William Holden, original name William Franklin Beedle, Jr., (born April 17, 1918, O'Fallon, Illinois, U.S.found dead November 16, 1981, Santa Monica, California), American film star who perfected the role of the cynic who acts heroically in spite of his scorn or pessimism. But also much funnier. (1940) followed by the role of George Gibbs in the film adaptation of Our Town (1940), done for Sol Lesser at United Artists.[8]. Previous image. Being born on 17 April 1918, William Holden was 63 years old at the time of his death. Holden's films continued to struggle at the box office, however: Paris When It Sizzles (1964) with Hepburn was shot in 1962 but given a much delayed release, The 7th Dawn (1964) with Capucine and Susannah York, a romantic adventure set during the Malayan Emergency produced by Charles K. Feldman, Alvarez Kelly (1966), a Western, and The Devil's Brigade (1968). Sunset Boulevard English audio Gloria Swanson, as Norma Desmond, an aging silent-film queen, and William Holden, as the struggling young screenwriter who is held in thrall by her madness,. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett met with Greta Garbo and tried to convince her to make a comeback in the role of Norma Desmond. The stars read the stars. Getty always wanted a pool, the poor dope. She reportedly told Clift shed kill herself if he made the movie. When Artie Green introduces Joe to other guests at his New Year's Eve party, he jokingly refers to him as "the well-known screenwriter, uranium smuggler and Black Dahlia suspect", a reference to the infamous unsolved L.A. murder case in 1947 of an aspiring actress known as The Black Dahlia, who was found murdered and dismembered on a street in Los Angeles. ), and he calls her "young fellow." We were close friends for many years. In a scene described by director Billy Wilder as one of the best he'd ever shot, the body of Joe Gillis is rolled into the morgue to join three dozen other corpses, some of whom--in voice-over--tell Gillis how they died. She reads everyone and everything in Hollywood, except Joes script. Gloria Swanson almost considered rejecting the role of Norma Desmond after Billy Wilder requested she do a screen test for the role. Wilder and his co-writers reversed several elements, and there was no official connection between the movie and Waugh's book. But it wasn't a bullet from the gun of an aging movie queen that tragically ended his life, but rather, a rug, per The New York Times. When crew members asked Billy Wilder how he was going to shoot the burial of Norma's monkey, one of the film's most bizarre scenes, he just said, "You know, the usual monkey-funeral sequence.". A neglected house gets an unhappy look. Among the many past associations embedded in Sunset Blvd. was better known as the seat of the film industry in 1950, the Los Angeles film industry actually began on Sunset Blvd. Queen Kelly nearly ruined both of their careers: von Stroheim was replaced as director midway through after complaints from Swanson about the racy material and arguments with the producer (JFK's father!) Holden was still an unknown actor when he made Golden Boy, while Stanwyck was already a film star. It was a the kind of a place crazy movie people built in the crazy 20s. The exterior shots were of a house located not on Sunset but Irving Boulevard, near the corner of Wilshire, owned by the J. Paul Getty family. "[18] Rumors at the time had it that Hepburn wanted a family, but when Holden told her that he had had a vasectomy and having children was impossible, she moved on. She hates all of Joes writing except for about six pages. Paramount reunited Bracken and him in Young and Willing (1943). He contributed to Altvariety, Chiseler, Smashpipe, and other magazines. The next decade saw Holden's career flourish. For a number of years, exhibitors voted Holden among the most popular stars in the country: On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. She felt that Wilder used her name in a past-tense context, and she was offended. This wasn't the original opening and was filmed long after completion of filming. Billy Wilder quickly offered the role to Fred MacMurray, who turned it down because he didn't want to play a gigolo. Montgomery Clift was originally cast as Joe Gillis but quit the production two weeks before filming began because he had already played the kept man of a wealthy older woman in The Heiress (1949). The mansion belonged to the second Mrs. Jean Paul Getty, who rented it on condition that if she did not like the swimming pool the studio would have to add for the film, it would cover it over and restore the original landscaping. And like the title, Holden seemed to have the looks and muscular build Hollywood craved. Cecil B. DeMille had a pet name for Gloria Swanson: "Young Fellow". She looks like a mannequin of a . After all, it's about a dethroned queen." Sunset Boulevard's cinematographer, John Seitz, said Wilder "had wanted to do The Loved One, but couldn't obtain the rights." These towns were favored because they were on the way to Palm Springs where, after collecting the audience reaction cards, studio personnel would then go to relax and determine what changes should be made to the previewed films. Norma Talmadge and Constance Talmadge were famous for owning downtown real estate in Los Angeles and San Diego. Throughout Hollywood history many film stars, and/or single films, were responsible for saving ailing studios. 10 films that began filming without a finished script, Donald Trumps Bad Romance with Hollywood Began Before Parasite, Shazam! Her friend George Cukor, who initially recommended her for the part, told her, "If they want you to do ten screen tests, do ten screen tests. To shoot Joe and Norma dancing together at her New Year's Eve party, cameraman John F. Seitz used a dance dolly---a wheeled platform attached to the camera. Originally Billy Wilder wanted both of Hollywood's top gossip columnists--Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons--reporting from Norma's mansion at the end and fighting over the phone. [23][24] Picnic was his last film under the contract with Columbia. Wilder won the argument and privately told friends that he would not be making any more films with Brackett. While in Italy in 1966, Holden was responsible for the death of another driver in a drunk-driving incident near Pisa. After graduating from South Pasadena High School, Holden attended Pasadena Junior College, where he became involved in local radio plays. His family moved to South Pasadena when he was three. In fact, Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett even went to Pickfair to pitch the story to Pickford, but her horrified reaction as the story progressed made them stop halfway through and apologize to her. In the penultimate scene, as Max tells Norma that "the cameras have arrived," the high strings in composer Franz Waxman's Oscar-winning score quote a chord from Richard Strauss's "The Dance of the Seven Veils" from his opera "Salome". over the spiraling budget. They had paired up in pictures since 1938. The film originally opened and closed the story at the Los Angeles County Morgue. Only 950 were made from 1924 to 1931. His Mount Kenya Safari Club in Nanyuki (founded 1959) was popular with the international jet set. That should make the young blond Paramount actress-turned-script reader Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olson) the virgin in the virgin/whore dynamic that film noir so often (and happily) deals in. The only extant film elements were 35mm inter-positives struck in 1952, which had undergone a great deal of decay. A version of how he obtained his stage name "Holden" is based on a statement by George Ross of Billboard: "William Holden, the lad just signed for the coveted lead in Golden Boy, used to be Bill Beadle [sic]. Billy Wilder was actually friendlier with the other leading gossip columnist of the day, Louella Parsons. Her Stockholm Syndrome is positively infectious. Swanson was told "She can't show herself, Gloria, she's too overcome. All I know is that she's meshuggah, that's all. When Norma Desmond says to the guard at the "Paramount Studio" gates, "Without me there wouldn't be any 'Paramount Studio'" the words could apply to Gloria Swanson herself, as she was the studio's top star for six years running. As day breaks. preppy-3 15 March 2008. According to the DVD commentary by Wilder biographer Ed Sikov, this story was most likely invented/exaggerated by Billy Wilder. It was this astonishing footage that rekindled interest in the film. So speaking of funerals, heres the great real life murder mystery we teased in the opening. The address of Norma Desmond's house is given as 10086 Sunset Boulevard. According to both versions of the morgue prologue script, Gillis' body is admitted on 5/17/49 (as indicated by a toe tag). His characters were always angling for something, whether it was silk stockings in a POW Camp in Stalag 17 from 1953, which won him a Best Actor Oscar, or to clear impersonation charges in in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) with Alec Guinness. He said it was because she was braver than any man. Ironically, the last films that Gloria Swanson made for Paramount were not at this famous facility. William Haines turned down an offer to appear in the film but attended the Hollywood premiere with Joan Crawford. He directed classic films like Double Indemnity, Ace in the Hole, The Apartment, The Lost Weekend, Stalag 17, Witness for the Prosecution, Sabrina, and Some Like It Hot. I think that Sunset Boulevard was the most important film of William Holden's career. Holden paid it forward, becoming Hepburns guardian angel.. So she lands his head on a golden tray, kissing his cold, dead lips. The mundane accident that took the Hollywood actor's life was made even worse by the fact that nobody found his body for a week afterward, according to the Associated Press. On February 7, 1955, Holden appeared as a guest star on I Love Lucy as himself. The young actor also got to work with George Raft and Humphrey Bogart in the gangsters on parole movie,Invisible Stripes. A second film with Seaton did not do as well, The Proud and Profane (1956), where Holden played the role with a moustache. Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard is one of his three or four masterpieces, a seminal Hollywood black comedy-satire, which unlike most films keeps improving with the passage of time.. Benfiting from a glorious and iconic cast, the film concerns a faded silent film star, played by Gloria Swanson (in a variation of her own onscreen persona), who lives in the past with her butler (and former . The Tragic 1981 Death Of Sunset Boulevard Star William Holden. Wilder was no fan of improvisation and was very protective of his words. Holden had another hit with The World of Suzie Wong (1960) with Nancy Kwan, which was shot in Hong Kong. Forensic evidence recovered at the scene suggested that he was conscious for at least half an hour after the fall. 25 on AFI's list of all-time great leading men. That movie, however, departs from the trope by making both actress and stranger much younger. Ballard, who used to impersonate Norma descending the stairs. Perhaps one of the reasons Swanson got the job was because director George Cukor mentioned that the actress once lived in a mansion on Sunset Boulevard. Gloria Swanson and Nancy Olson also co-starred in Airport 1975 together. He received an eight-month suspended sentence for vehicular manslaughter.[1]. He earned an Oscar nomination for "Sunset Boulevard" and won an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1954 for his role in "Stalag 17," per IMDb. was voted #6 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by "Premiere" magazine in 2007. On the last day of shooting, Swanson drove back to the house she, her mother and daughter shared during production, announcing "there were only three of us in it now, meaning that Norma Desmond had taken her leave.". He played Bogarts kid brother in Sabrina, Holdens third film with director Billy Wilder, in 1954. William Haines, along with fellow silent screen veterans Buster Keaton and Anna Q. Nilsson, was approached to play one of Gloria Swanson's bridge partners. The same musical quote from "Salome" is used again as she descends the stairs, where Waxman segues into his own original musical statement of "The Dance of the Seven Veils". The statuette on the telephone table at Artie Green's new years party is a model of the Philistine god, Dagon. Sands had forged Taylors name on checks and wrecked his car the summer before and left footprints on Taylors bed after a burglary. Norma's butler, Max, who used to be one of her directors is played by Erich von Stroheim, who directed Swanson in the movie Queen Kelly (1932), clips from which are used in the scene where Norma and Joe watch one of her old films. Later he strangled himself with it. As the camera cranes up into the apartment, we can see it's the Alto Nido. The movie was previewed with this opening, in Illinois, Long Island (NY) and Poughkeepsie (NY). The British author's satirical The Loved One was published in 1948, after Waugh had spent time in Hollywood observing the film industry and, of all things, the funeral industry. Our friendship never waned. If anything, its observations on the greedy machinations of Tinseltown are truer now than they were in 1950. Read more of his work here or find him on Twitter @tsokol. Oh, and while were at it, Wilder didnt submerge any cameras to get that underwater shot. Also, the house didn't have a pool, so Paramount paid to have one installed on the condition that if Mrs. Getty didn't like it, they'd remove it after filming was over. The car with the massive chrome grill that the repo men drive is a 1948 DeSoto Custom Club Coupe. The photos of the young Norma Desmond that decorate the house are all genuine publicity photos from Gloria Swanson's heyday. An inventory of his prospects added up to exactly zero. [35] Holden starred in The Earthling,[36] as a loner dying of cancer at the Australian outback and accompanying an orphan boy (Ricky Schroder). Now that we are getting closer to Awards Season in here in Hollywood, Im getting more and more interest from nominees and prospective nominees who want to know in advance if they are going home with the gold, Marie Bargas, known for years as the Hollywood Witch, told Den of Geek. (A few months later, Hepburn met Mel Ferrer, whom she later married and with whom she had a son Sean Hepburn Ferrer. The movie begins about five oclock in the morning, left coast time. It is one of the most indelible films you will ever see. He said hed already played a young kept man in the film The Heiresswith Olivia De Havilland, and in real life with his relationship with older singer Libby Holman. [49], His death was noted by singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega, whose 1987 song "Tom's Diner", about a sequence of events one morning in 1981, included a mention of reading a newspaper article about "an actor who had died while he was drinking". Principal photography took place from 11 April to 18 June 1949. is a 1950 American black comedy [1] [2] film noir [3] directed and co-written by Billy Wilder, and produced and co-written by Charles Brackett. Garbo was once rumored to be engaged to the innovative Hollywood and Broadway director Rouben Mamoulian whose film Golden Boy (1939) made William Holden famous. Holden met French actress Capucine in the early 1960s. Thirty-one years later, the actor who played Gillis, William Holden, met his end. Besides Tyrone Power, other stars mentioned when Joe Gillis is pitching his "baseball" picture to the producer are Alan Ladd, William Demarest and Betty Hutton. Cecil B. DeMille appears in the film on a studio set. Norma Shearer turned down the role of Norma Desmond as she didn't want to come out of retirement and also found the part to be highly distasteful. Well, not a comeback, a return, a return to the millions of people who have never forgiven her for deserting the screen. Marshman Jr. Sunset Boulevard was the last time Brackett and Wilder collaborated on a film. It was not particularly successful. . In addition to the famous swimming pool, the studio also built sets to exactly duplicate Schwab's Drug Store in Hollywood and the Los Angeles County Morgue. Norma Desmond says that she paid $28,000 for the Isotta-Fraschini car in 1929. Holden had another good break when he was cast as Judy Holliday's love interest in the big-screen adaptation of the Broadway hit Born Yesterday (1950). You used to be in silent pictures. Sunset Boulevard, one of Hollywood's most cruelly accurate depictions of itself, is now 65 years oldolder, even, than its main character, who's washed up at 50. New York-born novelist and screenwriter Brackett was head of the Screen Actors Guild in the late 1930s, and president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1949 to 1955. The larger version is seen at the temple that Samson brings down in the movie Samson and Delilah (1949), which Cecil B. DeMille was shooting when Norma visits him at Paramount. Every woman was in love with him. Holman was 16 years older than him and was afraid people would think the movie was a parody of their relationship. Sunset Blvd. [38], Holden maintained a home in Switzerland and also spent much of his time working for wildlife conservation as a managing partner in an animal preserve in Africa. Sunset Boulevard now begins with police cars racing to Norma Desmond's house, where a dead body is floating in the pool.