Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in “The Apartment” 1960. IMDb photo

Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond’s (That magic team who gave us “Some Like It Hot”) great, immortal love story begins with a wide shot of C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) appearing as one of what appears to be 300 other corporate lemmings, sitting at 300 desks, punching out numbers on 300 tabulators.

MOVIE INFO

“THE APARTMENT”
Comedy, Drama, Romance
A Manhattan insurance clerk tries to rise in his company by letting its executives use his apartment for trysts, but complications and a romance of his own ensue.
Length: 125 minutes
Director: Billy Wilder
Writers: Billy Wilder, I.A.L. Diamond
Stars: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray

It ends with an impromptu card game in a tiny apartment on the Upper West Side of New York City, on New Year’s Eve. That’s why I’m writing this today. I’m letting you in on a deal.

You may be alone tonight with someone you love or parting with someone else, or, your situation is reversed.

Either way, it’s New Year’s Eve, and I’m playing my piano and asking you, “What are you doin’ New Years Eve,” and hoping you’re watching Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in the aforementioned “The Apartment.”

If you’ve never seen or heard of it, I can promise you it is gonna make your New Year’s Eve.

Here’s what it’s about.

C. C. Baxter, (Lemmon) star insurance lemming, is in love with Fran Kubelik (MacLaine), the elevator operator in his 26 floor downtown building.

Each day he gets in her car and tips his hat, makes small talk, smiles shyly and goes to work thinking about her.

Each day at closing he repeats the action.

Before long, in one of the greatest love story/heartbreaking comedies since Ernst Lubitsch’s “The Shop Around the Corner” these two people, in two hours and the last five minutes, will light up your life and the way you look at movies will change.

C.C., eager to rise up in this bloodless insurance company, falls into a classic trap.

He agrees to lend his shabby, little, cluttered West Side apartment to five or six of his superiors, giving each of them a key, hoping they will promote him up the ladder.

Baxter begins stocking booze and goodies, and spending rainy nights at the library and movies, while the married executives entertain their girlfriends.

Eventually, the biggest of them, Mr. Sheldrake, (Fred McMurray), gets wind of this arrangement and wants in.

Sheldrake has an advantage, he really can promote C.C. and does.

There’s a twist, a heartbreaking twist. Sheldrake, a top drawer cad, only has one girlfriend outside of his marriage, and she’s Ms. Kubelik (MacLaine) who runs the elevator and unknowingly holds C.C.’s heart in her cage.

It won’t be long, maybe two hours of film time, before C.C. has to decide what he wants. Fran or the key to the executive bathroom hangs in the air.

The film is filled with old names, most you won’t remember, but you’ll get reacquainted with very fast.

Ray Walston, (“Damn Yankees” 1958) and the wonderful Dr. Dreyfuss (Jack Kruschen for which he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor) as C.C.’s nosy neighbor in the apartment next door, who grows curious about all the empty bottles and food going down the garbage chute.

The very highlight of Wilder’s wonderful, classic New Year’s love story is the last five minutes which I will not give away.

And the line? “ Deal.”

J.P. Devine of Waterville is a former stage and screen actor.