The Apartment

Infobox Film
name = The Apartment


image_size =
caption = Original movie poster
director = Billy Wilder
producer = Billy Wilder
writer = Billy Wilder
I.A.L. Diamond
narrator =
starring = Jack Lemmon
Shirley MacLaine
Fred MacMurray
music =
cinematography =
editing =
distributor = United Artists
released = United States:
June 15,1960
United Kingdom:
20 July, 1960
runtime = 125 min.
country = U.S.A.
language = English
budget = $3,000,000 (est.)
preceded_by =
followed_by =
website =
amg_id = 1:2667
imdb_id = 0053604

"The Apartment" is a 1960 American comedy-drama film produced and directed by Billy Wilder, and starring Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, and Fred MacMurray. It was Wilder's follow up to the enormously popular "Some Like It Hot" and was an equal commercial and critical hit, grossing $25 million at the box office, and winning the Academy Award for Best Picture.

It was later adapted by Neil Simon, Burt Bacharach and Hal David into the Broadway musical "Promises, Promises".

Plot

C. C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is a lonely office drone for an insurance company in New York City. Four different company managers take turns commandeering his apartment, which is located on West 67th Street on the Upper West Side, for their various extramarital liaisons. Unhappy with the situation, but unwilling to challenge them directly, he juggles their conflicting demands while hoping to catch the eye of fetching elevator operator Miss Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine). Meanwhile the neighbors, a medical doctor and his wife, assume Baxter is a "good time Charlie" who gets a different woman drunk every night. Baxter accepts their criticism rather than reveal the truth.

The four managers write glowing reports about Baxter. The reports are a little too glowing. Personnel director Mr. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) suspects something illicit behind the praise. Mr. Sheldrake lets Baxter's promotion go unchallenged on condition that Baxter's apartment accept a fifth regular customer. Still delighted about the promotion, Baxter asks Miss Kubelik to a Broadway show. She agrees, then stands him up. On Christmas Eve, Baxter is astounded to come home and find her in his bed, fully clothed, and overdosed on sleeping pills. Mr. Sheldrake had borrowed the apartment for the evening.

Baxter and his neighbor the doctor keep her alive and safe without notifying the authorities. She explains that she had an affair with Mr. Sheldrake the previous summer, ended it when his wife returned from vacation, and caved in to his appeals and promises later in the fall. When Sheldrake offered her money instead of a Christmas present she realized the ugliness of the situation and tried to commit suicide. The act shows a startling side of her usually sunny personality. Baxter tries to comfort her with assurances of Sheldrake's concern even though Sheldrake refuses to speak to her on the telephone.

Kubelik recuperates in Baxter's apartment for two days, long enough for her taxi driver brother-in-law to assume the worst of Baxter and come to blows. Sheldrake's catty secretary, one of his former mistresses, "educates" Mrs. Sheldrake. Faced with divorce, Sheldrake moves into a room at his athletic club and continues to string Kubelik along while he enjoys his newfound bachelorhood. Baxter finally takes a stand when Sheldrake demands the apartment for New Year's Eve, which results in Baxter quitting the firm. Kubelik realizes that Baxter is the man who truly loves her and leaves Sheldrake on New Year's Eve to be with him that evening and runs to him. They end as two misfits, both out of a job, playing a game of gin rummy. When Baxter declares his love for Kubelik, her reply is the now-famous final line of the movie: "Shut up and deal."

Cast

*Jack Lemmon as C.C. 'Bud' Baxter
*Shirley MacLaine as Fran Kubelik
*Fred MacMurray as Jeff D. Sheldrake
*Ray Walston as Joe Dobisch
*Jack Kruschen as Dr. Dreyfuss
*David Lewis as Al Kirkeby
*Hope Holiday as Mrs. Margie MacDougall
*Joan Shawlee as Sylvia
*Naomi Stevens as Mrs. Mildred Dreyfuss
*Johnny Seven as Karl Matuschka
*Joyce Jameson as The blonde
*Willard Waterman as Mr. Vanderhoff
*David White as Mr. Eichelberger
*Edie Adams as Miss Olsen

Trivia

*When Baxter first goes to his apartment, he tries to watch the 1932 film "Grand Hotel", but too many commercials frustrates him and he turns the television off (making this the first Best Picture movie to mention another Best Picture movie).

*To create the impression of a very large bureau in the scenes where Baxter is behind his desk, director Billy Wilder used child actors dressed in business attire and specially designed furniture. This is in contrast to a popular rumor that dwarf actors were used.

*The nasal spray used by Jack Lemmon was actually milk. Real nasal spray would not have shown up on camera.

*Billy Wilder also used the character name Sheldrake in "Sunset Boulevard" (1950), "Ace in the Hole" (1951), and "Kiss Me, Stupid" (1964).

*Billy Wilder originally thought of the idea for the film after seeing "Brief Encounter" (1945) and wondering about the plight of a character seen only for a brief time in that film. Shirley MacLaine was only given forty pages of the script because Wilder didn't want her to know how the story would turn out. She thought it was because the script wasn't finished.

*Paul Douglas was cast as Sheldrake but died before filming began.

*Billy Wilder claimed that he and I.A.L. Diamond already had Jack Lemmon in mind to play Baxter when they wrote the screenplay. In an interview years later, Lemmon confirmed this.

*Shirley MacLaine filmed her famous cameo in "Ocean's Eleven" (1960) during a break in filming this movie.

*This was the last B&W movie to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards until "Schindler's List" (1993).

*This was also the film that Marilyn Monroe wanted to be in. She had previously starred with Lemmon in "Some Like It Hot". But when she did not get the part, there is a line in the film that was dedicated to Monroe. When a character needs to use C.C Baxter's (Jack Lemmon) apartment to be with his pretty blonde girlfriend, Baxter begins to leave his apartment in an angry, sarcastic way: "No trouble at all, Mr Dobisch! Be my guest. Never closed at Buddy Boy's. Looks like Marilyn Monroe!"

*The film was later remade in India as the Hindi film Raaste Kaa Patthar (1972) starring Amitabh Bachchan [ [http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1048184&pageid=2 DNA - After Hrs - Gone with the wind - Daily News & Analysis ] ] The storyline of The Apartment was also used as part of the 2007 Hindi film Life in a Metro, where actor Sharman Joshi's character's life mirrors that of C.C. Baxter's.

*In the anime series .Hack//Sign during an event a Statue asks who the director of the film was

*The Long Blondes reference the film in their song "You Could Have Both", saying "I feel like C.C. Baxter in Wilder's "Apartment" - that particular arrangement just came out of the blue"

Awards

Academy Awards

Wins
* Best Picture — Billy Wilder
* Art Direction — Edward G. Boyle, and Alexandre Trauner
* Editing — Daniel Mandell
* Best Director — Billy Wilder
* Original Screenplay — Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond. Nominations
* Best Actor — Jack Lemmon
* Best Actress — Shirley MacLaine
* Supporting Actor — Jack Kruschen
* Cinematography — Joseph LaShelle
* Sound — Gordon Sawyer

Although Jack Lemmon did not win, at the 2000 Awards, Kevin Spacey dedicated his Oscar for "American Beauty" to Lemmon's performance. According to the behind-the-scenes feature on the "American Beauty" DVD, the film's director, Sam Mendes, had watched "The Apartment" (among other classic American movies) as inspiration in preparation for shooting his film.

Other

"The Apartment" also won the BAFTA Award for Best Film from any Source and Lemmon and MacLaine both won a BAFTA and a Golden Globe each for their performances. The film appears at #93 on the influential American Film Institute list of Top 100 Films, as well as at #20 on their list of
100 Laughs and at #62 on their 100 Passions list. In 2007, the film rose on the AFI's Top 100 list to #80. In 1994, "The Apartment" was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. Currently the film is ranked 67th on [http://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000_top100films51-75.htm They Shoot Pictures Don't They] 's poll of the '1000 Greatest Films of All-Time', as voted by 1,604 critics, filmmakers, reviewers, scholars and other likely film types. In 2002, a poll of film directors done by Sight and Sound magazine listed it as the 14th greatest film of all time (tied with "La Dolce Vita") [ [https://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/topten/poll/directors-long.html BFI | Sight & Sound | Top Ten Poll 2002 - The rest of the dirctors' list ] ] . In 2006, "Premiere" voted this film as one of "The 50 Greatest Comedies Of All Time".

References

External links

*
*

----