Chronicle goes wild for McBride’s Wilder bio

Author: School of Cinema
October 11, 2021

A Chronicle review of Professor of Cinema Joseph McBride’s newest biography calls the book “remarkable.” “Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge” (Columbia University Press) examines the life and work of the legendary director, who was responsible for such classics as “Double Indemnity,” “Sunset Boulevard,” “Some Like It Hot” and “The Apartment.” “Joseph McBride, steeped in Hollywood history, met and interviewed Billy Wilder (1906-2002) on several important occasions, and he provides the full background of the screenwriter-director’s early years in Germany as filmmaker and journalist,” Carl Rollyson wrote in the Chronicle. “McBride has apparently seen every scrap of film Wilder ever worked on, traveling abroad to track down fugitive films and consulting archives. ... Wilder ‘still is not studied as much or as deeply as he should be,’ McBride writes, but he has produced a book to remedy that oversight.” Read the full review online.