A little less than two years ago on this site, we got to talking about an unsold pilot made in 1961. It was for a sitcom based on the movie, Some Like It Hot and it had Vic Damone playing the role played by Tony Curtis in the movie and Dick Patterson in role played by Jack Lemmon. That seems like a weird idea but then to some, so did the idea of turning The Odd Couple and M*A*S*H and a few others into TV shows.
What was bizarre about this transformation is that the pilot for this Some Like It Hot started with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon — unbilled — playing the same characters they played in the movie. Then in the first scene, they undergo plastic surgery and when the bandages are removed, turn into Vic Damone and Dick Patterson. That, it's explained, is how they will hide out from gangsters still trying to kill them. There is no explanation of how their voices and, I think, their heights change.
I wrote about this bizarre unsold pilot here and said I wished I could see it sometime. Well, I finally did and now you can, too. A nice copy is now on YouTube and I've embedded it below. It has a lot of good character actors in it including Peter Leeds, Jack Albertson, Mike Mazurki, Fritz Feld, Robert Strauss, Jerry Paris, Herb Ellis, George Liberace and, of all people, Rudy Vallee. Plus Tina Louise takes over the Marilyn Monroe role and Joan Shawlee plays the character portrayed in the movie by Joan Shawlee.
Someone spent a lot of money to make this and I'd love to know how they got Lemmon and Curtis to be in it and what Billy Wilder thought of the whole enterprise. I can see why it didn't sell and if you watch it, maybe you'll see too…