Number 31 on IMDb's Top 250
Joe Gillis (William Holden), an unsuccessful screenplay writer, escapes the finance men who are trying to reclaim his car by driving into the garage of an old mansion on Sunset Boulevard. Assumed to be someone else, he is led by Max the butler to the mansion's owner, silent film star Norma Desmond (Glory Swanson). Wishing to make a comeback, she hires him to rewrite her "Salome" script, then falls in love with him. Joe moves into the mansion as a kept man. Secretly, Joe is collaborating with a pretty young screenplay editor, Betty Schaefer, on another idea. Though she is engaged to his best friend, Artie Green, an assistant director, Betty falls in love with Joe. When Betty finds out about Norma, she asks him to leave Norma for her, but Joe can't unsettle her life, too. He decides, instead, to leave Hollywood. As he is leaving, a crazed Norma tries to stop him anyway she can...hilarity ensues.
Trivia: The "Desmond mansion" had been built by a William Jenkins in 1924 at a cost of $250,000. Its second owner was Jean Paul Getty, who purchased it for his second wife. Mrs. Getty divorced her millionaire husband and received custody of the house; it was she who rented it to Paramount for the filming. The movie that Cecil B. DeMille is shooting (in this movie and in real life) was Samson and Delilah (1949), being made at the same time as this film. As a final dig at Hollywood, the tragic ending music (by Franz Waxman) as Norma vanishes into the lens of a camera, segues into a full-blown orchestra version of the Paramount News Shorts' theme. As a practical joke, during the scene where William Holden and Nancy Olson kiss for the first time, Billy Wilder let them carry on for minutes without yelling cut (he'd already gotten the shot he needed on the first take). Eventually it wasn't Wilder who shouted "Cut!" but Holden's wife, who happened to be onset that day.
I have watched a few William Holden movies now (Stalag 17, The Bridge On The River Kwai, Network, Sabrina) and I have liked all of them. The same can be said for Billy Wilder movies (Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, Stalag 17, Sabrina, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment). So having both in the same movie was golden.
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