27 Days With Billy Wilder And Me

Billy Wilder’s twenty-fifth movie, The Front Page, starring Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, and Susan Sarandon was released in 1974. Billy was 68 years old.

There is absolutely no reason why this movie should have been made — not when His Girl Friday stands as the definitive remake of the play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. Billy Wilder’s version is a lethargic, foul-mouthed, loud, uninspired, and unfocused film with characters shouting their lines as if everyone in the room with them is deaf.

Again, I am disappointed by a Billy Wilder movie — and by the screenwriting of Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond. This makes every movie since The Apartment another step down.

Principle Cast:
Hildy Johnson………………………………………….Jack Lemmon (1925–2001)
Walter Burns…………………………………………..Walter Matthau (1920–2000)
Peggy Grant……………………………………………Susan Sarandon (1946- )
Sheriff……………………………………………….Vincent Gardenia (1920–1992)
Bensinger……………………………………………..David Wayne (1914–1995)

It’s an interesting cast. And, normally, seeing Lemmon and Matthau together again would make me really happy. But not this time. For one thing, as fun as those two are, they’re no Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, who played Walter Burns and Hildy Jonson, respectively, in the 1940 Howard Hawks remake of the story of hard-boiled newspaper men scrambling to cover the story of a cop-killer about to be executed. Plus, in this movie, they’re just not much fun, together or apart.

This movie was a waste of my time.

What happened to Billy Wilder, anyway? How can this be the same guy who created Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, and The Apartment?