The 1959 comedy Geena Davis urges everyone to see: “So funny and fabulous”
As much as Geena Davis has proved her versatility across the board, it’s her comedic roles that have always stood out as her best, allowing her to become one of her generation’s most beloved stars.
Her success was secured the moment that she found herself among the likes of Dustin Hoffman and Jessica Lange in Sydney Pollack’s Tootsie, her first role. The comedic movie became a hit, subsequently setting the tone for her career, even if it did take her a few years to truly get on the cinematic wagon.
But as roles in movies like Beetlejuice, Thelma & Louise, and A League of Their Own suggest, Davis has a natural charm that’s hard to ignore, no matter the genre. So, as she established herself in the industry, she quickly proved that she could bring wit and comic flair to everything from horror to sports movies, adapting herself no matter the tone of the film. It makes sense, then, that she’s an expert on good comedy movies, and one of her favourites, like Tootsie, features male protagonists going undercover as women.
In fact, Tootsie is incredibly indebted to Some Like It Hot, which stands as Hollywood’s best cross-dressing comedy, and when you think about the fact that the Marilyn Monroe vehicle was released in 1959, it’s hard not to be blown away by how revolutionary it really was. Directed by Billy Wilder, the film sees Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis don feminine attire as they attempt to hide their identities from a Mafia boss.
After witnessing him ruthlessly gun down a gang, they flee with a travelling all-female band in the hopes of getting far away (as well as a job), but here they meet Monroe’s Sugar Kane, a gorgeous singer. In trying to maintain their identities as women, the pair come up with some pretty unusual strategies to woo her, with Curtis’ Joe ditching his Josephine disguise to become Shell Oil Junior, a wealthy English businessman who impresses Sugar.
It’s a genius comedy played to absolute perfection, and it even ends with a moment incredibly ahead of its time in terms of LGBTQ+ representation. To Davis, it’s a timeless classic that never gets old, and picking it out of the Criterion Closet, she said, “If you haven’t seen this, you have to see it”.
She gushed, “It’s directed by Billy Wilder, and it’s got Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe. What could be better? So funny and fabulous. So high energy. I love these old movies”.
She’s right: Some Like It Hot is bursting with energy, with the pacing of Wilder’s impeccable script, as well as Lemmon’s performance in particular, capable of capturing even the shortest of attention spans. It’s fizzing with jokes and confusion, musical numbers and ridiculous plot turns, barely stopping for breath.
If you want to watch any Old Hollywood comedy, then you should probably listen to Davis and sit down with Some Like It Hot if, somehow, you’ve not already seen such a masterpiece.
