Some Like It Hot: This funny experience Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis had before getting dressed for a movie

Jack Lemmon, A Life of Cinema, will be broadcast this April 24, 2023 on Arte and is available on arte.tv.

Considered “Mr. Everyman” of the 7th art, Jack Lemmon is nevertheless one of the biggest names in cinema of the last century. In addition to a filmography that spanned from 1954 to 2001 and includes more than 50 feature films, Billy was one of Wilder’s favorite actors, along with Marcello Mastroianni and Dean Stockwell, the only two-time Best Actor winner. at the Cannes Film Festival.

Jack Lemmon, an impressive career

An impressive career highlighted by iconic films, some from Like It Hot to JFK, through Irma la Douce and La Garçonnière, which Arte highlights in an engaging documentary. Baptized Jack Lemmon, cinematic life, therefore returns to public life, but also to the more complex and less smooth personality of the Hollywood “boy next door”. Between archival images, film clips and commentary from two film experts and an actor, this report offers a beautiful tribute to Jack Lemmon, but also some delicious anecdotes.

Dreaming of the theater and spotted on the boards of Broadway, she finally appears on the big screen with her first role in George Cukor’s The Woman Who Appears. But 9 years later she would mark everyone’s mind and become a face that will forever mark every generation, sharing the poster with Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis in Billy Wilder’s Some like it hot.

As hot as some hot underwear

In this classic among classics, he plays Jerry, a double bass player who must cross-dress his saxophonist Joe (Tony Curtis) to join a jazz orchestra and escape the mafia. A very lackluster film for its time, the two male headliners were forced to wear dresses, make-up and wigs. But before the shoot, the duo wanted to test their looks in real life.

“Tony and I were going to lunch and I said to him, ‘I have an idea!– says Jack Lemmon in an interview. The girl group was working on another film. I said “they go to the bathroom, we follow them”. We did so and no one’s eyelids were painted, we entered without any problems! I thought he passed the exam. We told Bill, who said, “It’s perfect, we’re not changing a thing!” An original experience, to say the least, and which made possible the birth of Josephine and Geraldine, the female doubles of Joe and Jerry in some like it hot.