The Oldies: SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959)
I love discovering movies that I hadn’t seen before. Whether they’re old or new.
I have a friend who loves old movies, and she has seen quite her share of them. In fact, she is my old movies encyclopedia. Seriously, whenever I feel like watching an old movie, I either call her up and ask her for a recommendation or rent something and get her thoughts on it. So far I have not found an old movie she hasn’t seen.
Because of that, I thought it would be fun to start a new weekly column in which you could discover some old movies you haven’t yet had a chance to watch.
This week’s movie is the 1959 movie, SOME LIKE IT HOT, starring Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, and Marilyn Monroe, and directed by Billy Widler, who also directed movies such as Sunset Blvd, Sabrina, The Seven Year Itch and The Apartment.
Before Dusting Hoffman in Tootsie and Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire, there was Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot.
Some Like It Hot follows two musicians (Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis) who dress up as women to join an all girl band in order to escape the mob (they witnessed the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre). As you can probably guess, this is a comedy, and what a comedy it is. I can guarantee laughs. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are an incredible team. I don’t think they make them like that anymore.
But getting into the band and passing off as women was of course only the beginning. Things get complicated when the mob comes after the two of them, but also when Joe (Tony Curtis) falls in love with one of the girls on the band, Sugar (you guessed it, Marilyn Monroe), and when Jerry (Jack Lemmon) gets courted by a millionaire, Osgood Fielding III, who thinks he’s a woman.
Overall, this is one of my favorites oldies, and I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.
And to end, the very last line of the movie (which is pretty famous one) is probably one of the most memorable ones you will ever hear, “Well, nobody’s perfect.” While you’ll have to watch the movie to understand the context, it was definitely quite a way to end the movie.
(Fun Fact: Tony Curtis makes fun of Some Like It Hot, in Sex and the Single Girl (also starring Natalie Wood), in which he wears a woman’s nightgown and says that he looks like Jack Lemmon in that movie.)
You can of course rent Some Like It Hot or buy it on Amazon.
If you do get a chance to watch Some Like It Hot, I would love to hear some of your thoughts. How do you think the movie holds up to today’s standards? Did you find it funny?
