"Billy Wilder loved testing the business edge of the censor scissors," Kinn and Piazza wrote of the director of the 1959 film. "Drag certainly wasn't new... but what made the difference, and what keeps this one so remarkably fresh, is the degree of seriousness [Jack] Lemmon and [Tony] Curtis invest in their masquerade... what's so especially tender is the sisterly bonding between them and Monroe's character."
According to , Lemmon and Curtis often took off their heels and soaked their feet in between takes.
Curtis was reported to have said that "kissing Marilyn was like kissing Hitler," and he went back and forth in subsequent years on whether he actually did.
