Some Like It Hot: The Official 50th Anniversary Companion

Featuring never-before-seen photos of Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon, Some Like It Hot: The Official 50th Anniversary Companion celebrates Billy Wilder’s classic film, voted the number one funniest movie of all time by the American Film Institute. Granted full access to the MGM vaults, author Laurence Maslon offers a fully illustrated companion guide of memorabilia and behind-the-scenes tidbits perfect for anyone who loves comedy, jazz, and American film. |

Selected as America's Funniest Movie by the American Film Institute, Some Like it Hot remains an undisputed classic fifty years after its release, as it continues to capture three of American culture's great preoccupations-jazz, gangsters, and Marilyn Monroe. The Official 50th Anniversary Companion details the history of this side-splitting farce from its roots as an obscure 1951 German film to its Hollywood conception, where Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond transposed the material to the Roaring Twenties and director Wilder cast the brilliant Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon in the starring roles.

As well as previously unpublished images, posters, and documents from the MGM archives, this book includes selections from the screenplay, casting notes, on-set production anecdotes, and location shots from the fabled Del Coronado in San Diego (doubling for Florida). In addition, songs and music used in the film's jazz era setting, background information on Chicago during Prohibition, the story of the Broadway and West End musical versions (one of which starred Tony Curtis), the previously undiscovered television pilot based on the movie, and the ongoing legacy of the most famous drag comedy in film history.

Featuring cameo appearances by Arthur Miller, Edward G. Robinson, Al Capone, Tommy Steele, Robert Morse, Tina Louise, and Tom Hanks, The Official 50th Anniversary Companion is the first book to tell the full story of Some Like it Hot from start to finish, from wig to high heels.

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Fresh off his companion book (written with Michael Kantor) to the splendid PBS series “Make ’Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America,” Laurence Maslon has written a loving tribute to one of cinema’s most enduring comedies in “Some Like It Hot: The Official 50th Anniversary Companion.” - Moving Pictures Magazine

Some Like It Hot: The Official 50th Anniversary Companion by Laurence Maslon is every inch the gorgeous coffee table tome you’d expect to see in celebration of the 1959 film which co-starred Jack Lemmon, and was selected by the American Film Institute as the funniest comedy ever made. - LA/OC Theatre Examiner

Some Like It Hot: The Official 50th Anniversary Companion — This exquisitely illustrated coffee-table book is a must-own for fans of the quintessential Marilyn Monroe comedy, voted by the American Film Institute as cinema’s all-time funniest. - Advocate.com