Story of movie Some Like It Hot :
Some Like It Hot is a 1959 American black and white romantic comedy film set in 1929, directed and produced by Billy Wilder, starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon. The supporting cast includes George Raft, Pat O'Brien, Joe E. Brown, Joan Shawlee, and Nehemiah Persoff. The screenplay by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is based on a screenplay by Robert Thoeren and Michael Logan from the French film Fanfare of Love. The film is about two musicians who dress in drag in order to escape from mafia gangsters whom they witnessed commit a crime inspired by the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre. Despite Monroe's contract requiring the film to be in color, she agreed to it being filmed in black and white after seeing that Curtis and Lemmon's makeup gave them a "ghoulish" appearance on color film.
| Some Like It Hot | |
|---|---|
Theatrical poster by Macario Gómez Quibus | |
| Directed by | Billy Wilder |
| Produced by | Billy Wilder |
| Screenplay by | Billy Wilder I. A. L. Diamond |
| Story by | Robert Thoeren Michael Logan |
| Starring | Marilyn Monroe Tony Curtis Jack Lemmon George Raft Joe E. Brown Pat O'Brien |
| Music by | Adolph Deutsch |
| Cinematography | Charles Lang |
| Edited by | Arthur P. Schmidt |
Production company | Mirisch Company |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
Release date |
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Running time | 121 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $2.9 million |
| Box office | $40 million |
Some Like It Hot opened to largely positive reviews and is today considered to be one of the greatest films of all time. It was voted as the top comedy film by the American Film Institute on their list on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs poll in 2000. In 2017, the film was voted the best comedy of all time in a poll of 253 film critics from 52 countries conducted by the BBC in 2017. In 2005, the British Film Institute included this film on British Film Institute list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14.
The film was produced without approval from the Motion Picture Production Code because it plays with the idea of homosexuality and features cross dressing. The code had been gradually weakening in its scope during the early 1950s, due to greater social tolerance for previously taboo topics in film, but it was still officially enforced. The overwhelming success of Some Like It Hot is considered one of the final nails in the coffin for the Hays Code.
Screenplay
In the city of Chicago during the Prohibition era, Joe (Tony Curtis) is a jazz saxophone player, irresponsible gambler and ladies' man; his more sensible friend Jerry (Jack Lemmon) is a jazz double bass player. They work in a speakeasy disguised as a funeral home and owned by gangster "Spats" Colombo (George Raft). Tipped off by informant "Toothpick" Charlie (George E. Stone), the police raid the joint. Joe and Jerry flee — only to accidentally witness Spats and his henchmen exacting revenge on "Toothpick" and his own gang (inspired by the real-life Saint Valentine's Day Massacre). Since Spats wants to kill them to eliminate witnesses, Joe and Jerry disguise themselves as women named Josephine and Daphne so they can join Sweet Sue (Joan Shawlee) and her Society Syncopators, an all-female band headed to Miami. Boarding a train with the band, they notice Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), the band's vocalist.
Joe and Jerry become enamored of Sugar and compete for her affection while maintaining their disguises. Sugar confides to Joe that she has sworn off male saxophone players as they have stolen her heart in the past and left her with "the fuzzy end of the lollipop". She has set her sights on finding a sweet, bespectacled millionaire in Florida. During the forbidden drinking and partying on the train, Josephine and Daphne become intimate friends with Sugar and have to struggle to remember that they are supposed to be girls who cannot make a pass at her.
Once in Miami, Joe woos Sugar by assuming a second disguise as a millionaire named Junior, the heir to Shell Oil, while feigning disinterest in her. An actual millionaire, the aging and much-married mama's boy Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown), tries repeatedly to pick up Daphne, who rebuffs him. Osgood invites Daphne for a champagne supper on his yacht, the New Caledonia. Joe convinces Daphne to keep Osgood occupied onshore so that Junior can take Sugar to Osgood's yacht, passing it off as his. Once on the yacht, Junior explains to Sugar that, due to psychological trauma, he is impotent and frigid, but that he would marry anyone who could change that. Sugar tries to arouse some romantic interest in Junior and begins to succeed. Meanwhile, Daphne and Osgood dance the tango ("La Cumparsita") till dawn. When Joe and Jerry get back to the hotel, Jerry explains that Osgood has proposed marriage to Daphne and that he, as Daphne, has accepted, anticipating an instant divorce and huge cash settlement when his ruse is revealed. Joe convinces Jerry that he cannot actually marry Osgood.
The hotel hosts a conference for "Friends of Italian Opera", which is in fact a major meeting of the national crime syndicate, presided over by "Little Bonaparte" (Nehemiah Persoff). Spats and his gang from Chicago recognize Joe and Jerry as the witnesses to the Valentine's Day murders. Joe and Jerry, fearing for their lives, realize they must quit the band and leave the hotel. Joe breaks Sugar's heart by telling her that he, Junior, has to marry a woman of his father's choosing and move to Venezuela. Joe and Jerry evade Spats' men by hiding under a table at the syndicate banquet. "Little Bonaparte" has Spats and his men killed at the banquet, with Joe and Jerry as witnesses again. They flee through the hotel. Joe, dressed as Josephine, sees Sugar onstage singing that she will never love again. He kisses her before he leaves, and Sugar realizes that Joe is both Josephine and Junior.
Jerry persuades Osgood to take "Daphne" and "Josephine" away on his yacht. Sugar runs after them and jumps aboard Osgood's launch just as it is leaving the dock with Joe, Jerry, and Osgood. Joe tells Sugar that he is not good enough for her, that she would be getting the "fuzzy end of the lollipop" yet again, but Sugar wants him anyway. Jerry, for his part, lists reasons why "Daphne" and Osgood cannot marry, ranging from a smoking habit to an inability to give him children. Osgood dismisses them all; he loves Daphne and is determined to go through with the marriage. Exasperated, Jerry removes his wig and shouts, "I'm a man!" Osgood, unfazed, simply responds, "Well, nobody's perfect."
- Marilyn Monroe as Sugar "Kane" Kowalczyk, a ukulele player and singer
- Tony Curtis as Joe/"Josephine"/"Shell Oil Junior", a saxophone player
- Jack Lemmon as Jerry (Gerald)/"Daphne", a double bass player
- George Raft as "Spats" Colombo, a mobster from Chicago
- Pat O'Brien as Detective Mulligan
- Joe E. Brown as Osgood Fielding III
- Nehemiah Persoff as "Little Bonaparte," a mobster
- Joan Shawlee as Sweet Sue, the bandleader of "Sweet Sue and Her Society Syncopators"
- Dave Barry as Mister Bienstock, the band manager for "Sweet Sue and Her Society Syncopators"
- Billy Gray as Sig Poliakoff, Joe and Jerry's agent in Chicago
- Barbara Drew as Nellie Weinmeyer, Poliakoff's secretary
- George E. Stone as "Toothpick" Charlie, a gangster who is killed by "Spats" Colombo
- Mike Mazurki as Spats's henchman
- Harry Wilson as Spats's henchman
- Edward G. Robinson Jr. as Johnny Paradise, a gangster who kills "Spats" Colombo
- Beverly Wills as Dolores, a trombone player, and Sugar's apartment friend
| Some Like It Hot: Original MGM Motion Picture Soundtrack | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Soundtrack album | |
| Released | 24 February 1998 |
| Genre | Soundtrack Jazz |
| Length | 32:22 |
The soundtrack features four songs performed by Marilyn Monroe for the movie, nine songs composed by Adolph Deutsch, as well as 2 songs performed by jazz artist Matty Malneck.
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