Billy Wilder
   HOME
*



picture info

Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder (; ; born Samuel Wilder; June 22, 1906 – March 27, 2002) was an Austrian-American filmmaker. His career in Hollywood spanned five decades, and he is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Classic Hollywood cinema. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director eight times, winning twice, and for a screenplay Academy Award 13 times, winning three times. Wilder became a screenwriter while living in Berlin. The rise of the Nazi Party and antisemitism in Germany saw him move to Paris. He then moved to Hollywood in 1933, and had a major hit when he, Charles Brackett and Walter Reisch wrote the screenplay for the Academy Award-nominated film ''Ninotchka'' (1939). Wilder established his directorial reputation and received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director with the film noir adaptation of the novel ''Double Indemnity'' (1944), for which he co-wrote the screenplay with Raymond Chandler. Wilder won the Best ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 in the aftermath of the Austro-Prussian War and was dissolved shortly after its defeat in the First World War. Austria-Hungary was ruled by the House of Habsburg and constituted the last phase in the constitutional evolution of the Habsburg monarchy. It was a multinational state and one of Europe's major powers at the time. Austria-Hungary was geographically the second-largest country in Europe after the Russian Empire, at and the third-most populous (after Russia and the German Empire). The Empire built up the fourth-largest machine building industry in the world, after the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom. Austria-Hungary also became the world's third-largest manufacturer and exporter of electric home appliances, ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Academy Award For Best Adapted Screenplay
The Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay is the Academy Award for the best screenplay adapted from previously established material. The most frequently adapted media are novels, but other adapted narrative formats include stage plays, musicals, short stories, TV series, and even other films and film characters. All sequels are also considered adaptations by this standard (based on the story and characters set forth in the original film). Prior to its current name, this award had been known as the Academy Award for Best Screenplay Based On Material From Another Medium. See also the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, the corresponding award for scripts with original stories. Superlatives The first person to win twice in this category was Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who won the award in two consecutive years, 1949 and 1950. Others to win twice in this category include: George Seaton, Robert Bolt (who also won in consecutive years), Francis Ford Coppola, Mario Puzo, Alvi ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Some Like It Hot
''Some Like It Hot'' is a 1959 American crime comedy film directed, produced and co-written by Billy Wilder. It stars Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, with George Raft, Pat O'Brien, Joe E. Brown, Joan Shawlee, Grace Lee Whitney and Nehemiah Persoff in supporting roles. The screenplay by Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond is based on a screenplay by Robert Thoeren and Michael Logan from the 1935 French film ''Fanfare of Love''. The film is about two musicians who disguise themselves by dressing as women to escape from mafia gangsters whom they witnessed committing a crime. ''Some Like It Hot'' opened to critical and commercial success and is considered to be one of the greatest films of all time. The film received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Actor, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, winning for Best Costume Design. In 1989, the Library of Congress selected it as one of the first 25 films for preservation in the United States National Film Registry ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

The Seven Year Itch
''The Seven Year Itch'' is a 1955 American romantic comedy film directed by Billy Wilder, from a screenplay he co-wrote with George Axelrod from the 1952 three-act play. The film stars Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell, who reprised his stage role. It contains one of the most iconic pop-culture images of the 20th century – Monroe standing on a subway grate as her white dress is blown upwards by a passing train. The titular phrase, which refers to a waning interest in monogamous relationship after seven years of marriage, has been used by psychologists. Plot Richard Sherman is a middle-aged publishing executive in New York City with an overactive imagination, whose wife, Helen, and son, Ricky, are spending the summer in Maine. When he returns home from the train station with the kayak paddle Ricky accidentally left behind, he meets an unnamed woman, who is a commercial actress and former model. She rents the apartment upstairs while in town to make television spots for a bran ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe (; born Norma Jeane Mortenson; 1 June 1926 4 August 1962) was an American actress. Famous for playing comedic " blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as well as an emblem of the era's sexual revolution. She was a top-billed actress for a decade, and her films grossed $200 million (equivalent to $ billion in ) by the time of her death in 1962. Long after her death, Monroe remains a major icon of pop culture. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked her sixth on their list of the greatest female screen legends from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Multiple film critics and media outlets have cited Monroe as one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Monroe spent most of her childhood in a total of 12 foster homes and an orphanage; she married at age sixteen. She was working in a factory during World War II when she met a ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Witness For The Prosecution (1957 Film)
''Witness for the Prosecution'' is a 1957 American legal mystery thriller film directed by Billy Wilder and starring Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester. The film, which has elements of bleak black comedy and film noir, is a courtroom drama set in the Old Bailey in London and is based on the 1953 play of the same name by Agatha Christie. The first film adaptation of Christie's story, ''Witness for the Prosecution'' was adapted for the screen by Larry Marcus, Harry Kurnitz and Wilder. The film received positive reviews and six Academy Award nominations. Plot Senior barrister Sir Wilfrid Robarts, who is recovering from a heart attack, agrees to defend Leonard Vole despite the objections of his private nurse Miss Plimsoll, as Sir Wilfrid's doctor has warned him against taking any criminal cases. Vole is accused of murdering Emily French, a wealthy, childless, older widow who had become enamored of him and had named him as the main beneficiary in h ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Love In The Afternoon (1957 Film)
''Love in the Afternoon'' is a 1957 American romantic comedy film produced and directed by Billy Wilder and starring Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn and Maurice Chevalier. The screenplay by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is based on the 1920 Claude Anet novel '' Ariane, jeune fille russe'' (''Ariane, Young Russian Girl''). The story explores the relationship between a notorious middle-aged American playboy business magnate and the 20-something daughter of a private detective hired to investigate him. The supporting cast features John McGiver and Lise Bourdin. Plot Young cello student Ariane Chavasse eavesdrops on a conversation between her father, Claude Chavasse, a widowed private detective who specializes in tracking unfaithful spouses, and his client, "Monsieur X". After Claude gives his client proof of his wife's daily trysts with American business magnate Frank Flannagan in Room 14 at the Paris Ritz, Monsieur X announces he will shoot Flannagan later that evening. Claude is nonchala ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

The Spirit Of St
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with pronouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of pronoun '' thee'') when followed by a ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Sabrina (1954 Film)
''Sabrina'' (''Sabrina Fair''/''La Vie en Rose'' in the United Kingdom) is a 1954 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Billy Wilder, adapted for the screen by Wilder, Samuel A. Taylor and Ernest Lehman from Taylor's 1953 play ''Sabrina Fair''. The picture stars Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn and William Holden. This was Wilder's last film released by Paramount Pictures, ending a 12-year business relationship between him and the company. In 2002, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Plot Sabrina Fairchild is the young daughter of the Larrabee family's chauffeur, Thomas, and has been in love with David Larrabee all her life. David, a three-times-married non-working playboy, has never paid romantic attention to Sabrina. Since she has lived for years on the Larrabees' Long Island, New York, estate with her father, to him she is s ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Stalag 17
''Stalag 17'' is a 1953 American war film which tells the story of a group of American airmen confined with 40,000 prisoners in a World War II German prisoner of war camp "somewhere on the Danube". Their compound holds 630 Sergeants representing many different air crew positions, but the film focuses on one particular barrack, where the men come to suspect that one of their number is an informant. The film was directed and produced by Billy Wilder who, with Edwin Blum, adapted the screenplay from the Broadway play of the same name. The play was written by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski, based on their experiences as prisoners in Stalag 17B in Austria. The film stars William Holden in an Oscar-winning performance, along with Don Taylor, Robert Strauss, Harvey Lembeck, Peter Graves, Neville Brand, Richard Erdman, Michael Moore, Sig Ruman, and Otto Preminger. Strauss and Lembeck appeared in the original Broadway production. Plot In a German prisoner-of-war camp named '' ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Ace In The Hole (1951 Film)
''Ace in the Hole'', also known as ''The Big Carnival'', is a 1951 American film noir directed by Billy Wilder. The film stars Kirk Douglas as a cynical, disgraced reporter who stops at nothing to try to regain a job on a major newspaper. The film co-stars Jan Sterling and features Robert Arthur and Porter Hall. It marked a series of firsts for auteur Billy Wilder: it was the first time he was involved in a project as a writer, producer, and director; his first film following his breakup with long-time writing partner Charles Brackett, with whom he had collaborated on '' The Lost Weekend'' and ''Sunset Boulevard'', among others; and his first film to be a critical and commercial failure. The story is a biting examination of the seedy relationship between the press, the news it reports and the manner in which it reports it. The film also shows how a gullible public can be manipulated by the press. Without consulting Wilder, Paramount Pictures executive Y. Frank Freeman changed ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Sunset Boulevard (film)
''Sunset Boulevard'' (styled in the main title on-screen as ''SUNSET BLVD.'') is a 1950 American black comedy film noir directed and co-written by Billy Wilder, and produced and co-written by Charles Brackett. It was named after a major street that runs through Hollywood, the center of the American film industry. The film stars William Holden as Joe Gillis, a struggling screenwriter, and Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, a former silent-film star who draws him into her deranged fantasy world, where she dreams of making a triumphant return to the screen. Erich von Stroheim plays Max von Mayerling, her devoted butler, and Nancy Olson, Jack Webb, Lloyd Gough, and Fred Clark appear in supporting roles. Director Cecil B. DeMille and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper play themselves, and the film includes cameo appearances by leading silent-film actors Buster Keaton, H. B. Warner, and Anna Q. Nilsson. Praised by many critics when first released, ''Sunset Boulevard'' was nominated ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]