by Michael Lyons
"I'm a man!"
"Well, nobody's perfect!"
It is one of the greatest ending lines of dialogue in film history and one of the many reasons that 1959's Some Like It Hot is a classic and was ahead of its time.
Celebrating its 65th anniversary this year, this cross-dressing comedy from master director Billy Wilder continues to not only provide laughs but also says so much.
Some Like It Hot takes place in Prohibition-era Chicago, where two musicians, a sax player named Joe (Tony Curtis) and a bass player Jerry (Jack Lemmon), accidentally witness the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929, an infamous event where a number of mobsters were killed.
As an aside, this setting and the romance that follows make Some Like It Hot an ideal movie for Valentine's Day.
After witnessing the massacre, Joe and Jerry need to go into hiding and need a job. They take a gig as musicians with the band Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators, but since it's an all-girl band, they need to disguise themselves as women—Joe as Josephine, Jerry as Jeraldine, and later as Daphne.
As the band travels to Miami for a gig, Joe falls in love with Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), the band's vocalist and ukulele player. Meanwhile, a well-meaning millionaire named Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown) becomes so obsessed with Daphne that, in the end, he doesn't even care that he is Jerry (as evidenced by the hysterical last line cited above).
Meanwhile, the hotel the girls are performing at is where a group of mobsters are meeting, and they eventually recognize Joe and Jerry from the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre.
Some Like It Hot was groundbreaking when it was released in 1959 and had to be released without approval from the Motion Picture Production Code as cross-dressing was considered "taboo."
What was also unlike any other story of the time was the film's script by director Wilder and his usual partner, I.A.L. Diamond. It was efficiently and sharply written, with messages about how men and women view each other and how society views them both.
All of the actors in this film are in top comedic form. Curtis conveys a smooth, easygoing persona as Joe and a hysterical voice as Josephine; Jack Lemmon is at his manic best, and his scenes of panic as he realizes that Osgood has a crush on him (and their dance scene together) are the stuff of legend.
It's said that Monroe had challenges making the film, but you'd never know from her performance as she conveys innocence and delivers some great, deadpan lines.
The three are all backed-up by an incredible supporting cast that not only includes Brown but character actors Pat O'Brien, Nehemiah Persoff, and Mike Mazurki.
Wilder pulls everything together in Some Like It Hot perfectly. With eclectic films like Double Indemnity (1944) and Stalag 17 (1953) to his credit, he knew how to stage a shot. With Some Like It Hot, like his other comedies, he also proved himself to be deft at delivering humor.
Released on March 29, 1959, Some Like It Hot has rightly earned its place in film history over the past six and a half decades. The American Film Institute listed it as number one when creating the list of the 100 greatest comedies ever.
The film's legacy remains today, particularly with a hit 2022 Broadway musical adaptation.
It's fitting that we still celebrate Some Like It Hot. As film critic Roger Ebert noted, it is "...one of the enduring treasures of the movies, a film of inspiration and meticulous craft."
Sources: Wikipedia.
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