Billy Wilder

*****
5/5

Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are ideally matched in this crackling cross-dressing comedy, as the 1920s musicians who join an all-girl band to escape the Mob after witnessing a St Valentine's Day massacre. Yet, amazingly, Billy Wilder had originally wanted Bob Hope and Danny Kaye, and even considered casting Frank Sinatra instead of Lemmon. Curtis didn't always get along with Marilyn Monroe and compared their embraces to kissing Hitler (ironically, the name she gave the bullying Wilder). Yet sparks fly when she falls for Curtis's bogus oil tycoon — who not only boasts the voice of Cary Grant but also the body language of Grace Kelly! Lemmon's fling with his own (even more eccentric) millionaire is equally hilarious. Clearly, the personality clashes both on- and off-screen were crucial to this becoming a true film classic, for, as Joe E Brown famously says in the last line, “Nobody's perfect!”

(1959)
US  B/W   121 mins