Huge fan of old school classical movies here, and fellow aficionados will immediately recognize this film from the first five words of the title alone. Yes, of course, Sunset Boulevard.
(Rod Taylor Twilight Zone voice) Picture, if you will, a moldering Hollywood mansion. With a pool. And in that pool, the fully clothed body of a young man serenely floats.) That young man is Joe Gillis, played by William Holden, and that mansion belongs to Norma Desmond, as played by the unforgettable Gloria Swanson.
This movie was the product of the writing/directing due of Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, already famous for The Lost Weekend and Double Indemnity. They had the general sketch, writing had begun, but it was time to start casting and that began with their female lead. They contacted both Mary Pickford and Mae West and were turned down by both. Then Gloria Swanson was mentioned. She had dropped out of movies years back, and was currently hosting a local television interview show on the East Coast. One thing though, they wanted her to do a screen test. She wasn’t too pleased about that, but finally consented. She tried the lines that were given to her in various ways, as suggested by the pair, as an addled old lady, as a meek old lady, but they weren’t getting what they were looking for. Finally, they just suggested that she do it the way she wanted. The lines came from the now famous interchange with Joe Gillis.
Joe Gillis: You’re Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.
Norma Desmond: I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.
And if you’ve ever seen the movie, you know she is basically breathing fire when she delivers them. And that’s when they knew they had their Norma.
Plenty of good stories in this telling, and Swanson, who was anything but a diva in real life, kept contributing. The final scene where she announces to Mr. De Mille that she is ready for her close-up and walks straight into the camera? Gloria’s idea.