59 Facts About Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder received seven Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or, and two Golden Globe Awards.

Billy Wilder then moved to Hollywood in 1933, and had a major hit when he, Charles Brackett and Walter Reisch wrote the screenplay for the Academy Award-nominated film Ninotchka.

Billy Wilder won the Best Director and Best Screenplay Academy Awards for the The Lost Weekend, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Billy Wilder directed and co-wrote three films in 1957, including The Spirit of St Louis, Love in the Afternoon and Witness for the Prosecution.

Billy Wilder directed Marilyn Monroe in two films, The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot.

In 1960, Billy Wilder co-wrote, directed and produced the critically acclaimed film The Apartment.

Billy Wilder received various honors for his distinguished career including the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1986, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1990, the National Medal of Arts in 1993, and the BAFTA Fellowship Award in 1995.

Billy Wilder received the Directors Guild of America's Lifetime Achievement Award, the Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement, and the Producers Guild of America's Lifetime Achievement Award.

Samuel Billy Wilder was born on June 22,1906, to a family of Polish Jews in Sucha Beskidzka, a small town which, at that time, belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Billy Wilder was nicknamed "Billie" by his mother.

Eugenia Billy Wilder has described her young son as a "rambunctious kid" and has been inspired by the Buffalo Bill's Wild West Shows that she saw while living briefly in New York.

Billy Wilder's parents had a successful and well-known cake shop in Sucha's train station that flourished into a chain of railroad cafes.

Eugenia and Max Billy Wilder did not persuade their son to join the family business.

Furthermore, Max Billy Wilder moved to Krakow to manage a hotel before moving to Vienna.

Billy Wilder collaborated with several other novices on the 1930 film People on Sunday.

Billy Wilder wrote the screenplay for the 1931 film adaptation of a novel by Erich Kastner, Emil and the Detectives, screenplays for the comedy The Man in Search of His Murderer, the operetta Her Grace Commands and the comedy A Blonde Dream, all of them produced in the Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam near Berlin.

In 1932 Billy Wilder collaborated with the writer and journalist Felix Salten on the screenplay for "Scampolo".

Billy Wilder became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1939, having spent time in Mexico waiting for the government after his six-month card expired in 1934, an episode reflected in his 1941 Hold Back the Dawn.

Billy Wilder co-wrote many of his films with Brackett from 1938 to 1950.

Billy Wilder's third film as director, the film noir Double Indemnity, starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G Robinson, was a major hit.

Two years later, Wilder adapted from Charles R Jackson's novel The Lost Weekend into a film of the same name.

Billy Wilder earned the Oscars for Best Director and Best Screenplay and Milland won Best Actor.

In 1950, Billy Wilder co-wrote and directed the cynical noir comedy film Sunset Boulevard.

Billy Wilder accompanies an aspiring screenwriter, who becomes her gigolo partner.

Billy Wilder then directed three adaptations of Broadway plays, war drama Stalag 17, for which William Holden won the Best Actor Academy Award, romantic comedy Sabrina, for which Audrey Hepburn was nominated for Best Actress, and romantic comedy The Seven Year Itch, which features the iconic image of Marilyn Monroe standing on a subway grate as her white dress is blown upwards by a passing train.

Billy Wilder was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for the first two films and shared a nomination for Best Screenplay for the second.

Billy Wilder was interested in doing a film with one of the classic slapstick comedy acts of the Hollywood Golden Age.

Billy Wilder first considered, and rejected, a project to star Laurel and Hardy.

Billy Wilder received an Academy Award nomination for Best Director for the last film.

In 1959, Billy Wilder reunited with Monroe in the United Artists released Prohibition-era farce film Some Like It Hot.

In 1960, Billy Wilder directed the comedy romance film The Apartment.

Billy Wilder received a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for his screenplay.

Billy Wilder gained his final Academy Award nomination and a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for the screenplay of The Fortune Cookie.

Billy Wilder received two Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay, and a Writers Guild of America Award nomination.

Billy Wilder directed The Front Page based on the Broadway play of the same name.

Billy Wilder had hoped to make Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Ark as his final film, saying "I wanted to do it as a kind of memorial to my mother and my grandmother and my stepfather," who had all been murdered in the Holocaust.

Billy Wilder avoided, especially in the second half of his career, the exuberant cinematography of Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles because, in Wilder's opinion, shots that called attention to themselves would distract the audience from the story.

Billy Wilder's belief was that no matter how talented the actor, none were without limitations and the result would be better if you bent the script to their personality rather than force a performance beyond their limitations.

Billy Wilder was skilled at working with actors, coaxing silent era legends Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim out of retirement for roles in Sunset Boulevard.

For Stalag 17, Billy Wilder squeezed an Oscar-winning performance out of a reluctant William Holden.

MacMurray had become Hollywood's highest-paid actor portraying a decent, thoughtful character in light comedies, melodramas, and musicals; Billy Wilder cast him as a womanizing schemer.

Billy Wilder coaxed a very effective performance out of Monroe in Some Like It Hot.

Billy Wilder mentioned Lemmon, and was the first director to pair him and Matthau in The Fortune Cookie.

Billy Wilder reveled in poking fun at those who took politics too seriously.

Billy Wilder received the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award in 1986.

Billy Wilder received the Irving G Thalberg Memorial Award in 1988, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1990 and the National Medal of Arts in 1993.

Billy Wilder has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Billy Wilder became well known for owning one of the finest and most extensive art collections in Hollywood, mainly collecting modern art.

Billy Wilder was buried at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary.

Billy Wilder holds a significant place in the history of Hollywood censorship for expanding the range of acceptable subject matter.

Billy Wilder is responsible for two of film noir's most definitive films, Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard.

Billy Wilder was ranked at No 19 on Empire magazine's "Top 40 Greatest Directors of All-Time" list in 2005.

Billy Wilder was voted at No 4 on the "Greatest Directors of 20th Century" poll conducted by Japanese film magazine Kinema Junpo.

Billy Wilder received twenty-one nominations at the Academy Awards, winning six.

Billy Wilder won both the Academy Award for Best Director and the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for both The Lost Weekend and The Apartment.

Billy Wilder garnered eight Directors Guild of America Award nominations, with the sole win for his work on The Apartment.

Billy Wilder received seven nominations at the Golden Globe Awards, winning Best Director for The Lost Weekend and Sunset Boulevard.

Billy Wilder won seven Writers Guild of America Awards including two Laurel Awards for Screenwriting Achievement.

Billy Wilder garnered a number of lifetime achievement awards including the Irving G Thalberg Memorial Award, the BAFTA Fellowship, the David O Selznick Achievement Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures, and the Honorary Golden Bear from the Berlin International Film Festival.