Marilyn appears in the January 2025 issue of UK nostalgia magazine Yours Retro (#83, with Doris Day on the cover), in an article headlined ‘I’ll Try That Again,’ focusing on famous movie scenes that took endless efforts to perfect.
Alongside Charlie Chaplin’s 342 takes for one scene in City Lights (1931), or Shelley Duvall’s 127 takes in The Shining (1980), Marilyn’s alleged 59 retakes of a single line (‘Where’s that bourbon?‘) for Some Like It Hot (1959) seems quite mundane – although numbers vary depending on who’s telling the story.
40 years later, her two-time director recalled the scene in an interview for Cameron Crowe’s 1999 book, Conversations With Billy Wilder.
“WILDER: That was 80 takes or something. You have to remember, when a man muffs a line, and they do it again and again and again, then you replace him, because he plays a small part. Marilyn was the star. She does the takes because it’s gonna be in the picture.
CROWE: In the finished film, the ‘Where’s that bourbon?’ line is played on Marilyn Monroe’s back. Did you never really get it?
WILDER: [Laughs at the specificity of the question.] Maybe we did it two ways. I just remember that we had about 50-plus takes, and there was the whole afternoon trying to get it, because she cried after every take, because she didn’t get it, and then she had to be made up again. And then also we lost the morning because she didn’t show up, and we lost the afternoon because she didn’t remember the line. And I had to get the line in that location, because a close-up [shot later] would stick out like a sore thumb.
CROWE: But normally you wouldn’t spend that much time on a line like ‘Where’s that bourbon?’ if you knew it could be played on her back.
WILDER: Then maybe I was just stupid. I was just kind of totally impressed with the thing [the line], or totally convinced that I had to have it on her forehead, or in her brain, and she had to say ‘Where’s that bourbon?’ I don’t really know, but you don’t have to be that accurate, because this was not the only line that she missed … As I’ve said before, I’ve got an old aunt in Vienna who would say every line perfectly. But who would see such a picture? [Laughs.] She missed a lot of [lines, but] then again, when I have a three-page dialogue scene—boom!”
Marilyn is also set to feature in the next issue of Yours Retro (due on February 13), which includes a ‘lost’ interview with her friend Marlon Brando, reflecting on Marilyn’s death and other memories.
The Marilyn Report 