in 1911 when the Nestor Film Company moved from New. A new 4K high-definition scan was done in 2008 for the film's release on Blu-ray disc. Their partnership ended in a professional and gentlemanly mannerthere was no airing of any dirty laundrybut it did end.. Holden starred in the 20th Century Fox film Apartment for Peggy (1948). The whole place seemed to have been stricken with the kind of creeping paralysis, out of beat with the rest of the world, crumbling apart in slow motion. Holden continued to work steadily for the next decade, but Hollywood often had no idea what to do with him. Later in the film Max tells Gillis that he was the silent-movie director who discovered Norma and put her in films. In fact,Bob Thomas, Holden's biographer, said that the actor's addiction counselor predicted his demise. This parallel narrative--two perspectives from the same character, one omniscient, the other blissfully ignorant--that converge at the moment of Joe's death, are a major reason the film retains such dramatic and emotional power. Seleccionar el departamento en el que deseas buscar. Salome was a wonderful part for Norma Desmonds celluloid comeback. Erich von Stroheim dismissed his participation in this film, referring to it as "that butler role.". You probably know about the Andrew Lloyd Webber version of Sunset Boulevard that premiered in London in 1993 and headed to Broadway in 1994 with Glenn Close in the lead role. The young actor also got to work with George Raft and Humphrey Bogart in the gangsters on parole movie,Invisible Stripes. As day breaks. "[13] And Wilder commented "Bill was a complex guy, a totally honorable friend. He rose to prominence with his role in the movie "Sunset Boulevard" (1950), which landed him his first Best Actor Oscar nomination. [41], Holden was married to actress Brenda Marshall from 1941 until their divorce in 1971. 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). Those offices later became the home of the "Star Trek" art department. A disagreement over the montage where Norma puts herself through hell getting thinner and younger for her comeback nearly resulted in physical violence: Brackett thought it was too mean, while Wilder felt it was necessary to show what lengths a desperate actor would go to in Hollywood. In her private screening room, with butler Max running the projector, Norma cuddles up with Joe to watch one of her own films. April 17, 2019 6:00AM. The others were Union Station (1950), Force of Arms (1951), and Submarine Command (1951). If anything, its observations on the greedy machinations of Tinseltown are truer now than they were in 1950. But Joe wouldnt have fallen so hard if he werent so shackled. According to the Los Angeles Times, the actor long experienced alcoholism, and though he was able to avoid drinking when with lover Stefanie Powers, it ultimately helped pave the way for his death. He was perfection on- and off-screen. In 1954, Holden was featured on the cover of Life. The photos of the young Norma Desmond that decorate the house are all genuine publicity photos from Gloria Swanson's heyday. Wilder was, well, the wilder of the two, often bawdy and crass, while Brackett was genteel. 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. After Salome, she planned to make another picture and another picture. Even though it wasn't the last scene filmed, Billy Wilder threw a party for her as soon as the shot was finished. Winston was one of those who discovered the Golden Boy newcomer and who renamed himin honor of his former spouse!"[3]. A second film with Seaton did not do as well, The Proud and Profane (1956), where Holden played the role with a moustache. These include Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Rudolph Valentino, Rod La Rocque, Vilma Bnky, Mabel Normand, Marie Prevost, Pearl White, and Douglas Fairbanks. When Norma is telling Joe about how rich she is, she mentions a beach house and downtown real estate. 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. He was a genuine star. The script (which was to be a vehicle for her comeback) was submitted to Cecil B. DeMille who sent it back. A week later she heard the news of Holden's death on her car radio. Set non-holiday all-time house record of $166,000 at New York's Radio City Music Hall when it opened. (The book is about a failed screenwriter who works for a cemetery and lives with a forgotten silent-film star.) Its second owner was Jean Paul Getty, who purchased it for his second wife. Gillis: "No, swimming pool." It's probably just as well, since the darker, more nuanced story that eventually emerged was quite different from West's wheelhouse anyway. Dont bother with a rewrite, man, take it direct! Erich von Stroheims Max von Mayerling is equally awestruck, still caught in the wake of Normas star dust. Cecil B. DeMille agreed to do his cameo for a $10,000 fee and a brand-new Cadillac. Billy Wilder also used Sheldrake as the last name of Fred MacMurray's character in "The Apartment". 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. At one point, Norma decides the time is right to send Gillis script to DeMille because is a Leo. On the Columbia lot is an assistant director and scout named Harold Winston. In addition to starring in "Queen Kelly", Swanson also produced it, and fired von Stroheim when he had already gone over the budget by more than double, and with no end to filming in sight. Erich von Stroheim, who made the masterpiece Greed in 1924, directed Swanson in Queen Kelly (1928), the flick Holdens character cuddles up with Norma to watch in the dark screening room of the dark mansion. This ushered in the peak years of Holden's stardom. That's a reference to the traditional grey morning suit worn by the groom at a formal wedding. Wilder's version is the one they went with (he was the director, after all), but the argument marked a turning point for him, and he decided never to work with Brackett again. Film debut (uncredited) of Yvette Vickers. You used to be big. She produced and starred in Sadie Thompson and The Love of Sunya. For a number of years, exhibitors voted Holden among the most popular stars in the country: On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Brackett and Wilder worked together on more than a dozen movies including The Lost Weekend. [4] He made a sex comedy with David Niven for Otto Preminger, The Moon Is Blue (1953), which was a huge hit, in part due to controversy over its content. 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. I didn't know. Mary Pickford, Pola Negri, and Greta Garbo turned down the role. Yeah. 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. Sunset Boulevard is no. She liked Holden and went out of her way to help him succeed, devoting her personal time to coaching and encouraging him, which made them into lifelong friends. Not long ago, he was divorced from the actress, Gloria Holden, but carried the torch after the marital rift. Costume designer Edith Head found working on the film to be one of her greatest challenges. Mae West rejected the role of Norma Desmond because she felt she was too young to play a silent-film star. Marshman Jr. was hired to help batten down a script that was giving Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett great difficulty. The film was the favorite of Sci-Fi author J.G. Oh, and while were at it, Wilder didnt submerge any cameras to get that underwater shot. He was Judy Hollidays tutor in Born Yesterday (1950) and played a war correspondent in Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955). Holden was still an unknown actor when he made Golden Boy, while Stanwyck was already a film star. 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. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett almost came to blows over the montage depicting Norma's preparations for her comeback. The movie premiered in the days of restricted language, not so long after Rhett Butler controversially told Scarlett OHara he didnt give a damn what happened to her in Gone With the Wind, a classic Paramount passed on because who wanted to see Civil War picture? But the old guard thought Wilder and his co-writer Charles Brackett fashioned a rope that could strangle this business of show by writing words, words, and more words. Sometimes its interesting to see just how bad, bad writing can be. The movie begins about five oclock in the morning, left coast time. According to Gloria Swanson's daughter, Michelle Amon, her mother stayed in character throughout the entire shoot, even speaking like Norma Desmond when she arrived home in the evening after filming. (1950) was plagiarized from other scripts. That should make the young blond Paramount actress-turned-script reader Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olson) the virgin in the virgin/whore dynamic that film noir so often (and happily) deals in. Billy Wilder had worked on a script for a Swanson picture years earlier called "Music in the Air (1934)" and had forgotten about it. In those days there were no buttons on formal shirts. Ironically, the last films that Gloria Swanson made for Paramount were not at this famous facility. As far as being a forgotten star, past her prime, Norma is only 50 in the movie, Swanson was 53 when she made it and was herself very busy on the then-new medium of television. In an interview Wilder gave in 1996 he claimed that the film which eventually became SUNSET BOULEVARD began as a comedy for Mae West and Marlon Brando. In reality, Gloria Swanson never worked with Normand and worked only once with Prevost in a 1916 short. The death was just one of many infamous Hollywood scandals of the 1920s, which included the Roscoe Arbuckle bottle rape trial, the death of Olive Thomas, the mysterious death of Thomas H. Ince, and the drug-related deaths of Wallace Reid, Barbara La Marr, and Jeanne Eagels. Her Stockholm Syndrome is positively infectious. 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. )[19], He took third billing for The Country Girl (1954) with Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly, directed by George Seaton from a play by Clifford Odets. Everyone had a good laugh, though the record doesn't reflect whether Marshall joined in. Her friend George Cukor, who initially recommended her for the part, told her, "If they want you to do ten screen tests, do ten screen tests. He worked on dramas like The Key (1958), Westerns like John Fords The Horse Soldiers (1959) opposite John Wayne, and comedies like The Moon is Blue which so famously challenged the Production Code in 1953 that Hawkeye and BJ insisted it get shown at M*A*S*H 4077 to break the monotony of the Korean War. 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. ", After serving with the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II, he returned to Hollywood and in 1950 he got his first substantial role in Billy Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard," per Britannica. Gloria Swanson played her final descent on the staircase barefoot, as she was terrified of tripping in high heels. Bogart was not especially friendly toward Hepburn, who had little Hollywood experience, while Holden's reaction was the opposite, wrote biographer Michelangelo Capua. 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). Schwab's was torn down in 1988 to make way for a movie theater and a shopping center. Sunset Boulevard mixed fiction with the realities of filmmaking. The drugstore where Joe Gillis meets up with his old movie industry friends is Schwab's Pharmacy, then a real pharmacy/soda fountain at the intersection of Sunset Blvd. A version of how he obtained his stage name "Holden" is based on a statement by George Ross of Billboard: "William Holden, the lad just signed for the coveted lead in Golden Boy, used to be Bill Beadle [sic]. A screenwriter develops a dangerous relationship with a faded film star determined to make a triumphant return. Although a registered Republican, he never involved himself in politics. Neither did Toward the Unknown (1957), the one film Holden produced himself. Sunset Boulevard (1950) 1950, 1h 50min - Drama Gloria Swanson, as Norma Desmond, an aging silent-film queen, and William Holden, as the struggling young screenwriter who is held in thrall by her madness, created two of the screen's most memorable characters in "Sunset Boulevard." Gloria Swanson does a famous impression of Charles Chaplin as the "Little Tramp," but Chaplin's name is never mentioned. In 2007 the American Film Institute ranked this as the #16 Greatest Movie of All Time. With unofficial permission from Paramount, she worked for a few years with writer Dickson Hughes and actor Richard Stapley developing a show called Starring Norma Desmond (later changed to Boulevard). "[13]:174 The interactions between Bogart, Hepburn and Holden made shooting less than pleasant, as Bogart had wanted his wife, Lauren Bacall, to play Sabrina. 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. Minters mother Charlotte Shelby was a manipulative stage mother who owned a rare .38 caliber pistol that fired unusual bullets very similar to ones found inside Taylor. It was like that old woman in Great Expectations, Miss Havisham in her rotting wedding dress and her torn veil, taking it out on the world because shed been given the go-by. It was a gift from her lover, automobile magnate Walter Chrysler. The stars read the stars. You see, this is my life, she promised. Oh, wake up, Norma. Sands disappeared after the murder. Well, not a comeback, a return, a return to the millions of people who have never forgiven her for deserting the screen. Holden's films continued to struggle at the box office, however: Paris When It Sizzles (1964) with Hepburn was shot in 1962 but given a much delayed release, The 7th Dawn (1964) with Capucine and Susannah York, a romantic adventure set during the Malayan Emergency produced by Charles K. Feldman, Alvarez Kelly (1966), a Western, and The Devil's Brigade (1968). Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die," edited by Steven Schneider. 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. but at 641 S. Irving Blvd. Zach Laws, Chris Beachum. But attempts to turn the movie into a stage musical began almost immediately, spearheaded by none other than Gloria Swanson. "I am big. Norma Desmond was the greatest of them all. The Academy Award-winning actor William Holden, born William Beedle Jr., on April 17, 1918, in O'Fallon, Illinois, began his career with 1939s "Golden Boy," per Britannica. (1950) Full Cast & Crew See agents for this cast & crew on IMDbPro Directed by Billy Wilder Writing Credits Cast (in credits order) verified as complete Produced by Charles Brackett . There once was a time in this business when they had the eyes of the whole world. Around this time he also appeared in 21 Hours at Munich (1976). When Norma Desmond visits her old friend at Paramount, she affectionately calls him "Mr. DeMille" (not Cecil or C.B. . For the opening shot of Joe Gillis floating face-down in the swimming pool, Billy Wilder wanted a shot from below that would show both the body and the police and photographers standing at the pool's edge looking down. (1940) followed by the role of George Gibbs in the film adaptation of Our Town (1940), done for Sol Lesser at United Artists.[8]. The film is included on Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" list. When Norma Desmond says to the guard at the "Paramount Studio" gates, "Without me there wouldn't be any 'Paramount Studio'" the words could apply to Gloria Swanson herself, as she was the studio's top star for six years running. But as commentator Steve Sailer points out, more than one contemporary source mentions it as an inspiration. ), a woman who trades on charms that have . Well, not everybody! It was widely known as a top Hollywood hangout for many actors, directors, writers and producers. [38], Holden maintained a home in Switzerland and also spent much of his time working for wildlife conservation as a managing partner in an animal preserve in Africa. 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. This film is in the Official Top 250 Narrative Feature Films on Letterboxd. Director Billy Wilder Writers Charles Brackett Billy Wilder D.M. Norma Desmond says that she paid $28,000 for the Isotta-Fraschini car in 1929. It was a the kind of a place crazy movie people built in the crazy 20s. So she lands his head on a golden tray, kissing his cold, dead lips. At Paramount, he did another Western, Streets of Laredo (1949). However, he knew that her arch-rival Hedda Hopper had trained as an actress and would therefore be more convincing onscreen. [17], Their relationship did not last much beyond the completion of the film. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Sunset Boulevard DVD Special Collector's Edition William Holden Gloria Swanson at the best online prices at eBay! are shown stenciled on the curb of that street. A screenwriter develops a dangerous relationship with a faded film star determined to make a triumphant return. "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 California license plate on Gillis' Plymouth, 4D R 116, appears to be a legal and current registration for 1949. David Lynch is an avid fan of the movie, having referenced it in films such as Inland Empire (2006), Mulholland Drive (2001)--which has a similar title and theme about the misfortunes of aspiring artists in Hollywood--and the television show Twin Peaks (1990), where Lynch himself played an FBI Bureau Chief named Gordon Cole. But trophies or not, Sunset Boulevard has stayed near the top of the list of great movies about moviemaking. William Holden had a similar trajectory as a young artist in Hollywood. Gloria Swanson worked closely with Edith Head on Norma's clothes to achieve just the right look: grandly expensive but slightly out of date. Holden made a fourth and final film for Wilder with Fedora (1978). After returning from France, she shot her last Paramount films--Stage Struck (1925), The Untamed Lady (1926) and Fine Manners (1926)--at the studio's lot in Astoria, Queens, NY.
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