Word: wilderness
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Director Billy Wilder, fresh off the boat from Europe and without a bean in his pocket, picked up his first salary check in Hollywood by hiring out as a stunt man and jumping into a swimming pool in full fig. Since that day, he has splashed about so energetically in the cinema swim that now he is established beyond question as one of Hollywood's most successful screenwriters, as a director who ranks with George Stevens (The Diary of Anne Frank), William Wyler (Ben Hur) and Fred Zinneman (A Nun's Story) in the Big Four...
Having made 23 Hollywood pictures, most of them commercial successes, Wilder has been nominated 18 times for Academy Awards and won three, for Lost Weekend (director and coauthor) and Sunset Boulevard (co-author). Says he with a snarl: "I was robbed 15 times." But he adds: "I am batting twice as good as Ted Williams ever...
Nevertheless, in the opinion of many critics, it was only last year, in the magnificent locker-room farce called Some Like It Hot, which rang up the biggest gross ($14 million) ever achieved by a Hollywood comedy, that Wilder revealed himself at his wildest and most wonderful...
Last week, with the release of The Apartment, which opened in Manhattan to rave reviews ("trenchant" . . . "sardonic" . . . "tumbling with wit" . . . "the most sophisticated movie I have ever seen"), Moviemaker Wilder obviously had another big hit on his hands. He also raised some intriguing questions in the minds of his audience about what, if anything, he is trying...
...Apartment. This funniest Hollywood comedy since Some Like It Hot (made by the same duet: Producer-Director Billy Wilder and Writer I.A.L. Diamond) packs a sharp moral without stooping to moralizing, as it traces the rise of an organization man (Jack Lemmon) who turns his Manhattan apartment into a walk-up tourist cabin for his lecherous bosses. With Shirley MacLaine as delightful as ever...