Some Like It Hot

"Nobody's perfect," is the last line of Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot, one of the most famous punchlines in cinema history, and the irony is that the film is an example of perfection, a comedic souffle that is light as a feather but rich as well. The line capped a sequence that Wilder and co-writer I.A.L. Diamond wrote at the eleventh hour, as a cover for the unreliable Marilyn Monroe. They both wondered whether it was strong enough to end the picture. It was.

I end my look at films of 1959 with my pick for the best of that year, at least among those that I've seen. As I watched it again for the at least the fifth time, I couldn't remember the first time I'd seen it, and envied those who will see it for the first time, to experience the giddy comedic thrill as something new. While watching one feels in the hands of a maestro, as Wilder was at the top of his game. This film doesn't have the bite of some of his other great films, instead he simply gives us a valentine.

Valentine's Day is when the film begins. Joe and Jerry, two down-on-their-luck musicians, have just escaped a raid of a speakeasy in 1929 Chicago. While in a garage they witness the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, which in this picture is orchestrated by mobster Spats Colombo (George Raft, sending up his tough-guy image). They escape, but not before Spats and his gang identify them. They have to get out of town, fast, so take a job in a band that's heading to Florida by train. The catch? It's an all-girl band.

The idea came from a German film, but it was Wilder and Diamond that added the gangster element, and it was Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon who gave Joe and Jerry and their distaff alter-egos, Josephine and Daphne, the memorable characterizations. That first cut, from Joe and Jerry on the phone to the talent agent to them walking down the train platform, wobbling in heels, is the first of several genius moments. The next is the first appearance of Marilyn Monroe as Sugar Kane, dodging a blast of steam, and looking "like Jell-O on springs."

This is the definitive Marilyn Monroe role, the one that best typifies the indelible legend she would become. The stories of her difficulty are legion, but somehow Wilder got out of her a magical performance. "Real diamonds! They must be worth their weight in gold!" she says, her voice a wispy breath. She never looked better, even in black and white (which annoyed her, but they had to do it to avoid the greenish tint of Curtis and Lemmon's makeup) and when she says she's not too bright and she always gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop there's a bit of sorrow in the humor.

Men dressing in drag is a gag as old as the hills, and on paper I'm not sure I would have bought this story, but boy does it work. The humor is frequently of the simplest nature:

Sugar: I come from this musical family. My mother is a piano teacher and my father was a conductor.
Joe: Where did he conduct?
Sugar: On the Baltimore and Ohio.

But there was also a sophistication to the zaniness, perhaps best expressed in the marvelous scene when Lemmon returns from his "date" with Joe E. Brown and announces his engagement. Watching this scene during the apex of the discussion over gay marriage makes the writing seem even more gifted, as it doesn't take cheap pot-shots of revulsion. Instead Curtis asks Lemmon, "Why would a guy want to marry a guy?" Lemmon answers, simply, "Security."

There are also classic elements of farce. I can't help but crack up watching Curtis, in his guise as Shell Oil Junior, riding a bicycle in his sailing togs but still wearing earrings. The climax, with gangsters chasing the boys through the hotel, is wonderfully scored with jazz saxophone. Raft, in a bit of metafiction, chides another hood for flipping a coin (which was Raft's trademark). The gunman that pops out of the cake at the end is Edward G. Robinson, Jr., son of the actor who played many a gangster in his day.

The film was named the best comedy of all time by the American Film Institute. I have other favorite comedies, most of them by Woody Allen, but I can't quibble with the selection.