Some Like It Hot

Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis drag it up as they hide from the mob in what is rightly considered one of the best comedies of all time.

When two musicians played by Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon witness a mob shootout, inspired by the real-life St Valentine's Day Massacre, they can't find a way out of prohibition-era Chicago fast enough. With gangsters in hot pursuit, they take the first opportunity that presents itself: to join an all-girl band leaving on tour.

Disguising themselves as women and keeping their identities secret, new obstacles emerge for the pair, including an enthusiastic male suitor and an attractive bandmate named Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe).

Curator's note
By the time Some Like It Hot hit cinema screens, the American film industry's self-imposed censorship code, the Hays Code, had been in effect for 25 years. Staunchly opposed to the code, which placed strict rules on implied nudity, sexuality and unpunished immorality, Billy Wilder's 1959 film subverted it at every turn.

Banned in some places upon its original release, the film is now considered groundbreaking for its approach to gender, sexuality and camp. While Curtis and Lemmon are essentially hiding beneath their drag, the film treats drag less as a deception and more as a revelation, allowing the characters to experience new freedoms, new vulnerabilities and new forms of desire.