22 Facts About Norma Desmond

Norma Desmond starts getting calls from Paramount executive Gordon Cole but refuses to speak to anyone except DeMille.

Norma Desmond's moonlighting is found out by Max, who reveals that he was a respected film director who discovered Norma, made her a star, and was her first husband.

Norma Desmond discovers a manuscript with Joe's and Betty's names on it and phones Betty, insinuating that Joe is not the man he seems.

Norma Desmond bluntly informs Norma there will be no comeback; her fan mail comes from Max, and she has been forgotten.

Norma Desmond disregards Norma's threat to kill herself and the gun she shows him to back it up.

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Norma Desmond, having lost touch with reality amid her arrest, believes the newsreel cameras are there to film Salome.

Norma Desmond recalled first wanting Mae West and Marlon Brando for the leads.

Norma Desmond then reached out to Clara Bow, the famed "IT Girl" of the 1920s, but she declined citing that she had no interest in engaging in the film industry again due to how hard it was for her during the transition of sound films and that she'd prefer to remain in seclusion with her husband and sons while leaving her previous life behind her.

Norma Desmond accepted the end of her film career, and in the early 1930s moved to New York City, where she worked in radio.

Norma Desmond did not know at the time that his salary of $39,000 was much less than had been offered to Clift.

Norma Desmond chose Nancy Olson, who had recently been considered for the role of Delilah in Cecil B DeMille's Samson and Delilah.

Wilder, Head, and Swanson agreed that Norma Desmond would have kept somewhat up-to-date with fashion trends, so Head designed costumes closely resembling the Dior look of the mid-1940s.

Norma Desmond had been commissioned to complete the interior design for the homes of movie stars, including the house of Mae West.

Bed in the shape of a boat in which Norma Desmond slept had been owned by the dancer Gaby Deslys, who died in 1920.

The exterior scenes of the Norma Desmond house were filmed at a house on Wilshire Boulevard built during the 1920s by the millionaire William O Jenkins.

Norma Desmond compares von Stroheim's character Max with the concealed Erik, the central character in The Phantom of the Opera, and Norma Desmond with Dracula, noting that, as she seduces Joe Gillis, the camera tactfully withdraws with "the traditional directorial attitude taken towards Dracula's jugular seductions".

Norma Desmond writes that the narrative contains an excess of "cheap sarcasm", but ultimately congratulates the writers for attributing this dialogue to Joe Gillis, who was in any case presented as little more than a hack writer.

Norma Desmond described it as "an unexpected blow" from which he never recovered fully.

Norma Desmond claimed that one in particular, Past Performance, served as the basis for the Sunset script, and sued the screenwriters and Paramount for $100,000 in general damages, $250,000 in punitive damages, $700,000 based on the box office returns, and an additional $350,000 for good measure, for a total of $1,400,000.

Norma Desmond won an Academy Award for his screenplay for Titanic, and wrote Niagara, the breakthrough film for Marilyn Monroe as a dramatic actress.

Norma Desmond received an Honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in 1958.

Norma Desmond won the Best Actor Oscar for Stalag 17, directed by Wilder, and by 1956 he was the top box-office attraction in the United States.