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Seventy-five years after appearing in the classic 1950 film noir Sunset Boulevard as William Holden’s love interest, Nancy Olson remembers how much she and her costar loved to kiss and cuddle in their romantic scenes together, prompting their director to playfully turn their warm affection into an awkward on-set moment.
“We loved to embrace – we loved to hug each other, and we loved to kiss,” Olson, the film’s last living principal cast member at 97, recalls exclusively to PEOPLE during an interview to mark the 75th anniversary of the beloved film on Aug. 10, still chuckling at the memory decades later.
Olson was a 21-year-old college student at UCLA when she was tapped by director Billy Wilder to play Betty Schaefer, the kind-hearted studio assistant and aspiring writer who becomes romantically entangled with Holden’s washed-up screenwriter Joe Gillis.
But, even today, she’s quick to make clear that the cozy chemistry the two actors shared didn’t lead anywhere off set, primarily because Holden, 32 at the time, was married to actress Ardis Ankerson, professionally known as Brenda Marshall.
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“Now, this did not lead anywhere – don’t misunderstand!” Olson notes. “But there was a wonderful affection and regard for each other, and an understanding of what we were both going through at the time. So we loved to kiss!”
Filmmaker Wilder, she recalls, was well known for his mischievous streak and decided to push the costars’ intimate rapport to the limit during one scene.
“It was shot at night – I arrived at 6 p.m.; by 7 p.m., it’s dark, and we were on a balcony,” the actress explains. “Below us were tables and chairs set for dinner, and there were people having a party underneath our love scene, and among them was [the director’s wife] Audrey Wilder and Mrs. Holden – Ardis Holden. And this was a little…It gave me a sense of being on edge.”
“Anyway, we started to rehearse the scene and we got to the point of the embrace and Billy would say, ‘Okay, at that point, Bill, take Nancy into your arms, hug very closely, draw her in and do not stop kissing her until I say cut,’” Olson continues. “I thought, ‘Oh God.’ ”
“We start the scene, and we rehearsed it very well, but we never kissed – we got to that point and then that was that,” she recalls. “But now we’re playing a scene. The camera is rolling, and we get to the point where he asks me what happened, and I answer, ‘You did.’ And he takes me into his arms and he starts to gently kiss me, but pulls me into the most extraordinary embrace. And we kept this kiss going.”
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Their kiss lasted for a seeming eternity as they waited for Wilder to call for the scene to stop, and then even longer.
“Finally, there was a female voice below us who said, ‘Cut, Dammit! Cut!’ And it was Mrs. Holden,” Olson says.
Although William would eventually become notorious for his extramarital affairs, including reputed romances with Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly, his wife had nothing to worry about with Olson, who would go on to make three more films over two years with the actor as contract players at Paramount Pictures (Union Station, Force of Arms and Submarine Command). She says she became deeply fond of William, even as he struggled with chronic alcoholism and the increasing fallout from his infidelities.
“Bill’s life was falling apart,” she reflects. “He had done two incredible pictures, Golden Boy and Our Town, and then he was in the Army for four years, so when he came back it was like starting all over again, and he was given very minor roles. [His films were] about his wife, and he was ‘the husband’; it wasn’t about him. And he was starting to drink too much, and his marriage was falling apart.”
But she thought the turmoil he was experiencing allowed William to dig deeper into the darker corners of his life to better bring his spiraling Sunset Boulevard character to life.
“He had an understanding of the role of Joe Gillis, who was desperate, losing everything, and he ended selling his soul for survival, that character,” she says. “Bill understood it, and absolutely, I think it’s a brilliant performance. Anybody who watches the movie, watch Bill: Bill is amazing.”
In honor of the film’s milestone anniversary, a new 4K restoration of Sunset Boulevard was re-released in over 1,000 theaters nationwide by Fathom Entertainment, and is now available in a 4K UHD home video release, ensuring the film will be discovered by generations to come.
