• Episode Aired on March 8, 2008 • Directed by: Billy Wilder • Selected Cast: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine • Written by: Billy Wilder, I.A.L. Diamond • Release Year: 1960 • Genre: Romance / Comedy / Drama » The Essentials Episode Screencaps » The Essentials Episode Clip

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A mild-mannered insurance clerk at a big corporation realizes that the only way to a promotion is to loan out his apartment for his superiors to carry on their extramarital affairs. Once he's rewarded for his services, he moves up the ladder and pursues his love interest - the elevator operator girl. Only problem is - she's the mistress of the CEO.

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• "Wilder is the master of humorous loneliness."

• "I think what makes it essential is that everybody could take something from the film."

• "Jack Lemmon will break your heart any day of the week."

• "So many of these movies that are on The Essentials is like a present waiting to be open, and all you have to do is pull the ribbon. To discuss movies and my love of them, that's a dream."

• "I love this film, and I think it's because I can watch it when I'm feeling lonely or blue and I can watch it when I'm feeling happy and wanna laugh and that's whats great about Billy Wilder. Especially in this, he's all of over the place but it works perfectly."

• On Billy Wilder
"He just hit the perfect note of alienated humor."

• "There's something about poor Shirley MacLaine on that elevator just dying a little death everyday. Jack Lemon trying to climb up the ladder - literally on somebody else's back and you're with all these people but you're incredibly lonely at the same time."

• "What's cool about it and what makes it essential for me as I think to some people it would be a comedy and to some people it would be this kind of biting satire or this cynical treament of the businessman or you know this love story, it mixed it all."

• On Jeff D. Sheldrake played by Fred MacMurray
"There's nothing redeeming about him. He's kind of what I would imagine every wife fears their husbands would be, and the fact that Fran (Shirley) is so gullable and wants this love so badly that she'll take like any piece and little bit is so heartbreaking. Then you have Jack Lemmon trying as hard as he can to turn himself into 'these' people."

• "I love that from this, many people who don't know certain Yiddish terms will come to find out what "be a mench is"... and his fantastic doctor neighbor says be a mench to Jack Lemmon... Be a good man."

• "It was pretty daring even in 1960 though to have her (Shirley MacLaine) basically, kind of, try to kill herself."

• "None of these characters are clean... But you still cared about all of them - well, except, for the exception of Mr. Sheldrake."

• In addition to this movie, Billy Wilder used Fred MacMurray's character name, Sheldrake, in his scripts for the movies Sunset Boulevard, Ace in the Hole and Kiss Me, Stupid.