****SPOILERS**** Realistic movie about a powerful and ruthless New York city gossip columnist J.J Hunsecker, Burt Lancaster, and how he treats people who dare to sand in his way. With Tony Curtis giving the best acting performance of his career as the sleazy and manipulating Sidney Falco a local publicist who's very existence depends on J.J giving print to the people who he represents in his column.
Falco being iced out of the J.J Hunsecker gossip column, which is the death penalty in the newspaper world for a publicist, because of him failing to break up the relationship between J.J's kid sister Susie, Susan Harrison, with the up and coming popular guitar player Steve Dallas, Martin Milner, of the Chico Hamilton Quintet.
Trying to get back into the good graces of J.J Falco gives a competing gossip columnist Otis Elwell, David White, a hot story to print about Steve being a pot smoker as well as card carrying commie! This can not only ruin Steve's but the Chico Hamilton Quintet's careers.
Even though J.J could have done a much more effective job of destroying Steve he and Falco manipulated Ewell to do their dirty work in order not to have Susie suspect that it was her brother who is breaking up their relationship as well as their future marriage. When J.J with the connivance of Falco invited Steve and his manager Frank D'Angelo, Sam Levene, and Susie to the TV studio where J.J, with Falco in attendance, all hell breaks loose. J.J is to talk about the the rights of Americans not to be trampled on with false and unsubstantiated accusations, like what J.J was doing to Steve. This is for J.J to show those in the audience as well as the shows some 60 million TV viewers how he took the high road in the Steve Dallas case of "Guilt by Gossip". Steve seeing through J.J's and Falco's scam and at the same time having too much pride and dignity to play along with their squalid game let J.J have it, verbally. This shakes up the normally cool as a cucumber J.J to the point where he really lost his cool and embarrassed himself in front of every one there.
Furious J.J, after that spectacle, not only wanted to destroy Steve's career but also his life! He then had Falco plant a pack of joints in Steve's coat at the nightclub where he was preforming and then tipping off the brutal and vicious Lt. Harry Kello, Emile Meyers, to not only arrest him but work him over.
Susie who agreed to break up with Steve after J.J browbeat her into submission at the TV studios and left her with an emotional breakdown heard the news about what happened to Steve. Going to the hospital Susie found out at that Syeve may not pull out of his coma from the beating that Kello gave him. Later as Falco came up to J.J's apartment, to give him the good news about Steve, that he pulled out of his coma but suffered permanent brain damage, he saved Susie's life as she tried to kill herself by jumping off the balcony.
J.J coming into the room and seeing his sister in a nightgown and in the arms of Falco, who was holding her in order for her not to jump out the window and kill herself, went wild. Slapping Falco around an outraged J.J then called the police and Lt. Kello to come over and arrest Falco for planting pot on Steve; which J.J himself had Falco do.
Falco running from the building is cornered by Lt.Kello and savagely beaten and arrested but Susie who knew that it was her brother J.J who was behind Steve's brutal beating, and everything else that was done to break Steve and her up, walks out on him as the movie ended.
Razor sharp black & white photography as well as dialog gave "Sweet Smell of Success" that real New York city look of the 1950's. The stunning on location filming makes the movie a must for those of us who appreciate the "Big Apple" as it was back then before it became a cheap imitation of what it is now. That's before the explosion of the real estate market in the mid 1970's made the city look like the nondescript and undistinguished town that it is today. Instead of the great Majestic Metropolis by the rivers, the Hudson an East, that it was back then.
Falco being iced out of the J.J Hunsecker gossip column, which is the death penalty in the newspaper world for a publicist, because of him failing to break up the relationship between J.J's kid sister Susie, Susan Harrison, with the up and coming popular guitar player Steve Dallas, Martin Milner, of the Chico Hamilton Quintet.
Trying to get back into the good graces of J.J Falco gives a competing gossip columnist Otis Elwell, David White, a hot story to print about Steve being a pot smoker as well as card carrying commie! This can not only ruin Steve's but the Chico Hamilton Quintet's careers.
Even though J.J could have done a much more effective job of destroying Steve he and Falco manipulated Ewell to do their dirty work in order not to have Susie suspect that it was her brother who is breaking up their relationship as well as their future marriage. When J.J with the connivance of Falco invited Steve and his manager Frank D'Angelo, Sam Levene, and Susie to the TV studio where J.J, with Falco in attendance, all hell breaks loose. J.J is to talk about the the rights of Americans not to be trampled on with false and unsubstantiated accusations, like what J.J was doing to Steve. This is for J.J to show those in the audience as well as the shows some 60 million TV viewers how he took the high road in the Steve Dallas case of "Guilt by Gossip". Steve seeing through J.J's and Falco's scam and at the same time having too much pride and dignity to play along with their squalid game let J.J have it, verbally. This shakes up the normally cool as a cucumber J.J to the point where he really lost his cool and embarrassed himself in front of every one there.
Furious J.J, after that spectacle, not only wanted to destroy Steve's career but also his life! He then had Falco plant a pack of joints in Steve's coat at the nightclub where he was preforming and then tipping off the brutal and vicious Lt. Harry Kello, Emile Meyers, to not only arrest him but work him over.
Susie who agreed to break up with Steve after J.J browbeat her into submission at the TV studios and left her with an emotional breakdown heard the news about what happened to Steve. Going to the hospital Susie found out at that Syeve may not pull out of his coma from the beating that Kello gave him. Later as Falco came up to J.J's apartment, to give him the good news about Steve, that he pulled out of his coma but suffered permanent brain damage, he saved Susie's life as she tried to kill herself by jumping off the balcony.
J.J coming into the room and seeing his sister in a nightgown and in the arms of Falco, who was holding her in order for her not to jump out the window and kill herself, went wild. Slapping Falco around an outraged J.J then called the police and Lt. Kello to come over and arrest Falco for planting pot on Steve; which J.J himself had Falco do.
Falco running from the building is cornered by Lt.Kello and savagely beaten and arrested but Susie who knew that it was her brother J.J who was behind Steve's brutal beating, and everything else that was done to break Steve and her up, walks out on him as the movie ended.
Razor sharp black & white photography as well as dialog gave "Sweet Smell of Success" that real New York city look of the 1950's. The stunning on location filming makes the movie a must for those of us who appreciate the "Big Apple" as it was back then before it became a cheap imitation of what it is now. That's before the explosion of the real estate market in the mid 1970's made the city look like the nondescript and undistinguished town that it is today. Instead of the great Majestic Metropolis by the rivers, the Hudson an East, that it was back then.