Billy Wilder Filmography

Born:: June 22, 1906 in Vienna, Austria
Occupation:: Director, Producer, Screenwriter
Birth name:: Samuel Wilder
Biography:: One of Hollywood's most consistent and enduring filmmakers, Billy Wilder was also among its most daring. In feature after feature, in a wide variety of styles and genres, he explored the taboo subjects of the day with insight, wit, and trenchant cynicism; adultery, alcoholism, prostitution -- no...Read More

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The Hollywood Collection: Jack Lemmon - America's Everyman

Actors: Jack Lemmon, Chris Lemmon, Billy Wilder, Garson Kanin, Delbert Mann

Synopsis: Jack Lemmon has mastered both stage and screen in his career with such hits as "The Odd Couple," "The Days of Wine and Roses," "The China Syndrome," "Save the Tiger" (for which he received an Oscar) and "Grumpy Old Men." He and Walter Matthau starred in numerous films together that were nearly Read More

1996
A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese through American Movies

Synopsis: In 1994, the British Film Institute commissioned a set of films to mark the centenary of the movies. They would trace the history of several national cinemas, and the BFI's choice for interpreting the history of American film fell to director Martin Scorsese, a longtime champion of film history Read More

1995
Billy, How Did You Do It?

Actors: Billy Wilder

1992
Directed by William Wyler

Actors: William Wyler, Bette Davis, Laurence Olivier, Lillian Hellman, Gregory Peck, Terence Stamp

Synopsis: This excellent biographical documentary looks at the life and work of director William Wyler. The film is dominated by clips from many of Wyler's better-known works, such as Roman Holiday, Ben-Hur, and Funny Girl. A long interview with the director himself (conducted a few days before he died) Read More

1986
Witness for the Prosecution

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Beau Bridges, Deborah Kerr, Ralph Richardson, Diana Rigg

Synopsis: From its humble beginnings as a four-character short story, Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution matriculated into a long-running London and Broadway stage hit, as well as a masterful 1957 film version directed by Billy Wilder. The 1982 TV version of Witness was overseen by Briton Norman Rosemont Read More

1982
Buddy Buddy

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Paula Prentiss, Klaus Kinski, Dana Elcar

Synopsis: As if in some way Billy Wilder sensed that Buddy Buddy would ultimately turn out to be his final feature film, Wilder lets loose scatter-shot stingers at a wide range of pop-culture targets -- from sex clinics, to 60 Minutes, to movie references, to disco, to Betamax video recorders. Based on Read More

1981
Portrait of a 60% Perfect Man

Actors: Billy Wilder, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau

Synopsis: Billy Wilder's acerbic wit and indomitable talent shine through in this documentary by Annie Tresgot. Michel Ciment, the French critic, interviews Wilder about his life and movie-making, and Tresgot also brings in discussions with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. Few directors have been as Read More

1980
Fedora

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: William Holden, Hildegarde Neff, José Ferrer, Marthe Keller, Frances Sternhagen

Synopsis: In Fedora, Billy Wilder approaches Hollywood stardom in the same fashion as he did in Sunset Boulevard--with cynicism, regret, understanding, and awe. Fedora (Marthe Keller) is film's most intriguing movie queen. Rumored to be well into her sixties, the actress has remained a starlet for over four Read More

1978
The Front Page

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Carol Burnett, Susan Sarandon, Vincent Gardenia

Synopsis: This third film version of the 1928 Ben Hecht/Charlie MacArthur Broadway hit The Front Page was the first one permitted to utilize all the salty profanities in the original play. Director Billy Wilder cast his two favorite leading men, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, as ace reporter Hildy Johnson Read More

1974
Avanti!

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Franco Acampora, Lino Coletta, Raffaele Mottola, Jack Lemmon, Juliet Mills, Clive Revill, Edward Andrews, Gianfranco Barra

Synopsis: This enchanting yet dark romantic comedy stars Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills as a pair of mismatched lovers helplessly drawn into a series of seemingly hopeless but humorous situations as in Lemmon's The Out-of -Towners two years earlier. Lemmon is Wendell Armbruster Jr., an overbearing American Read More

3/31/73
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Robert Stephens, Colin Blakely, Irene Handl, Geneviève Page, Stanley Holloway, Christopher Lee, Tamara Toumanova

Synopsis: In Billy Wilder's cinematic homage to the spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, British stage luminary Robert Stephens plays Holmes, while Colin Blakely is his friend and chronicler Dr. Watson. This self-described "hitherto suppressed and thoroughly fascinating" tale concerns Holmes' search for Read More

1970
Casino Royale

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress, David Niven, Orson Welles, Woody Allen, Joanna Pettet

Synopsis: Retired after years of international espionage, Agent 007 is lured back into action to battle the evil spy organization SMERSH in this notoriously incoherent parody of the James Bond films. David Niven portrays the aging Bond, who atypically rejects the advances of a variety of women, and agrees Read More

1967
The Fortune Cookie

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Ron Rich, Cliff Osmond, Judi West

Synopsis: The British title of Billy Wilder's classic comedy was Meet Whiplash Willie -- for, despite Jack Lemmon's star billing, the movie's driving force is Oscar-winning Walter Matthau as gloriously underhanded lawyer "Whiplash" Willie Gingrich. CBS cameraman Harry Hinkle (Lemmon) is injured when he is Read More

1966
Kiss Me, Stupid!

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Dean Martin, Kim Novak, Ray Walston, Felicia Farr, Cliff Osmond

Synopsis: The Catholic League of Decency gave Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid! a "condemned" rating. The Moral Majority charged the picture with debauchery and movie theaters across the nation discontinued its run. The bed-trick comedy had America's panties tied in a knot; one could not imagine a story so Read More

1964
Irma La Douce

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Lou Jacobi, Bruce Yarnell, Herschel Bernardi, Sheryl Deauville

Synopsis: This romantic comedy opens with a resounding warning: its chief concerns are passion, bloodshed, desire, and death. "Everything," exclaims the narrator, "that makes life worth living." Irma La Douce (Shirley MacClaine) is Paris' most prosperous prostitute. Wise, endearing, and compulsively clad in Read More

1963
One, Two, Three

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: James Cagney, Horst Buchholz, Pamela Tiffin, Arlene Francis, Liselotte Pulver

Synopsis: In his last starring film (it was supposed to be his last film, but Ragtime came along in 1981), James Cagney plays Coca-Cola executive C.R. MacNamara. Assigned to manage Coke's West Berlin office, MacNamara dreams of being transferred to London, and to do this he must curry favor with his Read More

1961
The Apartment

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston, Edie Adams, David Lewis

Synopsis: Widely regarded as a comedy in 1960, The Apartment seems more melancholy with each passing year. Jack Lemmon plays C.C. Baxter, a go-getting office worker who loans his tiny apartment to his philandering superiors for their romantic trysts. He runs into trouble when he finds himself sharing a Read More

1960
Some Like It Hot

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, George Raft, Pat O'Brien

Synopsis: The launching pad for Billy Wilder's comedy classic was a rusty old German farce, Fanfares of Love, whose two main characters were male musicians so desperate to get a job that they disguise themselves as women and play with an all-girl band in gangster-dominated 1929 Chicago. In this Read More

1959
Witness for the Prosecution

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton, Elsa Lanchester, Una O'Connor

Synopsis: Having just recovered from a heart attack, fabled British barrister Sir Wilfred Robards (Charles Laughton) has been ordered by his doctor to give up everything he holds dear-brandy, cigars and especially courtroom cases. Robards' already shaky resolve to follow doctor's orders flies out the window Read More

1957
Love in the Afternoon

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn, Maurice Chevalier, John McGiver, Van Doude

Synopsis: Gary Cooper more or less repeats his international-roue characterization from 1938's Bluebeard's Eighth Wife for the 1957 romantic comedy Love in the Afternoon (both films were co-scripted by Billy Wilder, who also directed the latter picture). Audrey Hepburn co-stars as the daughter of Parisian Read More

1957
The Spirit of St. Louis

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: James Stewart, Murray Hamilton, Patricia Smith, Bartlett Robinson, Marc Connelly

Synopsis: A misfire for all concerned, The Spirit of St. Louis can be chalked up as a courageous failure. At age 48, James Stewart was far too old to be convincing as 27-year-old "Lone Eagle" Charles Lindbergh. Director Billy Wilder, a past master of cynical pessimism, was clearly the wrong choice to helm Read More

1957
The Seven Year Itch

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Marilyn Monroe, Tom Ewell, Evelyn Keyes, Sonny Tufts, Robert Strauss

Synopsis: Like thousands of other Manhattanites, Tom Ewell annually packs his wife (Evelyn Keyes) and children off to summer vacation, staying behind to work at the office. This particular summer, the lonely Ewell begins fantasizing about the many women he'd foresworn upon getting married (in one of the Read More

1955
Sabrina

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, William Holden, Walter Hampden, John Williams

Synopsis: Billy Wilder directs the lighthearted romantic comedy Sabrina, based on the play by Samuel A. Taylor. Sabrina Fairchild (Audrey Hepburn) is the simple, naïve daughter of a chauffeur, Thomas Fairchild (John Williams). They live on an estate with the wealthy Oliver Larrabee (Walter Hampden) and his Read More

1954
Stalag 17

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: William Holden, Don Taylor, Otto Preminger, Robert Strauss, Harvey Lembeck

Synopsis: The scene is a German POW camp, sometime during the mid-1940s. Stalag 17, exclusively populated by American sergeants, is overseen by sadistic commandant Oberst Von Schernbach (Otto Preminger) and the deceptively avuncular sergeant Schultz (Sig Ruman). The inmates spend their waking hours Read More

1953
Ace in the Hole

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Robert Arthur, Porter Hall, Frank Cady

Synopsis: Billy Winder directed and co-wrote this bitterly satiric comedy-drama which turns a jaundiced eye towards both the news media and its consumers. Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas) is a talented but short-tempered reporter whose fondness for booze and unwillingness to bow to authority has cost him jobs at Read More

1951
Sunset Boulevard

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich Von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Fred Clark

Synopsis: Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard ranks among the most scathing satires of Hollywood and the cruel fickleness of movie fandom. The story begins at the end as the body of Joe Gillis (William Holden) is fished out of a Hollywood swimming pool. From The Great Beyond, Joe details the circumstances of Read More

1/1/50
A Foreign Affair

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Jean Arthur, Marlene Dietrich, John Lund, Millard Mitchell, Bill Murphy, Peter Von Zerneck

Synopsis: Writer/director Billy Wilder (in collaboration with producer/writer Charles Brackett) earned his first critical condemnation with A Foreign Affair. Reviewers accused Wilder (as they would so often in the future) of moral bankruptcy, challenging him to prove what could possibly be funny about the Read More

1948
The Emperor Waltz

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Bing Crosby, Joan Fontaine, Roland Culver, Lucile Watson, Richard Haydn

Synopsis: Set in pre-World War I Austria, this relatively sweet and cheerful film marks writer/director Billy Wilder's first and last try at musical comedy. Bing Crosby is Virgil H. Smith, a New Jersey-born phonograph salesman with a fox terrier mutt and orders to sell record players in Austria. Joan Fontaine Read More

1948
The Lost Weekend

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Howard Da Silva, Phillip Terry, Doris Dowling

Synopsis: Billy Wilder's searing portrait of an alcoholic features an Oscar-winning performance by Ray Milland as Don Birnam, a writer whose lust for booze consumes his career, his life, and his loves. The story begins as Don and his brother Wick (Philip Terry) are packing their bags in their New York Read More

1945
Double Indemnity

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Porter Hall, Jean Heather

Synopsis: Directed by Billy Wilder and adapted from a James M. Cain novel by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, Double Indemnity represents the high-water mark of 1940s film noir urban crime dramas in which a greedy, weak man is seduced and trapped by a cold, evil woman amidst the dark shadows and Expressionist Read More

1944
Five Graves to Cairo

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Franchot Tone, Anne Baxter, Erich Von Stroheim, Peter Van Eyck, Akim Tamiroff

Synopsis: Billy Wilder's Five Graves to Cairo is the third take on Lajos Biro's theatrical tale of romance and espionage, Hotel Imperial. This time, the action is transplanted from World War I Galicia to World War II Egypt as Rommel's Afrika Corps viciously forces the British Army to retreat towards Cairo. Read More

1943
The Major and the Minor

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Ginger Rogers, Ray Milland, Diana Lynn, Robert Benchley, Rita Johnson

Synopsis: A woman's attempt to disguise herself as an underage girl mushrooms into a series of humorous deceptions in this romantic comedy. Ginger Rogers stars as Susan Applegate, a young woman living in New York who, nearly broke and sick of the city, decides to head home to Iowa. Lacking the money for a Read More

1942
Ball of Fire

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Oscar Homolka, Dana Andrews, S.Z. Sakall, Dan Duryea, Henry Travers

Synopsis: Ball of Fire is a delightful retelling (by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett) of the "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" legend -- though strictly for grownups. Gary Cooper is the youngest of eight bookish professors authoring an encyclopedia. They find a perfect "research associate" in the Read More

1941
Hold Back the Dawn

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Charles Boyer, Olivia de Havilland, Paulette Goddard, Victor Francen, Walter Abel

Synopsis: Hold Back the Dawn begins with a shabby immigrant (Charles Boyer) wandering onto a Paramount sound stage and telling his life story to director Mitchell Leisen (who actually directed this film). In flashback, we see that Boyer was once a conscienceless gigolo, desperate to flee Nazi-occupied Read More

1941
Arise, My Love

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Ray Milland, Dennis O'Keefe, Dick Purcell, George Zucco

Synopsis: A serious journalist is sent to France and forced to write fashion fluff pieces. Tiring of this, she decides to sneak off to find an elusive notorious rebel and write a hard-new first-hand-account of the Spanish Civil War. This lively romantic comedy chronicles her adventures after she finds him Read More

1940
What a Life

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Jackie Cooper, Betty Field, John Howard, Janice Logan, Vaughan Glaser

Synopsis: In this comedy drama, young high school student Henry Aldrich tries to tone down his natural mischievousness and shuck the reputation of being the worst student in school. It isn't easy and his father, who was an excellent student at Princeton, doesn't help. Fortunately, by the story's end, the Read More

1939
Ninotchka

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Bela Lugosi, Sig Rumann, Felix Bressart, Ina Claire

Synopsis: "Garbo Laughs!" declared the ads for Ninotchka. In the face of dwindling foreign revenues, MGM decided to put Greta Garbo, a bigger draw in Europe than the US, in a box-office-savvy comedy, engaging the services of master farceur Ernst Lubitsch to direct. The film opens in Paris during the Read More

1939
Midnight

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore, Francis Lederer, Mary Astor

Synopsis: Paramount's screwball comedy Midnight is the first collaboration between director Mitchell Leisen and screenwriting duo Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder. The film merges Brackett and Wilder's early emphasis on repartee and masquerade with ex-costume designer Leisen's flair for high style and Read More

1939
Bluebeard's Eighth Wife

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, Edward Everett Horton, David Niven, Elizabeth Patterson

Synopsis: The great Ernst Lubitsch directed this farce (written by Charles M. Brackett and Billy Wilder) about a free-wheeling millionaire, Michael Brandon (Gary Cooper), who enjoys getting married but has a hard time staying married: he's had seven wives and is looking for number eight. He thinks he may Read More

1938
That Certain Age

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Melvyn Douglas, Jackie Cooper, Irene Rich, Nancy Carroll

Synopsis: In this musical romantic comedy of 1938, Deanna Durbin plays Alice Fullerton, a young woman of a "certain age" who is prone to developing crushes against her best judgment. Her parents have taken in an intriguing house guest, Vincent Bullitt (Melvyn Douglas), a successful international news Read More

1938
Lottery Lover

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Lew Ayres, Pat Paterson, Peggy Fears, Sterling Holloway, Walter Woolf King

Synopsis: In their never-ending efforts to transform contract actress Pat Paterson a major star, Fox Studios cast the lovely lady opposite such established favorites as Lew Ayres in such frothy musicals as Lottery Lover. Ayres plays American naval cadet Frank Harrington, on vacation in Paris with several Read More

1935
Music in the Air

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Gloria Swanson, John Boles, Douglass Montgomery, June Lang, Al Shean

Synopsis: The 1932 Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein Broadway hit Music in the Air was brought to the screen two years later by Fox Studios. Temperamental Bavarian prima donna Frieda (Gloria Swanson) and equally volatile lyricist Bruno (John Boles) spend half their time quarrelling and the other half making Read More

1934
Mauvaise Graine

Crew: Director

Actors: Danielle Darrieux

Synopsis: The legendary Billy Wilder made his debut as a director with this comedy, shot in France (in collaboration with Alexander Esway) shortly before Wilder emigrated to the United States. Henry (Pierre Mingland) is a carefree young man who has fallen out of favor with his wealthy father, a doctor. Read More

1934
Was Frauen traeumen

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Gustav Froehlich, Nora Gregor, Peter Lorre, Otto Wallburg

Synopsis: In this pre-WWII German mystery-comedy, a lovely klepto with a taste for fine jewelry is unable to resist temptation. Strangely, every time she steals something, a mysterious man pays for it. A clumsy detective begins investigating and finds a crucial clue: a strongly scented woman's glove. The Read More

1933
Das Blaue Vom Himmel

Crew: Screenwriter

1932
Scampolo, ein Kind der Strasse

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Dolly Haas, Madeleine Ozeray, Karl Ludwig Diehl, Oska Sima, Marcel André, Paul Hoerbiger, Hedwig Bleibtreu

1932
Es War Einmal Ein Walzer

Crew: Screenwriter

1932
Der Falsche Ehemann

Crew: Dialogue Writer, Screen Story, Screenwriter

Actors: Johannes Riemann, Maria Paudler, Gustav Waldau, Jessie Vihrog, Tibor von Halmay

Synopsis: The title tells all in the German comedy Die Falsche Ehemann (The Wrong Husband). As can be gathered, it's a mistaken-identity affair, with a married man being constantly mistaken for his unmarried twin brother. Star Johannes Riemann spends most of the picture running about in his underwear, which Read More

1931
Der Mann, Der Seinen Moerder Sucht

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Heinz Rühmann, Lien Deyers, Hans Leibelt, Hermann Speelmans

Synopsis: Robert Siodmak's second solo directorial effort was the breathless comedy-melodrama Der Mann, Der Seinen Moerder Sucht (Looking For His Murderer) In the face of ever-mounting debts, Heinz Ruhmann arranges for his own murder to be committed within the next 12 hours. During this period, Ruhmann Read More

1931
Ihre Hoheit Befiehlt

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Kaethe von Nagy, Willy Fritsch, Reinhold Schuenzel, Paul Hoerbiger, Paul Heidemann

Synopsis: Princess Marie Christine (Kaethe Von Nagy) doesn't want to marry the man picked out for her by her parents. Likewise, aristocrat Lt. Von Conradi (Willy Fritsch) balks at the notion of an arranged marriage. Now the scenes shifts to a costume ball: Princess Marie pretends to be a humble manicurist Read More

1931
Emil und die Detektive

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Fritz Rasp, Kaethe Haack, Olga Engl, Inge Landgut, Hans Hermann Schaufuss

Synopsis: No less a scrivener than Billy Wilder adapted the Erich Kastner novel Emil and the Detectives for its first film version. The story concerns a young boy named Emil who has been packed off to visit relatives in Germany. While en route on the train, Emil's money is stolen by a penny-ante thief. The Read More

1931
Menschen am Sonntag

Crew: Screenwriter

Synopsis: An early experiment in neo-realist filmmaking, Menschen Am Sonntag is a low-budget drama about two men, a cab driver and a salesman, who find themselves with nothing to do on a Sunday in Berlin. The friends pick up a couple of young women, and the four spend the day wandering the city streets Read More

1929

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