Subject:  ARCHIVE: March 27, 2002 ~BILLY WILDER, famed veteran Oscar-winning Austrian-born Hollywood film director, screenwriter, and producer whose career in Hollywood spanned over five decades, of films like "Double Indemnity", "Sunset Blvd", "Some Like it Hot", and "The Apartment", and regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's Golden Age, dies at 95. ... |
Author:
Bio & PHOTO
|
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
Date Posted: Saturday, March 27, 02:30:03pm
Billy Wilder
[ Samuel Wilder ]
(June 22, 1906 – March 27, 2002)
Austrian film director, screenwriter, and producer whose career in Hollywood spanned over five decades. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of the Hollywood Golden Age of cinema. Wilder's film The Apartment, (1960) gave him the distinction of being the first person to win Academy Awards as producer, director, and screenwriter.
Wilder became a screenwriter in the late 1920s while living in Berlin. After the rise of the Nazi Party, he left Germany in 1933 for Paris, where he made his directorial debut. He moved to Hollywood in 1933, and in 1939 he had a hit when he co-wrote the screenplay for the romantic comedy Ninotchka, starring Greta Garbo. Wilder established his directorial reputation with an adaption of James M. Cain's Double Indemnity (1944), a film noir. Wilder co-wrote the screenplay with crime novelist Raymond Chandler. Wilder earned the Best Director and Best Screenplay Academy Awards for the adaptation of a Charles R. Jackson story, The Lost Weekend (1945), about alcoholism. In 1950, Wilder co-wrote and directed the critically acclaimed Sunset Boulevard, as well as Stalag 17 in 1953.
From the mid-1950s on, Wilder made mostly comedies. Among the classics Wilder created in this period are the Marilyn Monroe vehicles The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Some Like It Hot (1959), and satires such as The Apartment (1960). He directed fourteen different actors in Oscar-nominated performances. Wilder was recognized with the American Film Institute (AFI) Life Achievement Award in 1986. In 1988, Wilder was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. In 1993, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.
Billy Wilder died of pneumonia at his home in Beverly Hills, California on March 27, 2002. He has been battling health problems, including cancer. He was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, Los Angeles near Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Marilyn Monroe's crypt is located in the same cemetery. Wilder died the same day as two other comedy legends: Milton Berle and Dudley Moore. The next day, French newspaper Le Monde titled its front-page obituary, "Billy Wilder dies. Nobody's perfect." – quoting the final gag line in Some Like It Hot. ...
 
Learn MORE of the famed Hollywood screnwriter/director ...
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000697/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Wilder
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/6295551/billy-wilder
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
| |
Feedback: 
