
Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) is a New York City based entertainment press agent whose success is marginal judging from the cheap sign “Sidney Falco - Publicity” crudely taped to his office door. When we first observe Sidney he’s anxiously awaiting the newest edition of the fictional “New York Globe” newspaper. Sidney’s bread and butter comes from his clients garnering favorable PR; the best kind in being a mention in J.J. Hunsecker’s (Burt Lancaster) nationally syndicated newspaper column titled “The Eyes of Broadway.” It’s from this famous column that careers are either launched, sustained or destroyed due to Hunsecker’s potent influence. For someone in Sidney’s profession, having J.J. Hunsecker bestow some positive words in his column about a client will eventually garner fame, respect and money for publicist and client alike. At one point Sidney did have some favor with Hunsecker, but Sidney’s clients haven’t received one mention in J.J. column for nearly a week (practically years in publicist time.) Sidney had done his best to help out the newspaper columnist with some dirty work involving Hunsecker’s little sister Susan. The young Susan Hunsecker has fallen hard for a promising young jazz guitarist named Steve Dallas. Her controlling older brother J.J. wanted Sidney to break the nest of the two love birds in half. Unsuccessful first, Sidney manipulates a cast of people to keep the two apart by resorting to pandering, blackmail and character assassination.
Falco manages to get a competing columnist of Hunsecker to smear Dallas’s name (which also insulates J.J. Hunsecker from the appearance of having a hand in the deed) by insinuating in print that he’s a marijuana smoking, card carrying commie. The dirty rumor gets Dallas fired from his gig at a prominent night club, but Dallas sniffs the stench of Hunsecker’s lapdog Sidney Falco orchestrating the public sullying of his

Where the payoff of his devious manipulation could have endured for Hunsecker, his pride gets the best of him as he decides to ruin Dallas against the advice of Sidney Falco. The insult Hunsecker sustained from Dallas was too egregious for his ego to handle. He orders Sidney to plant marijuana on Dallas and tip off corrupt police detective and Hunsecker goon Harry Kello (Emile Meyer) to arrest Dallas. This subversion of Dallas destroys his reputation while simultaneously alienating Susan from her brother and leaving her in a state of utter despair. She gleans Sidney is somehow behind the plot to sully Dallas and she summons Falco to the Hunsecker penthouse where she attempts suicide. Sidney successfully stops her from killing herself, but the scene looks dubious to J.J. as he arrives home to see Sidney with the sobbing Susan sprawled on her bed in a revealing nightgown. J.J. Hunsecker believes Sidney has taken advantage of Susan and when Sidney begs her to tell J.J. what happened, she chooses spiteful silence instead. J.J. begins beating Falco who then blurts out to Susan it was her brother who ordered him to plant the pot on Dallas. Sidney flees the penthouse and Hunsecker calls Detective Harry Kello informing him it was Falco who planted the pot on Dallas and tells him to arrest Sidney. Susan has dressed and packed a bag while J.J. is making the call and decides to leave her brother for Steve Dallas. She tells her brother she pities him and walks out into the street where Sidney has just been roughed up by Kello and arrested.
The film is brutal in it’s depiction of main characters of Sidney Falco and J.J. Hunsecker. Sidney is a creature that has an insatiable appetite for the type of fame and power that J.J. Hunsecker wields. Falco is like an animal (even his name sounds awful close to a particular bird of prey) whose eyes are always scanning its surroundings looking for opportunity and danger. “The best of everything is good enough for me” is the inexorable motive for Sidney’s seemingly instinctual drive and using others to achieve such is done without a trace of remorse or thought to others. His pandering of buxom cigarette girl/former prostitute Rita (Barbara Nichols), who owes him a favor, to the womanizing columnist that will smear the reputation of Dallas quid pro quo, is simply a means to advance his place in the food chain. He does so by reminding Rita of her 10 year old son in military school and this being an opportunity for her to indirectly help him. Rita reluctantly goes along with this arrangement, but not before telling Sidney, “You’re a snake Falco.” Sidney is a somewhat clever manipulator and his hunger for success stems from his younger years when he interpreted his confessed pool-hall lackey status as being a “mouse.” The film is rife with references to animals. From the “dog eat dog” entertainment business they live within, to Steve Dallas telling Sidney (who is sniffing around for information on the relationship status between Dallas and Susan Hunsecker) that if he wants to know he should just ask like a man and not, “scratch for it like a dog.” Even Susan tells Sidney that he resembles a, “trained poodle jumping through flaming hoops” for her older brother. Sidney is at one point assessed as having, “the scruples of a guinea pig and the morals of a gangster.” Aside from the numerous inverted anthropomorphic allusions, the film visually captures Sidney as constantly on the prowl. The camera work (beautifully shot by cinematographer James Wong Howe) dexterously tracks him as he quickly moves from one nightclub hunting ground to the next. Never content to rest for a moment, Sidney seems to be constantly scanning his environment and figuring out where his next proverbial meal is coming from.
Lancaster’s J.J. Hunsecker is a stoic and commanding presence. Loosely based on famed columnist and entertainment gossip pioneer Walter Winchell, Lancaster plays Hunsecker as an automaton with little indication of humane qualities. His only hint of humanity is his apparent affection for his sister Susan. Even so, this sentiment reads as more of a creepy obsession with her (Hunsecker keeps an unsuitable large framed picture of her on his desk). J.J. is devoted to protecting the insular world he has contained her within: not unlike a caged bird he wants at his side to look pretty, but never let fly. Hunsecker is the head lion of this show business Serengeti in which every creature respects his power as trumping all others. J.J. is incredibly shrewd in his assessment and dealings with others, yet he only surrounds himself with powerful people looking for scraps from the carcasses he devours. In a sense he has penned himself in with his seemingly omnipotent column as the people he has contact with only respect the power of the column and not necessarily the man behind it. J.J. seems okay with that however and he never lacks insight into the selfish and fame mongering motives of the players that clamor to be in his presence (or better yet his column.) Hunsecker reminds everyone he comes into contact with his position in the entertainment kingdom. From a fussing waiter whom he tells to, “Stop tinkering pal, that horseradish won’t jump a fence,” to a sycophantic U.S. Senator that may become President one day, “My big toe would make a better President” he tells Sidney, J.J. relishes his power and the environment in which he operates. The jungle of New York City is a harsh one and J.J. Hunsecker affectionately notes, while watching a drunk being kicked out of nightclub on to the street, “I love this dirty town.”
The characters considered weak in the context of this predatory terrain would be Dallas and Susan. Steve Dallas is possibly (and humorously) one of the least hip jazz musicians ever captured on film. While he has talent in spades, he can’t bring himself

When J.J. could have let the confrontation with Dallas end at forbidding Susan to see him, she would have obeyed. Afterwards J.J. takes it a step farther and orders Sidney to frame Dallas with the help of crooked cop Harry Kello. This scene is a revealing apex in the film as both main characters show their first signs of vulnerability. J.J. lets the insult of his integrity being questioned by Dallas stick in his craw.


Sweet Smell of Success is a beautifully photographed film integrating infamous landmarks like The 21 Club to many exterior scenes shot in the concrete jungle of New York City. From Flat Iron to 54th Street,



The screenplay by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman is wonderfully layered and complex. Ahead of it’s time, Sweet Smell of Success shows a revealing side to the manipulation of the public through the media and the unscrupulous people who control it by force feeding the flavor of the month to the public’s insatiable maws. It’s remarkable that this film and Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd came out the same year with their many shared themes. The standout aspect of the script is the crackerjack dialogue that has more electricity coursing through it than all the lights in Times Square and as many teeth as the mouth of a great white shark. At its heart, the script is a dark study of the requisite ruthlessness needed for success in a savage business where the weak are simply sustenance for the strongest predators.
Written by Tim (aka - Mappin and Webb Ltd.)