Hollywood Codebreakers: ‘Some Like It Hot’ Puts Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Pantyhose

Kristin Hunt
Sep 7, 2018 · 6 min read

The trailer for Some Like It Hot was heavy on hyperbole. “Not since Scarface so much action,” it began. “Not since the Marx brothers so much comedy. Not since The Seven Year Itch so much Marilyn.”

The cheery announcer promised something for everyone, a rollicking good time for men, women, and children alike. But between the shots of Marilyn Monroe strumming 1920s hits on a ukulele and gangsters in spats firing machine guns, the teaser hinted at something more risque.

“You’ll never laugh more at sex — or a picture about it.”

Some Like It Hot wasn’t just about sex, despite what all the wailing saxophones around Monroe implied. It was a comedy that parodied gender performance and, in some ways, got closer to an actual queer relationship than the Broadway dramas before it. Director Billy Wilder smuggled all of this past the censors with deft jokes and innuendo, successfully winning the PCA’s approval even as the Legion of Decency objected to this “outright smut.” But Wilder didn’t even bother to submit a script for review, indicating a growing consensus that the PCA was irrelevant, and filmmakers could ignore it on their way to the box office.

Some Like It Hot was a reworking of the 1935 French comedy Fanfare d’amour and the 1951 German remake Fanfaren der Liebe, both scripted by the German writer Robert Thoeren. All three versions follow two unemployed male musicians who don drag to get a gig with an all-female band. Wilder and his frequent writing partner I.A.L. Diamond set their movie in 1929 Chicago, so they could use the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre as a catalyst. Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) become accidental witnesses to this gang warfare, and since they know they can’t show their faces around town, they quickly book a job in Florida as Josephine and Daphne, the newest members of Sweet Sue and Her Society Syncopators. But Joe falls in love with the lead singer Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe) and Jerry, as Daphne, attracts the attention of the older millionaire Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown), landing both in impossible, farcical situations.

Curtis and Lemmon worked with famed costume designer Orry-Kelly to develop their drag looks, which were quite different. “When Jack came out, he was like a 20 cent tart,” Curtis later recalled. “He was chewing gum, hips swinging left and right, carrying a purse. When I saw him, instinctively I understood that I was not going to do that. So I came out like Grace Kelly, or my mother.” Both men adopted distinct voices and mannerisms when playing women, but Lemmon’s performance was the more radical one, since he entertains advances from another man throughout the film. “Daphne” and Osgood tango together, get engaged, and then speed away from the mob in motorboat in the final scene, where Jerry finally confesses. “I’m a man,” he says, ripping off his wig. Completely unfazed, Osgood replies, “Well, nobody’s perfect.”

Some Like It Hot ran over budget and schedule, due to Monroe’s frequent tardiness and requests for multiple takes. But during all that production time, Wilder never submitted a complete script to the PCA. He knew the censors would nitpick over certain lines or perhaps Sugar Kane’s low-cut dresses, so he waited until he had a finished print to seek any formal approval. It was a strategic move, but it was also a petty one. Wilder was reportedly annoyed with the censors after they shut down his attempt to make The Bad Seed, only to give Warner Brothers the greenlight. So he decided he wasn’t going to bother showing his script this time, and the gamble actually worked. Some Like It Hot earned a PCA seal in February 1959 without any fuss. But the Legion of Decency was another story.

When Monsignor Thomas Little caught wind of the movie, he sent a furious letter to PCA chief Geoffrey Shurlock, indicating the Legion might condemn Some Like It Hot. “The subject matter of ‘transvestism’ naturally leads to complications,” he wrote. “In this film there seemed to us to be clear inferences of homosexuality and lesbianism. The dialogue was not only ‘double entendre’ but outright smut. The offense in costuming was obvious.” Shurlock didn’t see such a grave threat. He actually defended the film in his reply, offering a rave review and revealing his high-brow proclivities.

“So far there is simply no adverse reaction at all; nothing but praise for it as a hilariously funny movie,” he wrote. “I am not suggesting, of course, that there are not dangers connected with a story of this type. But girls dressed as men, and occasionally men dressed as women for proper plot purposes, has been standard theatrical fare as far back as As You Like It and Twelfth Night.” This kind of remark was typical for Shurlock, an avid theatergoer who was more receptive to suggestive comedy than his predecessor Joseph Breen. He was willing to bend the rules as long as it was clever, not crude — at least by his estimation.

The Legion ended up relenting, grading Some Like It Hot a B, only objectionable in part. With that hurdle cleared, the movie opened in March to a complete media blitz. United Artists budgeted over $1 million in promotions, blanketing TV stations with six different trailers over the Easter holiday. Ads and posters showed Monroe in a revealing dress, winking and circling her arms around her “bosom companions” Curtis and Lemmon. These promos had their desired effect. One Minneapolis man was so distracted by “the picture of Miss Monroe” that he ran into a trash can, suing the mayor in a personal injury lawsuit.

The Kansas censor board demanded 105 feet snipped from Some Like It Hot, but it was mostly an extended kissing sequence between Monroe and Curtis. Overall, the movie encountered very little resistance. It racked up money just about everywhere it went, becoming the number one movie in America by May. Glowing reviews praised the “gay romp,” and the following year, Some Like It Hot earned six Oscar nominations, including Best Actor for Lemmon and Best Director for Wilder. Orry-Kelly took home the movie’s lone statue for his costumes.

Some Like It Hot achieved success with remarkable ease, indicating that audiences were much more receptive to drag and “smutty” double entendre than Monsignor Little. They were also, by this point, quite familiar with comedic queer characters. Character actors like Franklin Pangborn had built entire careers on playing the “sissy,” and although that type had declined somewhat in the Code era, it was not so distant a memory. Wilder had merely extended the tradition, realizing like so many other filmmakers that you could get away with a lot more queer innuendo so long as everyone was laughing at it. Adopting a dramatic lens left you more open to censorship, as the makers of Tea and Sympathy knew all too well.

Wilder’s decision to withhold his script was also significant, because it indicated the relative weakness of the PCA in 1959. The director faced no consequences for this breach in decorum — if anything, he was rewarded for it through box office returns and Shurlock’s dismissal of Legion complaints. And Wilder wasn’t the only one who noticed this shift in power.

Otto Preminger also saw new opportunity. For his next film, the frequent PCA adversary took on a courtroom drama that was ostensibly about a murder, but really about rape. Anatomy of Murder used a lot of shocking words for the time, among them “panties,” and addressed the taboo subject matter with a remarkable frankness. Its language would cause problems in Chicago, but not with the PCA, which once again approved a surprisingly candid film. We’ll discuss it next week on Hollywood Codebreakers.

Hollywood Codebreakers is a weekly TinyLetter covering the classic films that destroyed the industry’s first system of censorship, the Hays Code. Subscribe here!

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Editor and writer. Formerly on staff at Thrillist and Maxim.com. Freelancer everywhere.

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