Revisiting The Apartment

I recently returned from a wonderful trip to New York City in a true blur of theatre-delirium, a state from which I must confess I am still having trouble coming down. Angela Lansbury once said "One of the most wonderful--and terrible -- things about theatre is that it's a memory". The great Lansbury was right: in the theatre, the only rewind button is in your mind. However, I am happy to report that sometimes there is a way that one can recapture the magic --at least partially-- and perhaps acquire some new spine tingling moments in the process. Here is how you can do it.

The magic that caught me was in two productions in particular, both of which will be closing in a few weeks: The revivals of A Little Night Music and Promises, Promises. For the former, I am at a loss ( I do not recommend the 1977 film version) but for the latter -ah! I am in luck!! Because there is no way to better relive the pleasures of Promises, Promises than through The Apartment (1960).

I have always had a special fascination for that most interesting animal, the un-original Broadway musical. It is easy to understand why musicals are frequently adapted from successful, non-musical source material: they already have proven track records. Unfortunately, for every Pygmalion/My Fair Lady there is a Caesar and Cleopatra/Her First Roman. So, in the late 1960s when the idea to translate Billy Wilder's Oscar-winning masterpiece The Apartment into a Broadway musical first surfaced, all were not convinced it was a surefire proposition. Even after Neil Simon, Burt Bacharach and Hal David signed on, its producer, the redoubtable David Merrick, still had a few. But The Apartment turned out to be an ideal template for a Broadway musical. Even in the most optimistic of times, Wilder was an unapologetic cynic - frequently piercing the most bilious of complacent bubbles with his sharp and uncompromising wit. And while The Apartment is no exception to this Wilder tenant, it also contains an element that is essential for a successful musical: a sentimental heart. And although Wilder does his best to camouflage, its presence can be felt in every frame: from Jack Lemmon's wistful longing for the elevator girl of his dreams, to Shirley MacLaine's heartbreaking confession of love for her married lover, The Apartment wears its raw and overwhelming emotion on its sleeve. Unusual for a filmmaker who's stock in trade was always the "trade" of love-- but perhaps not really. After all, scratch a cynic, and you will most likely uncover a wounded romantic; and the characters in The Apartment are all wounded romantics attempting to find a bit of respite in a harsh and cynical world.

Lemmon's C.C. Baxter was the template for what became his screen persona: the "invisible" everyman struggling to be noticed in an indifferent world (think The Fortune Cookie (1966), Save the Tiger (1973), The Out-of-Towners (1970). But what was so appealing about Lemmon, and what made him the perfect Wilder hero, was that he always instilled in these characters a hint of the eternal optimist. Continually thwarted in his struggle to move far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, Baxter remains remarkably sanguine. Even when he discovers that the object of his affections, the luminous Shirley MacLaine, is the girl who's been sleeping in his bed--with his boss--he remains steadfast in his devotion to her. By the end of the film, Baxter has been left literally beaten and bruised after tangling with the "big boys". Yet, left alone in the ruins of his life, he doesn't pop his revolver, he pops a bottle of champagne. Baxter is down but not out...beaten up, but not beaten.

Likewise, Shirley MacLaine also sets the template for her decade-long portrayals of hookers with hearts of gold. Her impossibly fresh face with its cherubic cheeks and eyes set wide in perpetual wonder was the perfect counterpoint to the sensual and vulnerable women that lay beneath—women who frequently traded their bodies in the hope of emotional compensation. (Think Some Came Running (1958), Irma La Douce (1963), Sweet Charity (1970). In The Apartment, Fran Kubelik is a prostitute not of her body, but of her heart; a behavior which, in the end, proves much more injurious. Witness, for example, the devastating scene in which Fred MacMurray's loathsome boss, Sheldrake, hands Fran $100 as a Christmas "present". Wilder is very careful to make sure we realize that a sexual liaison has not occurred between the two; this is payment for emotional services rendered. In the aftermath of the devastation, Fran attempts suicide. No one was better than the young MacLaine in portraying this sort of emotional wanton, and her heart-wrenching performance won the actress her second Oscar nomination.

All this seems to be pretty dour stuff for something labeled a "comedy" –but, in true Wilder fashion, it is this attempted suicide which finally brings our disparate hero and heroine together. This seamless melding of tragedy with comedy is a Wilder hallmark, and is very much the emotional environment in which The Apartment dwells. Like life, it is a comedy which tips precariously on the edge of tragedy. It's also the brilliant Wilder "push-pull" -- leading us down one path, and then suddenly unexpectedly shoving us down another. This is no more magnificently illustrated than in the film’s final moments. As Shirley MacLaine romantically rushes through the streets of New York and back to Lemmon (to the strains of Adolphe Deutsch's lush theme), our romantic assumptions of happily ever after seem to be coming to certain fruition. Then, just as she (and the music) reach their crescendo, both are jarringly halted by what sounds like a gunshot. Comedy tipping on tragedy. Racing to the door of the apartment in a panic, she begins pounding on it in terror, only to greeted by a very much alive Jack Lemmon holding an over-flowing champagne bottle. Tragedy dips back into comedy . And when the lovers are finally re-united, and Baxter confesses his love for Miss Kubelik, what are we left with? Our lovers embracing in a romantic clinch? No. A game of cards. And one of the greatest final lines in movie history. From the man who gave us the surreal "No body's perfect" the year before in Some Like it Hot, we get the most pragmatic of summations: “Shut up, and deal”.

In life…sometimes…that is all you can do.

A Woman on the Verge

When I started this blog, I had no intention that it become a a sort of "celebrity obituary" cyber-spot. However, as each month goes by, it seems we lose one celebrated "golden era" figure after another; iconic personalities whose talent, personality and class helped define what we now term the era of "Classic Hollywood". This was highlighted during last week’s Emmy Awards ceremony, when we bid farewell to the likes of Lena Horne, Lynne Redgrave, and of course, Rue McClanahan (see my June 2010 tribute below). And then, there was the great Patricia Neal.

In a career that spanned over sixty years, Neal played everything from sultry cosmopolitan sirens to stoic mountain women. Today, she is probably best remembered for her high profile turns in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), or her Oscar-winning performance in Hud (1963). My first recollection of Neal, however, was in a modest television movie called The Homecoming (1971), in which she played the depression-era matriarch of an impoverished mountain family named Walton. With her elongated cadence ("Jahhnn-boy") and the sad but undefeated look in her dark eyes, she reminded me of some not-so-distant relatives from my mother's side of the family (the ones that my father often referred to as"those hillbillies"). But even more than her vocal perfection, her physicality suggested a woman that had been broken and by sheer force of will had put herself back together again (later I was to find out that this was very much the case for Neal, herself). I had no idea who this woman was, but she seemed to channel the spirit of these down but determined people whom I knew so well. Her performance haunted me for many years.

And then, I saw The Fountainhead.

At first, I could not believe that this young woman playing the fiery and imperious Dominique in King Vidor's controversial 1949 classic could possibly have been the same woman who played the elemental and stoic Olivia Walton. And then, I saw the glint of steel in the young woman's eyes, and I knew that indeed, she was one and the same. This was the defining attribute that Patricia Neal brought to all the characters she portrayed. Even in her most "throw-away" performances, there is an underlying current of power - a gravitas - which almost always made her characters distinctive and startling.

Patricia Neal was never the standard Hollywood leading lady. In the great tradition of Frances Farmer and Tallulah Bankhead, she confounded studio executives who were never sure what to do with her. When she arrived in Hollywood, she was most likened to the sultry young Lauren Bacall, but did not possess that actress' sexual aloofness, nor her emotional stability. Neal had a seething sensuality that seemed at times seemed ready to overtake her; she was frequently a woman on the verge of a sexual breakdown. This quality informed her performances to a degree uncomfortable to the Mayers, Warners and Cohns. Watch her as she excitedly sizes up the young Andy Griffith in A Face In the Crowd (1957), her eyes and sexual appetite growing larger by the second. Or in Hud, as the world-weary housekeeper who just barely suppresses her sexual desire for both Paul Newman and Brandon De Wilde. As Newman tosses sexual innuendos her way, her eyes linger a bit too long on his lean frame, giving the distinct impression that their eventual coupling is just a matter of time. Or, more startlingly, as she rustles the adolescent De Wilde out of bed for breakfast, and her wrestling becomes a bit more aggressive when he tells her that he is naked beneath the sheets.

On-screen she was a woman who was guided by her appetites; off-screen she was guided by her own moral compass, and gave little regard to the standards of "morality" espoused by the Hollywood community. Her infamous extra-marital affair with Fountainhead co-star Gary Cooper led to public condemnation, abortion, and eventually a nervous breakdown and self-imposed exile from Hollywood. A return to the stage and a stabilizing marriage to writer Roald Dahl brought much needed grounding to the actress. It also brought about a return to Hollywood’s good graces, and in a particularly pallid season, Neal won the 1963 Best Actress Oscar for Hud, even though her role was essentially a supporting one.

Later, after rising like a phoenix from a series near fatal strokes, the sexual undercurrent was replaced by steely resolve. This was a woman who had literally been broken and by sheer force of will, had put herself back together again. This quality was highlighted no more eloquently than in her "comeback" performance in The Subject Was Roses (1968). As Nettie, she is both victim and victimizer – a woman who cloaks the bitterness she feels over her life’s disappointments in passive-aggressive manipulation of those around her. It is a stunning performance that is halting in its simple power and poignancy-- and it earned Neal another Oscar nomination. Unlike 1963, however, the competition for the 1968 Best Actress Academy Award was arguably the most formidable in Oscar history. When the winning performance was announced, it was a tie between Katharine Hepburn's monumental turn in The Lion In Winter, and Barbra Streisand's phenomenal film debut in Funny Girl. Up against these two iconic characterizations, Neal's quiet but steely performance did not stand a chance.

Undeterred, Neal continued to work in television and films up until the final year of her life. Throughout the remaining years, she remained a beacon of talent and courage not just in her career, but in her life (her autobiography, As I Am, was published in 1988). She remains a shining example of what best personifies "Classic Hollywood".

Patricia Neal: 1926 - 2010

IT WAS ONLY PRONOUNCED "DEVER-UX" IN LIMERICKS

There are lots of ways to trick a man into thinking you're younger than you really are. Wear sunglasses, put on a little extra make-up, go to dark restaurants...fly to Nevada to get a fake birth certificate, have a phony high-school yearbook printed up, change the dates on your parent's graves...

--Blanche Devereaux

She was flirtatious. She was outrageous. She was vain and egotistical. She was profoundly selfish and sublimely unaware. Most of all, she was full of life - which makes her passing feel like an even greater loss. She was, of course, the divine Rue McClanahan, who died last week. Of her fellow players, Estelle Getty passed in relative obscurity. Beatrice Arthur went swiftly and quietly too, and somehow her death didn't seem to have quite the same impact. Why is that? Was it because Bea, in her sublimely detached, "I couldn't care less if I were dead" demeanor, seemed to be one step away from the grave anyway? Not so Rue/Blanche. So full of piss and vigor; so brazenly excited by the sybaritic offerings life had to offer. It seems almost incomprehensible that anything could extinguish that bacchanalian torch.

Blanche Elizabeth Devereaux's initials spelled "BED". By creation, she was sister to Blanche DuBois, cousin to Maggie the Cat, perhaps even distant relative of Sebastian Venable (knowing the penchant both had for younger men). She was the comical answer to every oversexed, delusional, psycho-neurotic Southern belle that Tennesee Williams created and cliched. But the writers of The Golden Girls, along with the gifted actress who played her, did more than simply view the archetype through a comic prism. They brilliantly took all the cliched attributes of those deluded dames and turned them on their heads. Blanche Devereaux (pronounced "Dever-oh". It was only pronounced "Dever-ux", as Dorothy pointed out, in limericks) may have had some of those qualities on the surface, but it was in the layers beneath that the demarcation was established.

Rue McClanahan often liked to point out that she and her alter ego were very dissimilar; unlike the single-wed Blanche, she stated with a twinkle in her eye, McClanahan married six times, and hailed from Oklahoma, not Georgia. She toiled on stage and daytime television for years, before landing the role that would prove to be the portal to greener theatrical pastures: Vivian Harmon in Maude, opposite her future Golden Girl co-star, Bea Arthur. On that show, she and Arthur had a chemistry that likened them to a 1970's Lucy and Ethel, so the opportunity to reunite with Arthur in The Golden Girls seemed like a foregone conclusion. Well, the opportunity may have been, but appearing opposite her as Blanche was not. It is now television lore that McClanahan was originally slated to play the divine simpleton Rose Nylund; the role of the libidinous Blanche was to go to another former co-star of McClanahan's (from Mama's Family), Betty White. Assigned to direct the pilot, it was esteemed director Jay Sandrich who suggested that perhaps the roles assigned should be switched, sensing that each actress had "been there/done that" before. It proved to be not only a stroke of genius from Sandrich, but a boon to both actresses--particularly McClanahan, who was able to soar beyond what anyone had ever suspected of either the actress or the part (Betty White, always the gracious professional, often remarked that she would never have found the remarkable things in Blanche that her co-star did). The role eventually secured the actress four consecutive Emmy nominations, and one win in 1987.

Like her infamous antecedents, Blanche Devereaux dealt in illusion -- or more aptly, delusion: about everlasting youth, beauty, and sex appeal. But Blanche Devereaux had two qualities those women did not possess: humor and self-awareness. In McClanahan's hands, Blanche blew the cobweb's off the cliched stereotype and became as original and memorable a character as television had ever seen. The actress did this by focusing not on the the obvious sexual elements of the woman, but her love and humanity...opening doors through which the writers ran. Thus, beneath the brazen exterior, Blanche became a character possessing not only vulnerability, but humor, self-depreciation, as well as sharp self-awareness. Watch her sometime when Sofia compares her to a loin of pork, or when she is referred to by any number of nicknames from "Slut-puppy", to "Shore Leave", to "a tramp with a airbag in her headboard". Nine times out of ten, she laughs off the put-down. This was the choice of the actress to go for the love, and not the more obvious, darker emotion...and it was a choice that not only endeared her to audiences, but diffused the invective (and usually the director of it) and made it seem playful instead of mean-spirited.

More than her humor, however, it was Blanche's self-awareness that set her apart from her literary doppelgangers. Sure, she could be superficially and supremely unaware (Blanche: For the first time in my life, I feel over forty. Dorothy: You know why that is honey? Because you're over fifty). But there was always the sense that this subterfuge was just a diversion; when it really mattered, Blanche knew the score. In a landmark (and hysterical) scene, she advises the girls -about to head on a romantic cruise with their respective boyfriends - that they need to bring "protection". In the drugstore, after comical misunderstandings occur, Blanche grabs the loudspeaker and sets the judgemental onlookers straight. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kOewRGhtx8) Later, we see more of this characteristic when she counsels Rose, anxious while awaiting the results of an HIV test. Confessing that she was concerned by her checkered sexual history, she had secretly undergone the testing process, and dealt with the anxiety of waiting for the results by acting "like a real bitch" to everyone around her ("No wonder we never knew" a surprised Rose answers). This all seems tame today, but in the late 1980s it was groundbreaking. Most telling, however, were the moments when she confessed that her tall tales of myriad sexual conquest were just that: tales she told to help deal with the loneliness she often felt since her husband died. (In contrast, octogenarian Sophia was caught in flagrate delicto more times than any other character on the show). For Blanche, the the implication of being a wanton was all that was needed.

These moments of touching self-analysis were naturally set up to contrast the other, less astute observations she often made about herself (I was once told I bore a striking resemblance to Cheryl Ladd... but my bosoms are perkier) which were usually deflated by a non-plussed Dorothy (Not even if you were hanging upside down on a trapeze!) which leaves Blanche humorously unfazed. Because, most importantly, the character of Blanche was imbued with great humor...about herself, as well as others. And it is in those classic moments, that Blanche will live forever:

Blanche: I do love the rain so. It reminds me of my first kiss
Dorothy: Your first kiss was in the rain
Blanche: No, it was in the shower

It's like when I say 'Men are blinded by my beauty'. They're not really blinded. They get their sight back in a day or two.

It's a curse. My beauty has always been a curse. I'm sorry, Dorothy, but like the fatal blossom of the graceful Jimpson weed, I entice with my fragrance but can provide no suckle.

But perhaps it was in the show's penultimate two-part episode, that Blanche showed her true, loving heart...and humor. As Rose is readied for open heart surgery, Blanche makes a heartfelt prayer for her friend's survival, offering up the ultimate sacrifice:

Dear God. You have given me a lot to be thankful for...my wonderful children, my health. A beautiful body, legs to die for...a face that is stunningly sexy and yet has the innocence of a child...anyway, Dear God, I do have a favor to ask. If you could please spare my friend, Rose. Now I know I haven't been perfect, but if you could just let her live, I will try and be a better person...and I promise, I will not have sex with anyone...unless they really--REALLY need it. Amen

Thank you, Rue. We really REALLY did.

Rue McClanahan
(1934 - 2010)