Sunset Boulevard: stage vs screen

Billy Wilder's 1950 film Sunset Boulevard, starring Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond and William Holden as Joe Gillis, is a film noir drama with no songs. Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, with a book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton, opened in London in 1993 and on Broadway in 1994, retelling the same story with much of its plot set to music. Here is what changes when the story is sung.

Stage

Broadway musical (1994)

Screen

Sunset Boulevard (1950), directed by Billy Wilder

1. The film has no songs; the musical sings its plot

Wilder's film is a black-and-white drama with an orchestral score by Franz Waxman and no musical numbers. Lloyd Webber's show sets much of its plot to music, and Frank Rich, reviewing it in 1993, described the score as part exposition-heavy recitative and part song. The story, setting, and main characters stay the same, but music now does work the film gave to dialogue and voice-over.

2. Norma finally sings

The film's Norma never sings; Gloria Swanson's performance lives in gestures, entrances, and speeches. Lloyd Webber gives the character the show's biggest ballads, including "With One Look," "Surrender," "The Perfect Year" with Joe, and "As If We Never Said Goodbye." Patti LuPone created the role in London, and Glenn Close won a Tony Award for it on Broadway.

3. Max has songs of his own

Erich von Stroheim's Max von Mayerling, Norma's butler, is a quiet, watchful presence in the film. In the musical he sings "The Greatest Star of All" in Act I and a reprise of "New Ways to Dream" in Act II. Both versions reveal that he was Norma's first husband and that he writes the fan letters that keep her illusions alive, and the film adds that he once directed her and made her a star.

4. Joe and Betty's romance becomes duets

In the film, Betty Schaefer is a Paramount script reader who works on a screenplay with Joe and falls for him. The musical turns that romance into songs, including the duet "Girl Meets Boy," which returns in Act II, and the Act II love duet "Too Much in Love to Care." On stage she is engaged to Joe's friend Artie Green, and in both versions Joe ends the affair so that she will go back to Artie.

5. Joe's voice-over becomes his songs

The film opens with Joe's body floating in Norma's pool, and he narrates how he got there. The musical keeps the dead-narrator frame, opening at the mansion at 5 a.m. after a homicide is reported, with Joe narrating the prologue. He then gets numbers of his own, including the Act II title song "Sunset Boulevard," where the film leaned on his wry voice-over.

6. DeMille plays himself in the film

Wilder cast Cecil B. DeMille as himself on the Paramount lot, alongside other real Hollywood figures such as Hedda Hopper and Buster Keaton. The musical casts an actor as DeMille instead, with Alan Oppenheimer in the role on Broadway. On stage DeMille is warm but noncommittal about Norma's Salome script and sings a reprise of "Surrender," and Norma and Joe share a duet titled "Salome."

7. The ending: the staircase and the close-up

Both versions end with Norma shooting Joe as he leaves, then descending the grand staircase, convinced that the police and reporters are a film crew. In the 1950 film they are newsreel cameras, and she says she is ready for her close-up before walking toward the lens. The musical stages the moment in its closing number, "The Final Scene," for Joe, Betty, Norma, and Max.

8. Black comedy versus opera

The film is a noir with a streak of black comedy, from its dead narrator to Norma's midnight funeral for her pet chimpanzee. Lloyd Webber's score is lush and romantic, turning Norma's longing into big ballads. Decades earlier, when Stephen Sondheim asked Wilder about a musical version in the early 1960s, Wilder told him it "has to be an opera," since the story is about a dethroned queen, and Sondheim let it go.

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