Mature Life Features

. . . are making a house call

so get your charge’s nails trimmed

or “anal gland expression”

in the lobby at noon today.

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Breakfast With A Film Legend

By Tom Morrow, Mature Life Features

Most everyone at one time or another has visions or dreams of noshing with someone considered great or a genius. Someone like Churchill, Eisenhower, or even Einstein.

My chance came with an invitation to have breakfast with one of the world’s great film makers – Billy Wilder.

His five-decade Hollywood career began when he escaped the Nazis in 1933 and began earning acclaim and Academy Awards as a writer-director for, among others, “Sunset Boulevard,” “Stalag 17,” “The Lost Weekend,” “Double Indemnity,” “The Apartment,” “The Seven Year Itch,” “Witness for the Prosecution,” “The Spirit of St. Louis,” “Sabrina,” “The Front Page,” and “Some Like it Hot.”

As an executive at the famed Hotel del Coronado across the bay from downtown San Diego where portions of “Some Like It Hot” was shot, I put together a 25th anniversary celebration of the movie that starred Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and the late Marilyn Monroe. Everyone connected with film was invited for a weekend of fun. Lemmon, Curtis, Wilder and several of the supporting cast showed up.

On the Sunday morning after our Saturday night ballroom festivities, I received word that Mr. Wilder wanted to have breakfast with me. I called Lemmon to ask if the invitation was real or simply a polite gesture. “My boy, never pass up a chance to sit at the feet of greatness,” was Lemmon’s response.

I headed out to the Promenade Deck where Wilder was sitting at a table sipping a cup of coffee and smoking one of the cigars from the box I had sent to his suite. I arrived at the same time as Lemmon, who Wilder also had invited.

We had breakfast and listened to Wilder talking on a number of subjects, including being back at the hotel after 25 years. He recalled how difficult Marilyn had been to work with — how she held up the filming while her two co-stars patiently stood by in high-heels and drag waiting for their next scene with her.

The money we raised that Saturday night in the hotel’s ballroom went to the San Diego State University’s new film-editing facility. Years later I received a call from a university official to ask if I would get in touch with Wilder and invite him to attend a function at the editing facility.

I still had his home phone number, so I dialed the number and a heavy German accent answered. When I identified myself, asking if he remembered me, the reply was: “Of course, Tom. Say, do you have any more of those great cigars?”

Billy Wilder died March 27, 2002, at the age of 95. Taking his sense of humor to the grave, the epitaph on his tombstone is the final line from “Some Like It Hot.” The stone is engraved: “Billy Wilder, I’m a writer, but then nobody’s perfect.