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.
