Today is the 116th birthday of the film director Billy Wilder. Do yourself a favor and throw a few of his films on your Netflix queue. There are so many movies that you should watch, quite a few of them are directed by Billy Wilder. See “Sunset Boulevard,” Wilder’s tale of the true Hollywood that no one had dared to tell before. Make sure you watch the making of the film portion of the DVD, it is brilliant. The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.
NAME: Billy Wilder
OCCUPATION: Director, Producer
BIRTH DATE: June 22, 1906
DEATH DATE: March 27, 2002
EDUCATION: University of Vienna
PLACE OF BIRTH: Sucha, Poland
PLACE OF DEATH: Beverly Hills, California
ORIGINALLY: Samuel Wilder
AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE LIFE ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: 1986
KENNEDY CENTER HONOR: 1990
OSCAR FOR BEST DIRECTOR: 1946 for The Lost Weekend
OSCAR FOR BEST DIRECTOR: 1961 for The Apartment
NATIONAL MEDAL OF ARTS: 1993
BEST KNOWN FOR: Billy Wilder is best known for the many films he directed and produced, like Some Like It Hot.
Billy Wilder (22 June 1906 – 27 March 2002) was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood’s golden age. Wilder is one of only five people to have won Academy Awards as producer, director, and writer for the same film (The Apartment).
He said, “The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.”
Wilder became a screenwriter in the late 1920s while living in Berlin. After the rise of Nazi Party, Wilder, who was Jewish, left for Paris, where he made his directorial debut. He relocated to Hollywood in 1933, and in 1939 he had a hit when he co-wrote the screenplay to the screwball comedy Ninotchka. Wilder established his directorial reputation after helming Double Indemnity (1944), a film noir he co-wrote with mystery novelist Raymond Chandler. Wilder earned the Best Director and Best Screenplay Academy Awards for the adaptation of a Charles R. Jackson story The Lost Weekend, about alcoholism. In 1950, Wilder co-wrote and directed the critically acclaimed Sunset Boulevard.
From the mid-1950s on, Wilder made mostly comedies. Among the classics Wilder created in this period are the farces The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Some Like It Hot (1959), satires such as The Apartment (1960), and the drama comedy Sabrina (1954). He directed fourteen different actors in Oscar-nominated performances. Wilder was recognized with the American Film Institute (AFI) Life Achievement Award in 1986. In 1988, Wilder was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. In 1993, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. Wilder has attained a significant place in the history of Hollywood censorship for his role in expanding the range of acceptable subject matter.
Wilder holds a significant place in the history of Hollywood censorship for expanding the range of acceptable subject matter. He is responsible for two of the film noir era’s most definitive films in Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard. Along with Woody Allen and the Marx Brothers, he leads the list of films on the American Film Institute’s list of 100 funniest American films with 5 films written and holds the honor of holding the top spot with Some Like it Hot. Also on the list are The Apartment and The Seven Year Itch which he directed, and Ball of Fire and Ninotchka which he co-wrote. The American Film Institute has ranked four of Wilder’s films among their top 100 American films of the 20th century: Sunset Boulevard (no. 12), Some Like It Hot (no. 14), Double Indemnity (no. 38) and The Apartment (no. 93). For the tenth anniversary edition of their list, the AFI moved Sunset Blvd. to #16, Some Like it Hot to #22, Double Indemnity to #29 and The Apartment to #80.
Spanish filmmaker Fernando Trueba said in his acceptance speech for the 1993 Best Non-English Speaking Film Oscar: “I would like to believe in God in order to thank him. But I just believe in Billy Wilder… so, thank you Mr. Wilder.” According to Trueba, Wilder called him the day after and told him: “Fernando, it’s God.” French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius also thanked Billy Wilder in the 2012 Best Picture Oscar acceptance speech for The Artist by saying “I would like to thank the following three people, I would like to thank Billy Wilder, I would like to thank Billy Wilder, and I would like to thank Billy Wilder.” Wilder’s 12 Academy Award nominations for screenwriting were a record until 1997 when Woody Allen received a 13th nomination for Deconstructing Harry.
FILMOGRAPHY AS DIRECTOR
Buddy Buddy (11-Dec-1981)
Fedora (30-May-1978)
The Front Page (17-Dec-1974)
Avanti! (17-Dec-1972)
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (29-Oct-1970)
The Fortune Cookie (19-Oct-1966)
Kiss Me, Stupid (22-Dec-1964)
Irma la Douce (5-Jun-1963)
One, Two, Three (15-Dec-1961)
The Apartment (15-Jun-1960)
Some Like It Hot (29-Mar-1959)
Witness for the Prosecution (Dec-1957)
Love in the Afternoon (30-Jun-1957)
The Spirit of St. Louis (20-Apr-1957)
The Seven Year Itch (3-Jun-1955)
Sabrina (22-Sep-1954)
Stalag 17 (1-Jul-1953)
Ace in the Hole (15-Jun-1951)
Sunset Blvd. (4-Aug-1950)
A Foreign Affair (7-Jul-1948)
The Emperor Waltz (30-Apr-1948)
The Lost Weekend (16-Nov-1945)
Double Indemnity (6-Sep-1944)
Five Graves to Cairo (4-May-1943)
The Major and the Minor (16-Sep-1942)
Mauvaise graine (1934)
Waldina 