Some Like It Hot

Some Like It Hot is a 1959 American black and white romantic comedy film set in 1929, directed and produced by Billy Wilder, starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon. The supporting cast includes George Raft, Pat O'Brien, Joe E. Brown, Joan Shawlee, and Nehemiah Persoff. The screenplay by Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond is based on a screenplay by Robert Thoeren and Michael Logan from the French film Fanfare of Love. The film is about two musicians who dress in drag in order to escape from mafia gangsters whom they witnessed commit a crime inspired by the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre.

Some Like It Hot opened to critical and commercial success and is today considered to be one of the greatest films of all time. The film received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Actor, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. It was voted as the top comedy film by the American Film Institute on their list on AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs poll in 2000, and was selected as the best comedy of all time in a poll of 253 film critics from 52 countries conducted by the BBC in 2017. In 2005, the British Film Institute included this film on its list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14.

The film was produced without approval from the Motion Picture Production Code because it plays with the idea of homosexuality and features cross dressing. The code had been gradually weakening in its scope during the early 1950s, due to greater social tolerance for previously taboo topics in film, but it was still officially enforced until the mid-1960s. The overwhelming success of Some Like It Hot is considered one of the final nails in the coffin for the Hays Code.

Plot
In February 1929 in Prohibition-era Chicago, Joe (Tony Curtis) is a jazz saxophone player and an irresponsible gambler and ladies' man; his sensible friend Jerry (Jack Lemmon) is a jazz double bass player. They work in a speakeasy (disguised as a funeral home) owned by gangster "Spats" Colombo (George Raft). Tipped off by informant "Toothpick" Charlie (George E. Stone), the police, led by treasury agent Mulligan (Pat O'Brien), raid the joint. Joe and Jerry flee, only to accidentally witness Spats and his henchmen exacting revenge on "Toothpick" and his own gang (inspired by the real-life Saint Valentine's Day Massacre). Broke and desperate to get out of town, Joe and Jerry disguise themselves as women named Josephine and Daphne so they can join Sweet Sue (Joan Shawlee) and her Society Syncopators, an all-female band headed to Miami. They board a train with the band and its male manager, Bienstock (Dave Barry). Joe and Jerry notice Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), the band's vocalist and ukulele player.

Joe and Jerry become enamored of Sugar and compete for her affection while maintaining their disguises. Sugar confides to Joe that she has sworn off male saxophone players, who have stolen her heart in the past and left her with "the fuzzy end of the lollipop". She has set her sights on finding a sweet, bespectacled millionaire in Florida. During the forbidden drinking and partying on the train, Josephine and Daphne become intimate friends with Sugar, and must struggle to remember that they are supposed to be girls and cannot make passes at her.

Once in Miami, Joe woos Sugar by assuming a second disguise as millionaire Junior, the heir to Shell Oil, while feigning indifference to her. An actual millionaire, the much-married aging mama's-boy Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown), tries repeatedly to pick up Daphne, who rebuffs him. Osgood invites Daphne for a champagne supper on his yacht, New Caledonia. Joe convinces Daphne to keep Osgood occupied onshore so that Junior can take Sugar to Osgood's yacht, passing it off as his. Once on the yacht, Junior explains to Sugar that psychological trauma has left him impotent and frigid, but that he would marry anyone who could change that. Sugar tries to arouse sexual response in Junior, and begins to succeed. Meanwhile, Daphne and Osgood dance the tango ("La Cumparsita") till dawn. When Joe and Jerry get back to the hotel, Jerry announces that Osgood has proposed marriage to Daphne and that he, as Daphne, has accepted, anticipating an instant divorce and huge cash settlement when his ruse is revealed. Joe convinces Jerry that he cannot actually marry Osgood.

The hotel hosts a conference for "Friends of Italian Opera", which is in fact a major meeting of the national crime syndicate, presided over by "Little Bonaparte" (Nehemiah Persoff). Spats and his gang from Chicago recognize Joe and Jerry as the witnesses to the Valentine's Day murders. Joe and Jerry, fearing for their lives, realize they must quit the band and leave the hotel. Joe breaks Sugar's heart by telling her that he, Junior, must marry a woman of his father's choosing and move to Venezuela. Joe and Jerry evade Spats' men by hiding under a table at the syndicate banquet. "Little Bonaparte" has Spats and his men killed at the banquet; again, Joe and Jerry are witnesses and they flee through the hotel. Joe, dressed as Josephine, sees Sugar onstage singing that she will never love again. He kisses her before he leaves, and Sugar realizes that Joe is both Josephine and Junior.

Jerry persuades Osgood to take "Daphne" and "Josephine" away on his yacht. Sugar runs from the stage at the end of her performance and jumps aboard Osgood's launch just as it is leaving the dock with Joe, Jerry, and Osgood. Joe tells Sugar that he is not good enough for her, that she would be getting the "fuzzy end of the lollipop" yet again, but Sugar wants him anyway. Meanwhile, Jerry lists reasons why "Daphne" and Osgood cannot marry, ranging from a smoking habit to infertility. Osgood dismisses them all; he loves Daphne and is determined to go through with the marriage. Exasperated, Jerry removes his wig and shouts, "I'm a man!" Osgood, unfazed, simply responds: "Well, nobody's perfect."

Cast

 * Marilyn Monroe as Sugar "Kane" Kowalczyk, a ukulele player and singer
 * Tony Curtis as Joe/Josephine/Shell Oil Junior, a saxophone player
 * Jack Lemmon as Jerry (Gerald)/Daphne, a double bass player
 * George Raft as "Spats" Colombo, a mobster from Chicago
 * Pat O'Brien as Agent Mulligan
 * Joe E. Brown as Osgood Fielding III
 * Nehemiah Persoff as "Little Bonaparte", a mobster
 * Joan Shawlee as Sweet Sue, the bandleader of "Sweet Sue and Her Society Syncopators"
 * Dave Barry as Mister Bienstock, the band manager for "Sweet Sue and Her Society Syncopators"
 * Billy Gray as Sig Poliakoff, Joe and Jerry's agent in Chicago
 * Barbara Drew as Nellie Weinmeyer, Poliakoff's secretary
 * George E. Stone as "Toothpick" Charlie, a gangster who is killed by "Spats" Colombo
 * Mike Mazurki as Spats' henchman
 * Harry Wilson as Spats' henchman
 * Edward G. Robinson Jr. as Johnny Paradise, a gangster who kills "Spats" Colombo
 * Beverly Wills as Dolores, a trombone player, and Sugar's apartment friend
 * Tom Kennedy as Gangster at Funeral palor (uncredited)
 * Al Breneman as the young bellboy (uncredited)