how old was william holden in sunset boulevard

All I know is that she's meshuggah, that's all. "We didn't need dialogue. The structure in the film required a tennis court, or rather the ghost of a tennis court, with faded markings and a sagging net. Garbo was once rumored to be engaged to the innovative Hollywood and Broadway director Rouben Mamoulian whose film Golden Boy (1939) made William Holden famous. When she received her Honorary Oscar at the 1982 Academy Award ceremony, Holden had died in an accident just a few months prior. Schwab's Pharmacy was filmed only 500 feet (145 meters) from where Robert "D-Fens" Foster shot out the phone booth in Falling Down (1993). In addition to starring in "Queen Kelly", Swanson also produced it, and fired von Stroheim when he had already gone over the budget by more than double, and with no end to filming in sight. cynical Hollywood survivor played by William Holden. There were three young directors who showed promise in those early days of silent film, D.W. Griffith, Cecil B. Holden did a sports film at Columbia, Boots Malone (1952), then returned to Paramount for The Turning Point (1952). [32] Also in 1974, Holden starred with Paul Newman and Steve McQueen in the critically acclaimed disaster film The Towering Inferno,[33] which became a box-office smash and one of the highest-grossing films of Holden's career. The actor's second major breakthrough occurred when Wilder cast him in the lead of the. Brenda Marshall, Holden's wife since 1941, was visiting the set when Holden and Nancy Olson had their kissing scene. When Norma visits Cecil B. Movie audiences in the nave early days of film sometimes didnt know that somebody had to sit down and write a movie. Holdens last movie, Blake Edwardss S.O.B., was another masterpiece of Hollywood cynicism. Gloria Swanson was paid $50,000 plus $5,000 per week for any time over schedule. Gillis: "Yes I was murdered." Dont bother with a rewrite, man, take it direct! Billy Wilder was one of the ultimate Hollywood insiders and he grew with film. An inventory of his prospects added up to exactly zero. Our friendship never waned. William Holden, original name William Franklin Beedle, Jr., (born April 17, 1918, O'Fallon, Illinois, U.S.found dead November 16, 1981, Santa Monica, California), American film star who perfected the role of the cynic who acts heroically in spite of his scorn or pessimism. Sunset Blvd. Highly unusual at the time, Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder had Joe Gillis narrate, from beyond the grave, the sad tale of the final months of his life, while the film simultaneously depicts the still living Gillis experiencing those events unaware of the fate his dead self already knows. Billy Wilder's sixth film in a row for Paramount Pictures. After all, it's about a dethroned queen." They thought the actors made it up as they went along. Louis B. Mayer's reaction is well documented but Mae Murray also found the film offensive. (A few months later, Hepburn met Mel Ferrer, whom she later married and with whom she had a son Sean Hepburn Ferrer. Brackett thought it was too mean while Wilder felt it was necessary. What is the streaming release date of Sunset Blvd. In fact, Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett even went to Pickfair to pitch the story to Pickford, but her horrified reaction as the story progressed made them stop halfway through and apologize to her. When he appeared in the innovative Hollywood director Rouben Mamoulian's Golden Boy (1939), he was hailed as exactly that, but had seen his stock fall, largely through his problems with alcohol and a string of unmemorable films in the 1940s. Also, the house didn't have a pool, so Paramount paid to have one installed on the condition that if Mrs. Getty didn't like it, they'd remove it after filming was over. Her Stockholm Syndrome is positively infectious. Joe Gillis is seen reading the book "The Young Lions" by Irwin Shaw, a best-selling World War Two novel of the time, Montgomery Clift, who was originally offered the part of Joe Gillis, later played one of the leads in the film adaptation of that book The Young Lions (1958), though it was not directed by Billy Wilder. Gloria Swanson worked closely with Edith Head on Norma's clothes to achieve just the right look: grandly expensive but slightly out of date. At Paramount, he did another Western, Streets of Laredo (1949). Haines, whose career had ended because of his homosexual off-screen life, was too happy in his new profession as an interior decorator to want to call attention to his past as an actor. Gloria Swanson's career was not revitalized by this film. "Lonely, alone, without dignity.". Suratt was reportedly obsessed with the fact that she was the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary, and after her career ended commissioned the leader of the U.S. Reform Bah' Movement to co-write a script on the life of Mary Magdalene. [28] Columbia would not meet Holden's asking price of $750,000 and 10% of the gross for The Guns of Navarone (1961); the amount of money Holden asked exceeded the combined salaries of stars Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Anthony Quinn.[29]. In subsequent years, two lawsuits have been filed against Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, claiming that Sunset Blvd. If you don't, I will personally shoot you." Gloria Swanson and Nancy Olson also co-starred in Airport 1975 together. He starred in Sam Peckinpahs masterwork Western The Wild Bunch. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features NFL Sunday Ticket Press Copyright . Normands career never recovered after word of her addiction leaked out and she died of tuberculosis on Feb. 23, 1930. Film debut (uncredited) of Yvette Vickers. Billy Wilder was actually friendlier with the other leading gossip columnist of the day, Louella Parsons. taste bar and kitchen missouri city. Around this time he also appeared in 21 Hours at Munich (1976). So funny that it took away from the rest of the picture. After a private screening for Hollywood dignitaries, Barbara Stanwyck knelt in front of Gloria Swanson and kissed the hem of her skirt. Norma goes to visit Cecil B. DeMille, several of whose films Swanson had starred in. DeMille." "[18] Rumors at the time had it that Hepburn wanted a family, but when Holden told her that he had had a vasectomy and having children was impossible, she moved on. This parallel narrative--two perspectives from the same character, one omniscient, the other blissfully ignorant--that converge at the moment of Joe's death, are a major reason the film retains such dramatic and emotional power. Principal photography took place from 11 April to 18 June 1949. When Billy Wilder went back to him later to secure a close-up, DeMille charged him another $10,000. He had made Swanson a star by. We all are." Paramount always labeled that studio as its Long Island Studios. Whether he was the washed up screenwriter of Sunset Boulevard or the reluctant hero of The Bridge on the River Kwai, Holden kept audiences engrossed. The exterior shots were of a house located not on Sunset but Irving Boulevard, near the corner of Wilshire, owned by the J. Paul Getty family. Every character is jaded, except the oldest players. Since her part required her to gaze at the newsreel cameramen and "fans" (the waiting police) gathered in the foyer below, she couldn't watch where she placed her feet. Costume designer Edith Head found working on the film to be one of her greatest challenges. After living in the home for a year he moved, and the house sat vacant for a little over a decade, earning the moniker "The Phantom House" in the process. Billy Wilder wanted a fresh face for the part of Betty Schaefer. It is one of the most indelible films you will ever see. In the film Gloria is seen playing cards with three silent film stars: Buster Keaton, H.B. You used to be in silent pictures. . She hates all of Joes writing except for about six pages. In an interview Wilder gave in 1996 he claimed that the film which eventually became SUNSET BOULEVARD began as a comedy for Mae West and Marlon Brando. Wilder changed the scene so that DeMille offered Lamarr's chair to Norma without Lamarr being present. The next decade saw Holden's career flourish. There was a maharajah who came all the way from India to beg one of her silk stockings. Only 950 were made from 1924 to 1931. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357). The silent comedian had a reputation as one of Hollywoods best bridge players. In his place, Wilder hired Buster Keaton. The Tragic 1981 Death Of Sunset Boulevard Star William Holden Grunge 2.14M subscribers Subscribe 486 18K views 3 weeks ago #Actor #Hollywood #SunsetBoulevard While Actor William Holden. 25 on AFI's list of all-time great leading men. Those offices later became the home of the "Star Trek" art department. Nothing else! [39][46] He dictated in his will that the Neptune Society cremate him and scatter his ashes in the Pacific Ocean. Now that we are getting closer to Awards Season in here in Hollywood, Im getting more and more interest from nominees and prospective nominees who want to know in advance if they are going home with the gold, Marie Bargas, known for years as the Hollywood Witch, told Den of Geek. Norma, the aging silent-movie star who ensnares down-at-the-heels screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden), is the vamp become vampire (look at those clawlike hands! Strange? Words are as good as sex to two writers. He just didnt have what it takes. X. Norma is perceived as the evil force, even if she uses a white phone while Betty is relegated to a poor black phone. The ocean?' When Joe Gillis says, "They'll love it in Pomona," most people assume (correctly) that Pomona is intended to be representative of just about any average American town. Sad as this may sound, to the day he died, Holden insisted Bogart was a bastard. This film was originally released in the United States as The Christmas Tree and on home video as When Wolves Cry. But attempts to turn the movie into a stage musical began almost immediately, spearheaded by none other than Gloria Swanson. Film News. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the film Stalag 17 (1953) and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for the television miniseries The Blue Knight (1973). (1950) in my head, and I'd always sort of related to that character floating in . Director Cecil B. DeMille, a pioneer of silent Hollywood who was still a top director when "Sunset Boulevard" was shot in 1949, also famously played himself. [22] The golden run at the box office continued with Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), from a best-selling novel, with Jennifer Jones, and Picnic (1955), as a drifter, in an adaptation of the William Inge play with Kim Novak. When Joe and Betty stroll around the studio back lot they pass through the Washington Square set that was used in The Heiress (1949). He was Judy Hollidays tutor in Born Yesterday (1950) and played a war correspondent in Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955). Gloria Swanson does a famous impression of Charles Chaplin as the "Little Tramp," but Chaplin's name is never mentioned. Holden's films after that time had not impressed Wilder (in the 1940s Holden's movies were decidedly mediocre). About 28:00 in, when Max is playing the organ, it is the same chords that Captain Nemo (James Mason) plays on his organ aboard the Nautilus in "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea." Wilder used real names like Darryl Zanuck, Tyrone Power, and Alan Ladd. De Mille at Paramount, the director is shooting the film Samson and Delilah, which he was actually shooting at the time. Technically the address was 641 S Irving Blvd but the estate lay at the corner of Irving and Wilshire Blvd. Well, not everybody! Holden was born William Franklin Beedle, Jr., on April 17, 1918, in O'Fallon, Illinois, son of Mary Blanche Beedle (ne Ball), a schoolteacher, and her husband William Franklin Beedle, an industrial chemist. Warner took the part. I instantly fell in love - both with the movie itself and with its handsome 32-year old male lead, William Holden. - 65th Anniversary (25) Film Noir Through the Years (3) Movies Set in Hollywood (3) Our Favorite Male-Female Duos (1) The History of Golden Globe Winners for Best Actor and Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama (1) Our Favorite Stills From "The Movies" (1) Movies About Movies (1) 77 Years of Golden Globes Best Picture Winners (1) Mae West rejected the role of Norma Desmond because she felt she was too young to play a silent-film star. When Norma Desmond says to the guard at the "Paramount Studio" gates, "Without me there wouldn't be any 'Paramount Studio'" the words could apply to Gloria Swanson herself, as she was the studio's top star for six years running. So in that scene, William Holden is driving over the future locations of Walk of Fame stars dedicated to the two people arguably most responsible for his success in Hollywood. The great big white elephant of a mansion on Sunset Boulevard was actually on Wilshire Boulevard and would be used again as the abandoned mansion in the film Rebel Without a Cause. The mundane accident that took the Hollywood actor's life was made even worse by the fact that nobody found his body for a week afterward, according to the Associated Press. Read more of his work here or find him on Twitter @tsokol. There's a little dig in the scene when Cecil B. DeMille finds out that Paramount has been calling Norma Desmond because it wants to rent her car for "the Crosby picture." He made two more films with Olson: Force of Arms (1951) at Warner Bros. and Submarine Command (1951) at Paramount. During Norma Desmond's New Years' Eve party, the band begin to play the song 'Diane', the theme of the 1927 film 7th Heaven (1927). Wilder and his co-writers reversed several elements, and there was no official connection between the movie and Waugh's book. Cecil B. DeMille had a pet name for Gloria Swanson: "Young Fellow". All of the silent film stars mentioned by Norma, Joe, Betty and Max were either dead or no longer active in films by 1950. Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard took the tinsel out of Tinseltown, the gild off the golden boy, and the cover off a forgotten murder. Holden served as a second and then a first lieutenant in the United States Army Air Force during World War II, where he acted in training films for the First Motion Picture Unit, including Reconnaissance Pilot (1943). Ultimately she retired completely from films, making only sporadic appearances, notably in Airport 1975 (1974). It opened on Broadway at the Minskoff Theater on November 17, 1994, ran for 977 performances and won the 1995 Tony Awards for Best Musical, Book and Score. Youre killing yourself for an empty house. Marshman Jr. was hired to help batten down a script that was giving Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett great difficulty. He contributed to Altvariety, Chiseler, Smashpipe, and other magazines. It was only natural that he should film several sequences on the studio's backlots. The two starred in the films The Lion (1962) and The 7th Dawn (1964). is a 1950 American black comedy [1] [2] film noir [3] directed and co-written by Billy Wilder, and produced and co-written by Charles Brackett. Norma Desmond promised she would never desert her audience again. The death was just one of many infamous Hollywood scandals of the 1920s, which included the Roscoe Arbuckle bottle rape trial, the death of Olive Thomas, the mysterious death of Thomas H. Ince, and the drug-related deaths of Wallace Reid, Barbara La Marr, and Jeanne Eagels. As day breaks. Zach Laws, Chris Beachum. Director Cecil B. DeMille, silent film actors Buster Keaton, H. B. Warner, and Anna Q. Nilsson played waxy versions of themselves. She offered Peavey 10 dollars to identify Taylors grave in the Hollywood Park Cemetery and had someone wait there in a white sheet to scare it out of him. Gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, who plays herself in the movie, wrote that Billy Wilder was crazy about Evelyn Waughs book The Loved One, and the studio wanted to buy it.. Norma Desmond was the greatest of them all. Marion Davies owned a famous ocean-front mansion in Santa Monica. When filming began, William Holden was 31 and Gloria Swanson was 50, the same stated age as her character. Marlon Brando was considered, but the producers thought he was too much of an unknown as a film actor. For the clip of the vintage film that Norma was watching Paramount couldn't find anything suitable so Gloria provided it from her own collection. Although they don't have a scene together in this film, Hedda Hopper and Buster Keaton had worked together in the 1932 comedy Speak Easily (1932), both were among the many stars appearing in the 1931 two-reeler The Stolen Jools (1931), and they both appeared in a 1958 episode of The Garry Moore Show (1958) that also featured Carol Burnett, who years later would spoof the Norma Desmond character regularly on her own variety show. He followed it with Damien: Omen II (1978) and had a cameo in Escape to Athena (1978), which co-starred his real-life love interest Stefanie Powers. After the. Norma's bed originally belonged to French actress/singer Gaby Deslys. When the movie first dropped, Louis B. Mayer, the Mayer in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, told everyone who would listen that Wilder disgraced the industry that made him and fed him, and urged that he be tarred and feathered, and run out of Hollywood. Wilder, who had been feeding himself for quite some time, told Meyer to go fuck himself. Newspapers printed love letters between 19-year-old former child star and screen idol Mary Miles Minter and Taylor. Microphones would catch the last gurgles, and Technicolor would photograph the red, swollen tongues. is directed toward his associate producer, Henry Wilcoxon, who had starred in his epics Cleopatra (1934), The Crusades (1935) and Unconquered (1947), later moving to a position behind the camera as DeMille's associate, which he held until the older man's death in 1959. He would slay, "I have no idea! Charles Brackett and Wilder were just as adamant that nothing in their scripts should be changed, and nothing new added. A true Hollywood horror story. He became bitter about the throwaway roles Hollywood kept giving him. (as Arthur Schmidt) This car has been on display at the National Automobile Museum in Turin, Italy since 1972. Some speculated it was because he was dating an older woman at the time (actress Libby Holman, 16 years his senior) and didn't want people to think the movie was a parody of that relationship. The murder made it to the late editions, radio, and television because one of the biggest old-time stars was involved. While Hollywood Blvd. preppy-3 15 March 2008. He played an older version of Joe in Sidney Lumets classic Network (1976), written by the cynical Paddy Chayefsky. His family moved to South Pasadena when he was three. Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard is one of his three or four masterpieces, a seminal Hollywood black comedy-satire, which unlike most films keeps improving with the passage of time.. Benfiting from a glorious and iconic cast, the film concerns a faded silent film star, played by Gloria Swanson (in a variation of her own onscreen persona), who lives in the past with her butler (and former . Clift's biographers say it was because he had a strong following among older women, who wrote him letters describing how they'd like to mother him, and he didn't want to encourage such behavior. At the end of her acceptance speech, she paid him a personal tribute: "I loved him very much, and I miss him. The two men never worked together again. This indicates that he is smoking filterless cigarettes, which was the norm for that era until filters became the standard after the mid-'50s. Both Keaton and Hopper died the same day, on February 1, 1966, at the ages of 70 and 80 respectively, both in Los Angeles. Von Stroheim didnt know how to drive, and the scene where hes driving the exotic leopard-upholstered Isotta-Fraschini was shot as the car was being towed. In 1969, Holden made a comeback when he starred in director Sam Peckinpah's graphically violent Western The Wild Bunch,[4] winning much acclaim. The first name of the Joe Gillis character was Dan in an early draft of the screenplay, then altered to Dick, and finally to Joe just before filming began. The character of Norma Desmond is modeled on the fate of several leading actresses of the silent era. The actor-turned-director-turned-actor-again, who had indeed been one of the great silent-filmmakers, winced at playing a character so self-referential and demeaning, but he needed the money. When Norma is telling Joe about how rich she is, she mentions a beach house and downtown real estate. It was meant to be slightly humorous in a morbid way, but the audience at the first test screening found it flat-out hysterical, setting the wrong mood for the rest of the picture. If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Peavey reportedly wore flashy golf clothes but didnt own golf clubs and had been arrested for social vagrancy and booked on lewd and dissolute charges just a few nights before the murder. There were actually three mansions used during filming. She looks like a mannequin of a . To shoot Joe and Norma dancing together at her New Year's Eve party, cameraman John F. Seitz used a dance dolly---a wheeled platform attached to the camera. Erich von Stroheim, who made the masterpiece Greed in 1924, directed Swanson in Queen Kelly (1928), the flick Holdens character cuddles up with Norma to watch in the dark screening room of the dark mansion. Carol Burnett spoofed the film several times on her TV variety show. His body was found four days later. If anything, its observations on the greedy machinations of Tinseltown are truer now than they were in 1950. The undertaker, who appears for a few seconds early on with the white casket for Norma's deceased pet chimp, was veteran actor Franklyn Farnum, who played extras in over 1,000 films during his lengthy but unsung career. Normand was the last person known to have seen Taylor alive and she was grilled by the Los Angeles Police Department as a result. A few years later, Stephen Sondheim became interested in writing a musical version of his own, working with writer Burt Shevelove (with whom he ended up writing A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum). The original nitrate negatives for the film have long disappeared. Holman was 16 years older than him and was afraid people would think the movie was a parody of their relationship. Although Sheldrake's musings on a film about the story of a female baseball player was seen as humorous, the movie "A League of Their Own" would do just that 42 years later. The last name of the studio executive played by Fred Clark is Sheldrake. Wilder was, well, the wilder of the two, often bawdy and crass, while Brackett was genteel. According to both versions of the morgue prologue script, Gillis' body is admitted on 5/17/49 (as indicated by a toe tag). Queen Kelly nearly ruined both of their careers: von Stroheim was replaced as director midway through after complaints from Swanson about the racy material and arguments with the producer (JFK's father!) She produced and starred in Sadie Thompson and The Love of Sunya. The mansion belonged to the second Mrs. Jean Paul Getty, who rented it on condition that if she did not like the swimming pool the studio would have to add for the film, it would cover it over and restore the original landscaping. He was perfection on and off-screen. Holden was a bit of an anti-hero, or at least a very flawed hero. Oh, and while were at it, Wilder didnt submerge any cameras to get that underwater shot. The restoration was performed at Lowry Digital by Barry Allen and Steve Elkin. Bogart was not especially friendly toward Hepburn, who had little Hollywood experience, while Holden's reaction was the opposite, wrote biographer Michelangelo Capua. His deal was considered one of the best ever for an actor at the time, with him receiving 10% of the gross, which earned him over $2.5 million, however, Holden stipulated that he should only receive a maximum of $50,000 per year from the film. When Joe Gillis and Norma Desmond watch one of Norma's old silent movies, they are watching a scene from Queen Kelly (1932), starring a young Gloria Swanson. The studio needed an actor who the audience could believe wrote a story about Okies in the Dust Bowl that played on a torpedo boat by the time it hit the screen. This was a first for Gloria Swanson, but proved a big boon in helping her develop her character's descent into madness. In fact,Bob Thomas, Holden's biographer, said that the actor's addiction counselor predicted his demise. Clift was also wary of appearing in the film because he, like the character of Joe, was having an affair with a wealthy older former actress, Libby Holman.

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