27 Days With Billy Wilder And Me

Billy Wilder’s twenty-second movie, The Fortune Cookie, the Academy-Award winning film starring Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, was released in 1966. Billy was 60 years old.

It’s a good thing I like Jack Lemmon. Here he is again in The Fortune Cookie. (All told, Lemmon appears in seven Wilder films!)

Fortunately, this time he’s with Walter Matthau, another of my favorite actors.

This is a genuinely funny movie. Act I is, anyway. As soon as jowly, dour Walter Matthau appears on screen, the movie takes off. Everything he says is funny because of the way he says it. Matthau won an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his portrayal of an ambulance-chasing lawyer (“Whiplash Willie”) who smells a big payoff when his brother in law (Lemmon), a camera man covering a football game, is bowled over by a pass receiver who runs out of bounds and knocks him flat.

Of course, the injury is minor. But Whiplash Willie tells Harry to make with the aches and pains to fool the everyone into thinking he’s in a terrible way. Willie then sues everyone, wins a big settlement, then sees his case fall apart because of his guilt-ridden plaintiff.

According to the book On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder, by Ed Sikov, The Fortune Cookie is a particularly negative, cynical movies awash in double-entendres. Maybe. But I like the movie, mostly because of Matthau. When he’s on the screen, the film sizzles (if dead-pan humor can cause anything to sizzle). So this may be the first time I’ve disagreed with Ed Sikov. But there’s a first time for everything.

Principle Cast:
Harry Hinkle……………………………………………..Jack Lemmon (1925–2001)
Willie Gingrich…………………………………………..Walter Matthau (1920–2000)
Luther ‘Boom Boom’ Jackson………………………Ron Rich (1938- )
Sandy Hinkle………………………………………………Judi West (1942- )
Purkey………………………………………………………Cliff Osmond (1937- )
Mr. Cimoli…………………………………………………Howard McNear (1905-1969)