The Apartment: Shut Up and Deal

The Apartment is a perfect film to begin a discussion about the Academy Awards in the 1960’s because in many ways it is a film that bridges the 32 years of Best Picture winners that preceded it to the fifty years of Oscar history that would follow. The film’s final line delivered with razor-sharp precision timing by Shirley MacLaine—“Shut up and deal”—is also the perfect angle in which to approach the ten Best Pictures of the decade. In a period of unmatched tumultuous social change, the most enduring films were the ones that chose to shut up and deal with the changes Americans faced.

The Apartment is also the perfect transitory film because it is the last film to win Best Picture to be shot entirely in black and white (Steven Spielberg used black and white film for Schindler’s List in 1993, yet that was a deliberate artistic choice, and the film also has sections where color is used for specific purposes). However, like its recent Best Picture-winning predecessors, the film is gloriously widescreen. It gives Ben-Hur and The Bridge on the River Kwai a run for its money in terms of scope. The look of the film straddles the past and the future. Unlike the chiaroscuro film stock, there is nothing black and white about the themes contained in The Apartment. The story is extraordinarily modern and it perhaps resonates stronger now than when it premiered over fifty years ago (Look at the television show Mad Men, which exists squarely under the shadow of The Apartment).

What makes The Apartment a great film is the way director Billy Wilder pull the audience in alongside his characters. I think Wilder was a great humanist filmmaker. What I mean by humanist is this: Wilder’s films contain characters drawn with such a depth of humanity that it becomes impossible for the audience not to be carried alongside their journeys. These characters are just as human as the viewers watching them. In Double Indemnity, we are seduced along with Walter Neff (played by Fred MacMurray, who also has a key, also similarly against type role as an insurance man in The Apartment) when he meets deadly Phyllis Dietrichson and mistakes murder for honeysuckle. Ray Milland makes Don Birnam’s alcoholism so profound in The Lost Weekend that we can smell the booze sweating out of his pores as he searches for the bottle of hidden whiskey. A funeral for a monkey in Sunset Boulevard makes Norma Desmond’s madness palpable, inspiring both horror and sympathy. The idea of two men being able to find the meaning of true love only after they have disguised themselves as women sounds absolutely absurd, but in Wilder’s hands Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon (Lemmon plays the lead role in The Apartment, and in many ways, he was Wilder’s muse) make the absurd logical in Some Like it Hot. Every one of these films is a classic because the characters endure.

Each of the main characters in Wilder’s films share a common trait—loneliness—and in The Apartment, that great existential theme drives the actions of the characters in the film.

The film opens with a brief montage of New York City. Wilder means to convey the metropolis is a bustling epicenter of human life and commerce, but the helicopter shots of towering skyscrapers and office buildings underscore the fact that a single individual could easily find themselves lost among the hubbub. The narration is provided by C.C. “Bud” Baxter (Lemmon), an average, hard working yet powerless white collar worker employed by Consolidated Life of New York. Bud describes New York as if he were reading off the back of a baseball card. “On November 1st, 1959, the population of New York City was 8,042,783. If you laid all these people end to end, figuring an average height of five feet six and a half inches, they would reach from Times Square to the outskirts of Karachi, Pakistan.” His description of his workplace is just as statistically bent:

“We're one of the top five companies in the country. Our home office has 31,259 employees—which is more than the entire population of Natchez, Mississippi. I work on the 19th floor—Ordinary Policy Department, Premium Accounting Division, Section W, desk number 861. My name is C. C. Baxter—C. for Calvin, C. for Clifford, however most people call me Bud. I've been with Consolidated for three years and ten months and my take-home pay is $94.70 a week.”

Wilder then gives us a shot of the interior of Bud’s office on the 19th floor—a literal sea of desks, with one benign occupant after another (the shot is an homage to King Vidor’s 1928 silent film The Crowd). Bud even provides us this detail: “The hours in our department are 8:50 to 5:20—they're staggered by floors, so that sixteen elevators can handle the 31,259 employees without a serious traffic jam.” Bud is just one man in an ocean of desks, in a skyscraper that houses a small city, where elevator rides must be scheduled as to not upend the entire building. In a city where he is surrounded by eight million other people, Bud could not be more alone.

Bud’s narration dives right into the main plot of The Apartment. He often arrives at his desk early and stays late despite the prime location of his apartment in the “West Sixties, just half a block from Central Park”. What could keep a man away from an apartment which is “just right for a bachelor”? Bud has found a way to advance his career, by loaning his apartment out to his superiors so that they can engage in extramarital trysts with the secretaries, telephone operators and other low-level female employees in the firm (it should be noted that all of the female employees at Consolidated Life are low level; this doesn’t make The Apartment a sexist film, merely a historically accurate one). This arrangement is a fruitful way of brown-nosing, and Bud enjoys being called a “bright boy” and hearing promises of a promotion. However, Bud incurs two problems with this arrangement, one he is unaware of, and one that is painfully obvious.

The painfully obvious part of his problem is that his apartment is loaned out so often that he is unable to use it for a social life of his own. The “hospitality” the apartment provides Bud’s bosses extend well after work hours. When Bud does get home, he usually has a TV dinner and a bottle of Coke, a late night movie his only companionship (in one scene, Bud watches the 1932 Best Picture Grand Hotel, another film about lonely people in a busy place). Bud also suffers looks of indignation and scorn from his neighbors, especially Dr. and Mrs. Dreyfuss (Jack Kruschen and Naomi Stevens). Because Bud’s “guests” fail to ever clean up after themselves, Bud often has to tote bags of empty bottles of alcohol down to the garbage. While there, Dr. Dreyfuss comments, “The way you're beltin' that stuff, you must have a pair of cast-iron kidneys....As a matter of fact, you must be an iron man all around. From what I hear through the walls, you got somethin' goin' for ya every night...Sometimes, there's a twi-night double-header. A nebbish like you!” Bud never bothers to correct the assumption that he is a boozehound, skirt-chaser, and all around lothario. He assumes that if he keeps a low profile and keeps his supervisors happy, the ever-elusive promotion will come his way.

What Bud remains unaware of is that his supervisors regard him as a doormat. The first supervisor who absconds to the apartment in the film, Kirkeby (David Lewis), tells his mistress that the dwelling belongs to “some schnook in the office”. Later, Mr. Dobisch (character actor Ray Walston, and if you’ve seen Fast Times at Ridgemont High you’ll recognize him instantly), another middle manager, wishes to extend his date. He phones Bud at 11 pm, rousing him from his sleep, simply because he wants to screw his date, a “blonde who looks like Marilyn Monroe” (a dig at the actual Monroe, who though irreplaceable, gave Wilder absolute fits when directing her in his previous picture, Some Like It Hot). Bud doesn’t want to give up the only activity he can enjoy in his apartment—sleep—but Dobisch blackmails him, saying "Look Baxter, we're making out the monthly efficiency rating, and I'm putting you in the top ten. Now you don't want to louse yourself up, do you?" Bud meekly acquiesces, spending the night on a hard bench on a cold November night in Central Park. He’s in so deep, that in many ways, he has become a secretary for his own home, keeping each middle manager on a rigid schedule and having to iron out conflicts when two bosses wish to cheat on their wives on the same night. Bud isn’t moving upward, he’s simply becoming a bigger bitch for mid-level management.

Bud does have at least one source of happiness at Consolidated Life—his daily ride on the elevator. It is there that he flirts with the charming and cheerful elevator operator, Fran Kubelik (the incandescent Shirley MacLaine). Miss Kubelik is also clearly likes him (in a friendly way)—she is compassionate toward Bud comes in the elevator sick, she places a carnation in his buttonhole when Bud is nervous upon being summoned for a meeting, and she tells him, crucially, that “something happens to men in elevators. Must be the change in altitude—the blood rushed to their head or something—boy I could tell you stories.” Bud, however, does not rank among these men. He is the only man who removes his hat as a sign of respect when he enters Fran’s elevator; she’s noticed, and she thinks Bud is a nice guy. When Bud tires to find out information about her from Kirkeby—whom Fran has rejected before—he is told that Fran plays hard to get and that she isn’t that special. Bud defends her, calling Fran “a nice, respectable girl.”

In that first act, Wilder and his co-writer I.A.L. Diamond gives the audience everything we need to know about Bud and Fran. He is lonely, angling for a promotion, and at heart a romantic; the removing of his hat in Fran’s elevator and his chivalrous defense of her prove that trait. Fran shows true kindness in addition to being charming and attractive. There is also an undeniable mystery and allure to the girl. Wilder and Diamond provide the set up for the audience to be on the side of these two characters; Lemmon and MacLaine make us want to know them better. What will become of the moral quandary Bud has found himself in? Will we ever know more about this cute, elusive and charming girl who runs the elevator? Luckily, the answer to both questions is yes.

The big twist in the plot occurs when Bud is summoned to the office of the Director of Personnel, Jeff D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray, playing a version of his Walter Neff had he survived Double Indemnity and rose up through the ranks from insurance salesman). Bud figures that Sheldrake has discovered that he is letting his superiors use his apartment for their infidelities, and that Sheldrake will fire him on grounds of moral turpitude. Instead, Bud is surprised that Dobisch, Kirkeby and the others have finally recommended him for promotion. There is a catch though, because Sheldrake does know about the apartment—“I know everything that goes on in this building”, Sheldrake intones. It turns out that Sheldrake is just as adulterous as Dobisch, Kirkeby and the rest, and he seeks to gain membership into Bud’s “little club”. At first, Bud can hardly believe he isn’t being fired, but Sheldrake buys him off with a pair of tickets to The Music Man and the promotion. Bud’s rationale: “Four apples, five apples, what’s the difference, percentage-wise” (Wilder and Diamond create an extended gag in the film by tacking “-wise” onto the end of several words in the script; it is even seen in the tagline in the film’s poster).

Bud is so excited with his promotion and now that he has a pair of tickets to the hot Broadway show, he works up the courage to as Fran out on a date. She declines at first, citing a previous commitment to meet another man for a drink, but Fran is unsure of her current relationship, calling it “more or less kaput.” She dismisses dinner with Bud, but agrees to meet him at 8:30 in the lobby of the theater for the start of the show. What Bud does not suspect is that the man Fran is meeting is Sheldrake, and they have had an on-again, off-again affair.

The night of The Music Man Fran and Sheldrake have a conversation in a Chinese restaurant, in the booth nearest to the back, that reveals how Fran is torn about their relationship (in a nice touch, the piano man in the restaurant plays “Jealous Lover” upon Fran’s entrance). It is the first date between Fran and Sheldrake in six weeks. Sheldrake tells her, “It's been hell...You don't know what it's like, standing next to you in that elevator, day after day. Good morning, Miss Kubelik. Good night, Mr. Sheldrake. I'm so crazy about you, Fran...I never said goodbye, Fran.” Wise to Sheldrake’s pleas, Fran retorts, “For a while there, you try kidding yourself that you're going with an unmarried man. Then one day, he keeps looking at his watch, and asks you if there's any lipstick showing, then rushes out to catch the 7:14 to White Plains. So you fix yourself a cup of instant coffee—and you sit there by yourself, and you think—and it all begins to look so ugly…What do you want from me?” Sheldrake tells Fran that he wants her back. He tells her that he is getting a divorce from his wife. Still, Fran is unfazed. “They got it on a long-playing record now. Music to String Her Along By. My wife doesn't understand me. We haven't gotten along for years. You're the best thing that ever happened to me.” Finally, Sheldrake plays his trump card: he will promise to divorce his wife if Fran promises to tell him that she loves him. With resignation, Fran says, “You know I do.” This is a woman trapped between what her heart is telling her and what her conscience knows is right. All the while, Wilder cuts to Bud waiting in the theater lobby for Fran. He has been stood up. As Sheldrake and Fran leave the restaurant, he hails a cab to take the pair to Bud’s apartment.

Six more weeks pass, and Bud and Fran do not talk to one another until the Consolidated Life Christmas party (on Christmas Eve). His anger toward Fran for standing him up has subsided considerably, going so far as forgiving her. Bud tells Fran: “I mean, when you're having a drink with one man, you can't suddenly walk out on him because you're having another date with another man. You did the only decent thing.” Fran tells Bud that she is “no Girl Scout”. Bud will hear nothing of it, saying “as far as I'm concerned, you're tops, I mean, decency-wise, and otherwise-wise.” While Bud forgives Fran, secrets are also spilled under the influence of alcohol. Miss Olsen (Edie Adams), Sheldrake’s secretary, has seen Sheldrake parade his mistresses in front of her desk for the past four years; she was, in fact part of the parade at one time. A conversation is all it takes for Miss Olsen to dispel Fran’s fantasies.

Miss Olsen: Hi. How's the branch manager from Kansas City?
Fran: I beg your pardon?
Miss Olsen: I'm Miss Olsen, Mr. Sheldrake's secretary...You don't have to play innocent with me. He used to tell his wife I was the branch manager from Seattle, four years ago when we were having a little ring-a-ding-ding.
Fran: I'm sorry; I don't know what you're talking about.
Miss Olsen: And before me, there was Miss Rossi in Auditing, and after me there was Miss Koch in Disability, and right before you, there was Miss, uhm, oh What's-Her-Name, on the twenty-fifth floor...You haven't done anything. It's him—oh, what a salesman! Always the last booth in the Chinese restaurant—and the same pitch about divorcing his wife—and in the end, you wind up with egg foo yong on your face.

Fran can no longer take it, and seeks out some comfort from Bud. He proudly shows her his new office, where there is a Christmas card from Sheldrake—pictured with his wife, sons, and dog—open on Bud’s desk. Fran begins to cry. When she goes to reapply her makeup, Bud notices Fran is using a compact—he recognizes a fleur-de-lis pattern—that he returned to Sheldrake after he used the apartment. He pieces together that Sheldrake and Fran have been having an affair. Both Bud and Fran leave the party disillusioned; Bud seeks comfort in booze at a dive bar, Fran leaves with Sheldrake to the apartment.

Back at the apartment, Sheldrake and Fran exchange gifts. She gives him a record. Sheldrake tells Fran that he cannot spend much time with her, that he has to be home because his in-laws are there, and that he is obligated to spend Christmas Eve with his family. Miss Olsen’s words prove prophetic—Sheldrake is the master salesman, and he has been stringing Fran along. He tells her, “When you've been married to a woman for twelve years, you just don't sit down at the breakfast table and say, 'Pass the sugar, I want a divorce.' It's not that easy. Anyway, this is the wrong time. The kids are home from school. My in-laws are visiting for the holidays. I can't bring it up now.” Fran knows now that there will never be a good time for Sheldrake to broach the subject of divorce with his wife. “You'd think I would have learned by now - when you're in love with a married man, you shouldn't wear mascara,” Fran says acknowledging the futility of her relationship. Sheldrake drives the stake Fran’s heart when he gives her his gift—a one hundred dollar bill. “You go and buy yourself something,” Sheldrake tells Fran, proving to her (and the audience) that she is no more than a prostitute in his eyes.

The theme of prostitution, or as is the case with Bud and Fran, of compromising one’s morals to attain a personal goal, runs deep in The Apartment. Bud has prostituted himself by turning his home into a hotel with rates by the hour. He isn’t a second administrative assistant; he is a scheduling manager for a brothel. Fran has it even worse. She has convinced herself that if she loves a married man enough, that he will return that love and marry her. Yet how much does it really weigh on her mind that if she receives a marriage proposal from Sheldrake, she will play a part destroying a family. Never mind that Sheldrake has made a farce of his wedding vows for years, Fran knows she is doing something morally compromising, and chooses to do it anyway. Simply because Sheldrake cheats on his wife does not mean that Fran should allow him to cheat on his wife with her. Bud—a single man with whom she shares a mutual attraction—could be a good man for her, but she deludes herself into thinking that Sheldrake will change. When Sheldrake gives her the $100, all he is doing is exposing Fran for what she has been in his eyes—a whore. What is worse is that Fran, until that moment (and this is true of Miss Olsen and the other women who the bosses cheat with) was lower than a whore. At least a prostitute is paid for her services.

The remainder of The Apartment seeks redemption for both Bud and Fran. In doing so, Wilder and Diamond’s script masterfully changes in tone—a move that would sink less assured screenwriters (and in Wilder’s case, director), but here is where the film truly becomes something memorable.

On the same Christmas Eve, bud returns to his apartment inebriated, with an equally lush date in tow. Upon entering his bedroom, he sees Fran passed out on his bed, having overdosed on a bottle of sleeping pills. At first, Bud is incensed at the sight of Miss Kubelik, but he soon realizes that Fran's health is critical. He dismisses his date (and really, what can the poor guy do to get laid in his own apartment?), and raps on the door of Dr. Dreyfuss. Dreyfuss already has a low opinion of Bud, and when the doctor spots a note lying next to the bed; he assumes that Bud has driven Fran to attempt suicide. Bud pleas with Dreyfuss to revive Fran, and he begrudgingly does so. The resuscitation is staged with such intensity that there is considerable doubt to Fran’s survival; the scene also helps jolt the film from being a lighthearted adultery comedy to a potentially tragic suicide drama.

Finally, Dreyfuss gives Bud a piece of his mind: “As your neighbor, I'd like to kick your keister clear around the block! I don't know what you did to that girl in there, and don't tell me, but it was bound to happen, the way you carry on. Live now, pay later. Diner's Club! Why don't you grow up, Baxter? Be a mensch! You know what that means? A mensch—a human being!” Dreyfuss has been incorrect in assuming Bud is a playboy, yet he rightly points out that Bud’s callous behavior reflects a lack of compassion for humanity. Bud may not have broken Fran’s heart, but he has created the environment for heartbreak. He is indirectly responsible for Fran’s suicide attempt.

Over the next few days, as Fran convalesces, a relationship slowly begins to develop between Bud and Fran. They spend Christmas together. They both speak of their failed romances. They play gin rummy. Fran tells of how she came to live in New York and become an elevator operator. Bud cooks spaghetti for her; the scene where Bud uses a tennis racket to strain the noodles is a great, pure example of a bachelor taking sublime pleasure in cooking a meal for the woman he loves for the first time, and Lemmon plays it perfectly. Bud tells her, “Me, I used to live like Robinson Crusoe, I mean shipwrecked among eight million people. Then, one day I saw a footprint in the sand, and there you were. It's a wonderful thing, dinner for two.” Bud is clearly in love with Fran; she though, remains cool, and says, “Why can't I ever fall in love with somebody nice like you?” Bud’s reply: “That’s the way it crumbles, cookie-wise.”

Meanwhile, back at Consolidated, change is afoot. Winning the Boss-of-the-Year Award, Sheldrake fires Miss Olsen for revealing his adulterous history to Fran. She serves him up with a sharp reply—“You let me go four years ago, Jeff. Only you were cruel enough to make me sit out there and watch the new models pass by."—and as a parting gift, she tells Mrs. Sheldrake about her husband’s infidelities. As a result, Mrs. Sheldrake begins divorce proceedings, and Sheldrake is kicked out of his home, living out of his suitcases at the men-only Athletic Club. Sheldrake—who was too cowardly to ask for the divorce himself—couldn’t be happier, and with the barrier of family no longer in place, he intends to rekindle his relationship with Fran. As a result, Bud is again rewarded with a promotion and the most symbolic gift of all—a key to the executive washroom.

Still, this isn’t a no-strings-attached promotion, and Sheldrake expects to continue to be allowed use of the apartment. Upon hearing this, Bud finally understands what it means to be a mensch. Sheldrake is shocked, telling Bud, “It takes years to work your way up to the 27th floor, but it only takes 30 seconds to be out on the street again.” Bud is no longer threatened. He passes the key to the executive washroom back to Sheldrake (who initially mistakes it for the key to the apartment), saying “I won’t be needing it, because I’m all washed up around here.”

On New Year’s Eve, a furious Sheldrake carries his anger over into a meeting with Fran in the Chinese restaurant. Sheldrake bitterly complains, "Just walked out on me, quit, threw that big fat job right in my face...that little punk, after all I did for him. Said I couldn't bring anybody to the apartment, especially not Miss Kubelik." Finally, this allows Fran to see that Bud is the right man for her. She tells Sheldrake, “I guess that’s the way it crumbles, cookie-wise.” She leaves a dumbfounded Sheldrake alone as revelers in the restaurant sing Auld Lang Syne.

The final scene is handled with remarkable restraint and perhaps a sly bit of skepticism. Fran, jubilant, runs down the street to Bud’s apartment. She finds him there alone with a bottle of champagne. Bud can hardly believe Fran is at his door. They resolve to move on to "another neighborhood, another town, another job." Regardless of where they end up, they know they will be together. Those who were once alone have found another person to share a meal with. They play another hand of gin rummy, and Bud finally tells Fran, “I love you, Miss Kubelik.” She remains reticent, almost stone faced, and continues to play the game. Bud tells her, “Did you hear what I said, Miss Kubelik? I absolutely adore you.” Her response is a fantastic one liner that closes the film: “Shut up and deal.”

What makes the ending perfect is that Wilder doesn’t immediately give the audience the saccharine conclusion they expect. Bud doesn’t kiss Fran in a moment of passion—in fact, our lovers are never seen kissing in the film—he only tells her he loves her, and she appears to be ignoring him. What Wilder knows is that the corny ending, the saccharine embrace, the give-over to romance is not in character for Bud and Fran. These are two weary souls, recovering from loneliness. Bud has told Fran he loves her; we know Fran loves him, when she surprises him on New Year’s Fran gives Bud all the acknowledgement of love he will ever need. The rummy game is a metaphor, for these two people have literally laid out all of their cards on the table to each other. All that remains is to shut up, and deal with it.

The Apartment signals a trend in film where romance is rejected in favor of realism. Bud and Fran don’t have a “meet cute” scene. They never go on a date. Neither of them makes a grand gesture of love to win the other over; their consciences come to the conclusion that they should be together. What they do understand is that each has made the other a whole human being. They no longer have to be lonely among eight million. The remainder of their lives is what they will have to deal with.

The 1960’s film that most embraces the notion of rejecting romanticism in favor of idealism is The Graduate. Ben whisks Elaine away—on her wedding day—in spectacular fashion. But when the young lovers board that bus together, Dustin Hoffman and Katherine Ross give the audience some two of the most quizzical and unsettled looks ever seen on film, and the audience isn’t left with happily ever after, instead, the characters seem to be saying, “Did I just really do that?” Wilder doesn’t end The Apartment on anywhere near of ambiguous of a notion, but neither does he give us the happily ever after we expect. He lets Fran do the speaking for him: “Shut up and deal.” He is saying that relationships are not always filled with fun and romance; they’re not an evening frolic in a bachelor’s apartment. In The Apartment, a true relationship is the one where two people grow into being better human beings. Wilder lets us know not to expect happily ever after, and in fact, we may be better off rejecting that notion.

“Shut up and deal” is an excellent way to view the Best Picture winners of the 1960’s. The Oscar winning films of the decade are monstrous and eternally popular and smaller, intimate and character driven. The best films are the ones that deal with the issues the characters—and by extension American society—face. The Apartment is one for the time capsule.

DETAILS

The Apartment (1960)

Director: Billy Wilder

Starring: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Jack Kruschen, Ray Walston, Edie Adams, David Lewis, Naomi Stevens

Studio: United Artists

Total Oscars: 5 (Best Picture—Billy Wilder, Best Director—Wilder, Best Original Screenplay—Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond*, Best Art Direction (called Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black & White at the time), Best Editing) out of 10 nominations (Best Actor—Jack Lemmon, Best Actress—Shirley MacLaine, Best Supporting Actor—Jack Kruschen, Best Cinematography (B&W), Best Sound)

*The acceptance speech given by Wilder and Diamond for winning Best Screenplay proves the axiom; brevity is the soul of wit. Diamond said, “Thank you Billy Wilder.” Wilder said, “Thank you I.A.L. Diamond.”

NEXT BLOG: West Side Story

Marty: Small Screen Roots, Big Screen Brilliance

Robert Redford’s 1994 film Quiz Show (which, by the way, received a Best Picture nomination) recreated the competition between nebbish Jew Herbie Stempel and handsome Gentile Charles Van Doren on the 1950’s Jeopardy!-style game show Twenty-One. In the film, the producers of the show have rigged the results to enhance the drama and create a national sensation. While both Stempel and Van Doren are brilliant men in their own right, each is seduced by the allure of fame and willingly plays along with the deception of the show; they are fed the answers and taught how to play up the drama. Stempel, the reigning champion as the film begins, does not have the star quality the executives on the show really want. He’s nerdy, a bit uncouth, too nebbish, and most unforgivably in the eyes of the anti-Semitic producers: too Jewish. Van Doren is photogenic, handsome, and comes from a wealthy family. Twenty-One’s producers see him as marketable and appealing. When Stempel and Van Doren clash, Stempel is told to throw the game. The decisive question: What movie won Best Picture in 1955 (Quiz Show is set in 1956, so the answer is a gimme)? The answer Stempel must give: On the Waterfront.

For Stempel, answering On the Waterfront instead of Marty is very nearly a deal breaker. He claims that it was his favorite film, he has seen it several times, and would consider it an indignity to answer that question wrong. Although Stempel does eventually compromise, when you watch Marty, it becomes clear why Stempel idolizes the picture. Marty describes himself as an ugly man. Unlovable. Painfully ordinary. Marty’s ordinariness becomes his endearing quality, and in Marty, men and women like Herbie Stempel found a kindred spirit. For once, a film showed one needn’t look like a matinee idol to find love and happiness. Of all the films ever awarded Best Picture, Marty is unquestionably the smallest in scale, yet in its celebration of the ordinary man, it proves to have the biggest heart.

Ironically enough, Marty began its life on television. The story originally debuted on television, broadcast on The Goodyear Television Playhouse on May 24th, 1953. (Another irony—The Goodyear Television Playhouse, like Twenty-One, were both programs on NBC, proving that both quality and corruption can exist on a single network.) The Goodyear Television Playhouse brought serious works of drama and theater to the home audience in a one hour program. Works popular on Broadway were condensed along with standalone original material. Marty, one of the latter, was scripted by Paddy Chayefsky (who is most famous for his searing script for Network) and proved to be quite successful and stood out amongst the fare it was aired with.

What is significant about Marty was that it went against the grain in terms of how Hollywood viewed television. TV was seen as a very serious threat to the movie studios in the 1950’s. Why would audiences pay good money to go out and see a movie when they can be entertained at home? Hollywood answered by giving audiences massive, spectacular films that television could not hope to recreate. This was the decade of the musical, of the epic, of the films adapted from great works of literature. Look at some of Marty’s Best Picture predecessors—An American in Paris, The Greatest Show on Earth, and From Here to Eternity fill out the bill for musicals, epics, and literary adaptations. Even All About Eve and On the Waterfront, with their marquee casts, pedigree filmmakers, and universal themes are larger than life in their own right, and could only work as feature films. In a decade of filmmaking where gigantic storytelling and gimmickry was seen as an absolute need (don’t forget, that the 1950’s were also the decade where 3-D, widescreen, and forgettable gimmicks like Aroma-vision were developed), Marty is tiny, unadorned and honest.

(Hell, the film was rumored to be a tax write-off for its producers, Harold Hecht and the actor Burt Lancaster. What bigger indicator of a throwaway project than that. In fact, in the trailer for Marty, Lancaster is seen introducing the picture, lending it some star power although Lancaster does not appear in a frame of the film itself. It is as if Lancaster doesn’t believe the story alone will sell the picture. Ultimately, when Marty became a critical and financial success—the film made back nearly ten times its budget—it made history as being the only film for which the Oscar campaign mounted for the picture cost more than the actual film itself. ($400,000 campaign budget against a $343,000 production budget, though it does seem like producers spend what it costs to make their film on many Oscar campaigns in recent history.))

Director Delbert Mann’s film traces roughly thirty-six hours in the life of its titular protagonist, butcher Marty Piletti (Ernest Borgnine). Marty is a lifelong bachelor in his thirties who lives at home with his overbearing Italian-American mother (Esther Minciotti) in the Bronx. Though Marty is a hard and dependable worker with a secure job, he has a grand total of zero romantic prospects. Partially due to his looks—Marty describes himself as a “fat, ugly man” (the stocky, round-faced Borgnine isn’t quite as hideous as his character describes himself as, but Borgnine is certainly not cut from traditional leading man cloth like his producer and From Here to Eternity co-star Lancaster)—and partially due to the constant browbeating he faces from his mother, Marty has become a large, decent man with absolutely no self-esteem. Marty is all-too aware of the price he has paid for his decency: “You don’t get to be good-hearted by accident. You get kicked around long enough; you become a professor of pain.”

Despite the fact that Marty has resigned himself to bachelorhood, Mrs. Piletti constantly harangues her eldest son into finding a girl. The fact that all of Marty’s younger brothers are married yet the oldest son is still single becomes a source of laughter in the community, and in many ways, reflects a failure on the part of Mrs. Piletti. Marty’s lack of romantic prospects becomes the primary source of conflict between mother and son: he is sick of rejection and heartbreak, she wishes to see her son happy. Ironically, Mrs. Piletti is clueless to what actually would make her son happy—some independence, for starters, and a chance to find love on his own terms. Furthermore, Mrs. Piletti secretly doesn’t want Marty to find love; she is absolutely terrified that if Marty does marry, she will be left utterly alone. Marty, in honest and direct terms, spells things out for his mother: “Ma, sooner or later, there comes a point in a man’s life where he’s gotta face facts. And one fact I gotta face is that whatever it is that women like, I ain’t got it.” It is a testament to the strength of Chayefsky’s script and the skilled performances of Borgnine and Minciotti that the lived-in bickering between mother and son—which the audience, is of course, witnessing with fresh eyes—seems eternal.

Mrs. Piletti wins the argument, and she convinces Marty to go to a community dance to meet women. Marty has his best friend Angie (Joe Mantell), tag along. Angie is an equally luckless bachelor, and when Marty says “I’ve been looking for a girl every Saturday night of my life,” one senses that the statement applies to Angie with the same fidelity, and that both men are burnt out in their search for female companionship. Again, Borgnine and Mantell make it appear that Marty and Angie have been best friends for a long time, and that their shared motivation for going to the dance springs not from the prospect of meeting women—both men dread the prospect of doing so by this point, they have a shared hopelessness in that regard—but simply because going out is a far better alternative than staying in and doing nothing and being bored. When the friends ask each other “So, what do you feel like doing tonight?”/ “What do you want to do tonight?” (This line became a 1950’s catchphrase), their fruitless search for women becomes a mundane, rote part of their weekly routines.

At the dance, Marty is unsurprisingly rejected when he asks a woman to dance. He wanders off by himself, and meets a 29-year old schoolteacher named Clara (Betsy Blair). Clara came with a couple and hoped to be set up with a man they were acquainted with, but Clara’s date has stood them up. Clara is called “a dog” by other men at the dance (Angie included), though if Clara has any strikes against her appearance, it is that she is spectacularly ordinary (Blair, while certainly no “dog”, benefits from her plain appearance in this role). Marty, sensing a kindred spirit begins to talk to Clara, and though both parties are apprehensive—Clara especially so—Marty finds that the pair have much in common. On a surface level, both are relatively committed to their careers and both live with and are devoted to their parents (with Clara, it is her father). On a deeper level, both Marty and Clara intuit that they are both people who have resigned themselves to never falling in love. Their shared outlook provides a foundation for the pair to begin a relationship.

Eventually, Clara and Marty warm to each other. Both Borgnine and Blair have, like every successful romantic pairing in the movies, perfect chemistry. In this case, things start perfectly awkward and timid. Borgnine and Blair understand that Marty and Clara have both been hurt in the past, both fear rejection and loneliness, and both can hardly believe that there is another person out there who feels the way the other does. Eventually, Marty and Clara warm up to each other, and both have found what has eluded them throughout adulthood: a potential partner. They spend the evening together, out so late that Marty has to take a taxi home after ushering Clara to her doorstep because the trains have stopped running. Marty kisses Clara as he leaves, and in a sublime movie moment, he giddily dances down the middle of the street. Borgnine makes this large, oafish man twinkle-toed, the picture of utter happiness. Marty’s dance down the street after his date with Clara is a moment as equally joyful as Jimmy Stewart running down the main street in Bedford Falls at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life, and frankly, the moment should be equally as famous.

The next day, Marty tells his mother how his date went and is met with reservation. It is here that Mrs. Piletti’s fears of abandonment are made explicit, and she puts it in Marty’s mind to renege on the promise he made Clara: to call her the day after the date. The final scene of the film finds Marty in the café that he frequents with Angie. Angie—peeved that Marty left him at the dance without telling him where he was going—also doesn’t approve of Marty’s matchup with Clara. Marty though, sees through Angie’s anger and realizes that Clara represents an opportunity at love that he would be foolish to throw away (Mantell also plays the role with a touch of obvious jealousy, and like Mrs. Piletti, the fear of abandonment is writ large over his face). Marty tells Angie:

“You don’t like her. My mother don’t like her. She’s a dog and I’m a fat, ugly man. Well, all I know is I had a good time last night. I’m gonna have a good time tonight. If we have enough good times together, I’m gonna get down on my knees and I’m gonna beg that girl to marry me. If we have a party on New Year’s, I got a date for that party. You don’t like her? That’s too bad. Hey Ange, when are you going to get married?”

The final moments of the film have Marty inside a telephone booth, making good on his promise to call Clara.

Marty is an honest film dealing with ordinary love. Atypical of romantic films, Marty does not adhere to the characteristics of its genre. Unlike It Happened One Night—a film I would categorize as prototypical—Marty doesn’t have leads who “meet cute” (and they certainly aren’t played by marquee stars like Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert—Borgnine and Blair are character actors). They are a pair of kindred spirits, not opposites who attract. Marty and Clara are very much, almost painfully ordinary, unlike Peter Warne, who is popular and likable, and Ellie Andrews, who is essentially a princess. Marty and Clara don’t have glamorous jobs—they’re a butcher and a teacher, not a star reporter and heiress. There is no love at first sight, a sweeping off the feet, or a mad dash for the marriage altar. There is simply a promise to make a follow-up date that is adhered to, a possibility of happiness. In Marty, there is romance but there is no bullshit.

And really, how many real-life romances and couplings are as zany as the movies make them out to be? Do any of us meet our spouses-to-be under wacky circumstances or are they more mundane? Do we really fall immediately in swooning love? Are we really attracted to our bickering opposites—and I’m not talking in a lustful manner here, I think everyone in some manner has a physical attraction to otherness—or when we seek out someone for a long-term relationship, do we look more for partners with whom there are shared characteristics? Do first dates go smoothly or awkwardly? Marty always errs on the side of realistic answers to those questions.

Reality is what attracted Herbie Stempel to the film. Marty showed that an ordinary man—one who, God forbid, may be considered a bit of a loser—resigned to bachelorhood can defy the odds and find a soul mate. (And another great thing about the film: it neither judges nor celebrates Marty and Clara’s resignation to be single; it presents it as it is. If anyone is condemned in the film it is Mrs. Piletti and Angie, who try and force Marty to act in ways that go against his heart.) Stempel was an ordinary guy—God forbid, a bit of a loser too—who also defied the odds and got to win money on a game show. The film resonated with ordinary folks worldwide. The French loved Marty; it was one of only two Best Picture winners that also received the Palme d’Or, top prize at the Cannes Film Festival (Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend is the other film).

Marty is a testament to the virtues of realism and honesty. It says that what is ordinary is also beautiful.


DETAILS

Marty (1955)

Director: Delbert Mann

Starring: Ernest Borgnine, Betsy Blair, Joe Mantell, Esther Minciotti

Studio: United Artists

Total Oscars: 4 (Best Picture*—Harold Hecht, Best Director—Delbert Mann, Best Actor—Ernest Borgnine, Best Adapted Screenplay—Paddy Chayefsky) from 8 total nominations (Best Supporting Actor—Joe Mantell, Best Supporting Actress—Betsy Blair, Best Art Direction (B&W), Best Cinematography (B&W)
*At 91 minutes, Marty is the shortest film to ever win Best Picture

NEXT BLOG: Around the World in 80 Days

It Happened One Night: K.I.S.S.

It Happened One Night: K.I.S.S.

Director: Frank Capra

Starring: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly, Jameson Thomas

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Total Oscars: 5 wins (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay) from 5 nominations

Thus far, the films I have discussed have had an air of self-importance about them. Whether they are historical spectacles, dramas with an all star cast, technical marvels, or films making political statements—each of the previous six films to win Best Picture were in some ways designed to be important pictures, flagships for their studios. It Happened One Night was seen as just another one of the fifty-two pictures a studio would release each year. This was not a film from which all-time greatness was expected. Yet, thanks largely to director Frank Capra, who—in adhering to the mantra Keep It Simple, Stupid—made the first film to sweep the five major Academy Awards and set a rarely matched standard for the romantic comedy.

To tell the story of It Happened One Night, it is necessary to tell the story of its studio, Columbia Pictures. Today, Columbia is now owned by Sony, and is considered to be one of the premier studios in Hollywood, but in the 1930’s it was considered to be on “Poverty Row”. Poverty Row studios were home to films and shorts that could be cheaply made—lots of Westerns, romances, exploitation films—and unlike a major studio, Columbia could not afford to keep a large roster of major stars under contract. MGM referred to Columbia as “Siberia”. While Columbia’s status as a minor studio can be in some part attributed to its owner—the notorious meddler and fussbudget Harry Cohn—in many ways it was the perfect place for an ambitious director to operate free of the expectations and baggage that often came when staging a gargantuan production at a major.

Capra began his career in Hollywood in 1915 working as a prop man. The Sicilian-American filmmaker bounced around several production companies—directing documentaries and silent films before landing with Columbia in 1928. Capra had a reputation for making films quickly and economically while retaining a strong voice and style. While MGM made pictures that celebrated royalty and opulence, Capra’s films with Columbia were characterized by depicting ordinary Americans (and later, his work would become unabashedly sentimental and patriotic). He frequently collaborated with screenwriter Robert Riskin, and the source material for It Happened One Night came from a source wholly opposite of the great and popular novels the major studios had access to—a short story, “Bus Stop” written for Cosmopolitan magazine.

For whatever reason—the status of Columbia as a Poverty Row studio, the lack of prestige in the source material, a script that called for only a few costume changes for the leading lady (in the film Ellie Andrews wears only four outfits—a nightgown, the traveling suit, Peter Warne’s pajamas and a wedding gown), or simple disdain for the script (many actors are quoted as saying it was the worst thing they had ever read)—Capra could not attract a star to his production. Clark Gable—easily MGM’s biggest leading man and arguably the biggest star of the decade—was loaned to Columbia for $2500 dollars per week. Unlike reports that say Gable was lent to Columbia as punishment, the actor was moved for simple profit. At the time the film was being made, MGM did not have a project lined up for Gable, and he was being paid $2000 a week to sit on his ass and do nothing. MGM made an extra $500 bucks a week by loaning Gable to Columbia, and Capra had his male lead.

Finding Gable’s opposite was much more problematic. Capra originally wanted Myrna Loy, but she hated the script. Several other actresses turned the part down, for a variety of reasons. Constance Bennett wanted to do it, but also wished to produce the film herself. Carole Lombard (who received a marriage proposal from Robert Rifkin and would later be the future Mrs. Clark Gable) had a scheduling conflict. Bette Davis wanted the role, but was under contract to Warner Brothers and Jack Warner did not want to have the career of one of his leading ladies diminished by appearing in the film and refused to loan her.

Ultimately, Harry Cohn suggested Claudette Colbert, who after making a disastrously unsuccessful silent picture with Capra in 1927, vowed to never work with the director again. Urgently needing a leading lady, Colbert’s demands were met. She was paid a salary of $50,000 dollars to make the picture, along with the demand that filming be completed in four weeks to accommodate a pre-planned vacation. Her salary represented over a sixth of the film’s estimated $325,000 dollar budget, meaning that Capra not only had to work economically, but also on a limited timeframe.

He also had to deal with a couple of unhappy costars. Both Gable and Colbert were reluctant to be filming the picture at all, but Gable was eventually won over by the director and tried his best to have fun with Colbert, playing practical jokes on her and encouraging a lighthearted mood on set. While Gable was able to establish a rapport with Colbert, she generally acted like a haughty bitch on set. One example of her legendary bitchiness involved filming the famous hitchhiking scene, where Ellie outsmarts Peter by pulling up her skirt and flashing her leg to flag down a ride. Colbert outright refused to do the scene—in the 1930’s, flashing a leg was equated with flashing a breast—but upon seeing the leg double Colbert became indignant, harrumphing “That’s not my leg!” and ultimately filming the scene herself. Even after the film was wrapped Colbert expressed her displeasure with the picture, remarking to her friends “I just finished the worst picture in the world.” But hey, fifty grand buys away discomfort.

Ultimately, it is Capra who made the film a success. In many ways, having to win over Colbert during filming mirrors the plot of the reporter ultimately winning over the reluctant heiress. Whatever tricks Capra and Gable used to make Colbert cooperative worked, because in the picture she is charming, funny and gorgeous. Ellie Andrews is also a bitch herself, but when matched with Peter Warne played by the cocksure Gable, it is easy to see why she melts for him (and he too for her). Gable and Colbert define movie star chemistry on screen. It is a foregone conclusion from the moment the characters meet that they will fall in love by picture’s end; the joy in the film is seeing how the actors play off one another. Capra was wise to give the film an uncluttered feel. The sets are very simple—a bus, simple hotel rooms, a car. Even the Andrews mansion at the end is understated. This allows the audience to focus on the actors and the wittiness of Riskin’s script (Example—Ellie: “You’ve been telling me what to do ever since I can remember.” Her Father: “That’s because you’ve always been a stubborn idiot.” Ellie: “I come from a long line of stubborn idiots.” Also: Ellie: “I proved once and for all that the limb is mightier than the thumb.” Peter: “Why didn’t you take off all your clothes? You could have stopped forty cars.” Ellie: “Oh, I’ll remember that when we need forty cars.”).

The story is also uncomplicated. Ellie, an heiress whose life has always been controlled by her father, escapes to elope with a man her father disapproves of. Peter is a newspaper man fired for being a drunk. The father has put out a reward for anyone who can return Ellie to him. Both Ellie and Peter are both headed from Miami to New York and meet on a bus. Ellie is an inexperienced traveler, so Peter agrees to chaperone her—and keep her identity a secret by posing as a married couple—if he is allowed an exclusive scoop to his former employer. On the way there the opposites attract and they fall in love. Simple stuff, beautifully and perfectly executed by cast, screenwriter and director.

Initially, It Happened One Night was only mildly successful in the first run theaters. In the 1930’s films played the venues in the larger cities first then rolled out to the rest of the country (a practice commonly used today by independent or prestige films). During the second run of the film It Happened One Night became a runaway smash. I think a huge reason for the popularity of the film with rural America was that it took time to showcase the Depression era. The characters in the film are all, in one way or another, down on their luck. Even Ellie—spoiled rich girl personified—has to wait in line to use the showers at the motels. Ellie also shows tremendous kindness, giving the last of their money to a mother and child in need, even after Peter chastises her for it. Many characters are driven to odd extremes. The driver who picks up Peter and Ellie actually robs them, inverting the cliché of hitchhikers being dangerous to drivers. As the scene plays out, Capra is sympathetic to the robber. The fact that two of Hollywood’s hugest stars were slumming it to make the picture endeared them to the ordinary moviegoer. Capra makes Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert just like us, and because they are like us, we make a greater emotional investment into their relationship. The film ended up becoming the biggest hit Columbia had to date.

The momentum gained by the film carried all the way into the Oscar ceremony, where it won every award it was nominated for and swept the five major categories (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay). It Happened One Night singlehandedly raised the prestige of Columbia Pictures, lifting the studio out of poverty row and establishing Capra as a major director (he would win two other Best Director Oscars in the 1930’s). Funnily enough—and true to bitchy form—Colbert was still unimpressed with the picture. On the day of the Oscar ceremony, she was so sure she wasn’t going to win (ironically, Bette Davis was the favorite in a write-in campaign), that she made travel arrangements instead. Upon her victory, Harry Cohn had Colbert dragged off her train and she accepted her Oscar in a business suit, not forgetting to thank Frank Capra in her acceptance speech. Gable, in a noble gesture, gave his Oscar away to a young boy who admired it, saying that the winning of the award mattered more than the statuette (the Oscar was returned to the Gable estate after his death, ended up being purchased by Steven Spielberg in an auction, and he donated it to the Motion Picture Academy).

So, seventy-six years later, does It Happened One Night hold up? Absolutely. Many film critics bemoan the lack of great romantic comedies being made. I agree. The vast majority of the films released in the genre today are uniformly insipid and charmless, the entire story can be gleaned from the trailer, and more often than not the films feed consumer interests by having a soundtrack filled with pop hits and designer clothes. When an audience goes to see a movie to admire the wardrobe of the actresses, which is a sign of a terrible film. Unfortunately, the clothes are often the most interesting part, with the plots of the films being ridiculous and stupid, the actresses relying on the usual shticks of being overworked and underappreciated (Meg Ryan, Jennifer Aniston, Katherine Heigl, Sarah Jessica Parker and Sandra Bullock are the worst offenders of this), the leading men indistinguishable, there is a montage where someone sings into a hairbrush, and the biggest laugh comes from the heroine falling in the mud.

Modern audiences that have never seen It Happened One Night may probably think it is filled with clichés, but let’s face it; Capra’s film invented the clichés. Maybe—and that is a big maybe—ten romantic comedies since its release have been the equal of It Happened One Night. I daresay that none have surpassed its quality.

This is one of the finest films to ever be awarded Best Picture—easily the best film of the 1930’s accorded the honor—and when I make a list ranking all of the Best Picture Oscar winners, It Happened One Night will be amongst the top five. Next time you (or your girlfriend or wife, and girlfriends and wives, listen up) want to check out the latest romantic comedy at the multiplex (or are dragged there), resist the notion, stay in, and watch It Happened One Night instead. It is well worth 105 minutes of your time.