We expect geniuses to be eccentric, and Billy Wilder, the director of
”Sunset Boulevard,” ”Some Like It Hot” and ”Irma La Douce,” doesn`t disappoint. One of his many fetishes concerns cleanliness. ”Please wash your hands,” is what he tells guests using the bathroom, according to Maurice Zolotow, author of ”Billy Wilder in Hollywood” (Limelight). ”After he had told me for the hundredth time to wash my hands,” Zolotow says, ”I assured him that I always did, and he said: `But I never see the towels crumpled! I never yet had a collaborator who crumples up the towels. If I could find a collaborator who crumpled up towels, I would not care if he couldn`t write screenplays.` ”
Eddie Murphy is one superstar who has the world on a string and knows it. The multimillionaire gloats over his good fortune in the February issue of Forum magazine. ”I`ve got everything I could ever want,” says Murphy. ”I`m a 26-year-old heterosexual who`s never had a venereal disease. I couldn`t have my life go any better.”
When it came to getting old, Marilyn Monroe was ambiguous. On her 30th birthday she said: ”Kinsey says a woman doesn`t really begin to live before she`s 30. That`s good news-and it`s also positive.” But, as recounted in
”Marilyn Monroe: A Never-Ending Dream” (St. Martin`s), she later changed her mind. ”I don`t want to get old,” she said. ”I want to stay like I am. I still can`t act, not really. Monty (Clift) had his looks, but when he lost them, he was still a great actor. I`m not. I won`t fool myself anymore. When my face goes, my body goes, I`ll be nothing . . . nothing . . . all over again.” Monroe, who committed suicide when she was 36, never lived to find out if her prediction was right.
