... maybe one of the most famous last-lines in movie history. Wilder tells how he and his writing partner came up with it.
The final scene of Some Like it Hot, we wrote on a weekend in the studio. We just did not have it. We had the guys escaping, jumping into the motorboat of Mr. Joe E. Brown. And a little dialogue between Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis. And then we came to the unmasking, when Jack Lemmon says, "You know I cannot marry you because ... I smoke." And finally he takes that wig off and says, "Look, I'm a man." Now we needed a line for Joe E. Brown and could not find it. But somewhere in the beginning of our discussion, Iz [Diamond] said, "Nobody's perfect." And I 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."Posted by sheilaWe never found the line, so we went with "Nobody's perfect". The audience just exploded at the preview in Westwood ...
It's always very difficult for me to say, "This is my line and this is his," always, except of course I have to give him credit for "Nobody's perfect". Because that's the thing they jump on, and I say, "That was a temporary line, suggested by Mr. Diamond." And it wound up to be our funniest last line. I was asked by many people, "What is going to happen now? What happens now to Lemmon, what happens to his husband?" And I always said, "I have no idea." "Nobody's perfect." Leave it up there on the screen. You cannot top that."