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Article: Wilder Times: The Life of Billy Wilder.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- August 24, 1996
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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WILDER TIMES: THE LIFE OF BILLY WILDER by Kevin Lally. Henry Holt; 496 pages; $30
BILLY WILDER, 90-year-old director of such vintage Hollywood pictures as "Sunset Boulevard" and "Some Like It Hot", tells a typically sardonic story against himself in this entertaining biography. A "fan" sidles up and asks him for three autographs. Why three? "Because for three Wilders I can get a Spielberg."
Today he is Hollywood's forgotten man, who has not made a movie since 1981, nor had a smash hit since "The Apartment" in 1960. Born in the Austro-Hungarian empire, he brought a European sophistication to his pictures and thrived on working with a stream of well-chosen ...