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Why do the main characters disguise themselves as women in Some Like It Hot?
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Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder in a promotional photograph for Sunset Boulevard (1950), which he directed.
In the 1959 film Some Like It Hot, the main characters—musicians Joe and Jerry—disguise themselves as women to escape from gangsters. After accidentally witnessing a gangland killing based on the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, the pair are marked for death and must go into hiding.12
To evade the mob, they join an all-woman band traveling to Florida, necessitating their masquerade as female band members.12