Tag: sunset boulevard

Calendar: April 17

A Year: Day to Day Men: 17th of April

The Seat of the Revelation

April 17, 1918 was the birthdate of William Franklin Beedle Jr., known to the public as William Holden, one of the biggest stars of the 1950s and 1960s.

William Holden’s first starring role was in the 1939 film “The Golden Boy”, costarring Barbara Stanwyck, in which he played a violinist turned boxer. He was still an unknown actor at the time, while Stanwyck was already a film star. She liked Holden and went out of her way to help him succeed, devoting her personal time to coaching and encouraging him.

Next he starred with George Raft and Humphrey Bogart in the 1939 Warner Brothers gangster epic “Invisible Stripes” followed by the role of George Gibbs in the film adaptation of “Our Town”. After Columbia Pictures picked up half of his contract, he alternated between starring in several minor pictures for Paramount and Columbia before serving as a second lieutenant in the United States Army Air Force during World War II, where he acted in training films for the First Motion Picture Unit.

Holden’s career took off in 1950 when director Billy Wilder tapped him to star in “Sunset Boulevard”, in which he played a down-on-his-heels screenwriter taken in by a faded silent-screen star, played by Gloria Swanson. Holden earned his first Best Actor Oscar nomination with the part. Getting the part was a lucky break for Holden, as the role was initially cast with Montgomery Clift, who backed out of his contract.

Following this breakthrough film, his career quickly grew as Holden played a series of roles that combined his good looks with cynical detachment, including a prisoner-of-war entrepreneur in the 1953 “Stalag 17”, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. His most widely recognized role was an ill-fated prisoner of war in the 1957 “The Bridge on the River Kwai” co-starring with Alec Guinness. He also starred in John Ford’s western “The Horse Soldiers” playing an American Civil War military surgeon opposite John Wayne.

William Holden co-starred as Humphrey Bogart’s younger brother, a carefree playboy, in the 1954 “Sabrina” starring Audrey Hepburn. It was Holden’s third film with director Billy Wilder. His career peaked in 1957 with the enormous success of “The Bridge Over the River Kwai”, but Holden spent the next several years starring in a number of films that rarely succeeded commercially or critically.

By the mid-1960s, the quality of his roles and films had noticeably diminished. A heavy drinker most of his life, Holden made a comeback in 1969 when he starred in director Sam Peckinpah’s graphically violent Western “The Wild Bunch”, winning much acclaim. Holden gave two more great performances, in the 1974 “Towering Inferno” and the 1976 “Network”, until his shock death from blood loss due to a fall at his apartment while intoxicated. In 1982, actress Stefanie Powers, with whom Holden had been in a relationship since 1975, helped set up the William Holden Wildlife Foundation and the William Holden Wildlife Education Center in Kenya, an area where Holden was active in animal sanctuary.

Billy Wilder, “Sunset Boulevard”: Film History Series

Artist Unknown, “Sunset Boulevard” Film Gifs, Computer Graphics

“Sunset Boulevard” is a 1950 American film noir, which was co-written by Billy Wilder and novelist Charles Brackett, directed by Wilder, and produced by Brackett. The title is taken from one of the most important streets in Hollywood, a twenty-two mile artery that extends through the heart of the Greater Los Angeles area.

Starring William Holden as Joe Gillis, a struggling screenwriter, and Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, a former silent-film star, the story begins with the body of Joe Gillis in a swimming pool and  is told through Gillis’s flashback of his encounter with and developing financial dependence upon Norma Desmond.  A great supporting role as Max von Mayerling, Desmond’s butler, is played by Austrian-American director Erich von Stroheim, whose 1924 film “Greed” is considered one of the most important films ever made.

Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett began working on the script in 1948, and were joined in August of that year by D. M. Marshman, Jr, who had previously written a critique of their 1948 “The Emperor Waltz”.  By not disclosing full details of the story to Paramount Pictures, they were able to avoid the company’s strict self-censorship, caused by the Breen Code, and proceed with relative freedom. With only the first third of the script completed, the filming began in early May of 1949. 

The dark, shadowy, black and white cinematographic work of “Sunset Boulevard” was accomplished by John F. Seitz, who had previously worked with Billy Wilder. Allowed to make his own decisions on the filming, Seitz used innovative techniques to create the gothic atmosphere of the noir genre and produce the necessary shots. For some interior shots, he sprinkled dust in front of the camera lens, a method he used for the 1944 ‘Double Indemnity”; the shot of the floating corpse in the swimming pool was achieved by placing a mirror in the bottom of the pool and shooting the body’s reflection from above. For his work on the film, John Seitz was nominated for  an Academy Award for Best Cinematography.

“Sunset Boulevard” had its official world premiere at New York’s Radio City Music Hall on August 10, 1950. After a seven-week run, where it grossed over one million dollars, it was one of the Music Hall’s most successful films. Although, it was doing well in major cities, Gloria Swanson, in order to promote the film in rural areas, traveled by train on a twenty-three city tour in a few months. The box office receipts for the year 1950 totaled over two million dollars.

Described as one of Billy Wilder’s most significant works, “Sunset Boulevard” has developed lasting appeal. The film was nominated for Academy Awards in Best Motion Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Actress, and Best Supporting Actor and Actress; it won Best Story and Screenplay and Best Art Direction. The film , considered culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant by the Library of Congress, was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1989. As the film was shot using cellulose nitrate film stock, Paramount Studios digitally restored the film; the restored version was released on DVD in 2002.