Why Billy Wilder spent thousands to paint daisies blue for a musical comedy

Entertainment · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Director Billy Wilder sought to capture a nostalgic, idealized vision of Austria in his 1948 musical The Emperor Waltz. To achieve the perfect aesthetic, he went to extreme lengths, including importing California pines and dyeing thousands of Canadian wildflowers blue, despite the film becoming a source of personal creative regret.

Following the success of The Lost Weekend, Billy Wilder and collaborator Charles Brackett originally intended to film a serious project about post-war Europe. However, after witnessing the trauma of concentration camps during research, Wilder pivoted to a musical comedy. Inspired by a historical anecdote regarding Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen and Emperor Franz Joseph I, the pair crafted a story about an American salesman attempting to sell a gramophone to the Austrian monarch.

The production, filmed in Jasper National Park, was marked by significant logistical and interpersonal friction. Wilder, dissatisfied with the local flora, spent $20,000 to ship trees from California and hand-dyed 4,000 daisies to ensure the Technicolor visuals met his standards. The shoot was further complicated by poor weather, illness, and a strained relationship between stars Bing Crosby and Joan Fontaine. Fontaine later noted that Crosby was often aloof and disregarded Wilder’s direction, frequently improvising his lines rather than adhering to the script.

Upon its 1948 release, the film earned nominations for Academy Awards in costume design and musical scoring, alongside a Writers Guild of America nod. While contemporary critics like Bosley Crowther praised its charm and sight-humor, Wilder later viewed the project with ambivalence. He admitted the film failed to reach the standard of his idol, Ernst Lubitsch, and served as a retreat into a romanticized, artificial version of his own Austrian childhood that ignored the harsh realities of the era.

The narrative centers on the clash between American informality and imperial tradition, symbolized by the mating of the characters' dogs. Despite the film's financial success—ranking 14th in 1948 with $3,209,000 in earnings—it remains a polarizing entry in Wilder's filmography. Some later assessments label it an irredeemable trifle, while others acknowledge it as a pleasant, if lightweight, example of Crosby’s effortless screen persona.

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