Sweet Smell of Success
Sweet Smell of Success is a 1957 American film noir satirical drama film directed by Alexander Mackendrick, starring Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, and Martin Milner, and written by Clifford Odets, Ernest Lehman, and Mackendrick from the novelette by Lehman. The shadowy noir cinematography filmed on location in New York City was shot by James Wong Howe. The picture was produced by James Hill of Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Productions and released by United Artists. The supporting cast features Sam Levene, Barbara Nichols, Joe Frisco, Edith Atwater, David White, and Emile Meyer. The musical score was arranged and conducted by Elmer Bernstein and the film also features jazz performances by the Chico Hamilton Quintet. Mary Grant designed the costumes.
The film tells the story of powerful and sleazy newspaper columnist J.J. Hunsecker who uses his connections to ruin his sister's relationship with a man he deems unworthy of her.
Despite a poorly received preview screening, Sweet Smell of Success has greatly improved in stature over the years. It grew to become highly acclaimed by film critics, particularly for its cinematography and screenplay. In 1993, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Plot
In Manhattan, slick, up-and-coming press agent Sidney Falco scans the New York Globe for the column of the immensely popular journalist J.J. Hunsecker, an influential media kingpin whose journalistic contributions and associated radio show both dominate the entertainment world. For the fifth consecutive day, J.J. has neglected to publicize any of Sidney's clients: J.J. is overly protective of his 19-year-old younger sister Susan and has asked Sidney to end her recent affair with Steve Dallas, a budding jazz guitarist, but so far Sidney has been unsuccessful.At the Elysian Room, where Steve performs with his group, the Chico Hamilton Quintet, Sidney argues with his uncle Frank D’Angelo, who has promised him that Steve and Susan will part. Upon learning from his casual girlfriend Rita, a cigarette girl, that Susan is awaiting Steve behind the club, he interrupts the pair. Steve accuses him of "scratching for information like a dog." Rita appeals to Sidney to help her keep her job, which is at risk because she refused to sleep with J.J.’s competitor, prominent columnist Leo Bartha, who then ordered her dismissal. Sidney fixes a date with Rita. Inside a cab, Susan questions his relationship with J.J. but he reassures her that J.J. is a close friend of his. Outside the 21 Club, J.J. greets his informer, Harry Kello, a corrupt police lieutenant, who is indebted to J.J. for petitioning the mayor to save his job after Kello beat a suspect severely. When Sidney reveals Steve's and Susan's engagement, J.J. gives him an ultimatum to destroy their relationship. Desperate to salvage his career, he vows not to disappoint J.J.
Sidney attempts to blackmail Leo at Toots Shor's Restaurant and Lounge, threatening to expose his marital infidelity with Rita unless Leo prints a defamatory gossip item stating that Steve is a Communist who smokes marijuana. Instead, Leo chooses exposure over compromising his journalistic integrity, which even his wife Loretta praises as his first decent act in years. Sidney bribes another columnist, Otis Elwell, who agrees to print the item if Sidney will arrange for him to receive a sexual favor from an "available" woman. At his apartment, Rita balks at the implications of getting acquainted with Otis, but ultimately assents to Sidney's plan in order to stay employed. The next morning, the smear appears in Otis's column and the quintet is fired.
As planned, J.J. theatrically gets Steve rehired with a phone call in front of Susan, but Steve rebukes him for being a malignant influence on society. Forced to choose between them, an overwhelmed Susan breaks up with Steve, hoping to save him from J.J.'s vengeance. Planning to destroy Steve's career, an incensed J.J. orders Sidney to plant marijuana on Steve; a shocked Sidney balks, saying he can accept a dog collar but not a noose, but once J.J. offers to let Sidney write his column for three months while he vacations with Susan in Europe, he acquiesces.
At the Elysian Room, Sidney slips marijuana into the pocket of Steve's coat. Once Steve finishes work that evening, Kello accosts him outside and so assaults him that he is hospitalized. At a bar, surrounded by his industry cohorts, Sidney celebrates his accomplishment but is then summoned to J.J.'s penthouse apartment. He arrives to find a distraught Susan in her nightgown, about to commit suicide by jumping off the balcony. He rescues her, and takes her into her bedroom to rest. Upon arriving to find the two holding each other, J.J. harshly scolds him. Realizing that Susan set him up, Sidney irately reveals to her that J.J. conspired to frame Steve; he then departs, vowing to reveal the truth and informing J.J. that Susan is permanently lost to him. J.J. then calls Kello and tells him Steve is innocent, ordering Sidney to be arrested for planting the evidence. As Sidney exits the building, Kello brutally beats him.
As Susan packs her belongings, J.J. unsuccessfully begs her to stay; she coolly informs him that death is preferable to living with him. An overwrought J.J. watches from the balcony as she strides into the coming dawn to start life afresh with her lover.
Cast
Production
Faced with potential unemployment from the sale of Ealing Studios to the BBC in 1954, director Alexander Mackendrick began entertaining offers from Hollywood. He rejected potential contracts from Cary Grant and David Selznick and signed with independent production company Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, enticed by their offer to adapt George Bernard Shaw’s play The Devil's Disciple. After the project collapsed during pre-production, Mackendrick asked to be released from his commitment. Harold Hecht refused and asked him to start work on another project – adapting Ernest Lehman's novellette Sweet Smell of Success into a film.Lehman's story had originally appeared in the April 1950 issue of Cosmopolitan, renamed "Tell Me About It Tomorrow!" because the editor of the magazine did not want the word "smell" in the publication. It was based on his own experiences working as an assistant to Irving Hoffman, a New York press agent and columnist for The Hollywood Reporter. Hoffman subsequently did not speak to Lehman for a year and a half. Hoffman then wrote a column for The Hollywood Reporter speculating that Lehman would make a good screenwriter, and within a week Paramount called Lehman, inviting him to Los Angeles for talks. Lehman forged a screenwriting career in Hollywood, writing Executive Suite, Sabrina, ''North by Northwest, The Sound of Music, West Side Story, The King and I, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?''.
Pre-production
By the time Hecht-Hill-Lancaster acquired Success, Lehman was in position to not only adapt his own novelette but also produce and direct the film. After scouting locations, Lehman was told by Hecht that distributor United Artists was having second thoughts about going with a first-time director, so Hecht offered the film to Mackendrick. Initially, the director had reservations about trying to film such a dialogue-heavy screenplay, so he and Lehman worked on it for weeks to make it more cinematic. As the script neared completion, Lehman became ill and had to resign from the picture. James Hill took over and offered Paddy Chayefsky as Lehman's replacement. Mackendrick suggested Clifford Odets, the playwright whose reputation as a left-wing hero had been tarnished after he named names before the House Un-American Activities Committee.Mackendrick assumed that Odets would need only two or three weeks to polish the script, but he took four months. The director recalled, "We started shooting with no final script at all, while Clifford reconstructed the thing from stem to stern". The plot was largely intact, but in Mackendrick's biography he is quoted from Notes on Sweet Smell of Success: "What Clifford did, in effect, was dismantle the structure of every single sequence in order to rebuild situations and relationships that were much more complex, had much greater tension and more dramatic energy". This process took time, and the start date for the production could not be delayed. Odets had to accompany the production to Manhattan and continued rewriting while they shot there. Returning to the city that had shunned him for going to Hollywood made Odets very neurotic and obsessed with all kinds of rituals as he worked at a furious pace, with pages often going straight from his typewriter to being shot the same day. Mackendrick said, "So we cut the script there on the floor, with the actors, just cutting down lines, making them more spare – what Clifford would have done himself, really, had there been time".
Tony Curtis had to fight for the role of Sidney Falco because Universal, the studio to which he was contracted, was worried that it would ruin his career. Tired of doing pretty-boy roles and wanting to prove that he could act, Curtis got his way. Orson Welles was originally considered for the role of J. J. Hunsecker. Mackendrick wanted to cast Hume Cronyn because he felt that Cronyn closely resembled Walter Winchell, the basis for the Hunsecker character in the novelette. Lehman made the distinction in an interview that Winchell was the inspiration for the version of the character in the novelette, and that this differs from the character in the film version. United Artists wanted Burt Lancaster in the role because of his box office appeal and his successful pairing with Curtis on Trapeze. Robert Vaughn was signed to a contract with Lancaster's film company and was to have played the Steve Dallas role but was drafted into the Army before he could begin the film. Ernest Borgnine, contracted to Hecht-Hill-Lancaster since Marty was offered a role in the film but turned it down as his role was only seven pages long in the script. His refusal led him to be put on suspension from Hecht-Hill-Lancaster.
Hecht-Hill-Lancaster allowed Mackendrick to familiarize himself with New York City before shooting the movie. In Notes on Sweet Smell of Success, Mackendrick said, "One of the characteristic aspects of New York, particularly of the area between 42nd Street and 57th Street, is the neurotic energy of the crowded sidewalks. This was, I argued, essential to the story of characters driven by the uglier aspects of ambition and greed". He took multiple photographs of the city from several fixed points and taped the pictures into a series of panoramas that he stuck on a wall and studied once he got back to Hollywood.
Cellist Fred Katz and drummer Chico Hamilton, who briefly appear in the film as themselves, wrote a score for the movie, which was ultimately rejected in favor of one by Elmer Bernstein.