March 29, 1959: "Some Like It Hot" Premieres

Left to right: Tony Curtis, Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon

March 29, 1959: Some Like It Hot premieres. It features 3 all-time legends at their peak -- 4, if you count director Billy Wilder.

The film begins in Chicago in 1929, with a pair of jazz musicians: Tony Curtis plays Joe, a saxophone player and an irresponsible ladies' man; and Jack Lemmon plays Jerry, a nervous double bass player. Prohibition is in progress, and Chicago is ground zero for gangland defiance of it. Joe and Jerry work in a speakeasy run by "Spats" Colombo, played by George Raft.

The speakeasy gets raided by the police. Spats finds out a rival gang's leader ratted him out, and so he has the gang gunned down, a reflection of the real-life St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Joe and Jerry see it, and know that Spats know the saw it. They have to get out of Chicago immediately: The weather is cold, but the heat is on them.

They disguise themselves as women named Josephine and Daphne, and join Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators, an all-female band on a train to a gig in nice warm Miami. On board, they meet the band's singer, Sugar Kowalczyk, a.k.a. Sugar Kane, played by Marilyn Monroe. Among the other "girls" in the band is a fiddler played by future Star Trek actress Grace Lee Whitney.

Sugar confides in the new "girls," saying that saxophone players have taken advantage of her in the past, and she wants to meet "a gentle, bespectacled millionaire" in Miami. So, upon arrival, while they perform -- Joe and Jerry in drag -- Joe takes on a 2nd disguise: "Junior," an heir to Shell Oil. Sugar likes him.

Curtis was then married to another blonde bombshell, Janet Leigh. Their daughter, actress Jamie Lee Curtis, was born between the end of filming and the release of the film. Curtis would later make the shocking claim that he didn't like kissing Monroe, the most popular sex symbol of the era.

An actual millionaire, the much-married, aging, mama's-boy Osgood Fielding III, played by Joe E. Brown, pursues "Daphne." Joe convinces Jerry to keep Osgood occupied onshore so that "Junior" can take Sugar to Osgood's yacht, and pass it off as his own. Once on the yacht, to "reel her in," Joe/Junior claims impotence, and that he would marry a woman who could cure him. She "cures him."

While this is going on, Osgood and Jerry/Daphne dance the tango all night. Back at the hotel, Jerry tells Joe, "I'm getting married!" Joe says, "Congratulations. Who's the lucky girl?" Jerry says, "I am!" Joe snaps him out of it, reminding him that he's "a boy."

But at least they're safe, right? Wrong: There's a Mob sit-down in Miami, and Spats is going to be there. They have to flee, and Joe, as Junior, calls Sugar on the phone, and tells her that he has to break up with her and marry a woman of his family's choosing, breaking her heart.

Joe and Jerry hide under a table at the banquet, and see Johnny Paradise, a young hitman played by Edward G. Robinson Jr., son of another actor well-known for playing gangsters, shoot and kill Spats. (There's an inside joke: Johnny is constantly flipping a coin, which was a gesture that Raft had made famous in gangster movies a quarter of a century earlier, possibly also inspiring the Batman villain Two-Face.) Now, they're in the clear of Spats, but not his enemies.

They put on their drag disguises. Joe sees Sugar onstage, singing a lament to lost love. He runs onto the platform and kisses her, causing Sugar to realize that Josephine and Junior are the same person. Jerry persuades Osgood to take "Daphne" and "Josephine" away on his yacht. Sugar runs from the stage at the end of her performance, and jumps aboard Osgood's launch just as it is leaving the dock with Joe, Jerry, and Osgood.

Joe tells Sugar the whole truth, and tells her that she deserves better, but Sugar wants him anyway, realizing he is the first man to genuinely care for her. Meanwhile, Jerry tries to get out of his promise to marry Osgood, by listing reasons why "Daphne" and Osgood cannot marry, including, "I've been living in sin with a saxophone player!" Osgood says, "I forgive you." Daphne says, "I can never have children!" Osgood says, "We can adopt some." Finally, Jerry rips off his wig, and says, "I'm a man!" And Osgood says, "Nobody's perfect."

The film ends there, but leaves it ambiguous as to how Joe and Jerry can stay out of the Mob's crosshairs. There would be no Federal Witness Protection Program until 1970. The easiest presumption is that Osgood could have used his wealth and connections to get them new identities -- identities which did not require them to pose as women.

So here, we have a film with gang violence, premarital sex, impotence, cross-dressing, a potential same-sex marriage, and a man questioning his gender identity -- all this, in a film released in 1959. The Ike Age. The Frigid Fifties, rather than the Fabulous side of the decade. The Hays Code, the puritanical guide that had ruled Hollywood with an iron fist since 1934, refused to approve the film. Ordinarily, this would have been a death blow: People would have been afraid to go see it, lest they be branded as "immoral."

Billy Wilder didn't care. He had already directed Ninotchka, Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17, Sabrina, The Seven Year Itch (with Monroe), Love in the Afternoon, and Witness for the Prosecution. Some of these films had already tried the censors' patience. Along with his next film, The Apartment, Wilder proved that he didn't need the Hays Code's approval, and that people would watch his movies, anyway. It took until 1968, and a few more challenges, for the Code to finally fall.

Some Like It Hot was nominated for 6 Academy Awards, but won only one, for Best Costume Design, Black-and-White -- possibly Wilder's comeuppance for his defiance.

In 1972, the film was adapted into the Broadway musical Sugar, with Elaine Joyce in the title role, and Robert Morse and Tony Roberts as Joe and Jerry. It was re-adapted with an all-black cast under the Some Like It Hot name in 2022, and won 4 Tony Awards, including J. Harrison Ghee, who, as Jerry and Daphne, became, along with Alex Newell for Shucked at the same ceremony, the 1st nonbinary actor to win a Tony Award. (Since both were playing born-male roles, they had been put in the "Best Actor" category, rather than "Best Actress.")

At the time of filming, Marilyn Monroe was married to playwright Arthur Miller, and 4 months pregnant, making her curvier than ever. (I still wonder if Lemmon's line, "It's like Jell-O on springs!" was an ad-lib.) But she lost the baby, and she and Miller soon split up. She died in 1962. Edward G. Robinson Jr., a.k.a. Manny Robinson, also died young, at 40, of a heart attack in 1974. He had outlived his legendary father by only a year.

Joe E. Brown died in 1973, George Raft in 1980, Jack Lemmon in 2001, Billy Wilder in 2002, and Tony Curtis in 2006.

UPDATE: On April 5, 2022, 7 days after posting, the film's last surviving castmember died: Nehemiah Persoff, who played Mob leader "Little Napoleon" in the Miami banquet scene. He was 102 years old.

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March 29, 1959 was a Sunday. Hockey star Brad McCrimmon was born. His sport was into its Stanley Cup Playoffs, but no games were played on this day. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season.

There were 2 games played in the NBA. The Syracuse Nationals beat the Boston Celtics, 133-121 at the Onondaga County War Memorial (now the Upstate University Medical Arena) in Syracuse, New York. Dolph Schayes scored 39 points. And the Minneapolis Lakers beat the St. Louis Hawks, 106-104 at the St. Paul Auditorium in St. Paul, Minnesota. Rookie Elgin Baylor scored 33 points.