how old was william holden in sunset boulevard

how old was william holden in sunset boulevard

The name "Norma Desmond" was chosen from a combination of silent-film star Norma Talmadge and silent movie director William Desmond Taylor, whose still-unsolved murder is one of the great scandals of Hollywood history. [45], According to the Los Angeles County Coroner's autopsy report, Holden bled to death in his apartment in Santa Monica, California, on November 12, 1981, after lacerating his forehead from slipping on a rug while intoxicated and hitting a bedside table. The first-floor set of Norma Desmond's mansion was also used in the western comedy Fancy Pants (1950) starring Bob Hope and Lucille Ball, giving fans a chance to see it in full color. And, of course, a pool. Billy Wilder had worked on a script for a Swanson picture years earlier called "Music in the Air (1934)" and had forgotten about it. The apartments, and the "Alto Nido" sign out front that is glimpsed briefly in the film, are still there. She is ever the star. [42][citation needed]. Buster Keaton appears only in the bridge party scene and utters the word "Pass" twice. Youre killing yourself for an empty house. over the spiraling budget. She worked closely with Gloria Swanson on Norma Desmond's wardrobe, as she figured Swanson would have had a better idea of what women of that time would have worn and what they would be wearing now. But it's also a love story, and the love keeps it from becoming simply a waxworks or a freak show. Zach Laws, Chris Beachum. Cinematographer John Seitz put a mirror on the bottom of the pool and filmed the reflection. ", After serving with the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II, he returned to Hollywood and in 1950 he got his first substantial role in Billy Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard," per Britannica. As a practical joke, during the scene where William Holden and Nancy Olson kiss for the first time, Billy Wilder let them carry on for minutes without yelling "Cut!" On the advice of Libby Holman, Montgomery Clift, who had signed to play the part of Joe Gillis, broke his contract just two weeks prior to the start of shooting. Normand made movies with the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle, and lived like life was one Wild Party. 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. For some scenes, cinematographer John F. Seitz would sprinkle dust into the air so it could be caught by the lights and create a moody effect. For the first industry screening, Paramount executives invited several silent-film stars. 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. Was the inspiration for Metallica's 1997 song "The Memory Remains". and Crescent Heights Blvd. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett's 17th and final screenplay collaboration. Included among the 25 films on the American Film Institute's 2005 list of AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores. That's a reference to the traditional grey morning suit worn by the groom at a formal wedding. On the basis of this film and largely due to his continuing association with director Billy Wilder, Holden would reach the zenith of his career from 1950-'57. Words are as good as sex to two writers. And if you find it a little odd to hear dead men telling their own tales via narration, it is less strange than hearing it from a bunch of corpses with toe-tags talking it over in the LA county morgue, which was the way the movie was originally shot. According to the DVD commentary by Wilder biographer Ed Sikov, this story was most likely invented/exaggerated by Billy Wilder. The next decade saw Holden's career flourish. According to both versions of the morgue prologue script, Gillis' body is admitted on 5/17/49 (as indicated by a toe tag). Every time I go to L.A., which isn't too often, I look at these palm-bemused, once smart stucco facades, and wonder if a Norma Desmond from a later era might be hiding from the world inside them, buttressed by cable TV (AMC or TCM, no doubt), a poodle named FiFi or Sir Francis, walk-in closets full of leopard-print Capri pants that haven't fit in decades, and a world class liquor cabinet that has seen heads of state under the table on a good night. The only film to be nominated for Best Actor and Actress Oscars that year. When filming began, William Holden was 31 and Gloria Swanson was 50, the same stated age as her character. Upon telephoning her, however, Wilder found that Negri's Polish accent, which had killed her career, was still too thick for such a dialog-heavy film. The forensics team rolled him over and saw he had been shot at least once in the back with a small-caliber pistol. 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. Joes voice even starts to take on more and more of her theatrical flourish after too much exposure. You see, this is my life, she promised. Holden, just 63 when he died, had most recently appeared in the Blake Edwards' film "S.O.B." Wilder was, well, the wilder of the two, often bawdy and crass, while Brackett was genteel. a mean old woman who looks and acts a little like Ma Bates if she'd been dead for several years but was somehow still just as talkative and feisty. His body was found four days later. This can be deduced from the fact that when he pulls one out of the pack he turns the bottom end up to his mouth. Initially, writer-director Wilder envisioned the movie as a straightforward comedy, and the famously saucy West seemed like a perfect fit. 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. Charles Brackett and Wilder were just as adamant that nothing in their scripts should be changed, and nothing new added. "No, don't let it be true. It said so on the chart from her astrologer, who read DeMilles horoscope. Sondheim respectfully stopped work on the project and, on the same grounds, later declined an offer to write the score for a proposed movie remake., Additional Sources: But it was too difficult to put a camera underwater to get the shot, so Wilder and cinematographer John Seitz came up with an ingenious solution: they put a mirror on the bottom of the pool and filmed the reflection from above. Location scenes at Norma Desmond's mansion were shot not on Sunset Boulevard but on Wilshire Boulevard. Sunset Boulevard is a noir film and like many of the post-World War II dark classics, it is covered with a thick sheen of cynicism. She looks like a mannequin of a . According to the Los Angeles Times, the actor long experienced alcoholism, and though he was able to avoid drinking when with lover Stefanie Powers, it ultimately helped pave the way for his death. Their relationship makes the film as much a love story as it is a noir film, because if ever there is a femme fatale, it is Norma Desmond. 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. For Swanson, whose career was already being threatened by the advent of talkies, Queen Kelly was another blow. Forensic evidence recovered at the scene suggested that he was conscious for at least half an hour after the fall. It's the pictures that got small," was voted #24, out of 100. William Holden movies: 15 greatest films, ranked worst to best, include 'Sunset Boulevard,' 'Network,' 'Stalag 17'. This dynamic served them well for years, each man's extreme tendencies being balanced by the other's, but during Sunset Boulevard it finally became unworkable. William Holden (born William Franklin Beedle Jr.; April 17, 1918 November 12, 1981) was an American actor and one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1950s. The same musical quote from "Salome" is used again as she descends the stairs, where Waxman segues into his own original musical statement of "The Dance of the Seven Veils". 10 films that began filming without a finished script, Donald Trumps Bad Romance with Hollywood Began Before Parasite, Shazam! It always will be! Brackett and Wilder worked together on more than a dozen movies including The Lost Weekend. It also alludes to the fact that Pomona was one of three towns in California's Inland Empire region (Riverside and San Bernardino were the others) that were frequently used during Hollywood's Golden Age for testing preview audiences' reactions to unreleased films. And what faces. Gillis: "No, swimming pool." In July 1941, he married 25-year old actress Brenda Marshall, who commanded five times his income. William Haines, along with fellow silent screen veterans Buster Keaton and Anna Q. Nilsson, was approached to play one of Gloria Swanson's bridge partners. In one week, she received 17,000 fan letters. In fact, such was the buzz about the film during production that the viewing of the dailies became one of the hottest tickets on the lot. (The book is about a failed screenwriter who works for a cemetery and lives with a forgotten silent-film star.) Neither did Toward the Unknown (1957), the one film Holden produced himself. The writer was almost all washed up, one step ahead of the finance company, parking his car in a lot behind the shoeshine parlor run by Rudy, a guy who never asked any questions about finances because he could just look at the peoplesr heels and know the score. "I know how it's going to be," Holden said (per The Huntsville Item). (as Arthur Schmidt) Some, including Holden himself and one of his close confidants, could foresee the death (per The Huntsville Item). Part of the dialogue goes: Fat Man: "Where did you drown? One of the few showy bits of camerawork in the film is near the beginning, when the corpse floating in Norma Desmond's pool is seen from underneath. Wilder changed the scene so that DeMille offered Lamarr's chair to Norma without Lamarr being present. The actor's second major breakthrough occurred when Wilder cast him in the lead of the. Sunset Boulevard told an old familiar story. The larger version is seen at the temple that Samson brings down in the movie Samson and Delilah (1949), which Cecil B. DeMille was shooting when Norma visits him at Paramount. If Gillis is accurate in stating that his meeting with Norma occurred some six months prior, the action of the film takes place between mid-November 1948 and mid- May 1949. Newspapers printed love letters between 19-year-old former child star and screen idol Mary Miles Minter and Taylor. The stars read the stars. The photos of the young Norma Desmond that decorate the house are all genuine publicity photos from Gloria Swanson's heyday. This makes her the youngest of the cast members, excluding any extras. You used to be big. The murder made it to the late editions, radio, and television because one of the biggest old-time stars was involved. Well, not everybody! Her Stockholm Syndrome is positively infectious. The moment he discovers that life could be beautiful, Norma slits her wrist with Joes razor. 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. Holden had another hit with The World of Suzie Wong (1960) with Nancy Kwan, which was shot in Hong Kong. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett almost came to blows over the montage depicting Norma's preparations for her comeback. Billy Wilder wanted a fresh face for the part of Betty Schaefer. Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Every character is jaded, except the oldest players. Haines declined and fellow screen veteran H.B. The movie was previewed with this opening, in Illinois, Long Island (NY) and Poughkeepsie (NY). It was a big hit, as was The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954), a Korean War drama with Kelly.[20][21]. A true Hollywood horror story. Holden earned his first Best Actor Oscar nomination for the role.[11]. Holden's career took off again in 1950 when Billy Wilder tapped him to play a down-at-heel screenwriter taken in by a faded silent film actress (Gloria Swanson) in Sunset Boulevard. Prior to joining the Houston Chronicle, Gonzales worked as a night cops reporter at The. [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. The director turned actor was still able to steer the expensive Italian car into the Paramount gate. Director Cecil B. DeMille, silent film actors Buster Keaton, H. B. Warner, and Anna Q. Nilsson played waxy versions of themselves. In a scene described by director Billy Wilder as one of the best he'd ever shot, the body of Joe Gillis is rolled into the morgue to join three dozen other corpses, some of whom--in voice-over--tell Gillis how they died. But it wasn't a bullet from the gun of an aging movie queen that tragically ended his life, but rather, a rug, per The New York Times. In the movie when a cop tries to call in to the coroners office, he cant get an open line because Hedda Hopper is on the phone in Normas room, talking to the Times City Desk and that is more important. True to character, Von Stroheim refused to leave Paris to attend the Academy Awards ceremony, and declared that his nomination for best supporting actor should've been for best actor. The structure in the film required a tennis court, or rather the ghost of a tennis court, with faded markings and a sagging net. This film was originally released in the United States as The Christmas Tree and on home video as When Wolves Cry.

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