Some Like It Hot (1959) on Netflix
Joe and Jerry, a saxophonist and a bassist in Prohibition-era Chicago, witness a mob killing. They join an all-female band as Josephine and Daphne to get out of town.
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- Rotten Tomatoes94%
Trailer
Plot summary
In Prohibition-era Chicago, Joe plays saxophone in a speakeasy run by mob boss Spats Colombo, and Jerry plays bass. Both men are broke. A police raid sends them out into the night, where they see Spats and his henchmen shoot down the informant Toothpick Charlie and his gang, and the killers see them too. With Chicago too dangerous to stay in, the two disguise themselves as women called Josephine and Daphne and join Sweet Sue's Society Syncopators, an all-female band traveling by train to a Miami hotel. On board they befriend the band's singer and ukulele player, Sugar Kane Kowalczyk, and both become obsessed with her while trying not to break their cover. Sugar tells Joe she has sworn off saxophone players and hopes to meet a gentle, bespectacled millionaire in Florida.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Some Like It Hot (1959)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Wilder's first idea for Jerry was Frank Sinatra, whom he then thought would be too difficult; Jerry Lewis and Danny Kaye were also considered, and Lewis was offered the role but declined because he did not want to do drag, a decision he later regretted.
- The line "It's me, Sugar" took 47 takes because Monroe kept getting the word order wrong, saying either "Sugar, it's me" or "It's Sugar, me", and Curtis and Lemmon made bets during filming on how many takes she would need.
- Monroe demanded dozens of retakes and did not remember her lines or act as directed, and Curtis famously said that kissing her was "like kissing Hitler" because of the number of retakes.
- Wilder shot the film in black and white because Lemmon and Curtis in full drag costume and make-up looked "unacceptably grotesque" in early color tests; Monroe's contract required color, but she agreed once she saw that their makeup gave them a "ghoulish" appearance on color film.
SPOILER
The closing line "Well, nobody's perfect" was never supposed to be in the final cut: Diamond and Wilder put it in the script as a placeholder until they could come up with something better, and never did. Wilder's tombstone reads "I'm a writer, but then, nobody's perfect".- Asked in 1959 about making another film with Monroe, Wilder said: "I have discussed this with my doctor and my psychiatrist and they tell me I'm too old and too rich to go through this again."
- The Broadway musical won four Tony Awards in 2023, among them Best Leading Actor in a Musical for J. Harrison Ghee, the first openly non-binary actor both nominated for and winning a Tony, along with Alex Newell, who won for Shucked.
