Billy Wilder left a mark on Hollywood that few filmmakers can equal. Born in Vienna in 1906, 27- year-old Wilder fled Nazi Germany for Hollywood, where he eventually wrote BLUEBEARD'S EIGHTH WIFE (1938) and NINOTCHKA (1939) for his idol Ernst Lubitsch, coscripted with Charles Brackett. He and Brackett went on to write several hits, but Wilder longed to direct his own work. He finally got his chance with THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR (1942), a success that led to a string of hits. His second great screenwriting partnership, with I. A. L. Diamond, yielded such classics as SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959) and THE APARTMENT (1960). Wilder was nominated for 15 Oscars and won 6. Among other honors, he received AFI's Life Achievement Award (1986) and the Motion Picture Academy's Irving Thalberg Award (1988).

AFI Silver and the National Gallery of Art present a centennial retrospective of Wilder the director. The series begins in March at AFI and continues at the National Gallery in April. For more information, visit www.nga.gov.

All Wilder films are NOT RATED unless otherwise indicated.

AFI Member Passes will be accepted at all screenings in the Billy Wilder Series.

Restored 35mm Print
THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR
Inspired comedic work from Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland. Nearly broke, and fed up with New York, working girl Rogers resolves to head home to Iowa. Masquerading as a twelve-yearold to get a child's fare on the train, she gets marooned at a midwestern military school, where the cadets are a little too fond of the new girl (Rogers was 30!).

DIR Billy Wilder; SCR Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder; PROD Arthur Hornblow, Jr. US, 1942, b&w, 100 min.

Restored print courtesy of UCLA Film & TV Archive

#1 on AFI's 100 Years . . . 100 Laughs
Restored 35mm Print
SOME LIKE IT HOT
"Nobody's perfect," but this boundary-breaking comedy just may be. It was voted #14 on AFI's 100 YEARS . . . 100 MOVIES, best movies of all-time. Speakeasy musicians Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis happen to be in the wrong Chicago garage on St. Valentine's Day, 1929. To hide from the mob, they join Marilyn Monroe's all-girl band--dressed in drag. With George Raft, Pat O'Brien, and Joe E. Brown as the smitten zillionaire who delivers the immortal closer.

DIR/PROD Billy Wilder; SCR Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond. US, 1959, b&w, 120 min.

Special screening Sunday, March 12, 2006, 3:10 p.m.*
IN PERSON! GEORGE STEVENS, JR., WITH NPR'S LIANNE HANSEN
Producer and AFI Founding Director George Stevens, Jr., will appear at the AFI Silver to introduce this special screening of SOME LIKE IT HOT. NPR's Lianne Hansen, host of Weekend Edition Sunday, will join him to discuss Billy Wilder and other Hollywood greats as he knew them, from his new book Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood's Golden Age: At the American Film Institute. Book signing to follow the film.

Restored 35mm
CinemaScope Print
THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH
When his new neighbor Marilyn Monroe walks over a subway grate in that summer dress, paperback publisher Tom Ewell is smitten. But he's supposed to be concentrating on work, with his wife in Maine for the summer. In this adaptation of George Axelrod's Broadway hit, Ewell's fantasies are never consummated.

DIR Billy Wilder; SCR Billy Wilder and George Axelrod; PROD Billy Wilder and Charles Feldman. US, 1955, b&w, 105 min.

#24 on AFI's 100 YEARS . . . 100 Thrills, heart-pounding American movies
DOUBLE INDEMNITY
Film noir at its noirest, as jaded insurance man Fred MacMurray and bored housewife Barbara Stanwyck team up to murder her husband and collect--but ace insurance inspector Edward G. Robinson gets in the way. Wilder adapted the work of the great hard-boiled novel by James M. Cain by collaborating with another detective fiction great, Raymond Chandler. min.

DIR Billy Wilder; SCR Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder, from the novel by James M. Cain; PROD Buddy DeSylva. US, 1944, color, 75

THE LOST WEEKEND
In his daring exploration of alcoholism, failed writer Ray Milland hits the bottle and rock bottom in Wilder's first Oscar winner for both writing and directing. Famous sequences include the bat and mouse hallucination and Milland's desperate search for a drink on Yom Kippur (filmed on location, with Howard da Silva's bar a recreation of P. J. Clarke's).

DIR Billy Wilder; SCR Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder, from the novel by James M. Cain; PROD Joseph Sistron. US, 1944, b&w, 107 min.

THE EMPEROR WALTZ
Wilder's homage to his mentor Ernst Lubitsch, this lighthearted musical was a definite change of pace after his previous film, the dark and harrowing THE LOST WEEKEND. In fin-de-siecle Vienna, traveling gramophone salesman Bing Crosby makes romance with countess Joan Fontaine--while their dogs follow suit.

DIR Billy Wilder; SCR Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder; PROD Charles Brackett. US, 1948, color, 106 min.

New 35mm Print
ONE, TWO, THREE
Wilder's most frenetically paced comedy was both a throwback to 1930s screwball style and avant-garde for its anything-goes satire. Released as the Cold War was heating up (the Wall went up during production), this farce of capitalists, communists and "ex"-Nazis competing to rook each other struck some as tasteless--today it looks about right. James Cagney is in electrifying form as a Coca-Cola exec in West Berlin, charged with keeping an eye on his boss's flirtatious daughter. She has her eye on cute communist Horst Buchholz.

DIR/PROD Billy Wilder; SCR Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, from the play by Ferenc Molnar. US, 1961, b&w, 115 min.

Restored 35mm Print
THE APARTMENT
Career-making performances from Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine lead an outstanding cast in one of the screen's most poignant comedies, a workplace romance of uncommon sophistication. Motivated by vague promises of promotion, lowly insurance clerk Lemmon lets his bosses use his apartment for their late-night assignations. When he falls for elevator operator MacLaine, ex-girlfriend of boss Fred MacMurray, the moral dilemmas gain momentum. Ten Oscar nominations and five wins, including Best Picture, Director and Screenplay for Wilder.

DIR/PROD Billy Wilder; SCR Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond. US, 1960, b&w, 125 min.

Restored, Uncensored 35mm Print
KISS ME, STUPID
A cheerfully crass but classically structured sex comedy, with the uncensored version restoring the lunatic symmetry of the climactic couplings. Aspiring songwriter Ray Walston schemes to detain boozy, Vegas crooner (and gamely self-parodying) Dean Martin in small town Climax, Nevada, long enough to sell him one of his songs. The bait is Kim Novak, playing a hooker.

DIR/PROD Billy Wilder; SCR Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, from the play by Anna Bonacci. US, 1964, b&w, 125 min. RATED PG-13

New 35mm Print
THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
A treasured project for over a decade--at one time Wilder considered producing it as a Broadway musical. In this cheeky portrayal of the Great Detective, Wilder has him making mistakes, falling in love and joking about the Watson relationship. With Robert Stephens as Holmes, Colin Blakeley as Watson and Hammer Studios icon Christopher Lee as Holmes's rarely seen brother Mycroft.

DIR/PROD Billy Wilder; SCR I. A. L. Diamond and Billy Wilder, based on characters created by Arthur Conan Doyle. US, 1970, color, 125 min. RATED PG-13

"I am big! It's the pictures that got small!"
#24 AFI's 100 Years . . . 100 Movie Quotes
SUNSET BOULEVARD
Regarded by many as the best film ever made about Hollywood--and by others as audacious treachery. Told in flashback, dead screenwriter/kept man William Holden narrates his tormented, mutually exploitative affair with has-been star Gloria Swanson. Erich von Stroheim, in the role of Swanson's devoted valet, came up with the memorable idea of having him write the star's fan mail. Wilder rejected his other suggestion: washing and ironing her panties. #12 AFI's 100 Years . . . 100 Movies.

DIR Billy Wilder; SCR Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and D. M. Marshman, Jr.; PROD Charles Brackett. US, 1950, b&w, 110 min.

FEDORA
A variation on the SUNSET BOULEVARD theme, but more a cautionary fable on the folly of trying to recapture the past than a nostalgia piece. Aging producer William Holden plans the comeback of Fedora, a reclusive, mysterious and seemingly ageless Golden Age star. Driven to show Hollywood he has one more picture in him, Holden courts disaster.

DIR/PROD Billy Wilder; SCR Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond. US, 1978, color, 114 min. RATED PG