Jack Lemmon ham, a fine ham, and with ham you have to trim a little fat." The biography quotes Lemmon as saying, "I am particularly susceptible to the parts I play... If my character was having a nervous breakdown, I started to have one." He enjoyed longtime working relationships with both Blake Edwards, starring in "Days of Wine and Roses" (1962), "The Great Race" (1965) and "That's Life!" (1986), and Richard Quine, starring in "My Sister Eileen", "Operation Mad Ball", "Bell, Book and Candle", "It Happened to Jane", and "How to Murder Your Wife". Quine also directed Lemmon's screen test when the
Jack Lemmon Should Happen to You". Lemmon worked with actresses such as Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood, Betty Grable, Janet Leigh, Shirley MacLaine, Lee Remick, Romy Schneider, Doris Day, Kim Novak, Judy Holliday, Rita Hayworth, June Allyson, Virna Lisi, Ann-Margret and Sophia Loren. He was close friends with actors Tony Curtis, Ernie Kovacs, Walter Matthau and Kevin Spacey. He made two films with Curtis, and fifteen with Matthau. Early in Lemmon's career he met comedian Ernie Kovacs while co-starring with him in "Operation Mad Ball". Lemmon and Kovacs became close friends and appeared together in two subsequent films, "Bell, Book and Candle" and