The investigation found that in the weeks just prior to his death, Taylor had been making some pretty delusional statements about his place in the world and some of his friends thought he had recently gone insane. Swanson was told "She can't show herself, Gloria, she's too overcome. This film was originally released in the United States as The Christmas Tree and on home video as When Wolves Cry. In 1989 the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress selected this as one of 25 landmark films of all time. Sometimes hetinkles the wheezing gothic ivories like Lurch in the original TV series The Addams Family, playing the recognizable strains of The Phantom of the Opera. In accordance with his wishes, no funeral or memorial services were conducted. Holden continued to work steadily for the next decade, but Hollywood often had no idea what to do with him. 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. Gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, who plays herself in the movie, wrote that Billy Wilder was crazy about Evelyn Waughs book The Loved One, and the studio wanted to buy it.. The body was found by Henry Peavey, who took over for convicted embezzler Edward F. Sands as Taylors valet. She can sense the hot spot of every light and has never lost the wonderment of movies. Sondheim respectfully stopped work on the project and, on the same grounds, later declined an offer to write the score for a proposed movie remake., Additional Sources: She offered Peavey 10 dollars to identify Taylors grave in the Hollywood Park Cemetery and had someone wait there in a white sheet to scare it out of him. Technically the address was 641 S Irving Blvd but the estate lay at the corner of Irving and Wilshire Blvd. The general consensus was that the two titans had canceled each other out, leaving the field clear for Holliday. At one point Norma mentions working with Mabel Normand and Marie Prevost. With unofficial permission from Paramount, she worked for a few years with writer Dickson Hughes and actor Richard Stapley developing a show called Starring Norma Desmond (later changed to Boulevard). When Norma is telling Joe about how rich she is, she mentions a beach house and downtown real estate. Billy Wilder originally wanted another silent star, Pola Negri, to take the part of Norma Desmond. Brackett thought it was too mean while Wilder felt it was necessary. The one on the Paramount studio soundstage; the one whose driveway William Holden ducks into at 10060 Sunset Blvd; and the one used for the exteriors, which is the one shown here. Holden's films after that time had not impressed Wilder (in the 1940s Holden's movies were decidedly mediocre). The exteriors of Norma Desmond's home on Sunset Boulevard were filmed at 641 South Irving Boulevard. Yes, this is Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. The only extant film elements were 35mm inter-positives struck in 1952, which had undergone a great deal of decay. A week later she heard the news of Holden's death on her car radio. Dont bother with a rewrite, man, take it direct! Billy Wilder's terrifying valentine to Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard (1950), features one of the most indelible of all screen performances: Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond. We were close friends for many years. At Paramount, he did another Western, Streets of Laredo (1949). Holden earned his first Best Actor Oscar nomination for the role.[11]. A new 4K high-definition scan was done in 2008 for the film's release on Blu-ray disc. The antique car used as Norma Desmond's limousine is an 1929 Isotta-Fraschini Tipo 8A, a luxury car made in Italy, and once belonged to 1920s socialite Peggy Hopkins Joyce. Sunset Boulevard (1950) 1950, 1h 50min - Drama 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, created two of the screen's most memorable characters in "Sunset Boulevard." When Joe tells Betty that next time he will write "The Naked and the Dead", he is referring to the best-seller written by Norman Mailer and published in 1948. Sunset Boulevard turns the tables on film noir by casting Joe in the oldest role on the books. Forensic evidence recovered at the scene suggested that he was conscious for at least half an hour after the fall. When the movie first dropped, Louis B. Mayer, the Mayer in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, told everyone who would listen that Wilder disgraced the industry that made him and fed him, and urged that he be tarred and feathered, and run out of Hollywood. Wilder, who had been feeding himself for quite some time, told Meyer to go fuck himself. The latter was shot in Africa and sparked Holden's fascination with the continent that was to last for the rest of his life. ), a woman who trades on charms that have . When Max picks up the discarded headpiece during the tango scene, his expression hints at concern for the mental issues Norma suffers from. They thought the actors made it up as they went along. "Waxwork" Buster Keaton was in reality an excellent bridge player, always in demand at Hollywood bridge parties. Wilder's version is the one they went with (he was the director, after all), but the argument marked a turning point for him, and he decided never to work with Brackett again. At the end of her acceptance speech, she paid him a personal tribute: "I loved him very much, and I miss him. Holden met French actress Capucine in the early 1960s. 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. In those days there were no buttons on formal shirts. In fact,Bob Thomas, Holden's biographer, said that the actor's addiction counselor predicted his demise. [12] Swanson later said, "Bill Holden was a man I could have fallen in love with. At Paramount, he was in a comedy with Ginger Rogers that was not particularly popular, Forever Female (1953). He played Rafts kid brother, who was following in his gangster footsteps and needed to be set straight. Hedda Hopper: at the top of the stairwell as Norma descends toward the cameras. According to Gloria Swanson's daughter, Michelle Amon, her mother stayed in character throughout the entire shoot, even speaking like Norma Desmond when she arrived home in the evening after filming. As the band plays 'Diane', we also see Desmond ascending her staircase. It opened on Broadway at the Minskoff Theater on November 17, 1994, ran for 977 performances and won the 1995 Tony Awards for Best Musical, Book and Score. After all, it's about a dethroned queen." As this film opens, William Holden's character Joe Gillis describes himself as a Hollywood screenwriter "living in an apartment house above Ivar Street." The film is included on Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" list. There was a maharajah who came all the way from India to beg one of her silk stockings. This is a reference to the now-mad Norma's final possession by the character of Salome, with whom she'd been so obsessed. X. Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! All I know is that she's meshuggah, that's all. It said so on the chart from her astrologer, who read DeMilles horoscope. But like so many of the female actors of the era, Holden soon realized it was his physical attributes and not his acting ability that the studio cared about. Norma Desmond: Get out! (She liked it.). Sunset Boulevard now begins with police cars racing to Norma Desmond's house, where a dead body is floating in the pool. Sunset Boulevard is a noir film and like many of the post-World War II dark classics, it is covered with a thick sheen of cynicism. Brackett thought the sequence was cruel in its emphasis on what age had done to the one-time beauty, but Wilder insisted it was essential to show how driven she was in her pursuit of youth. Still, whatever hard feelings there may have been between Swanson and von Stroheim, they were gone by the time Sunset Boulevard came along. Holden had a supporting role in Ashanti (1979) and was third-billed in another disaster film, When Time Ran Out (1980), which was a flop. The first-floor set of Norma Desmond's mansion was also used in the western comedy Fancy Pants (1950) starring Bob Hope and Lucille Ball, giving fans a chance to see it in full color. It's kind of sweet, actually. Wilder won the argument and privately told friends that he would not be making any more films with Brackett. "Twin Peaks" also features characters named Chester Desmond and Norma Jennings, in reference to Norma Desmond. Im not giving anything away here. 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. Brackett was also a frequent collaborator with Billy Wilder, co-writing and producing a dozen movies with him (including The Lost Weekend) before Sunset Boulevard proved to be their last. I know your face. What is the streaming release date of Sunset Blvd. 25 on AFI's list of all-time great leading men. It was the same technique he had used to shoot Rudolph Valentino's tango in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921). Mrs. Getty's home had to be completely re-decorated to give it the oversized grandeur needed for the film. They had paired up in pictures since 1938. Brenda Marshall, Holden's wife since 1941, was visiting the set when Holden and Nancy Olson had their kissing scene. (Norma Desmond would be quick to point out that, thanks to computers and iPads, the pictures have gotten even smaller. - 65th Anniversary (25) Film Noir Through the Years (3) Movies Set in Hollywood (3) Our Favorite Male-Female Duos (1) The History of Golden Globe Winners for Best Actor and Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama (1) Our Favorite Stills From "The Movies" (1) Movies About Movies (1) 77 Years of Golden Globes Best Picture Winners (1) [47], President Ronald Reagan released a statement: "I have a great feeling of grief. At the time this movie was made, the incident was still quite recent. The "Desmond mansion" was located not on Sunset Blvd. words "Sunset Blvd." Movie audiences in the nave early days of film sometimes didnt know that somebody had to sit down and write a movie. Brackett was a New York-born novelist and screenwriter, 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 (during which time he won two screenwriting Oscarsgood news for conspiracy theorists). So Wilder gave up, and DeMille (who was already being compensated) gave Norma his own chair.. It would not be turned into a motion picture until: The Naked and the Dead (1958). At the end, they stood and cheered for Gloria Swanson's return. over the spiraling budget. Joe could have slept with Norma and loved Betty, and owned the pool that would be his final resting place. In Billy Wilder's film, Erich von Stroheim plays the butler of Gloria Swanson's forgotten silent-film star. Billy Wilder's 1978 Flop Fedora is less a worthy follow up to Sunset Boulevard than a sorry footnote. An inventory of his prospects added up to exactly zero. In the scene where Norma is showing Joe her silent movies, one of them is Queen Kelly (1932), which was filmed at Paramount's Astoria Studios in Astoria, Queens, NY. Kodak would discontinue to manufacture it altogether in 1953. 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. Joe Gillis' typewriter is a portable manual Remington Rand Noiseless Model 7. They had to have the ears of the old place, too. In an interview Wilder gave in 1996 he claimed that the film which eventually became SUNSET BOULEVARD began as a comedy for Mae West and Marlon Brando. 1851 Ivar Street was the address of the Alto Nido Apartments, where he lived, sometimes worked and, ultimately died in 1941. [10] RKO borrowed him for Rachel and the Stranger (1948) with Robert Mitchum and Loretta Young. However, he knew that her arch-rival Hedda Hopper had trained as an actress and would therefore be more convincing onscreen. But it was too difficult to put a camera underwater to get the shot, so Wilder and cinematographer John Seitz came up with an ingenious solution: they put a mirror on the bottom of the pool and filmed the reflection from above. American actress Gloria Swanson in a promotional portrait for 'Sunset Boulevard', directed by Billy Wilder, 1950. 3.48. "Sometimes he'd just get in his car and drive," the director told the AP. Paramount was more than happy to be the subject of the film, and didn't ask for the studio to be disguised. You murdered me. Norma, the aging silent-movie star who ensnares down-at-the-heels screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden), is the vamp become vampire (look at those clawlike hands! The forensics team rolled him over and saw he had been shot at least once in the back with a small-caliber pistol. In 1972, Holden began a nine-year relationship with actress Stefanie Powers and sparked her interest in animal welfare. After living in the home for a year he moved, and the house sat vacant for a little over a decade, earning the moniker "The Phantom House" in the process. He played an older version of Joe in Sidney Lumets classic Network (1976), written by the cynical Paddy Chayefsky. read more: Can The Biblical Epic be Resurrected? It was like that old woman in Great Expectations, Miss Havisham in her rotting wedding dress and her torn veil, taking it out on the world because shed been given the go-by. . In 2007 the American Film Institute ranked this as the #16 Greatest Movie of All Time. It is one of the most indelible films you will ever see. When Norma visits DeMille at Paramount, he's in the midst of shooting Samson and Delilah, which really is what he was up to at the time. The apartments, and the "Alto Nido" sign out front that is glimpsed briefly in the film, are still there. Her character's age was 22 but she was 21 at the time of filming. 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]. Erich von Stroheim could not drive in real life. It's the pictures that got small" was #91. In later interviews, Davis admitted that she thought Swanson's work in the film was absolutely outstanding. Erich von Stroheim, who directed Swanson in Queen Kelly (1932), plays Max the butler, who serves as the projectionist in the scene. Holdens last movie, Blake Edwardss S.O.B., was another masterpiece of Hollywood cynicism. "Lonely, alone, without dignity.". Swanson argued that a woman like Norma would have been obsessed with her appearance and would have done her utmost not to look old. Microphones would catch the last gurgles, and Technicolor would photograph the red, swollen tongues. Holden himself claimed that he, too, could picture his end. F. Scott Fitzgerald suffered a heart attack while in Schwab's in 1940 (contrary to legend, Lana Turner was not discovered by a talent agent in Schwab's but, rather in a drugstore across from Hollywood High School, about three miles to the east). She puts on a show playing a Max Sennett bathing girl and Charlie Chaplins Tramp character, though Maxs bad timing is a little too on the nose. ", After serving with the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II, he returned to Hollywood and in 1950 he got his first substantial role in Billy Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard," per Britannica. She refuses to believe that she's no longer remembered and will never make another movie. In 1998 the American Film Institute selected this as the 12th greatest film of the 100 Greatest American Movies of All Time. [44] After his death, Powers set up the William Holden Wildlife Foundation at Holden's Mount Kenya Game Ranch. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett's 17th and final screenplay collaboration. When filming began, William Holden was 31 and Gloria Swanson was 50, the same stated age as her character. For the first industry screening, Paramount executives invited several silent-film stars. Normas waxworks card sharps were Swedish-born Anna Q. Nilsson, H. B. Warner and Buster Keaton. 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. Von Stroheim didnt know how to drive, and the scene where hes driving the exotic leopard-upholstered Isotta-Fraschini was shot as the car was being towed. Gloria Swanson played her final descent on the staircase barefoot, as she was terrified of tripping in high heels. (1940) followed by the role of George Gibbs in the film adaptation of Our Town (1940), done for Sol Lesser at United Artists.[8]. When Joe Gillis and Norma Desmond watch one of Norma's old silent movies, they are watching a scene from Queen Kelly (1932), starring a young Gloria Swanson. The restoration was performed at Lowry Digital by Barry Allen and Steve Elkin. She lives in a crumbling old mansion with her butler Max (Erich von Stroheim). Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Sunset Boulevard DVD Special Collector's Edition William Holden Gloria Swanson at the best online prices at eBay! And that young man who was found floating in the pool of her mansion, with two shots in his back and one in his stomach, was nobody important, really. This was a first for Gloria Swanson, but proved a big boon in helping her develop her character's descent into madness. [14], Holden made a third film with Wilder, Sabrina (1954), billed beneath Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. Billy Wilder was actually friendlier with the other leading gossip columnist of the day, Louella Parsons. Wilder told the actors to kibbutz and let him shuffle. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the film Stalag 17 (1953) and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for the television miniseries The Blue Knight (1973). For some scenes, cinematographer John F. Seitz would sprinkle dust into the air so it could be caught by the lights and create a moody effect. "Lux Radio Theater" broadcast a 60-minute radio adaptation of the movie on September 17, 1951, with Gloria Swanson and William Holden reprising their film roles. In July 1941, he married 25-year old actress Brenda Marshall, who commanded five times his income. a mean old woman who looks and acts a little like Ma Bates if she'd been dead for several years but was somehow still just as talkative and feisty. Columbia put Holden in a Western with Jean Arthur, Arizona (1940), then at Paramount he was in a hugely popular war film, I Wanted Wings (1941) with Ray Milland and Veronica Lake. 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). Sunset Boulevard is no. 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. This one had it in spades. (1966), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), Network (1976), Coming Home (1978), Reds (1981), Silver Linings Playbook (2012) and American Hustle (2013). He was perfection on- and off-screen. After a private screening for Hollywood dignitaries, Barbara Stanwyck knelt in front of Gloria Swanson and kissed the hem of her skirt. A modern-girl Jiminy Cricket, Betty asks, Dont you sometimes hate yourself? and Joe corrects her, Constantly.. (1950) in my head, and I'd always sort of related to that character floating in . Both Mary Astor and Miriam Hopkins starred in TV versions of the film in 1955 and 1956, respectively. Not long ago, he was divorced from the actress, Gloria Holden, but carried the torch after the marital rift. Getty always wanted a pool, the poor dope. There were no shortage of suspects. Director Billy Wilder Writers Charles Brackett Billy Wilder D.M. Norma Desmond was the greatest of them all. He was Judy Hollidays tutor in Born Yesterday (1950) and played a war correspondent in Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955). He followed it with a romantic comedy, Dear Ruth (1947) and he was one of many cameos in Variety Girl (1947). H.B. The film and actors was excellent and lived up to our expectations. Norma's buying Joe a fine woolen topcoat would be mostly an affectation in sunny Los Angeles. Or shall I call my servant? Our friendship never waned. This is a nod to retired silent-movie star Clara Bow, whose husband Rex Bell, a former star of "B" westerns, was the president of the Nevada Chamber of Commerce, and later Lieutenant Governor of Nevada. 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. Although they don't have a scene together in this film, Hedda Hopper and Buster Keaton had worked together in the 1932 comedy Speak Easily (1932), both were among the many stars appearing in the 1931 two-reeler The Stolen Jools (1931), and they both appeared in a 1958 episode of The Garry Moore Show (1958) that also featured Carol Burnett, who years later would spoof the Norma Desmond character regularly on her own variety show. Bogart took the part hoping it would pair him back up with his wife Lauren Bacall. There were three young directors who showed promise in those early days of silent film, D.W. Griffith, Cecil B. From the right angle, the camera could shoot the reflected image in the mirror without ever going underwater itself. But before that happened, it appeared in Rebel Without a Cause as the abandoned mansion in which the kids hang out. It was this astonishing footage that rekindled interest in the film. and Crescent Heights Blvd. 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). As DeMille was directing Lamarr at the time in Samson and Delilah (1949), this would have been no problem. Erich von Stroheim, who made the masterpiece Greed in 1924, directed Swanson in Queen Kelly (1928), the flick Holdens character cuddles up with Norma to watch in the dark screening room of the dark mansion. There were actually three mansions used during filming. 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. But she wanted to rewrite her dialogue (as was her custom)a nonstarter for Wilder, who seldom let his actors change their lines even slightly from what was on the page. 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.". The film originally opened and closed the story at the Los Angeles County Morgue. This ushered in the peak years of Holden's stardom. Sometimes its interesting to see just how bad, bad writing can be. Wilder and Brackett told everyone at Paramount and the Production code that the screenplay was based on the story A Can of Beans by Wilder, Brackett, and D.M. Billy Wilder was a friend of the danish silent movie star Asta Nielsen, and based the Norma Desmond caracter on her. A classic film review of Sunset Boulevard (1950) starring William Holden, Gloria Swanson and Eric Von StroheimDirected by acclaimed film maker Billy Wilder (. Getting the role was a lucky break for Holden, as Montgomery Clift was initially cast but backed out of his contract. [27] He played an American Civil War military surgeon in John Ford's The Horse Soldiers (1959) opposite John Wayne, which was a box-office disappointment. . The character of Joe Gillis was very much in tune with William Holden's standing at the time. The Homicide Squad, complete with detectives and newspapermen, are responding to a call about a murder from one of those great big houses in the ten thousand block of Sunset Boulevard, a 22-mile block that stretches from Figueroa Street in downtown LA to the Pacific Ocean. There's a little dig in the scene when Cecil B. DeMille finds out that Paramount has been calling Norma Desmond because it wants to rent her car for "the Crosby picture." This wasn't the original opening and was filmed long after completion of filming. When two more test audiences reacted the same way, Wilder cut the scene and the movie was saved. "I'm not surprised that this could have happened.". Joe insists hes not a Hollywood whore, but he accepts Normas gifts, gold cigarette cases, a platinum watch, suits, shirts, and shoes that would impress Rudy. Although it can get chilly by the ocean, a light jacket or sweater would be plenty. Sunset Blvd. It was Erich von Stroheim who suggested the revelation that Max was writing all of Norma's fan mail. [4] The film was made for Columbia, which negotiated a sharing agreement with Paramount for Holden's services. 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.". But as commentator Steve Sailer points out, more than one contemporary source mentions it as an inspiration. [15] Holden and Hepburn became romantically involved during the filming, unbeknownst to Wilder: "People on the set told me later that Bill and Audrey were having an affair, and everybody knew. On the advice of Libby Holman, Montgomery Clift, who had signed to play the part of Joe Gillis, broke his contract just two weeks prior to the start of shooting. Some speculated it was because he was dating an older woman at the time (actress Libby Holman, 16 years his senior) and didn't want people to think the movie was a parody of that relationship. [2] His brother Robert ("Bobbie") became a U.S. Navy fighter pilot and was killed in action in World War II, over New Ireland, a Japanese-occupied island in the South Pacific. The directions given by the Paramount guard for Norma and Joe to go meet Cecil B. DeMille on "Stage 18" is accurate: this stage, one of the largest on the Paramount lot, was known for years as "The DeMille Stage" and now is called "The Star Trek Stage", as all the "Trek" movies and some scenes from the TV shows have been shot there (the TV series, from Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) onward, had its main sets right across the studio street on Stages 8 and 9, which are right below the second-floor office occupied by Betty Schaefer in this film. Peavey died in a San Francisco asylum, where he was being treated for syphilis-related dementia, in 1931. in West Hollywood. [16] Holden recalls their romance:.mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}, Before I even met her, I had a crush on her, and after I met her, just a day later, I felt as if we were old friends, and I was rather fiercely protective of her, though not in a possessive way. There are several references to Gloria Swanson's actual career in the film. To publicize the film, Paramount sent Gloria Swanson on a cross-country tour, paying her $1,000 a week for her services. In the movie when a cop tries to call in to the coroners office, he cant get an open line because Hedda Hopper is on the phone in Normas room, talking to the Times City Desk and that is more important. Norma's bed originally belonged to French actress/singer Gaby Deslys. ), It came out the same year as another behind-the-scenes showbiz classic, All About Eve, which took most of the Oscars. Ready? 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. The Academy Award-winning actor William Holden, born William Beedle Jr., on April 17, 1918, in O'Fallon, Illinois, began his career with 1939s "Golden Boy," per Britannica. The clips in Sunset Boulevard were the first American audiences had seen of it. This car has been on display at the National Automobile Museum in Turin, Italy since 1972. To get around the restrictions of the Breen Code, the script was submitted piecemeal, several pages at a time. Being born on 17 April 1918, William Holden was 63 years old at the time of his death. It was George Cukor who suggested Gloria Swanson for the role of Norma Desmond. is directed toward his associate producer, Henry Wilcoxon, who had starred in his epics Cleopatra (1934), The Crusades (1935) and Unconquered (1947), later moving to a position behind the camera as DeMille's associate, which he held until the older man's death in 1959. He called it "that goddamned butler role" for the remaining seven years of his life. Holden, who was at this point dependent on alcohol, said, "I really was in love with Audrey, but she wouldn't marry me. 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,. Paramount always labeled that studio as its Long Island Studios. Bogart was not especially friendly toward Hepburn, who had little Hollywood experience, while Holden's reaction was the opposite, wrote biographer Michelangelo Capua. After working on Sunset Boulevard, Swanson remarked, Bill Holden was a man I could have fallen in love with.
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