They were playing them like they just got off the shtetl. Come on, this is 1960, not 1910. Why did Billy Wilder choose to have them play it this way? It's pretty demeaning.
I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.
They were older people and children of Yiddish speaking immigrants. Especially in New York City they were very typical. I grew up among Jewish people in that era and who were that age and I did not find them very exaggerated.
shareExactly. At the time there were areas in NY that were so drenched in their culture you could swear you weren't in America at all.
shareWhat? No love for the shine boy?
shareDemeaning in what way?
shareI found them realistic enough, and I, too, knew some Jewish people who talked just like that not too many years AFTER The Apartment came out. Some cadences are "passed down."
One author on Wilder noted that he was actually "pushing the envelope" a bit in creating such overtly Jewish characters in a 1960 movie released in a still white-bread America. For instance, one year before in Frank Capra's "A Hole in the Head," a Jewish family(from the source book or story) was converted into an Italian-American one(with brothers Edward G. Robinson and Frank Sinatra.)
Along with the Dr. and his wife are the landlady, talking about that "Meshagas at Cape Caneveral."
Wilder had to NEGOTIATE with United Artists to get those Jewish characters into the movie and evidently the studio relented with a casting suggestion for the doctor:
Groucho Marx.
Who might have been fun, but who would thrown all the realism of the story right off. So we got the lesser-known but quite good(Oscar-nominated good, by the largely Jewish Oscar voting community)...Jack Kruschen.
Good for Wilder, negotiating like that. As a Jewish man, he knew he had to be true to himself and the movie goers. To completely erase other ethnic groups in entertainment is a crime. The Jewish characters added realism and flavor to this movie, it makes it more enjoyable and serves as a time capsule of history.
shareDemeaning? How? The thing about 'stereotypes' is that they are based on fact.
In addition to using his skills as a doctor and saving her life, the doctor was a very decent man. His wife was kind and generous to a stranger. They were kind neighbours, not judgmental to her, only him because of his lifestyle and that would be the same now.
I liked how a doctor actually lived in as low-rent and cheesy and apartment building as an insurance clerk.
shareWell good point, if it was set in contemporary times. But in those days, doctors weren't the super wealthy elite that they became after. He said he worked at a uni and they certainly wouldn't have paid him well, not back then. Besides we don't know that he didn't own his apartment, or do we? Did I miss that?
shareIn 1960, it would certainly have been a rental, not a coop or condo.
And today, no one at Baxter's level could remotely afford the same apartment, unless he had 2 or 3 roommates.
Well, he did have at least 4, albeit on a very temporary basis! lol. Today, though, wouldn't that be interesting in a one bedroom apartment? What is the rent on something that now?
shareAt least 4. LOL. Too cheap to pay beyond career advancement.
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I'm not where I can get to my Apartment DVD, but Baxter quotes the 1959/60 rent in his opening narration.
I would expect one would have to START with inflation and then throw in NYC pricing to get the cost today. Baxter would be a "tunnel and bridge" man.
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Nice point above, movieghoul, about Kruschen's university doctor perhaps not being today's wealthy doc(honestly, its a profession that seems to MERIT the high pay...but the rest of us can't pay the full freight for it with our jobs!)
The rent is also mentioned in a lyric in the musical Promises, Promises, and I'm pretty sure it was a two figure number.
Besides inflation, note that the neighborhood is much more desirable today than during the pre-Lincoln Center period; it's the same neighborhood where West Side Story takes place.
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Wilder and Diamond made them the conscience of the film, and that was assuredly no accident. Nothing remotely 'demeaning' about it.
I don't find it the least bit demeaning, and half of me is Jewish. It gives the film added dimension and realism. Would you prefer all the characters be WASPS, including a doctor? Please, let's not be so politically correct that we take all the charm out of the film.
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I tend to agree (somewhat) with the original poster.
The characters aren't demeaning, but I think some of the mannerisms and vocal inflections were overdone (especially the wife). It isn't a big issue though.
If they seem "overdone" (oy, that word again....only food can be overdone) it's because this movie in a comedy, where some exaggeration is permissible. I grew up in NYC during the 60s and 70s and there were plenty of people like the doc and his wife. As a proud and highly intelligent Jewish man, Billy Wilder would never put anything on film that would be unflattering toward Jews.
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