“Some Like It Hot”: From Hollywood classic to the Broadway stage

In the comedy classic “Some Like It Hot,” Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play two musicians on the run from the mob who hide themselves as girls, and finish up making Hollywood historical past. The movie got here out in 1959, and 63 Oscar nights in the past, it was once up for 6 awards.

Oscar emcee Bob Hope quipped, “Jack Lemmon was nominated for impersonating a girl. I remember when you used to get arrested for that.”

Director Billy Wilder is claimed to have almost driven the two males into the women room to see if they may cross for the actual factor (they did!). Curtis would want to ice his ft each evening after an afternoon spent in top heels. And Marilyn Monroe, as Sugar Cane, was once pregnant right through filming, and not on time manufacturing together with her continual lateness.

But it was once a triumph anyway, stated U.T. Austin movie professor Noah Isenberg. “The critical praise for this film was extraordinary,” he stated, “along the lines of ‘run, don’t walk’ to get to the theater to see this movie.”

But no longer everybody ran to see it: “Some Like It Hot” landed on the National League of Decency’s checklist of “morally objectionable” motion pictures. Now it is on different lists, together with #1 on the American Film Institute’s 100 best comedies of all time.

And it is nonetheless as humorous now because it was once then.

To watch a trailer for “Some Like It Hot” click on on the video participant beneath:

Isenberg famous a scene the place Lemmon, as “Daphne,” tells Curtis {that a} millionaire needs to marry him [“Osgood proposed to me. We’re planning a June wedding!”]

“This scene with Jack Lemmon as Daphne playing the maracas in the hotel room, they had to time it so that the jokes didn’t get drowned out by laughter,” Isenberg stated. The maracas have been added exactly for that objective: “You need to be able to time how long approximately it’s going to take an audience to finish their belly laugh so that they can get to the next line.”

Curtis: “But you’re not a girl, you’re a guy! And why would a guy want to marry a guy?”
Lemmon: “Security!”

But past comedy, it was once a movie about reinvention, made most commonly via individuals who had reinvented themselves. Marilyn Monroe was once as soon as Norma Jean Mortenson; Bernie Schwartz changed into Tony Curtis.

And now, the movie itself has been reinvented, as a Broadway musical. The bones are the identical, however it is surely no longer only a rehash of the unique, stated director Casey Nicholaw. “I think the thing that made the movie special that people loved, was you were seeing these two movie stars dressed as women. And that was funny to people. But it doesn’t fly now. And I don’t want to see it now. And I’m not really interested in doing that now, you know? But I think the discovery of these guys, while they have to do that to get away from the law, is what makes our show different.”

Smith requested, “If you can boil it down, what’s the message?”

“Well, the message is basically self-love, and everyone be nice to each other,” Nicholaw spoke back.

Smith requested Adrianna Hicks (“Aladdin,” “Six”), who performs Sugar Cane, “You’re taking over the role that was created by Marilyn Monroe. Were you a little intimidated?”

“I was, starting out,” she spoke back, “because I didn’t know what was going to be asked of me, especially being a Black woman portraying an iconic White woman.”

Christian Borle (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”) and J. Harrison Ghee (“Kinky Boots”) are in the Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon roles, and it is a exercise for them each evening. The display is one dance quantity after any other, and that is the reason each a problem and a welcome exchange for a solid who had to watch for this second via the pandemic. Borle stated, “We have been all traumatized for years no longer being ready to be on stage. So, to be again and notice the ones faces and notice them guffawing and notice them satisfied, that is why we do it. 

“That, and the money, you know?”

Ghee, who identifies as non-binary, sees his function as Daphne as his ministry, and his calling is to open minds. He issues to a remark from a person in the target audience overheard via one among the staff: “He said he was sitting next to this man and he was with some woman. And I did my song in Act Two, ‘You Coulda Knocked Me Over With a Feather.’ They applauded, and the man just, like, turned to the lady and goes, ‘I need to treat my son better.’ That’s my ministry. That’s why I do what I do. I don’t care about a review in a paper – it’s reaching the hearts of the people sitting in those seats, that you think just a little differently than when you came in the theater.”

To watch scenes from the Broadway manufacturing of “Some Like It Hot” click on on the video participant beneath:

The film and the Broadway display could not be extra other, however in many ways, they each really feel the identical. According to Isenberg, Jack Lemmon, in the movie, “embraces his inner Daphne toward the end. And in fact, Harrison Ghee, who plays Daphne on stage, says all of us, we all have a Daphne inside us. It’s an extraordinary performance.” 

And speak about atypical: the well-known remaining line in the film was once only a placeholder till they got here up with one thing higher, however Wilder saved it in after take a look at audiences went wild.

Lemmon: “You don’t understand, Osgood, I’m a man!”
Brown: “Well, nobody’s perfect.”

Sometimes, in Hollywood and on Broadway, you simply by no means know what is going on to be scorching.

      
For extra data:

     
Story produced via John D’Amelio. Editor: Steven Tyler.