount of money Holden asked exceeded the combined salaries of stars Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Anthony Quinn.[29]. The investigation found that in the weeks just prior to his death, Taylor had been making some pretty delusional statements about his place in the world and some of his friends thought he had recently gone insane. This indicates that he is smoking filterless cigarettes, which was the norm for that era until filters became the standard after the mid-'50s. His family moved to South Pasadena when he was three. "[4], For his contribution to the film industry, Holden has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 1651 Vine Street. (1949), and "Father Is a Bachelor" (1950). In 1973, Holden starred with Kay Lenz in a movie directed by Clint Eastwood called Breezy, which was considered a box-office flop. 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. Norma is at the edge of insanity through the whole movie, but that doesnt mean shes not fun. Born William Beedle Jr. on April 17, 1918, he was 21 when he got his first starring role as the classical fiddle playing boxer in Golden Boy in 1939. Included among the American Film Institute's 1998 list of the Top 100 Greatest American Movies. The actor's second major breakthrough occurred when Wilder cast him in the lead of the. All of the silent film stars mentioned by Norma, Joe, Betty and Max were either dead or no longer active in films by 1950. William Holden returns to find that Gloria Swanson has tried to slash her wrists in 'Sunset Boulevard', directed by Billy Wilder. Brackett was a New York-born novelist and screenwriter, 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 (during which time he won two screenwriting Oscarsgood news for conspiracy theorists). In reality, Gloria Swanson never worked with Normand and worked only once with Prevost in a 1916 short. 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. Unlike the character she played, Gloria Swanson had accepted the fact that the movies didn't want her anymore and had moved to New York, where she worked on radio and, later, television. and was "a loner," according to Edwards, who wasn't surprised that Holden's body went so long without being discovered. 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). Holdens last movie, Blake Edwardss S.O.B., was another masterpiece of Hollywood cynicism. [17], Their relationship did not last much beyond the completion of the film. Sunset Boulevard now begins with police cars racing to Norma Desmond's house, where a dead body is floating in the pool. Since her part required her to gaze at the newsreel cameramen and "fans" (the waiting police) gathered in the foyer below, she couldn't watch where she placed her feet. Upon telephoning her, however, Wilder found that Negri's Polish accent, which had killed her career, was still too thick for such a dialog-heavy film. The only extant film elements were 35mm inter-positives struck in 1952, which had undergone a great deal of decay. What is the correct title - "Blvd." 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. "Twin Peaks" also features characters named Chester Desmond and Norma Jennings, in reference to Norma Desmond. Director Cecil B. DeMille, silent film actors Buster Keaton, H. B. Warner, and Anna Q. Nilsson played waxy versions of themselves. cynical Hollywood survivor played by William Holden. Holman was 16 years older than him and was afraid people would think the movie was a parody of their relationship. "Variety" ran a front-page review, and this led to a belated release of Swanson's version in 1957 (the year of Stroheim's death). At Cecil B. DeMille's first appearance, his on-set cry of "Wilcoxon!" H.B. She puts on a show playing a Max Sennett bathing girl and Charlie Chaplins Tramp character, though Maxs bad timing is a little too on the nose. He walked into his bedroom and tripped over a throw rug and slammed his head so hard into the corner of a teak nightstand, the piece of furniture flew into the wall causing an indentation, per "William Holden." It is one of the most indelible films you will ever see. 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.. Gillis: "Yes I was murdered." Im not giving anything away here. In those days there were no buttons on formal shirts. And so tonight, my golden boy, you got your wish". A screenwriter develops a dangerous relationship with a faded film star determined to make a triumphant return. Sunset Boulevard is a noir film and like many of the post-World War II dark classics, it is covered with a thick sheen of cynicism. 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). Holden had another hit with The World of Suzie Wong (1960) with Nancy Kwan, which was shot in Hong Kong. According to both versions of the morgue prologue script, Gillis' body is admitted on 5/17/49 (as indicated by a toe tag). Taylor had a British accent and the imposter sounded like he came out of Chicagos south side. Still, whatever hard feelings there may have been between Swanson and von Stroheim, they were gone by the time Sunset Boulevard came along. director of photography Film Editing by Arthur P. Schmidt . In a scene described by director Billy Wilder as one of the best he'd ever shot, the body of Joe Gillis is rolled into the morgue to join three dozen other corpses, some of whom--in voice-over--tell Gillis how they died.
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