This is a pretty poor movie overall, particularly in its overblown romantic scenes with Lennie Hayton's syrupy MGM strings pounding out the emotions. Its best moments, and there are many, must come from Fredrick Wakeman's 1946 novel—at its time one of the first exposés of the advertising and talent agency business. Most of the screenplay seems watered down by today's standards, most likely sanitized not to offend two of Hollywood's power brokers, Leo Stein and Lou Wasserman of MCA, said to be the prototypes. On the other hand, if you have ever wondered why Ava Gardner in her first major part broke Sinatra's heart when she left him, just take a look at her under Harold Rosson's soft-focus big studio glamor lighting. At the time the picture was made she was twenty-five year's old and absolutely ravishing! Deborah Kerr, playing a stereotypical upper-class Englishwoman, simply can't compete with the gorgeous Ava; Deborah has very little to do here other than to be vedy vedy British and the voice of Integrity. There are some wonderful on- the-nose scenes about the biz, however, with Edward Arnold and Adolphe Menjou, perfectly cast and doing what they did so superbly film after film, to say nothing about the great Sydney Greenstreet at his most gross physically and morally. But it is Keenan Wynn who walks away with the picture, playing a thoroughly obnoxious and untalented stand-up comic with jokes so bad that even Milton Berle wouldn't have stolen them. It takes great talent to make someone so bad seem good.
Review of The Hucksters
