CHARLES CLIFFORD BUD BAXTER (Jack Lemmon), in The Apartment, is the late Vice-President in Charge of Finance at Mutual of Omaha (Omaha, Neb.). Long before he started at Mutual of Omaha, he started in 1956 as an ordinary premium accounting clerk at the Consolidated Life Insurance Company (New York, N.Y.). After three years, he left that company, citing the usual sort of vague reason-for-leaving: a desire to pursue education as an accountant. True enough, he did take a CPA course, and did pass the CPA exam. But now his children have decided to tell the real reason why he left Consolidated Life. And for that matter, why he left New York City, the financial capital of the world, to try to make a fresh start in what was then known as passing train country and is today called flyover country. His beginning at Consolidated Life was pleasant enough, though uneventful and generally boring. Every day he sat at the same desk on the nineteenth floor, with his mechanical adding machine, his Rolodex, his appointment calendar (the kind with the single pages on which one had to hand-write all appointments), and a single telephone. All day long he would sit at that desk, in the Ordinary Premium Accounting Department, processing premium statements from Consolidated's policyholders.In 1958 he started attending night classes in accounting. One fine day, in the fall, his immediate supervisor, Al Kirkeby, approached him to ask a favor. The story Mr. Kirkeby told (probably not the truth) is that he was going to a banquet and needed a place to change into his tuxedo, and could he use Baxter's nice apartment in the upper Seventies. Baxter agreed.Word spread swiftly, and suddenly three more executives were going to banquets : Joe Dobisch of General Office Administration, Vanderhof at Public Relations, and Eichelberger at Mortgages and Loans. When you give the key to one guy you can't hold it back from another guy. The whole thing got out of hand, he explained later.Each of those executives eventually let Baxter in on the real reasons for using his apartment: for love trysts with female employees. (Anyone doing that kind of thing today at Mutual of Omaha, or the former Consolidated Life, could face termination for sexual harassment. But this was, of course, the late Fifties.) So Baxter used his appointment calendar to keep track of them all. And for that reason he would often stay later than the 5:20 p.m. bell on his floor, to work an extra hour or two--to kill time until that evening's love tryst was over with. And even then he often had to wait outside for fifteen minutes at a time while Mr. Kirkeby (or Mr. Vanderhof, Mr. Eichelberger, or Mr. Dobisch) bundled his squeeze-of-the-evening out of the apartment.Things came to a head on Tuesday, November 3, 1959. That evening, Mr. Kirkeby had Sylvia, a switchboard operator, up to his apartment. Baxter couldn't get in until nine. Kirkeby came back for Sylvias galoshes (the weather outside was bad--it would rain all night in New York City) and informed Baxter he was out of liquor. (Kirkeby at least offered to pay for a re-order.)Baxter prepared a TV dinner for himself, and sat down to watch TV. Or try to. After the TV station twice announced a showing of Grand Hotel, but first, a word from our sponsor(s), Baxter turned the TV off.He took a sleeping pill and climbed into bed--only to get awakened in the middle of the night. Mr. Dobisch called, saying he had gotten lucky with a girl who looked and sounded like Marilyn Monroe. So Baxter actually had to clear out of the apartment and could not return until well into the morning. So he sat on a bench, in Central Park, in the rain. It didn't help Baxter's mood any when he found a key under the mat (that was how the execs would return the key to him), but it was the wrong key. So at four a.m. he had to awaken his landlady, Mrs. Lieberman, with a song-and-dance to explain how he could be locked out at this hour.The next day (Wednesday), he reported in to work, nursing a bad sneeze and sinus congestion. The first thing he did when he got to his desk was to call Mr. Dobisch and complain about the mixup with the key. Dobisch realized he must have left Baxter the key to the executive washroom, and promised to send the key right down. Which he did, so Baxter sent the executive-washroom key back up.Baxter then took his temperature and discovered, to no surprise, he had a fever. He consulted his calendar. Right: Mr. Vanderhoff. Tonight. He called Mr. Vanderhof and begged him to cancel his tryst for that night, as he was sick and had to go to bed. Vanderhof said he would have to make it next Wednesday. Problem: Mr. Eichelberger was pencilled in. So Baxter called Mr. Eichelberger and asked him to reschedule. Eichelberger suggested Friday. Bad. Mr. Kirkeby was scheduled. But he, after checking with someone (Baxter never learned who; maybe it was Sylvia), agreed to reschedule for next Thursday. So Baxter called Mr. Eichelberger to say it was OK for Friday, and Mr. Vanderhof to say it was OK for Wednesday.And that's when the worker at the desk one slot up and to the left turned to him and said, Hey, Baxter, Mr. Sheldrake's secretary has been trying to reach you for twenty minutes! Mr. Sheldrake was J. D. Jeff Sheldrake, Vice-President in Charge of Personnel. (Today that would be called Human Resources. ) And Mr. Sheldrake wanted to see Baxter at once!Baxter, all smiles despite that cold, got into an elevator (with the attractive Fran Kubelik running it) and rode to the twenty-seventh floor. There he greeted Mr. Sheldrake's secretary, Miss Olsen, who notified Mr. Sheldrake of his arrival.The interview went badly at first. Because Mr. Sheldrake, having received glowing reports from Messrs. Kirkeby, Vanderhof, Eichelberger and Dobisch, calmly announced he knew all about a certain key floating around this office, among all four men. The key to Baxter's apartment! Baxter explained to Mr. Sheldrake how that had got started. Mr. Sheldrake at first chewed Baxter out about such a violation of public trust. BUt then he asked Baxter the details: where was the apartment, and how did he work it with the key. Then he offered Baxter a deal he couldn't refuse, however sick he was: Mr. Sheldrake now would have the exclusive use of Baxter's apartment. Kirkeby, Vanderhof, Eichelberger, and Dobisch would be out of it. In return, not only would Mr. Sheldrake not press the matter further, but also, he would consider making Baxter a junior executive. He also gave Baxter two tickets to tonight's showing of The Music Man.Baxter decided to try to take Fran Kubelik to see the show. But unaccountably, she stood him up. He would only learn later why. And when he got back home to his apartment and found a woman's compact with a broken mirror, he thought nothing of it, except he ought to return that to Mr. Sheldrake, because surely it could not have belonged to anyone other than Mr. Sheldrake's love interest (whoever she was; it was not Miss Olsen, as Baxter already knew).Mr. Sheldrake came through. He carved out some kind of supervisory position for Baxter and gave him a private office. On that day, the four charter members actually threatened Baxter with bad reports if he didn't let them keep using the apartment. But when Mr. Sheldrake walked in, they picked up their hats and walked out. Baxter gave Mr. Sheldrake back the compact with the broken mirror and thought nothing more about it.Came Christmastime, and the nineteenth floor gave itself over to a big party. Baxter, on his own newfound authority, peremptorily declared Fran Kubelik's elevator out-of-order and took her to the party as his date. But things went sour super-fast when he discovered that she was the owner of the compact with the broken mirror. Mening she was Mr. Sheldrake's love interest.That night he went to a bar to drown his sorrows in booze. A certain barfly, married to a horse jockey who was in one of Fidel Castro's revolutionary jails (he evidently had not been above horse doping during the Batista administration), picked him up. They tried dancing the night away until the bartender threw them Oh, you, tee, out! This being Christmas day, Baxter brought Mrs. MacDougal up to his apartment.Where a most unpleasant surprise greeted him: Fran Kubelik, asleep on his bed. At first he tried to throw her oh, you, tee, out. Until he discovered, to his horror, the empty bottle of sleeping pills lying on the bedside table!He dismissed Mrs. McDougall without an explanation. Then he rapped on the door of his neighbor, Dr. Dreyfuss, and asked him to come quickly, as a girl had tried to kill herself with sleeping pills! He came at once, and the two of them poured coffee into Fran and forced her to walk around the room to stay awake. Against his better judgment, Dr. Dreyfuss agreed not to file a report, formal or otherwise.Eventually Fran woke up, feeling terrible at discovering that the apartment Jeff Sheldrake had brought her to, was the one Bud Baxter rented. Baxter called Sheldrake to inform him of what Fran had done, and Sheldrake told Baxter to handle it himself. Which he did. The two spent three days living in that apartment, though sleeping in separate rooms.It ended just as badly. Karl Matruschka, Fran's brother-in-law, somehow found out where Fran had been staying. Upon hearing she had taken sleeping pills, Karl started to get furious. Seeking to keep the embarrassment to a minimum, Baxter bravely said, She did this on my account. You?!? Who else? And Matruschka decked Baxter with the worst roundhouse he'd ever taken in his life.Dr. Dreyfuss, who witnessed that affair, told Baxter he'd had that coming. Baxter, however, found he could smile about it. Because he knew he was in love.But when he reported in to work, to tell Mr. Sheldrake he was going to take Miss Kubelk off his hands, Mr. Sheldrake announced he was going to take her off Baxter's hands. He made Baxter his personal executive assistant as compensation for this.And then on New Year's Eve, Mr. Sheldrake asked him for his apartment key. It seemed Mrs. Sheldrake had got wind of the affair and now was going to divorce him. So he wanted to see Fran, and that night.That was when Baxter refused. He not only refused; he resigned from Consolidated Life right then and there.That night he went back to his apartment, to pack and to celebrate New Year's Day his own way. Mr. Kirkeby had stopped by earlier and in the confusion had left behind a bottle of champagne on ice. Finding it, Baxter popped the cork, thinking to celebrate the New Year with it......and he heard Fran Kubelik outside, screaming hysterically: 'MISTER BAXTER! MISTER BAXTER! NO! He opened the door, champagne bottle in hand, to find a breathless Fran standing outside, asking him about his knee (which he had accidently shot himself in, the last time he broke up with a girl), and the gun he had had that accident with (unloaded and waiting for Baxter to put it in a box). Then she asked him if he still had the deck of playing cards with which they had played gin rummy while she had stayed with him. And she asked to sit down, drink champagne with him, and play gin rummy. But what about Mr. Sheldrake? he asked. We'll send him a fruitcake every Christmastime, she said--referring to a story of one of her own relationships that had ended in a bittersweet way.That was the beginning of a beautiful romance. They were married after a six-month courtship in Omaha. Karl Matuschka, by way of an apology for his earlier behavior, enthusiastically agreed to be Baxter's best man.Baxter started with Mutual of Omaha exactly as he had at Consolidated Life: as an ordinary premium accountant. He then pursued a more honorable rise to the top. He did become a Vice-President in his own right, and at that level, he retired. Show less «