Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Brainsbell The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Robert J. Maxwell Near the beginning of this movie Evan Llewellyn Evans, Sidney Greenstreet, owner of Beautee Soap and the most powerful client of Adolph Menjou's Madison Avenue advertising agency, hawks up a big ginder from the back of his throat and lobs it onto the boardroom table, much to the shock of his sycophants. "Gentlemen," he announces, "I have just performed a disgusting act." It's the most telling moment in the film. Evan Llewellyn Evans may be genetically incapable of Welshing on a deal but he's capable of some pretty disgusting acts. The second most telling moment in the film is saved for the climax, when the successful new employee, Clark Gable, finds that the phoniness and throat-cutting of the advertising business is not for him, and tells Greenstreet and Menjou what they can do with the jumbo-sized salary they've just offered him, and then stalks out of the board room to melt away his old self and discover his new, more principled, bite-sized, transfat-free new self in the arms of Deborah Kerr.The plot isn't stupid. The intrigues, betrayals, and misunderstandings aren't openly spelled out as in a child's storybook. Most of the character development takes place in Gable's character, just returned from the war. He's pretty honest about himself and a little blunt with others but he keeps his cool throughout. He has what sociologists call "role distance." Role distance is Erving Goffman's term for "actions which effectively convey some disdainful detachment of the (real life) performer from a role he is performing". He knows when he's being good at his job and he knows when he's being a cad. His chief mistake is in thinking that money is the most important goal and that it's achieved by sometimes unethical means. His performance throughout is quite good.Deborah Kerr as the aristocratic war widow is excellent. Her beauty is of an ethereal sort. She's delicate, frangible. She's "in touch with her feelings" and can be firm enough but her demeanor suggests she might collapse with fear or an excess of desire at any moment. (I kind of like that in a woman.) I don't know where she got the reputation of being some kind of ice queen in the movies. As an actress, she had good range -- comedic in "Casino Royale" and homespun and earthy in "The Sundowners." I don't think Ava Gardner ever looked more attractive or gave a better performance. But then all the acting is good and earns the film some extra bonus points. All the acting except for Sidney Greenstreet, that is, who is miscast as a rude blowhard redneck with some kind of terrible COWBOY hat and a blustering insistence on an in-your-face commercial style: His ideal jingle does nothing but repeat "BEAUTEE SOAP" without syncopation. This is Ed Begley's role, not Sidney Greenstreet's.The movie was a bellwether in its own way. In 1947, the economy was just getting back onto a peacetime footing. People were beginning to make money again, and in the 1950s there would be an explosion of stories (eg., "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit", "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?") about the Madison Avenue ad agencies that would guide consumers into one or another channel to spend it all and go into debt doing it. Logically, in the 60s, there should have been a succession of dramas about credit card companies but it didn't happen.

dlevy1201 Very underrated. Not well known. Not shown often. Actually, this is the first time I came across this gem. Loved it, loved Clark Gable, loved Deborah Kerr. Clark was just adorable when he was talking to the women he was attracted to. The twinkle in his eye and kiss on his lips as he spoke on the phone to the previous night's paramour in his first scene was priceless. I fell in love with him AGAIN! I never realized the vastness of his facial expressions before. He looked serious and business-like when he was dealing with his advertising cronies and looked charming, fun loving and caring when he was "off he clock". There was no one more elegant, classy and sexy as Deborah Kerr. Nominated for 6 Best Actress in a Leading Role Academy Awards but never winning, remarkable. Ava Gardner always a sultry beauty, her quick, sharp dialog showed the high level of good script writing. The film showed the falseness, conniving and corrupt side of advertising vs. personal integrity, ethical behavior and morality. Good life lesson film of the time rings true today, for me at least. This has become a NEW personal favorite.

ilprofessore-1 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.

moonspinner55 Clark Gable is in good form playing an advertising ace, unemployed after spending the last four years in the Army, talking his way into a top Wall Street radio and print agency and landing the company's biggest account: Beautee Soap, run by a despicable, disrespectful tyrant. Sydney Greenstreet is the spitting, bug-eyed soap czar who keeps all his yes-men clucking like frightened geese, and his scenes around the conference table very nearly go over the top (but their payoff is in the finale); Deborah Kerr is a glamorous war widow whom Gable chases; and young Ava Gardner is well-cast as a nightclub singer--and Gable's rebound girl after Kerr plays tough-to-get. It's a slick, handsome piece of refined goods, not satiric as one might expect, though not quite stuffy, either. There are leisurely laughs, a cute sequence with Gable and Gardner on the train to Hollywood, and a satisfying wrap-up. If the picture doesn't exactly deliver fireworks, it does gives us Gable nicely contemplative, blowing kisses at the girls while at the same time re-examining his place in the work force. **1/2 from ****