Billy Wilder

His parents sold cake in the Sucha railway station, in Galicia, and built it into a chain of station cafes. His mother had lived in New York, seen Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, and named her second son Billie after it. The family moved to Vienna, where he skipped university for newspapers. In 1926 he interviewed the bandleader Paul Whiteman, who liked him enough to take him to Berlin, where he filed crime and sports stories, took a tabloid job, and worked as a taxi dancer for money. Then the pictures took: 12 German films between 1929 and 1933, including People on Sunday, made with Fred Zinnemann and Robert Siodmak. When Hitler took power he left for Paris. It seemed the wise thing for a Jew to do, he said.

He reached Hollywood in 1934, waited out an expired entry card in Mexico, and wrote his way in. Ninotchka, with Charles Brackett and Ernst Lubitsch, made Garbo laugh and brought his first Oscar nomination in 1939. Double Indemnity, written with Raymond Chandler in 1944, came from a book the Hays Office had declared unfilmable and became one of the pillars of film noir. The Lost Weekend took Picture, Director and Screenplay in 1945. Sunset Boulevard followed in 1950. Some Like It Hot went out in 1959 without a Production Code seal, because of the cross-dressing and the sex, and buried the objection at the box office. In 1960 The Apartment won him Best Original Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture. Seven Academy Awards in all, from 21 nominations.

He got out. His family did not. For decades it was assumed his mother, stepfather and grandmother all died at Auschwitz. In 2011 his Austrian biographer Andreas Hutter went through Polish and Israeli archives and found they died in three different places: his stepfather Bernard Siedlisker at Belzec in 1942, his mother Eugenia at Plaszow in 1943, his grandmother Balbina Baldinger in the ghetto at Nowy Targ the same year. In 1945 the War Department's psychological warfare branch put Wilder to work on Death Mills, the documentary made to show Germans what had been done in their name. He wanted to film Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Ark as a memorial to the three of them, and lost it to Steven Spielberg. To Holocaust deniers he wrote in a German newspaper: then please tell me where my mother is.

He collected compulsively — Picassos from every period, Calder mobiles, glass paperweights, miniature Japanese trees — and called it a sickness, then started making objects himself, wrapping and splattering busts of Nefertiti after Christo, Pollock and Warhol, and showed them at a Beverly Hills gallery in 1993. He died of pneumonia on March 27, 2002, at 95. Le Monde ran the news across its front page under the line: Billy Wilder is dead. Nobody is perfect. Seven of his films sit in the National Film Registry. Directors have thanked him in Oscar speeches for a quarter century. His stone at Westwood reads: I'm a writer but then nobody's perfect.

Billy Wilder's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Ninotchka film
  Co-written with Charles Brackett for Ernst Lubitsch. Garbo Laughs. 1939
• Double Indemnity film
  Written with Raymond Chandler from a book the Hays Code had ruled unfilmable 1944
• The Lost Weekend film
  Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay 1945
• Death Mills film
  Made for the War Department to show Germans the camps 1945
• Sunset Boulevard film
  His second Academy Award for screenwriting 1950
• Some Like It Hot film
  Released with no Production Code seal and topped the AFI comedy list anyway 1959
• The Apartment film
  Screenplay, Director and Picture, all three 1960

• 1926 aged ~20 Interviews Paul Whiteman in Vienna and leaves for Berlin with the band
• 1930 aged ~24 Co-writes People on Sunday with Fred Zinnemann and Robert Siodmak A landmark of the New Objectivity, made outside the expressionist style.
• 1933 aged ~27 Leaves Berlin for Paris after Hitler takes power
• 1934 aged ~28 Directs Mauvaise Graine in Paris, then sails for Hollywood
• 1939 aged ~33 Becomes a US citizen, and Ninotchka brings his first Oscar nomination
• 1945 aged ~39 Works on Death Mills for the Army's psychological warfare branch
• April 17, 1961 aged 54 The Apartment wins him three Academy Awards in one evening
• March 27, 2002 aged 95 Dies of pneumonia in Beverly Hills at 95
• 2011 aged ~105 A biographer establishes where his mother and grandmother actually died Not Auschwitz, as assumed for 60 years, but Plaszow and the Nowy Targ ghetto.

• Marilyn Monroe 1926–1962
  Actress and cultural icon whose blend of vulnerability and glamour made her a symbol of Hollywood's golden age. directed her twice
• Charles Lindbergh 1902–1974
  Aviator who made the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight from New York to Paris in 1927. filmed his crossing
• Steven Spielberg b. 1946
  Director and producer whose blockbusters and dramas have defined American cinema for five decades. made the film he wanted to make
• Alfred Hitchcock 1899–1980
  Director whose Hollywood films and television presence defined modern suspense and influenced generations of American filmmakers. camera style he refused
• Orson Welles 1915–1985
  Director, actor, and broadcaster whose innovations in film, radio, and theater reshaped American visual and dramatic storytelling. camera style he refused