Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder (born Samuel Wilder; June 22, 1906 – March 27, 2002) was an Austrian-American filmmaker who worked as both a director and screenwriter. Over five decades in Hollywood, he built a reputation as one of the industry's most adaptable talents. His awards include seven Oscars from 21 nominations, a BAFTA Award, and the Palme d'Or.

Early life

Wilder was born to a Polish-Jewish family in Sucha, a town in what was then Austria-Hungary. In 1916, his family moved to Vienna, where he became a journalist rather than going to university. He started his screenwriting career in Berlin, where he moved as a young adult. With the rise of the Nazis and growing antisemitism, he left for Paris.

He arrived in Hollywood in 1934, and his first major success came when he co-wrote the screenplay for Ninotchka (1939) with Charles Brackett and Walter Reisch. He earned his first Academy Award nomination for Best Director for Double Indemnity (1944), a film noir he co-wrote with Raymond Chandler. The following year, The Lost Weekend (1945) won him Oscars for Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Picture.

Legacy

During the 1950s, Wilder directed and co-wrote a series of highly praised films: Sunset Boulevard (1950), which earned him a second Oscar for Best Screenplay; Ace in the Hole (1951); Stalag 17 (1953); and Sabrina (1954). In 1957 alone, he directed and co-wrote three films: The Spirit of St. Louis, Love in the Afternoon, and Witness for the Prosecution. He directed Marilyn Monroe in two movies, The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Some Like It Hot (1959). In 1960, he co-wrote, produced, and directed The Apartment, which won him Oscars for Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture.

Awards and honors

Later honors include the AFI Life Achievement Award (1986), the Kennedy Center Honors (1990), the National Medal of Arts (1993), and the BAFTA Fellowship (1995). He also received lifetime achievement awards from the Directors Guild of America, the Producers Guild of America, and the Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement.

Seven of his films are preserved in the National Film Registry. Some Like It Hot, The Seven Year Itch, and The Apartment appear on AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs list. His life and work were covered in the American Masters documentary Billy Wilder: The Human Comedy.

Samuel Wilder was born on June 22, 1906, to Eugenia and Max Wilder in Sucha, a small town in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (The town has been known as Sucha Beskidzka since 1964.) Wilder later joked it was "half an hour from Vienna. By telegraph." His mother, from Zakopane, and father, from Stanisławczyk, met in Kraków, where Wilder spent his early years.

His mother called him a "rambunctious kid" and nicknamed him "Billie" after Buffalo Bill's Wild West shows, which she had seen while living briefly in New York. He changed it to "Billy" when he moved to the United States. The Wilders ran a successful cake shop at Sucha's train station that grew into a chain of railroad cafes, but they did not push their son into the family business. Max later moved to Kraków to manage a hotel, then to Vienna, and died when Billy was 22.

After the family settled in Vienna, Wilder became a journalist instead of attending university. In 1926, he interviewed jazz bandleader Paul Whiteman, who liked him enough to take him along to Berlin, where Wilder built connections in entertainment. Before finding success as a writer, he worked as a taxi dancer in Berlin.

Early work

After writing crime and sports stories as a stringer for local papers, Wilder landed a regular job at a Berlin tabloid. He turned to film and worked as a screenwriter, producing twelve German films from 1929 to 1933. He collaborated with other newcomers, including Fred Zinnemann and Robert Siodmak, on the 1930 film People on Sunday. Unlike the German Expressionist styles of F. W. Murnau and Fritz Lang, that film was a groundbreaking example of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement, a "street film" genre that later influenced Italian neorealism and the French New Wave.

He wrote screenplays for the 1931 adaptation of Erich Kästner's Emil and the Detectives, The Man in Search of His Murderer (1931), Her Grace Commands (1931), and A Blonde Dream (1932), all produced at Babelsberg Studios near Berlin. In 1932, he worked with writer Felix Salten on the screenplay for Scampolo. After Hitler came to power, Wilder moved to Paris—"It seemed the wise thing for a Jew to do." There, he made his directorial debut with Mauvaise Graine (1934).

Once in Hollywood, he continued as a screenwriter and became a U.S. citizen in 1939. (He had spent time in Mexico waiting for his visa after his six-month card expired in 1934, an experience he later used in Hold Back the Dawn.) His first big success was Ninotchka, a collaboration with fellow Jewish émigré Ernst Lubitsch.

The romantic comedy starred Greta Garbo, known for tragic roles, and was a critical and popular hit, marketed with the tagline "Garbo Laughs!" It earned Wilder his first Academy Award nomination, shared with co-writer Charles Brackett. Wilder co-wrote many of his films with Brackett from 1938 to 1950. Brackett described their process: "The thing to do was suggest an..."