EXTRA: 85 years since 'massacre,' yet I just want to watch Marilyn Monroe

It has been 85 years since the violent outburst in a garage at 2121 N. Clark St. that we now think of as the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. Yet all I can think of on this Friday is Marilyn Monroe.

Yes, the curvaceous beauty to whom all Hollywood glamour for all time invariably gets compared.

A PART OF me wants to pull out my copy of “Some Like It Hot” and pop it in the DVD player.

Let’s not forget that the film starring Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon was set largely on board a passenger train and in Miami Beach. But it started in Chicago with their two musician characters inadvertently witnessing the grisly killings.

Hence, they have to get out of town before they’re killed off. So naturally, they dress up as women, get hired by an all-girl band (Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators) and wind up encountering Sugar (played by Monroe).

Yes, it’s total nonsense. Just the other day I stumbled across a Monroe documentary that said much of the humor of the film was in the preposterous notion that Monroe’s character would not be immediately able to tell that “Josephine” and “Daphne” were really men.

BUT IT DOES put a humorous touch to that ugly day. It certainly comes across as more entertaining than the 1967 film “The St. Valentine’s Day” massacre, which was a slightly-fictionalized take on what supposedly happened.

But one that got bogged down in so much factual matter that it becomes dreary at times. It gives evidence to the old cliché, “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.”

That film certainly did.

When it comes to the latter film, what I most note is that it gave us Jason Robards as Capone – some nine years prior to giving us the award-winning performance as the Washington Post’s Ben Bradlee in “All the President’s Men.”

HE WENT FROM playing a man who later got busted by the Internal Revenue Service to being the man who helped take down a political hack of a president.

Interesting material. Although I’d still rather watch Monroe – who showed us her humor as well as her curves.

The real thing!

Even if it’s not, strictly speaking, a historic moment film. Although if there is a moment in Chicago history that I’d like to see someone try to make a film out of, it is the Chicago fire of October 1871.

I realize that 1937’s “In Old Chicago” starring Don Ameche already gave us one take. Yet I wonder what could be done now, with the additional knowledge we now have that acquits the reputation of the O’Leary family and with the visual technology that could make the burning down of nearly an entire city a true spectacle to watch.

COME TO THINK of it, I think I’d still rather see the interaction of Curtis and Lemmon in “Some Like It Hot.” It has its humorous moments.

And it also gave us what might well be the funniest ending line of a film (by comedian Joe E. Brown) ever when Lemmon’s “Daphne” character finally whips off his wig and reveals he’s a man.

“Well, nobody’s perfect!”

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Heart attack gets Curtis where “Spats” Columbo couldn’t all those decades ago

There have been many attempts throughout the years to use the Feb. 14, 1929 slayings of seven men at a Lincoln Park neighborhood garage on film and television. Yet I have to admit that my favorite take on the “St. Valentine” massacre by the Capone mob was a silly little farce that showed us just how ugly of women actors Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon would have made.

I’m referring to the 1959 film “Some Like It Hot,” which I must admit was the thought that popped into my mind when I learned that Curtis died this week at his home near Las Vegas. He was 85. Funeral services will be held Monday.

THAT WAS THE comedy that had Curtis and Lemmon playing the part of down-on-their-luck musicians who, while on their way to get a car so they could get to Urbana so they could play at a University of Illinois frat party, happen to witness the slaying of the seven men.

Which had mob boss “Spats” Columbo (played by the legendary actor George Raft, who made a career of playing gangsters) put out a hit on both of them. The film, then, tells the story of the wacky antics they resort to so as to avoid getting gunned down by gangsters.

That included joining an all-girl band (Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopaters), joining them on board a train ride to Florida where they play at a resort. It is there that Curtis in drag meets up with Marilyn Monroe’s “Sugar Kane,” whom even all these decades later remains as sexy a presence as ever. Although anyone who dismisses her as an untalented actress has never seen this film.

This could have easily been a forgettable film about a lecherous perv stuck wearing a dress. Instead, it becomes a laughable farce. Personally, it is a film I pop into the DVD player whenever I need a chuckle.

AS FOR THOSE who think “Caddyshack” is a funny film for the ages, I’d argue that you have never watched “Some Like It Hot.” If you had (and if you have any sense), you’d realize how over-rated that film has become.

Now I know that this film offers nothing in the way of fact or history in terms of telling of Chicago back in the 1920s, or the famous slaying at 2122 N. Clark St. Of course, a lot of the films that put on pretentions of telling us the “true” story manage to mix in fictional elements – including 1967 self-titled film directed by Roger Corman (and starring actor Jason Robards, which always makes me wonder when did Ben Bradlee become Al Capone?).

In fact, it is only those first few minutes that are even set in a fictional Chicago. Once their train leaves Union Station, the rest of the film is either train-set or Florida set.

But it is because of that, I think, that the film remains entertaining all these years later – instead of deteriorating into a period piece that becomes unwatchable in the 21^st Century (which is pretty much what I think of the 1931 film, “The Front Page”).

NOW I KNOW that Curtis’ career consists of much more than this one film released 51 years ago. I’m sure there are those who will claim that his performance as Joe/Josephine/Junior was not even the highlight of his career.

But like I wrote earlier, it was the film I thought of when hearing of Curtis’ demise. Considering that “Some Like It Hot” was chosen in 2000 as the greatest comedy of all-time by the American Film Institute, I can’t be alone with my sentiment.

So there is a part of me that now wants to give another viewing to the film, which in my opinion has the funniest final line of dialogue of any film ever.

Actor Joe E. Brown’s Osgood Fielding III telling Lemmon’s “Daphne” that “Nobody’s perfect” in response to his revelation that they can’t get married because she’s really “a man” never fails to crack me up.

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