Some Like It Hot

by Jerry Roberts
December 19, 2004

For some, comedy requires hard work and years of refinement. For Marilyn Monroe it just seemed to flow naturally. Revisiting her in Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot it is, thereafter, difficult to dismiss her as simply a starlet who found movie stardom via her spectacular pneumatic form. That's because she seems to possess that rare gift of effortless comedic timing . She is a textbook example of how to succeed in comedy without really trying.

I think pairing Marilyn Monroe with a mad comic genius like Billy Wilder was a masterstroke. Wilder was always able to see the full potential in his actors but none better than Monroe as Suger Kane. Monroe was, of course, the most prolific actress in the business and often worked effectively in comic and dramatic roles but she always seemed pigeonholed in the role of the standard sexy blonde and in most of her films she wasn't given much to do. I think she suffered the same problem that plagued people like W.C. Field and later Arnold Schwarzenegger, all were odd ducks with odd features that shelved their images and limited their roles. The only way out was to kid their own image and each in their own way succeeded. Her over-developed form seemed perfect for the kind of lusty palette that Wilder was looking for for Some Like It Hot and he used that form in every possibly leering manner while never exploiting or cheapening.

Because he makes such brilliant use of that form, a steamyness hangs over Some Like It Hot, one of the greatest of all comedies and certainly alone on the very short list of great Hollywood sex comedies. Freud would have eaten this movie for breakfast with it's themes of transvestitism and sexual identities and it's buried themes of homosexuality, lesbianism, oral sex (Sugar complains about always getting "The fuzzy end of the lollipop"), impotence and gender politics. But although the movie is purely about sex it comes out of a plot about other carnal lusts like greed, money and crime.

The movie opens in 1920s Chicago when Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) two jazz musicians who witness the St. Valentine's Day massacre and are spotted briefly by it's architect Spats Columbo (George Raft). On the run from the mob they realize that Spats and his gang will be looking for them in every male band in Chicago and that they're only choice is to get out of town fast . . . as girls. Boarding a train for Florida they now assume the identity of Josephine and Daphne and hook up with an all-girl band. This almost immediately unhinges their sexual desires which come to a boiling point when they first get a gander at the band's ukuele player Suger Cane (Monroe). "Look at that!" Lemmon gasps at her hourglass form "She must have some sort of built-in motor. I tell you, it's a whole different sex." Jerry/Daphne nearly flies apart in a scene where Sugar breaks into the song "Running Wild" while bouncing and jiggling up and down the train aisles. She confides to Joe (as Josephine) that she wants to marry a millionaire because she is tired of chasing her lust for saxaphone players. In Florida, he disguises himself as a millionaire and heir to the Shell Oil fortune but is romantically frigid. Monroe naturally offers her services in the romance department to try and thaw his frozen libido.

Lemmon meanwhile has to fight off the advances of a millionaire and seven time divorcee Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown whose odd face looks like he was born from the pen of Tex Avery). It is this subplot that leads to one of the best dance sequences in movies in which Osgood and "Daphne" tango the night away to a dance that is so perfectly timed that the rose between Lemmon's teeth ends up between Brown's. Then the scene cuts to his gem of a punchline to reveal that Osgood has blindfolded that band.

This is, of course, all just happy deception. Curtis decieves Monroe because of her lusty passion for millionaires. Dressing in thick glasses and yachting togs (and sporting a wicked imitation of Cary Grant) he takes her aboard Osgood's boat and convinces her that he's sex drive is at a standstill (It is a smart choice that she admits from the start that she isn't very bright). The scene should be required viewing for anyone aspiring to be a comedy writer, especially for it's use of timing. Note the double entendre when Curtis lies on the couch and Monroe plants a kiss on him and his foot rises into the shot. "I've got a funny sensation in my toes like someone was barbecuing them over a slow flame." and Monroe without missing a beat, "Let's throw another log on the fire." All heating up to a moment of comic brilliance as Curtis removes those this glasses to reveal that they have steamed up.

What makes the comedy work her is Wilder's volume of jokes of every size and shape, there are set-up gags, short gags, one liners, double entendres and even the dead art of funny names. He packs the frame with wall to wall jokes that sometimes overlap. Most writers would be content with the men in drag plot and the standard jokes that follow but follow the story threads and the layers and you can see that this is an idea that stretched as far as Wilder's imagination will take it. Note how Osgood's midnight Tango sends Lemmon into an early morning rapture, lying horizontally on the hotel bed shaking the castenets and happily announcing to Curtis that he intends to except his proposal of marriage. "Your a guy!" Curtis reasons "and why would a guy want to marry a guy?". "Security!" Lemmon tells him. How can this work? Lemmon has that figured out too.

All these elements are brilliant but the movie would be nothing without Monroe who brings a teddy bear quality to Suger Kane that doesnt make you pity her but simply want her to find what she's looking for. Monroe's timing is spotless, notice how she lands perfectly on little throw-away lines little a happy accident. Never a great singer Monroe carries two musical performances in the movie with a happy, frentic breathlessness. Note how she winks and smirks as she bounds up and down the train aisle to "Running Wild" and notice how she manages to bring everything to a standstill with "I Wanna Be Loved By You" accompanied by a generous evening gown and a perfectly place spotlight that make nudity seem useless. She sells the performance with a breathy seduction that it must have driven the censors quite mad. Wilder makes full use of Monroe's form but doesn't exploit it. Note the casual manner in which he makes full use of her bosom in a low-cut nightie as she talkes to "Josephine" about her passion for saxaphone players (Curtis' character plays, what else?). The Oscar winning costume design by Orrie-Kelly must have come from the gown that Monroe wears later in the film which seems to be see-through and is indeed a treat for the eyes. The gown, I'm told, was pink but utilized with Charles Lang's black and white photography looks flesh-colored and one could mistake her for wearing nothing at all. At times, in fact, it is hard to tell where the gown ends and Marilyn begins.

Just as the movie dodges the censors scissors so too does it dodge breaking it's colorful con games and leaving broken hearts. Both Sugar and Osgood have been duped but neither is left in the dark at the end. Sugar learns of Joe's deception and despite her history decides to love another sax player. Osgood, well, in the movie's legendary closing sequence, he just won't be swayed. In a closing line that is going to live forever in movie history he lets Jerry know that even though he's been duped it's he who is getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop.