- Born
- Died
- Birth nameSamuel Wilder
- Nickname
- The Viennese Pixie
- Height5′ 9½″ (1.77 m)
- Originally planning to become a lawyer, Billy Wilder abandoned that career in favor of working as a reporter for a Viennese newspaper, using this experience to move to Berlin, where he worked for the city's largest tabloid. He broke into films as a screenwriter in 1929 and wrote scripts for many German films until Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. Wilder immediately realized his Jewish ancestry would cause problems, so he emigrated to Paris, then the US. Although he spoke no English when he arrived in Hollywood, Wilder was a fast learner and thanks to contacts such as Peter Lorre (with whom he shared an apartment), he was able to break into American films. His partnership with Charles Brackett started in 1938 and the team was responsible for writing some of Hollywood's classic comedies, including Ninotchka (1939) and Ball of Fire (1941). The partnership expanded into a producer-director one in 1942, with Brackett producing and the two turned out such classics as Five Graves to Cairo (1943), The Lost Weekend (1945) (Oscars for Best Picture, Director and Screenplay) and Sunset Boulevard (1950) (Oscars for Best Screenplay), after which the partnership dissolved. (Wilder had already made one film, Double Indemnity (1944) without Brackett, as the latter had refused to work on a film he felt dealt with such disreputable characters.) Wilder's subsequent self-produced films would become more caustic and cynical, notably Ace in the Hole (1951), though he also produced such sublime comedies as Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960) (which won him Best Picture and Director Oscars). He retired in 1981.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Michael Brooke <[email protected]>
- Billy Wilder is an Austrian-born American film director and screenwriter whose career spanned more than five decades.
He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of the Hollywood Golden Age of cinema. With The Apartment (1960), Wilder became the first person to win Academy Awards as producer, director, and screenwriter for the same film.
Wilder became a screenwriter in the late 1920s while living in Berlin. Later he left 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 (1939), starring Greta Garbo. Wilder established his directorial reputation with an adaption of James M. Cain's Double Indemnity (1944), a film noir. He 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). In 1950, Wilder co-wrote and directed the Sunset Boulevard (1950), as well as Stalag 17 (1953) in 1953.
From the mid-1950s on, Wilder made mostly comedies. Among the classics created in this period are 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.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Tango Papa
- SpousesAudrey Young(June 30, 1949 - March 27, 2002) (his death)Judith Frances Coppicus(December 22, 1936 - March 4, 1946) (divorced, 2 children)
- ChildrenVictoria Wilder
- ParentsMax WilderEugenia Wilder
- RelativesW. Lee Wilder(Sibling)Myles Wilder(Niece or Nephew)
- His movies frequently started with narration
- Films feature a sharp wit and characters who frequently try to change their identity.
- A few of his films feature scenes where characters play cards (Sunset Boulevard (1950), Stalag 17 (1953), The Apartment (1960)). Wilder himself was an avid bridge and poker player.
- Frequently cast Marilyn Monroe, William Holden, Jack Lemmon and Fred MacMurray. Wilder directed Jack Lemmon in seven movies: The Apartment (1960), Avanti! (1972), Buddy Buddy (1981), The Fortune Cookie (1966), The Front Page (1974), Irma la Douce (1963) and Some Like It Hot (1959).
- Films often featured low key lighting
- Once told Billy Bob Thornton that he was too ugly to be an actor and he should write a screenplay for himself in which he could exploit his less than perfect features. Thornton later collected an Oscar for his Sling Blade (1996) screenplay.
- Wilder had tried to enter the U.S. via Mexico, where U.S. officials repeatedly denied him entry for several months. At the point of losing hope, he went to a new immigration officer who asked him his profession. After stating he was a filmmaker, the officer stamped his papers, and upon entering the U.S. the officer said,"Make good ones, then."
- His idol and mentor was German director Ernst Lubitsch. Wilder always kept a sign hanging in his office that asked, "How would Lubitsch do it?"
- Not having seen his mother and stepfather since he went to Berlin in 1933 to make films, he joined American patrols through war-torn Europe during WWII. Through intense research he learned they had been murdered in concentration camps and his grandmother had died in a Polish ghetto. He usually declined to discuss this. However, once, while directing a film, an actor expressed sympathy for the Nazi character he was playing, causing Wilder to roar, "Those bastards killed my mother!!!".
- He collaborated closely with Steven Spielberg on the script for Schindler's List (1993), and was one of several directors considered to direct it (Roman Polanski and Martin Scorsese; both turned down the project). Although Wilder strongly considered directing Schindler's List (1993), he felt he was a little too old (he had already retired) and the subject was almost too personal (his mother, step-father and grandmother were killed in the Holocaust). It was ultimately Wilder who told Spielberg he should direct it.
- [after directing Marilyn Monroe for the second time in Some Like It Hot (1959)] I have discussed this with my doctor and my psychiatrist and they tell me I'm too old and too rich to go through this again.
- Some pictures play wonderfully to a room of eight people. I don't go for that. I go for the masses. I go for the end effect.
- Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles isn't a realist.
- My English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop [Desmond Tutu].
- A bad play folds and is forgotten, but in pictures we don't bury our dead. When you think it's out of your system, your daughter sees it on television and says, "My father is an idiot."
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