When was sunset boulevard released

In the role of Max, he watches a film with Norma Desmond, and the briefly shown scene is from Queen Kelly , which von Stroheim himself directed with Swanson in the title role. Cecil B. DeMille , often credited as the person most responsible for making Swanson a star, plays himself, and was filmed on the set of his current film Samson and Delilah at Paramount Studios. He calls Norma "young fella," as he had called Swanson, a tiny detail of authenticity suggested by DeMille.

Norma's friends who come to play bridge with her, described in the script as "the waxworks", are Swanson's contemporaries Buster Keaton , Anna Q. Nilsson and H. Warner , who, like DeMille, play themselves.

Hedda Hopper also plays herself, reporting on Norma Desmond's downfall in the film's final scenes. She also performs a Charlie Chaplin impersonation identical to one she performed in the film Manhandled The bed in the shape of a swan that Norma Desmond slept in was actually owned by the dancer Gaby Deslys , who died in It had originally been bought by the Universal prop department at auction after Deslys's death.

Wilder also made use of authentic locales. Joe Gillis's apartment is in the Alto Nido, a real apartment block in central Hollywood that was often populated by struggling writers. The scenes of Gillis and Betty Schaefer on Paramount's backlot were filmed on the actual backlot, and the interior of Schwab's Drug Store was carefully recreated for several scenes.

The exterior scenes of the Desmond house were filmed at a house on Wilshire Blvd. Jenkins and his family lived in it for just one year, then left it abandoned for more than a decade, which earned it the nickname, The Phantom. Paul Getty. It was demolished by the Gettys in the early s to allow construction of an office building. Wilder and Brackett, nervous about a major screening in Hollywood, held the preview in Evanston, Illinois.

The original edit opened with a scene inside a morgue , with the assembled corpses discussing how they came to be there. The story began with the corpse of Joe Gillis recounting his murder to the others.

The audience reacted with laughter and seemed unsure whether to view the rest of the film as drama or comedy. After a similar reaction during its second screening, the opening scene was deleted. The new edit was well received in Poughkeepsie, New York. In Hollywood, Paramount arranged a private screening for the various studio heads and specially invited guests.

After viewing the film, Barbara Stanwyck knelt to kiss the hem of Gloria Swanson's skirt. Swanson later remembered looking for Mary Pickford , only to be told, "She can't show herself, Gloria. She's too overcome. We all are. Mayer berated Wilder before the crowd of celebrities, saying, "You have disgraced the industry that made and fed you!

You should be tarred and feathered and run out of Hollywood! Wilder's reply to Mayer's response after the Hollywood screening was both insulting and abrupt. Upon hearing of Mayer's slight, in characteristic fashion, he strode up to the mogul and said: "I am Mr. Wilder, and go fuck yourself! A statement of such a nature so soon after the war gave additional depth to Mayer's statement.

Sunset Boulevard attracted a range of positive reviews from critics. Time described it as a story of "Hollywood at its worst told by Hollywood at its best", [23 ] while Boxoffice Review wrote "the picture will keep spectators spellbound. Some critics accurately foresaw the film's lasting appeal.

The Hollywood Reporter wrote that future generations would "set themselves the task of analyzing the durability and greatness" of the film, while Commonweal said that in the future "the Library of Congress will be glad to have in its archives a print of Sunset Boulevard. The rare negative comments included those from The New Yorker , which described the film as "a pretentious slice of Roquefort ," containing only "the germ of a good idea. Pryor wrote for the New York Times that the plot device of using the dead Joe Gillis as narrator was "completely unworthy of Brackett and Wilder, but happily it does not interfere with the success of Sunset Boulevard.

Variety also noted that, while it was "breaking records in major cities, it is doing below average in The publicity helped attract people to the cinemas, but in many provincial areas it was considered less than a hit. Of the various films that have attracted nominations in all four acting categories , Sunset Boulevard is one of only three not to win in any category, the others being My Man Godfrey and American Hustle Its eleven Oscar nominations were exceeded only by the fourteen received by All About Eve , which won six awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Swanson recalled the press' reaction following Holliday's win: "It slowly dawned on me that they were asking for a larger-than-life scene, or better still, a mad scene. More accurately, they were trying to flush out Norma Desmond.

In an interview years later, Davis bluntly stated that she and Swanson had "cancelled each other out," [28 ] though in she told Playboy of her admiration for Swanson's performance, saying, "If she'd won, I'd have shouted hooray. She was sensational, just fantastic. American Film Institute recognition.

Sunset Boulevard was the last collaboration between Wilder and Brackett. They parted amicably and respected their long-term partnership by not airing any grievance publicly. Their mutual respect and courteous integrity remained in force throughout the rest of their lives. He described it as "an unexpected blow" from which he never recovered fully. When asked to respond to Brackett's comments, Wilder remained silent. The two men briefly reunited in October to face charges they had plagiarized Sunset Boulevard.

Former Paramount accountant Stephanie Joan Carlson alleged that in she had submitted to Wilder and Brackett, at their request, manuscripts of stories, both fictional and based on fact, she had written about studio life. Carlson's suit was dismissed after two and a half years. In , a similar suit was filed by playwright Edra Buckler, who claimed material she had written had been the screenplay's source.

Her suit was dismissed the following year. Brackett's Hollywood career continued after his split with Wilder. He won an Academy Award for his screenplay for Titanic , and wrote Niagara , the breakthrough film for Marilyn Monroe as a dramatic actress. Brackett's career waned by the end of the decade, though he did produce the critically praised and Oscar-nominated film The King and I William Holden began receiving more important parts and his career rose.

In , he won the Best Actor Oscar for Stalag 17 , also directed by Wilder, and by he was the top box-office attraction in the United States. Nancy Olson's pairing with William Holden was considered a success, and she appeared opposite him in several films during the s, although none of them repeated their earlier success. She went on to star in The Absent-Minded Professor and Son of Flubber , in which she was paired with Fred MacMurray , but despite the films' popularity with movie-goers, her career stalled.

Similarly, Gloria Swanson was not able to leverage her own success in Sunset Boulevard. Although offered scripts, she felt that they all were poor imitations of Norma Desmond. Imagining a career that would eventually reduce her to playing "a parody of a parody," she virtually retired from films. Sunset Boulevard was shown again in New York City in , and drew such a positive response that Paramount arranged for a limited rerelease in theaters throughout the United States.

In the film was among the first group of 25 deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Polls conducted by the American Film Institute have demonstrated the lasting appeal of Sunset Boulevard and the esteem in which it is held by the modern filmmakers who respond to these polls. In , it was ranked number twelve on a list of " Greatest Films ". DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up" and "I am big, it's the pictures that got small!

Roger Ebert has praised the acting of Holden and von Stroheim and has described Swanson's as "one of the all time greatest performances. By the late s, most Sunset Boulevard prints were in poor condition, and since the film was one of the last to be filmed on cellulose nitrate filmstock , much of the original negative had perished.

Paramount Studios, believing the film merited the effort of a complete restoration, mounted an expensive project to have it digitally restored. The restored version was released on DVD in Hollywood had been making films about itself since the s, such as What Price Hollywood? Sunset Boulevard also was followed by other films which varied the story of an older actress desperately clinging to her past glory, such as Bette Davis in The Star and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Rainer Fassbinder's film Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss was set in the post-war German film industry, detailing a tragic love affair of a doomed faded movie star and a younger reporter. The ending of Cecil B. Demented is a parody of Sunset Boulevard's final scene. Holden and Wilder also rejoined forces in for Fedora , another film critical of Hollywood.

Sunset Boulevard was adapted into a musical in with a book written by Don Black and Christopher Hampton, and music and lyrics by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Other Norma's include Patti Lupone, Betty Buckley, Elaine Paige and Diahann Carroll, who in the Canadian run of the musical became the first African-American actress to play the part in a major professional production.

Stapley and Hughes first approached Swanson about appearing in a musical revue they had written, About Time based on Time. Swanson stated that she would return to the stage only in a musical version of her comeback film. Within a week, Stapley and Dickson had written three songs which Swanson approved. In this version, the romance between Gillis and Schaefer was allowed to blossom, and rather than shoot Gillis at the end, Norma gave the couple her blessing, sending them on their way to live "happily ever after.

Warner and Anna Q. Praised by many critics when first released, Sunset Boulevard was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won three. It is widely accepted as a classic, often cited as one of the most noteworthy films of American cinema. Deemed "culturally significant" by the U. Library of Congress in , Sunset Boulevard was included in the first group of films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. Nilsson as Anna Q. Warner H.

Warner as H. Billy Wilder. More like this. Watch options. Storyline Edit. In Hollywood of the 50's, the obscure screenplay writer Joe Gillis is not able to sell his work to the studios, is full of debts and is thinking in returning to his hometown to work in an office.

While trying to escape from his creditors, he has a flat tire and parks his car in a decadent mansion in Sunset Boulevard. He meets the owner and former silent-movie star Norma Desmond, who lives alone with her butler and driver Max Von Mayerling. Norma is demented and believes she will return to the cinema industry, and is protected and isolated from the world by Max, who was her director and husband in the past and still loves her.

Norma proposes Joe to move to the mansion and help her in writing a screenplay for her comeback to the cinema, and the small-time writer becomes her lover and gigolo. When Joe falls in love for the young aspirant writer Betty Schaefer, Norma becomes jealous and completely insane and her madness leads to a tragic end.

A Hollywood Story. Did you know Edit. Trivia Unlike the character she played, Gloria Swanson had accepted the fact that the movies didn't want her anymore and had moved to New York, where she worked on radio and, later, television.

Although she had long before ruled out the possibility of a movie comeback, she was nevertheless highly intrigued when she got the offer to play the lead. Goofs As the policemen run towards the pool, you can see the dead man's head lift up out of the water.

Quotes Joe Gillis : Wait a minute, haven't I seen you before? Crazy credits The Paramount logo appears as a transparency over the opening shot. The words "Sunset Blvd. User reviews Review. Top review. FAQ 7. What is the correct title - "Blvd. What is the movie Joe and Norma watch?