Billy Wilder worked with Marilyn Monroe twice, which is twice as much as most directors could stand her. Famously late and unreliable on the set of 1959’s brilliant drag-gangster farce (which concludes the GI’s tribute to Wilder), she required countless takes with her more professional co-stars Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis, giving Wilder fits in trying to cut the picture together. And yet. Hot represents Monroe’s saddest, greatest, most damaged and vulnerable performance precisely because all her foibles show through in the part of chanteuse Sugar Kane. “It’s the story of my life. I always get the fuzzy end of the lollipop,” she saysand that’s pretty much the way Hollywood treated Monroe, too. No matter how fast, furious, and irreverent the script, Monroe’s fragile character gives Hot a heart that was worth all Wilder’s exasperation. (NR) Grand Illusion. Fri. Sept. 26-Thurs. Oct. 2. (Closed Mon.) BRIAN MILLER
Some Like It Hot
