cinemamonamour:

The Apartment: According to Shirley MacLaine, much of the movie was written as filming progressed. The gin rummy game was added because at the time she was learning how to play the game from her friends in the Rat Pack. Likewise, when she started philosophizing about love during a lunch break one day, this was also added to the script:

”[…] It was different because on The Apartment, we only had 29 pages of script, and what he [Billy] did was wait to see how the relationship and the chemistry and all that between Jack and me would develop, and then he wrote it accordingly. Actually, he put the gin scene in, where we were playing cards, because he knew I was playing gin with Dean and Frank all the time”.

(via oldfilmsflicker)

While I was working with Mr. Lemmon for the first time on Some Like It Hot, I thought to myself, This guy’s got a little bit of genius. I would love to make another picture with him, but I don’t have a story. So I looked in my little black book and I came across a note about David Lean’s movie Brief Encounter, that story about a married woman who lives in the country, comes to London, and meets a man. They have an affair in his friend’s apartment. What I had written was, What about the friend who has to crawl back into that warm bed?  

I had made that note ten years earlier, I couldn’t touch it because of censorship, but suddenly there it was—The Apartment—all suggested by this note and by the qualities of an actor with whom I wanted to make my next picture. It was ideal for Lemmon, the combination of sweet and sour. I liked it when someone called that picture a dirty fairy tale.

- Billy Wilder

(via oldfilmsflicker)

Alfred Hitchcock sent this letter to Billy Wilder, praising him on his film The Apartment

(via oldfilmsflicker)

pickurselfup:

The Apartment (1960)

Jack Lemmon & Shirley MacLaine

(via chamberofmaidenthought)