Billy Wilder

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Not to be confused with William Wyler or William Wilder.

Billy Wilder
Wilder, c. 1942
Born
Samuel Wilder

(1906-06-22)June 22, 1906
Sucha, Galicia, Austria-Hungary
DiedMarch 27, 2002(2002-03-27) (aged 95)
Beverly Hills, California, U.S.
Occupations
  • Film director
  • screenwriter
  • producer
Years active1929–1981
WorksFull list
Spouses
Judith Coppicus
​
​
(m. 1936; div. 1946)​
​
(m. 1949)​
Children2
RelativesW. Lee Wilder (brother)
Myles Wilder (nephew)
Patrick Curtis (nephew)
AwardsFull list

Billy Wilder (

BAFTA Award, the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or and two Golden Globe Awards
.

Wilder became a screenwriter while living in Berlin. The rise of the

Academy Award for Best Picture.[2]

In the 1950s, Wilder directed and co-wrote a string of critically acclaimed films, including the Hollywood-set drama Sunset Boulevard (1950), for which he won his second screenplay Academy Award; Ace in the Hole (1951), Stalag 17 (1953) and Sabrina (1954).[3] Wilder directed and co-wrote three films in 1957: The Spirit of St. Louis, Love in the Afternoon and Witness for the Prosecution. During this period, Wilder also directed Marilyn Monroe in two films, The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Some Like It Hot (1959).[4] In 1960, Wilder co-wrote, directed and produced the critically acclaimed film The Apartment. It won Wilder Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.[5] Other notable films Wilder directed include One, Two, Three (1961), Irma la Douce (1963), Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), The Fortune Cookie (1966) and Avanti! (1972).

Wilder received various honors over his career, including the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1986, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1990, the National Medal of Arts in 1993 and the BAFTA Fellowship Award in 1995. He also received the Directors Guild of America's Lifetime Achievement Award, the Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement and the Producers Guild of America's Lifetime Achievement Award.[6] Seven of his films are preserved in the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".

Early life

Samuel Wilder (

Stanislawczyk; they met in Kraków where Billy spent his early years.[9] His mother described him as a "rambunctious kid"; inspired by Buffalo Bill's Wild West Shows, which she saw while living briefly in New York, she nicknamed him "Billie", which he changed to "Billy" upon moving to America.[11]

Wilder's elder brother, W. Lee Wilder, was also a filmmaker. His parents had a successful cake shop in Sucha's train station that flourished into a chain of railroad cafes. Eugenia and Max Wilder did not persuade their son to join the family business. Max moved to Kraków to manage a hotel before moving to Vienna and dying when Billy was 22 years old.[11] After the family moved to Vienna, Wilder became a journalist instead of attending the University of Vienna. In 1926, jazz band leader Paul Whiteman was on tour in Vienna where he was interviewed by Wilder.[12] Whiteman liked young Wilder enough that he took him with the band to Berlin, where Wilder was able to make more connections in entertainment.

Before achieving success as a writer, he was a taxi dancer in Berlin.[13][14]

Career

Early work

Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas in Ninotchka

After writing crime and sports stories as a

Belzec; and his grandmother, Balbina Baldinger, died in 1943 in the ghetto in Nowy Targ.[17]

After arriving in Hollywood in 1934, Wilder continued working as a screenwriter. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1939, having spent time in Mexico waiting for the government after his six-month card expired in 1934, an episode reflected in his 1941 Hold Back the Dawn.[18] Wilder's first significant success was Ninotchka, a collaboration with fellow German immigrant Ernst Lubitsch. The romantic comedy starred Greta Garbo (generally known as a tragic heroine in film melodramas), and was popularly and critically acclaimed. With the byline "Garbo Laughs!", it also took Garbo's career in a new direction. The film marked Wilder's first Academy Award nomination, which he shared with co-writer Charles Brackett (although their collaboration on Bluebeard's Eighth Wife and Midnight had been well received). Wilder co-wrote many of his films with Brackett from 1938 to 1950. Brackett described their collaboration process: "The thing to do was suggest an idea, have it torn apart and despised. In a few days it would be apt to turn up, slightly changed, as Wilder's idea. Once I got adjusted to that way of working, our lives were simpler."[19]

1940s

Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity

Wilder continued his screenwriting career with a series of box office hits in the early 1940s, including the romantic drama Hold Back the Dawn and the screwball comedy Ball of Fire. Both films earned him nominations for the 1941 Academy Awards in the categories of Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Story respectively.[20] Wilder made his Hollywood directorial debut in 1942 with The Major and the Minor, a comedy starring Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland.[21]

His third Hollywood film as director, the film noir Double Indemnity (1944), starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson, was a major hit. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, Director, Screenplay and Actress; Wilder co-wrote it with Raymond Chandler. The film not only set conventions for the noir genre (such as "venetian blind" lighting and voice-over narration), but is a landmark in the battle against Hollywood censorship. Based on James M. Cain's novel, it featured two love triangles and a murder plotted for insurance money. While the book was popular with the reading public, it had been considered unfilmable under the Hays Code because adultery was central to the plot.

In 1945, the

Psychological Warfare Department of the United States Department of War produced an American documentary film directed by Wilder. The film known as Death Mills, or Die Todesmühlen, was intended for German audiences to educate them about the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. For the German version, Die Todesmühlen, Hanuš Burger
is credited as the writer and director, while Wilder supervised the editing. Wilder is credited with the English-language version.

Two years later, Wilder adapted from

Production Code. It follows an alcoholic writer (Ray Milland) opposing the protestations of his girlfriend (Jane Wyman). The film earned critical acclaim after it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and competed in the main competition, where it received the Festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or, and four Academy Awards including for Best Picture. Wilder earned the Oscars for Best Director and Best Screenplay and Milland won Best Actor. The film is one of four to win both the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d' Or, alongside Marty, Parasite and Anora
.

1950s

Gloria Swanson with Wilder on the set of Sunset Boulevard

In 1950, Wilder co-wrote and directed the cynical noir film Sunset Boulevard. It follows a reclusive silent film actress (Gloria Swanson), who dreams of a comeback with delusions of her greatness from a bygone era. She accompanies an aspiring screenwriter (William Holden), who becomes her gigolo partner. This critically acclaimed film was the final film Wilder collaborated with Brackett. The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards; together Wilder and Brackett won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

In 1951, Wilder directed Ace in the Hole (a.k.a. The Big Carnival) starring Kirk Douglas in a tale of media exploitation of a caving accident. The idea had been pitched over the phone to Wilder's secretary by Victor Desny. Desny sued Wilder for breach of an implied contract in the California copyright case Wilder v Desny, ultimately receiving a settlement of $14,350.[22][23] Although a critical and commercial failure at the time, its reputation has grown over the years. The following year, Wilder announced plans to direct and produce a film version of the Sophocles tragedy Oedipus Rex, adapted for the screen by Walter Reisch. They planned to shoot the film on location in Greece in Technicolor,[24] but it never went into production.

Subsequently, Wilder directed three adaptations of Broadway plays, war drama Stalag 17, for which William Holden won the Best Actor Academy Award, romantic comedy Sabrina, for which Audrey Hepburn was nominated for Best Actress, and romantic comedy The Seven Year Itch, which features the iconic image of Marilyn Monroe standing on a subway grate as her white dress is blown upwards by a passing train. Wilder was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for the first two films and shared a nomination for Best Screenplay for the second. He was interested in doing a film with one of the classic slapstick comedy acts of the Hollywood Golden Age. He first considered, and rejected, a project to star Laurel and Hardy. He held discussions with Groucho Marx concerning a new Marx Brothers comedy, tentatively titled A Day at the U.N. The project was abandoned after Chico Marx died in 1961.[25]

In 1957, three films Wilder directed were released:

biopic The Spirit of St. Louis, starring James Stewart as Charles Lindbergh, romantic comedy Love in the Afternoon—Wilder's first screenplay with I. A. L. Diamond, who would become his regular partner—featuring Gary Cooper, Maurice Chevalier and Audrey Hepburn, and courtroom drama Witness for the Prosecution, featuring Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich and Charles Laughton
. Wilder received an Academy Award nomination for Best Director for the last film.

Curtis, Lemmon and Monroe in Some Like It Hot

In 1959, Wilder reunited with Monroe in the United Artists released Prohibition-era farce film

Joe E. Brown – setting up the film's final joke in which Lemmon reveals that his character is a man and Brown blandly replies "Well, nobody's perfect". A box office success, the film was lightly regarded by film critics during its original release, although it did receive six Academy Award nominations, including for Best Director and Best Screenplay. But its critical reputation grew prodigiously; in 2000, the American Film Institute selected it as the best American comedy ever made.[26] In 2012, the British Film Institute decennial Sight and Sound poll of the world's film critics rated it as the 43rd best movie ever made, and the second-highest-ranking comedy.[27]

1960s

Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment

In 1960, Wilder directed the comedy romance film The Apartment. It follows an insurance clerk (Lemmon), who allows his coworkers to use his apartment to conduct extramarital affairs until he meets an elevator woman (Shirley MacLaine). The film was a critical success with The New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther, who called the film "gleeful, tender, and even sentimental" and Wilder's direction "ingenious".[28] The film received ten Academy Awards nominations and won five awards, including three for Wilder: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay.

Wilder directed the

Writers Guild of America Award nomination for the screenplay of The Fortune Cookie, which he co-produced through his independent film company, Phalanx Productions. It was the first film pairing Jack Lemmon with Walter Matthau. The film was titled Meet Whiplash Willie in the United Kingdom. In 1970, he directed The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, also made through Phalanx Productions, which was intended as a major roadshow theatrical release, but to Wilder's dismay was heavily cut by the studio.[31][32]

Final films

He produced and directed the comedy film

Holocaust.[34][35] He praised Steven Spielberg's adaptation, Schindler's List. To those who denied the Holocaust, Wilder wrote in a German newspaper, "If the concentration camps and the gas chambers were all imaginary, then please tell me—where is my mother?"[36]

Directorial style

Wilder's directorial choices reflected his belief in the primacy of writing. He avoided, especially in the second half of his career, the exuberant cinematography of Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles because, in Wilder's opinion, shots that called attention to themselves would distract the audience from the story. Wilder's films have tight plotting and memorable dialogue. Despite his conservative directorial style, his subject matter often pushed the boundaries of mainstream entertainment. Once a subject was chosen, he would begin to visualize in terms of specific artists. His belief was that no matter how talented the actor, none were without limitations and the result would be better if you bent the script to their personality rather than force a performance beyond their limitations.[37] Wilder was skilled at working with actors, coaxing silent era legends Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim out of retirement for roles in Sunset Boulevard. Regarding Wilder's more comedic films, Roger Ebert wrote: "he took the characters seriously, or at least as seriously as the material allowed, and got a lot of the laughs by playing scenes straight."[38]

For Stalag 17, Wilder squeezed an Oscar-winning performance out of a reluctant William Holden (Holden had wanted to make his character more likable; Wilder refused). At a casting meeting, Wilder reportedly said, "I'm tired of clichéd typecasting—the same people in every film."[39] An example of this is Wilder's casting of Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity and The Apartment. MacMurray had become Hollywood's highest-paid actor portraying a decent, thoughtful character in light comedies, melodramas, and musicals; Wilder cast him as a womanizing schemer. Humphrey Bogart shed his tough-guy image to give one of his warmest performances in Sabrina. James Cagney, not usually known for comedy, was memorable in a high-octane comic role for Wilder's One, Two, Three. Wilder coaxed a very effective performance out of Monroe in Some Like It Hot.

In total, he directed fourteen different actors in Oscar-nominated performances:

The Lost Weekend, William Holden in Sunset Boulevard and Stalag 17, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim and Nancy Olson in Sunset Boulevard, Robert Strauss in Stalag 17, Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, Charles Laughton in Witness for the Prosecution, Elsa Lanchester in Witness for the Prosecution, Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, Jack Kruschen in The Apartment, Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment and Irma la Douce and Walter Matthau in The Fortune Cookie. Wilder mentored Lemmon, and was the first director to pair him and Matthau in The Fortune Cookie. Wilder and Lemmon worked on seven films.[40]

Politics

Wilder opposed the

Screen Directors Guild had a vote by show of hands. Only John Huston and Wilder opposed. Huston said, "I am sure it was one of the bravest things that Billy, as a naturalized German, had ever done. There were 150 to 200 directors at this meeting, and here Billy and I sat alone with our hands raised in protest against the loyalty oath."[41]

Wilder was not affected by the Hollywood blacklist. Of the blacklisted '

Hollywood Ten' he said, "Of the ten, two had talent, and the rest were just unfriendly."[41] In general, Wilder disliked formula and genre films.[42] Wilder reveled in poking fun at those who took politics too seriously. In Ball of Fire, his burlesque queen 'Sugarpuss' points at her sore throat and complains "Pink? It's as red as the Daily Worker and just as sore." Later, she gives the overbearing and unsmiling housemaid the name "Franco
".

Retirement

Wilder in 1989

Wilder received the

Christo, or splattered à la Jackson Pollock, or sporting a Campbell's soup can in homage to Andy Warhol.[46]

Personal life and death

Wilder married Judith Coppicus on December 22, 1936. The couple had twins, Victoria and Vincent (born 1939), but Vincent died shortly after birth. They divorced in 1946. Wilder met

Audrey Young while filming The Lost Weekend. They were married on June 30, 1949.[47]

Wilder died of pneumonia on March 27, 2002. He was buried at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary.[48] A French newspaper, Le Monde, titled the front-page obituary: "Billy Wilder is dead. Nobody is perfect", a reference to the last line of Some Like It Hot.[49]

Legacy

Westwood Village Memorial Park

"Don't be boring". — Billy Wilder[50]

Wilder holds a significant place in the history of Hollywood censorship for expanding the range of acceptable subject matter. He directed two of

Empire's "Top 40 Greatest Directors of All-Time" list in 2005.[53] In 2007, Total Film magazine ranked Wilder at No. 13 on its "100 Greatest Film Directors Ever" list.[55] Wilder was voted at No. 4 on the "Greatest Directors of 20th Century" poll conducted by Japanese film magazine Kinema Junpo
.

Seven of his films are preserved in the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".[56] Anthony Lane writes that Double Indemnity, The Seven Year Itch, Sunset Boulevard and The Apartment are "part of the lexicon of moviegoing" and that Some Like It Hot is a "national treasure."[57] Roger Ebert asked, "Of all the great directors of Hollywood's golden age, has anybody made more films that are as fresh and entertaining to this day as Billy Wilder's?...And who else can field three contenders among the greatest closing lines of all time?", citing the closing lines of Sunset Boulevard, Some Like it Hot, and The Apartment.[58] Ron Shelton recalls encountering Wilder:

I was in a restaurant about six months after Bull Durham came out. And a man came over and said "Somebody would like to see you." And I looked over and it was Billy Wilder. And I went over and he said, "Great fuckin' picture, kid!" And I thought that was as good a review as you could have."[59]

When Belle Époque won the 1993 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Spanish filmmaker Fernando Trueba said in his acceptance speech: "I would like to believe in God in order to thank him. But I just believe in Billy Wilder... so thank you, Mr. Wilder." According to Trueba, Wilder called him the day after and told him: "Fernando, it's God." French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius thanked Billy Wilder in the 2012 Best Picture Oscar acceptance speech for The Artist: "I would like to thank the following three people, I would like to thank Billy Wilder, I would like to thank Billy Wilder, and I would like to thank Billy Wilder." Wilder's 12 Academy Award nominations for screenwriting were a record until 1997 when Woody Allen received a 13th nomination for Deconstructing Harry. In 2017, Vulture.com named Wilder the greatest screenwriter of all time.[60] He directed fourteen actors in Oscar-nominated performances. Wilder's epitaph, a paraphrase of the last line of Some Like It Hot, is "I'm a writer but then nobody's perfect."[61]

Filmography

Main article: Billy Wilder filmography
Directed features
Year Title Distributor
1934 Mauvaise Graine Pathé Consortium Cinéma
1942 The Major and the Minor Paramount Pictures
1943 Five Graves to Cairo
1944 Double Indemnity
1945 The Lost Weekend
1948 The Emperor Waltz
A Foreign Affair
1950 Sunset Boulevard
1951 Ace in the Hole
1953 Stalag 17
1954 Sabrina
1955 The Seven Year Itch 20th Century Fox
1957 The Spirit of St. Louis Warner Bros.
Love in the Afternoon Allied Artists Pictures Corporation
Witness for the Prosecution United Artists
1959 Some Like It Hot
1960 The Apartment
1961 One, Two, Three
1963 Irma la Douce
1964 Kiss Me, Stupid Lopert Pictures Corporation / United Artists
1966 The Fortune Cookie United Artists
1970 The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
1972 Avanti!
1974 The Front Page Universal Pictures
1978 Fedora United Artists
1981 Buddy Buddy United Artists / Cinema International Corporation

Awards and honors

Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Billy Wilder

Wilder received twenty-one nominations at the

Directors Guild of America Award nominations, with the sole win for his work on The Apartment. He received seven nominations at the Golden Globe Awards, winning Best Director for The Lost Weekend and Sunset Boulevard (1950). He won seven Writers Guild of America Awards including two Laurel Awards for Screenwriting Achievement. He garnered a number of lifetime achievement awards including the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, the BAFTA Fellowship, the David O. Selznick Achievement Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures, and the Honorary Golden Bear from the Berlin International Film Festival
.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Murphy, Dean E. (May 26, 1996). "Polish Town Goes Wild Over Wilder". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 13, 2020.
  2. ^ "1945 | Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences". www.oscars.org. Retrieved February 10, 2023.
  3. ^ "Sunset Blvd". Academy Museum of Motion Pictures – Timeline. Retrieved February 10, 2023.
  4. ISBN 0-393-97868-0
    .
  5. ^ "The 33rd Academy Awards Memorable Moments | Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences". www.oscars.org. August 27, 2014. Retrieved February 10, 2023.
  6. ^ * Hammond, Pete (October 3, 2014). "Steve Martin To Receive AFI Life Achievement Award". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on November 28, 2019. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  7. ^ "הם היו כל-כך יהודים, הם היו כל-כך אמריקנים". Globes. April 4, 2002.
  8. Biography.com. 2015. Archived from the original
    on May 9, 2015. Retrieved May 2, 2015.
  9. ^
    ISBN 0786861940
    .
  10. ^ Brackett, Charles, It's the Pictures That Got Small, Columbia University Press, 2015, pg.87
  11. ^ a b c Hamrah, A.S. (March–May 2022). "Some Like It Fraught- How Billy Wilder survived the twentieth century". Bookforum. New York: Bookforum Magazine. Retrieved March 15, 2022.
  12. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved February 4, 2020.
  13. ^ Philips, Alastair. City of Darkness, City of Light: Emigre Filmmakers in Paris, 1929–1939. Amsterdam University Press, 2004. p. 190.
  14. ^ Silvester, Christopher. The Grove Book of Hollywood. Grove Press, 2002. p. 311
  15. ISBN 978-3-86124-746-3
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  16. ^ Jacques Le Rider, "Les Juifs viennois á la Belle Époque," Paris: Albin Michel, 2013, p. 194
  17. Neue Zuercher Zeitung
    .
  18. ISBN 978-0-7864-2119-0
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  19. ^ Brackett, Charles, It's the Pictures That Got Small, Columbia University Press, 2015, pg. 92
  20. ^ "The 14th Academy Awards". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. October 3, 2014. Retrieved December 31, 2024.
  21. ^ Crowther, Bosley (September 17, 1942). "The Screen; ' The Major and the Minor,' a Charming Comedy-Romance, With Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland, at the Paramount". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 25, 2017.
  22. ^ 46 Cal.2d 715, 299 P.2d 257, CAL. 1956.
  23. ^ Sikov, Ed. On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder, Hyperion Press, 1998, p. 328
  24. ^ Pryor, Thomas M. (September 5, 1952). "BILLY WILDER LISTS 'OEDIPUS REX' FILM; Plans to Produce Technicolor Version of Sophocles Tragedy in Greek Locale Next Year". The New York Times. Retrieved June 13, 2024.
  25. ^ Gore, Chris (1999). The Fifty Greatest Movies Never Made, New York: St. Martin's Griffin
  26. ^ "AFI's 100 Funniest American Movies Of All Time". American Film Institute. 2000. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
  27. ^ "Critics' top 100". British Film Institute. 2012. Archived from the original on February 7, 2016. Retrieved June 6, 2016.–
  28. ^ Crowther, Bosley (June 16, 1960). "Busy 'Apartment':Jack Lemmon Scores in Billy Wilder Film". The New York Times. Retrieved September 2, 2017.
  29. ^ Variety. Film review, 1961. Last accessed: January 31, 2008.
  30. ISBN 978-0-7864-8520-8
    .
  31. ^ Jonathan Coe (April 30, 2005). "Detective Work". The Guardian. Retrieved January 12, 2015.
  32. ^ "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. Retrieved September 18, 2024.
  33. ^ "Fedora (1978)". Rotten Tomatoes. May 26, 2009. Retrieved November 21, 2020.
  34. ISBN 978-0375406607
    .
  35. ^ Hillestrom, Oscar (April 2, 2013). "Spielberg's List". The Sydney Morning Herald.
  36. ^ Lane, Anthony (2002). Nobody's Perfect. p. 717.
  37. ^ "One Head Is Better than Two," in Films and Filming (London), February 1957.
  38. ^ "Trial and Error movie review & film summary (1997) | Roger Ebert".
  39. ISBN 978-0-8131-2570-1
    .
  40. ^ Philips (2010), p. 230.
  41. ^ a b José-Vidal Pelaz López. Filming History: Billy Wilder and the Cold War. Communication & Society, 25(1), pp. 113–136. (2012).
  42. ^ Morris Dickstein (Spring 1988). "Sunset Boulevard" Grand Street Vol. 7 No. 3 p. 180
  43. ^ "Lifetime Honors – National Medal of Arts". Archived from the original on August 26, 2013. Retrieved January 30, 2010.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) National Endowment for the Arts
  44. ^ Ed Sikov. On Sunset Boulevard – the Life and Times of Billy Wilder "Turnaround", p. 582.
  45. ^ Yarrow, Andrew L. (August 30, 1989). "Billy Wilder Decides to Sell Some of His Art Collection". The New York Times.
  46. ^ Charlotte Chandler. Nobody's Perfect: Billy Wilder – A Personal Biography. "Nefertete", p. 317.
  47. ^ Pedersen, Erik (June 7, 2012). "Audrey Young Dies; Actress and Widow of Billy Wilder". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved May 25, 2019.
  48. ^ "Oscar Firsts and other Trivia" (PDF). Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. February 2015. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 25, 2015. Retrieved May 2, 2015.
  49. ^ "From comedy to drama to film noir, film director Billy Wilder was America's best". MinnPost. March 19, 2010.
  50. NPR
  51. ^ "AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies — 10th Anniversary Edition". American Film Institute. Retrieved April 19, 2020.
  52. ^ "BFI | Sight & Sound | Top Ten Poll 2002 – The Directors' Top Ten Directors". October 13, 2018. Archived from the original on October 13, 2018.
  53. ^
    Filmsite.org. Archived from the original
    on April 19, 2015. Retrieved April 19, 2009.
  54. ^ "Greatest Film Directors". filmsite.org.
  55. Filmsite.org. Archived from the original
    on July 2, 2014. Retrieved April 19, 2009.
  56. ^ "Complete National Film Registry Listing". National Film Registry. Retrieved January 21, 2020.
  57. ^ Lane, Anthony (2002). Nobody's Perfect. pp. 712–713.
  58. ^ Ebert, Roger. The Great Movies. 2002. p. 440.
  59. ^ "Ron Shelton's Closet Picks".
  60. ^ "The 100 Best Screenwriters of All Time". vulture.com. October 27, 2017.
  61. Times Literary Supplement
    .

Further reading

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