Sunset Boulevard (1950)
A return to big-screen stardom? The love of small-time screenwriter Joe Gillis? Both are in Norma Desmond’s head.
Nominated for 11 Academy Awards, Sunset Boulevard is said to be on the short list of the greatest movies ever made. AFI’s “100 Years...100 Movies” list put it at #16. It was in the first group of films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. It’s Donald Trump’s favorite movie. That’s its reputation. Does it deserve it?
Well, yes and no. Sunset Boulevard starts with screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) hard up for money and on the run from creditors. When he hides out at what seems to be a deserted mansion on Sunset Boulevard, he discovers the faded silent film star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) and her eerie butler Max (Erich von Stroheim), both of whom are imprisoned in the past of old Hollywood.1 When Gillis recognizes Norma and mentions that she used to be big in the pictures, Norma delivers the iconic line, “I am big. It's the pictures that got small.” She then convinces Gillis to assist in writing a screenplay for her grand comeback and to be her live-in lover.
Once the script is done, the three go to pitch it to Cecil B. DeMille (himself, in a cameo). The scenes with DeMille, where he wants to let his old star down gently, are poignant and painful, with Norma not getting the message and believing her comeback is imminent. Norma’s mental delusion then becomes physical as a flock of “beauty experts” give her a makeover worthy of body horror master David Cronenberg. As she readies herself for a production of Salome that will never happen, Gillis falls in love with another woman, exacerbating Norma’s madness.
The movie begins with Gillis facedown in Norma’s pool, dead, and once Norma starts losing it, it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out how we get to that ending. When the police and press descend upon Norma’s mansion after she shoots Gillis, Norma becomes convinced that the place is now a sound stage and that the filming of Salome has begun. The movie ends with the devastating line, “All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my closeup.”
But is it good? It’s okay.
Rating: 6/10, definitely okay.
Cast and crew
William Holden, one of the classic leading men of Hollywood, got his start in the 1939 film Golden Boy, an adaptation of Clifford Odets’ play with Barbara Stanwyck and Adolphe Menjou.2 Holden had a slew of credits in the 1940s, but his next memorable movie was the 1950 flick Born Yesterday, where he played a journalist who teaches manners to a brassy blonde played by Judy Holliday. In Sunset, Holden plays Gillis as irritable and entitled, and we’ll see Holden lean more into that schtick in 1953 and 1954.
Billy Wilder helms Sunset Boulevard, and his unfussy directorial style is summed up by his quote, “the best director is the one you don’t see.” We’ll be seeing—or, I guess, not seeing—a lot of him in this column.
Of Wilder’s dozen or so trivia-worthy flicks, we’ll highlight two that came before Sunset Boulevard. One is 1944’s Double Indemnity, based on the James M. Cain novel about a wife (Barbara Stanwyck) getting an insurance adjuster (Fred MacMurray) to make the murder of her husband seem like an accident.3 The other is 1945’s The Lost Weekend, about the title lost weekend of an alcoholic writer (Ray Milland) and his girlfriend (Jane Wyman, the first wife of Ronald Reagan).
It’s too simplistic to assign all of fictional Norma Desmond’s characteristics to her portrayer Gloria Swanson, though for trivia, it’s not the worst heuristic. We’re told that Norma was a mammoth silent film star who has had a long layoff from movies; well, Gloria Swanson was nominated for the inaugural Best Actress Oscar for Sadie Thompson4 and then appeared in only one film between 1934 and 1950. On the other hand, Swanson was married six times, which gives her twice as many husbands as Desmond—and this doesn’t even count Swanson’s affair with Joseph P. Kennedy.
Erich von Stroheim is both an actor and director of note. He directed numerous films that show up on lists of the greatest films of all time, and none other than Billy Wilder considered him an inspiration.5 von Stroheim also co-starred in the 1937 Jean Renoir film The Grand Illusion, about WWI POWs who plan an escape. That’s another film that shows up on those “greatest film” lists.
Jack Webb plays Artie, Gillis’ friend. Jack Webb was already playing Joe Friday in a radio version of “Dragnet” when Sunset Boulevard was filmed, and in 1951, “Dragnet” would start the first of its eight initial seasons on TV. You should know its four-note theme song—it’s BAAA-BA-BAH-BUM.
The trivia
Hedda Hopper, who was both an actress and a gossip columnist, cameos as herself at the end of Sunset Boulevard. She was known for her longstanding feud with another gossip columnist, Louella Parsons. She also wore big, garish hats; the Nazis used pictures of her to exhibit American decadence.
During the movie, Norma performs a number for Gillis called the “Mack Sennett bathing beauty.” Mack Sennett was a director and studio head known as the “King of Comedy.” He opened Keystone Studios (of Keystone Kops fame) and produced short features of Bathing Beauties, where women appeared in “bathing costumes.” Gloria Swanson, who worked with Sennett while wearing a bathing costume, vehemently denied being a bathing beauty.
Gillis compares the mansion Norma lives in to that of Miss Havisham, a character from Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations” (1861). She’s the one who was left at the altar years ago but keeps wearing her wedding dress. If you’re like me and couldn’t get through “Great Expectations” in high school, you should know that Miss Havisham’s scheme is to get the protagonist, the orphan Pip, to fall in love with her adopted daughter Estella so Estella can break Pip’s heart. It works; Pip’s heart is broken by Estella. Then Miss Havisham is accidentally set on fire and, before dying, she repents for her dumb and petty scheme.
The movie Norma wants to star in is one based on Salome. Salome6 was a Jewish princess, the granddaughter of Herod the Great. When Salome dances the sexy Dance of the Seven Veils before King Herod Antipas (don’t worry, it’s a different Herod), he promises to give her whatever she wants. She requests—and later receives— the head of John the Baptist on a platter.
Two major works based on this story are Oscar Wilde’s play and Richard Strauss’ opera, both entitled “Salome.”7
At Artie’s New Year’s Eve party, Artie jokingly introduces Gillis as a “black dahlia suspect,” alluding to the gruesome 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short; that case, whose name likely came from the 1946 Alan Ladd movie The Blue Dahlia, is still unsolved. James Ellroy fictionalized the case in the 1987 novel “The Black Dahlia,” the first novel in his L.A. Quartet.8
Alan Ladd, who Gillis suggests would be a good actor for a screenplay he’s writing, was an enormously popular star of Westerns and films noir. These included This Gun for Hire (1942) and The Blue Dahlia (1946, mentioned above), both with Veronica Lake. His most famous role was as the titular character in Shane (1953).
Odds and ends
When Max is playing the organ, he’s playing Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (whenever you hear a spooky organ song, it’s usually that)…Norma drives an Isotta Fraschini, a favorite car brand of movie stars from the 1920s; their last car was made in 1949… At the NYE party, Artie refers to himself as the Elsa Maxwell of assistant directors; Elsa Maxwell was a professional hostess who is credited with the introduction of the scavenger hunt as a party game (cool, I guess)…Auld Lang Syne, literally "old long since," plays at midnight on NYE and comes from a poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 (though it’s based on an older Scottish folk song)…Gillis describes a drug store as a kaffeeklatsch, which comes from the German for "coffee" and "gossip."
Also, it’s been reported that, after losing his re-election campaign, Donald Trump stayed at home and watched Sunset Boulevard over and over again. The New York magazine article that revealed that fact politely didn’t point out the overt symbolism at play so I will not either.
Metaphorically—this isn’t Back to the Future.
Menjou himself is one of a zillion name drops in Sunset Boulevard.
“Double Indemnity” is a life insurance provision where the insurance payout is doubled if death was caused by accidental means. In the film, Edward G. Robinson is the claims adjuster who seeks to stamp out Stanwyck’s phony claim.
Sadie Thompson is based on Somerset Maugham’s “Rain,” which is about a prostitute who moves to Pago Pago.
von Stroheim’s most famous directorial effort was 1924’s Greed, which is an adaptation of Frank Norris's 1899 novel McTeague. He also directed 1932’s Queen Kelly, which starred Gloria Swanson. As a fun Easter egg, part of that film is shown during Sunset Boulevard.
The story of Salome is in the Bible but Salome herself goes unnamed there. The source on her name is the Jewish historian Josephus.
Interestingly, in 1953—just three years after Sunset Boulevard—there was a real movie made out of the story of Salome with Rita Hayworth in the title role.
The other novels in the quartet are “The Big Nowhere,” “L.A. Confidential,” and “White Jazz.”