Billy Wilder’s Cool Hollywood Career
Billy Wilder famously said, “I’m a writer, but then, nobody’s perfect.” His movies ranged from film noir to screwball comedy and were known for tight plots and memorable dialogue. He despised sentiment and sought to tell stories as simply and elegantly as possible. To Wilder, “the best director is one you don’t see.”
Wilder was born in Austria-Hungary in 1906. He was raised in Vienna where he became a newspaper reporter and a paid dancer. At age twenty, he moved to Berlin where he became a screenwriter in the burgeoning German film industry. Wilder was Jewish and with the rise of the Nazis he escaped to Paris. His mother, sister, stepfather and grandmother remained in Germany. All died in concentration camps.
Wilder moved to Hollywood in 1936 where he roomed with fellow German Peter Lorre at the Chateau Marmont. Wilder and Lorre shared a can of Campbell’s Soup a day to keep from starving. Wilder’s hero was German refugee filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch. Wilder was hired as a contract writer at Paramount where he teamed with Charles Brackett, a writing partnership that lasted 14 years. Wilder and Brackett co-wrote two films for Lubitsch: Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife and Ninotchka. Wilder later credited Lubitsch for teaching him all he knew about film. (A sign on Wilder’s office wall read: “How would Lubitsch do it?”)
