Comedy, Romance, Cross-Dressing, and Mafia in Miami

One of the my favorite romantic comedies about music, love, cross-dressing, and the mafia definitely has to be Billy Wilder's 1959 film Some Like It Hot. With the stellar cast of Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and Marilyn Monroe, it is easy to see why this steamy film is on top of so many film lists and continues to delight and entertain nearly fifty years after it was made.

After being witness to the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, saxophonist Joe (Curtis) and bass violin player Jerry (Lemmon) try to hide from the mob by disguising themselves as Josephine and Daphne and joining an all-girl band headed by vocalist and ukulele player Sugar Kane (Monroe) headed for a rich resort in Miami filled with millionaires. Joe falls in love with Sugar and pretends to be a rich millionaire (when he's not in drag as Josephine). Meanwhile "Daphne" is being chased around by real millionaire Osgood Fielding (Joe E. Brown), who's yacht Joe conveniently uses to keep up his charade with Sugar. When the mob comes for a convention in Miami to deal with the two missing witnesses from the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, a whole new dimension of comedy ensues.

For a more detailed synopsis and review, you can click here, thanks to filmsite.org. Legendary costume designer Orry-Kelly designed the dresses worn not only by Monroe but also by Curtis and Lemmon when they were dressed up as their female alter-egos. The cast in this film is not the original cast Wilder and the studio intended at all. Danny Kaye and Bob Hope were considered for the roles that went to Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. Mitizi Gaynor was wanted for Monroe's role of Sugar Kane and director Billy Wilder originally wanted Frank Sinatra as Jerry/Daphne. Of course, the roles being assigned as they were have made the film that much more memorable.

In fact, this film is #81 on IMDB's list of 250 Greatest Movies, made Time's list of 100 Greatest Movies, and AFI voted it #14 on its list of top movies and #1 on it's list of top comedies. Premiere Magazine also voted it as the #1 comedy on its list of 50 Greatest Comedies of All time and Entertainment Weekly voted it 9th on its list of Greatest Comedies of All Time. For more info and reviews on the film, you can check out this article at Frank's Movie Log. For a more in depth look at the filmography, you can check out this site, thanks to film.u-net.com. Screensavour.net has this site, which focuses on both the history and the humor of the film. Finally, a brief overview can be found here, thanks to 1001flicks blogspot. As a special treat, here is the original trailer for the film:

All About Acting Over Forty

If you have not seen All About Eve, I implore you, drop everything you’re doing and go rent it now! It is one of my personal favorites and perhaps one of Bette Davis’s best performances, though you’re free to debate me on that. It remains the Most Nominated Film by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It won six Oscars for Best Supporting Actor, Best Costume Design, Best Director, Best Picture, Best Sound, and Best Screenplay. There isn’t much that can you can say about the greatness of this film that has not already been said. So why talk about it, you might ask?


Since Women’s Lib in the Seventies, there has been much talk about female empowerment, breaking the glass ceiling, and how women sabotage other women. Also, everyone knows about how a Hollywood actress’s roles are cut in half once she turns 40 since most films want young, beautiful women as their leading ladies. After 40, women seem resigned to the roles of either mom, grandma, or cougar. All About Eve is a movie that deals with all of these themes and ideas that still plague actresses and career women in modern days, with the added twist that All About Eve was made in 1950. Being very young, when I think of the Fifties, I think of the Leave It To Beaver and Donna Reed Show reruns I’ve seen. Or something reminiscent of Al’s Diner in Happy Days. The Fifties is not an era one typically associates with ideas of women taking charge of their lives, careers, and especially their men. The film seems completely ahead of its time to me. It amazes me how the lessons learned from still apply today and how the struggles in the movie are still prevalent in today’s Hollywood.

The entire film is a satire of struggling women in theatre. Bette Davis’s brusque, been-around-the-block-before character of Margo Channing is an aging starlet in a world where roles go to young women. Celeste Holm is Karen Richards, Margo’s friend and wife of a playwright who wrote a play especially for Margo in younger days. Anne Baxter plays up-and-comer Eve Harrington who maniacally weasels her way into Margo’s good graces and then steals away her career. Even Marilyn Monroe makes a cameo in a role that soon comes to echo her own rise to stardom, an ingénue who has to use her body to get things done and has the caricature of a dumb blonde. The characters still apply today in modern Hollywood and many actresses face the same struggles as Margo Channing although perhaps not with as much wit.

If you want to further explore what it means to be an actress over forty, I recommend checking out Invisible Women, which tries to find out what is responsible for the phenomena of aging actress disappearing off the screen.