Fun Facts: Some Like It Hot

George Raft

Honors Comedy

In Some Like It Hot, the actor who plays Spats Columbo is George Raft, who was famous for playing gangsters in other, usually more serious movies. Some Like It Hot contains a couple of jokes involving him that the audience of time (1959) would have recognized. When playing gangsters, notably in Scarface (1932), Raft's signature move was to flip a coin. So when Spats encounters another gangster who's flipping a coin in Some Like It Hot, Spats is annoyed. Another actor who played a lot of gangsters was James Cagney. In one film, The Public Enemy (1931), Cagney's character pushes half a grapefruit into the face of a woman played by Mae Clarke. In Some Like It Hot, there's a little tribute to Cagney in which Spats threatens to shove half a grapefruit into the face of a henchman.