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Marilyn Monroe Poster
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by: Anastas Mikoyan
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Word Count: 400
Who doesn't love "Some Like It Hot"? Who could forget the capers of Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis dressed as women as part of an all lady music band to escape gangsters looking to get them in Billy Wilder's amazingly successful 1959 comedy movie? But for many the true star of the film was the fabulous Marilyn Monroe.
As with any really successful film the end product seems effortless, but the reality of shooting the picture was quite different - Monroe was becoming quite awkward to work with by this time and Billy Wilder had quite a few headaches during the shoot.
Monroe's personal issues were becoming a worry. She had experienced a miscarriage in the summer of 1957 and her husband, Arthur Miller, encouraged her to return to Hollywood in August 1958 to make "Some Like it Hot".
Wilder had worked with Monroe on "The Seven Year Itch" so he was well aware of her inability to remember lines, stage fright and tardiness. But on "Some Like It Hot" her behaviour was more extreme. She sometimes refused to appear on the set or take Wilder's direction. She insisted that some simple scenes were remade repeatedly until she was satisfied. There were also occasional outbursts of profanity.
During filming Monroe discovered that she was expecting but suffered a second miscarriage towards the end of 1958, as shooting was drawing to an end.
She had good rapport with Jack Lemmon but was less keen on Tony Curtis after discovering he had likened their love scenes to "like kissing Hitler". He later insisted this comment was meant as a joke.
The film turned out a huge success and received five Academy Award nominations - Monroe winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.
Wilder attributed the problems he had suffered during filming to Monroe's unpredictable behaviour. He had little time for her method school of acting and said she would have been better served by going to a train engineer's school instead of the Actors Studio, to learn something about punctuality. Wilder was made ill by the difficulties during shooting, and he is reputed to have said: "We were in mid-flight - and there was a nut on the plane."
Despite all the problems "Some Like It Hot" was a resounding success for Wilder. Looking back years later he paid homage to Marilyn Monroe's "certain indefinable magic" and "absolute genius as a comic actress".
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