Billy Wilder

 Billy Wilder (June 22, 1906 – March 27, 2002)

His career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. Wilder is one of only five people to have won Academy Awards as producer, director and screenwriter for the same film (The Apartment), and was the first person to accomplish this. Wilder became a screenwriter in the late 1920s while living in Berlin. After the rise of the Nazi Party, Wilder, who was Jewish, left for Paris, where he made his directorial debut. He moved to Hollywood in 1933, and in 1939 he had a hit when he co-wrote the screenplay for the screwball comedy Ninotchka. Wilder established his directorial reputation with Double Indemnity (1944), and continued with such great films as Sunset Boulevard (1950), Sabrina (1954), The Seven Year Itch (1955), Some like it Hot (1959), and The Apartment (1960), among others. He died of pneumonia at age 95, and buried at Westwood Memorial Park. Wilder died on the same day as Milton Berle and Dudley Moore.