This month marks the 75th anniversary of “Sunset Boulevard,” Billy Wilder‘s darkly hilarious, brutally honest, and ultimately surprisingly poignant poison-pen letter to the Hollywood film industry where he made his success. To mark the occasion, Paramount has meticulously restored the film for a new 4K release that premiered at Cannes this year and is now available via streaming and physical media.
That “Sunset Boulevard” and its story of the doomed relationship between struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) and faded silent film queen Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) has endured for 75 years is not surprising to Nancy Olson, who starred in the movie as Gillis’ love interest and conscience Betty Schaefer. She was Oscar-nominated for her performance for Best Supporting Actress.
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“We knew we were at another level of filmmaking,” Olson, 97, told IndieWire. “There was something being asked of us that was not ordinary, and you had to live up to it.” Olson, who was 22 when “Sunset Boulevard” opened in 1950, noted that Wilder’s film had considerably more artistic merit than her only previous feature, the Randolph Scott vehicle “Canadian Pacific.”
“I was under contract to Paramount,” Olson said. “I was a theater arts student at UCLA, and they had seen me in a play and signed me. One day, the studio called and said, ‘We’re going to lend you to 20th Century Fox to do a movie called “Canadian Pacific.” It’s in color, and you are partly Indian.’ And I said, ‘Wait a minute. I’m a Scandinavian from Wisconsin.’ They said, ‘You’ll have your hair dyed very dark and you’ll be fine.’”
The movie may not have stood the test of time like “Sunset Boulevard,” but it made Olson comfortable with the camera before she stepped onto Wilder’s set. “I learned that working with the camera is a whole other operation than theater,” she said. “The camera tells half the story, and by the time I did ‘Sunset,’ I at least had a sense of how to use that.”
After being signed by Paramount, Olson enjoyed wandering the lot and checking out the sets, not unlike her aspiring screenwriter character in “Sunset Boulevard,” who roams the backlot at night with Gillis. On her walks, she would often encounter Wilder, who was considering her for “Sunset Boulevard” without her even being aware of it.
“ He was so interested in talking to me, and I never understood it,” Olson said. “He would ask, ‘What is it like to grow up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and be a doctor’s daughter? What’s it like to be a student at UCLA? What’s your life like now?’ And he would go on and on with question after question.” Once Olson was cast as Betty Schaefer, she realized that Wilder had been making sure she was articulate in a way that he thought would serve the character.
“He wanted me to be Betty Schaefer,” Olson said, insisting that Olson wear her own clothes — even though she barely had any appropriate outfits to speak of. “I did not have a great wardrobe! I was too busy going to school, going to Paramount. I didn’t know where to shop either, but somehow we put some stuff together. That’s how much he wanted me to be simply me.”
Although “Sunset Boulevard” has the feeling of a work that’s been finely tuned in every moment, Olson says Wilder did not come across as a perfectionist on set — to the contrary, he often rattled her and other actors with his refusal to shoot multiple takes. “I’ve talked with Shirley MacLaine about this a number of times,” Olson said. “The one thing [Wilder] did that drove me crazy is he would only do one take.”
Olson was shocked to realize this while shooting her first scene with Holden and actor Fred Clark. “I started to stutter in the middle, and I thought surely he’s going to call cut, and we’re going to start this again,” Olson said. “I kept going and we finished the scene and he said, ‘Cut, print.’ I said, ‘Billy, please let me do it again,’ and he said, ‘Print, next setup.’ And that was what he did in every single shot. But you finally got used to it.”
“Sunset Boulevard” is available now to buy or rent on 4K Ultra HD from Paramount Pictures. The 4K UHD physical media edition will be released on August 6.
