Taxi Movies (3)

Mad Men Take #1?

In Billy Wilder's (1960) The Apartment--more properly a Christmas movie, but what the hell?--taxis play an essential role of ferrying the bosses and their girls to and from C.C. Baxter's (aka, "some schnook's) apartment. That's Jack Lemmon as Baxter lurking in the entryway of his building until the coast is clear.

"On account of you?"

It's also a taxi driver, Karl Matuschka (Johnny Seven), Miss Kubelik's (Shirley Maclaine) brother-in-law, that socks him in jaw when he comes to bring her home from Baxter's apartment. Not before the ever gracious C.C. offers him a martini; then, realizing he's a cabbie, commiserates about driving a cab in New York, "I mean, with all that cross-town traffic," swinging his own martini across his chest to demonstrate. Not the first movie in which cabbies represent the witnesses and sometime conscience of the city but one of the very best.