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
Professor Mamlock (1938 film) exile, during 1933. It was first performed in Warsaw's Yiddish Theater. Director Rappaport saw it in a Moscow theater and decided to adapt it to screen, albeit with considerable differences form Wolf's play: among others, portraying the protagonist being executed rather than committing suicide. Georges Sadoul recalled the playwright told him that during World War II, he visited a Red Army unit at the front; many of those present watched the film. He was asked to recount the plot of "Professor Mamlock", which he did based on the play — "the soldiers judged his summary so inaccurate that he might