• Some Like It Hot

3/27/25 (Thurs)

I was in the mood for something light and came across Billy Wilder’s 1959 masterwork by chance on Amazon. I hadn’t seen it in years but had been meaning to watch it after reading about the unfortunate Broadway musical version by the Hairspray guys. That show – Broadway’s second try at musicalizing this piece after Jule Styne’s 1972 Sugar – suffered two serious flaws. First, while the casting of a black actress as Sugar seemed a smart way of getting away from the Marilyn Monroe image, they actually wrote a black anthem for her, meaning that the character, not just the actress, has to be black. That seems limiting since it introduces a heavy issue that goes against the farce. Also, the Jack Lemmon character evidently starts enjoying his new identity as a woman, a woke interpretation that’s so dull at this point. The writers don’t seem to understand that we don’t want racial or gender issues thrown at us. We just want to see a man in a dress. I wish musical writers would broaden their horizons to more universal themes. At any rate, the show was unsuccessful and dropped quickly off the radar. Mercifully.

Fortunately we still have the film, which is blissfully free of everything except the desire to make us laugh. It is perfectly structured with a logical story and distinctive characters and none of the coincidences or impossibilities that lesser authors often resort to in order to make the story work. Yes, we have to accept that Marilyn Monroe doesn’t recognize Tony Curtis as a man, but that’s a convention of the genre and absolutely fine in context. The film benefits from idiosyncratic actors like Joe E. Brown (terrific) and George Raft, not to mention the supreme triumvirate of Monroe, Curtis and Lemmon. The musical choices couldn’t be better, especially a fabulous “I’m Through With Love”, and Monroe delivers them to perfection. Sharp book, quotable lines, great performances from top to bottom… I can’t think of any downside whatsoever. One of the best farces ever constructed. I’m not sure why it seems to be resistant to musicalization: maybe the breathless pace of the plot makes it impossible to slow things down for character songs, or maybe the characters are too well drawn and the plot too tightly woven to need any further explanation in music. Memories of the original film certainly can’t help. I can’t wait to see it again in a few years.