A film director’s life well lived and well told

Nobody’s Perfect

Billy Wilder -- A Personal Biography

Charlotte Chandler

Simon & Schuster: 352 pages, $27.50

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Writer Charlotte Chandler has befriended an impressively wide range of legendary directors, ranging from Jean Renoir to Fritz Lang to Michelangelo Antonioni.

The ubiquitous Chandler (“Hello, I Must Be Going” and “I, Fellini”) has always asked the right questions and earned the confidence of these and other formidable figures. It’s a safe bet that Billy Wilder, the subject of her latest book, “Nobody’s Perfect,” would have been happy with the result, which is subtitled “A Personal Biography.”

She has taken exactly the right approach to Wilder, who would have abhorred any trace of academic cant and pretension. Many years in the making, it captures Wilder’s voice yet is no mere transcription of the extensive tapes Chandler made with the director, who died last March at age 95.

Chandler allows Wilder to tell the story of his life and his films within her sharply observant yet admirably economical framework, which includes contributions from a wide range of his collaborators. Leave it to Chandler to get to even the most elusive of stars, Greta Garbo, for whom Wilder collaborated on the script of Ernst Lubitsch’s classic romantic comedy “Ninotchka” (1939). Chandler maintains a conversational tone that embraces a treasure trove of anecdotes and information, and captures Wilder’s famous wit.

Born in 1906 to a loving but not always successful businessman father and a mother who longed to return to the America she had visited, Wilder grew up in Vienna and at 18 decided upon a newspaper career over university. He may have failed in his attempt to interview Sigmund Freud, but hit it off so well with Paul Whiteman, on a 1926 European tour, that he followed the orchestra leader to Berlin, where he stayed to expand his journalistic opportunities. When Wilder, always a movie fan, saw Sergei Eisenstein’s groundbreaking “Potemkin,” he knew he wanted a career in films. He was an established screenwriter when he fled Hitler for Paris and later Hollywood. By 1936, Wilder was on his way when he was assigned to collaborate with Charles Brackett on the script for Lubitsch’s “Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife,” which was to star Claudette Colbert.

The teaming of Wilder and the aristocratic, articulate, ultra-conservative Brackett would carry Wilder to the heights and pave the way for his Hollywood directorial debut with “The Major and the Minor” (1942), starring Ginger Rogers. Such classics as “Double Indemnity” (1944) and “The Lost Weekend” (1945) were to follow.

“Sunset Boulevard” (1950), arguably the definitive movie about Hollywood, took Wilder to the pinnacle. “Stalag 17,” “The Seven Year Itch,” “Some Like It Hot” and “The Apartment” (the latter two written with I.A.L. Diamond) would keep him there for another decade. The ‘70s began badly, with Wilder forced to trim an hour from a cherished project, “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes,” originally intended as a roadshow presentation. The decade ended with the fascinating but flawed “Fedora,” and Wilder’s career concluded with a fizzle, “Buddy Buddy” (1981) with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, who couldn’t say no to their friend.

Wilder faces this downward spiral squarely, with not even so much as a mention of his long search for relief from severe back pain, which surely helped sidetrack him until it was too late to resume his career. Wilder directed many glamorous actresses -- he admired Marlene Dietrich the most -- but avoided romances with his stars. He often remarked on how difficult it was to work with the chronically late and insecure Marilyn Monroe but found it always worth it, and here he and Tony Curtis reveal just how tough, maddening and finally sad it was.

Several actresses express regret that an enduring friendship did not develop with Wilder after a picture was finished, the way it had with Matthau and especially Lemmon. But it’s clear that his widow, Audrey, his elegant wife of more than half a century, was the adored center of his existence.

Wilder knew that wonderful quips were expected of him, and he unfailingly delivered. Yet the remarks in “Nobody’s Perfect” that linger longest are the most touching, those that express gratitude toward his adopted country. Wilder, who lost his mother and other relatives to the Holocaust, told of having to go to Mexicali six months after his arrival in the U.S. in 1934 to renew his visa with the U.S. consul. The diplomat proved to be encouraging. When Wilder explained that he wrote movies, the consul stamped his passport, saying, “Write some good ones.”

In telling this story, Wilder always said, “I’ve lived my life trying my best not to disappoint that dear man.”