how old was william holden in sunset boulevard how old was william holden in sunset boulevard

(1940) followed by the role of George Gibbs in the film adaptation of Our Town (1940), done for Sol Lesser at United Artists.[8]. The first draft of the film was a straightforward comedy about a has-been actress making a comeback, and Wilder saw Mae West in the role. Carol Burnett spoofed the film several times on her TV variety show. "We didn't need dialogue. The restoration was performed at Lowry Digital by Barry Allen and Steve Elkin. (1950) was plagiarized from other scripts. They eventually worked together on several films and became close friends. In his place, Wilder hired Buster Keaton. He became bitter about the throwaway roles Hollywood kept giving him. Holden had his most widely recognized role as "Commander" Shears in David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) with Alec Guinness,[25] a huge commercial success. or "Boulevard"? Sunset Boulevard (1950) 1950, 1h 50min - Drama Gloria Swanson, as Norma Desmond, an aging silent-film queen, and William Holden, as the struggling young screenwriter who is held in thrall by her madness, created two of the screen's most memorable characters in "Sunset Boulevard." Realizing that former actress Hopper would easily dominate the scene, Parsons declined, even though she and Wilder were friends. He was Judy Hollidays tutor in Born Yesterday (1950) and played a war correspondent in Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955). Rudy's shoeshine stand at the parking lot where Gillis hides his car from the creditors was inspired by Oscar Smith's shoeshine stand located just inside the Bronson Gate at the old Paramount Studios, which was a popular hangout for gossip and socializing while Billy Wilder was building his career there. Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor, Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie, Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie, New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor, Venice Film Festival Special Award for Ensemble Acting, Laurel Award for Top Male Dramatic Performance, BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor, Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie, "When Alcoholics drink themselves to death", "William Holden Dead at 63; Won Oscar for 'Stalag 17', "Barbara Stanwyck's Honorary Award: 1982 Oscars", "The Screen Strand Shows 'Invisible Stripes', "30 Days, 30 Classics Day 17: Sabrina (1954) starring Audrey Hepburn, William Holden and Humphrey Bogart", "Screen: Crosby Acts in 'Country Girl'; Film Based on Odets Drama Makes Bow", "The Screen in Review; 'Bridges at Toko-ri' Is Fine Film of War", "Han Suyin dies at 95; wrote 'Many-Splendored Thing', "13 Fascinating Facts About 'The Bridge on the River Kwai', "Columbia Earns as It Holds Coin Due Bill Holden on 10% of 'Kwai', "The Towering Inferno Movie Review (1974)", "Network Movie Review & Film Summary (1976)", "William Holden Gave His All Even "When Time Ran Out", "William Holden's Unscripted Fall From Grace", The William Holden Wildlife Education Center, "West Holden: More than just the son of William Holden", Image of William Holden and Brenda Marshall, Academy Awards, Los Angeles, 1951, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_Holden&oldid=1142631715, Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie Primetime Emmy Award winners, United Service Organizations entertainers, Articles with dead external links from December 2019, Short description is different from Wikidata, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Pages using infobox person with multiple partners, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2022, TCMDb name template using numeric ID from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, episode: "William Holden/Frances Bergen Show", This page was last edited on 3 March 2023, at 14:28. Billy Wilder was actually friendlier with the other leading gossip columnist of the day, Louella Parsons. The car William Holden drives is a P15 Plymouth Special DeLuxe convertible, a model that was produced from 1945-49. If anything, its observations on the greedy machinations of Tinseltown are truer now than they were in 1950. His body was found four days later. (1950), as a way of "art imitating life." He played an older version of Joe in Sidney Lumets classic Network (1976), written by the cynical Paddy Chayefsky. It's the *pictures* that got small. It was George Cukor who suggested Gloria Swanson for the role of Norma Desmond. 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.. 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 one on the Paramount studio soundstage; the one whose driveway William Holden ducks into at 10060 Sunset Blvd; and the one used for the exteriors, which is the one shown here. (1966), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), Network (1976), Coming Home (1978), Reds (1981), Silver Linings Playbook (2012) and American Hustle (2013). [17], Their relationship did not last much beyond the completion of the film. Both Keaton and Hopper died the same day, on February 1, 1966, at the ages of 70 and 80 respectively, both in Los Angeles. The car with the massive chrome grill that the repo men drive is a 1948 DeSoto Custom Club Coupe. Fat Man: "A husky fellow like you?" I instantly fell in love - both with the movie itself and with its handsome 32-year old male lead, William Holden. Winston was one of those who discovered the Golden Boy newcomer and who renamed himin honor of his former spouse!"[3]. Warner, and Anna Q. Nilsson. We'll hear two of his visits to Suspense, beginning with the New Orleans jazz . When filming began, William Holden was 31 and Gloria Swanson was 50, the same stated age as her character. When he drives Norma to Paramount Pictures at the studio gates, the car was pulled with a rope by off-camera grips. The building manager found the body of the legendary actor who starred in 70 films and was a good friend of President Ronald Reagan nearly a week later, per The Washington Post. This was a first for Gloria Swanson, but proved a big boon in helping her develop her character's descent into madness. Holden's films after that time had not impressed Wilder (in the 1940s Holden's movies were decidedly mediocre). When Joe and Betty stroll around the studio back lot they pass through the Washington Square set that was used in The Heiress (1949). . 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). Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett met with Greta Garbo and tried to convince her to make a comeback in the role of Norma Desmond. LAS COSAS DEL QUERER", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sunset_Boulevard_(film)&oldid=1142173541, Best Overall New Extra Features Library Release. He rejects her. London Boulevard (2010) was based on the Ken Bruen novel that was inspired by Sunset Boulevard and features the same trope of an aging actress as the stranger caught in her web. Joe Gillis mentions that the painting of wild horses that covers the projection screen in Norma Desmond's mansion was given to her by "some Nevada Chamber of Commerce." Holden continued to work steadily for the next decade, but Hollywood often had no idea what to do with him. His killer was never identified. In addition to the famous swimming pool, the studio also built sets to exactly duplicate Schwab's Drug Store in Hollywood and the Los Angeles County Morgue. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett almost came to blows over the montage depicting Norma's preparations for her comeback. [49], His death was noted by singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega, whose 1987 song "Tom's Diner", about a sequence of events one morning in 1981, included a mention of reading a newspaper article about "an actor who had died while he was drinking". The stars read the stars. He was a genuine star. Two years later, he was praised for his Oscar-nominated leading performance in Sidney Lumet's classic Network (1976),[34] an examination of the media written by Paddy Chayefsky, playing an older version of the character type for which he had become iconic in the 1950s, only now more jaded and aware of his own mortality. 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. Billy Wilder went into production with only 61 pages of script finished, so he had to shoot more or less in chronological order. The others were Union Station (1950), Force of Arms (1951), and Submarine Command (1951). When crew members asked Billy Wilder how he was going to shoot the burial of Norma's monkey, one of the film's most bizarre scenes, he just said, "You know, the usual monkey-funeral sequence.". And here is how he obtained his new movie tag. American Beauty screenwriter Alan Ball has acknowledged that another Billy Wilder film, The Apartment (1960), influenced that screenplay. 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. The Paramount logo appears as a transparency over the opening shot. The Tragic 1981 Death Of Sunset Boulevard Star William Holden. Gillis smokes unfiltered cigarettes in the film. It was the same technique he had used to shoot Rudolph Valentino's tango in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921). Talk! When Norma Desmond visits her old friend at Paramount, she affectionately calls him "Mr. DeMille" (not Cecil or C.B. "[13] Paramount reunited him with Nancy Olson, one of his Sunset Boulevard costars, in Union Station (1950). 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. 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. Darryl F. Zanuck, Olivia de Havilland, Tyrone Power and Samuel Goldwyn all refused to allow their names to be used in the film, but Billy Wilder decided to use Zanuck's and Power's names anyway. These towns were favored because they were on the way to Palm Springs where, after collecting the audience reaction cards, studio personnel would then go to relax and determine what changes should be made to the previewed films. In the film Gloria is seen playing cards with three silent film stars: Buster Keaton, H.B. Some, including Holden himself and one of his close confidants, could foresee the death (per The Huntsville Item). But it originally began in the L.A. county morgue, with toe-tagged corpsesincluding Joe'sspeaking to each other (in voiceover) about how they died. The name Norma Desmond was a combination of early Hollywoods comedy star Mabel Normand and her lover, silent film director William Desmond Taylor. Florabel Muir, the New York Daily News Hollywood correspondent, thought Peavey was the murderer and tried to ambush him into a confession. Yes, this is Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. This is a reference to the now-mad Norma's final possession by the character of Salome, with whom she'd been so obsessed. In those days there were no buttons on formal shirts. Still, whatever hard feelings there may have been between Swanson and von Stroheim, they were gone by the time Sunset Boulevard came along. When she received her Honorary Oscar at the 1982 Academy Award ceremony, Holden had died in an accident just a few months prior. Even though it wasn't the last scene filmed, Billy Wilder threw a party for her as soon as the shot was finished. The other line, "I am big! ", 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. Brackett was a New York-born novelist and screenwriter, head of the Screen Actors Guild in the late 1930s, and president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1949 to 1955 (during which time he won two screenwriting Oscarsgood news for conspiracy theorists). Wilder and his co-writers reversed several elements, and there was no official connection between the movie and Waugh's book. The photos of the young Norma Desmond that decorate the house are all genuine publicity photos from Gloria Swanson's heyday. Cecil B. DeMille appears in the film on a studio set. He played Bogarts kid brother in Sabrina, Holdens third film with director Billy Wilder, in 1954. Betty is an idealist, more closely resembling Normas rose-colored outlook, but with darker shades she wants to bring to light. Sunset Boulevard DVD (2007) William Holden, Wilder (DIR) cert PG Amazing Value. The body was found by Henry Peavey, who took over for convicted embezzler Edward F. Sands as Taylors valet. The movie opens with a shot of a dead guy floating face down in a pool, and the dead man himself tells us that its Joe Gillis getting bloated in the chlorine. ), and he calls her "young fellow." If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. 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). 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). The film is openly referenced in Soapdish (1991), The Player (1992), Gods and Monsters (1998), Mulholland Drive (2001), Inland Empire (2006) and Be Cool (2005) while the closing scene of Cecil B. Demented (2000) is a direct parody of the final scene of the 1950 classic. Warner, who appears as one of "The Waxworks", had been Gloria Swanson's leading man in Zaza (1923). Sometimes its interesting to see just how bad, bad writing can be. The ocean?' Dont bother with a rewrite, man, take it direct! Suratt believed that DeMille's epic, "The King of Kings" (released in 1927) was based on her screenplay and filed a $1,000,000 plagiarism suit which was settled out of court in 1930. The only extant film elements were 35mm inter-positives struck in 1952, which had undergone a great deal of decay. Holden made a fourth and final film for Wilder with Fedora (1978). Holden appeared uncredited in Prison Farm (1939) and Million Dollar Legs (1939) at Paramount. The actor-turned-director bitched about that goddamned butler role for the rest his life. Well, in the end, he got himself a poolonly the price turned out to be a little high, so Paramount paid to have one installed on the condition that if Mrs. Getty didnt like it, theyd remove it after filming was over. Without Norma Desmond, there wouldnt be any Paramount Pictures. Minters mother Charlotte Shelby was a manipulative stage mother who owned a rare .38 caliber pistol that fired unusual bullets very similar to ones found inside Taylor. 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 . Strange? (She liked it.). Marshman was a journalist but both Wilder and Brackett had been impressed by the critique he had given of their earlier film, The Emperor Waltz (1948). [14], Holden made a third film with Wilder, Sabrina (1954), billed beneath Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. Betty and Joe fall in love after they sneak off to the studio backlot by moonlight to collaborate on a screenplay. 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. Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard took the tinsel out of Tinseltown, the gild off the golden boy, and the cover off a forgotten murder. 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 inter-positive was scanned at 2,000 lines of resolution and electronically restored for the 2002 DVD reissue. If you don't, I will personally shoot you." 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. Besides Tyrone Power, other stars mentioned when Joe Gillis is pitching his "baseball" picture to the producer are Alan Ladd, William Demarest and Betty Hutton. The older actor prided himself on needling people and he needled the shit out of Holden on the first movie, and the second movie was worse because Holden started dating Audrey Hepburn during filming. 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. This is absolutely true, Nancy Reagan continued consulting her astrologer long after she stopped parking at studio lots. Well, they kissed, and kissed, and kept kissing, and the crew began to snicker, and finally Marshall's voice rang out: "Cut, dammit!" Ready? 1751 Vine is still a parking lot across the street from the landmark, Capitol Records building and is the address of both Billy's Wilder's and Barbara Stanwyck's "Hollywood Walk of Fame" stars that were dedicated in 1960. (as Arthur Schmidt) Sunset Boulevard turns the tables on film noir by casting Joe in the oldest role on the books. An out of work writer in Hollywood (Holden) randomly pulls into the driveway of a silent film star (Swanson) who can use the assistance of his writing talent. Not long ago, he was divorced from the actress, Gloria Holden, but carried the torch after the marital rift. Costume designer Edith Head found working on the film to be one of her greatest challenges. Eugene Walter was a prolific Hollywood screenwriter of the 1920s and 1930s. Sunset Blvd. Make-up designer Wally Westmore found that Gloria Swanson's face belied her age and wanted to make her look older. That's the end.". The killing and the media circus that followed it hurt the industry. In 1986 Nancy Olson became the last surviving member of the cast. [12] Swanson later said, "Bill Holden was a man I could have fallen in love with. 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. Unsurprisingly, he was largely self taught, spending countless hours with instruction manuals and newspaper clips, playing all four hands simultaneously until he became an expert.