The Center for Jewish Studies and the Department of German welcomed Noah Isenberg on November 6, 2025. Isenberg, a Berkeley graduate, is currently the Charles Sapp Centennial Professor of Radio-Television-Film and the Executive Director of UTLA and UTNY at the University of Texas at Austin. A film scholar and historian, Isenberg is currently working on two projects: a cultural history of the film Some Like It Hot (1959) and a biography of Billy Wilder. In his lecture, titled “‘Runnin’ Wild’: Billy Wilder, Hot Jazz, and Weimar Jewish Culture,” Isenberg explored the influences of Weimar Germany and American jazz on Wilder’s life and on his film Some Like It Hot. Before arriving in Hollywood as a Jewish émigré and becoming a successful screenwriter, director, and producer, Wilder, who was Galician-born, was raised in Vienna, where he began his journalism career in 1926 at the age of nineteen. His first assignments were filing crossword puzzles, but his obsession was covering the Viennese jazz scene for magazines. Isenberg described how jazz was “an erotically charged obsession of his,” even in Wilder’s youth. In 1926, Wilder moved to Berlin, following Paul Whiteman and his orchestra, the acclaimed “King of Jazz.” In Berlin, he reinvented himself and rekindled his passion for jazz and nightlife. Isenberg believes that Berlin was home to Wilder’s most formative and profound years, where he truly “fell under the spell of American jazz” and “fell in love with it.” 
Isenberg’s lecture also addressed Wilder’s Amerikanophilia, his deep fascination with American culture. Wilder was obsessed with fast cars, boxing, speed, and cocktails, all of which he viewed as quintessentially American. He was fascinated by Black American jazz performers, jazz music, and dance numbers such as the Charleston. Wilder described dancers’ hips as “running wild” during the Charleston; Isenberg cheekily likened the craze and popularity of the Charleston to today's twerk. After fleeing Nazi Germany, Wilder moved to Hollywood in 1934. The primary subject of Isenberg’s lecture, Some Like It Hot, is a film that Wilder wrote, produced, and directed. Starring Marilyn Monroe, the film features cross-dressed male musicians posing as women in a jazz band. Isenberg noted that Wilder drew on his writings as a journalist and incorporated Yiddish expressions into the screenplay. He argued that the film reflects Weimar Germany’s cultural atmosphere and represents a nostalgic return to Wilder’s Berlin years. Although the film’s opening scenes are set in Chicago, Isenberg contends that they symbolically evoke Berlin.
The lecture was held in the Nestrick Room in Dwinelle Hall on Friday evening, drawing an audience of about sixty people and lasting an hour and a half.