Some Like It Hot is one of the greatest comedies in American motion-picture history. The film was released in 1959 and stars Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and Marilyn Monroe. Billy Wilder was the director and wrote the original story with I. A. L. Diamond.
The film takes place during the 1920’s. Curtis and Lemmon play Joe and Jerry, two unemployed musicians. They accidentally witness the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, in which a gang murdered several rival gangsters in a Chicago garage. The killers spot the musicians and pursue them. To escape, Joe and Jerry disguise themselves as females “Josephine” and “Daphne” and join an all-woman band headed for a job in Miami.
Some Like It Hot is filled with brilliant comic moments, many of them playing off the female impersonations by Curtis and Lemmon. Marilyn Monroe plays Sugar Kane, the band’s vocalist. She sings three songs and shows herself to be a deft comedian, winning praise for her performance as a sexy but innocent blonde.
The supporting cast includes several of Hollywood’s best-known character actors. Pat O’Brien plays a wisecracking police sergeant. George Raft is the gangland chief Spats Columbo, and Joe E. Brown is an aging millionaire who falls in love with “Daphne.”
