PEOPLE IN AMERICA - Billy Wilder

PEOPLE IN AMERICA -June 16, 2002: Billy Wilder

VOICE ONE:
I’m Mary Tillotson.
VOICE TWO:
And I’m Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program, PEOPLE IN AMERICA.

Today we tell about Billy Wilder. He was the director of some of the greatest American
movies.
((THEME)
)
VOICE ONE:

Many experts say that Billy Wilder changed the history of American movies. He is often called the best
moviemaker Hollywood has ever had. He was known for making movies that offered sharp social comment and
adult sexual situations. Wilder was one of the first directors to do this.

Between the middle nineteen-thirties and the nineteen-eighties, Billy Wilder made almost fifty movies. During
that time he received more than twenty nominations 1 from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He
won six of the Oscar awards. His movies have been seen by people around the world. Wilder made famous
movies like “Sunset Boulevard”
, “Some Like It Hot”, and “Double Indemnity 2.
”
He also directed “The
Lost Weekend”
, “The Apartment”, and the “The Seven Year Itch 3.
”

VOICE TWO:

Samuel Wilder was born in nineteen-six in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. His
birthplace is now part of Poland. His mother had enjoyed spending several years in the United
States when she was young. So she called him Billy because she thought it sounded American.

Billy Wilder started law school in Vienna, Austria. Then he decided 4 not to become a lawyer.
Instead, he began reporting for a Vienna newspaper. By the nineteen-twenties, he was writing
movies in Germany.

However, the Nazis 6 had risen to power in the nation. Wilder was Jewish, and he recognized
that he had no future in Nazi 5 Germany. In nineteen-thirty-three, he went to Paris. There he
directed a movie for the first time. It was called “The Bad Seed.
”
Then he received word that producers in the
United States had accepted one of his scripts. Billy Wilder left Europe for America.

VOICE ONE:

Billy Wilder had only eleven dollars when he arrived to settle in the United States in nineteen-thirty-four. He
decided to live in the center of American movie making: Hollywood, California. At the time, many people who
had left Germany were working there. They helped Wilder get jobs. After a while he formed a writing team with
Charles Brackett. The two writers created many films together.

Wilder and Brackett wrote several successful movies. One was the nineteen-thirty-nine movie, “Ninotchka”,
starring Greta Garbo. Ernst Lubitsch (LOO bich) directed the film. Wilder always praised this man as a friend
and teacher whose humor and expert direction greatly influenced his work.

((MUSIC BRIDGE))

VOICE TWO:


In his love stories, Billy Wilder did not follow the Hollywood tradition of sweet boy-meets -girl situations. He had
an unusual way of showing relations between men and women. For example, one of his most successful films
was “Hold Back the Dawn.
”
The French actor Charles Boyer plays a refugee in this nineteen-forty-one film.

He marries an American woman so he can enter the United States.

In nineteen -forty-four, Billy Wilder made a film called “Double Indemnity.
”
Some critics said this movie
established him as one of the greatest Hollywood directors. It told a vicious story about a married woman and her
boyfriend. They plot the death of her husband.

Charles Brackett thought the story was not moral. So the famous American mystery writer Raymond Chandler
was asked to help write the script.

VOICE ONE:

As a director, Billy Wilder often violated Hollywood customs about social issues. For example, someone who
drinks too much alcohol had rarely been a movie subject. Then Wilder directed “The Lost Weekend
”
in
nineteen-forty-five. Charles Brackett returned to work on the movie with him. They developed the script from a
book by Charles Jackson.

Ray Milland plays the part of an alcoholic 8 writer in the movie. It shows the alcohol rules his life yet he does not
admit it. He hides alcohol in his home and says he is not drinking.

VOICE TWO:

Reports at the time said manufacturers of alcoholic drinks tried to suppress the movie. They did not succeed. The
public and critics praised “The Lost Weekend
”
for its painful honesty. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences gave Ray Milland the best-actor award. Billy Wilder won two Academy Awards. One honored his
part in writing the script. The other honored his direction. “The Lost Weekend”
also won the first Grand Prix
–first prize --of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France.

World War Two ended in nineteen-forty-five. Wilder had become an American citizen in nineteen-thirty-nine.
After the war, Wilder was asked by the United States Army to go to Germany to help re -organize the movie
industry and radio media. The Nazi government had used both for its propaganda. While in Germany, Wilder
learned that the Nazis had murdered his sister, his mother and his mother’s husband.

VOICE ONE:

In nineteen -fifty, Wilder made “Sunset Boulevard.
”
This movie told of an aging actress in silent movies. She
plans to return to movies. Gloria Swanson played this star. More than fifty years later, movie-lovers can still
repeat some of her lines.

In one of the famous lines in “Sunset Boulevard,
”
Miz Swanson remembers telling the famous director Cecil

B. DeMille that she is prepared for him to start filming:
((CUT ONE: “I’m ready for my close-up, Mister DeMille.”))

VOICE TWO:

“Sunset Boulevard”
won three Academy awards. One honored the writing team of Wilder, Brackett and D. M.
Marshman Junior. The movie marked the last time Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett wrote together.

Wilder also was highly praised for “Stalag Seventeen”, which he both produced and directed. The movie

mixes humor and wartime realism. William Holden plays a dishonest American war prisoner in a World War
Two German camp for Allied 9 servicemen. Holden won the nineteen-fifty-three Academy Award for his part.
Wilder was nominated for best director.

((MUSIC BRIDGE))

VOICE ONE:


In nineteen -fifty-four, Billy Wilder became an independent producer. He left Paramount 10 Pictures, the motion-
picture company he had worked with for many years. He left after company officials cut many anti -Nazi
comments from a version of “Stalag Seventeen.
”
That version was to be shown in Germany.

The next year, Wilder’s first movie as an independent filmmaker was a huge success. It was “The Seven Year
Itch.
”
He developed the movie from a play by George Axelrod. In this movie, a married man wants to cheat on
his wife with a beautiful golden-haired young woman. Marilyn Monroe played the young woman. The part
launched her as a major Hollywood success. Some critics said Marilyn Monroe gave her best performances under
Billy Wilder’s direction.

VOICE TWO:

In nineteen -fifty-nine, Wilder made a funny movie that was very popular. I. A. L. Diamond joined Wilder in
writing “Some Like It Hot.
”
It tells about two jazz musicians being chased by criminals. Jack 7 Lemmon and
Tony Curtis play the musicians. They decide to wear women’s clothes and join a band in which all the
musicians were women. Marilyn Monroe plays one of the band members. She wants to make Lemmon and Curtis
believe she is a musician.

MONROE: “I’m Sugar Kane.
"
MAN: "Hi.
"
WOMAN: "Sugar Kane?
"
MONROE: "Yeah, I changed it. It used to be Sugar Kowalczyk.
"

MAN: "Polish?
"

MONROE: "Yes. I come from this musical family. My mother is a piano teacher. My father
was a conductor.
"
WOMAN: ”Where did he conduct?
"
MONROE: "On the Baltimore and Ohio [railroad].
"

VOICE ONE:
Billy Wilder continued to make interesting movies through the nineteen-sixties and nineteen-seventies. As usual,
he filled his movies with social comment and sexual situations. Over the years, however, other writers and
directors also did this. By the nineteen-eighties Wilder no longer was considered the most unusual creative
moviemaker in Hollywood.

VOICE TWO:
In recent years, however, Billy Wilder received many more awards and honors. Critics praised his gifts to movie

making. In nineteen-eighty-seven, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him the Irving G.
Thalberg Memorial Award. It is the highest award a producer can receive.
Wilder died in March, two-thousand-two. He was ninety-five. A current Hollywood producer said, “Billy

Wilder made movies that people will never forget.
”

((THEME)
)
VOICE ONE:
This VOA Special English program was written by Jerilyn Watson and produced by Caty Weaver 11. I’m Mary

Tillotson.
VOICE TWO:


And I’m Steve Ember. Join us again next week for another PEOPLE IN AMERICA program on the Voice of
America.

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