Excerpt from Conversations with Wilder
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.”
We 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.”
