Even casual classic movie buffs tend to have some familiarity with the plot of Billy Wilder’s 1959 romp Some Like It Hot. Often considered one of the finest comedies in Hollywood history, the film stars Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon as 1920s Chicago-based musicians who inadvertently witness a mob hit reminiscent of 1927’s real-life St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
With the gangsters looking for them, the boys escape by donning dresses and wigs to hide out as members of an all-girl jazz band heading south to play at a Florida beach resort. Unfortunately for the in-drag duo, the resort is also the location for the 10th Annual “Friends of Italian Opera” Convention…which is really a gathering of top gang lords. Among the attendees is their pursuer, the nattily-dressed “Spats” Columbo, played by George Raft.
There’s one scene midway through the film, though, with a sight gag that sails over the head of many a casual fan. As Spats and his Neanderthalic entourage are checking into the “convention,” he’s greeted by a young hoodlum who’s flipping a coin. After registering and–eventually–passing a weapons check, Spats grabs the coin in midair, stuffs it in the breast pocket of the hood’s jacket, and asks “Where did you pick up that cheap trick?” The answer, more than likely, was a landmark ’30s gangster film which co-starred none other than…George Raft.
Half a century before Al Pacino played Tony Montana in Brian De Palma’s Scarface, 1932 audiences were shocked at the on-screen violence of Paul Muni’s Tony Carmonte that punctuated Howard Hawks’ original Scarface. Both films were based on a crime novel of the same name, which was itself inspired by the career of bootlegger Al Capone. In the ’32 version, Italian immigrant-turned-trigger man Antonio Carmonte climbs the Chicago mob ladder with the help of his pal and fellow gunman Guino “Little Boy” Rinaldo (Raft).
Appearing in just his tenth picture, Raft came up with a novel method of hiding his inexperience in front of the camera. “I wasn’t sure I was ever going to get anywhere in this racket,” he once recalled. “When we made Scarface I happened to snap my fingers in a way I have when I’m nervous. The director saw me and put a buffalo nickel between my fingers and told me to flip that! I did! It was easy. I’ve always been flipping something. When they saw the stunt in the projection room they wrote my part bigger and gave me more to do. I was made in Hollywood on the flip of a coin!”
The seemingly nonchalant habit made the quiet Guino seem all the more sinister, helped catapult Raft to stardom, and became a long-standing gangster cinema trope, one that the actor–aided by Wilder and co-scripter I. A. L. Diamond–was happy to send up in Some Like It Hot.
Fun Fact: Johnny Paradise, the younger hood that Columbo has the coin encounter with, was played by Edward G. Robinson, Jr., son of the actor who was Raft’s chief rival for gangster roles at Warner Bros. in the early ’30s. Wilder once said that he had hoped to cast Robinson père himself, but because of a long-standing feud between the two screen tough guys he refused. Robinson fils had the last laugh, though, as he (SPOILER ALERT!) gets to pop out of a birthday cake and mow down “Spats” and his boys with a tommy gun.