The film revolves around Victor Norman (Clark Gable), a World War II veteran and radio advertising executive. Victor is in search of a job in his field after returning from the war. In an attempt to appear uninterested in finding work, he throws a few dollars out of his hotel window, leaving himself with only $50.
Victor Norman: back from the war and looking for big money on Madison Avenue.
On his way to a job interview at the Kimberly Advertising Agency, Victor spends $35 on a hand-painted necktie to appear sincere. The interview is interrupted by a phone call from Evan Llewellyn Evans (Sydney Greenstreet), the demanding head of the agency's largest client, Beautee Soap. The call causes chaos, and Victor offers to recruit Mrs. Kay Dorrance (Deborah Kerr), a widow of noble British birth and the wife of a WWII U.S. general, for a Beautee Soap campaign targeting Manhattansocialites.
Victor manages to secure an appointment with Kay by pretending to represent the Charity League. During their meeting, he quickly charms her into agreeing to participate in the campaign. However, when they arrive at the photo shoot, the Beautee art director presents a concept featuring a provocative negligee. Victor insists on a more dignified approach and directs a portrait of Kay in an evening gown, surrounded by her children.
The next day, Victor and Mr. Kimberly are summoned to Beautee's offices, where they face Evans. He expresses his displeasure with the changed advertisement but is impressed when Victor plays the radio commercial he created overnight. Evans decides to hire Victor and instructs Kimberly to do so. Victor finds himself attracted to Kay, and they go on a double date with Mr. and Mrs. Kimberly. During the evening, Kimberly drunkenly confesses to starting the agency by betraying his mentor and stealing the Beautee Soap account.
At a nightclub, Victor encounters Jean Ogilvie (Ava Gardner), a torch singer and a former flame, causing tension between him and Kay. To make amends, Victor invites Kay for a romantic getaway in Connecticut. However, when they arrive, they discover the place has changed ownership, and they are assigned adjoining rooms with a connecting door. Upset by the circumstances, Kay leaves, feeling disappointed in Victor.
Evan Llewellyn Evans: tyrant head of Beautee Soap, the agency's biggest account.
Evans summons Victor and Kimberly and reveals his desire for a new radio variety show featuring Buddy Hare (Keenan Wynn), a C-list comedian. Victor agrees to secure the deal with Hare's agent, Dave Lash (Edward Arnold), who will be leaving on an evening train. Before heading to the station, Victor visits Kay's house, but their conversation leaves them both unsettled. On the train, he meets Jean again and recruits her help to sign Hare at a lower price. Despite Lash realizing he's been tricked, he honors the deal.
In Hollywood, Victor and his team work on creating the radio show, but they exclude Hare due to his obnoxious behavior and tired jokes. Victor accepts a dinner invitation from Jean but realizes he's still in love with Kay when he returns to find her waiting outside his bungalow. They reconcile, and Victor envisions himself as the provider for Kay and her children.
However, a legal issue threatens the contract with Buddy Hare, and Victor uses cruel innuendo and implied blackmail against Lash to secure the deal. Regretting his actions, Victor feels remorse for his behavior. Back in New York, he presents the proposed show to Evans but realizes that he no longer wants to grovel for success. He confronts Evans, criticizes his behavior, and leaves the meeting.
Outside, Kay waits in her car, and Victor tells her that they will have to postpone marriage until he can regain his financial stability. Kay reassures him that money is not important, as long as he can sell things with dignity and taste. Victor throws his last bit of pocket money into the street, symbolizing their fresh start with nothing, but with a sense of neatness.
Frederic Wakeman's novel The Hucksters (1946) spent 35 weeks in the top stratum of The New York Times Fiction bestseller list,[2] aided perhaps by its raunchy, racy controversy. Life magazine called the book "last year's best-selling travesty"[3] and even Clark Gable, who would eventually star in its film adaptation, said "It's filthy and it isn't entertainment."[4]Life's and Gable's literary sensibilities to the contrary, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer paid $200,000 for the motion picture rights before the novel was even published.[4]
Screenwriter Luther Davis and the novel's adapters Edward Choderov and George Wells had "an extensive laundering job" to do to bring the project into compliance with Louis B. Mayer's tastes and the Hays Office's policies.[5] They had to eliminate the graphic (for 1946) sexual scenes, and they changed the book's Mrs. Dorrance from a married woman into a war widow — so she and Vic "could live happily ever after."[4] More problematic, though, was the portrayal of the talent agent David Lash, a pivotal character in the second half of the film. Lash was based on Jules Stein, the founder of talent agency MCA, and Lash's Hucksters protégé Freddie Callahan, who bore an undeniable physical resemblance to Lew Wasserman, Stein's protégé in 1946 who would eventually head MCA himself.[6] Even in 1947, there were "fears about reprisals from MCA"[7] over the portrayals of Stein and Wasserman, and Vic avers on several occasions that "Dave Lash is an honest man" when the dispute arises over the Buddy Hare contract. The other problem was Lash/Stein's ethnicity: in the novel, Vic tells Lash people will call his honesty into question because he is a Jew;[8] Davis removed all references to Lash's ethnicity and made him a kid who had been in trouble but had "gone straight" and succeeded.
Once the toned-down screenplay was finished and Clark Gable's comfort with it secured, producer Arthur Hornblow Jr. made his final casting decisions and "assembled an exceptional supporting cast"[9] featuring Sidney Greenstreet, Adolphe Menjou and Edward Arnold, Keenan Wynn and the then "still-unknown Ava Gardner."[10] MGM executives had selected The Hucksters as the debut Hollywood film for Kerr, who had drawn attention for her appearances in ten films in her native Britain since 1941, causing production to be "rushed by Louis B. Mayer, who wanted to release it the following August, trying to revive Gable's name after the flop of Adventure, his last film and launching Deborah's in Hollywood."[9]
As the start of production neared, Ava Gardner grew nervous about appearing with Gable, an actor she had idolized since childhood.[11] Hornblow asked Gable to call her, and he told her: "I'm supposed to talk you into doing this thing. But I'm not going to. I hated it when they did that to me. But I hope you change your mind, kid, I think it would be fun to work together."[12] The two remained friends for the rest of Gable's life.
Gable also sought to make a nervous Kerr feel relaxed when shooting commenced. He sent her six dozen roses on the first day, and "the two hit it off beautifully from the beginning, on and off the set."[9]
Director Jack Conway, an MGM regular with credits stretching back to the silent era, brought this, his penultimate film, in on Mayer's August 1947 timetable. His budget was $2.3 million.[10]
Release
MGM used a "splash" approach on The Hucksters, opening in 350 theaters on July 17, 1947 before expanding to 1,000 theaters a week later, one of the widest releases of the time.[13]
Reception
Critical reception
Although Louis B. Mayer had chosen carefully—and spent lavishly—on a property to launch Deborah Kerr and attempt to recoup Clark Gable's popularity after the poorly received Adventure, The Hucksters was not well received by contemporary critics.
Life magazine had excoriated the Wakeman novel, and its film reviewer commented: "The movie version of the famous attack on the advertising business fails to live up to its own ads" and called it "[a] cynically exaggerated study of big business and big advertising."[14]
Bosley Crowther, film critic for The New York Times, wrote that it was simply too much Gable. "[U]nless you like Clark Gable very much, you are going to find him monotonous in this hour-and-fifty-five-minute film... [he] is off the screen for all of five minutes—maybe eight. The rest of the time, he's on." He liked Deborah Kerr rather more: "We could do with a little more of her. Not that her rather radiant passion for this well-tailored roughneck makes much sense, but Miss Kerr is a very soothing person and she elevates the tone of the film." He saved his biggest praise for Greenstreet and Menjou, calling their contributions "entertaining and fascinating."[15]
Brog. of Variety was lukewarm: "Somehow Clark Gable just doesn't quite take hold of the huckster part in signal manner. Same goes for Deborah Kerr who is a shade prissy for her volatile romantic role." Like the Times, they were more enthusiastic about the supporting cast: "Sydney Greenstreet's portrayal of the soap despot emerges as the performance of the picture, as does Keenan Wynn as the ham ex-burlesque candy butcher gone radio comic. Ava Gardner is thoroughly believable as the on-the-make songstress; Adolphe Menjou is the harassed head of the radio agency which caters to Evans' whilom ways because it's a $10 million account." Finally, there was an observation, politely put, that no doubt crossed the minds of many 1947 moviegoers: "Gable looks trim and fit but somehow a shade too mature for the capricious role of the huckster who talks his way into a $35,000 job [and] is a killer with the femmes...."[16] Gable's interaction with the two women in the story generated commentary. When it came to the romance between Vic and Kay, Life magazine stuck to its negative guns: "The love story is stupefyingly dull. Opposite the ladylike Deborah, Clark Gable's mannered virility seems embarrassing—something that never happened to him alongside such tough Tessies as Joan Crawford and Jean Harlow in his greater days."[17] But others applauded Kerr and the pairing: The Hollywood Reporter called Kerr "a charming English star... a delightful personality in her American debut."[10]The New York Herald-Tribune called the Gable-Kerr pairing "ideal", saying "she made an impressive bow on the U.S. screen."[10]
Ava Gardner biographer Lee Server, pointing to the chemistry between Vic and his old flame Jean Ogilvie (Gable and Gardner): "proved to be a wonderful pairing, with an on-screen spark between them that revealed their genuine amusement and easy pleasure in each other's company."[12]
Judgment about The Hucksters has mellowed over the years. Halliwell's Film Guide calls it "good topical entertainment which still entertains and gives a good impression of its period", also praising the performance of Greenstreet.[18] The current New York Times capsule summary calls it "one of Clark Gable's best postwar films, as well as one of the finest Hollywood satires of the rarefied world of advertising."[5]
On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a 60% rating based on reviews from 5 critics.[19]
Box office
The Hucksters opened at number one at the US box office, with a non-holiday record in New York City.[20] It finished twelfth at the box office for 1947, earning $3,635,000 in the US and Canada and $810,000 elsewhere, resulting in a profit of $412,000.[1][21][22] Topping that list was another soldiers-come-home tale, The Best Years of Our Lives. Author Denise Mann suggests that Vic Norman's unsavory side might have held The Hucksters back: "Clark Gable's unheroic ad-man as post-war returning hero may have contributed to the smaller returns."[22] It also "was a total failure in the foreign market, which in those days knew nothing about American advertising or commercial broadcasting."[10]
William Clark Gable was an American film actor. Often referred to as the "King of Hollywood", he had roles in more than 60 films in a variety of genres during a career that lasted 37 years, three decades of which was as a leading man. He was named the seventh greatest male movie star of classic American cinema by the American Film Institute.
Ava Lavinia Gardner was an American actress. She first signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1941 and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew critics' attention in 1946 with her performance in Robert Siodmak's film noir The Killers. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in John Ford's Mogambo (1953), and for best actress for both a Golden Globe Award and BAFTA Award for her performance in John Huston's The Night of the Iguana (1964). She was a part of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Deborah Jane Trimmer CBE, known professionally as Deborah Kerr, was a British actress. She was nominated six times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the first person from Scotland to be nominated for any acting Oscar. Kerr was known for her roles as elegant, ladylike but also sexually repressed women that deeply yearn for sexual freedom.
Mogambo is a 1953 Technicolor adventure/romantic drama film directed by John Ford and starring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, and Grace Kelly, and featuring Donald Sinden. Shot on location in Equatorial Africa, with a musical soundtrack consisting entirely of actual African tribal music recorded in the Congo, the film was adapted by John Lee Mahin from the play Red Dust by Wilson Collison. The picture is a remake of Red Dust (1932), which was set in Vietnam and also starred Gable in the same role.
Sydney Hughes Greenstreet was a British and American actor. While he did not begin his career in films until the age of 61, he had a run of significant motion pictures in a Hollywood career lasting through the 1940s. He is best remembered for the three Warner Bros. films - The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942), and Passage to Marseille (1944) - with both Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre. He portrayed Nero Wolfe on radio during 1950 and 1951. He became an American citizen in 1925.
An Affair to Remember is a 1957 American romance film directed by Leo McCarey and starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. Filmed in CinemaScope, it was distributed by 20th Century Fox. It is considered among the most romantic films of all time according to the American Film Institute. The film was a remake of McCarey's 1939 film Love Affair, starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer.
Francis Xavier Aloysius James Jeremiah Keenan Wynn was an American character actor. His expressive face was his stock-in-trade; and though he rarely carried the lead role, he had prominent billing in most of his film and television roles.
Red Dust is a 1932 American pre-Code romantic drama film directed by Victor Fleming, and starring Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, and Mary Astor. It is based on the 1928 play of the same name by Wilson Collison, and was adapted for the screen by John Mahin. Red Dust is the second of six movies Gable and Harlow made together. More than 20 years later, Gable starred in a remake, Mogambo (1953), with Ava Gardner starring in a variation on the role Harlow played and Grace Kelly playing a part similar to one portrayed by Astor in Red Dust.
The Ducksters is a 1950 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes theatrical cartoon short, directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese. The cartoon was released on September 2, 1950, and stars Daffy Duck and Porky Pig. The title is a pun on the 1947 film The Hucksters.
The Grass Is Greener is a 1960 British romantic comedy film starring Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum, and Jean Simmons. It was directed by Stanley Donen, with a screenplay adapted by Hugh Williams and Margaret Vyner from the play of the same name they had written and found success with in London's West End.
Hugh Ryan "Jack" Conway was an American film director and film producer, as well as an actor of many films in the first half of the 20th century.
Hollywood Steps Out is a 1941 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon short directed by Tex Avery and produced by Leon Schlesinger. The short was released on May 24, 1941.
Lone Star is a 1952 American Western film starring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Broderick Crawford, Ed Begley, and Lionel Barrymore as President Andrew Jackson. The film also marks the first (uncredited) screen appearance by then-13-year-old George Hamilton, playing beside Barrymore in the role of Jackson's servant.
Band of Angels is a 1957 American psychological drama film set in the American South before and during the American Civil War, based on the 1955 novel of the same title by Robert Penn Warren. It starred Clark Gable, Yvonne De Carlo and Sidney Poitier. The movie was directed by Raoul Walsh.
The Three Musketeers is a 1948 film directed by George Sidney, written by Robert Ardrey, and starring Gene Kelly and Lana Turner. It is a Technicolor adventure film adaptation of the classic 1844 novel The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas.
Clark Gable (1901–1960) was an American actor and producer who appeared in over 70 feature films and several short films. Gable first began acting in stage productions, before his film debut in 1924. After many minor roles, Gable landed a leading role in 1931, subsequently becoming one of the most dominant leading men in Hollywood. He often acted alongside re-occurring leading ladies: six films with Jean Harlow, seven with Myrna Loy, and eight with Joan Crawford, among many others.
Somewhere I'll Find You is a 1942 film directed by Wesley Ruggles and starring Clark Gable and Lana Turner, released by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. The film took almost two years to complete and was the last film Gable starred in before he enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces for World War II. His next film was the post-war Adventure (1945).
Lost Angel is a 1943 drama film directed by Roy Rowland, starring Margaret O'Brien as a little orphan girl raised to be a genius. James Craig plays a reporter who shows her the world outside the Institute of Child Psychology.
George Wells was an American screenwriter and producer, best known for making light comedies and musicals for MGM.
If Winter Comes is a 1947 American drama film directed by Victor Saville and starring Walter Pidgeon, Deborah Kerr and Angela Lansbury. Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, it is based on the 1921 novel by A.S.M. Hutchinson. The film tells the story of an English textbook writer who takes in a pregnant girl. The novel had previously been made into the 1923 silent film If Winter Comes.
References
1 2 3 The Eddie Mannix Ledger, Los Angeles: Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study.
↑ John Bear, The #1 New York Times Best Seller: intriguing facts about the 484 books that have been #1 New York Times bestsellers since the first list, 50 years ago, Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1992. pp. 21-27
↑ "Greenstreet Plays the Great Huckster," Life, March 31, 1947, p. 51
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