Billy Wilder and United Artists Join Hands

Making Industry Out Of One Director's Comedy

Was Billy Wilder, with United Artists, the only director-distributor to make a franchise out of creative output? I mean product flow that for a while seemed reliable as next year’s Christmas, the stamp spelled Comedy on each update they did. Hitchcock's suspense, as I'm helpfully reminded by Scott MacGillivray, was lucrative for Paramount, as was DeMille in spectacle mode under same aegis, but his were spaced wider and seemed more free-standing than a freshest Wilder jape pushing limits farther out than the last. He began the 60’s like a coming decade’s surest thing (in a same way that Woody Allen would become in the 70's, adds Scott). 1959’s Some Like It Hot ($16.4 million in worldwide rentals) was something brand new in suspense-laced farce, had Marilyn Monroe doing precisely a role her public wanted to see, and made saucy the prospect of lead men in extended drag. Wilder habitually came back with profit, excluding WB's The Spirit of St. Louis, for which he’d not be blamed, for it wasn’t him that insisted on (mis)casting James Stewart or choosing this project in the first place (I still say Spirit might have clicked had they used Tab Hunter as Lindbergh --- think of star fee saved, plus youth audience served). Some Like It Hot would be surpassed, awards-wise and profit-wise (for distributing UA at least) by The Apartment, which followed up too on Wilder as edge-pusher at limits long in place re screen expression. Even nearing sixty, he thought like a writer-director half that age where it came to instinct for patron preference.

Any Idea From This Ad and the One Below What This Show Is About? Me Neither.

UA Damage Control Gets Out Conventional Ads, Too Little and Too Late

Franchise notion came quick to UA marketing. To follow general release of Some Like It Hot and The Apartment came combo billing for the “mirth-quakes,” a policy repeatable should Wilder continue his “laff hit” streak. Imagine a double feature for each year between a latest Wilder, a 60’s sky as limitless as UA would enjoy with paired James Bond reissues once that group got propulsion. Trouble was momentum broke by One, Two, Three, a late 1961 release unwisely sold on Billy Wilder’s name and image rather than the film’s cast and comedy values. This was hubris of unique sort for a campaign presumed to reach viewership that may well not know Wilder, despite two home runs he’d hit in a past two seasons. Saul Bass design for poster art did everything but announce what One, Two, Three was about, star James Cagney lost in eccentric scrawl that was cast credits. Worse was alternate style of the director seated on a ladder beneath three balloons, art to promise merriment upon buying a ticket, perhaps, but who was this nondescript man, and why pay to watch him? United Artists must have picked their focus group from Manhattan art houses, or critic circles who thought we all knew Wilder by sight and would take on face value any of his offerings.

Gotham First-Run Ad Celebrates Wilder's Boundary Push

As fuel to fire, the director characterized exhibitors as “being here to steal,” backlash from which was recalled by Greenbriar in June 2006. Shoveling behind the horse parade were quick fixers issuing a “United Artists Advertising Supplement” to clear waft of Bass and Billy Balloons, but better late than never was this time too late for damage done. Or maybe few saw fun in Soviets dropping an Iron Curtain down Berlin’s middle. Writers have asserted this as reason for a One, Two, Three bust, though I think it was too-smug selling that fouled the well. Consequence was four million in worldwide rentals for One, Two, Three, less than half of what The Apartment took, and a fourth of Some Like It Hot’s outcome. Again as with The Spirit of St. Louis, there wasn’t Wilder to blame, his comedy bite sharp as ever, so onward and upward to Irma La Douce for 1963, and hopeful return of a master to (commercial)form. For its part, One, Two, Three, not a candidate for revival, single or paired, was given over to ABC for network premiere on January 31, 1965, just over three years after theatrical. Billy Wilder films were especially unstrung by television, all of his UA’s save Witness For The Prosecution, Some Like It Hot, Avanti!, and Fedora shot in scope. Let the record show that One, Two, Three is lately reborn on Blu-Ray from Kino, even if it needs a refresher in Political Science to get comedic points, but again, that’s no failing of the writer-director. I just wonder if young people today can watch the film with any idea of what is going on in it, or why.

From My Mid-60's Scrapbook: All-Night Jack at a Charlotte Drive-In

Irma La Douce was the daisy, or doozy so far as revenue, with an epic $22.3 million worldwide. The story was about prostitutes, one of them Shirley MacLaine, with Jack Lemmon, most likeable of comic names by then, as her dual-posing customer. These stars, with much good will a residual from The Apartment, kept Irma La Douce out of serious harm’s way, even if more than a few critics saw Wilder’s latest as a joke too ripe to tell general audiences. That last became crux of the pitch, Irma La Douce loudly “naughty” in ads, grown-ups dared to come, let alone bringing children. Again it seemed Wilder was recipient of ideal timing, United Artists paving way later in a same year with Tom Jones, and Never On Sunday previous. Double-billing for encore runs was gravy to UA spoons, Irma La Douce a natural fit with Tom Jones, as was Never On Sunday with thieving-for-fun Topkapi, ideal for drive-ins like these enroute to Charlotte in 1966. Collateral benefits spread to Jack Lemmon, acclaimed “King Of Comedy,” at least by the management of Charlotte’s Queen Drive-In for “6 Solid Hours Of Laffs” as supplied by features not directed by Wilder, but certainly enabled by ones he did: How To Murder Your Wife, Under The Yum-Yum Tree, and Good Neighbor Sam. HE HE HE AND HAW HAW indeed.