On Some Like it Hot
Standing on the beach at the Hotel del Coronado gives one the impression of being a small child who’s briefly managed to step away from the adults. It is a modest stretch of snowy white sand that sits calmly within the embrace of San Diego Bay. You can meet the breaking waves alone in a silence that contradicts the area’s bustling tourism. Inland shops are a short walk from the beach, at the ready yet far enough away that they’re unobtrusive — like a nursemaid knitting in her cabana. The hotel (fortress that it is, with terra cotta roofs and blazing gesso walls) grows very distant very quickly as one walks further up the shore. Looking back, it resembles not the looming grandeur of an island resort but the contained prettiness of a doll’s house.
Sixty years ago, this beach was temporarily occupied by a film production from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Hollywood. The picture they were filming was titled Some Like it Hot. It was a comedy: Joe (Tony Curtis) is pursuing Sugar (Marilyn Monroe), the lead singer of an all-girls’ jazz band who aspires to land a rich husband. In the scene, Joe has dressed as a yachtsman and gone down to the beach with the aim of catching Sugar’s attention. The ruse works, and what proceeds between Curtis and Monroe is just about the most sublime conversation in all American cinema.
The scene begins with Sugar frolicking with her fellow bandmates. When she runs off to retrieve a beachball, Joe — lurking in a chair like a petulant schoolboy — surreptitiously sticks out his foot as Sugar rushes by. She trips, and Joe quickly makes a point of not only apologizing but dropping a neat bit of personal invention: “…usually when people find out who I am they get themselves a wheelchair, a shyster lawyer and sue me for three quarters of a million dollars.”
This piques Sugar’s interest. She tosses the ball back to her friends and directs her attention towards Joe. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” He suggests perhaps she’s come across his photograph in magazines: Vanity Fair, etc. He then requests that Sugar move — she’s blocking the view of his yacht, which is due to run up a flag when it’s time for cocktails. Such information is enough to turn any gold digger pale, and so Sugar leans in with her questioning:
Now Sugar goes in for the catch. With introductions aside the charade becomes a mutual confection, for as Sugar “learns” more about Joe she fashions and relates a sophisticated upbringing of her own: “It was such a bore… Daddy threatened to cut me off without a cent.” Many a signifier of elitism is passed between the two: Bryn Mawr, inauguration balls, the Sheboygan Conservatory of Music. Not only are Sugar and Joe speaking a vernacular for wealth --- for all intents and purposes, within the realm of their conversation, they are rich. The code flatters them both. They are impressing themselves as much as they are trying to impress each other.
The scene is delightful, in my eyes, for two reasons. First, there is its inherent comic value: a man is pretending to be something he’s not, and getting away with it. His act is transparent to the audience, but he is believed by his co-player — a woman who is as determined to write her own fate as her deceiver is to write his. And Sugar is playing, too; even though her affectation isn’t bought by Joe, her lying only adds to the humor of the situation. We are not just laughing at them. We are laughing at their game. It is a scene about two big kids, ordinary folks, pretending to be important.
That’s where things get twisty. Adding to the character dynamic is the fact that we are looking at two live people — Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe — who happen to be movie stars. Both were born into obscurity (he in New York City, she in Los Angeles), and both found their way to the heights of millions of Americans’ fantasies. They are living, breathing testaments to the very daydream this scene is mocking. Two normal people who became celebrities are playing normal people pretending to be celebrities. The beach scene in Some Like it Hot synthesizes Americans’ hapless identification with wealth. It is our national pastime: to mime at being set for life.
Joan Didion said that Americans do not crave wealth for its material or power, but because it affords absolute privacy. On the beach at Coronado sixty years ago, watched by director and crew, two actors gave us a glimpse of the American Dream in its fullest form: to be young and unconcerned under a quiet, warm San Diego sun.
