Billy Wilder – L.A. Times

Beyond Sunset Boulevard

Billy Wilder’s favorite spots in L.A. reflect the appreciation he had for his adopted home and its people.

The celebrated writer-director Billy Wilder, who died last week at 95, was one of Los Angeles’ most famous residents. Born in Vienna, Wilder made movies that showed a grand affection for the city he adopted after arriving in 1934. He drew boundless inspiration from the color and the characters, and the opportunities the growing film world provided a young screenwriter. When I sought him out more than 60 years later, and our meetings grew into the book “Conversations With Wilder,” his recollections of early Los Angeles were still fresh.

“When I came here, Sunset Boulevard was in the country,” Wilder recalled in 1997, sitting in his Brighton Way office in Beverly Hills. “It was not even asphalted. People lived around Vine Street, and Santa Monica Boulevard and Hollywood Boulevard. The Sunset Boulevard that we’ve built up since the war … the high-rises that were started, they were once meadows.”

The key word there is “we.” Wilder took the city to heart. Soon his movies were populated with vivid characterizations and depictions that could have come only from Los Angeles. From the ridiculously venal to the gloriously naive, these were the characters that would soon become his unforgettable screen creations.

And the city embraced Wilder with equal enthusiasm. Even in his early 90s, I often noted the special bounce in his gait as he walked the city streets with Audrey Wilder, his wife of more than 50 years. (On Sunday afternoons, however, nothing could tear him away from the Dodgers telecast.)

In Hollywood, there are tours available for just about anything. This is one you won’t find anywhere else. Here’s a guide to some of Billy Wilder’s favorite haunts, the spots where he lived and worked, and the ones he often said made the town indelible in his memory.

The Lot, 1041 N. Formosa Ave.
Originally Samuel Goldwyn Studios. The second floor of the writer’s building is where Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond penned some of their finest scripts. More accurately, Diamond wrote while Wilder paced. According to Wilder, “I never sat down in 50 years.” Moving briskly around the room, often carrying a riding crop, Wilder worked with his beloved co-writer “Izzy” to craft some of the greatest movies of modern times. Just a few steps down the studio street, on Stage 4, Wilder filmed “The Apartment.” The director achieved the memorable task of re-creating the huge accounting firm that employed beleaguered hero C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) by filling the back of the small stage with miniature desks and cutout figures.

20th Century Fox, 10201 W. Pico Blvd.
The iconic image of Marilyn Monroe’s white dress fluttering with the gust from a subway grate was first shot for Wilder’s “The Seven Year Itch” on a chaotic fan-filled Lexington Avenue in New York City. The director knew he’d need greater control and later returned to Los Angeles to shoot the close-ups on the 20th Century Fox lot.

Today, an enormous mural of “Seven Year Itch” stars Monroe and Tom Ewell adorns the side of the entire New York Street building, not far from the spot where the memorable sequence was completed.

Paramount Studios, 5555 Melrose Ave.
Paramount was Wilder’s first studio home as a writer in Hollywood. It was also the lot where he earned his stripes as a director. Wilder filmed on virtually every one of the studio’s stages. The final stairway sequence of “Sunset Boulevard,” in which Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) declared herself ready for one final close-up, took place on Stage 18. Wilder’s primary office was on the third floor of what is now the Ernst Lubitsch building, the site of his early collaborations with Charles Brackett, Raymond Chandler and others.

Lucy’s Restaurant, Windsor and Melrose
The actual building has long since been torn down, but directly across the street from Paramount was once a restaurant where some say more business was conducted than on the lot itself. Lucy’s (not to be confused with Lucy’s El Adobe) was the ’40s watering hole where many a working writer, director, executive or star cooled his or her heels or even knocked back a drink before returning to the studio fray. It’s also a historic location in the career of Billy Wilder.

One fateful afternoon Wilder was lunching with Charles Brackett. The two writers ran into actor Charles Boyer, who was then filming their script of “Hold Back the Dawn” with director Mitchell Leisen. Boyer cavalierly mentioned that he had stricken one of the best sequences in the script, a moment in which his character delivered a glorious speech to a cockroach on a motel wall. Wilder decided to become a director at that moment to protect his scripts from further maiming. (Boyer also met his karmic justice. Wilder and Brackett returned to their office and promptly rewrote the ending of the film to exclude Boyer and emphasize the leading lady, Paulette Goddard. “If he’s not talking to the cockroach,” recalled Wilder, “he’s not talking to anybody!”)

The Corner of Melrose and La Cienega
This corner held strong memories for Wilder. At the end of a long shooting day, it was always at the same spot—traveling down Melrose and turning right at La Cienega—when he realized the brilliant solutions to the problems of the day. Always, he recalled, when it was just a little too late. For Billy Wilder, the corner forever represented the directing process in all of its beautiful agony.

Mr. Chow, 344 N. Camden Drive
The director’s favorite restaurant is run by his good friend Michael Chow. The first table on the left as you enter the main dining room is revered as Billy Wilder’s table. Though he hadn’t directed a film in 21 years, Wilder was well-known and accessible to modern-day Hollywood. Many an actor or director met the great Wilder, sharing in his memorable stories, sitting at this table.

Johnny Rockets, 474 N. Beverly Drive
Another favorite Wilder hangout is the lively spot he often visited for lunch. Billy enjoyed the pure Americana of the place, as well as the chili, and in the last year of his life something miraculous happened here. Famously not a fan of rock ‘n’ roll, Wilder finally heard one song from the rock era that reached him, courtesy of the Johnny Rockets jukebox. It was Elvis Presley’s aching ballad “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”

Kate Mantilini’s, 9101 Wilshire Blvd.
Wilder was fond of Kate Mantilini’s because of the atmosphere, the waiters and waitresses, and one specific item on their menu: calf’s brains.

Owners Harry and Marilyn Lewis always kept the dish in the kitchen, just in case Wilder called for a reservation. Few others ever ordered it. It didn’t matter. Just having it on hand was the restaurant’s tip of the hat to one of its most valued customers.

The Corner of Irving and Wilshire
The search for the perfect gothic house for “Sunset Boulevard” ended on this corner. Wilder spotted a two-story home and declared it perfect. “We got it from an early wife of Paul Getty,” Wilder remembered. “She conducted a school for acting there.” The swimming pool where Joe Gillis (William Holden) would meet his watery doom was constructed, filmed, and later filled in with dirt by Getty, who leveled the place and replaced it with one of his oil company offices. “I used to hang around there quite a bit while we built the little touches,” said Wilder. “Sad that it is gone.”

The Wilders’ Beverly Hills Residence, 704 Beverly Drive
Though Billy and Audrey Wilder moved to Century City in 1956, many vivid memories remained from the house he and Audrey formerly occupied in Beverly Hills. The regular site of some of the outstanding social events of the era, or a meeting place for card games with friends like Cary Grant or neighboring director William Wyler, Wilder recently declared, “it was a place of many wonderful memories, our home in the flats of Beverly Hills.” Aviator Charles Lindbergh, then the most recognizable face in the world, once turned up on the doorstep for a discussion about Wilder’s then-upcoming “Spirit of St. Louis.” There was no car in sight. “I took the bus from Pasadena,” said Lindbergh.

Billy Wilder’s Office, 9538 Brighton Way
On the second floor of this unmarked office building, just above a small coffee shop (now a shoe store) was Billy Wilder’s office for many years. In his 80s and well into his 90s, Wilder worked out of Room 204 and then later moved across the hall to Room 211. Wilder’s routine brought him to the cozy location almost daily, where he sorted mail, answered phone calls himself and looked out on the Beverly Hills street traffic with true affection for the colorful personalities below.

Many tourists looking for celebrities never spotted the renowned director framed in the double window just above their heads. Others saw the familiar sight of Wilder, cane in hand, briskly moving down Brighton Way on his way to lunch. To those who noticed him on the street, his greeting was always brisk and polite. “Hi, how are you?” Often he would sign a poster, or a scrap of paper before declaring, “Good to see you. I cannot be late.” And with that, the always dapper Billy Wilder moved down the street, sometimes waving at honking passersby, always arriving at his destination precisely on time.

Cameron Crowe, the writer and director of the films “Jerry Maguire,” “Almost Famous” and “Vanilla Sky,” is the author of “Conversations With Wilder.”

Courtesy of L.A. Times – Cameron Crowe – April 4, 2002