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Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond’s comeback comedy performed decently enough at the box office, but its real accomplishment is vaulting Walter Matthau into mainline stardom. Matthau embodies the most venal ambulance chaser alive: Whiplash Willie Gingrich. His sad insurance scam scramble for unearned, undeserved loot is more of an exposé of sagging American values than anything particularly satirical. Jack Lemmon is the straight man this time around. He spends much of the movie in a medical collar, being victimized to make a fast buck. But Matthau hits the laughs out of the park — it’s an inspired performance that won him a Best Supporting Oscar. “You know Willie. He could find a loophole in the Ten Commandments.”

The Fortune Cookie

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1966 / B&w / 2:35 widescreen / 125 min. / Meet Whiplash Willie / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Ron Rich, Judi West, Cliff Osmond, Lurene Tuttle.

Cinematography:...

“You Cannot Fool Everyone All The Time”

By Raymond Benson

Abraham Lincoln once famously said, “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” That utterance is evoked in the course of Billy Wilder’s 1966 acerbic comedy, The Fortune Cookie and it certainly applies to the legal goings-on as instigated by “Whiplash Willie” Gingrich (Walter Matthau), an unscrupulous lawyer who sets out to commit fraud against an insurance company for big bucks.

While it’s arguable that the great Billy Wilder continued to make good films into the 1970s, The Fortune Cookie might be his last superb one. It’s no Some Like it Hot or The Apartment, but the picture manages to evoke many laughs and also exhibits what is perhaps the quintessential performance by Matthau.

Jack Lemmon is sports news cameraman Harry Hinkle.

Billy Wilder movies, Johnny Carson interviews tonight on TCM Billy Wilder is Turner Classic Movies’ Director of the Evening tonight, July 8, 2013. But before Wilder Evening begins, TCM will be presenting a series of brief interviews from The Tonight Show, back in the old Johnny Carson days — or rather, nights. The Carson interviewees this evening are Doris Day, Charlton Heston, Tony Curtis, Chevy Chase, and Steve Martin. (See also: Doris Day today.) (Photo: Billy Wilder.) As for Billy Wilder, TCM will be showing the following: Some Like It Hot (1959), The Fortune Cookie (1966), The Spirit of St. Louis (1958), and The Seven Year Itch (1955). Of course, all of those have been shown before and are widely available. Some Like It Hot vs. The Major and the Minor: Subversive and subversiver Some Like It Hot is perhaps Billy Wilder’s best-known film. This broad comedy featuring Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis...