Sweet Smell of Success is a 1957 American satirical drama film noir directed by Alexander Mackendrick, adapted by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman from the latter's 1950 novelette Tell Me About It Tomorrow!. It stars Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, and Martin Milner. The film tells the story of powerful and sleazy newspaper columnist J.J. Hunsecker (portrayed by Lancaster and based on Walter Winchell) who uses his connections to ruin his sister's relationship with a man he deems unworthy of her.
The shadowy 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.
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 Up-and-coming Manhattan press agent Sidney Falco scans the New York Globe for the column of J.J. Hunsecker, a media kingpin whose journalism and radio show dominate the entertainment world. For the fifth day, J.J. has not publicized any of Sidney's clients, as he is protective of his 19-year-old sister Susan and has asked Sidney to end her affair with jazz guitarist Steve Dallas. Sidney has been unsuccessful.
Steve is performing at the Elysian Room with his group as Sidney argues with his uncle Frank D’Angelo (who is Steve's manager), who has promised Steve and Susan will part. Steve learns from Rita, cigarette girl, that Susan is waiting for Steve behind the club, he interrupts them. Steve accuses him of "scratching for information like a dog." Rita asks Sidney to help her keep her job, at risk because she refused to sleep with J.J.’s competitor, Leo Bartha. Sidney secures a date with Rita. Questioned by Susan, he reassures her that J.J. is a close friend. J.J. greets his informer Harry Kello, a corrupt NYPD lieutenant indebted to J.J. for saving his job after Kello beat a suspect. J.J. gives Sidney an ultimatum to destroy Steve and Susan's relationship.
Sidney attempts to blackmail Leo, threatening to expose his affair with Rita unless Leo prints a gossip item that Steve is a Communist who smokes cannabis. Leo chooses his journalistic integrity, which his wife Loretta praises as his first decent act in years. Sidney bribes another columnist, Otis Elwell, with the promise of a sexual favor from an "available" woman. Rita initially objects, but ultimately assents to Sidney's plan in order to stay employed. The smear appears in Otis's column and the quintet is fired.
As planned, J.J. gets Steve rehired with a phone call in front of Susan, but Steve rebukes him for his malignant influence on society. Susan breaks up with Steve to save him from J.J.'s vengeance. J.J. orders Sidney to plant marijuana on Steve; Sidney balks, saying he can accept a dog collar but not a noose. He acquiesces when J.J. offers to let Sidney write his column for three months while he vacations with Susan.
Sidney slips marijuana into Steve's coat pocket. Kello assaults Steve, who is hospitalized. Sidney celebrates, but is summoned to J.J.'s penthouse where Susan is about to commit suicide by jumping from the balcony. He takes her to her bedroom to rest. Arriving to find the two holding each other, J.J. scolds him. Realizing that Susan set him up, Sidney reveals that J.J. conspired to frame Steve. He leaves, vowing to reveal the truth and telling J.J. that Susan is lost to him. J.J. calls to tell Kello that Steve is innocent, ordering Sidney be arrested for planting evidence. Kello ambushes Sidney and beats him.
J.J. begs Susan to stay as she packs; she says death is preferable to living with him. J.J. watches from the balcony as she strides into the coming dawn.
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 adapt his novelette, 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. "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, his studio, 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 (1955) was offered a role but turned it down as it was only seven pages long in the script. His refusal led him to be put on suspension from Hecht-Hill-Lancaster. Susan Harrison was cast and then did five screen tests with potential love-interests before Martin Milner was cast opposite her.Susan Harrison Eddie Muller 2011 interview
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 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. The 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.Butler, David. (2002) Jazz Noir: listening to music from Phantom Lady to The Last Seduction. Greenwood Publishing Group, , p. 136
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. Susan Harrison went on to say: "Everyone was always there. There were constant, daily around-the-table discussions, revisions, changes. Everyone was welcome to their input. It was the most democratic... and even I was invited and even asked what I thought... it was a good way to work. I'd never seen it done that way."Susan Harrison Eddie Muller 2011 interview
Lancaster's presence proved to be intimidating for numerous individuals involved with the production; at one point, Lehman had been approached to direct the film, but declined due to his fear of Lancaster, although Hecht maintained that Lehman had never been offered the chance to direct. Mackendrick and composer Elmer Bernstein both found Lancaster intimidating, with Bernstein later recalling, "Burt was really scary. He was a dangerous guy. He had a short fuse". Mackendrick decided to use Lancaster's volatility to work for the character of J.J., asking that Lancaster wear his own browline glasses, which Mackendrick felt gave him the presence of "a scholarly brute". Mackendrick smeared a thin layer of vaseline on the lenses, preventing Lancaster from focusing his eyes and giving him a perpetually blank gaze. Assisted by cinematographer James Wong Howe, Mackendrick intentionally filmed scenes with J.J. from a low angle using a wide-angle lens and with overhead lighting directly above Lancaster, so that the spectacle frames cast shadows on his face.