A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year 2021
Longlisted for the Kraszna-Krausz Book Award, Moving Image Category
Longlisted for the National Translation Award, American Literary Translators Association
A revelation, a trove of snappy pieces that give the reader tantalizing glimpses of the mature film satirist.
---Marc Weingarten, Washington PostThe brightest moments here let you watch a little more of the human comedy through Billy Wilder's eyes. Few saw it as clearly he did or had more fun writing it down.
---Jeremy McCarter, Wall Street JournalReaders who come to
Billy Wilder on Assignment to find the seeds of the films for which he is famous-nearly all of them, one assumes-will not be disappointed.
---Ryan Ruby, BookforumA delicious compilation.
---Tobias Grey, Financial Times The most successful story in this collection, 'Waiter, a Dancer, Please!,' about being a hoofer for hire at a big hotel, is waspish and (if you allow for the choppy sentences) jazz-era excitable,
New Yorker-ish, with a self-deprecating turn and a fairly urbane sense of the perfectly ridiculous.
---Andrew O'Hagan, New York Review of BooksLong before he became the celebrated filmmaker of 'Sunset Boulevard,' 'Some Like It Hot' and 'The Apartment,' a young Billy Wilder worked briefly as a dancer for hire in the ballroom of a fashionable Berlin hotel. As he described the endeavor . . . for a German newspaper in 1927, 'This is no easy way to earn your daily bread, nor is it the kind that sentimental, softhearted types can stomach. But others can live from it.' Wilder's observations on his experience-from one of his many delightfully acerbic pieces of journalism anthologized in
Billy Wilder on Assignment . . . get to the heart of our enduring obsessions with show business and the performing arts.
---Dave Itzkoff, New York TimesSharp and witty. . . . Full of glorious turns of phrase, entertaining narratives, and quirky characters. . . . . Thumbing through Wilder's essays from the 1920s will make you feel as if you are enjoying yourself at a German coffeehouse, catching up on popular culture, and planning your next weekend adventure in the Weimar Republic. Isenberg and Frisch have done a great service for film historians and fans of classic Hollywood.
---Chris Yogerst, Los Angeles Review of BooksAn irresistible collection of articles, profiles, and reviews from Wilder's salad-und-bratwurst days in Berlin, where he worked as a roving journalist, critic, and scene-maker between 1926 and 1930. . . . Isenberg is an expert guide to the Berlin-to-Hollywood axis, and Frisch is a veteran translator.
---Thomas Doherty, Tablet MagazineBilly Wilder on Assignment is, as my colleague, TIME Magazine film critic Stephanie Zacharek
kvelled to me in an email, 'the little book you didn't know you needed.'
---Jordan Hoffman, Times of IsraelA must-read for film buffs and history aficionados alike.
---Tobias Carroll, Inside HookThis new volume takes in the most significant staging posts of Wilder's early career.
---Gavin Plumley, Literary Review[Wilder] quickly moved on to Berlin and became a prolific writer of occasional pieces for papers such as
Der Querschnitt and the
Berliner Boersen Courier. Selections of these articles have been published before but are long out of print, and were never translated into English. Now, thankfully, Professor Isenberg of the University of Texas has put this frustrating situation to rights with a lively anthology, translated by Shelley Frisch into a brisk, punchy English which feels as though it must be an accurate reflection of the young Wilder's original tone.
---Jonathan Coe, SpectatorThe opportunity to read Wilder's journalism in English is welcome. . . . What's particularly impressive, even slightly eerie, is how many times this young film buff and Americanophile wrote about people he would later work with in Hollywood. * Bookforum *
A delightful and illuminating collection.
---Sam Wasson, Air MailThere is no question that
Billy Wilder on Assignment is the most historically important recent book exploring the early days of a major filmmaker. It compiles, for the first time, Wilder's writings as a young freelance reporter in 1920s Berlin and Vienna. The result is an incredible glimpse of Wilder's mind at a key age.
---Christopher Schobert, The Film StageBilly Wilder On Assignment . . . explores the roots of one of Hollywood's most accomplished and acclaimed directors in the fervid journalistic atmosphere of Central Europe between world wars. . . . Shelley Frisch-one of the nimblest and liveliest translators working today-renders Wilder's journalism into an English that leaps off the page with deadline urgency. . . . Isenberg's collection offers those interested in the Golden Age of Hollywood valuable new insight into one of its most significant personalities. It is also a vivid account of the vanished world that helped shape Billy Wilder. * Wilson Quarterly *
Let it be said that Billy Wilder on Assignment - Dispatches from Weimar Berlin and Interwar Vienna, is an altogether wonderful read. In fact it reads as if a fine, literary, malt-whiskey.
---David Marx, David Marx: Book ReviewsThe new anthology
Billy Wilder on Assignment proves Wilder's verbal and narrative gifts existed long before he set foot in Hollywood during the 1930s.
---Dan Lybarger, Northwest Arkansas Democrat GazetteReaders will have fun picking out elements, traits and incidents in these lively witty texts and attempting to match them with Wilder's later cinematic masterpieces.
---Alexander Adams, Alexander Adams ArtBilly Wilder on Assignment . . . provides a long-overdue translation of Billy Wilder's early writings in German. . . . The anthology will be of interest to both the academic and general public.
---Nora Gortcheva, EuropeNowVery nice.
---Tom Stoppard, Times Literary SupplementIn this first English-language compilation of Wilder's early journalism . . . we can see the mischievous humour and love of snappy dialogue characteristic of his later movies.
---Monica Porter, The Jewish ChronicleBilly Wilder on Assignment: Dispatches from Weimar Berlin and Interwar Vienna is a revealing collection of his lively reportage from those two cities. . . . [The book] create[s] a portrait of a man who is so much more complex than a mere cynic.
---Kevin Lally, Cineaste MagazineBilly Wilder on Assignment is a beautifully assembled collection of the early writings of a master storyteller whose body of work has entertained moviemakers and movie watchers for generations.
---Leonora Cravotta, American Spectator