t was a dangerous movie. And a brilliant one. hen Sweet Smell of Success ened on June 27,1957, wever, it was a flop, iit Ernest Lehman's biting tale of a Walter Winchell-like gossip columnist, J. J. Hunsecker, played by Burt Lancaster, and a terminally hungry press agent— Tony Curtis, in a stunning breakthrough role as Sidney Falco—has echoed down the decades and is being adapted for Broadway by John Guare and Marvin Hamlisch. From interviews with Lehman, Curtis, and producer James Hill, SAM KASHNER reconstructs the appropriately dark and vicious birth of a masterpiece of New York noir • ^ _
"V*^* Boulevard did for Hollywood. It was con shines, seemingly drenched in acid rain: ^ ceived as a short story called "Hunsecker the enormous neon signs above the great Fights the World." published in 1948 in buildings, even the newsstand holding Collier's by Ernest Lehman, an unhappy down its corner of the sidewalk in front press agent who wanted only to be a nov of Nedick's. At one point, after Hunseck elist and a screenwriter; it was Lehman's er watches a drunk being bounced from attempt to expiate his guilt for being one a nightclub, he turns away and says, "I of the little guys feeding the big colum love this dirty town." Sweet Smell of Suc nists the stuff that made Walter Winchell cess is a corrosive valentine to New York, more powerful than presidents. embracing its energy and its clashing The writer Michael Herr called Win ambitions. But what cineasts really love chell "the wizard of the American vicari about this film is its biting dialogue, writ ous: gossip columnist, failed vaudevillian. ten by Lehman and that most miserable weet Smell of Success power broker, and journalistic demagogue, of urban geniuses. Clifford Odets. Where has always been a dangerous film. It even one of the most powerful and famous else would you hear a sinister cop utter had the most powerful gossip columnist in men of his time." At the height of his the words "'Come back. Sidney. I want to America pacing nervously across the street popularity, in the late 1930s, 50 million chastise you"? from Loews State on Times Square, where people—two thirds of American adults- the film was having its premiere in New- read Winchell's syndicated column and lis he Sturm und Drang of York on June 27, 1957. Walter Winchell. tened to his Sunday-night radio broadcast. bringing Lehman's morali the fast-talking, snap-brim-fedora-wearing An insecure man, he was quick to per ty tale to the screen had a arbiter of American culture, was waiting ceive slights and avenged them ruthlessly. nearly lethal effect on a for a handful of his spies to reassure him As he wrote in his autobiography. "I'm number of its players: It that the movie was going to be a flop. And not a fighter. I'm a "waiter." I wait until I made Lehman so ill he indeed it was. The film that's now regard can catch an ingrate with his fly open, Thad to leave the project. It deepened the ed as a delicious morality tale, credited with and then I take a picture of it." Winchell's melancholia of the great Odets. It almost sulking Winchell's reputation for all time, special brand of nastiness is the evil heart sent Susan Harrison, the fragile actress failed at the box office. of Sweet Smell of Success. who played Hunsecker's sister, over the The public hated it. Earlier, when it was Among the film's many pleasures is edge. And it helped to derail the career of screened for a Northern California audi James Wong Howe's chiaroscuro cinema its talented director. Alexander "Sandy" ence, one viewer wrote on the preview card. tography, which unerringly captures the Mackendrick. "Don't touch a foot of this film. Just burn look and feel of postwar New York City. Burt Lancaster plays the villainous J. J. the whole thing." Howe shot his subjects from low angles Hunsecker. understood by all audiences- But 42 years after its release this stylish so they always seemed to be "knifing up then and now—to be a swipe at Winchell. black-and-white movie refuses to go away. through the air. poised for the kill." as though Lehman claims he went out of his Its sly influence has cropped up in the work critic and screenwriter Stephen Schiff way to make Hunsecker as different from of directors as diverse as Martin Scorsese. put it. The city is awash in brilliant Winchell as he possibly could. ("Winchell Barry Levinson. the Coen brothers, and shadows—everything never played golf." Lehman points out. Paul Thomas Anderson. New Yorker "I put all those golf trophies in Hunseck film critic David Denby has called it er's study!") But Hunsecker is the finest New York film ever—besting even Annie Hall and Taxi Driver on his personal list. "It was such a tough film." Scorsese has said. "It was vibrant, alive. The images of New York, the location work were all brilliant.... It was a world of operators I knew very well." Why has this film, rejected by its initial audiences in favor of Peyton Place, Tlie Bridge on the River Kwai, and Funny Face, re-emerged in all its low-life glory? What is it about Sweet Smell of Success that causes the film to live up to its hype: THE MOTION PICTURE THAT WILL NEV ER BE FORGIVEN—OR FORGOTTEN! as its theater posters claimed. Just about everything. Sweet Smell of Success—the story of an unethical press agent named Sidney Falco and a power-mad gossip columnist named J. J. Hunsecker—does for New York what Sunset
VANITY FAIR FAMILIAR HAUNTS Walter Winchell, right, ¥ generally acknowledged as the model for Hunsecker, and singer Al Jolson at Manhattan's Stork Club, where the columnist held court at Table 50. Inset, the entrance to the Stork Club, 1939. ,1
|iM|[ljjFg Hi• 1
• ^Mt IISfBlis "Relax, lump! I told you I wasn't peddling any !««•* • fish today," Falco tells a talent agent nervous about being conned, before pretending to dictate a column item to Hunsecker over the phone. Inset, Falco and Rita, the cigarette girl (Barbara Nichols).
9*3
impressive figure... zipping up ms41y~ and smiling proudly.. rCThat was my introduction to Lancaster" Winchell: an unscrupulous, megalomaniac pimp his girlfriend. And destroy Steve Dallas to get off." Hoffman was tall, physically im gossipmonger who rules his empire from by libeling him as a pot-smoking Commu posing—"a great talker and phone man." a table at '21.' (In real life Winchell's was nist. When Hunsecker says to Falco, "I'd He had terrible vision and wore thick glass Table 50 at the Stork Club.) Lancaster por hate to take a bite out of you; you're a es. He usually wore a camel-hair coat. He trayed Hunsecker as a tight-lipped mon cookie full of arsenic," Falco just smiles. was a star in his own right, a friend of J. ster, "the first heartless titan in American It was a hell of a role. Edgar Hoover's, and his clients included a film." according to film historian David number of the major motion-picture stu Thomson. He's obsessed with his own n some ways, Ernie Lehman was dios. He had his own power, including a power, destroying careers on a whim, us not a typical press agent. He was column in Tlie Hollywood Reporter with ing his column to bludgeon his enemies probably the only one in history the highbrow title "Tales of Hoffman." and friends alike. But then, he has no who had been raised by a Czech Lehman contributed to those columns, and friends, just lackeys and hangers-on like oslovak nanny. His parents lived to a weekly segment called "Last Week Sidney Falco who suck up to him. the in Woodmere, Long Island (one on Broadway." press agents whose livelihoods depend on of the affluent Five Towns), but lost their When Lehman showed his former boss getting their clients mentioned in Hun rhome in 1938. when Lehman was 18. Shy the manuscript of his short novel, which secker's column. "You're dead, son—get and high-strung. Lehman had the nervous would be published in 1950 in Cosmopoli yourself buried!" are nearly the first words system of a whippet. He went into public tan under the title "Tell Me About It To that come from his mouth. relations because it offered financial secu morrow" (Herbert Mayes. Cosmopolitan's What drives the plot is Hunsecker's rity. He would soon develop moral qualms editor in chief, didn't want the word "smell" relationship with his sister, a fragile doll about his profession. "I knew Winchell. I to appear in his magazine), Hoffman was named Susie in an oversize mink, and his was the guy on the other end of the phone. furious. resolve to break up Susie's romance with He'd go into a 30-minute tirade about Ed "Ernie," he asked, "how can you do Steve Dallas, a jazz guitarist played by the Sullivan, then he'd say, 'Who is this?" The this to me? Everybody's going to think I'm gleamingly clean-cut Marty Milner. (This nicest thing you could do was to keep Sidney! Everybody's going to think Hun was another element that was too close to someone out of that world." secker is Winchell! You have things in reality to be a coincidence: Winchell was a "We were a frightened bunch of people." here that only somebody who's close to smothering father to his beautiful daughter. Lehman says about the cadre of press Winchell would know!" Walda, to the point of ruthlessly hounding agents and writers who fed the columnists, her boyfriend, a producer named William who made the rounds of all the nightspots here were similarities. Fal Cahn. in an attempt to destroy him.) in New York in the 40s: '2V El Morocco, co read Hunsecker's column Enter Sidney Falco. press agent on the the Stork Club. "We knew [our] lives were the day before, as Hoffman make and uneasy protagonist of this twist in the hands of a small group of colum did Winchell's. Falco had ed tale, played by Tony Curtis in arguably nists. It's hard to believe the columns were an apartment-cum-office the greatest role of his long career. Falco that important in those days. There were that was very much like is Hunsecker's lapdog—he'll do anything three in the Daily News. There was Nick THoffman's. ("I used to visit Irving's of to stay in the columnist's good Kenny and Walter Winchell in the Mirror, fice," Lehman recalls. "He would hand graces: lie. cheat. there was Louis Sobol and Dorothy Kilgallen the phone over to me so I could hear Tru in the Journal-American, there was Lucius man Capote's voice") A bedroom lurked Beebe in the Herald Tribune. behind the front desk, where on at least There was George Ross one occasion Lehman had to knock off a in the World-Telegram." theater review to the sounds of moans Lehman was still living and bouncing bedsprings coming from with his parents on West behind the door. Hoffman was a world- 75th Street when he was class womanizer, a fact confirmed by Leh absorbing the world of Sweet man's friend the producer David Brown, Smell of Success. Looking who has known the writer since they were back on that whole period, boys together on Long Island. Lehman says that he "was Brown was the managing editor of Cos fearful" when he quit his job mopolitan when Lehman's novelette ap in 1948, rented a cottage and peared in the magazine. Brown has said a writing studio in Province- that "Hoffman was afflicted with satyria town, Massachusetts, with his sis, male nymphomania." But there was wife, Jacqueline, and began writ one important difference between Sidney ing a hundred-page "novelette" Falco and Irving Hoffman: Hoffman didn't extending the short story. "I have to suck up to Winchell. Lehman tried knew I was playing with fire," to explain this crucial difference to his for he says. mer boss, but it didn't matter. "Irving had Irving Hoffman was the chief a right to feel betrayed," Lehman would press agent for whom Lehman, as later say. In fact, out of respect for Hoff legman and writer of items, had man, he made several small changes in the worked. "Irving was a celebrity, manuscript: having the secretary address really." Lehman recalls, "and he Hunsecker as "boss" instead of "chief," was one of the few men who could for example, because Winchell's secretary. stand up to Winchell. tell him where Rose Bigman, always addressed Winchell
VANITY FAIR I Winchell talks with Marilyn Monroe, and, inset, holds forth in front of Sardi"s. 1959. At one time America's most powerful journalist, he was, by the late 60s. reduced to begging for work.
Hifl^H
"I see Odets has r typed out. 'The cats in the bag. and the bags in the river' It took my breath away, right from his brain to my brain." as "chief." But Hoffman was not assuaged. he film-productioncompa 'Tor a year and a half, he didn't talk to ny of Hecht-Hill-Lancaster me," Lehman admits. "We had a complete could be a treacherous place break." to work. Harold Hecht had Winchell tried to derail the inevitable been a hoofer and a liter speculation that came when the novelette ary agent. Small, clever, was published by calling up rival colum Tand tricky. Hecht laughed a lot and drank nist Louis Sobol and saying, "Hey, did a little too much. The skinny on him was you read that story Ernie wrote about that, despite his affability, you shouldn't But everyone read it as an attack turn your back: he was given the nick on Winchell anyway, and that's why, at name "the Mole." In Naming Names, Vic first, no one in Hollywood would touch it. tor Navasky's book on Hollywood and the Lehman's agent in Los Angeles, George House Committee on Un-American Ac Willner. attempted to sell the story to the tivities, he is described as "a denigrating movie studios even before it appeared in informer." Cosmopolitan. He wrote to Lehman in The 32-year-old Burt Lancaster had Provincetown in June 1949: "The big just made his debut on Broadway in A problem still remains the resemblance to Sound of Hunting, in which he played a Winchell. I ... went to all places where I tough World War II sergeant, when he thought it would do some good, but I met Harold Hecht in 1946. Hecht, 6 years still ran up against the same problem Lancaster's senior, had already spent some I'll say one thing for your story—it set 20 years in show business, but with mod this town on its ear, and Ernest Leh est success. Hecht recognized Lancaster's man's name is probably as well known immense potential, even though the ac out here now as any of the top ten or tor's major credential before the Broadway twelve writers." play was his membership in a two-man Ironically, it wasn't the manuscript trapeze-and-gymnastic act. Lancaster's of "Tell Me About It Tomorrow" that charisma was instantly apparent, though. brought Lehman to Hollywood, but his His sheer physical presence was over estranged mentor, Irving Hoffman. In 1952. whelming; his shadow fell over you before Hoffman finally wanted to make up with he even entered the room. Lehman, after they were brought together In order to induce Lancaster to go in by a mutual friend, a press agent for Artie with him. Hecht came up with the idea of Shaw named Sid Garfield. As an olive forming their own film-productioncompa branch. Hoffman offered Lehman a plug ny, something unthinkable for a mere ac in his column. Better yet, he let Lehman tor at the time. "Here we were," Hecht write the whole column himself: told Lancaster's biographer, "a couple of "The world I want to see on film bums without a quarter between us. dis is the world of Toots Shor's at cussing producing our own pictures." lunch-hour. Sardi's at 11 of an open James Hill, the third partner in Hecht- ing night. Lindy's at 2 o"clock Hill-Lancaster. who was brought in seven of any morning ... the world of years after the company's formation, was Winchell and Wilson, Sullivan and perennially boyish. He had been a page at Sobol ... of columnists on the NBC before becoming a contract screen prowl for items, press agents on writer at MGM. People wondered why he the prowl for columnists ..." was made a partner in the company. The Lehman ended his pitch with truth was Hill "was Burt Lancaster's boy," "Now I may be wrong (and I according to Julius Epstein, who. with his don't think I am), but just off brother Philip, co-wrote the screenplay his past performances I would for Casablanca. It had been Lancaster's say that Ernest Lehman is idea to put Hill's name between Hecht's the guy who can write that and his own: Hill would come between kind of picture." the two in other ways as well, most often Two weeks later, Para as a buffer—because Hecht and Lancaster mount called. And none too were usually at each other's throats. In re soon: Lehman, who was turn. Lancaster found women for Hill, and writing freelance now, had not just any women—movie stars. In Feb become a pariah at Lindy's. ruary 1958. at the age of 41. Hill would the Stork Club. '21'- marry Rita Hayworth—her fifth marriage, places where he had for and his first. The marriage would last only merly plied his trade. three years. Press agents got up and When Hill first came to work at the left whenever he entered Hecht-Lancaster building on North Can the room. non Drive, which had formerly housed the
VANITY FAIR I GLOBAL WARNING Susan Harrison and Mam vi;i .. .
of Plot points for the fiJm he now savs.
William Morris Agency he noticed the intense rivalry between his two new partners. "Harold and Burt," Hill recalls, "had as strange a relationship as you could get. People were frightened of Burt, and he never did anything to make people unfrightened of him."' Another friend described the relationship as "a Freudian can of worms." Not only was Lancaster capable of verbally brutalizing Hecht, he once lifted him into the air and threatened to throw him out the window. Their contention stemmed from Hecht's desire to "get out from under Burt's shad ow," Hill says. Lancaster wasn't just a company figurehead:h e was an active and involved partner. Lehman recalled that "Burt had the power. He was the famous movie star. He had the money, which Har old Hecht didn't have In terms of pub licity and power. Burt Lancaster had both. Hecht was the nobody." Hecht resented Hill's presence in the company, but he wasn't about to go up against Lancas ter. "It was old-fashioned jeal ousy," Lehman says. Once Hill became involved in the making of Sweet Smell of Success, Hecht lost all interest in the film, although he was the one who had originally angled for the rights. From the minute Lehman walked into their plush of fices, with an aviary of twit tering finches that seemed ^£-j^ to fall silent whenever Lan caster passed by. he didn't like his NCASTER -TONY CURTIS t surroundings. "They were profligate," he SHOOTING STAR remembers. "They spent money on every- Inset, above: thing-$ 12,000 remodeling the executive cinematographer James washroom." The partners also maintained Wong Howe, here a luxurious apartment on Wilshire Boule in 1943, shot the actors $WEET P' vard for their trysts, replete with gold- from low angles plated dinnerware and a Utrillo hanging so they seemed to be •knifing up through the air, in the hallway near the bathroom; the an poised for the kill.'" tiques and hundred-dollar ashtrays still Inset, right: the poster had their price tags attached. for the movie. Lehman's first encounter with Lancaster didn't do much to change his mind: "I was 4 sitting with Harold Hecht. The door opened
VANITY FAIR and in walked a towering, impressive fig ure. He was zipping up his fly and smiling proudly, saying, 'She swallowed it.' That was my introduction to Burt Lancaster. "I called my agent and said, 'I'm not going to do this picture. Get me off of it.' Harold Hecht pleaded with me. He got down on his hands and knees and said, 'Please don't leave, or Burt will blame me.'" Although they were the only producers in town with the courage to show interest in the project, frankly, they scared Leh man—there was a whiff of violence about the place.
ancaster was rumored to have beaten up a girlfriend who was a telephone opera tor. "He was known to be violent with women," con firms Lehman. Confidential magazine published an article in 1955 with the headline THE SECRET'S OUT ABOUT BURT LANCASTER. A woman named Francesca de Scaffa, who at one time had been a mistress of the Shah of Iran and then mar ried the actor Bruce Cabot, who saved Fay Wray from the ape's clutches in King Kong, had gone to the scandal sheet and offered her story. She had met with Lan caster to maneuver for a role in the 1954 film Vera Cruz, but, she claimed, when she turned down his sexual advances he at tacked her, ripping the sleeve from her $400 Jacques Fath dress. "Things went from waltz time into a tempo four times faster than the mambo," the magazine re ported in its signature style. "Burt's ten dency toward clobbering cuties is rapidly becoming no secret at all among dames in the know in Hollywood." "The place was rife with womanizing," Lehman remembers. Early on, the screen writer was invited to a meeting with the three heads of the company, the subject of which was "Who can we find to be come our official procurer?" "I'm ashamed to say," Lehman ex plains, "that I was a part of this meet ing. There we were, scratching around for women. They were the most corrupt group. I really sank into the depths when I decided to work with them." Lehman remembers being in Palm Springs with his wife when Hecht and Hill tried to per suade him to join them in Acapulco, where they had two women waiting. "I said no, absolutely not. And to this day I can't figure out
VANITY FAIR I why they did that Here I was, married Curtis knew he had been born to play atone for "having done some pretty terrible with two young children—my wife was in the streetwise Falco. "All they had to tell things as a press agent," Lehman felt he'd the next room What were they trying me was New York. I was raised in that entered a whole new level of corruption. to do by exporting me to Acapulco? It was city. I should have done it as the first very strange." movie I ever made." A fter United Artists came Paddy Chayefsky was also working for For the role of Hunsecker, Lehman ^k in with the funds to pro- the production company at the time and thought of Orson Welles. But while Leh ^k duce the picture. Hecht had just adapted his television play Marty- man was working on the first of several ^L fired Lehman as director. tor it. He and Lehman would go on long drafts of the screenplay, Lancaster would / ^L The ostensible reason was walks together and trade horror stories. "I sit in on story conferences. "He was fasci _ _Hl that Lancaster's first di seemed to have been surrounded by evil," nated," Lehman remembers. "It's like he rectorial effort, on The Kentuckian, a 1955 Lehman says today. "But they were the smelled that this could be a different role film with Lancaster and Walter Matthau, ones who felt a great affinity for Sweet for him—no hero. One day, Burt just said, had lost money for United Artists, but the Smell. They dug it. Nobody else did, real Tm going to do it.' That's when it be truth was, as Hill explains 42 years later, ly. The film could only have been made came a bigger venture, more important." "we were never gonna let Ernie direct!" by Hecht-Hill-Lancaster." With Lancaster now starring in the In fact, Hill believes that "Ernie didn't It was the unexpected success of Mar film, Lehman's sensitive stomach began want to work on the picture at all, or he ty—in 1956 the film won four Academy to give him trouble. "It bothered me a wouldn't have made a demand like that." Awards, including best picture—that made lot," he said. "They used to make jokes Tony Curtis confirms this. "We were talk Lehman change his mind about letting about it. I remember at a meeting we ing about getting Orson Welles to play J. J. the project go forward. "When Marty won had one day when Burt looked at me Hunsecker. They're gonna let Lehman, the Oscar, I said yes," Lehman recalls. and he said, 'I can see us all standing who's never directed a movie before in his "On the condition that I also direct the around Ernie's grave, and there's a stom life, direct Orson Welles? They [promised picture." ach tree growing out of it.' And the three him] that, I feel, because they wanted to Tony Curtis hounded Burt Lancaster of them laughed. This was the atmos get the property. That's the only reason." for the part of Sidney Falco, the weaselly phere I was working in. This was not Lehman says he was crushed when press agent who long ago had thrown John Houseman or Billy Wilder." Instead Hecht called him in to his office his moral compass into the East River. of using the project to to give him the news. He went Lancaster had been impressed with Cur to his agent, Lew Wasserman, tis the previous year during ( and said, '"Lew, I have terrible the making of director Carol news for you.' And Wasserman Reed's Trapeze, the sawdust- said, "I already know.' That and-sweat circus drama in was the trouble with MCA in which the two men were those days, because Wasser teamed as aerialists who fall man was also their agent! So out over Gina Lollobrigida. they made me a producer in The movie was highly suc stead of the director. I kept cessful, but there was more getting more and more pain chemistry between the two in my gut, and more and men in tights than between more stress. And that's when either man and they chose Alexander Mac- kendrick. Sandy was al ^^^ the girl. ready there on another project, so they asked him to direct. It seemed an un likely choice. What would he know about the world of Broadway and New York nightlife?" He was from Scotland, after all. In a way, Mackendrick was coming home when he flew to America in 1956. Although he grew up in Glasgow and worked in England, he had ac tually been born in Boston of Scottish immigrant parents. When his father died in the Spanish-flu epidemic of 1918, it was decided that the experiment of living in America ' just hadn't worked out. The famiW returned to Scotland, and MackendricJ was raised by his grandparents. (Mj kendrick was fond of telling pe that he had been conceived in Holly\ ' *eu
SWCr u A r> "Harrison admitted to a fascination with high buildings-she had an impulse to throw herself off."
%.
i : STRIKING OUT Susie Hunsecker (Harrison) and Falco in a publicity still. "I'd rather be dead than living with you," Susie tells her brother before she walks out in the last scene. Opposite: top, Mackendrick, right, directs Curtis and Harrison; bottom, a 1957 telegram sent to Lehman by his father, Paul. so his "mistrust of Hollywood was pre-natal.") bed. He said, 'Ernie, we've looked up there Odets knew that the theater world of the Mackendrick had made his reputation with a sigmoidoscope, and you're not going 30s, in which he had made his reputation, directing two of the classic Alec Guinness back to work. In fact, you're leaving the no longer existed. Even with his tremendous comedies for Britain's Ealing Studios, The country.'" early success, he could not have supported Man in the White Suit (1951) and The When the doctor called to say that himself there. As Miller observed, there was Ladykillers (1955), the latter considered the Lehman was leaving the picture, two of little to return to: "Only show business and apotheosis of the Ealing style. His back the partners turned to each other and said some theatrical real estate." ground was in design; he had been a wun- at the same time; "I hope the son of a In 1936, Odets had predicted that "in a derkind at the advertising agency J. Walter bitch dies." few years the movies will have developed Thompson before being hired to create Lehman traveled to Hawaii and then on into the most important artistic medium storyboards for Ealing, which he then to Samoa and Tahiti. "I went native," he the world has ever seen, and it's high time parlayed into directing. His comedies are remembers. "One day I was lying there by playwrights found out about them." Twenty known for their dark-edged humor ("Where myself on a beach, and suddenly I sat up years later, when he was signed to finish there is comedy he rims it in black," wrote and realized, My God, they're shooting a Lehman's script, Odets was living in di one critic). Guinness described him as "a picture in New York called Sweet Smell of minished circumstances—divorced from man of great charm but of astonished out Success. I'd forgotten all about it." his second wife, driving a dusty old Lin rage at the wickedness of the world." coln, and caring for his two children, Nora, Soon after Tlte Ladykillers was made, t was Mackendrick's idea to bring in 11, and Walt, 9. A gifted painter and col Michael Balcon sold Ealing Studios to the IClifford Odets, whom he had admired lector of works by Klee and Matisse, Odets BBC, and Mackendrick sought his fate from afar. Odets, who was already adapt was reduced to selling a number of the abroad. "He got a call from his agent one ing A. B. Guthrie's novel The Way West paintings from his collection to survive. day asking him to come out here and talk for Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, had never gotten to somebody at Paramount," Mackendrick's over the triumph of having five plays run ony Curtis remembers his first meet widow, Hilary, remembers. "It was all rath ning simultaneously in New York in 1935 Ting with Odets. "He used to call me er mysterious, so naturally he was intrigued." when he was only 29, including Waiting for 'boychick,' right from the start." There was Mackendrick, used to the camaraderie of Lefty and Awake and Sing! The "Bernard a kind of bond between Odets and Curtis— Ealing, turned down offers from big stu Shaw of the Bronx" was stocky and hand the playwright may have seen in the young dios such as Paramount and producers some, with wild hair like Einstein's that er man his own youthful, urban beauty, such as David O. Selznick, deciding instead bushed up around his head. "He used to now rumpled and fading. "The picture is to sign with Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, because be wonderful to observe at parties," Tony loaded with little references to my looks," they promised he could direct an adapta Curtis recalls. "He had an old tuxedo with Curtis points out, "'the boy with the ice tion of George Bernard Shaw's Tlie Devil's a vest and he had a very beautiful look cream face' ... and Rita, the cigarette girl, Disciple. about him in those days. No one looked as calling me 'Eyelashes.'" Mackendrick and his wife settled into elegant as he with a martini in his hand. One of the things Odets did was to give a rented house on South Rodeo Drive. He had a great deal of fire and lust and Curtis the key to Sidney Falco. He said, Mackendrick's biggest complaint about drive." Odets took many women to bed, in "Don't be still with Sidney. Don't ever let cluding the movie star Luise Rainer, whom Hollywood at that time was its lack of Sidney sit down comfortably. I want Sid he married in 1937. pubs. At Ealing Studios each crew mem ney constantly moving, like an animal, nev ber would drink a quart of bonded whiskey Odets left New York soon after for Cali er quite sure who's behind him or where a night. fornia, where he accepted Hollywood's lucre he is." During daily conferences with Macken but spent the rest of his life being consid Curtis took Odets's suggestions to -heart drick, Lehman quickly recognized the Scot ered a hypocrite for abandoning the leftist and gave what many consider his break tish director's brilliance. "His words just ideals of his great, early plays. It was an through performance. Up until then he had tumbled over each other; I couldn't quite opinion that the playwright shared, tortur swashbuckled his way through numerous follow him at times. He was too bright for ing himself with his sense of self-betrayal. "tit and sand" movies, such as Son of AH me, too fast. Working with Sandy was great, The playwright Arthur Miller spent some Baba, and made lots of money for Univer but at the same time stressful. You had the time with Odets in Hollywood in 1958, six sal, which had transformed a rough-cut feeling he wasn't even listening to you be years after Odets had been a friendly, Hungarian Jew named Bernard Schwartz cause his mind was going so fast." though captious, witness for HUAC during from Brooklyn into a brilliantined teen idol the McCarthy bloodletting. Finishing the who called himself Anthony Curtis. Sweet fter one particularly rough story con screenplay for Sweet Smell of Success, Smell of Success would reverse that trans Aference. Lancaster walked Lehman Odets felt, would give him a way of striking formation. out into the hall and put an arm around back at that public humiliation. Miller de There's sweet irony in the fact that Curtis his shoulder. "We're going to start shooting scribed the embattled playwright as typify went back to his roots—back to being Ber- next week in New York," he said. "You're ing "what it meant to survive as an artist in nie Schwartz—to unleash the character of going to have to do some rewrites behind America. There was something so utterly Sidney Falco on the world. Falco's little the camera." American in what had betrayed him—he aria on success, delivered to his lugubrious "O.K., Burt, but first I'm going to have had wanted everything." Miller compared secretary while he's getting dressed in the to go see my doctor." Odets to his wife Marilyn Monroe: "Like cramped bedroom behind her desk, could Lehman was really suffering. David her, he was a self-destroying babe in the easily have been Curtis's credo as well: Brown, then living in Los Angeles and woods absentmindedly combing back his "Hunsecker is a golden ladder to the places working as an executive at Twentieth Centu hair with a loaded pistol." I wanna get. Way up high, Sam, where it's ry Fox, drove him in his Mercedes roadster Harold Clurman, one of the founders of always balmy and no one snaps his fingers to Cedars cf Lebanon Hospital. "When I the Group Theatre, which had launched and says, 'Hey, shrimp, rack the balls!' ... woke up the next morning," Lehman re Odets. kept exhorting the playwright to leave From now on, the best of everything is calls, "the doctor was seated next to my Hollywood and return to New York. But good enough for me."
VANITY FAIR soul long since squeezed out of him by the machinery of power. "Match me. Sidney." times write the same scene eight times be fore he'd let you read it." "I was really astounded by the twist of he says, extending his cigarette to Falco it." Curtis says about playing Falco. "I from his throne at '21,' in his sadistic little But there was another problem. Odets was able to grace the part with little phys game of dominance and submission. didn't seem to realize until Chicago that ical innuendos. Not for nothing. I wanted they were going on to New York. He com to make him an excellent athlete, growing owe is rightly credited with the movie's plained to Hill. "For Christ's sake. I can't up in the streets of New York, playing Hdarkly dazzling evocation of Broadway go to New York! I can't face those peo stickball. He punched, he boxed, he did nightlife. It would have been impossible to ple!"—meaning the theater people he had . everything, always on his feet, always get the sort of shots he wanted filming in left behind, who by now considered him a moving." side '21,' so interiors were filmed in Holly defector: Harold Clurman, Stella Adler, and Both Mackendrick and Lehman thought wood at Goldwyn Studios' Soundstage 8— other members of the Group Theatre. Curtis was miraculous as Falco. For Curtis. they spent $25,000 just re-creating '21,' Meanwhile, Mackendrick had mixed feel the role opened doors: other complex and with movable "wild walls" to make way for ings about Odets's sizzling dialogue, worried demanding roles would follow—in The Defi Howe's camera. Howe smeared the walls that it would sound "stagey." But Odets re ant Ones, Some Like It Hot, Hie Great Im with oil so they would gleam. To capture assured him: "You're probably worried that postor, and TIw Boston Strangler. And behind the smoky atmosphere of New York night the dialogue is exaggerated and may sound all those roles was Sidney clubs, sets were built two feet off the implausible. Don't be. Play it real fast—and Falco: "In all the films play the scenes not for the words but for the situations! Play them 'on J've done, I've never lost the run' and they'll work Sidney. And I don't want just fine." to lose him," Curtis says.
n contrast to Falco. J. J. y the time shooting B, finally began in New IHunsecker hardly ever r seems to move—he's usual York, things had really ly shown sitting, at his become chaotic. "One of ble in '21.' at his desk the most frightening ex _"
VANITY FAIR and you're falling apart at the seams ... happened. He was particularly annoyed year, nearly six months after its run, that with a fatality for doing wrong, picking that Harold Hecht did not speak to him Winchell acknowledged the film at all, wrong, and giving up even before you start personally but sent in the production man reporting matter-of-factly that Hecht-Hill- a fight." he could have been speaking about ager. It was very crushing for him. He be Lancaster would stand to lose $500,000 on Harrison herself. It was one of those mam came depressed." It's possible that Mac it. But. as Winchell's latest biographer, Neal moments when the line was blurred be kendrick was being made a scapegoat for Gabler, wrote, Lehman's novelette and tween life and art. the box-office failure of Sweet Smell of Mackendrick's movie "helped sully Walter Curtis says that "working with those guys Success, despite the critics' appreciation of Winchell's name forever." He lived another was tough. We all came in with barrels the film and the fact that it made Time's 14 years, long enough to see his power loaded, we all came in to fight. Susan had and the New York Herald Tribune's 10-best and influence evaporate. The power of the no experience at all, so we drove her down lists for 1957. tabloid gossip column had ebbed with the into nowhere." She seems lost in the film. Mackendrick returned to England, where coming of television—and Winchell. though he made a few more films before he came he briefly tried television, was really a ra here were a number of reasons why back to Hollywood in 1969. He spent 10 dio man. David Brown describes his last TSweet Smell of Success failed at the box years developing a film based on the life of encounter with Winchell. not long before office. The movie was just too cynical for Mary. Queen of Scots, which he felt would his death: "It was at Danny's Hideaway. the times—in 1957. America was in no have been his masterwork, only to have He was all alone in the booth, surrounded mood to see a film about its dark side. Universal cancel the project. His last film by his clippings. He had totally aban And the public wasn't ready to see two would turn out to be a silly 60s comedy doned his column, he had been fired, but popular stars. Curtis and Lancaster, cast as with Tony Curtis and Sharon Tate called he still had that incredible ego. At his fu villains. They had been so winning in Trapeze. Don't Make Waves, which was plagued by neral, you know, nobody was there who One film executive marveled that the film problems—including the death of a stunt- wasn't paid to be there." According to seemed to have been made "almost in defi man. Mackendrick came to the conclu Gabler, Walda discouraged people from ance of the box office." sion that in Hollywood "the deal is the attending the funeral. The Hollywood reporter Ezra Goodman real product; the movie is the by-product As for Odets, he continued to work on accompanied Hill. Hecht. and Lancaster to of the deal." When the California Insti films, often uncredited. He had always San Francisco for a preview. After the tute of the Arts began looking for some been a cynic about Sweet Smell of Success. screening, Hecht approached Goodman one to head up its new film program, it "Hell." Odets once said to Burt Lancaster, and asked him what he thought of the pic asked Mackendrick. He accepted, was its "you can get killed just yearning for Holly ture. dean for 9 years and a much-beloved teach wood." "I told him that I thought it was poor. er until his death at the age of 81 in 1993. Odets was hired to write Wild in the Hecht was overjoyed. His face broke out He never made another film. "Without Country (1961) for Elvis Presley, but when into a wide CinemaScope-type smile and I him," Anthony Lane wrote in The New' he had Presley commit suicide at the end of became his buddy. [The movie] was a flop Yorker, "the landscape of cinema has the picture, he was told to rewrite the end and lost a great deal of money, but Hecht grown dimmer." ing. He did so because he needed the mon was happy." Once Hill had ended up get "He was cynical, cynical about every ey. "Everything he was against at the begin ting the producer's credit on the film. Hecht thing," Hilary Mackendrick says. "He took ning of his career," observed his friend the was glad to see it fail. to calling Sweet Smell of Success a piece of pianist Oscar Levant, "he wound up doing At a party at Hill's Los Angeles apart hokum, but that was his nature. He just himself." ment after the preview. Lehman sat at a couldn't bring himself to acknowledge that Odets lived for six more years after the table with Lancaster, who turned to him he had made a masterpiece." release of Sweet Smell of Success. Just as he suddenly and said, "You weren't that sick, had accepted the inevitability of movies, he Ernie. You didn't have to leave the picture. n 1960. three years after the movie was accepted the inevitability of television, and I ought to punch you in the jaw right here I released, Hecht, Hill, and Lancaster dis agreed to be a writer for The Richard Boone and now." solved their partnership. In 1965, Susan Show. But when a stomach complaint Lehman said. "Go ahead. Burt. I need Harrison sued Hecht for $25,000. claiming turned out to be cancer, Odets was hospi the money." that he had "fraudulently induced" her talized. All his old friends from Broadway, "They resented me," Lehman says now. into abandoning a contract she had with the ones he had avoided during location "They considered me an enemy in their Hecht-Hill-Lancaster. After that, she seemed shooting in New York—Harold Clurman. midst. I never saw Clifford again. He was just to disappear. Except for a 1960 teen- Elia Kazan. Lee Strasberg—showed up at off on another picture. They got rid of exploitation movie. Key Witness, she did his bedside to pay homage to their former everyone." not work again in Hollywood. In October golden boy. His death received modest no 1965, Harrison was given a suspended 90- tice in the press: Time magazine dismissed ne of the people they got rid of was day jail sentence by a superior-court judge his long career in a flippant epitaph: "Odets. OMackendrick, two weeks into the film in Los Angeles for child neglect, after she where is thy sting?" ing of The Devil's Disciple, the film he had failed to give her two-year-old son urgently- But Odets, near the end of his life, had initially been hired to direct. Lancaster needed medical attention. The boy, Daniel, written his own epitaph: "That miserable claimed that the director was simply taking had sustained a brain injury after having patch of events, that melange of nothing, too long, driving up the budget. "Sandy fallen. (Repeated attempts to locate Harri while you were looking ahead for some was a very brilliant man." Lancaster ex son today, even by a private detective, were thing to happen, that was it! That was life! plained, "but we hadn't the time or the unsuccessful.) You lived it!" money for him. That's the truth." Walter Winchell refused even to see Hilary Mackendrick recalls that her hus Sweet Smell of Success. "I don't fool with ehman, on the other hand, has had a band "was let go from Devil's Disciple after the Lehmans of the world," he allegedly L spectacular career as a screenwriter in he had already shot sequences with Lau said when asked why he didn't retaliate in Hollywood. His credits include Sabrina, rence Olivier.... He had no idea why it his column. It wasn't until the end of the The King and I, Somebody Up There Likes
APRIL 2000 VANITY FAIR Line, is writing the score with the lyricist wonderful nonsense, but an era of char Sweet Smell of Success Craig Carnelia. who contributed to the acter assassination, of instant celebrity. In musical adaptation of Studs Terkel's Work my view, it was all invented by J. J. Hun- Me, North by Northwest, West Side Story, ing, The English director Nicholas Hytner secker." The Sound of Music, Who's Afraid of Vir (The Madness of King George) is slated to As for Lehman, he's remaining on the ginia Wool/?, Hello, Dolly!, and Hitch direct. West Coast, content not to involve himself cock's last film. Family Plot. He's now co- Sweet Smell of Success has come full creatively in this new incarnation of the nov producing with David Brown a musical circle, to. perhaps, where it belongs. It elette he wrote 50 years ago in a Province- adaptation of Sweet Smell of Success for had always been David Brown's dream to town studio. "I wrote the novel, the screen Broadway. John Guare. author of The make it into a Broadway musical: "After play—it's theirs now," he says. "I'm staying House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of all," Brown suggests, "it's a fable. And a away from it. I just hope they have a good Separation, has written the book, and musical lends itself to a fable. We are press agent. Maybe Sidney Falco will get Marvin Hamlisch. composer of A Chorus now living in a tabloid era—not the era of the job." D
fice. he had an inner office. She was very At the time. Merrick, the powerful pro Sue Mongers flirtatious. One day I popped in to see ducer of such Broadway hits as Gypsy and Charlie, and suddenly I said, 'Oh. I've got Hello, Dolly.', and the film director Otto CONTINUED FROM PAGE 404 that W'hen I to go.' and opened the door to his office, Preminger (Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, went to see him in Death of a Salesman I nearly putting her eye out as she was down Exodus) were "the two most formidable, had every intention of going backstage, but peeping through the keyhole, or with her frightening names to agents." according to I was so upset by it that I couldn't. My fa ear to the keyhole—I never could get her to Mengers. "But Merrick would take my ther was Willy Loman." She pauses. Then: admit which it was. In due course, she left calls because he knew I would be either "God. I hate to talk about myself. How do the Morris office and went to work for an amusing or I'd give him a free idea. When you like the tuna fish?" other agent." Hello, Dolly! opened. I called David and According to the Rosenfield book. Men- The other agent was Korman. who had gave him a list of replacements, from Gin gers moved with her mother, by now a book left Baum-Newborn in 1963 to start his own ger Rogers on down, and in fact I tried to keeper, to the Bronx. In 1955. she answered agency. Tom Korman Associates. That same get Ginger Rogers to let me negotiate it for an ad for a receptionist at MCA. the pow year he wooed Mengers from Morris by of her. I thought I would faint on the way up erhouse talent agency run by Jules Stein fering her her first job as an agent. Korman's to her suite in the elevator. And there she and Lew Wasserman (which later bought shop started out with only three clients: the was, sitting behind a tray, sipping coffee, Universal and divested its agenting business). fading movie star Joan Bennett: Claudia Mc and she never even offered me a cup. She Mengers worked at MCA for a couple of Neil, who had appeared in A Raisin in the made me feel—ugh." years, until she was unceremoniously given Sun; and the writer-actress Lillian Roth, In 1967, Preminger was directing Hurry the boot for failing to summon an agent whose memoir Til Cry Tomorrow had been Sundown, and Mengers was trying to sell from the men's room to take a call from Ty adapted into a hit movie in 1955. But Kor him on one of her male clients. Preminger rone Power. From there she went to the man Associates quickly became known as was a liberal, famous for openly employing smaller Baum-Newborn agency. Again she the Jolly Robbers, for the boldness with blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo on Exo was frequently in trouble. Her boss. Marty which it purloined clients, or. alternatively, dus. As she recalls. "He said to me. "Miss Baum. "had a roaring temper and Sue was the Relative Wrong agency, as in dancer- Mengers, your client is a fairy!' Of course a total fuckup." according to Tom Korman. actress Marge Champion instead of Gower. he was. but I said. 'Oh. Mr. Preminger. then a young agent, now a manager. An in actress Jocelyn Brando instead of Marlon. that's not true—I've been to bed with him." different typist, she was not cut out to be a I would go that far. yes. I wish I could say secretary, and Baum. Korman told Paul idal continues the story: "I believe she he gave the guy the part, but he didn't. He Rosenfield. "must have fired her 50 times. V took Charlie Baker's Rolodex. She had may have broken the blacklist, but gay was One day an actress, who was our client, was everybody's phone number, and as she had verboten in movies." supposed to audition for Tlie World ofSuzie been listening to everything that was going One of Mengers's clients was Constance Wong, and nobody could find her. Sue. only on, she was perhaps the most knowledge Bennett, Joan's sister and a fading star in Sue, knew she was having an affair with a able agent in the business." She wooed peo her own right. Mengers knocked herself out married musician. Sue was in sheer panic ple such as Tom Ewell, who was then a big to get Bennett into her "comeback" film: from Marty Baum screaming at her every Broadway star, with The Seven Year Itch Madame X (the umpteenth remake of a three minutes Finally she called the mu and a lot of other plays to his credit. In 1908 French melodrama), which starred sician at home, and a woman answered. those days, actors would come in early, be Lana Turner and Ricardo Montalban and Sue said. "You old sneak! I found you." fore their matinees, and have lunch at Sar- was produced by Ross Hunter. Instead of Well, of course, it was the musician's wife. di's, where Mengers would troll for clients. being grateful. Bennett complained about And Marty Baum fired Sue once again." One afternoon. Mengers stopped by Ewell's her billing below Turner, demanding that table, dropped her business card in his wa her name be set off by a box on the ads and er next job was as secretary to Charlie ter glass, and said. "Hi, I'm Sue Mengers, I posters. It wasn't. Bennett, who had gotten HBaker, head of the theater department met you with Charlie Baker, I'm now on a hefty salary, refused to pay her commis at the William Morris Agency. One of his my own, I just want to be frank with you— sion to the agency. Then, just before the clients was Gore Vidal. who had a hit on I'd love you to be our client." According to movie came out. she died. Mengers sent Broadway called Visit to a Small Planet. Vi Vidal. "Ewell said. 'What can you do for Hunter a telegram that said. CONSTANCE FI dal, who became a good friend of Men- me that [my agent] Abe Lastfogel can't do?" NALLY GOT HER BOX! gers's and eventually a client, remembers She said. -Fuck David Merrick!' With that, Mengers was shameless hustling clients. her from those days: "She had an outer of- a star was born. She got him. too." One of her favorite lines was "Get rid of
APRIL 2000 I VANITY FAIR