Writer turned director turned producer Billy Wilder
contributed to a plethora of highly successful films of varying genres
over the course of his 50+ year Hollywood film career, receiving
an incredible eight Academy Award nominations as Best Director
(second only to William Wyler
who had twelve). He won the award twice, but even more amazing
is the fact that he was nominated twelve times for Best Screenplay awards,
and he took three of these home. Perhaps better than any other director of
his time, Wilder succeeded in creating films of substance which appealed
to (most) critics and audiences alike.
Claudette Colbert
and Gary Cooper in BLUEBEARD'S
EIGHTH WIFE (1938), an Ernst Lubitsch comedy about a millionaire (Cooper)
whose eighth wife (Colbert)
tries to make sure she's the last. Wilder co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Brackett based on a French
play by Alfred Savoir.
Featuring
Olivia de Havilland,
Charles Boyer and Paulette Goddard,
HOLD BACK THE DAWN (1941) is the story of a spinster American school teacher (de
Havilland) taken advantage of by a foreign gigolo who wants to immigrate to
the United States. The film earned six Oscar nominations including one for Best
Picture and one for the Wilder-Brackett screenplay based on Ketti Frings book.
Wilder made his Hollywood directorial debut with
another comedy, THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR (1942) starring Ginger Rogers and
Ray Milland. Then in 1944, he branched out into the emerging genre
of film-noir, writing and directing the now-classic DOUBLE INDEMNITY
(1944) with Barbara
Stanwyck, Fred MacMurry
and Edward G. Robinson,
for which he received his third Academy Award nomination for Best Writing and
his
first nominated as Best Director.
Proof that Wilder was more than just a writer who could
direct, in 1945 he led Ray
Milland to a Best Actor Oscar for his performance as a frustrated writer
who spirals into alcoholism and lands in the psychiatric ward of a hospital
after a weekend binge. In addition to
Milland's award, Wilder won
his first two Academy Awards -- one as Best Director and one for the
screenplay he co-wrote with Charles Brackett. The film was also named
Best Picture of the year.
Music Clips:
"The
Bottle, First Meeting" (clip) by
Miklos
Rozsa (a .MP3 file). "Love
Scene and Finale" (clip) by
Miklos
Rozsa (a .MP3 file).
(For help opening the multimedia files, visit the plug-ins
page.)