He then moved to Hollywood in 1934, and had a major hit when he, Charles Brackett and Walter Reisch wrote the screenplay for the Academy Award-nominated film Ninotchka (1939).

[2] In the 1950s, Wilder directed and co-wrote a string of critically acclaimed films, including the Hollywood-set drama Sunset Boulevard (1950), for which he won his second screenplay Academy Award; Ace in the Hole (1951), Stalag 17 (1953) and Sabrina (1954).

Samuel Wilder (Yiddish: שמואל װילדער Shmuel Vilder[7]) was born on June 22, 1906,[8] to a Jewish family[9] in Sucha,[1] a small town in Galicia, present-day Poland, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

"[10] His parents were Eugenia (née Dittler), from Zakopane, and Max Wilder, from Stanislawczyk; they met in Kraków where Billy spent his early years.

[13][14] After writing crime and sports stories as a stringer for local newspapers, he was eventually offered a regular job at a Berlin tabloid.

For decades it was assumed that it happened at Auschwitz Concentration Camp, but, while researching Polish and Israeli archives, his Austrian biographer Andreas Hutter discovered in 2011 that they were murdered in different locations: his mother, Eugenia "Gitla" Siedlisker, in 1943 at Plaszow; his stepfather, Bernard "Berl" Siedlisker, in 1942 at Belzec; and his grandmother, Balbina Baldinger, died in 1943 in the ghetto in Nowy Targ.

He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1939, having spent time in Mexico waiting for the government after his six-month card expired in 1934, an episode reflected in his 1941 Hold Back the Dawn.

The film marked Wilder's first Academy Award nomination, which he shared with co-writer Charles Brackett (although their collaboration on Bluebeard's Eighth Wife and Midnight had been well received).

"[19] Wilder continued his screenwriting career with a series of box office hits in the early 1940s, including the romantic drama Hold Back the Dawn and the screwball comedy Ball of Fire.

[20] Wilder made his Hollywood directorial debut in 1942 with The Major and the Minor, a comedy starring Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland.

The film not only set conventions for the noir genre (such as "venetian blind" lighting and voice-over narration), but is a landmark in the battle against Hollywood censorship.

The following year, Wilder announced plans to direct and produce a film version of the Sophocles tragedy Oedipus Rex, adapted for the screen by Walter Reisch.

Subsequently, Wilder directed three adaptations of Broadway plays, war drama Stalag 17, for which William Holden won the Best Actor Academy Award, romantic comedy Sabrina, for which Audrey Hepburn was nominated for Best Actress, and romantic comedy The Seven Year Itch, which features the iconic image of Marilyn Monroe standing on a subway grate as her white dress is blown upwards by a passing train.

[25] In 1957, three films Wilder directed were released: biopic The Spirit of St. Louis, starring James Stewart as Charles Lindbergh, romantic comedy Love in the Afternoon—Wilder's first screenplay with I.

A. L. Diamond, who would become his regular partner—featuring Gary Cooper, Maurice Chevalier and Audrey Hepburn, and courtroom drama Witness for the Prosecution, featuring Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich and Charles Laughton.

It was released, however, without a Production Code seal of approval, which was withheld due to the film's unabashed sexual comedy, including a central cross-dressing theme.

It follows an insurance clerk (Lemmon), who allows his coworkers to use his apartment to conduct extramarital affairs until he meets an elevator woman (Shirley MacLaine).

Wilder then wrote and directed the sex comedy film Kiss Me, Stupid starring Dean Martin, Kim Novak, and Ray Walston, who was a last minute replacement for ailing Peter Sellers.

In 1970, he directed The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, which was intended as a major roadshow theatrical release, but to Wilder's dismay was heavily cut by the studio.

[33] Wilder had hoped to make Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Ark as his final film, saying "I wanted to do it as a kind of memorial to my mother and my grandmother and my stepfather," who had all been murdered in the Holocaust.

He avoided, especially in the second half of his career, the exuberant cinematography of Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles because, in Wilder's opinion, shots that called attention to themselves would distract the audience from the story.

[37] Wilder was skilled at working with actors, coaxing silent era legends Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim out of retirement for roles in Sunset Boulevard.

Regarding Wilder's more comedic films, Roger Ebert wrote: "he took the characters seriously, or at least as seriously as the material allowed, and got a lot of the laughs by playing scenes straight.

MacMurray had become Hollywood's highest-paid actor portraying a decent, thoughtful character in light comedies, melodramas, and musicals; Wilder cast him as a womanizing schemer.

In total, he directed fourteen different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity, Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend, William Holden in Sunset Boulevard and Stalag 17, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim and Nancy Olson in Sunset Boulevard, Robert Strauss in Stalag 17, Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, Charles Laughton in Witness for the Prosecution, Elsa Lanchester in Witness for the Prosecution, Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, Jack Kruschen in The Apartment, Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment and Irma la Douce and Walter Matthau in The Fortune Cookie.

In 1993, art dealer Louis Stern, a longtime friend, helped organize an exhibition of Wilder's work at his Beverly Hills gallery.

The exhibition was titled Billy Wilder's Marché aux Puces and the Variations on the Theme of Queen Nefertete segment was notably popular.

[56] Anthony Lane writes that Double Indemnity, The Seven Year Itch, Sunset Boulevard and The Apartment are "part of the lexicon of moviegoing" and that Some Like It Hot is a "national treasure.

"[57] Roger Ebert asked, "Of all the great directors of Hollywood's golden age, has anybody made more films that are as fresh and entertaining to this day as Billy Wilder's?...And who else can field three contenders among the greatest closing lines of all time?

"[59]When Belle Époque won the 1993 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Spanish filmmaker Fernando Trueba said in his acceptance speech: "I would like to believe in God in order to thank him.