Why Was Some Like It Hot Filmed in Black and White?

Some Like It Hot was not filmed in black-and-white because colour was unavailable in 1959. It was a deliberate bargain.

The familiar answer is that colour made Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon’s disguise make-up look unconvincing. That was part of the production logic, but it is not the whole story. Director Billy Wilder later said he simply preferred black-and-white and had used the make-up explanation to persuade Marilyn Monroe. Walter Mirisch, whose company produced the film, remembered two practical benefits: monochrome suited the 1929 setting and helped the disguises pass. [1] [2]

The most honest answer therefore has three parts: Wilder liked black-and-white, it made the period world cohere, and it stopped colour from exposing the machinery of the disguise.

That last effect matters most on screen. Monochrome does not make Josephine and Daphne perfectly realistic. It makes us stop inspecting them long enough for the performances—and the comedy—to take over.

Colour Was Available in 1959

By the end of the 1950s, Hollywood colour was neither new nor rare. Major musicals, westerns, epics and star vehicles were using it as spectacle. Some Like It Hot was photographed in black-and-white by Charles Lang Jr. because the filmmakers chose that form, not because a camera capable of colour could not be found.

The AFI records the production at Samuel Goldwyn Studios from August to November 1958 and identifies the finished film as black-and-white. It was released in March 1959. The choice was visible enough that the Academy Awards still separated several craft categories by format: the film won for black-and-white costume design and was nominated for black-and-white cinematography and art direction. [3]

So “it is an old film” is not an explanation. Plenty of old films are in colour, and plenty of later films return to monochrome. The useful question is what black-and-white allowed this particular comedy to do.

The Famous Make-up Story Is Not the Whole Story

The standard piece of trivia says that Curtis and Lemmon looked ghastly—or, in many retellings, green—in colour tests. Wilder therefore switched to black-and-white, and Monroe accepted the change after seeing the results.

There is good reason to connect the format with the disguises. Mirisch, whose company produced the film, wrote that black-and-white made the men’s make-up and clothes more acceptable, helping the other characters’ belief in Josephine and Daphne feel plausible. TCM gives a similar production account. [2] [5]

Lemmon also recalled how seriously the appearance was tested. He and Curtis entered the ladies’ room at the Goldwyn lot in costume and pretended to adjust their lipstick. When the women around them showed no sign of noticing anything unusual, they reported back to Wilder, who told them not to alter the look. [4]

But Wilder complicated the tidy story when Cameron Crowe asked him about the decision decades later. Wilder said Monroe had been disappointed that the film would not be in colour. He told her the heavier powder required for the disguises made black-and-white necessary—then admitted to Crowe that this explanation had been a bluff. Asked for the real reason, he said he liked black-and-white. [1]

Elsewhere in the same interview book, Wilder described much contemporary colour as too sweet and showy for his taste. He preferred the shadows that filmmakers had to invent in monochrome. Yet he also conceded that Some Like It Hot might have benefited from colour if the process had offered the tones he wanted. [1]

These accounts do not give the causes the same weight. They show that insiders remembered the decision differently, while the finished format served several functions at once: it reflected Wilder’s preference, suited the period world, helped the disguises and gave Monroe an explanation she could accept.

The Real Test Was Not “Do They Look Like Women?”

It was: can the film keep moving before the audience starts measuring the disguise?

Farce rarely survives forensic attention. Doors open at exactly the wrong moment. One lie requires another. A person fails to recognise someone the audience can plainly recognise. We accept these things when the film gives us something more pleasurable to follow than the flaw in the premise.

Colour supplies more surface information. It distinguishes the tone of powder from skin, separates fabrics, makes lipstick and shadow more specific, and turns a costume into a collection of materials. Those details are not bad in themselves. Here, however, they could make the viewer ask whether the disguise is technically convincing every time Josephine or Daphne enters a room.

Black-and-white compresses those differences into light, dark and texture. A face becomes an arrangement of eyes, brows, cheekbones and movement. A dress is first a silhouette. The audience still knows that Joe and Jerry are performing, but the image does not keep presenting fresh evidence against the performance.

The disguise only needs to be credible at the speed of the joke.

That is why the format works even though Curtis and Lemmon do not attempt the same kind of transformation. Josephine is controlled and guarded. Daphne increasingly seems to enjoy the social freedom and attention that the disguise creates. Monochrome gives both performances a shared visual surface while leaving room for their different rhythms.

Black-and-White Makes Performance More Important Than Surface

Once colour stops demanding attention, other signals become stronger.

Watch the posture. Josephine often looks as if every joint has received instructions. Daphne’s body becomes looser as the film continues. Listen to the voices, which do not merely imitate femininity but reveal how differently Joe and Jerry manage danger. Notice how quickly a look of panic has to become a smile when another person enters.

The comedy depends on that visible labour. We need to see the disguise almost failing, then watch the performer rescue it.

Monochrome is therefore not a curtain placed over a weak effect. It is a redistribution of attention. It asks us to read line, gesture, timing and expression before hue. This is one reason black-and-white can feel unexpectedly alive: removing colour does not remove visual information; it changes the hierarchy of that information.

Our broader guide, Why Watch Black-and-White Films Today?, explores how monochrome can concentrate attention across very different kinds of cinema.

1929 Gives the Film a World Built for Disguise

The period setting solved a writing problem before it solved a visual one.

AFI’s production history records I. A. L. Diamond’s explanation that he and Wilder initially considered a contemporary setting. Poverty alone did not seem a strong enough reason for the musicians to maintain the disguise, so the writers moved the story into the Jazz Age and made Joe and Jerry witnesses to a gangland killing. The threat turns performance into survival. [3]

The Library of Congress essay adds another useful detail: the fashionable bobbed hair and straighter silhouettes associated with the 1920s gave the filmmakers a period vocabulary in which the disguises could sit more easily. The setting also offered speakeasies, bootleggers, travelling bands and Florida millionaires—a world already organised around hidden identities, rule-breaking and performance. [7]

Black-and-white makes those elements feel as though they belong to one film. The opening borrows the hard shapes of a gangster picture. The train section becomes crowded musical farce. The hotel scenes open into romantic glamour. Colour could have distinguished those worlds more sharply. Monochrome lets them share one visual contract.

The result does not look exactly like 1929. It looks like 1959 remembering the films, photographs and legends of 1929. That slight distance is useful. The past becomes a stage on which behaviour can be less fixed than the respectable present pretends.

What Colour Would Have Changed

It is tempting to imagine only what colour would add: blue water, gold instruments, bright dresses, Monroe’s hair and skin under Florida light.

It would also change what we watch first.

The hotel could become a holiday spectacle before it becomes a maze of identities. The band members’ clothes could separate into individual fashion statements before they form a moving group. Curtis and Lemmon’s make-up could become a technical problem before their behaviour becomes a comic one.

That does not prove a colour version would fail. Wilder himself later wondered whether this was the film of his that ought to have been in colour. [1] It does show why the existing version works so cleanly. Black-and-white withholds just enough surface certainty to make room for play.

The film’s most radical joke is not that clothes can hide a stable identity. It is that performing another identity changes what the characters can notice, say and want. A format that softens the border between body and costume gives that idea more time to develop before realism interrupts.

So Why Was Some Like It Hot Filmed in Black and White?

Not because colour was unavailable, and not for one perfectly documented reason.

Wilder preferred black-and-white and distrusted the look of contemporary colour. Mirisch believed monochrome suited the 1920s setting and helped the disguises remain plausible. The make-up problem gave Wilder a practical argument for the choice, even if he later laughed about how he used that argument with Monroe.

The finished film turns all of those motives into one effect: black-and-white stops the audience from testing the disguise as an object and lets us experience it as a performance.

That is why the choice feels larger than production trivia. Monochrome protects the speed of the farce, joins gangster film to musical comedy, and shifts our attention from what a person appears to be towards what performing another life allows that person to become.

For a spoiler-light introduction and verified version notes, visit the Monocurator Film page for Some Like It Hot. To continue through the director’s work, use Where to Start with Billy Wilder. For a very different film in which a practical limitation also became the finished visual identity, read Why Was Night of the Living Dead Shot in Black and White?.

Frequently Asked Questions

Was colour film available when Some Like It Hot was made?

Yes. Colour was widely used by Hollywood in the 1950s. Some Like It Hot was deliberately photographed in black-and-white by cinematographer Charles Lang Jr.; AFI records its production in 1958 and release in March 1959.

Did the make-up really look green in colour?

The precise “green make-up” detail appears often in later retellings, but the strongest firsthand accounts we checked do not use that exact description. Mirisch says black-and-white made the disguises more acceptable; Wilder says he used the heavier make-up as an argument for monochrome. It is safer to say colour made the disguise harder to believe than to insist on one particular shade.

Was the 1929 setting also a reason for black-and-white?

Yes, according to Walter Mirisch, whose company produced the film. The period setting and monochrome supported one another. The writers also found that moving the story to the Jazz Age gave the disguises a stronger plot motive and a more accommodating world of fashion, gangsters and travelling bands.

Did Marilyn Monroe insist on colour?

Many accounts repeat a contractual requirement, but we have not relied on that claim without the relevant contract. Wilder’s own account is enough to establish that Monroe was disappointed by the decision and believed she looked better in colour; he persuaded her that monochrome was necessary for her co-stars’ make-up.

Should I watch a colourised version?

The original photography, lighting, costumes and make-up were prepared for black-and-white. A colourised version may satisfy curiosity, but it changes the visual hierarchy that helps the disguises and period world cohere. The black-and-white original is the form to watch first.

References

The production history below is source-backed. The account of monochrome as a redistribution of attention—and the distinction between inspecting a disguise and following a performance—is Monocurator’s interpretation of the finished film.

1. Cameron Crowe, Conversations with Wilder (Knopf, 1999), pp. 60–61 and 203, including Wilder's explanations of the black-and-white decision and his response to contemporary colour.
2. Walter Mirisch, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History (University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), p. 103.
3. ‘Some Like It Hot’, AFI Catalog of Feature Films, including physical format, production dates, credits, period-setting history and awards (accessed 1 September 2026).
4. Joan Dew, ‘Jack Lemmon? “He's Not Here”’, Los Angeles Times, 25 April 1989.
5. Rob Nixon, ‘Behind the Camera — Some Like It Hot’, Turner Classic Movies (accessed 1 September 2026).
6. Some Like It Hot (1959), Criterion Collection film record, including format and principal craft credits (accessed 1 September 2026).
7. David Eldridge, ‘Some Like It Hot’, National Film Registry essay, Library of Congress.