Top 250 Challenge: 235

Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Number 223 on IMDb's Top 250

J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), the most powerful newspaper columnist in New York, is determined to prevent his sister from marrying Steve Dallas (the guy from Bloom County, just kidding, really it is the guy from Adam 12 [on the left]), a jazz musician. He therefore covertly employs Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis), a sleazy and unscrupulous press agent, to break up the affair by any means possible. Hilarity ensues.

Trivia: The character of J.J. Hunsecker is based on famed New York columnist Walter Winchell. This film's shoot was filled with macho tensions and at one point, the temperamental Burt Lancaster threatened to punch the film's writer, Ernest Lehman. The witty scribe replied, "Go ahead, I need the money."

What is that horrible stench? It is the Sweet Smell of Success. This movie was just absolutely awful. There is only one character in this whole freaking movie that is even close to having me give a darn about, Steve Dallas, and he gets set-up on drug charges, and beat-up and put into the hospital by the police, seemingly on orders from Curtis, acting on behalf for Lancaster. Lancaster plays a powerful society columnist that verbally abuses sources, manipulates stories, and grants favors by putting people in his column. Curtis is a press agent who is not above doing anything to get his clients into Hunsecker's column, destoying, blackmailing, and even prostituting (in a sense) his semi-girlfriend to the guy who played Dick York's boss Larry Tate in "Bewitched!" Even Lancaster's sister, who is in love with Steve Dallas, which makes Lancaster go after him, even she is mousy and cringes anytime Lancaster looks at her. Ugghh!

Next Up (speaking of Dick York): Inherit the Wind, It's all about the monkey trial that rocked America.