[39] On a trip to Africa, he fell in love with the wildlife and became increasingly concerned with the animal species that were beginning to decrease in population. William Holdens Joe Gillis helps a timid soul named Norma Desmond cross a crowded street on Paramounts back lot. Gloria Swanson brings sunshine into every room as silent screen idol Norma Desmond. 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. 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. 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. It was largely from his association with Wilder that Holden would enjoy the greatest acting successes of his career in the 1950s. His characters were always angling for something, whether it was silk stockings in a POW Camp in Stalag 17 from 1953, which won him a Best Actor Oscar, or to clear impersonation charges in in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) with Alec Guinness. [40], Holden had a daughter born in 1937 from his relationship with actress Eva May Hoffman. Kodak would discontinue to manufacture it altogether in 1953. A Western at MGM, Escape from Fort Bravo (1953) did much better, and the all-star Executive Suite (1954) was a notable success. In 1969, Holden made a comeback when he starred in director Sam Peckinpah's graphically violent Western The Wild Bunch,[4] winning much acclaim. As this film opens, William Holden's character Joe Gillis describes himself as a Hollywood screenwriter "living in an apartment house above Ivar Street." The much sought after but highly finicky leading man accepted the role, then backed out. Gloria Swanson worked closely with Edith Head on Norma's clothes to achieve just the right look: grandly expensive but slightly out of date. Was the inspiration for Metallica's 1997 song "The Memory Remains". They thought the actors made it up as they went along. 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]. It would not be turned into a motion picture until: The Naked and the Dead (1958). Swanson herself reportedly asked him to do it. Set non-holiday all-time house record of $166,000 at New York's Radio City Music Hall when it opened. In reality, Gloria Swanson never worked with Normand and worked only once with Prevost in a 1916 short. Next image (0) (0) When Artie Green introduces Joe to other guests at his New Year's Eve party, he jokingly refers to him as "the well-known screenwriter, uranium smuggler and Black Dahlia suspect", a reference to the infamous unsolved L.A. murder case in 1947 of an aspiring actress known as The Black Dahlia, who was found murdered and dismembered on a street in Los Angeles. Norma goes to visit Cecil B. DeMille, several of whose films Swanson had starred in. No one wants to get caught by surprise anymore. Director Billy Wilder Writers Charles Brackett Billy Wilder D.M. Billy Wilder was actually friendlier with the other leading gossip columnist of the day, Louella Parsons. When Joe and Betty stroll around the studio back lot they pass through the Washington Square set that was used in The Heiress (1949). 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). Joe could have slept with Norma and loved Betty, and owned the pool that would be his final resting place. This film was originally released in the United States as The Christmas Tree and on home video as When Wolves Cry. .
Holden had another hit with The World of Suzie Wong (1960) with Nancy Kwan, which was shot in Hong Kong. Joe Gillis' typewriter is a portable manual Remington Rand Noiseless Model 7. The film's narrative structure bears a marked resemblance to that of American Beauty (1999). 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. Gloria Swanson and Nancy Olson also co-starred in Airport 1975 together. She said it was a blackmail scheme gone wrong. Swanson was told "She can't show herself, Gloria, she's too overcome. Holden's first starring role was in Golden Boy (1939), costarring Barbara Stanwyck, in which he played a violinist-turned-boxer. Fat Man: "A husky fellow like you?" Art director John Meehan experimented until he came up with the idea to shoot the scene through a mirror at the bottom of the studio water tank. The pool was used in its empty condition in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). (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). William Holden, original name William Franklin Beedle, Jr., (born April 17, 1918, O'Fallon, Illinois, U.S.found dead November 16, 1981, Santa Monica, California), American film star who perfected the role of the cynic who acts heroically in spite of his scorn or pessimism. De Mille, and Max von Mayerling. DeMille." In 2007 the American Film Institute ranked this as the #16 Greatest Movie of All Time. Schwab's Pharmacy was filmed only 500 feet (145 meters) from where Robert "D-Fens" Foster shot out the phone booth in Falling Down (1993). His family moved to South Pasadena when he was three. The footage we see is from Queen Kelly (1929), which starred Gloria Swanson and was directed by Max himself, Erich von Stroheim. Old whores dont fuck for fun, as the old saying goes. 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. It's the pictures that got small" was #91. The only Best Picture Oscar nominee of the year to be also nominated for Original Screenplay. Despite that, von Stroheim "still managed to hit the gates, he had no co-ordination", said Billy Wilder in an interview for the book "Sunset Boulevard: From Movie to Musical". but at 641 S. Irving Blvd. Sunset Boulevard, one of Hollywood's most cruelly accurate depictions of itself, is now 65 years oldolder, even, than its main character, who's washed up at 50. Brackett thought it was too mean while Wilder felt it was necessary. The actor got up and tried to staunch the blood pouring from his forehead but never called 911, which might have saved his life, per the biography. Hola, identifcate .
'Sunset Blvd.': 15 Things You (Probably) Didn't Know About - Moviefone Holden, who was at this point dependent on alcohol, said, "I really was in love with Audrey, but she wouldn't marry me. She reads everyone and everything in Hollywood, except Joes script. Holden's films after that time had not impressed Wilder (in the 1940s Holden's movies were decidedly mediocre). This one had it in spades. He followed it with a romantic comedy, Dear Ruth (1947) and he was one of many cameos in Variety Girl (1947). Salome was a wonderful part for Norma Desmonds celluloid comeback.
Sunset Blvd. by Billy Wilder, Billy Wilder, William Holden, Gloria The first name of the Joe Gillis character was Dan in an early draft of the screenplay, then altered to Dick, and finally to Joe just before filming began. (Norma Desmond would be quick to point out that, thanks to computers and iPads, the pictures have gotten even smaller. Normands career never recovered after word of her addiction leaked out and she died of tuberculosis on Feb. 23, 1930. Norma Shearer turned down the role of Norma Desmond as she didn't want to come out of retirement and also found the part to be highly distasteful. So in that scene, William Holden is driving over the future locations of Walk of Fame stars dedicated to the two people arguably most responsible for his success in Hollywood. This is an old film which has been made into a musical. Eugene Walter was a prolific Hollywood screenwriter of the 1920s and 1930s. It was this astonishing footage that rekindled interest in the film. 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. Taylor had $78 in his wallet, a silver cigarette case, a Waltham pocket watch, and a two-carat diamond ring on his finger when his body was found, so cops quickly ruled out robbery as the motive. [48] He also has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. I know your face. Read more of his work here or find him on Twitter @tsokol. The clips in Sunset Boulevard were the first time American audiences saw it. and Crescent Heights Blvd. (1950) in Australia? In the movie when a cop tries to call in to the coroners office, he cant get an open line because Hedda Hopper is on the phone in Normas room, talking to the Times City Desk and that is more important. Norma's buying Joe a fine woolen topcoat would be mostly an affectation in sunny Los Angeles. In July 1941, he married 25-year old actress Brenda Marshall, who commanded five times his income. Now I had two favorite movies - aside from "Gone With The Wind" of course - both from 1950, "Sunset Boulevard" and "All . Location scenes at Norma Desmond's mansion were shot not on Sunset Boulevard but on Wilshire Boulevard. The name "Norma Desmond" was chosen from a combination of silent-film star Norma Talmadge and silent movie director William Desmond Taylor, whose still-unsolved murder is one of the great scandals of Hollywood history. But along with the accolades came a dependence on alcohol that would play a major role in his tragic end. One of only 13 films to be nominated for Best Film, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Director. Norma Desmond: Get out! The plot element of Norma Desmond's obsession with writing a screenplay based on Salome as a vehicle for her comeback was obviously influenced by eccentric, aging actress Valeska Suratt, who had a brief film career (1915-1917) playing mostly vamp roles. Men bribed her hairdresser to get a lock of her hair. [10] RKO borrowed him for Rachel and the Stranger (1948) with Robert Mitchum and Loretta Young. 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). [35] Holden starred in The Earthling,[36] as a loner dying of cancer at the Australian outback and accompanying an orphan boy (Ricky Schroder). Gloria Swanson almost considered rejecting the role of Norma Desmond after Billy Wilder requested she do a screen test for the role. [22] The golden run at the box office continued with Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), from a best-selling novel, with Jennifer Jones, and Picnic (1955), as a drifter, in an adaptation of the William Inge play with Kim Novak. Holman was 16 years older than him and was afraid people would think the movie was a parody of their relationship. Film News. The 3.48. In one week, she received 17,000 fan letters. [42][citation needed]. When filming began, William Holden was 31 and Gloria Swanson was 50, the same stated age as her character. Studs and cufflinks were inserted into the shirt holes to secure the garment. Warner took the part. read more: Key Largo, Lauren Bacall, and the Definitive Post-War Film. The others were Union Station (1950), Force of Arms (1951), and Submarine Command (1951). [47], President Ronald Reagan released a statement: "I have a great feeling of grief. Fury of the Gods Brings Back the "Shazamily": Inside DC's New Superhero Adventure, Scream 6's Brutal NYC Trip: "You Can't Trust Anyone" This Time, Cocaine Bear Is Not Just About a Killer "Coked-Up" Bear, It's Also an "Underdog Story", How Marvel's Wastelanders Podcast Created an Exciting Story with No Visual Safety Net, Sunset Boulevard: The Original Hollywood Expose. She lives in a crumbling old mansion with her butler Max (Erich von Stroheim). Sunset Boulevards cinematographer John Seitz said Wilder had wanted to do The Loved One, but couldnt obtain the rights. British author Evelyn Waughs satirical 1948 novel was about a failed screenwriter who lives with a silent film star and works in a cemetery. Well, not a comeback, a return, a return to the millions of people who have never forgiven her for deserting the screen. Well, they kissed, and kissed, and kept kissing, and the crew began to snicker, and finally Marshall's voice rang out: "Cut, dammit!" Cecil B. DeMille appears in the film on a studio set. The forensics team rolled him over and saw he had been shot at least once in the back with a small-caliber pistol. In fact, Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett even went to Pickfair to pitch the story to Pickford, but her horrified reaction as the story progressed made them stop halfway through and apologize to her. A classic film review of Sunset Boulevard (1950) starring William Holden, Gloria Swanson and Eric Von StroheimDirected by acclaimed film maker Billy Wilder (. 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. 1751 Vine is still a parking lot across the street from the landmark, Capitol Records building and is the address of both Billy's Wilder's and Barbara Stanwyck's "Hollywood Walk of Fame" stars that were dedicated in 1960. Erich von Stroheim, who directed Swanson in Queen Kelly (1932), plays Max the butler, who serves as the projectionist in the scene. Gillis: "Yes I was murdered." They reportedly began a two-year affair, which is alleged to have ended due to Holden's alcoholism.
Sunset Boulevard (1950): Billy Wilder's Darkly Humorous Masterpiece Haines, whose career had ended because of his homosexual off-screen life, was too happy in his new profession as an interior decorator to want to call attention to his past as an actor. Holden earned his first Best Actor Oscar nomination for the role.[11]. #7. She turns out to be a multimillionaire silent screen icon played by the legendary Gloria Swanson and she leaves him all her money, which shes already spent, and face down in a pool. In 1972, Holden began a nine-year relationship with actress Stefanie Powers and sparked her interest in animal welfare. Perry, George & Andrew Lloyd Webber (1993). The silent comedian had a reputation as one of Hollywoods best bridge players. [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. 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. When he appeared in the innovative Hollywood director Rouben Mamoulian's Golden Boy (1939), he was hailed as exactly that, but had seen his stock fall, largely through his problems with alcohol and a string of unmemorable films in the 1940s. While in Italy in 1966, Holden was responsible for the death of another driver in a drunk-driving incident near Pisa. director of photography Film Editing by Arthur P. Schmidt . 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. Billy Wilder's sixth film in a row for Paramount Pictures. She hates all of Joes writing except for about six pages. The car with the massive chrome grill that the repo men drive is a 1948 DeSoto Custom Club Coupe. (She liked it.). Billy Wilder wanted Hedy Lamarr to appear in a cameo in the scene where Norma and Joe visit Cecil B. DeMille at Paramount. [14], Holden made a third film with Wilder, Sabrina (1954), billed beneath Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. 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. A screenwriter develops a dangerous relationship with a faded film star determined to make a triumphant return. But as commentator Steve Sailer points out, more than one contemporary source mentions it as an inspiration. Everyone had a good laugh, though the record doesn't reflect whether Marshall joined in. Gloria Swanson became so identified with the demanding, irascible Norma that later generations of fans were startled to discover her serene, easy-going, naturalist personality in real life. Schwab's was torn down in 1988 to make way for a movie theater and a shopping center. Some, including Holden himself and one of his close confidants, could foresee the death (per The Huntsville Item).
Getty Mansion aka Norma Desmond's home in "Sunset Boulevard" midway And so tonight, my golden boy, you got your wish". Paramount reunited him with Nancy Olson, one of his Sunset Boulevard costars, in Union Station (1950). 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. 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. But Hollywood press has always had clout. The house was owned by the J. Paul Getty family.
Sunset Boulevard, Clip, William Holden, Gloria Swanson, 1950 At Paramount, he did another Western, Streets of Laredo (1949). The princess in love with a holy man, she dances the dance of the seven veils. The home was built in 1923 for businessman William O. Jenkins. This indicates that he is smoking filterless cigarettes, which was the norm for that era until filters became the standard after the mid-'50s. And here is how he obtained his new movie tag. Sunset Boulevard now begins with police cars racing to Norma Desmond's house, where a dead body is floating in the pool. Holden himself claimed that he, too, could picture his end. Wilder changed the scene so that DeMille offered Lamarr's chair to Norma without Lamarr being present. She was nominated for the first Academy Award in the Best Actress category. 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. Realizing that former actress Hopper would easily dominate the scene, Parsons declined, even though she and Wilder were friends. [27] He played an American Civil War military surgeon in John Ford's The Horse Soldiers (1959) opposite John Wayne, which was a box-office disappointment. So funny that it took away from the rest of the picture. We had faces" was #13. Swanson supplemented many of the costumes with her own accessories and jewelry. Joe Gillis: You're Norma Desmond. When Powers returned to California, she went to his penthouse apartment in Santa Monica but couldn't get in. Joe Gillis is seen reading the book "The Young Lions" by Irwin Shaw, a best-selling World War Two novel of the time, Montgomery Clift, who was originally offered the part of Joe Gillis, later played one of the leads in the film adaptation of that book The Young Lions (1958), though it was not directed by Billy Wilder. The Tragic 1981 Death Of Sunset Boulevard Star William Holden. The part was only Nancy Olson's third film appearance. Erich von Stroheims Max von Mayerling is equally awestruck, still caught in the wake of Normas star dust. William Holden (born William Franklin Beedle Jr.; April 17, 1918 - November 12, 1981) was an American actor and murderer, and one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1950s.