Biography

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 Blvd. (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 <michael@everyman.demon.co.uk>

His movies frequently started with narration

A few of his films feature scenes where characters play cards (Sunset Blvd. (1950), Stalag 17 (1953), The Apartment (1960)). Wilder himself was an avid bridge and poker player.

Films often featured low key lighting

Characters often look themselves on a little mirror

Father of the twins Victoria and Vincent (born 1939). Their mother was Judith. Vincent died shortly after birth.

Estranged brother of producer/director W. Lee Wilder, uncle of Myles Wilder.

Awarded Austria's Golden Order, First Class for Meritorious Services. [1991]

Tom Cruise and Cameron Crowe begged Wilder to appear in Jerry Maguire (1996), but he turned them down flat.

Had a long-standing partnership with screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond, with whom he won an Oscar for The Apartment (1960).

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.

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.

In 1949 he married Audrey Young, an actress and former singer with the Tommy Dorsey band, whom he met on the set of The Lost Weekend (1945).

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?"

Was voted the 24th Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 1206-1210. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.

Was the subject of the 1999 book "Conversations with Wilder," written by director/writer Cameron Crowe.

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."

He is among an elite group of nine directors who have won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay (Original/Adapted) for the same film. In 1961 he won all three for The Apartment (1960). The others are Leo McCarey, Francis Ford Coppola, James L. Brooks, Peter Jackson, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, and Bong Joon Ho.

As a writer, he had odd habits. On the one hand, he hated writing alone, so he almost always used a partner, someone to be in the room with him while he worked. On the other hand, many of the partners complained that if he heard an idea he did not like, he could be cruel and insulting. Many writers quit on him because they could not take his abuse.

Wilder died on the same day as Dudley Moore and Milton Berle. He and Moore both died of pneumonia. Of the three, Wilder is the only one who never made a guest appearance in The Muppet Show (1976).

He was awarded the American National Medal of the Arts in 1993 by the National Endowment of the Arts in Washington, DC.

His first Hollywood film was The Major and the Minor (1942).

Profiled in "Conversations with Directors: An Anthology of Interviews from Literature/Film Quarterly", E.M. Walker, D.T. Johnson, eds. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008.

He wrote five of the American Film Institute's 100 Funniest Movies: Some Like It Hot (1959) at #1, The Apartment (1960) at #20, The Seven Year Itch (1955) at #51, Ninotchka (1939) at #52 and Ball of Fire (1941) at #92.

He worked closely with two co-writers in his career: earlier in his career with Charles Brackett, an older man who frequently provided a strong argumentative counterpoint in the writing room and later with I.A.L. Diamond, who possessed a cynical, humorous world view more in line with Wilder's.

Honored on a US Postage Stamp in May 2012 (along with Frank Capra, John Ford, and John Huston).

He was always uncomfortable around children and was an absentee father to his two children from his first marriage. He and his second wife, Audrey, agreed that they didn't want children.

Gaylord Larsen's 1988 novel "A Paramount Kill" features Wilder as a character. A whodunit set in 1940s Hollywood, it has Raymond Chandler as the hero and Wilder as his antagonist, causing trouble for Chandler because of their bad blood during the making of Double Indemnity (1944).

He was asked to direct Cabaret (1972).

Jerry Lewis asked him to direct The Bellboy (1960). He declined and suggested that Lewis direct it himself.

Michael Caine recounted in his biography that he was surprised to see Wilder living in a flat instead a villa. Caine visited the apartment and said that it was full of paintings, with no room left to hang them on the walls.

Was very unhappy that Buddy Buddy (1981) would be the last film he ever directed. Wilder once said that when he died he expected he'd see the "spirits" of all the movies that he'd directed and he would love to see most of them and would be polite to some others but "Buddy Buddy, I would try to avoid".

[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.

Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles isn't a realist.

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."

I just made pictures I would've liked to see.

[in 1976] They say Wilder is out of touch with his times. Frankly, I regard it as a compliment. Who the hell wants to be in touch with these times?

I was not a guy writing deep-dish revelations. If people see a picture of mine and then sit down and talk about it for 15 minutes, that is a very fine reward, I think.

[to a cameraman on one of his pictures] Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.

[on Marilyn Monroe] Breasts like granite and a brain like Swiss cheese.

I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.

[asked if it was important for a director to know how to write] No, but it helps if he knows how to read.

Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.

You're only as good as the best thing you've ever done.

France is the only country where the money falls apart and you can't tear the toilet paper.

[on Marlene Dietrich] Mother Teresa with better legs.

The Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that [Adolf Hitler] was a German and [Ludwig van Beethoven] an Austrian.

An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but 1000 imbeciles together in the dark--that is critical genius.

In certain pictures I do hope they will leave the cinema a little enriched, but I don't make them pay a buck and a half and then ram a lecture down their throats.

What critics call dirty in our movies, they call lusty in foreign films.

The best director is the one you don't see.

[asked what the purpose of making films is] Well, number one, it's too late for me now to change and to become a gardener. Number two is to get away from the house and the vacuum cleaner. I want to be in my office and think. And number three, it's very exciting. I like to tell stories. Ultimately it's interesting. You meet nice people, it's glamorous, and, if you get lucky, very profitable. You suffer a great deal, but to paraphrase President [Harry S. Truman], if you can't take all that crap, get out of the studio. Believe me, this is not a profession for a dignified human being. I can see the interest in pictures when I talk to you students [at the American Film Institute], especially now that almost every university has something connected with movies. But if I had a son I would beat him with a very large whip trying to make a gardener, a dentist or something else out of him. Don't do it. It's just too tough. It hurts, and the moments of glory are very far between. Well, it's too late for me to turn back, too late for me to become a gardener. I can't bend over the azaleas. Not anymore.

Everybody in the audience is an idiot, but taken together they're a genius.

I don't think that making movies is my entire life. But there's one thing, you know, that I hate more than not being taken seriously, is to be taken too seriously.

There was an actress named Marilyn Monroe. She was always late. She never remembered her lines. She was a pain in the ass. My Aunt Millie is a nice lady. If she were in pictures she would always be on time. She would know her lines. She would be nice. Why does everyone in Hollywood want to work with Marilyn Monroe and no one wants to work with my Aunt Millie? Because no one will go to the movies to watch my Aunt Millie.

[on William Holden's death] If someone had said to me, "Holden's dead", I would have assumed that he had been gored by a water buffalo in Kenya, that he had died in a plane crash approaching Hong Kong, that a crazed, jealous woman had shot him, and he drowned in a swimming pool. But to be killed by a bottle of vodka and a night table--what a lousy fade-out of a great guy!

[on Marilyn Monroe] I had no problem with Monroe. Monroe had a problem with Monroe.

[on Audrey Hepburn] She gives the distinct impression that she can spell "schizophrenia".

[on his abortive attempts to get projects off the ground in the 1980s] I was retired but I didn't know it, because I was too busy.

[of Raymond Chandler] He was a mess, but he could write a beautiful sentence.