I can not agree with the other reviewer who rated this book so highly. It's most certainly the most unreliable biography ever written about Wilder, gossipy and not even entertaining. O.K, no book about Billy Wilder is really boring, there are too many anecdotes, true of false that can amuse the reader. But Wilder himself claimed that Zolotows book was - no! I just cannot cite him. In any case, the (real) life of Billy Wilder is too interesting and his (real) quotations too funny to rely on this book. I recommand Ed Sikovs Wilder biography instead. That's the way they should be.

Amidst the flurry of new books by and about Billy Wilder, don't neglect this forgotten gem originally published in the mid-70s. Author Zolotow has an 'Old Hollywood' perspective on Wilder's astonishingly productive career and acerbic personality--not to be missed.

The screenplay was published by Studio Vista sometime in the seventies. The screenplays are formatted like a play but these scripts are not verbatim transcripts of the final movie but the actual shooting acripts (or so the introduction claims). Apart from some dialogue changes, the scripts are virtually identical to the final films. Witty and interesting to screenwriters everywhere but could have had some more input from the two writers. Its a pity that more of their work isn't more widely available.