I don't know of a better closing line to a movie than the one in Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot" when the Jack Lemmon character, who has been trying to escape gangsters by pretending to be a woman, finally reveals to a persistent suitor played by Joe E. Brown that he is actually a man. Brown just smiles and says, "Well, nobody's perfect."

If that is a perfect closing line for a great movie, it is also the perfect title for Charlotte Chandler's 2002 biography of Billy Wilder.

Wilder, a Jew who managed to get out of Germany before Hitler came to power, became one of the most important directors in Hollywood during the middle decades of the 20th century. In addition to "Some Like It Hot," he directed such classics as "The Lost Weekend," "Sunset Boulevard," "Stalag 17," "Sabrina," "The Seven Year Itch," "The Spirit of St. Louis," "Love in the Afternoon," "Witness for the Prosecution," "The Apartment" and "Irma la Douce."

Yet Wilder never really thought of himself as a director. He said he was a writer who just directed movies to protect his screenplays. Other directors always wanted to change his words, but as a director he could make sure that actors followed his scripts to the letter. There was no adlibbing in a Billy Wilder picture.

Wilder practically writes this biography of himself by himself. Chandler recorded her interviews with Wilder over the last years of his long life, and much of the book is just him talking. That works well because Wilder was, no surprise, an engaging wit and a terrific storyteller.

Chandler also interviewed numerous people who knew Wilder over the years -- Tony Curtis, Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Walter Matthau, Shirley MacLaine and many others -- letting each one talk at length. This makes Chandler seem more like an editor than a writer. Her other show business biographies, especially the one she did about Alfred Hitchcock, are terrific, however, suggesting that, as in so many other cases, it takes a lot of work to make one's work look effortless.

My main complaint about "Nobody's Perfect" is that some movies, especially the flops Wilder didn't want to talk about, are given little attention. "The Fortune Cookie," which I think is a terrific movie, gets just three pages, and "Avanti!," which is almost as good, gets only four. Yet "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes," hardly a classic, has 20 pages devoted to it. That's more than "Sabrina," "Witness for the Prosecution" and "Irma la Douce" combined.

Well, nobody's perfect. ( )