MARILYN MONROE and SOME LIKE IT HOT

Anonymous snapshots of Marilyn between scenes at the Del Coronada Hotel (with Lemmon above middle)

     Annie Tresgot made two documentary films dedicated to director Billy Wilder, whom she had first known on the set of Love in the Afternoon in 1957.  In the process of researching her films, she chatted at length with both Wilder and Jack Lemmon about working with Marilyn Monroe on Some Like it Hot.

     Lemmon, whom Annie once described as wildly likeable and very amusing off-screen, professed real affection for Monroe, but said that her extreme insecurities rendered her one of the most difficult actresses he had ever worked with.  He described with humor one tiny scene where she was supposed to enter a room, open a drawer, then say one line which she kept forgetting.  He said it was Hollywood legend that Wilder had filmed the scene 59 times! 

                               Polish poster for the film

                          Wilder with an apparently overweight Marilyn

     Billy Wilder also remembered.   "I had no problem with Marilyn, it was Marilyn who had problems with Marilyn," he said, "and she sometimes made all of us very unhappy.  But, you know …I could have found three dozen beautiful blonde actresses who would have remembered their lines perfectly.  But they wouldn’t have been Marilyn, and the end result on the screen wouldn’t have been the same.  In the end it was all worth it.”      

Postage stamp commemorating Wilder, Monroe and the Del Coronada

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