Scrapped: The Original Opening Sequence of “Sunset Boulevard” was Even Stranger than the Final Cut, and Audiences had a Peculiar Reaction to It

Erich von Stroheim, William Holden, Gloria Swanson,
"Sunset Boulevard" (1950).

Test Audiences Were Stunned, Amused and Confused

Joe Gillis (Holden), a life cut short.

By Paul Parcellin 

At the start of "Sunset Boulevard," hapless screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) floats face-down in a swimming pool with several bullet holes punched into his torso. He’d been the long-term houseguest of deranged former silent screen siren Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) until, in a fit of grief and jealous rage, she used him for target practice.

She’d hired Gillis to polish a hopelessly disorganized screenplay written by and for the delusional Norma as a vehicle to reignite her long-dormant career. Of course, things didn’t work out that way. By the film’s end, we learn that Norma’s return to the klieg lights is on permanent hold and she’s about to be hauled off to a sanitarium. Meanwhile, cops are fishing Gillis out of the pool with pruning hooks. So much for Hollywood endings.

For those who’ve never seen the film, that’s hardly giving too much away. Almost everyone has at least heard of the gruesome setup that puts the story in motion. As the film opens, we see the police and a caravan of news reporters speeding down Los Angeles’s Sunset Boulevard toward the scene of the crime as daybreak washes over the City of Angels. Angelenos will immediately sense that this story is fictional – Sunset is all but traffic-free. Even in the early morning hours in 1950, that’s pure poppycock.

Norma Desmond (Swanson)
in a hysterical rage.

But the opening sequence that appears in the final cut wasn’t the first one that director Billy Wilder had in mind. Preview audiences viewed a quite different and even more bizarre opening, and their reaction was not the one Wilder anticipated. 

The sequence in question was quickly re-edited into the version we’re all familiar with. All that remains of the original are a few short clips without sound and some still photos. Consequently, few have ever seen the completed original opening and it appears that no one is sure if copies of the entire sequence still exist.

However, surviving script pages outline the remarkably strange introduction that ended up in the dust bin. It opens with shots of the coroner’s wagon speeding along the streets, delivering the earthly remains of Joe Gillis to the city morgue. 

The body is taken into the sterile facility, toe-tagged, and wheeled into a room temporarily housing other recently deceased unfortunates. But ethereal music fills the air and a strange glow emanates from beneath a bed sheet covering the cold, still dripping wet Gillis. Suddenly, he reanimates, as do his new roommates, who begin to chit-chat among themselves. 

Each has a tale of woe about the circumstances leading up to their demise – a truck crash here, an accidental drowning there. Gillis is a bit of a curiosity to the others due to his Hollywood connections and because he was murdered. So, he begins telling his story, and thus, narrating the rest of the movie from beyond the grave, or in this case, the slab.

Preview audiences in Evanston, Illinois, and Poughkeepsie and Great Neck, N.Y., laughed at the morgue sequence and were unsure whether the film was a comedy or drama.

Enroute to the city morgue.

After the opening credits, when the story moved down Sunset Boulevard and into the L.A. County Morgue, spectators were stunned. Years later Wilder recalled, “When the morgue label was tied on Mr. Holden’s toe, they started to scream with laughter. I walked out of the preview, very depressed.”

The revised cut shows the arrival of police and reporters. Next, we’re assaulted by a complex and eerie view of the corpse that appears to be filmed from the bottom of the pool. From our vantage point, we look up at Gillis and see his lifeless face. The cops are poolside, looking down at the dead man and they seem to be looking down at us, too, as we gaze upward from the depths of Gillis’s watery grave.

Getting that one shot took a good deal of work and planning. First, since there was no swimming pool at the location, Paramount had to dig one. After much experimentation, art director John Meehan set up the shot. At the bottom of a portable process tank, he placed an eight-by-six-foot dance rehearsal mirror.

 After sinking the tank to the bottom of the pool, he placed a muslin canopy behind the police and news photographers, which, shot in black and white, would mimic the dawn sky. With those elements in place, cinematographer John F. Seitz could light the scene effectively in a short time. The camera was set up alongside the pool and Seitz pointed it down at the mirror on the bottom of the tank and filmed Holden’s bobbing reflection. 

According to Meehan, the shot “turned out to be a simple, inexpensive way to get through-water or underwater shots” by removing the need to use expensive underwater equipment. Meehan noted that the water had to be well filtered for clarity and kept at a low temperature of about 40 degrees because at higher temperatures the natural gases that build up in water would cut down on light transmission.

It’s unclear, however, how long Holden, face down in the frigid water, had to keep his eyes open and how he managed to stave off hypothermia.

A grim end for Gillis.

Despite the efforts to smooth over the original segment’s jagged edges and tone down its comedic content, the revised opening still caused a stir. In Hollywood, Paramount arranged a private screening for the various studio heads and specially invited guests. 

While many were appreciative of the film, MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer was incensed by the cheeky sendup of Tinsel Town. He allegedly shouted at Wilder, “You bastard! You have disgraced the industry that made and fed you.” The outraged movie mogul tried to buy the film so that he could bury it. Fortunately, he failed to do so.

Critical response was positive and box office receipts were good, making “Sunset Boulevard” an undisputed hit. But Gillis’s snappy, matter-of-fact voice-over narration, a sardonic mix of blunt fact, barely restrained venom, and self-deprecation didn’t sit well with all reviewers. 

Thomas M. Pryor wrote for The New York Times that the plot device of using the dead Joe Gillis as narrator was “completely unworthy of Brackett and Wilder, but happily it does not interfere with the success of ‘Sunset Boulevard’.” Taking a more hostile tone, The New Yorker described the film as “a pretentious slice of Roquefort,” containing only “the germ of a good idea.”

According to Sam Staggs in his book Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard, no audience has seen the morgue sequence since 1949, although Wilder did save the footage.

When Sherry Lansing, head of Paramount, approached Wilder about including the deleted sequence as an addendum to the DVD version of “Sunset Boulevard,” he refused. Although Wilder sometimes claimed to hold the missing sequence, he told director Cameron Crowe, “I don’t know who has it now.”

This article was originally published in the Dec. 2023 issue of The Dark Pages. Check out The Dark Pages newsletter at: www.allthatnoir.com/newsletter/

MAP CAN HELP YOU FOLLOW IN JAKE'S FOOTSTEPS

Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway in 'Chinatown.'

There's something about iconic films that make fans get dizzy. When a movie so inspires a legion of followers to dress up like the film's characters, and perhaps talk like them, when kindred spirits communicate at parties by exchanging sharp, witty lines of dialogue that they know by heart ... well, then you've got yourself a cultural phenomenon there, buddy.

If you're a "Chinatown" fanatic, you'll want to trace the movements of one Jake Gittes, the private eye who unravels the complex yarn of scandal, murder and deception that unfolds in Roman Polanski's 1974 classic film.

The folks at Curbed L.A. can help you do that, with their online Ultimate Chinatown Filming Location Map of Los Angeles. Some of the filming locations aren't exactly in the same location that they're supposed to be in the film. Immaterial.

What's important is that you can walk in the footsteps of "Chinatown" stars Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and John Huston. You'll see such locations as:

Los Angeles City Hall, the scene of a Water Department meeting, where an angry sheepherder crashes the party with his charges.
The Oak Pass reservoir -- actually the Stone Canyon Reservoir, where Hollis Mulwray takes the big sleep.
The Brown Derby, where Nicholson and Dunaway meet to talk turkey.

And the list goes on. So, pack a lunch and gas up the car. It's "Chinatown" — remember it!

A Taste of Death on Hollywood Boulevard

A visit to the Museum of Death in Hollywood doesn't sound like a particularly cheerful take-in ... and believe me, it isn't.
But if serial killers, mass suicides, autopsy photos and vintage mortician devices are your thing, you will enjoy a thoroughly absorbing hour or so at this humble 6031 Hollywood Blvd. showroom of the macabre.

Photos, videos, newspaper clippings and other assorted memorabilia such as human and animal skulls, caskets, and at least one mummified severed human head, are also there for the viewing.

I toured the MOD today with English music journalist Nina Antonia, who is visiting from London. After studying the exhibits, one must agree the museum offers a unique welcome to the City of Angels.

A chilling display of
John Wayne Gacy's art.

It's hardly great art, but the drawings, paintings and essays by famed mass murderers, including John Wayne Gacy and Lawrence Bittaker are among the first items you'll encounter in the museum, after passing though a room of vintage funerary accoutrements. Gacy's self portrait in clown makeup and costume -- he was a children's entertainer -- is one of the more notorious pieces.

In case you're wondering, Museum of Death owners Cathee Shultz and J.D. Healy came about the original artwork by corresponding with imprisoned serial killers, and sending them art supplies, stamps and $10 money orders.

There are also records and photos documenting the crimes of serial killers Richard Ramirez, Henry Lee Lucas and others.
Those who decide to visit should be strongly cautioned, however. There is a good deal of extremely rough stuff there --  at times it was a struggle to keep the morning's huevos rancheros down.

An instructional video on embalming showing all the gory details plays continuously in one room. Color, posed snapshots of a couple dismembering a man whom they murdered -- what happens at Fotomat doesn't always stay at Fotomat -- are also on display.

An entire room is devoted to Charles Manson, and among the news clippings, coroner's reports and police bulletins are autopsy photos of some Manson Family victims.
The 1997 Heaven's Gate cult mass suicide, the O.J. case, the JFK assassination and the Black Dahlia killing all figure prominently in the museum's exhibits.

If you're expecting a highly polished presentation of the materials contained in the MOD you will be disappointed. The pristine, exhaustively curated  L.A. County Museum, it's not.
Newspaper pages with barking headlines that seem to have been ripped from a daily edition are posted on walls with black office clips holding them up. Most exhibits are chock-full of memorabilia. In short, the galleries seem like an approximation of what a serial killer's bedroom might look like -- odd talismans of the killer's obsessions plastered on the walls and stuffed into every available surface. And here, that makes sense.

Tickets are $15 apiece and parking is free. Don't forget to visit the gift shop -- there really is one.

Tarantino's Twists and Turns Add Up Perfectly

Vincent, left, and Jules settle a score.

Some may quibble with “Pulp Fiction”’s herky jerky storyline. It dodges back and forth from the past to the present without warning. The trouble is, at first it’s challenging to figure out exactly what is happening in the present and what took place in the past.
You have to watch it more than one time before the sequence of events starts to make sense – and it does. There is really no “present” in the film. Each sequence, no matter where it fits into the story, past, present or future, is the only present you have to pay attention to.
The Oscar-winning “Pulp Fiction” screenplay is so skillfully written that you barely notice its complex time shifts. You just surf the narrative wave from beginning to end, and come in for a soft landing at the end of a fairly wild ride – is it just a coincidence that the opening music is Dick Dale’s surf guitar blast, “Miserlou”?

Knocked Off-Balance
Director and screenwriter Quentin Tarantino’s non-linear storytelling – he co-wrote the script with Roger Avary – is hardly the artifice some make it out to be. In fact, the darting and weaving storyline serves a purpose, other than keeping the audience slightly off-balance, and the film would not be nearly as effective without it.

Honey Bunny, left, and Pumpkin.

The beginning and ending scenes are part of the same sequence. On an impulse, Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer) hold up a diner, but their plan goes awry when they unexpectedly meet up with Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta), two mobbed-up hitmen.

Coffee and Handguns
The beginning sequence shows Honey Bunny and Pumpkin, over coffee and breakfast, hatching a plan to rob the diner. They kiss, brandish weapons, then go to work scaring everyone in the joint. Their plan is to clean out the cash register and grab everyone’s wallet without incident.
The scene cuts away to the opening credits, after which we begin meeting the motley cast of characters who inhabit L.A.’s underbelly.
The story plays out, and we're back at the same diner where we started, but Jules and Vincent, as it turns out, are catching some breakfast there, too. The four characters collide, of course, and the result is as anxiety-provoking and hilarious as the rest of the movie.

Ends at the Beginning
When you piece it together, though, the entire diner sequence actually takes place in about the middle of the story. By the time we reach the last scene we don't know how the diner stand-off between robbers and mobsters will end. But we do know what is going to happen after the scene is over, and we have seen everything that led up to it. But why put this out of sequence scene where it is in the film?

Like Kung-Fu Cain.

The answer, I think, is that it firmly establishes both the movie's theme, which is redemption, and the hero of the story, Jules. By the time we reach that fateful scene we learn that Jules has decided to leave his life of crime behind and "walk the earth like Kung-Fu Cain."

The Wrong Choice
Vincent, on the other hand, is going to keep being a mobster, and, because we've already seen the future, we know that he will meet a dark fate due to that unwise decision.
The actual ending, sequentially, is the death of Vincent and the triumph of Butch (Bruce Willis), the corrupt prizefighter who double-crossed the mob. But the film ends with Jules and Vincent, who are about to part ways as crime partners, exiting the diner into the blinding L.A. sun. It’s a new day, and Jules has found redemption. It’s the perfect place for the film to end.

A DIFFERENT WHITEY FROM BOSTON -- Warner Bros., the studio with a storied history of gangster film production, has tapped James Grey ("We Own the Night," "The Yards" and "Little Odessa") to write and direct "White Devil," inspired by the true story of Dorchester (Daw-chest-ah to the locals) native John Willis, who was adopted by a Chinese family and allegedly rose to the top of the Asian mob in Boston. His nickname? You guessed it: White Devil.

'The Crimson Kimono': Big Crime in Little Tokyo

Tawdry newspaper headlines bark out plot twists
in 'The Crimson Kimono' (1959).

Director, producer and writer Samuel Fuller photographs the streets of downtown L.A. stunningly in "The Crimson Kimono," a film that's part mystery, part love triangle and part travelogue. We get to see the downtown exteriors, particularly Little Tokyo as it looked in 1959, with a gleaming City Hall in the background. The City Hall tower is a crucial visual marker in a metropolis whose skyline has few recognizable buildings. It instantly orients the observer, and in "The Crimson Kimono" it serves as a looming symbol of justice watching over the city's mean streets.

Sugar Torch (Gloria Pall).

He started his career as a teenaged crime reporter for New York tabloid newspapers, and it shows in his films. Fuller had a gift for exploiting the tawdry and the sensational. "Crimson Kimono"'s plot involves the search to find out who murdered stripper Sugar Torch, and the characters include the denizens of the urban demimonde plus a number of eccentrics thrown in for good measure — the story takes place in L.A., a city routinely portrayed in crime fiction and movies as kooks central. As the manhunt for the killer proceeds, the two detectives, who happen to be buddies and roommates as well, fall in love with the same woman, and the resulting turmoil is the backdrop to the central murder mystery.

Ziggy plays a small role in the story, but is worth mentioning because much of the rest of the cast, especially Corbett and his buddy, Det. Joe Kojaku (James Shigeta) don't have the same air of authenticity about them as does street canary Ziggy. They come across as much too square to be uttering the words that come out of their mouths. Kojaku observes, "Charlie figured bird-doggin' wouldn't appeal to you," and Bancroft admits, "You know, I knocked around an awful lot," and, "Somethin's eatin' him the way he clammed up." 

Wandering through Little Tokyo.

These two ivy league-looking dudes are almost painful to watch when they spout these howlers. Granted, the kind of stylized Runyonesque dialogue Fuller was going for probably never came out of anyone's mouth at anytime in real life. A grittier cast may have turned up the believability quotient a few notches, but, no matter, it's still a bracingly exciting film.

Fuller knew how to open a movie with a healthy dose of hoopla, and his aerial view of L.A. at night and the roaring Gene Krupa-like orchestration behind the soaring camera work perfectly sets the scene. As we view the city from a bat's-eye perspective, the title card tells us it's LOS ANGELES, in case there was doubt.

The greatness behind "The Crimson Kimono" is its ability to turn L.A. into a character in the story, not just a location, and at that Fuller excels. And if you're going to pick a city to play the backdrop for a crime story you could do a lot worse than L.A.