Hitchhiking to Nirvana

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.