Shirley MacLaine’s gin lessons from Frank Sinatra inspired The Apartment ending

Tonight, The Apartment, which claimed five Academy Awards, including for Best Picture and Best Director at the 1960 Oscars, airs on BBC Four from 9.50pm. It follows the story of insurance clerk CC Baxter, as he bids to climb the corporate ladder by loaning out his apartment to his firm’s management for their extramarital “entertainment”. Both of its leading stars, Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, also earned rave reviews for their performances in the comedy-drama, going on to collect Best Actor and Best Actress gongs at the Golden Globes.

Such was its significance in cinema, The Apartment was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in the mid-Nineties, as a result of its “cultural, historical and aesthetic” significance.

And decades after its release, the BBC’s 100 Greatest American Films list of 2015, saw the flick voted 24th overall.

The film retains iconic status, but its ending was inspired by MacLaine, who uttered its famous last line: “Shut up and deal.”

Director Billy Wilder discussed the finale with Jerry Maguire writer Cameron Crowe, who would go on to publish his interviews with The Apartment legend.

In Conversations with Wilder, which was published in 1999, the director noted how the gin game between Lemmon and MacLaine’s characters was completely engineered midway through production.

Writing in The Guardian at the time of the book’s release, Crowe wrote: “[W]hen MacLaine shared the trials of learning how to play gin, lessons she was then getting from [Frank] Sinatra and the Rat Pack, Wilder and [screenwriter I. A. L.] Diamond wrote that into the script too.

“And so was born the gin game between Lemmon and MacLaine that continues throughout The Apartment.”

Crowe noted that Wilder had to reconstruct the set in order to bring the story to life, including the game of gin between the pair.

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The first game of gin follows MacLaine’s character Fran’s decision to try and take her own life the night before, before discussing her unluckiness with men.

MacLaine’s relationship with Lemmon on-screen helped catapult the film to immortality.

However, off-screen MacLaine, who has spoken candidly previously about her affairs with actors she performed with, said Lemmon wasn’t someone she would ever have a relationship with.

Along with Lemmon, Oscar winner Jack Nicholson was also someone she wouldn’t stray with.

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In 2011, she told Oprah Winfrey: “I wasn’t attracted to Jack [Lemmon].

“He was a sweetheart. He was like my Aunt Rose.

“He didn’t have that dangerous, complicated, sexual-dominating confusion that I liked helping the men I was attracted to to figure out.

“And Jack [Nicholson]? Too much for me! No, he’s too much.

“I guess I liked the dangerous chemistry if it was controllable. His isn’t. He is authentically dangerous.”

MacLaine appeared to share chemistry with many of her colleagues and co-stars, but one who she didn’t was with Welshman Sir Anthony Hopkins.

The pair starred in 1980’s A Change of Seasons, a flick that was nominated for three Golden Raspberry Awards at the inaugural ceremony.

After the film’s release, Sir Anthony said: “She was the most obnoxious actress I have ever worked with.”

It was a view shared by fellow industry man, and director, Don Siegel who once claimed: “It’s hard to feel much warmth for. She’s too unfeminine and has too much balls.”

The Apartment airs from 9.50pm tonight on BBC Four.