ABSTRACT
In the mid-1950s Billy Wilder adapted three Broadway shows for the screen: Stalag 17, Sabrina, and The Seven Year Itch. In the process, Wilder came into conflict with the censoring Hollywood Production Code, as embodied by the Breen Office. While the story of his struggles with the American film industry's self-censorship has to a large extent already been told, the censorship, again driven by the Catholic Church, but implemented in a harsher and more anonymous manner, of Billy Wilder's films in Franco's Spain remains largely unknown to American and European Wilder specialists, and even to the Spanish audiences who continue to watch the Francoist dubbings nowadays. Sabrina's 1955 dubbing offers an insight into early Francoist film manipulations. The 1964 dubbings of Stalag 17 and The Seven Year Itch, typical products of the regime's post-1963 cultural policies, illustrate how important a player Billy Wilder was in Spain's hesitant move towards cultural openness around 1963.
