
made by Hill-Hecht-Lancaster Productions and released by United Artists
. It was directed by Alexander Mackendrick
and stars Burt Lancaster
, Tony Curtis
, Susan Harrison
and Martin Milner
. The screenplay
was written by Clifford Odets
, Ernest Lehman
and Mackendrick from the novelette by Lehman. Mary Grant designed the film's costumes.
The film tells the story of a powerful newspaper columnist (clearly based on Walter Winchell
) who uses his connections to ruin his sister's relationship with a man he deems inappropriate.
Despite a poorly received preview screening, Sweet Smell of Success has greatly improved in stature over the years.
Holding an unlit cigarette
Match me, Sidney.
Put on the mask and dance for daddy!
You're dead, son. Get yourself buried.
Everybody knows Manny Davis - except Mrs. Manny Davis.
President? My big toe would make a better President!
My right hand hasn't seen my left hand in thirty years.
I love this dirty town.
Son, I don't relish shooting a mosquito with an elephant gun, so why don't you just shuffle along?
I'd hate to take a bite outta you. You're a cookie full of arsenic.
Well son, it looks like we have to call this game on account of darkness.
made by Hill-Hecht-Lancaster Productions and released by United Artists
. It was directed by Alexander Mackendrick
and stars Burt Lancaster
, Tony Curtis
, Susan Harrison
and Martin Milner
. The screenplay
was written by Clifford Odets
, Ernest Lehman
and Mackendrick from the novelette by Lehman. Mary Grant designed the film's costumes.
The film tells the story of a powerful newspaper columnist (clearly based on Walter Winchell
) who uses his connections to ruin his sister's relationship with a man he deems inappropriate.
Despite a poorly received preview screening, Sweet Smell of Success has greatly improved in stature over the years. 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."
Sweet Smell of Success: The Musical
was created by Marvin Hamlisch
, Craig Carnelia
and John Guare
in 2002. The next year, the AFI
named J.J. Hunsecker number 35 of the top 50 movie villains of all time.
Plot
New York press agent Sidney Falco has been unable to get his clients mentioned in J.J. Hunsecker's influential, nationally syndicated newspaper column of late because of Falco's failure to make good on a promise to break up the romance between Hunsecker's younger sister Susan and musician Steve Dallas, an up-and-coming jazz guitarist.
Falco is losing money and clients. Given one last chance by the bullying, intimidating Hunsecker, he schemes to plant a false rumor in a rival column that Dallas is a dope-smoking Communist, then encourage Hunsecker to rescue Dallas's reputation, certain that the headstrong boyfriend will reject Hunsecker's favor and end up looking bad to Susan.
The plan works, in a way -- Dallas can't resist insulting Hunsecker's methods, and, forced to choose between them, the timid Susan breaks up with Dallas in order to protect him from her brother. Hunsecker, however, is enraged by Dallas's comments to him. He decides to ruin the boy after all (against Falco's advice) and wants to have marijuana
planted on the musician, then have him arrested and roughed up by corrupt police officer Harry Kello (Emile Meyer).
It is such a dirty trick that even Falco wants no part of it, at least until Hunsecker promises to take a long vacation from his powerful column and turn it over to Falco in his absence. At a nightclub, Falco slips the marijuana cigarettes into a pocket of a coat belonging to Dallas, who is accosted by Kello outside the club.
Falco is summoned to Hunsecker's penthouse apartment, only to find Susan there by herself and about to attempt suicide. He grabs her just as her brother walks in, but Hunsecker, encouraged by Susan's silence, accuses Falco of trying to assault Susan.
In a climactic confrontation, Falco reveals to Susan that it was her brother who ordered him to destroy Dallas's reputation and their relationship. Hunsecker makes a call to Kello to come after Falco, who tries to flee but is caught on the street by the brutal cop.
Back in the penthouse, Susan, her bags packed, admits to her brother that she attempted to commit suicide, considering death preferable to living with JJ. She walks out on him, saying that she will go to Dallas and tells Hunsecker that she pities, rather than hates, him.
Cast
- Burt LancasterBurt LancasterBurton Stephen "Burt" Lancaster was an American film actor noted for his athletic physique and distinctive smile...
as J. J. Hunsecker - Tony CurtisTony CurtisTony Curtis was an American film actor whose career spanned six decades, but had his greatest popularity during the 1950s and early 1960s. He acted in over 100 films in roles covering a wide range of genres, from light comedy to serious drama...
as Sidney Falco - Susan HarrisonSusan HarrisonSusan Harrison is an American actress. She is most famous for her appearance in the 1957 film noir classic Sweet Smell of Success as the sister for whom Burt Lancaster has an unhealthy affection as well as in The Twilight Zone episode "Five Characters in Search of an Exit."She is a graduate of the...
as Susan Hunsecker - Martin MilnerMartin MilnerMartin Sam Milner is an American actor best known for his performances in two popular television series, Adam-12 and Route 66....
as Steve Dallas - Sam LeveneSam LeveneSam Levene was an American Broadway and film actor. He made his Broadway debut in 1927 with five lines in a play titled Wall Street, and over a span of nearly 50 years, appeared on Broadway in 37 Shows, of which 33 were the original Broadway Productions, many now considered legendary...
as Frank D'Angelo - Chico HamiltonChico HamiltonChico Hamilton , is an American jazz drummer and bandleader.-Early life through 1960s:Hamilton was born in Los Angeles, California. He had a fast-track musical education in a band with Charles Mingus, Illinois Jacquet, Ernie Royal, Dexter Gordon, Buddy Collette and Jack Kelso...
as Himself - Emile MeyerEmile MeyerEmile Meyer was an American actor usually known for tough, aggressive, authoritative characters in Hollywood films from the 1950s era, mostly in westerns or thrillers...
as Harry Kello - Barbara NicholsBarbara NicholsBarbara Nichols was an American actress who often played brassy comic roles in a number of films in the 1950s and 1960s.-Early life and Career:...
as Rita
Production
Faced with potential unemployment from the sale of Ealing Studiosto the BBC
in 1954, director Alexander Mackendrick
began entertaining offers from Hollywood. He rejected ones from the likes of Cary Grant
and David Selznick and signed on 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 contract. 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 a 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 prominent 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 went on to forge a notable screenwriting career in Hollywood, writing Executive Suite
, Sabrina
and The King and I
.
Pre-production
By the time Hecht-Hill-Lancaster acquired Success, Lehman was in position to not only adapt his own novellette but also produce and direct the film. After scouting locations, Lehman was told by Hecht that distributor United Artistswas 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 makes 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.
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 Hamilton wrote a score for the movie, which was ultimately rejected in favor of one by Elmer Bernstein
.
Principal photography
Mackendrick shot the film in late 1956, and was scared the entire time because Hecht-Hill-Lancaster had a reputation for firing their directors for any or even no reason at all. The filmmaker was used to extensive rehearsals before a scene was shot and often found himself shooting a script page one or two hours after Odets had written it. Lancaster’s presence also made Mackendrick nervous. He was both one of the film’s stars and a producer, and a frustrated director with a reputation for being tough on others. Shooting on location in New York City also added to Mackendrick’s anxieties. Exteriors were shot in the busiest, noisiest areas with crowds of young Tony Curtis fans occasionally breaking through police barriers. Mackendrick remembered, "We started shooting in Times Squareat rush hour, and we had high-powered actors and a camera crane and police help and all the rest of it, but we didn’t have any script. We knew where we were going vaguely, but that’s all".
Reaction
A preview screening of Sweet Smell of Success did not go well, as Tony Curtis fans were expecting him to play one of his typical nice guy roles and instead were presented with Sidney Falco. Mackendrick remembered seeing audience members "curling up, crossing their arms and legs, recoiling from the screen in disgust". Burt Lancaster's fans were not thrilled with their idol either, "finding the film too static and talky". The film was a box office failure, and Hecht blamed his producing partner Hill. "The night of the preview, Harold said to me, 'You know you've wrecked our company? We're going to lose over a million dollars on this picture,'" Hill recalled. However, Lancaster blamed Lehman, who remembers a confrontation they had: "Burt threatened me at a party after the preview. He said, 'You didn't have to leave – you could have made this a much better picture. I ought to beat you up.' I said, 'Go ahead – I could use the money.'"Sweet Smell of Success premiered in New York at Loew’s
State in Times Square on June 27, 1957. Critical reaction was much more favorable. Time
said that the movie was "raised to considerable dramatic heights by intense acting, taut direction ... superb camera work ... and, above all, by its whiplash dialogue". Both it and the New York Herald
included the film on their ten-best lists for 1957. The film's reputation improved over time, with David Denby
in New York
magazine calling it "the most acrid, and the best" of all New York movies because it captured, "better than any film I know the atmosphere of Times Square and big-city journalism".
Sweet Smell of Success holds a 100 percent "fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes
and a 100 metascore at Metacritic
. Though Mackendrick's direction of the actors and his staging of the scenes are at times extraordinary, in recent years critics have praised only the film's dialogue, "courtesy of Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets, a high-toned street vernacular that no real New Yorker has ever spoken but that every real New Yorker wishes he could", A. O. Scott
wrote
in The New York Times
. Andrew Sarris
in the New York Observer
wrote, "the main incentive to see this movie is its witty, pungent and idiomatic dialogue, such as you never hear on the screen anymore in this age of special-effects illiteracy".
Legacy
In 1993, Sweet Smell of Success was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registryby the Library of Congress
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Time magazine ranked the film as one of the "All-Time 100 Movies". In 2002, Sweet Smell of Success: The Musical
was created by Marvin Hamlisch
, Craig Carnelia
and John Guare
. In addition to AFI's naming J. J. Hunsecker number 35 of the top 50 movie villains of all time in 2003, Mackendrick's film has achieved cult film
status because of its dialogue. Filmmaker Barry Levinson
paid tribute to Sweet Smell of Success in Diner
(1982) with one character wandering around saying nothing but lines from the film.
Sweet Smell of Success was released on DVD (Region 1) and Blu-ray (Region A) as part of The Criterion Collection.
Further reading
- "CITY LORE; The Bittersweet Smell of the Broadway of Yore" by Charles Strum, The New York Times, March 10, 2002.
- "That Old Feeling: Sweet Smells" by Richard Corliss, Time, March 21, 2002.
- "Alexander Mackendrick on Sweet Smell of Success" by Alexander Mackendrick, Film in Focus, June 16, 2008.