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: Sex and the Single Girl, starring Natalie Wood, Tony Curtis, Henry Fonda, and Lauren Bacall (1964)

Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood discover some shocking information when they read the book the movie was based on.

Tony Curtis and Henry Fonda in Sex and the Single Girl, 1964. Henry looks like he's saying, "I don't know why I'm in this movie."

The lovely Natalie Wood, 1964.

Natalie looking stunning in her white dress, 1964.

Sex and the Single Girl was a change of pace for Natalie Wood as an actress. It was her first comedic role as an adult, and it was the second of three movies she made with Tony Curtis, the first being 1958’s Kings Go Forth, and the last being 1965’s The Great Race. Sex and the Single Girl was based on Helen Gurley Brown’s 1962 non-fiction best-seller. The movie didn’t really have anything to do with the book, the studio just wanted the titillating title, and paid $200,000 for the film rights. 

The movie is an example of a very specific genre, the “sex comedy” that flourished in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Of course, thanks to the production code that was still in effect, the main characters don’t actually have sex until they are safely married. Perhaps the ne plus ultra of sex comedies from this era is 1959’s Pillow Talk, starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day. Sex comedies are replete with characters assuming false identities, and that becomes integral to the plot of Sex and the Single Girl. 

Natalie Wood is cast as Helen Gurley Brown, and the film has changed her occupation to psychoanalyst. In real life, Gurley Brown worked in advertising and publishing. In 1965, shortly after the movie was released, Gurley Brown got the job that she’s best known for, as she became the editor in chief of Cosmopolitan and transformed the magazine into one of leading women’s magazines. Tony Curtis plays Bob Weston, a writer for Stop magazine, which takes pride in being the lowest of the scandal rags. As the movie opens, another writer for Stop has just published a scalding critique of Gurley Brown’s best-selling book, titled Sex and the Single Girl. But Weston thinks there’s more to this story, and he wants to meet Gurley Brown in person, as he thinks she’s a virgin who is masquerading as a sex expert. (This is not the movie to see if you’re looking for enlightened attitudes about men and women.) It seems odd that Stop magazine would want to publish another story about Gurley Brown, since their takedown of her just appeared. 

Weston goes to Gurley Brown for treatment, but he doesn’t tell her his real identity. Instead he tells her the marital problems his friend Frank, played by Henry Fonda, is having with his wife, played by Lauren Bacall. Gurley Brown is much too nice to Weston, and quickly develops a crush on him. Hilarity, or something meant to approximate it, ensues. 

And there the plot summary stops. It’s no use telling you about how “funny” it is when Weston fakes a suicide attempt, only to have Gurley Brown save him from drowning (it’s always a little sad when Natalie Wood’s movies feature her in a water tank) or how completely “hilarious” the ten minute long car chase at the end of the movie is. I put “funny” and “hilarious” in quotation marks because I didn’t find Sex and the Single Girl to be very funny. It’s a movie that has not aged very well, and it’s ideas and stereotypes about women are hopelessly dated. I know, I should let it go, but the movie just didn’t work for me.

Tony Curtis is a charming and funny actor, but he doesn’t get to do much that’s very funny in this movie. He’s much funnier in Some Like It Hot and Operation Petticoat. I like Tony Curtis a lot, and his voice is just great. You can tell in Sex and the Single Girl that Tony is starting to lose his hair in front, as it’s always combed forward. Natalie Wood does the best she can, and she brings an earnest conviction to the role that is appealing, but the movie doesn’t give Helen Gurley Brown very much depth. I wonder how the real Helen Gurley Brown felt about the movie? I would imagine that she was probably excited that someone as beautiful and talented as Natalie Wood was playing her, but it probably annoyed her that she was turned into a woman who at the end of the movie gives up her career for her man. 

The real problem with Sex and the Single Girl is the script. It’s a real dog, and oddly enough, it was written by Joseph Heller, of Catch-22 fame. The funniest part is probably when Tony Curtis is wearing Natalie Wood’s nightie (long story) and he remarks that he looks like Jack Lemmon in that movie where he dresses up like a girl. Curtis’ character can’t remember the name of the movie, but of course, it’s Some Like It Hot, which Tony Curtis starred in. It’s a funny joke, but then it gets overdone as everyone remarks on how Bob Weston looks like Jack Lemmon. There are also some bewildering jokes about Tony Curtis’ character having to put coins in everything in the Stop office building. Curtis even needs a coin so a mirror will be revealed so he can comb his hair in the men’s room. I assume this was a joke about the popularity of automats, as after the scene in the men’s room Curtis goes to the automat for lunch, but automats had been popular for decades before 1964. They weren’t exactly a new thing, so it seems like an odd joke. 

Henry Fonda and Lauren Bacall don’t have much to do in the movie. But I could listen to Henry Fonda read the phone book. He had such a great voice. The supporting cast is rounded out by Mel Ferrer, playing the rather pointless role of Rudy, another doctor in Gurley Brown’s practice whose only purpose in the movie is to flirt relentlessly with her. Although a successful actor in his own right, Mel Ferrer is probably best known today for being married to Audrey Hepburn. 

Natalie Wood looks beautiful throughout the film, and her Edith Head wardrobe is fantastic. In particular the white dress and the white robe she wears are just jaw-dropping. 

Wood’s biographer Suzanne Finstad researched her contract for Sex and the Single Girl, and discovered that, in addition to being paid $160,000 for her role, Wood had a lot of “riders” in her contract. Wood stipulated the color of the phone that was to be in her dressing room. (Unfortunately, Finstad doesn’t reveal the color.) “She requested white cigarette holders from a shop in London, a special oil of gardenia available in Cairo, and stipulated days off during her menstrual period.” (Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood, by Suzanne Finstad, p.290) 

Finstad interviewed Tony Curtis for her book, and she got some very interesting quotes from him. Curtis told Finstad that he had the best on screen chemistry of any of his co-stars with Wood. Curtis said, “Natalie and I had to be careful, because we found each other quite attractive, but I just didn’t want to degenerate the relationship and neither did she.” Curtis then tells Finstad the real reason he didn’t sleep with Natalie: “Natalie’s boom-booms weren’t big enough. To each his own.” (Finstad, p.293) That’s just the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Of course, that might only be Curtis’ lame excuse. The truth might be that she just didn’t want to sleep with him. Clearly something happened in their relationship, because by the time they started filming The Great Race, shortly after Sex and the Single Girl wrapped, Curtis and Wood were estranged. (Finstad, p.295)

Wood was likely less than happy with the way the script of Sex and the Single Girl made fun of analysis, as during this time in her life she was going to therapy almost daily. Wood said, “I was in analysis for some time, and I found it very beneficial…for me it was a different way of looking at things. I think it made me less introspective, more open to other people. It really changed my life.” (Natalie Wood: A Biography in Photographs, by Christopher Nickens, p.131)

Sex and the Single Girl was released in December 1964. Cue magazine called it “thoroughly coarse, irritating and stupid.” (Nickens, p.126) Despite unfavorable reviews, it grossed $8 million and was the 20^th highest grossing film released in 1964. It’s an interesting time capsule, but one that hasn’t aged very well. Despite the movie’s shortcomings, you can still enjoy the beauty and talent of Natalie Wood in it.