The memory of Sugar Kane is alive and well on Coronado Island, where scenes from Some Like it Hot were filmed, Jackie Burrell writes in The Reporter.
“Surf surges against this pristine shore, the white sand dotted picturesquely with red-striped cabanas. A paved footpath leads up to the iconic grand hotel. And it doesn’t take much imagination to see Marilyn Monroe on this beach, sun-kissed and wind-swept in her short white beach robe.
In fact, it takes no imagination at all. All over Coronado Island you’ll see photographs taken during the filming of Some Like It Hot, the 1959 comedy starring a ukulele-playing Monroe, and Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as fellow members of her, ahem, girl band bound for Florida.
Much to the consternation of Miami’s then-mayor, the role of Florida beach was played by this stretch of strand, which is crowned by the 19th-century Hotel Del Coronado. Legend has it that Coronado’s mayor told his much-aggrieved Floridian counterpart, ‘Some like it hot, but not as hot as Miami in September.’
Coronado actually is the bulbous end of a skinny peninsula that connects the ‘island’ to the mainland in Imperial Beach, seven miles south. But it’s easy to forget such topographic technicalities as you cross the sweeping bridge or arrive by ferry from San Diego.”