Summary
As Baxter goes off to talk to the representatives in Personnel, Ms. Kubelik walks over to him and pins the flower that she wears on her collar onto his collar, wishes him luck, and gets back on the elevator. Baxter goes into Mr. Sheldrake’s office expectantly, and Mr. Sheldrake’s secretary scolds him for not answering his phone, before directing him to Mr. Sheldrake’s office. When Baxter goes into Mr. Sheldrake’s office, Mr. Sheldrake invites him to sit down and begins telling him about all the wonderful things that different businessmen have been saying about him. Noting that two different businessmen in two different departments want Baxter to come work with them, Mr. Sheldrake asks, “Tell me, Baxter, what is it that makes you so popular?” When Baxter says that he doesn’t know, Sheldrake tells him to “Think!” before telling Baxter, “Look, Baxter, I'm not stupid. I know everything that goes on in this building, in every department, on every floor, every day of the year…What kind of joint are you running?” Baxter feigns ignorance, as Sheldrake references the key to Baxter’s apartment that has been cycling through the men in the office.
Baxter tries to explain, lying that he uses his apartment as a place where businessmen can change and freshen up on their ways to events and meetings. Sheldrake doesn’t buy it, and wants to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. Frantically, Baxter assures Sheldrake that no one will use his apartment anymore. “Where is your apartment, Baxter?” asks Sheldrake, and Baxter tells him, before assuring Sheldrake that he is relieved to finally be done with the business with his apartment. “How do you usually do the key?” asks Sheldrake and Baxter tells him he gives the key to the man at the office, and then the man leaves it under the mat. Suddenly, they are interrupted by Sheldrake’s secretary, who has called to inform him that his wife is on the line returning his call. As Sheldrake picks up the call from his wife, his secretary puts her hand over the mouthpiece and eavesdrops. As Sheldrake speaks to his wife, Baxter tries to sneak out, but Sheldrake notices and keeps him in the office. Sheldrake tells his wife that he’s going to be out for dinner with a branch manager from Kansas City and tells her not to wait up for him, before hanging up and turning back to Baxter and asking if he would like to go see The Music Man that evening. Baxter is confused, thinking that Sheldrake needed the tickets for himself and the branch manager. “I have other plans,” Sheldrake tells him, before giving him both of the tickets. When Baxter tries to decline the theater tickets, insisting that he has a cold and should go home, Sheldrake insists, saying, “Baxter, you’re not reading me. I have other plans.” Baxter is still confused, as Sheldrake makes it clear that he wants to use Baxter’s apartment that evening. Baxter takes out his key, realizing what Sheldrake is implying, as Sheldrake informs him that he will likely be promoted in the next month and asks him to write down his address on a sheet of paper. Sheldrake hands Baxter the theater tickets and dismisses him.
In the lobby, Baxter waits for Ms. Kubelik. Sylvia and another operator come out of the elevator and make their way out of the building, Sylvia complaining about how Mr. Kirkeby took her to “some schnook’s apartment.” After them, Ms. Kubelik comes out, and Baxter tells her that he’s been waiting for her, before asking if she wants to go see The Music Man. She tells him that she’s meeting a man. When Baxter asks her if the date is just a date or if it’s serious, she tells him that it used to be a relationship, but now it’s “more or less kaput.” When Baxter persists, Ms. Kubelik agrees to meet him right before the show in the lobby of the theater. Baxter is excited, has completely forgotten about his cold, and is excited to go out on the town with Ms. Kubelik after the show. He tells her that they can go to a club right around the corner from where she lives in the West Village. “How do you know where I live?” she asks him, startled. Baxter proceeds to rattle off all of the facts he knows about Ms. Kubelik, including whom she lives with, where she was born and when. Ms. Kubelik laughs, charmed by the attention Baxter has paid her. She says her goodbyes and walks away. “8:30!” Baxter yells, watching her go and putting some nasal spray in his nose.
We see Ms. Kubelik coming into a piano bar and walking over to a booth where Mr. Sheldrake is waiting for her. She greets him curtly, and when he tries to take her coat she declines. They sit, as Ms. Kubelik tells him she can’t stay long. “I’ve missed you,” Mr. Sheldrake says, as her drink arrives. He continues: “You don’t know what it’s like standing next to you in that elevator day after day…I was so crazy about you, Fran.” She tells him to stop and that she will remember their two months that summer fondly, but that she has moved on. Growing teary-eyed, she says, “Wife and kids go away to the country and the boss has a fling with the secretary, or the manicurist, or the elevator girl. Come September, the picnic’s over, goodbye! The kids go back to school, the boss goes back to the wife…and the girl…” Mr. Sheldrake tries to tell her that he still loves her, but Fran grows more despondent, remembering how rejected she felt being the “other woman.” “Why do you keep calling me? What do you want from me?” she asks, and Sheldrake tells her he wants her back and has something to tell her. When she asks to hear what he has to tell her, he tells her he wants to take her somewhere, but Fran informs him she has a date.
We see the marquee for The Music Man, and Baxter waits anxiously for Fran. The scene shifts back to the bar where Fran and Sheldrake are having drinks. They reminisce about a weekend they spent together in “a leaky boat,” in which Fran was wearing a “black negligee and a life preserver.” Sheldrake brings up the fact that on that trip he brought of the possibility of his getting a divorce. Fran mocks him for his empty promises, but he tells her that he met with his lawyer that morning to discuss the possibility of making the divorce official. “Let’s get something straight Jeff. I never asked you to leave your wife,” Fran tells him, but Sheldrake assures her that she has nothing to do with it. Fran tells him that she still loves him, as a group of people come into the bar, including Sheldrake’s secretary. Sheldrake insists that they should leave, and his secretary watches them as they walk out of the bar.
Fran and Sheldrake get in a cab to go to Baxter’s apartment. Meanwhile we see Baxter waiting outside the theater for Fran. The following day, Baxter packs up the things on his desk and the man at the desk next to him congratulates him on his promotion. Baxter goes into his new office as triumphant music plays. Before he can even sit down, the businessmen who have used his apartment for their affairs come in and congratulate him on his promotion. One of them tells Baxter that they are disappointed with his ingratitude, however, and want to know why he has suddenly decided not to let them use his apartment anymore. “After all, it’s my apartment, it’s private property, it’s not a public playground,” he tells the men. The men grow less understanding as one of them threatens, “Listen, Baxter, we made you, and we can break you!” Sheldrake enters Baxter’s office and congratulates him, as Baxter ushers out the other businessmen. Sitting down on Baxter’s desk, Sheldrake asks if Baxter is willing to get a second key made.
Baxter agrees, and hands Sheldrake a small compact that Fran left at his apartment; the mirror is broken, and Sheldrake tells Baxter that the woman threw it at him in a fight they had at the apartment. Sheldrake begins complaining about Fran, without mentioning her name, and Baxter nods along as the executive tells him that women always expect too much from a man. “You know, you see a girl a couple times a week, just for laughs, and right away they think you’re gonna divorce your wife. Now I tell you, is that fair?” Sheldrake says. Baxter assures him that it’s not fair, adding, “Especially not to your wife!” Baxter still has no idea that the girl to whom Sheldrake is referring is Fran, and Sheldrake begins to leave, telling Baxter to put him down for Thursday again.
We see the operators wishing people “Merry Christmas!” over the phone, when suddenly Sylvia gets word that there is a “swingin’ party on the 19th floor!” The operators all rush out and we see a party taking place in another part of the office. We see Baxter walking towards the elevator with two drinks and calling for Fran. He hands her a drink, and she tells him that she thought he was avoiding her. “Well, as a matter of fact, I was rather hurt that night you stood me up,” he tells her. “I don’t blame you, it was unforgivable,” she tells him, but he assures her that he’s forgiven her. Baxter invites Fran to come join the party, slapping an “Out of Order” sign on the elevator and taking her arm. As Baxter rambles on about the party, Fran is charmed and asks how many drinks he had. “Three!” he laughs, holding up four fingers. Baxter goes to get another round of drinks as Sheldrake’s secretary approaches Fran and calls her “the branch manager from Kansas City.” The secretary explains that she is Sheldrake’s secretary and so Fran doesn’t have to play innocent; “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,” the secretary tells Fran. The secretary lists all of the women that Sheldrake has had affairs with. Baxter returns with drinks, as Fran thanks Sheldrake’s secretary, Ms. Olsen, and Ms. Olsen walks away. Baxter notices that Fran seems upset, and invites her to look at his office. Baxter pulls out a bowler hat and asks Fran what she thinks of it. Fran just scowls, before whispering, “I like it.” Delighted, Baxter invites Fran to go out with him that evening, but Fran tells him she has another engagement. Fran tries to excuse herself to get back to her elevator, but Baxter assures her that he will see she doesn’t get in trouble for leaving the elevator, because he is very close with Mr. Sheldrake. Baxter shows Fran Mr. Sheldrake’s Christmas card to prove that they are close, then promises that he could get Fran a promotion if she wanted it.
Analysis
No matter how serious matters get, the film maintains a comic sparkle, aided mainly by Jack Lemmon’s performance. As C.C. Baxter, Lemmon keeps his eyes wide and expectant, and he finds himself more and more put upon by difficult circumstances as the film progresses. His ease with physical comedy is on full display in Baxter’s meeting with Mr. Sheldrake. Baxter enters the meeting expecting to get news about a promotion, but as he shoots nasal spray in his nose to fight off his cold, Mr. Sheldrake informs him that he knows about the arrangement that Baxter has with his business superiors. Growing more and more anxious, Baxter struggles to come up with adequate excuses for the powerful businessman’s benefit. When Mr. Sheldrake expresses his worry about the news of Baxter’s “joint” “leaking” to the public, Baxter accidentally sprays the nasal spray across the room, just in time with the word “leak.” He cannot help but accidentally reveal his own guilt through his anxious antics, which contrast rather comedically with Mr. Sheldrake’s calm self-assurance.
In a comic turn of events, as soon as Mr. Sheldrake is through scolding Baxter for his having helped businessmen have affairs in his apartment, he requests to use the apartment himself for his own affair. In this way, the hypocrisy and immorality of the Manhattan businessman is satirized and made comic. While Mr. Sheldrake seems like the pinnacle of corporate respectability and honesty, he is just like Mr. Kirkeby and the others. While at the beginning of the meeting he seemed to have looked down on and disapproved of the other businessmen’s ulterior ways, Sheldrake reveals himself to be just as crafty and underhanded in his own dealings. The difference between Sheldrake and the other businessmen is that Sheldrake doesn’t have to explicitly outline his intentions to use the room; rather, he wields his power to promote Baxter in a more suggestive way, and Baxter gets the message loud and clear, handing over the key. The corruption in Baxter’s office runs deep, and even high-level executives need an extra room to carry out their affairs.
The fact that even the high-ranking executive Sheldrake wants in on using Baxter’s apartment for his own affairs (literally), and is willing to promote Baxter in exchange for use of the room, is at The Apartment’s satirical core. The film makes light of corruption and the arbitrary deals that allow businessmen to climb the ranks in the corporate world, exposing an office in which unspoken agreements and personal discretion hold up seemingly-respectable systems of power. All Baxter has to do in order to be promoted in his office is hand over the keys to his apartment. Baxter’s glowing efficiency reports are based on little more than his compliance with the personal secret demands of his employers, and have very little to do with his actual proficiency at his job. Thus, we see that the film seeks to satirize the way that men form bonds and loyalties in business. These bonds have little, in fact, to do with business, the film suggests, and more to do with mutual enablement, a patriarchal agreement to keep quiet about one another’s personal indiscretions.
Matters get even more complicated when it turns out that the woman with whom Mr. Sheldrake is having an affair is Fran Kubelik, the elevator girl, on whom Baxter has a crush. Not only is Mr. Sheldrake asking to use Baxter’s apartment for a clandestine affair, but he is asking to do so with the woman Baxter loves. This is sure to complicate matters quite a bit. While Baxter has been more or less compliant with the demands and needs of the businessmen who want to use his apartment, his jealousy is likely to create a rift in his understanding with Mr. Sheldrake, but he is shielded from this truth for a while. When Fran stands him up on the night she agreed to see the musical, he has no idea that it’s because she is on a date with Mr. Sheldrake. In a state of blissful ignorance, Baxter is momentarily hurt, but soon gets back to pursuing Fran with the same earnest interest as before at the Christmas party.
Sheldrake proves to be an exceedingly deceptive character. While he wields a lot of power and commands a great deal of respect in the company, he treats the women in his life very poorly. At first, we see that he is deceiving his wife by having an affair and calling it a meeting with the branch manager from Kansas. Later, when his secretary approaches Fran at the Christmas party, Fran learns that the deception goes much further. Not only is Sheldrake deceiving his wife, but as an “expert salesman,” he is deceiving all of the women in his life, and cycling through affairs almost seasonally. Fran scowls as the secretary tells her all about Sheldrake’s affairs, realizing that she is being duped by her lover, made to believe that he will actually leave his wife, when in reality he has no intention of doing so. Indeed, in the previous scene, Sheldrake confides in Baxter that he has no intention of getting a divorce, and resents his mistresses’ expectation that he will. Sheldrake is revealed to be a rather unethical character from the first moment he is introduced, in contrast to Baxter, who treats the women in his life with an affable respect.
