RE: "Billy Wilder.
Now there was a comic genius!"
And how. I just rented the Fortune Cookie for the first time last week, and the comedic writing in that one was just as sharp as the day it was released, and the plot (about a shyster lawyer tricking his client into feigning non-existent injuries for a big money suit) seems quite prescient today, when tort reform remains an elusive goal.
And Walter Mattheau's facial expressions could ring laughs out of a dead man.
He was the definitive "Oscar Madison."
My favorite role, though, was his turn in the apocalyptic film, Fail-Safe.