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<\/p>\nNEED TO KNOW<\/p>\n
Sunset Boulevard, directed by Billy Wilder, came out on Aug. 10, 1950, starring William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Nancy Olson and Erich von Stroheim<\/p>\n
David M. Lubin’s new book, Ready for My Close-Up: The Making of Sunset Boulevard and the Dark Side of the Hollywood Dream, shares insight into the creation of the movie and hits shelves two days after the 75th anniversary<\/p>\n
A new 4K restoration of Sunset Boulevard will also be re-released in over 1,000 theaters nationwide by Fathom Entertainment starting Aug. 3<\/p>\n
Nearly 75 years ago, in 1950, Hollywood produced its first bona fide masterpiece depicting the darker side of striving for fame and success in Tinseltown, writer-director Billy Wilder\u2019s classic Sunset Boulevard.<\/p>\n
To mark the bitter-yet-beloved movie\u2019s anniversary, author and film scholar David M. Lubin’s new book, Ready for My Close-Up: The Making of Sunset Boulevard and the Dark Side of the Hollywood Dream, releasing Aug. 12 from Grand Central Publishing, chronicles the history and secrets behind the film\u2019s sometimes fraught and turbulent journey to the screen, details of which he shares exclusively with PEOPLE.<\/p>\n
Sunset Boulevard depicts the toxic, co-dependent relationship between washed-up, increasingly desperate young screenwriter Joe Gillis, played by William Holden, and the delusional aging actress Norma Desmond, played by Gloria Swanson, once one of Hollywood\u2019s most admired stars now stagnating years after the spotlight turned away from her, and how their tortured attempts to achieve success or reclaim past glories leads them down a bleak path.<\/p>\n
Lubin reveals that behind the scenes, that nagging uneasiness that can permeate Hollywood was front and center in the lives of Sunset Boulevard\u2019s creative team. \u201cEvery one of the major players had a lot at stake \u2013 they were [at] turning points in their careers,\u201d the author points out.<\/p>\n
Director Wilder, an Austrian expatriate, had found tremendous success in Hollywood, first as a screenwriter and then as a director known for his acerbic wit and pervasive cynicism, with major hit films in the 1940s including the definitive film noir Double Indemnity and the alcoholism drama The Lost Weekend.<\/p>\n
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Grand Central Publishing<\/p>\n
‘Ready for My Closeup: The Making of Sunset Boulevard and the Dark Side of the Hollywood’<\/p>\n
But by 1950, he\u2019d helmed a string of flops in a row and was eager to craft something both artistically satisfying and audience-pleasing. \u201cWilder wanted to have a comeback movie, and in Sunset Boulevard, \u2018comeback\u2019 is a big theme,\u201d Lubin says.<\/p>\n
Wilder was taking an ambitious risk, especially by setting his story in the more shadowy corner of show business. The only Hollywood-on-Hollywood films that tended to score with audiences were built on starry-eyed dreamers achieving their dreams of stardom on the screen, and Sunset Boulevard was the antithesis of that. \u201cIt was another thing to say Hollywood as a system destroys the people who are in it, even ones like Norma Desmond who’ve been successful at a time and then never recaptured that glory and was obsessive about getting back,\u201d Lubin says.<\/p>\n
For the role of Desmond, Wilder turned to Swanson, who in real life had also once existed among Hollywood\u2019s loftiest ranks at the height of her career during the Silent Era of the 1920s and ’30s, but had gradually \u2014 but not regretfully \u2014 followed other directions when her stardom waned.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe had retired from Hollywood in the early ’30s when her movies started to flop and got involved in the clothing design business,\u201d Lubin says. \u201cAnd she had a scientific business that bought patents from German Jewish inventors and then used that transaction to get them out of Germany to France or to the United States [during the rise of Nazi fascism]. So she had another life going on, and she wasn’t really yearning to get back to the movies. In fact, I think she said, \u2018I’m done with the movies.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Still, she dabbled on the fringes of showbiz. \u201cGloria Swanson was working on afternoon TV for, I think it was $20,000 a year,\u201d Lubin says, \u201cand in her heyday in the silent years, she was making $20,000 a week.\u201d When Wilder\u2019s offer came, Swanson quickly recognized \u201cthis was a chance for her to get her foot back into Hollywood,\u201d the author recounts. \u201cI think she realized, \u2018This can make a huge change in my life.\u2019 And she loved acting, so she wanted to do the film.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Courtesy Fathom Entertainment<\/p>\n
‘Sunset Boulevard’ 75th Anniversary screening<\/p>\n
Despite being tantalized by the opportunity, Swanson almost walked away after she arrived in Los Angeles from New York and was asked by Wilder to screen test. \u201cShe said, \u2018I’m way too experienced and important to do a screen test,\u2019\u201d Lubin says, noting that one of her close friends convinced her this could be the role of her lifetime, and she finally consented to the screen test.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd she was amazing!\u201d Lubin adds. Wilder and his screenwriting and producing partner, Charles Brackett, he says, \u201chad no idea the intensity that this woman could emit. And so they started rewriting lines and rewriting the script to make her [more] important. They really bumped up the role of Norma as it had not been in the original script.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Wilder was on the hunt for the perfect Joe Gillis, though six different actors ultimately turned down the role. \u201cThey had been planning to have the hottest young talent in Hollywood, Montgomery Clift, play the role of Joe Gillis,\u201d Lubin says. \u201cBut two or three weeks before shooting was to begin, Montgomery dropped out.\u201d Wilder was furious and found himself scrambling to find his leading man, eventually landing on Holden.<\/p>\n
Holden had initially taken Hollywood by storm with his breakout role in 1939\u2019s Golden Boy, but his career had fizzled shortly after with a string of mediocre, second-banana roles. \u201cHe was 31 years old when this movie came around, half a dozen bigger Hollywood names had turned it down because nobody wanted to play a gigolo,\u201d Lubin explains. Holden, too, nearly balked at the character\u2019s moral slipperiness. \u201cHe took it because he needed a good role, but he was scared that whatever fans he had would leave him if he played in gigolo, so he was taking a big risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
Almost as difficult to cast was the film\u2019s central location itself, Desmond\u2019s expansive, once-lavish mansion now in slowly rotting decay, tucked away in a posh Beverly Hills or Bel-Air neighborhood. \u201cBut they couldn’t find a house that would be suitable for the dilapidated mansion that is almost a costar in the film \u2014 the mansion is so important,\u201d Lubin says.<\/p>\n
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Snap\/Shutterstock <\/p>\n
Still from ‘Sunset Boulevard’ in 1950, showing William Holden, Nancy Olson, Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim.<\/p>\n
After an exhaustive search, Wilder finally found an ideal spot in the more easterly L.A. neighborhood of Hancock Park. \u201cThey found a home that J. Paul Getty had given to one of his ex-wives as an alimony settlement, and she never lived in the house \u2014 she occasionally used it for parties, but she was glad to rent it out for Paramount,\u201d Lubin says. \u201cTrouble is, a swimming pool is key to the movie \u2013 it’s absolutely imperative. And this mansion did not have a swimming pool. So Mrs. ex-Getty and Paramount signed a deal that Paramount would put in a pool, but they wouldn’t put in filters or anything to make it useful, and at the end of the movie, they’d fill it all back in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even as the movie began to fall into place, \u201cthere were tensions and fights and conflicts all the way through,\u201d Lubin reveals. Just before beginning the project, Wilder had announced it would be his last with longtime partner Brackett, which sent the latter into a panicky tailspin and sparked frequent clashes between them. But even within Wilder\u2019s passionate vision for Sunset Boulevard, Brackett brought his own talents to bear.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was this great scene with Cecil B. DeMille where Gloria or Norma comes to Paramount studio under the mistaken belief that he has summoned her,\u201d Lubin explains. \u201cWilder wanted to make it really comic and satirical, but Brackett said, \u2018Our movie is too comic and satirical. We need to get some gravitas, put some emotional weight into it, so we have to make it that she’s vulnerable and hurt.’ And that was a huge argument they had.\u201d Though Wilder wielded more power on the film, eventually, \u201cWilder realized, yeah, Charlie was right: it gives the movie more power if you show these vulnerable moments.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ironically, one of the most potentially explosive relationships on set found a peaceful resolution. Actor and director Erich von Stroheim, who was cast as Desmond\u2019s worshipful valet, driver and former silent film director, had a rocky history with Swanson.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwenty years earlier, he had directed her in Queen Kelly, a film co-produced by Swanson and her lover, Joseph Kennedy, and Stroheim was such a perfectionist that he kept shooting and reshooting and reshooting,\u201d Lubin says. When the film ran out of budget as a result, Swanson had to fire von Stroheim.<\/p>\n
\u201cStroheim always felt like that had ruined his career as a director,\u201d Lubin recounts. \u201cI hadn’t understood how deep the tensions were between Stroheim and Swanson, but I was also surprised to learn in the correspondence in the archives that they became quite friendly with each other, sent sort of loving letters to each other, so it was wonderful to hear that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even when work on the film was nearly complete, Sunset Boulevard offered one more surprise twist during a preview screening of the film in Evanston, Ill. Wilder had opened the film with a scene set in the county morgue, where Gillis\u2019 corpse was laid out under a sheet, and Holden\u2019s voiceover narration began setting the scene for the events about to unfold.<\/p>\n
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