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Lubitsch was the director the Hollywood Europeans most admired, and all tried to emulate
what was called the "Lubitsch touch, " his gracefully sophisticated way of making a point
visually with a minimum of dialogue. ("How Would Lubitsch Do It?" was a sign that [Cameron]
Crowe found still hanging above [Billy] Wilder's office door when he began to interview him.)
"Meeting cute" was the most enduring cliche of thirties comedies, and the scene in
"Bluebeard's Eighth Wife" where Gary Cooper meets Claudette Colbert is famously so: at a
pajama counter, Cooper wants the top and Colbert the bottom, so they divide a pair.
[Charles] Brackett and Wilder's next script for Lubitsch,
"Ninotchka" (in which they shared the credit with Walter Reisch}, garnered them an Oscar nomination. Starring Garbo and
Melvyn Douglas, it is one of the great American movies, a comedy about Communism, and it
provided Wilder with a classic anecdote: after a sneak screening in Long Beach, Lubitsch
showed his writers a preview card that said, "Funniest picture I ever saw. So funny that I peed
in my girlfriend's hand."
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"Tell me about yourself, Mr. Zinneman, " a youthful studio executive asked Fred Zinneman
when the director came to pitch a movie, and Zinneman, who worked with Wilder in Berlin in
1930 and had won Best Director Oscars for "From Here to Eternity" and " A Man for All
Seasons," replied, with elaborate Viennese courtesy, "You first."
-- John Gregory Dunne, reviewing Cameron Crowe's Conversations with Wilder
in the New Yorker
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