Some Like
It Hot (1959)
In Billy Wilder's classic comedy about the Roaring
Twenties - the funniest and best-loved comedy of all time:
- the first shocking glimpse of drag-dressed musicians
joining an all-girl band for a three week gig: Jerry/Daphne (Oscar-nominated
Jack Lemmon) and saxophone-playing cad Joe/Josephine (Tony Curtis),
as they walked toward the Florida-bound train to flee from gangsters
led by Spats Colombo (George Raft), after witnessing the 1929 St.
Valentine's Day Massacre
- the first view of the band's ukelele-playing, voluptuous
singer, hip-swinging 24 year-old blonde 'Sugar Kane' Kowalczyk (Marilyn
Monroe) walking to the train when she was squirted by a jet of steam
- and Jerry remarked: "Look at that! Look how she moves. That's
just like Jell-O on springs. She must have some sort of built-in
motor, or somethin'. I tell you, it's a whole different sex!"
- the sequence of Daphne's and Josephine's troubles
in adjusting to their drag costumes - Jerry told Joe to watch where
he grabbed him after he tore off a phony "breast" in his
bra: "Now you've done it! Now you have done it!...You tore off
one of my chests...Now you tore the other one"
- Sugar's sneaking of a drink in the train's Ladies
Room, and her hard-luck story of depression and blues to Daphne and
Josephine: ("I play the ukulele and I sing too....Well, I don't
have much of a voice, but then this isn't much of a band either.
I'm only with them because I'm running away....I don't want you to
think I'm a drinker. I can stop any time I want to - only I don't
want to. Especially when I'm blue....All the girls drink, it's just
that I'm the one who gets caught. The story of my life. I always
get the fuzzy end of the lollipop")
- all of Sugar's songs (particularly 'Runnin' Wild')
a wiggling, hip-swinging rendition of the song on the train, led
by Sweet Sue (Joan Shawlee), milquetoast manager Beinstock (Dave
Barry) and her Society Syncopaters, an all-girl jazz band
- Joe's words of advice to Jerry to suppress his male
lust: "Steady boy. Just keep telling yourself you're a girl" -
Jerry repeated the phrase: "I'm a girl...I'm a girl...I'm a
girl"
- the hilarious wild upper berth train party scene in
the close-quarters train bunk when boozy yet soft-hearted singer
Sugar Kane, in her seductive black sheer nightgown, cuddled affectionately
next to cross-dressed Jerry
- the sequence of Sugar's second confessional scene
about her bad luck with all-male bands and her lovers, usually male
saxophone players, to Josephine: "I'm not very bright, I guess...just
dumb. If I had any brains, I wouldn't be on this crummy train with
this crummy girls' band...I used to sing with male bands but I can't
afford it anymore...That's what I'm running away from. I worked with
six different ones in the last two years. Oh, brother!...I can't
trust myself. I have this thing about saxophone players, especially
tenor sax...I don't know what it is, they just curdle me. All they
have to do is play eight bars of 'Come to Me, My Melancholy Baby'
and my spine turns to custard. I get goose pimply all over and I
come to 'em...every time...That's why I joined this band. Safety
first. Anything to get away from those bums...You don't know what
they're like. You fall for 'em and you really love 'em - you think
this is gonna be the biggest thing since the Graf Zeppelin - and
the next thing you know, they're borrowing money from you and spending
it on other dames and betting on horses...Then one morning you wake
up, the guy is gone, the saxophone's gone, all that's left behind
is a pair of old socks and a tube of toothpaste, all squeezed out.
So you pull yourself together. You go on to the next job, the next
saxophone player. It's the same thing all over again. You see what
I mean? Not very bright...I can tell you one thing - it's not gonna
happen to me again - ever. I'm tired of getting the fuzzy end of
the lollipop"
- the scene of the band's arrival at the hotel in Miami
- where doddering old millionaires (in identical poses - reading Wall
Street Journal newspapers with sunglasses, canes, white panama
hats) were in rocking chairs to greet the girls - one of whom was
lustful and eccentric old millionaire tycoon Osgood Fielding III's
(Joe E. Brown) who exclaimed: "Zow-ee!" who took an immediate
interest in Daphne
- Josephine's impersonation of a Cary Grant-like, impotent
Shell Oil heir bachelor named "Junior"
on the beach, wearing a naval outfit and thick glasses, and bragging
about his yacht to Sugar
- Sugar's performance of 'I Wanna Be Loved By You' in
which she wore a sheer, see-through gown as she performed in the
hotel's nightclub lounge - the spotlight tantalizingly teased the
viewer with shadows as it moved over her translucent, backless dress
with transparent fabric, just cutting off her breasts
- the slow-burn yacht seduction scene for a midnight
snack aboard Fielding's The New Caledonia yacht between Joe
and Sugar -- cross cut with Jerry and Osgood dancing the tango all-night
long; Joe's ploy was to feign impotence, so that Sugar would do her
best to cure him -- Joe: "Oh, it's not that, it's just that
I'm, umm, harmless....Well, I don't know how to put it - but I've
got this thing about girls...When I'm with a girl, it does
absolutely nothing to me"; she accepted the challenge to be
the aggressor by making multiple attempts to arouse his libido with
kisses: "I may not be Dr. Freud or a Mayo brother, or one of
those French upstairs girls, but could I take another crack at it?...You're
not giving yourself a chance. Don't fight it. Re-lax...Let's throw
another log on the fire"
- in their hotel room after Jerry's night of liberated
tango dancing with Fielding, his joyful squeal: "I'm engaged" -
while Joe tried to dissuade him: "You can't marry Osgood!";
Jerry gave his reason for getting hitched - accompanied by shaking
maracas: (Joe: "Why would a guy want to marry a guy?" --
Jerry: "Security")
- the shocking appearance of the Chicago gangsters,
led by Spats and his gang, and Jerry's reaction: "Something
tells me the omelette is about to hit the fan" - soon followed
by a slapstick chase through the hotel
- the heartbroken Sugar's final song: ' I'm Thru With
Love', in which she soulfully and sadly sang the poignant tune on
the bandstand in the cabaret, while Joe/Josephine listened and then
came up to her and gave her a goodbye kiss as a female - a moment
of sexual exposure, to affirm the bond between them; at first believing
that he was the millionaire, Sugar opened her eyes, looked up and
exclaimed: "Josephine!"
- the flight of the two mismatched couples from the
pier in a getaway boat, when both Joe and Jerry revealed their true
identities to Sugar and Osgood Fielding
- the famous closing punch-line when nothing could diminish
millionaire Fielding's love for the cross-dressed Jerry who tactfully
attempted to break their engagement, even when he ripped off his
wig and admitted: "I'm a man!", to which love-struck Fielding
blithely and unflappably replied with the film's memorable last line: "Well,
nobody's perfect!"