On this day in movie history - Sunset Boulevard (1950 movie & books):

Sunset Boulevard

aka SUNSET BLVD.,

directed by Billy Wilder,

written by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and D. M. Marshman Jr.,

was released in the United States on August 10, 1950.
Music by Franz Waxman.

Cast:

William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Fred Clark, Lloyd Gough, Jack Webb, Franklyn Farnum, Larry J. Blake, Charles Dayton, Cecil B. DeMille, Hedda Hopper, Buster Keaton, Anna Q. Nilsson, H.B. Warner, Ray Evans, Jay Livingston, Fred Aldrich, Joel Allen, Gertrude Astor, Anne Bauchens, Edward Biby, Danny Borzage, Ken Christy, Ruth Clifford, John Cortay, Archie R. Dalzell, Eddie Dew, Peter Drynan, Julia Faye, Al Ferguson, Gerry Ganzer, Rudy Germane, Kenneth Gibson, Joe Gray, Sanford E. Greenwald, Creighton Hale, Chuck Hamilton, James Hawley, Len Hendry, E. Mason Hopper, Stan Johnson, Tiny Jones, Howard Joslin, Arthur Lane, Perc Launders, Alan Marston, William Meader, Gertrude Messinger, Harold Miller, John ‘Skins’ Miller, Lee Miller, Ralph Montgomery, Bert Moorhouse, Jay Morley, Bernice Mosk, Howard Negley, Ottola Nesmith, Eva Novak, Frank O’Connor, Robert Emmett O’Connor, Jack Perrin, Virginia L. Randolph, Bill Sheehan, Sidney Skolsky, Emmett Smith, Roy Thompson, Archie Twitchell, Yvette Vickers, Edward Wahrman, Jack Warden, Henry Wilcoxon.

Recommended reading:

Sunset Boulevard

By Billy Wilder.

Published by University of California Press.

Published 1999.

ISBN-10: 0520218558

ISBN-13: 978-0520218550

Description:

Sunset Boulevard (1950) is one of the most famous films in the history of Hollywood, and perhaps no film better represents Hollywood's vision of itself. Billy Wilder collaborated on the screenplay with the very able Charles Brackett, and with D. M. Marshman Jr., who later joined the team. Together they created a film both allusive and literate, with Hollywood's worst excesses and neuroses laid out for all to see. After viewing Sunset Boulevard Louis B. Mayer exclaimed: "We should throw this Wilder out of town!" The New York Times, however, gave the movie a rave review, praising "that rare blend of pungent writing, expert acting, masterly direction, and unobtrusively artistic photography." The film was nominated for Best Picture, and Wilder won an Academy Award for Best Story and Best Screenplay.

This facsimile edition of Sunset Boulevard makes it possible to get as much pleasure from reading the highly intelligent screenplay as from seeing the film. Jeffrey Meyers's introduction provides an intriguing array of background details about Wilder, the film's casting and production, and the lives of those connected to what has become a classic.

Sunset Boulevard

By Steven Cohan.

BFI Film Classics.

Published by British Film Institute.

Published 2022.

ISBN-10: 1839024089

ISBN-13: 978-1839024085

Description:

Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard was a critical and commercial success on its release in 1950 and remains a classic of film noir and one of the best-known Hollywood films about Hollywood. Both its opening, with William Holden as the screenwriter Joe Gillis floating face down in ageing star Norma Desmond's (Gloria Swanson) pool, and lines such as 'I am big, it's the pictures that got small' are some of the most memorable in Classical Hollywood cinema.

Steven Cohan's study of the film draws on original archival research to shed new light on the film's production history, and the contribution to the film's success and meanings of director Wilder, stars Holden and Swanson but also supporting actors Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson (who plays Betty Schaefer), Cecil B. DeMille, and Hedda Hopper, as well as costumier Edith Head, and composer Franz Waxman. Cohan considers the film both as a 'back studio' picture (a movie about Hollywood) and as a film noir, and in the context of McCarthyism, blacklisting and the Hollywood Ten.

Cohan explores how the film was marketed, its reception and afterlife, tracing how the film is at once a product of its own particular historical moment as the movie industry was transitioning out of the studio era, yet one that still speaks powerfully to contemporary audiences, and speculates on the reasons for its enduring appeal.