The Apartment

Coming in at number 93 on the AFI list is The Apartment, made in 1960, the same year that gave us The Iceman Cometh, The Cape Canaveral Monsters, and The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond.

Actors you've heard of: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine. Actors you'll recognize but may not know: Fred MacMurray and Ray Walston. It's odd to see the father from My Three Sons playing what is technically the bad guy. Evil, no. But very little to recommend him in this movie.

Jack Lemmon is very good as C.C. Baxter, a lovable loser type guy who lets the higher-ups in his company walk all over him. He's a lot of fun to watch on screen and I like the way he interacts with the other characters in the movie. He adapts himself to each relationship very, very well, I think.

If you don't count Cannonball Run II (and you really shouldn't), then the first (and only, it appears) Shirley MacLaine movie I've ever really watched was Steel Magnolias. And she was old then. So seeing her at age 26 and doing a great job as Fran Kubelik is quite a revelation. She was nominated for an Oscar, and deservedly so. Sometimes sassy, sometimes sad, sometimes happy, but always likable and making good use of her face. Ouiser she ain't.

The movie takes its title from the fact that Baxter lets the higher-ups in his company use his apartment for entertaining young ladies. Young ladies who are not their wives, to be precise. Some merriment and much soul-searching ensues. Good movie, well done, well written, well acted. Nice.

Ray Walston was in the great musical South Pacific and went on to do some extensive work in TV for decades, My Favorite Martian, and Picket Fences among his jobs. He was also in The Sting, one of the great con movies ever, Johnny Dangerously, one of the great spoof movies ever, and somehow he ended up in a movie called The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington. I don't even want to know.

The Apartment is good, especially if you like Lemmon and/or MacLaine. They're a joy.