My deep dive into the career of Burt Lancaster would nothave been complete without reference to The Sweet Smell of Success, the1957 noir in which everyone is more or less rotten. Hollywood filmmakerslove to delve into the venal side of the entertainment world, often happily focusingon the crass materialism of their own industry. (See, off the top of my head,elements of Sunset Boulevard, Inside Daisy Clover, A Star isBorn, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and the recent Babylon.)The Sweet Smell of Success, though, is based in Manhattan, mostly theglitzy stretch of Broadway between 42nd and 57th Streets.Lancaster’s character occupies an elegant penthouse apartment, and is a regularat swanky nightspots like the 21 Club, places where gossip is gospel.

 

Lancaster plays J.J. Hunsecker, a media personality modeledafter Walter Winchell. He writes a hot gossip column for the New York Globe,and is also a star attraction over the airwaves. The man is all-powerful: heknows just who is canoodling with whom, and can make even a congressman quakewhen he spots an inappropriate dinner companion. The comparison to today’smedia climate is an interesting one: we gather he’s not on the payroll of anypolitical party, but he still has a firm sense of how the world should work,and will gladly punish anyone who tries to cross him. We gather he has nointimate attachment of his own, but puts all his energy into overseeing thelove life of his much younger sister, Susie, who has fallen hard for aclean-cut but independent-minded jazz musician (Martin Milner).

 

Lancaster’s Hunsecker is unforgettable, but the film reallybelongs to Tony Curtis. (The two had earlier starred together in a box-officehit, 1956’s Trapeze)  Curtis, sickof accepting nice-guy roles, here plays a slippery press agent, one who’ll dojust about anything to get his clients’ names in newspaper columns. Young andhungry for success, he’ll hustle, scheme, and try to blackmail the powerfulinto publicizing those on his roster. He feels he has a special “in” withHunsecker, thanks to his willingness to clean up a certain small mess by anymeans necessary, and part of the energy of the story goes into seeing him twisthimself into pretzels to please the man who holds the keys to the kingdom. SaysHunsecker, with a mix of scorn and appreciation, “You’re a cookie full ofarsenic.”

 

Sweet Smell of Success started out as a differentlytitled story in a 1950 issue of Cosmopolitan. It was written by a youngErnest Lehman, and reflected his own experience as an assistant to a New Yorkpublicist. Eventually Hollywood got wind of Lehman’s writing skills, and hestarted to rack up jobs as a screenwriter. Among his credits prior to the filmversion of Sweet Smell of Success were Sabrina, Somebody Up ThereLikes Me, and The King and I. Later, his major screenwriting hits includedNorth by Northwest, West Side Story, The Sound of Music,and Who’s Afraid of  Virginia Woolf? Butwhen it came to Sweet Smell of Success,  the dialogue-heavy script required asubstantial rewrite that Lehman was too ill to handle. So the gig eventuallywent to one of Broadway’s most esteemed playwrights, Clifford Odets, who bothrestructured the story and heavily revamped the details, resulting in sometaut, terse dialogue. Here’s one example I like: “The cat’s in the bag and thebag’s in the river.”  And I’ve got to putin a word for the great James Wong Howe’s spectacularly moody black-&-whitecinematography.

 

Dedicated to fellow biographer Beth Phillips, who knowseverything there is to know about Clifford Odets.