Where to watch Some Like It Hot (1959)

Trivia & production notes

• Billy Wilder discovered Tony Curtis while Curtis was filming Houdini and immediately envisioned him in the role because his handsomeness would make it believable when his character claimed to be part of the Shell Oil family.
• Jerry Lewis turned down the role of Jerry because he refused to perform in drag, a decision he later regretted.
• Marilyn Monroe was not the filmmakers' first choice for Sugar Kane; they had originally considered Mitzi Gaynor but pivoted when Monroe expressed interest in the part.
• Monroe agreed to take the role partly because her husband Arthur Miller encouraged her to do so and she was offered 10% of the film's profits in addition to her standard salary.
• Billy Wilder based the story on a 1951 German remake of a 1935 French film about two musicians looking for work, but he added the gangster subplot himself.
• Female impersonator Barbette was hired to coach Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon on how to perform in drag.
• The line 'It's me, Sugar' required 47 takes because Marilyn Monroe kept reversing the word order or inserting her own name, while Curtis and Lemmon bet on how many takes she would need.
• A beach scene with Marilyn Monroe was originally scheduled for three days of shooting due to the complexity of her dialogue but was completed in just 20 minutes.
• The famous closing line 'Well, nobody's perfect' was meant to be a temporary placeholder in the script until the writers could devise something better, but they never replaced it.
• Billy Wilder joked after filming that he had discussed making another movie with Marilyn Monroe with his doctor and psychiatrist, who told him he was too old and too rich to endure another such experience.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Some Like It Hot, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.