Thirty-three years after the fact, Jack Lemmon is still reluctant to talk about his co-star in one of the biggest comedy hits of all time, Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot."
The Marilyn Monroe mystique continues to fill the pages of tabloids, with new tales rising to the surface like lumps in gravy."To tell you the truth, I get the feeling that she's being used from the grave all the time," says Lemmon, now a graying elder states-man with that still-youthful rubbery face and insightful pale eyes.
"This whole thing - this ceaseless thing about her. And I liked her. I was very, very fond of her. We were good friends."
He loved working with Monroe, he says. "Except it was exasperating because of the lateness thing, mostly. It was not a bit out of temperament. She was unable to come out of that dressing room and face the cameras until SHE psyched herself up and she was ready. Only she could say when that was. Then we'd go to work."
Sometimes it would require 50 takes and sometimes only one, he says. "She would cut. Billy wouldn't. Half the time, she would just stop because it didn't feel right to her. You never knew why, but it just didn't feel right to her. Sometimes I'd look at her and I'd say, `Nobody's home,' " he says, tapping his forehead with his index finger.
"And I'd go to the rushes and I wouldn't look at myself. I'd be looking at her. It was working. She had something that went directly to the camera - not to me, maybe - but it sure went to the camera."
Lemmon says that Monroe was able to use her talent with more facility than anyone he has ever known. "She was not a great actress. She was not a great this, not a great that, but she had a sense of comedy. She had a unique delivery of her own that she developed; had a fantastic use of her face and body visually that made her maybe the greatest model that God ever put on this Earth."
Lemmon says those memorable stills of Monroe, lips apart, eyes closed to a slant, cleavage aimed perfectly at the camera, were all her creations.
"That's her. That's not the photographer. There are millions of 'em and they're all great. She created the whole persona; the speech, everything, it was all her. She was able to use that fully. Hardly a great actress but one of the great, great personalities in the history of film."
By contrast, Lemmon IS one of the great actors in the history of film. Oscar winner as best actor for "Save the Tiger" and best supporting actor for "Mister Roberts," Lemmon has been nominated eight times for an Academy Award.
And though he is remembered mostly for his comedy, it was his dramatic work in films like "The China Syndrome" and "Missing" that proved that Lemmon is one of the few performers capable of wrenching tears as well as guffaws from his fans. That old Lemmon shine is back again in the new dramatic film "Glengarry Glen Ross," in which he plays a once-successful salesman determined to maintain his humanity among the sharks. Lemmon has already been named best actor at the Venice Film Festival for that portrayal.
Lemmon never aimed at a guaranteed target, he says. "There are people that I know that had very promising careers going and whatever happened to them? They started to go for hits and deals, making the big deal and looking for the commercial hits.
"Nobody knows what is going to hit. The fortunate thing is I've done enough films that I'm very proud to be part of that ALSO were not just critical hits and worthwhile on an artistic level, but also did well at the box office. They often were films that nobody wanted to make."
One of those was "The Days of Wine and Roses," co-starring Lee Remick, the tragic story of two alcoholics and their struggle to get sober.
"It was almost two years, and we only got it made because we promised Jack Warner that we would redo the ending and make it a happy ending."
The script, directed by Blake Edwards, was based on a television play that had starred Piper Laurie and Cliff Robertson. In the end, it is only the husband who is able to give up the booze.
"We'd told Warner that we'd all be together and Lee and I and the baby would walk off into the sunset. And Jack Warner said, `Terrific! Go ahead.' And we shot it the way we wanted to, filmed the last scene last, the way it was supposed to be. And I went off to Europe and didn't tell him where I was. So he couldn't reshoot it."
The movie earned five Oscar nominations.