Books: “Ready for My Closeup” by David M. Lubin
“As long as the lady is paying, why not take the vicuña?”
This was the snide remark whispered by the men’s store salesman to Joe Gillis (William Holden), the screenwriter/kept man of Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) in the film “Sunset Boulevard” (1950.)
For the next 76 years, Billy Wilder’s groundbreaking movie launched books, essays, even an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical currently starring Nicole Scherzinger. The latest welcome addition to Sunset-mania is “Ready for My Closeup” by David M. Lubin.
For cinephiles, this very readable 244-page work offers a significant point of difference. It digs more deeply into the lives of each of the major players, focusing on how the movie reflected the perfect confluence of their various talents.
The cynical fast-talking Wilder arrived in America from Berlin in 1925 speaking next to no English. Fortunately, he learned the language quickly, listening to soap operas and baseball games on the radio.
Wilder’s writing partner on “Sunset,” Charles Brackett, resembled a stuffed-shirt CEO rather than a scriptwriter. His father, a New York State senator, wanted him to take over the family-owned bank, but Charles yearned to be a writer.
Swanson, a leading silent-film star from the Roaring Twenties, hadn’t been in a picture for nearly a decade prior to “Sunset.” After being painstakingly wooed by Wilder, Swanson plunged into the role of Norma, resisting the urge to make her a recluse stuck in the past. Though she was 50 when the movie was made, she could have easily passed for 35. “Look at her,” her costar Erich von Stroheim cooed to Wilder on the set. “I would like to f-ck her now.”
Holden, a breezy, good-guy second-lead man prior to “Sunset,” reportedly got this star-making role because Wilder’s first choice—Montgomery Clift—turned him down. Holden took it and ran with it, making movies great right up to his death in 1981.
Cecil B. De Mille’s far-right politics, Stroheim’s disappointment at being reduced to mere actor status, cameos by the young Jack Webb (“Dragnet”) and Buster Keaton—details like these make Lubin’s book a welcome addition to the “Sunset” iconography.
“Sunset Boulevard, as I look back at it, was a miraculous series of lucky incidents that helped the picture,” said Wilder. “I wanted DeMille and I got DeMille. I wanted somebody who at one time had directed a picture with Swanson and I found Stroheim. And I got to use the picture ‘Queen Kelly’ (one of Gloria’s early silents). And I needed the Paramount studio, I got the Paramount studio. Whatever I needed. I was very, very lucky.” Amen.
Like this review? Follow me at “What Does Aug Think?” at acsntn.substack.com. Thank you!
The detail about Wilder learning English through soap operas and baseball broadcasts is fascinating, shows his adaptibility which definately shaped his directorial voice. The Swanson casting is brilliant, using an actual fading star to play one adds layers the film wouldn't have otherwise. I've noticed this sorta meta-casting in other classics but it rarely works as perfectly. Lubin's book sounds like it captures stuff usual film histories miss.