Lemmon is an acquired taste.
Jack Lemmon had a great career, but he was only a Top Ten type star from about 1959 (Some Like It Hot) to, ironically enough, 1968(when he got his biggest payday and his biggest hit in the same movie: "The Odd Couple.")
Lemmon may have overly perfected his high-strung neuroticism with "The Odd Couple." Walter Matthau...so deadpan in comparison as Oscar Madison(so what if he was a slob? He was a GUY, and put up with Felix so damn well) was advanced by "The Odd Couple" to Top Ten stardom for the seventies. Guys of a certain age identified with with the laid-back Matthau, and ladies actually found him attractive, said a "favorite male star" poll. Jack Lemmon, rather nervous and neutered compared to the taller, cooler Matthau, started to channel his emotional intensity into drama: "Save the Tiger," "The China Syndrome," "Missing."...all the way to his heartbreaking work in "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Tuesdays With Morrie."
But back in the fifties, Jack Lemmon's emotional intensity and overdone line readings were lively and fun in a handsome young man. In 1955, Lemmon's comic energy allowed him to steal "Mr. Roberts" from some powerhouse "old guys"(Henry Fonda, James Cagney, William Powell)...and then he broke everybody's hearts reading the letter from Roberts and the death notice from the same mail packet. Oscar, please.
As the fifties moved on, Lemmon played some fairly virile roles, holding his own with some VERY virile actors: Robert Mitchum(Fire Down Below), Glenn Ford(Cowboy), Tony Curtis(Some Like It Hot) and James Stewart(Bell Book and Candle.)
Those other guys were the romantic leads for the most part, but Lemmon was ready to join them. He WAS a virile romantic lead in "Operation Mad Ball" and a "nice guy" romance for Doris Day in 1959's "It Happened to Jane"(even though a more manly but lower-billed Steve Foreest was on hand for his competition.)
All of this is to prepare us for what Jack Lemmon did in "The Apartment," and where he was in his career. Said Time Magazine: "Jack Lemmon has been 'arriving' as a leading man for some years now. With 'The Apartment,' he can be truly said to have arrived.'"
It was true. Lemmon's CC Baxter IS a rather aggravating, high-strung nebbish in the early sequences of "The Apartment" -- and Billy Wilder wants it that way. 1960 audiences KNEW that Lemmon COULD BE more virile(they'd seen "Operation Mad Ball" and "Cowboy"), but Lemmon was such a good actor that he could play CC Baxter as a bit of a doormat and we'd stay with him. We knew that Jack Lemmon was a decent guy; we figured that CC Baxter would get there eventually, too.
Jack's up-tempo timing of line readings was on great display in "The Apartment" early on. Listen to how he says to Ray Walston(trying to get into the apartment with his MM clone for quickie) "There's no cheese crackers!" Vintage Lemmon...quick, crisp, with special delivery on the line.
Like a lot of us, CC Baxter is "compartmentalized": he's selling himself out horribly by pimping out his apartment EVEN AS he is aggressively and manfully pursuing Fran Kubelik for a date(and he manages to win one, to "The Music Man," though she'll break it for that cad Fred MacMurray.)
"The Apartment" is about CC's journey to break down the compartments, pursue Fran for real(the stakes are high; he's gotta go up against her near-suicide, her two-fisted brother-in-law, his corporate masters, and MacMurray), and, to become, in the film's classic admonition from the fine Jack Kruschen(Oscar-nominated) as Dr. Dreyfuss...a "mensch." (Decent man.)
By the end of the movie, and Lemmon's brilliantly UNDERPLAYED comments to MacLaine ("Where are you going?" "I don't know, another job, another city...I'm on my own") not to mention his famous and tear-inducing confession of love TO MacLaine...the overacting is over. And Jack Lemmon has arrived.
...for at least eight more years of superstardom(from the drama of "Days and Wine and Roses" to the sublime comedy summit of "The Great Race" and the persona-defining Felix Unger) and then into a few decades of a fine "after-career" as a legendary actor of meaning, if not necessarily an actor of fun times, anymore.
P.S. With re Jack's performance in "The Apartment": has any actor better related the sinus-snuffing realities of a really bad cold?
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filmklassik
15 years ago
I love Jack Lemmon but, like some other fine actors I can mention (Al Pacino, Paul Newman, Mickey Rooney) he required the hand of a STRONG DIRECTOR to reign in his tendency to get "big" or too "ticky".
Most of my favorite Lemmon performances can be found not in his many comedies, but in searing dramas such as DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES, GLEN GARY GLEN ROSS and THE CHINA SYNDROME, where he is beautifully, magnificently RESTRAINED most of the way through.
Finally, Lemmon is one of very, very few actors I can think of (and MAN is it a short list) who actually got better with age. I'd put Paul Newman on that list too. Maybe John Wayne. Almost no one else.
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ecarle
15 years ago
I'm with you on Newman(who both got EVEN better looking with age and cooled down an early tendency to mug) and Wayne(who, somewhere around "Rio Bravo," reinvented himself with more humor and bravado and become a lovable father figure) as becoming much better with age.
Lemmon became much more "prestigious" with age, I think. Somewhere in the 80's, some critic actually called him "The American Olivier."
Lemmon himself said that he spent his youth in movies waiting for the days when he would get older and could play older parts.
Its funny. In the fifties and sixties, Lemmon found himself in classic material like "Some Like It Hot" and "The Apartment," but as stardom hit, Lemmon was willing to take some pretty bad material (famously, "Under the Yum Yum Tree" where he is quite the overdone lecher) for the paycheck. "Yum Yum Tree," Lemmon ruefully noted, was one of his biggest hits.
But as his stardom "shrank"(again, Lemmon evidently started acting so neurotic on the screen that his fans were depressed by him), he moved more and more into the dramatic work that he had showcased early on in "Days of Wine and Roses."
I've seen parallels in Jack Lemmon's career to what would happen with the rather similar Tom Hanks later: both men started as rather broad comedians, and aged into fine dramatic actors. In the cases of both actors, I think that they are both very tuned into their emotions(recall Hanks crying BOTH YEARS when he gave his Oscar speeches?)
Jack Lemmon did a few comedies after "The Odd Couple," including the popular "Out of Towners," by Neil Simon, which I classify as a horror movie(an Ohio couple travelling to New York City encounter nothing but harrowing obstacles on their trip. Horror). But drama became the vessel of his later career. And it was a great career.
And yet, I still like to go back and visit Young Jack in "Some Like It Hot" and "The Apartment," and a childhood favorite: as Professor Fate in "The Great Race," where Lemmon is delightfully macho and overbearing and loud, 180 degrees from his usual high-strung milquetoast types.
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csu16387
15 years ago
I'd add Gable and Bogart to the list who got better with age.
"Now what kind of man are YOU dude?"
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robertodelamar
15 years ago
ecarle,
Thanks for your interesting post and the useful Lemmon's progression line.
I had started this post with the aim of finding out whether there were many other viewers that had shared my opinion since I had often heard how great an actor Jack Lemmon was.
And after reading some of the responses I suppose he was.
But not in this movie.
After reading your detailed response I understand clearer what bothered me about Lemmon's performance in the Apartment.
I suppose that it is true that the overacting of the type that Lemmon had performed in the film is very difficult to do well and he does it very well.
But in this film, his acting routine was incongruent with that of Shirley MacLaine (Fran in the film).
MacLaine hardly did any overacting in The Apartment, all the while the film revolves around their relationship.
In fact the film is all about their relationship.
I am not sure whether this was Wilder's intention or not, but MacLaine is clearly the hero of the film. Just as Billy Loman's wife Linda was the true hero of "Death of a Salesman".
MacLaine represents goodness in almost every way, sincerity, altruism, discipline, forgiveness, humanity etc. I mean her only failing was having a dolt for a brother, which she cannot really be blamed for.
I was hoping throughout the film that Lemmon, just once, would drop the acting routine and really talk to Fran. Instead, his acting routine actually increased and it took away from the story and particularly from the ending of the film.
Lemmon was doing great theatre while MacLaine was doing an amazing reality acting.
For this I suppose, they were both nominated for an oscar in the leading roles for the film.
The last 20 minutes of the film would have been clearly much more powerful emotionally had Lemmon played it straight.
Theirs could have been comparable to the wonderfull relationship between the Harison Ford's and Kelly McGillis's characters in Witness.
Sorry folks, I just do not watch films to appreciate how difficult the acting is for the actor.
The acting should be for the film and not the other way around.
For the life of me, I could not finish watching My Left Foot nor the film where Sean Penn played a mentally disabled man.
To this day, my favorite film of all is Aurevoir Les Enfants and I suppose it was not so difficult to act out for the actors or maybe it was.
But that matters litle to me.
You get life as it is, both beautiful and sad all at once.
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IzzyTree
13 years ago
Beautiful resume of Jack Lemmon's career and description of his tremendous acting abilities. You should publish it (I'm not kidding!)
Thanks, ecarle!!!
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trashname
9 years ago
Lemmon is an acquired taste.
As pithy a summary as one could hope to express. Well done!
I'm no expert, but . . . .
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