Professor McBride's New Book Digs Deep into Famed Hollywood Director Billy Wilder

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE -- The creator of classics such as “The Lost Weekend” (1945), “Sunset Boulevard” (1950) and “Some Like It Hot” (1959) receives a remarkable biographical and critical treatment from a screenwriter, film critic, journalist, acclaimed biographer of John Ford and Frank Capra, and professor at San Francisco State University. Joseph McBride, steeped in Hollywood history, met and interviewed Billy Wilder (1906 – 2002) on several important occasions, and he provides the full background of the screenwriter-director’s early years in Germany as filmmaker and journalist. McBride has apparently seen every scrap of film Wilder ever worked on, traveling abroad to track down fugitive films and consulting archives.