SUNSET BOULEVARD: The Making of the Billy Wilder Classic

Premise

Before legendary director Billy Wilder had moved to Los Angeles and began to direct iconic Hollywood movies, he was a big fan of them. While Wilder was in Berlin in the 1920s, he was interested in American pop culture. This interest included the lifestyles of the silent movie stars that ruled the day.

Fast-forward over 20 years and Wilder is now a big-time Hollywood director with prestigious credits. This includes Ninotchka (1939), Double Indemnity (1944), and The Lost Weekend (1945), which earned him two Oscar statues. Subsequently, the director begins to think back on those bygone days of fandom in Germany, and an idea begins to percolate in his mind.

Wilder starts to think about all of the old stars from the silent era. Many of which he knew lived in the mansions on Sunset Boulevard and were now either reclusive, forgotten, or both. Wilder imagines how they spent their time, decades after their careers had ended. Consequently, a story begins to take shape.

Screenplay

In 1948, Wilder teamed up with his frequent writing partner, producer Charles Brackett to write the script for what would become Sunset Boulevard. However, they were unhappy with the result. In August of that year, they brought in Life magazine writer D.M. Marshman Jr. He would help to flesh out and improve the story they had put to paper.

Wilder told Paramount that he was adapting a short story that didn’t exist called A Can of Beans so that the studio would leave him alone with no interference. Wilder feared that they would kill the movie if they knew the full story. Additionally, he was afraid of censorship by The Breen Office. To avoid any heartburn from either source, he submitted only a few pages of the script to each one at a time.

Casting

When a third of the script for Sunset Boulevard was finally completed, Wilder and Brackett began the process of casting the movie. However, the two leads for this film, Joe Gillis and Norma Desmond, were not easy roles to fill. According to Wilder his first choice for the washed-up screenwriter “Gillis” was Marlon Brando.

At this point in his career, Brando had not appeared in a movie. The future screen icon had a 1947 screen test at Warner Brothers for Rebel Without A Cause (1955) as his sole celluloid performance up to this point. Consequently, due to Brando being an unknown, the decision was made to hire Montgomery Clift for the role.

Clift signed on for a 12-week stint for $5,000 a week to make the picture. However, days before filming began he dropped out of the movie. He cited that the Gillis character was too close to the one he had played in The Heiress, released in 1949. With a sense of desperation, Wilder and Brackett looked at the available contract players at Paramount.

They soon focused their attention on William Holden, an up-and-comer in such movies as Our Town (1940). However, his career hadn’t set the box office on fire since his return from World War II a few years earlier. Still, Holden was offered and accepted the role of Gillis for $39,000. This was 35% lower than the $60,000 offered to Clift.

Norma Desmond

The character of Norma Desmond got her name from an amalgamation of silent movie actress Mabel Normand and director William Desmond Taylor. Casting this role took considerably more effort to fill. However, Brackett would later go on to falsely say that only Gloria Swanson was considered for the part.

The first person Brackett and Wilder approached for the role was Greta Garbo. The screen legend flatly told them she was not interested. They then turned to Pola Negri but quickly ruled her out because her heavy Polish accent made her nearly impossible to understand. Additionally, they approached Clara Bow, Norma Shearer, and Mary Pickford. None of them were interested in the slightest.

Without any idea on how to fill the Desmond role, Wilder sought advice from his friend director George Cukor. The famed director suggested that he approach Gloria Swanson with the part. Swanson had been working steadily for many years in radio and the theatre in New York City with only occasional movie appearances since the advent of sound. Her last big-screen appearance was nearly a decade earlier in Father Takes A Wife (1941).

When Wilder approached her with the part, Swanson was very interested in it as the pay would be substantially higher than her work in New York was currently earning her. When asked to submit to a screentest, Swanson balked stating:

“I’ve made twenty films for Paramount. Why do they want me to audition?”

As a result of this confrontation, Swanson turned to Cukor looking for advice on how to proceed. Cukor told her this would be her definitive role, the one she would be remembered for, and that:

“If they ask you to do ten screen tests, do ten screen tests, or I will personally shoot you.”

Because of this conversation, Swanson was convinced to do the screen test. Not long after it had been shot, the actress had enthusiastically accepted a contract for $50,000 to portray the iconic role of Norma Desmond.

Other Roles

1920s famed movie director Erich von Stroheim was brought in to portray Max, Norma’s butler, and ex-husband. Stroheim had previously directed Swanson in the film Queen Kelly (1932). In Sunset Boulevard, Norma screens for Gillis this very movie on her home screen projector.

Other Hollywood players from the silent era appear in a bridge game at Norma’s home. Among them are Buster Keaton, Anna Q. Nilsson, and H. B. Warner. Additionally, Cecil B. DeMille also appears in the “movie within a movie” on the Paramount lot. All four of these people portray themselves.

The other notable role in the movie is script girl, Betty Schaefer. Wilder wanted a fresh-faced newcomer for the role and he got it when he cast 21-year-old Nancy Olson. This was only her second movie, with the first coming a year earlier in the Western film Canadian Pacific (1949) starring Randolph Scott.

Production

Filming on Sunset Boulevard began in May of 1949. When cameras rolled on that first day they had no idea how the movie would end. This was because only a third of the script had been finalized. The film was shot on location, with additional production taking place on the Paramount backlot.

The exteriors of Norma Desmond’s home on Sunset Boulevard were filmed at 641 South Irving Boulevard. The home was built in 1923 for businessman William O. Jenkins. 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.

 

It was next owned by oil tycoon J. Paul Getty whose ex-wife allowed Wilder to shoot there under the condition that the studio build her a new pool, which they did. It was in this pool that the body of Joe Gillis would be seen floating at the beginning and end of the film. Also featured in Rebel Without A Cause, the house was razed in 1957.

Interior Design

The interior of the Desmond house was shot at Paramount and designed by John Meehan and Hans Drier. Drier had worked as an art director since the silent era, beginning his career in Germany. He has also done interior design work for stars such as Mae West. As a result, he was able to invoke a sense of authenticity to the set design based on experience.

Meanwhile, the boat-shaped bed in Norma’s bedroom had once been owned by actress and dancer Gaby Deslys, who passed away in Paris at the age of 38 in 1920. The bed was purchased at an auction of her belongings by Universal shortly after her death. It also appeared in The Phantom of the Opera (1925).

Other locales that were used for the production and shot on-location included the Paramount backlot and offices, where scenes of Joe Gillis and Betty Schaefer took place. The interiors of Schwab’s Drug Store were recreated on the Paramount lot and were not shot on location.

Costume Design and Makeup

Legendary costume designer Edith Head was brought in to dress Norma Desmond as well as many of the cast. For the most part, Desmond was kept fairly contemporary, wearing clothes from the mid-1940s. Wilder instructed both von Stroheim and Olson to wear their own, personal clothes.

“Because Norma Desmond was an actress who had become lost in her own imagination, I tried to make her look like she was always impersonating someone.”

– Edith Head

Wally Westmore was the makeup supervisor on the film and Wilder wanted him to make Swanson, who looked young for her age, appear older. He instructed Westmore to make her look older. Swanson protested saying that Desmond should have a more youthful and glamorous appearance. Wilder agreed with her perspective and the decision was made to have Westmore make Holden appear younger.

Cinematography

Sunset Boulevard had the choice of being shot in black and white or color. However, the former won out as bland & white better suited to the noir genre. Frequent Wilder collaborator John F. Seitz was hired to be the cinematographer on the film.

Seitz wanted to have realism enhanced and altered by dreamlike and surreal aspects. To accomplish this feat, he would sprinkle dust in front of the lens before the cameras rolled. He also used wide-angle shots that involved extreme depth-of-field and retrained low-key lighting to capture the intended mood.

“I believe that a motion picture should be alive and not dead — spontaneous instead of calculated”

-John Seitz

In Sunset Boulevard, the iconic opening of William Holden’s Joe Gillis floating in the pool was not the original beginning of the movie. Instead, it opened with a group of corpses in a morgue discussing how they died. Test audiences hated this scene with many laughing at how ridiculous it seemed.

The actual filming of the replacement scene with the camera looking up from the bottom of the pool was quite complicated. It was accomplished by placing a mirror at the bottom of the pool and filming the reflection from above.

The music for the film was scored by Franz Waxman, who had up to this point worked on everything ranging from Universal horror (The Bride of Frankenstein) to Hitchcock movies (Rebecca). Waxman had integrated tango and bebop music with popular music from the 1920s and 1930s.

Reception and Legacy

Upon its release in 1950, Sunset Boulevard was a critically acclaimed hit. It grossed $5 million at the box office on a budget of $1,75 million and earned eleven Academy Award nominations. The film went on to win three (Best Scoring, Best Art Direction-Ser Decoration, and Best Screenplay). In the subsequent decades, its reputation has only grown and it is widely considered to be amongst the greatest movies ever made.

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