DGA Monthly

The Apartment A PA ST D G A W I N N E R PHOTO: CR E DIT TB D » HOME COOKING: Billy Wilder directs Jack Lemmon how to nurse Shirley MacLaine back to health after she tries to kill herself in The Apartment (1960). After being nominated for his previous features, Sunset Boulevard (1950), Stalag 17 (1953), Sabrina (1954), The Seven Year Itch (1955), Witness for the Prosecution (1957) and Some Like It Hot (1959), 65 years ago the legendary Director Billy Wilder fi nally took home the DGA Award for his romantic comedy The Apartment (1960). The fi lm starred frequent Wilder collaborator Jack Lemmon as C.C. "Buddy Boy" Baxter, a lonely offi ce worker at an insurance company in New York. To climb the corporate ladder, he allows four company executives — including Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), the head of personnel at his fi rm, — to use his Upper West Side apartment to conduct their extramarital affairs. Baxter becomes attracted to Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), an elevator operator in his offi ce building, unaware that she is having an affair with Sheldrake until she overdoses on sleeping pills in his apartment over that relationship. In addition to Wilder's DGA Award win, The Apartment was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won fi ve, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay. Lemmon, MacLaine and Jack Kruschen (who played Dr. David Dreyfuss, Baxter's neighbor who helps him nurse Fran back to life) were nominated for Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor. Regarded as one of the greatest fi lms ever made, in 1994, the Library of Congress selected the fi lm for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically or aesthetically signifi cant." 3 6 I D G A M O N T H L Y

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