Movie Review: Sweet Smell of Success, starring Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster (1957)

Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster in Sweet Smell of Success, 1957

Sweet Smell of Success, starring Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster, is a classic film noir portrait of New York City in the 1950’s. Despite not being a success on its initial release in 1957, the film has gone on to become recognized as a classic, and it features two Hollywood legends delivering amazing performances.  

Burt Lancaster was one of the first actors to form his own production company, Norma Productions, in 1948, which eventually became Hecht-Hill-Lancaster. Starting his career in the post-war era, Lancaster didn’t want to be tied down to one studio—he had contracts with producers Mark Hellinger and Hal Wallis, but Lancaster was never a contract player at a studio the way many actors of the 1930’s and 1940’s were. Forming his own production company was an opportunity for Lancaster to achieve more independence in his film work. Sweet Smell of Success was developed and produced by Hecht-Hill-Lancaster and distributed by United Artists. The end credits also tell us that the movie was a Norma Production, as well as a Curtleigh Production, the company that Tony Curtis formed with his then-wife Janet Leigh.   

Sweet Smell of Success focuses on the denizens of Broadway at night. Curtis plays Sidney Falco, a press agent who is chagrined that his clients have been shut out of J.J. Hunsecker’s newspaper gossip column for several days in a row. Hunsecker had ordered Falco to break up Hunsecker’s sister’s relationship with a jazz guitarist, but Falco failed at this. We watch as Falco tries to slither his way back into Hunsecker’s good graces.  

There’s a lot of buildup to Hunsecker’s appearance in the film, and Burt Lancaster does not disappoint. As Hunsecker, Lancaster fires his lines like missiles, making it unmistakably clear that he is in charge. Lancaster was able to vary his looks remarkably from film to film. Lancaster was only 43 years old when he played Hunsecker, and one of the most handsome and attractive movie stars, but he’s not attractive as Hunsecker. Lancaster didn’t achieve this transformation through makeup; it’s all done through his acting, and the browline glasses that he wears. The legendary cinematographer James Wong Howe lit Lancaster’s face so his glasses become almost like a shield, protecting him from the rest of the world. Hunsecker is often filmed from below, which just magnifies Lancaster’s imposing physical presence, and his impossibly broad shoulders.  

I’ve always been impressed with the way that Lancaster could change according to the role he was playing. Think of him in movies like The Rainmaker and Elmer Gantry: his charisma is cranked up to 11; he commands your attention. But in movies like Sweet Smell of Success, he’s able to turn that remarkable charisma off. He still commands your attention, but in a totally different way. It’s one of the reasons why I find Burt Lancaster to be such a great actor.  

Tony Curtis gives perhaps the best performance of his career as Sidney Falco. Curtis was an extremely handsome man, with thick dark black hair and piercing blue eyes, and Sweet Smell of Success might be the absolute peak of his handsomeness. Curtis wanted to prove that he was more than just a pretty face, and Sweet Smell of Success was the perfect opportunity for him to show off what he could do. Curtis and Lancaster were both New Yorkers: Lancaster grew up in Harlem, Curtis in the Bronx. They knew the characters they were playing and the world they inhabited, giving their performances an extra bit of effectiveness.  

Lancaster and Curtis had previously teamed up for the 1956 movie Trapeze, which also starred the lovely Gina Lollobrigida. Trapeze was one of the highest-grossing films of 1956, a Technicolor spectacular about life in the circus, with Lancaster, who had worked as a circus acrobat, doing most of his own stunts. It’s hard to imagine two films more different from each other than Trapeze and Sweet Smell of Success.  

Sweet Smell of Success was based on a novella by Ernest Lehman. The screenplay was written by Clifford Odets, who had been a hugely successful playwright during the 1930’s, but whose reputation was tarnished by his 1952 testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Odets was writing the script as they were shooting it. Gary Fishgall wrote in his biography of Lancaster, “Final edits were made on the set, with the producers, the director, and the actors participating.” (Against Type: The Biography of Burt Lancaster, p.161) Considering the chaos around the filming, it’s remarkable that the movie turned out as well as it did.  

Adding to the cost of the production was director Alexander Mackendrick, whose painstaking perfectionism played a pivotal role in the budget ballooning to $2.6 million, a huge amount of money for a black and white film noir that was only 96 minutes long. (Cost of the movie from Fishgall, p.163)  

The movie features an excellent soundtrack by Elmer Bernstein, as well as music from the Chico Hamilton Quintet. In the movie, Martin Milner plays Steve Dallas, a jazz guitarist who is part of Hamilton’s Quintet. According to Wikipedia, Sweet Smell of Success was the first movie to spawn two separate soundtrack albums: one with Bernstein’s score, and the other with Hamilton’s music.  

Hunsecker’s newspaper column, titled “Eye on Broadway” features a closeup of Lancaster’s eyes behind his glasses, and it reminded me of the all-seeing eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg from The Great Gatsby. The eyes in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel are found on a billboard, and we don’t see the rest of the face, only the glasses and the eyes, just like in Hunsecker’s column. There’s also the similarity of names: J.J. Hunsecker, T.J. Eckleburg, both initials followed by a last name dominated by the sound of “eck.” In Gatsby, George Wilson compares the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg to the eyes of God, and that’s an apt comparison to the eyes of J.J. Hunsecker, who is the God of his domain on Broadway—Hunsecker is all seeing, all knowing.  

There’s another curious connection to The Great Gatsby in Sweet Smell of Success. In the film, there’s a comedian that Hunsecker mentions in his column. Seeing the column before it runs in the newspaper, Falco goes to the theater to meet the comic in order to persuade him to hire Falco as his agent. The comic is played by Joe Frisco, a vaudeville comedian who is mentioned by name in The Great Gatsby. At the party scene at Gatsby’s house at the beginning of Chapter 3, this sentence appears: “Suddenly one of these gypsies in trembling opal seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and moving her hands like Frisco dances out alone on the canvas platform.” (p.45) Coincidence, or a deliberate reference? I don’t know, but both Gatsby and Sweet Smell of Success share as a key theme the rotting core of American capitalism.  

Another excellent performance in the movie is given by Susan Harrison as Susan Hunsecker, J.J.’s much younger sister. Presumably Mama and Papa Hunsecker have shuffled off their mortal coils, as J.J. is Susan’s guardian, and she lives with him. J.J.’s interest in his sister’s love life, and his attempts to break up her relationship with Steve Dallas, are frankly just kind of weird. Lancaster and Harrison play it perfectly, so without anything too sordid being revealed, the viewer just feels this off-kilter sense of unease about J.J.’s obsession with Susan. And viewers should note the huge 8x10 glamour photo of Susan that adorns J.J.’s desk at his home office. Harrison did a great job, and I was surprised to learn that she only made one other movie, a 1960 film called Key Witness with Jeffrey Hunter and Dennis Hopper.  

Sweet Smell of Success was released in July 1957, and for fans of Curtis and Lancaster it must have come as quite a shock to see these actors playing such unheroic characters. For Lancaster’s fans it must have seemed like whiplash, as only a month earlier, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was released. Starring Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, Gunfight was an excellent Western, but a very different movie from Sweet Smell of Success. In Gunfight, Lancaster plays heroic, stoic Wyatt Earp, a far cry from the amoral J.J. Hunsecker. I know that back in 1957 studios didn’t pay so much attention to release dates, but Sweet Smell of Success just doesn’t feel like a summer movie—I would have released it in the fall if I had been making the decision.  

There are many great lines throughout the movie, and one of the best is Hunsecker’s line to Falco: “I’d hate to take a bite out of you. You’re like a cookie filled with arsenic.” That’s an apt description of the movie itself. 

Movie Review: Criss Cross, starring Burt Lancaster and Yvonne De Carlo (1949)

Yvonne De Carlo and Burt Lancaster in the opening scene of Criss Cross, 1949. Burt's jacket is really weird, it has a checkered pattern with black elbow patches and a black back. Did anyone really wear jackets like that in 1949?

Yvonne De Carlo and Burt Lancaster clinch for the cameras in Criss Cross, 1949. Get away from her Burt, that dame's no good for you!

Burt Lancaster was a star from the very beginning of his movie career. He made his electrifying screen debut in The Killers in 1946. Although his acting technique improved over the years, his charisma was readily apparent from the moment he first stepped onto the screen.

Before Lancaster made The Killers, his entire professional acting experience consisted of a single appearance on Broadway in the play A Sound of Hunting, which ran for three weeks in November, 1945. That fact always blows me away. You’d never know from watching The Killers how little experience Lancaster had. Of course, he had been an acrobat for years in the 1930’s, but that’s very different from being an actor. Lancaster was older for an actor who was just starting out. He turned 32 in November, 1945, and he was 6 months older than Tyrone Power, who had been a major movie star for nearly a decade. But Lancaster quickly made up for lost time. In 1947 Lancaster formed his own production company and took charge of his film career. 

Lancaster was an extremely handsome man. He was tall, athletic, and had thick wind-swept brown hair and magnetic blue eyes. Lucy Kibbee, the wife of screenwriter Roland Kibbee, who would go on to work with Lancaster on several movies, said of her first glimpse of Lancaster at a Hollywood party: “I grabbed Kibbee and said, ‘My God, there’s a Greek god sitting over there!’ He was so gorgeous and tall and beautiful and had this great body, physically above everyone in the room.” (Burt Lancaster: An American Life, by Kate Buford, p.83) 

Lancaster signed non-exclusive contracts with producers Hal Wallis and Mark Hellinger. Wallis wanted to change Lancaster’s name to Stuart Chase, but decided against it because there was a famous economist with the same name. Lancaster certainly didn’t look like he should have been called Stuart Chase. 

Criss Cross, from 1949, was Lancaster’s ninth movie, and in his filmography it followed the luridly titled Kiss the Blood off My Hands, which was the first movie that Lancaster’s production company made. Criss Cross had been a project of Mark Hellinger’s, and Lancaster was excited about working with Hellinger again. Hellinger had produced Lancaster’s first two movies, The Killers and Brute Force. When Hellinger died suddenly from a heart attack in December, 1947, Universal studios took over production of Criss Cross. Lancaster was not looking forward to making the film, as the script had changed a great deal since Hellinger had died. But Lancaster didn’t have much of a choice, as Universal told him he would be in breach of his contract if he didn’t make Criss Cross. 

On the set of Criss Cross, Lancaster was reunited with director Robert Siodmak, who had directed The Killers. The plot of Criss Cross was becoming very similar to The Killers as well, with Lancaster cast as the hapless film noir stooge who falls under the spell of a treacherous woman. The woman in Criss Cross was played by the stunningly beautiful Yvonne De Carlo. De Carlo had first met Lancaster at a casting conference in late 1946, and according to her autobiography, they began a short but passionate affair, which included an encounter where they made love in De Carlo’s backyard on her mink coat! (Against Type: The Biography of Burt Lancaster, by Gary Fishgall, p.57) 

Criss Cross opens with a tracking shot of Los Angeles from a helicopter, which eventually focuses in on a parking lot, where we met Steve Thompson (Lancaster) and Anna (De Carlo), caught in a passionate embrace. They are divorced, and she has married someone else, but they are passionately in love. Criss Cross then flashes back to Steve’s return to LA. He’s been traveling the country, trying to get Anna out of his system after their divorce. He thinks he’s been successful, but of course it hasn’t worked. When Lancaster goes to their old favorite club, look closely at the young, handsome guy with dark hair who Yvonne De Carlo is dancing with. It’s Tony Curtis, in one of his first film roles. Anna and Steve start dating again, even though all of their encounters seem to end with them getting into a fight. Anna also starts dating the gangster Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea), who she eventually marries. But when she runs into Steve again, they start an affair. Eventually Slim finds out about their affair, and Steve offers Slim a proposition: he will help Slim rob an armored truck. (Helpfully, Steve works for an armored truck company.) Of course, things go awry during the robbery, and it becomes clear that the plan was to double cross Steve. Steve gets shot, but he’s able to thwart the robbers from getting all of the money, and the newspapers hail him as a hero. As he recovers in the hospital, Steve is kidnapped by one of Dundee’s thugs. Steve bribes the thug to take him to Anna instead, who has all of the robbery money. Instead of being happy to see Steve, Anna lashes out at him, telling him he would only slow her down with his broken arm. Criss Cross ends bleakly, as Dundee shows up and shoots both Steve and Anna dead. 

Criss Cross is a good, gritty film noir, but for me it was too similar to The Killers to really be a classic. I think The Killers is just a better movie. But Criss Cross has all of the typical noir elements: interesting camera angles, a fatalistic and hapless protagonist, flashbacks, voiceover narration, a colorful supporting cast, and a cold-hearted femme fatale. 

Dan Duryea gives an excellent performance as Slim Dundee, the kind of slimy gangster that no one would want to run into. Stephen McNally is also very good as Pete Ramirez, a cop who tries to help Steve. Duryea and McNally both had interesting lives before they became actors. Duryea majored in English at Cornell University, and then entered the advertising business. When he suffered a heart attack in his late 20’s, he decided to pursue acting, which had always been his first love. Duryea had success on Broadway in The Little Foxes, and he reprised his role in the 1941 movie version. Duryea worked steadily in movies and television until his death in 1968. Stephen McNally had a successful career as an attorney before he quit in his late 20’s to become an actor. Like Duryea, McNally always found plenty of work in movie and on television. McNally retired from acting in 1980, and passed away in 1994.

After Criss Cross, Burt Lancaster would try harder to broaden his screen image, and he broke out of the tough guy mold with roles like the alcoholic Doc Delaney in Come Back, Little Sheba. I’ve always admired how Lancaster tried to show his full range as an actor. Just when it looked like he might be typecast as a film noir actor, he made a swashbuckling film like 1950’s The Flame and the Arrow, which showed a different side of his talent, and demonstrated what a great acrobat he was. With his roles in Come Back, Little Sheba in 1952, and From Here to Eternity in 1953, Lancaster was finally taken seriously as an excellent dramatic actor. Lancaster was never afraid to play against type, and in many films he downplayed his charisma and his athletic physique. Slowly but surely, one film at a time, Lancaster expanded his range, to the point where he may have been the most versatile leading man of his generation.