how old was william holden in sunset boulevard how old was william holden in sunset boulevard

Every character is jaded, except the oldest players. but Holden's wife, Ardis (Brenda Marshall), who happened to be on set that day. From the right angle, the camera could shoot the reflected image in the mirror without ever going underwater itself. It is because of Sunset Blvd., for certain, that my mind could ever go there. (1950) in my head, and I'd always sort of related to that character floating in . When Gloria Swanson finished Norma's final scene, the mad staircase descent, she burst into tears and the crew applauded. This is an old film which has been made into a musical. Swanson argued that a woman like Norma would have been obsessed with her appearance and would have done her utmost not to look old. William Holden (born William Franklin Beedle Jr.; April 17, 1918 - November 12, 1981) was an American actor and murderer, and one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1950s. Norma, the aging silent-movie star who ensnares down-at-the-heels screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden), is the vamp become vampire (look at those clawlike hands! After a private screening for Hollywood dignitaries, Barbara Stanwyck knelt in front of Gloria Swanson and kissed the hem of her skirt. In her private screening room, with butler Max running the projector, Norma cuddles up with Joe to watch one of her own films. Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor, Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie, Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie, New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor, Venice Film Festival Special Award for Ensemble Acting, Laurel Award for Top Male Dramatic Performance, BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor, Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie, "When Alcoholics drink themselves to death", "William Holden Dead at 63; Won Oscar for 'Stalag 17', "Barbara Stanwyck's Honorary Award: 1982 Oscars", "The Screen Strand Shows 'Invisible Stripes', "30 Days, 30 Classics Day 17: Sabrina (1954) starring Audrey Hepburn, William Holden and Humphrey Bogart", "Screen: Crosby Acts in 'Country Girl'; Film Based on Odets Drama Makes Bow", "The Screen in Review; 'Bridges at Toko-ri' Is Fine Film of War", "Han Suyin dies at 95; wrote 'Many-Splendored Thing', "13 Fascinating Facts About 'The Bridge on the River Kwai', "Columbia Earns as It Holds Coin Due Bill Holden on 10% of 'Kwai', "The Towering Inferno Movie Review (1974)", "Network Movie Review & Film Summary (1976)", "William Holden Gave His All Even "When Time Ran Out", "William Holden's Unscripted Fall From Grace", The William Holden Wildlife Education Center, "West Holden: More than just the son of William Holden", Image of William Holden and Brenda Marshall, Academy Awards, Los Angeles, 1951, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_Holden&oldid=1142631715, Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie Primetime Emmy Award winners, United Service Organizations entertainers, Articles with dead external links from December 2019, Short description is different from Wikidata, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Pages using infobox person with multiple partners, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2022, TCMDb name template using numeric ID from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, episode: "William Holden/Frances Bergen Show", This page was last edited on 3 March 2023, at 14:28. Gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, who plays herself in the movie, wrote that Billy Wilder was crazy about Evelyn Waughs book The Loved One, and the studio wanted to buy it.. The Tragic 1981 Death Of Sunset Boulevard Star William Holden Grunge 2.14M subscribers Subscribe 486 18K views 3 weeks ago #Actor #Hollywood #SunsetBoulevard While Actor William Holden. Wilder wanted Hedy Lamarr to sit in for a cameo, but she wanted $25,000. "Lonely, alone, without dignity.". For the record, the other 12 films to achieve a similar feat are Mrs. Miniver (1942), Johnny Belinda (1948), A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), From Here to Eternity (1953), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The statuette on the telephone table at Artie Green's new years party is a model of the Philistine god, Dagon. The silent comedian had a reputation as one of Hollywoods best bridge players. At Columbia, he starred in film noirs, The Dark Past (1948), The Man from Colorado (1949) and Father Is a Bachelor (1950). When Powers returned to California, she went to his penthouse apartment in Santa Monica but couldn't get in. a mean old woman who looks and acts a little like Ma Bates if she'd been dead for several years but was somehow still just as talkative and feisty. The movie featured the famed director Erich von Stroheim, who made photographs of Gloria Swanson move so beautifully the world was enthralled, as Max Von Mayerling, the director who made, married, and divorced the enthralling Norma Desmondand then gave up his career in film to be her slave in butlers clothing. But it originally began in the L.A. county morgue, with toe-tagged corpsesincluding Joe'sspeaking to each other (in voiceover) about how they died. It was this astonishing footage that rekindled interest in the film. Despite the 19 year gap in their ages, Holden and Swanson died just 2 years apart from each other- Holden in 1981 at age 63 and Swanson in 1983 at age 84. Later he strangled himself with it. ", The scene of Max playing Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" at the organ might well have been an inspiration for Lurch at the harpsichord in the TV series "The Addams Family.". "No, don't let it be true. In fact, a pivotal plot point in the Showtime limited series of Twin Peaks (2017) includes a scene from "Sunset Boulevard" in which the character's name is mentioned. And like the title, Holden seemed to have the looks and muscular build Hollywood craved. But that wasnt good enough for Hollywood. A week later she heard the news of Holden's death on her car radio. The two men never worked together again. Neither was The Revengers (1972), another Western. [12] Swanson later said, "Bill Holden was a man I could have fallen in love with. The movie's line "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up" was voted the #7 movie quote by the American Film Institute. Holden was reunited with Wilder in Stalag 17 (1953), for which Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Holden met French actress Capucine in the early 1960s. In 2007 the American Film Institute ranked this as the #16 Greatest Movie of All Time. At the end, they stood and cheered for Gloria Swanson's return. Universal bought it on her death in 1920 and it was used in several movies, most notably in The Phantom of the Opera (1925). It would go on to be one of his most successful movies. Sondheim respectfully stopped work on the project and, on the same grounds, later declined an offer to write the score for a proposed movie remake., Additional Sources: Wilder, ever the merry prankster, told Holden and Olson to keep kissing until he called "cut": he was going to fade out at the end of the scene, and he needed to make sure the kiss didn't end prematurely. So funny that it took away from the rest of the picture. The only addition was the swimming pool, which wasn't equipped with a means of circulating the water so it was useless after filming. The whole place seemed to have been stricken with the kind of creeping paralysis, out of beat with the rest of the world, crumbling apart in slow motion. Montgomery Clift was originally cast as Joe Gillis but quit the production two weeks before filming began because he had already played the kept man of a wealthy older woman in The Heiress (1949). Stanwyck went to bat for Holden when he was going to be replaced in Golden Boy (1939) and Wilder's collaboration with Holden in the 50s starting with Sunset Boulevard revitalized his career (including the Best Actor Oscar for Stalag 17 (1953). (She liked it.). The other line, "I am big! In their scene together in Artie's bathroom Gillis mentions to Betty in his dramatic flirtation about having spent "12 years in the Burmese jungle", when coincidentally, just a few years later his character, Shears, finds himself lost there in David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai. Billy Wilder originally wanted another silent star, Pola Negri, to take the part of Norma Desmond. The writer was almost all washed up, one step ahead of the finance company, parking his car in a lot behind the shoeshine parlor run by Rudy, a guy who never asked any questions about finances because he could just look at the peoplesr heels and know the score. The movie premiered in the days of restricted language, not so long after Rhett Butler controversially told Scarlett OHara he didnt give a damn what happened to her in Gone With the Wind, a classic Paramount passed on because who wanted to see Civil War picture? But the old guard thought Wilder and his co-writer Charles Brackett fashioned a rope that could strangle this business of show by writing words, words, and more words. The restoration was performed at Lowry Digital by Barry Allen and Steve Elkin. In Billy Wilder's film, Erich von Stroheim plays the butler of Gloria Swanson's forgotten silent-film star. [38], Holden maintained a home in Switzerland and also spent much of his time working for wildlife conservation as a managing partner in an animal preserve in Africa. While Hollywood Blvd. Unlike the character she played, Gloria Swanson had accepted the fact that the movies didn't want her anymore and had moved to New York, where she worked on radio and, later, television. As a practical joke, during the scene where William Holden and Nancy Olson kiss for the first time, Billy Wilder let them carry on for minutes without yelling "Cut!" (The book is about a failed screenwriter who works for a cemetery and lives with a forgotten silent-film star.) The actor-turned-director bitched about that goddamned butler role for the rest his life. Sure she was a forgotten silent star, living in exile, screening her old movies and dreaming of a comeback. His death certificate makes no mention of cancer. He always wished that I would get an Oscar. Paramount always labeled that studio as its Long Island Studios. Some, including Holden himself and one of his close confidants, could foresee the death (per The Huntsville Item). When Joe and Norma sit down to watch one of her old movies, Joe pulls out a cigarette and places the bottom end in his mouth. Norma Desmond was the greatest of them all. Principal photography took place from 11 April to 18 June 1949. See production, box office & company info. She looks like a mannequin of a . Joes voice even starts to take on more and more of her theatrical flourish after too much exposure. Darryl F. Zanuck, Olivia de Havilland, Tyrone Power and Samuel Goldwyn all refused to allow their names to be used in the film, but Billy Wilder decided to use Zanuck's and Power's names anyway. Wilder changed the scene so that DeMille offered Lamarr's chair to Norma without Lamarr being present. It was only natural that he should film several sequences on the studio's backlots. Gloria Swanson became so identified with the demanding, irascible Norma that later generations of fans were startled to discover her serene, easy-going, naturalist personality in real life.