Some Like it Hot

When considering the legacy of a comedy, obviously one of the most important traits a movie must display to be worthy of "classic" status from generation to generation is "is it still funny?" If the movie is dated the humor of the film usually suffers. Concessions can be made though, when considering a film's historical significance. This is where "Some Like it Hot" adamently maintains its "classic" status. To say that this film is dated though, does it a disservice. The jokes and gags still hold up brilliantly, however the film's main conceit, that stars Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis dress as women for the majority of the film, today seems dated. This ties into my second point however. While Billy Wilder was hardly the first director to realize the comedic potential of putting a man in a wig and a dress, his spin on it has to be recognized as the blueprint for how to successfully pull it off, mining it for as many laughs as it will yield. Dozens of imitators have come and gone in the 45 years since its release in 1959, but revisiting Billy Wilder's seminal cross-dressing comedy is well worth the time.

The film, unlike most screwball comedies, has a surprisingly strong and succinct plot. Musicians Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, respectively) witness the infamous Saint Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago. Fearing for their lives the two become Josephine and Daphne and join Sweet Sue's Society Syncopaters, an all girl band bound for Miami Beach. Among the obvious problems and complications that arise simply trying to maintain their masculine selves, Joe falls for Sugar Kane, the volutuous singer/ukelale player of the band, played (in an art imitating life manner) by Marilyn Monroe, and randy old millionaire Osgood Fielding III falls for Daphne. The genius of Billy Wilder's comedy writing is wonderfully apparent during the film's time in Miami, specifically Joe's plan to win over Sugar. In another gender bending switch, Joe becomes "Junior" a Cary Grant-esque playboy who "can't fall in love". Shrewdly utilizing vacant yachts and perfectly nailing Grant's cockney accent and "Bringing Up Baby"'s tortoise shell glasses Joe manages to seduce Sugar Kane into falling in love with him, as Junior of course. Jerry, however, while initially keen on marrying a millionaire, soon finds his attention drawn to another problem: Spats Colombo, the Al Capone-esque mob boss of Chicago, has chosen the resort hotel Joe and Jerry are staying at with the band as his meeting place for a convening of Mafioso. Joe and Jerry of course avoid Spats, played with coin-flipping flair by George Raft as a parody of....himself, and Joe ends up revealing his identity, his real one, to Sugar, while Jerry tries desperately to convince Osgood that marriage would never work, finally informing him that he's a man, prompting Osgood's classic final line "Nobody's perfect".

While I mentioned earlier that Marilyn Monroe plays Sugar in an art-imitating-life manner, the truth is that the vulnerability and melancholy that plague Sugar are the same demons that cursed Monroe through much of her life. Despite being beautiful and talented, Sugar cannot find love and happiness, a perfect summation of Monroe's tumultuous love life, which saw her married three times; her husbands included baseball superstar Joe DiMaggio, and powerhouse playwright Arthur Miller, as well as numerous (alleged and substantiated) affairs, most famously both Kennedy brothers. While Sugar eventually does find Joe, Monroe's life unfortunately did not end with the same happiness, as she was found dead of an apparent suicidal drug overdose just three years after "Some Like it Hot" was released. It is extremely telling that as her career (what would turn out to be) wound down, Monroe's characters became more and more reflective of herself, and it is no surprise that she was the studio's choice to play Holly Golightly. While I do not know if this would have been the right choice, Truman Capote's novella is definitely darker and more melancholy than Blake Edwards' film, and perhaps Monroe's channeling of her own inner demons would have translated extremely well into the emotionally scarred Holly. We will never know; instead we are left with the roles of Sugar Kane and her role in "The Misfits" another somber, late career "comedy" in which the real Marilyn Monroe truly inhabits her roles, an ominous sign of the tragedy which would soon follow.