Walking a Mile in Someone Else's Heels

 

From the beginning it is immediately apparent that Joe and Jerry (especially Joe) are very interested in meeting and two-timing women; their main interest is sex, but they do not consider the particular perspective of the fairer sex. When the two musicians have to don women's clothes to escape the wrath of Spats Columbo, they realise the subtle inconveniences of being a woman. Rather unexpectedly, they immediately take to their roles, realising just how unwanted so much male attention is to women. In this way, the gender-bending serves as not only a sight gag, but also a thematically significant element of the plot; in adopting the lifestyle of two vulnerable and single women traveling, Joe and Jerry learn more about the difference between the sexes, and the particular nuisances faced by women. Thus by putting on dresses, the two come to a better understanding of what it means to be a woman in a man’s world.

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The Quest for Identity

 

Not only does cross-dressing give Joe and Jerry a better understanding of women, but it also gives them a fuller understanding of their own identities. In listening to Sugar's perspective on playboy saxophonists from the safety of his disguise as "Josephine," Joe begins to see that his two-timing ways are damaging. By living as "Josephine," he learns to be a more thoughtful and romantically sensitive man. Jerry also learns an important, if more confusing, lesson about himself. While initially, he had thrown himself into his female persona for the sole purpose of reaching a previously-forbidden intimacy with the women in the band, he eventually grows to enjoy living as a lady, and learns something about the confusing and complicated expression of his own gender.

That he so happily embodies Daphne, even when it is clear that he has become the sexual object of another man’s desire, is proof that he is in a process of learning things about his own identity that he would likely have never considered had he not cross-dressed in the first place. While his revelation of identity is somewhat confusing and inconclusive, Jerry finds a new kind of joy in accessing the "Daphne" inside him.

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Crime

 

The opening moments of the film depict criminal activity. In the back of a hearse, Spats Columbo's men carry a coffin filled with banned alcoholic bottles. They are pursued closely by the police, and eventually the speakeasy that Spats runs gets raided by the police and its patrons are arrested.

Later, when Jerry and Joe go to pick up Nellie's car in the garage, they happen to witness a huge massacre that Spats orchestrates to get revenge on police informer Toothpick Charlie. Fleeing the scene, Joe and Jerry must escape from the criminal underworld by dressing up as women. Crime and the mafia are what set the story in motion. While intense violence and dark situations abound, crime is also treated with a light and sometimes humorous touch. The gangsters are portrayed as dim-witted thugs, and when Little Bonaparte makes a speech at the "convention," he talks about organised crime as though it were a regular corporation. Billy Wilder wants his mobster villains to be scary and intimidating, but he also wants them to be buffoons, characters the viewer can laugh at.

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Wealth and Class

 

Joe and Jerry's first issue is that they are broke. They have no money, they are behind on their rent, and they disagree about how to spend their first pay-check from working as musicians at the speakeasy. This establishes that the question of money, how to earn it or where to find it, is at the centre of the narrative. When Joe and Jerry then join the all-female band, it becomes apparent that Sweet Sue's group is not just about making music and gigging. Indeed it is a kind of matchmaking operation: the band travels to Florida, a hotbed for bachelor millionaires, in order to give its members opportunities to marry well and find security. Sugar, in particular, hopes to find a gentle bespectacled millionaire to take care of her, instead of the usual lowlife saxophone players who leave her out to dry. To her, money is also synonymous with class and decency. In order to win her over, Joe poses as a wealthy man, affecting a phony accent and using Osgood's yacht as a setting for his wooing of Sugar. On the boat, both he and Sugar pretend to be wealthier than they actually are, and they stumble through references to their high pedigree, often to comic ends.

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Marriage

 

The girls in Sweet Sue's band are not only interested in wealth, but also in a broader security, through the institution of marriage. They don't just want to get the millionaires' money, they want to marry them too. Indeed, Jerry gets so wrapped up in the drive towards marriage, that he becomes convinced that he ought to marry Osgood, even though he is a man, and that is technically not legal. The prospect of marriage is so appealing that Jerry forgets his sex in favour of the dream of getting hitched. In this context, Jerry's interest in marriage is explicitly linked to money and wealth, and he pleads with a skeptical Joe, "Joe this may be my last chance to marry a millionaire." The dream of marrying a millionaire is such an enticing one that Jerry gets swept up in it. The dream stays alive up through the very end of the movie. Even when he thinks the revelation of his gender will reroute Osgood's desire for marriage, Osgood seems relatively unfazed, and to the confession of Jerry's manhood simply says, "Nobody's perfect."

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Pretension and Performance

 

The most explicit instance of performance in the film is Joe and Jerry's adoption of female clothing in order to fit in with the all-girl band going to Florida, but a number of other performances take place throughout. Notably, Joe adopts two characters; in addition to his role as "Josephine" he also performs as the heir to the Shell Oil fortune, "Junior." By pretending he is "Junior," he is able to get closer to Sugar, who has already confided in "Josephine" that she wants to meet a sweet, bespectacled millionaire. Joe adopts the persona of Sugar's ideal man, which allows him to perform in such a way that earns her trust. Sugar also performs a role in hopes of impressing and winning the love of "Junior." She pretends that she is a high society Seven Sisters college graduate and former debutante. She is actually a simple girl from Ohio, but she feels the need to pretend in order to impress Joe. The irony is, of course, that neither is actually from the high society lifestyle that they each profess to know so well, and they struggle together to piece together two less-than-convincing performances.

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Heartbreak

 

Sugar is often heartbroken throughout the movie. When we first meet her, she is a lush; she drinks a lot because she feels used by men and she is trying to find a better life, "the sweet end of the lollipop." When she meets "Junior" she becomes optimistic about her love life, thinking that she might finally find the security she always wanted. However, when Joe and Jerry encounter Spats and realise they have to split town, "Junior" must say his goodbyes to Sugar, which leaves her heartbroken again. She starts drinking again and sings the mournful "I'm Through With Love" with Sweet Sue's band. However, when "Josephine" comes and kisses her mid-song, she falls in love again, and follows "Josephine" to Osgood's escape motorboat without even quite knowing what's really going on. Sugar may be easily heartbroken, but she is also easily swayed by an admirer.

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The "Fuzzy End of the Lollipop" (Symbol)

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The "lollipop" is a recurring metaphor invoked by Sugar Kane to describe how life has treated her poorly. She tells "Josephine" that she always gets "the fuzzy end of the lollipop," which means that she always has bad luck in her life, whether it's falling for the wrong man, or always being the one to get in trouble in Sweet Sue's band. The "fuzzy end of the lollipop" contrasts with the "sweet end of the lollipop," which represents good luck and the sweetness that life has to offer. Sugar's name is also an allusion to the sweet things in life, and she has the personality to match.

At the end, Joe tries to discourage Sugar from coming with him, because he is not actually the millionaire that he's pretended to be, and he tells her, "Go back to where the millionaires are, the sweet end of the lollipop, not the cole slaw in the face, the old socks and the squeezed-out tube of toothpaste." By now, however, she doesn't mind that he's not a millionaire, and she wants to stay with him. While the "sweet end of the lollipop" is initially associated with marrying a wealthy man, by the end, Sugar realises that marrying for love is sweeter than anything.

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The Elevator Floor Indicator Arrow (Symbol)

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When Osgood first meets "Daphne," she tries to get away from him by getting on an elevator, but he follows her on. The doors close and we do not see what happens, but we do see the arrow on the outside of the elevator that indicates which floor it has reached. The arrow goes up to the second floor, before immediately coming back down. "Daphne" emerges from the elevator back on the first floor, appalled with Osgood's behaviour on the elevator—he has allegedly pinched her. Instead of showing the sexually charged moment, director Billy Wilder turns the elevator floor indicator into a kind of sexually-charged symbol, representing Osgood's arousal and then his subsequent deflation when "Daphne" rebukes his advancements. The actions are unseen, but the symbolic significance of the arrow communicates a lot to the audience.

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The Yacht (Symbol)

 

The yacht that is owned by Osgood, but used by Joe to seduce Sugar under the pretence of being the heir to an oil dynasty, comes to symbolise the "sweet end of the lollipop" that Sugar thinks she has finally found. The yacht is a symbol of extreme wealth, and serves to communicate to Sugar that "Junior" is filthy rich. It represents the fact that "Junior" has quite a lot of money and knows how to live in style and luxury. Sugar is overwhelmed by the boat and how beautiful it is, and is enchanted to imagine herself aboard it with the object of her affection. In this way, the yacht symbolises both the extreme wealth that Sugar so desires, but also Joe's deception, his pretensions towards being a wealthier man than he actually is.

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Cross-dressing (Motif)

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It is almost so constant throughout the film that it doesn't even seem like a motif, but cross-dressing is a major and rather obvious motif in the film. Joe and Jerry go through many transformations and struggle to keep their many characters straight while visiting Florida, but they come back time and time again to cross-dressing. Cross-dressing is a way for them to escape the vengeful wrath of the mob, but it is also a way to get closer to a group of attractive women, to explore different sides of their identities, and to loosen up. Jerry enjoys cross-dressing so much that he completely forgets he is doing it, and imagines that he is a woman, accepting Osgood's proposal of marriage and celebrating it with Joe. At the end of the film, after having abandoned their drag personas, Joe and Jerry again become "Daphne" and "Josephine" in order to elude Little Bonaparte and get Osgood to pick them up on the docks and take them to his yacht. Cross-dressing serves as a shield for the characters, an opportunity to hide, but also an opportunity to learn about identity and gender.

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Jazz (Motif)

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Jazz is a recurring motif throughout the film. When we first meet Joe and Jerry, they are playing in a jazz band at a speakeasy. Jazz represents the underground nightlife, the "hot" antidote to classical music, a genre of music in which people loosen up and unleash their more sexual and uninhibited side. Later, having witnessed the massacre, Joe and Jerry's only way out of town is to dress up like women and join an all-female jazz band, Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators. They play jazz music, while Sugar Kane, the voluptuous lead singer, sings seductively for her audience. Speaking of Sugar, in the beginning of the film, whenever she enters, a scratchy horn riff plays, a reference to jazz that is meant to establish her as a sexually inviting and appealing character. When Sugar asks "Junior" if he likes jazz, he tells her that "some like it hot; I prefer classical." Jazz is associated with heat and sexual impropriety; the film is set in the 1920s after all, when liquor was illegal, vice ruled, and jazz was just coming into prominence.