Closing Scene, Some Like It Hot
In the famous final scene of Billy Wilder’s classic 1959 comedy Some Like It Hot, musician in drag Jerry (Jack Lemmon) tries to wiggle out his engagement to cheerful Osgood Fielding III. When Jerry’s more straightforward excuses (“I smoke!” “I have a terrible past!” “I can never have children!”) are rebuffed, he gives up, pulls off his wig, and drops the bombshell: “I’m a man!” “Well,” Osgood shrugs, “Nobody’s perfect!” What was perfect was that line, which made it to the AFI’s 2005 list of the greatest movie quotes of all time — yet Wilder and co-writer I.A.L. Diamond had only intended it as a placeholder. Wilder would later tell Cameron Crowe that after a long discussion with Diamond, he finally said, “Look, let’s go back to your line, ‘Nobody’s perfect.’ Let’s send it to the mimeograph department so that they have something, and then we’re going to really sit down and make a real funny last line.” But they never found a funnier one — unsurprisingly.
