Corporate Politics Take Center Stage in "Executive Suite"

I first saw Executive Suite in an unlikely setting: a broadcast manage-ment class at Indiana University in 1978. I don’t remember how the film pertained to the class (or if the professor just wanted to take a break from lecturing). But the film, an engrossing look at corporate politics, stuck with me over the years. I didn’t see it again until my wife and I discovered a copy at a local video store in the 1990s. This second viewing surprised me—Executive Suite was far better than I remembered.

The opening scene, shot in first-person, has business executive Avery Bullard entering a skyscraper, taking an elevator, and sending a telegram to his board of directors about a meeting at six o'clock. Bullard then leaves the building, hails a taxi, and keels over dead. It’s a terrific sequence, all the more effective for its lack of music (which is replaced by bells and street sounds).

We quickly learn that the 56-year-old Bullard was president of Tredway, the nation’s third-largest furniture manufacturer, located in Millburgh, Pennsylvania. After the death of his second-in-command, Bullard delayed in naming a successor. As a result, Bullard’s untimely death places the company in the hands of five vice-presidents with equal authority. Since Wall Street viewed Tredway as a one-man company, the VPs realize the criticality of naming a replacement to Bullard over the weekend.

Walter Pidgeon tries to reason with Barbara Stanwyck.

Loren Shaw (Fredric March), Tredway’s

ambitious VP of finance, quickly starts lining up the required votes to become the company’s new president. But his “profit first” approach clashes with the philosophy of board members Fred Alderson (Walter Pidgeon) and Don Walling (William Holden). They believe that investing in research and producing quality furniture will attract loyal customers and, eventually, generate long-term company growth. Alderson and Walling launch a frantic drive to find their own candidate capable of defeating Shaw. Blackmail, illegal stock trading, and a spurned lover all come into play before the board of directors finally selects Avery Bullard’s succesor.

I admit a penchant for movies where the plot builds to a event scheduled for a specific time (e.g., the assassination in Day of the Jackal). Director Robert Wise, one of Hollywood’s most versatile directors, expertly shapes Executive Suite into a “time ticking” film. As the clock counts down to the climatic vote, it’s fascinating to watch alliances shift and deals fall through. It’s equally compelling to follow the philosophical underpinnings of the decisions made (e.g., profit vs. quality, traditional methods vs. new ones).

It's all about profit according to March's Shaw.

The superstar cast includes Holden, Pidgeon, Barbara Stanwyck and June Allyson. For my money, the standout performances are delivered by Fredric March and Paul Douglas. After two decades as a leading man, March gave some of his best performances in supporting roles in the 1950s and 1960s (see also Inherit the Wind and Seven Days in May). He captures the ruthlessness and the impatient frustration that makes Shaw such a vivid character. Paul Douglas is equally good in a smaller role, as a confident executive who gets backed into a corner. It’s a nice change-of-pace for Douglas, who specialized in playing nice guys in comedies like The Solid Gold Cadillac and It Happens Every Spring.

Executive Suite is often compared with 1956’s Patterns, another boardroom drama that was adapted from a Rod Serling TV play. Most critics prefer Patterns, which we finally saw in the late 1990s. We find them hard to compare; they’re two very different films, each fine in its own right. Patterns may be the more realistic of the two, but Executive Suite offers an optimistic viewpoint that works better as sheer entertainment.

Clash by Night (1952) - Noir or Noir-ish

There is an ongoing debate regarding the status of Clash by Night as a true representative of the film noir genre. It does not have a crime at its core; however there is the lingering threat of an explosion of violence from one or more of the characters. It is effectively filmed in black and white by noir veteran cinematographer Nicholas Mucurasa, and directed by the legendary Fritz Lang, who took three superb actors and drew from them performances crackling with frustration, self-loathing, disappointment, desperation, the aching need for and the paralyzing fear of love. The film is based on a play by Clifford Odets, which appeared on Broadway in 1941.






This story centers around the character of Mae Doyle (Barbara Stanwyck), who has come home to the small fishing village of Monterey California after years on the East Coast where she was involved with a married politician until his death. He provided for her in his will, but it was successfully contested by his family and she returns reluctantly to what essentially is the only place she can go. She is not exactly welcomed with open arms by her fisherman brother (Keith Andes), but is warmly accepted by his girlfriend Peggy (Marilyn Monroe). Mae has escaped the asphyxiating and restrictive bonds of her hometown, seeking a more independent and perhaps unacceptable existence where she could follow her own instincts and desires. Happiness is not part of her vocabulary, but confidence is a major factor in her search for security. She needs a man who will give her confidence in herself and love does not necessarily play a part in this equation.

Still beautiful and alluring, Mae is courted by the simple, kind, goodhearted fisherman, Jerry who has fallen in love with her. He wants to marry her, although she warns him off, telling him that she will be no good for him and will ultimately hurt him. But Jerry is persistent and Mae starts to imagine that she could change, that domestic life would not be the locked cage that she imagines it to be. At the same time she's introduced to Jerry's best friend Earl, a drunken, woman hating, sexually charged and potentially violent man who works as a projectionist in the local theater. When they meet, the chemistry starts percolating immediately. Jerry is totally oblivious to this attraction between Mae and his best friend and he continues to have Earl in his life not knowing how combustible the situation is. Mae realizes she's made a mistake almost from the beginning and that Jerry's bearlike physical appearance of strength does not guarantee that he will be the one to keep her safe and inspire her with confidence. Mae has a child with Jerry, but this does not solidify the relationship and she is once again beset by a sense of imprisonment in the domestic life she has chosen with Jerry. It is almost painful to watch Mae conforming to the domestic duties of a housewife, hanging sheets. washing blouses, even her interaction with her child. Clearly she is not ready for this way of life.

Ultimately there is an eruption of violent passion between Mae and Earl. The intensity of their kisses seems almost brutal in their need to satisfy the raging sensual hunger that consumes them both, most particularly when Mae places her hand beneath Earl's undershirt, flesh against flesh, in an attempt to intensify the electric current coursing through them. Earl begs Mae to run off with him, declaring that he can't live without her and vowing to become whatever she wants him to be in order to please her; however, these entreaties have a sinister undertone of power and control not associated with the love that he professes. Jerry still pathetically unaware of the betrayal going on around him is finally enlightened by the innuendos of his uncle Vince, a man who bears a grudge against Mae. in a manner eerily reminiscent of Iago's deadly whispers to Othello about Desdemona. Jerry confronts the couple and Mae admits that she is going away with Earl. Jerry is profoundly disgusted by their actions, referring to them as animals who should be kept in cages away from human beings. Emotionally devastated, he storms out of the room. Vince continues his vitriolic rantings about Mae to a drunken and vulnerable Jerry, whose gentle demeanor is ruptured by an uncontrollable rage that leads him to nearly strangle Earl, in another reference to Othello.

When Mae returns to her home she finds her baby girl missing from her crib and realizes that Jerry has taken her. The shock of this situation forces Mae to acknowledge that the intensity of her relationship with Earl would burn out quickly and she opts for a safe life with Jerry. She seeks him out in an attempt to gain his forgiveness and redeem herself in his eyes. In spite of all the pain Mae has inflicted on him, Jerry is willing to take her back and thus offers her the redemption she seeks.

Barbara Stanwyck gives one of her finest performances as Mae, delivering lines in the natural and unadulterated fashion that made her one of the great screen actresses. Odets' dialogue becomes on-target, rapid machine-gun fire in the hands of this most talented actress. Robert Ryan, one of our great underrated film actors, perfectly embodies the brutal code of life by which Earl lives. As Jerry, Paul Douglas, an experienced stage actor, is a revelation capturing all aspects of Jerry's emotional roller coaster, from naive and trusting soul to a murderous husband scorned. Director Fritz Lang utilized the elements of film noir in his dazzling camerawork and lighting and guides his actors to believably natural performances, never removing them from the realities of the emotional anguish that permeates their everday lives.

Defining this film as genuine or faux noir does not diminish my reaction to its honest portrayal of complex characters trying to find a way to defeat the various demons that possess them and still manage to emerge from that battle with enough strength and hope to continue the search for that elusive defense tactic that will finally give them peace.

Forget the noir debate and see one of the finest films of the fifties, compelling, brilliantly directed and photographed, with superb unflinching performances which lay bare the self-inflicted wounds of failed attempts to live life according to one's own rules, no matter whose "throat is cut" during the process.

Underrated Performer of the Week: Paul Douglas

A versatile actor equally at ease in comedy and drama, Paul Douglas's film career started at age 42 and lasted just eleven years.

Although he was interested in drama in high school, his early jobs centered around sports. After attending Yale, the Philiadelphia native played professional football with his hometown's Frankford Yellow Jackets. That led to radio gigs as a sports announcer and news commentator.

He made his Broadway debut in 1935 in the short-lived Broadway play Double Dummy. Eleven years later, he was working in radio when Garson Kanin offered him the role of gruff scrap-metal tycoon Harry Brock in Born Yesterday. The play was a smash hit, running for 1642 performances over three years, and making stars of Douglas and his leading lady Judy Holliday.

His film career started in 1949 with key supporting performances in A Letter to Three Wives and It Happens Every Spring. The latter, one of my favorite Douglas films, cast him as a likable baseball catcher on the St. Louis Cardinals. Ray Milland stars as a college professor who accidentally invents a formula that repels wood--so when he rubs it on a baseball, no one can hit the ball with a wooden bat. To earn money to marry his girl, Milland joins the Cardinals as a pitcher (it's interesting to note that he cheats by using his formula on some pitches). When Douglas spots the formula in Milland's locker one day, the pitcher tells him it's hair tonic. That sets up one of the funniest scenes in this engaging film--and shows off Douglas's marvelous skills as comedian.

Lead roles and key supporting ones quickly followed:  he was a soft-hearted gangster in Love That Brute (1950); a police captain who works with Richard Widmark to prevent an epidemic in Panic in the Streets (1950); a fisherman involved with Barbara Stanwyck in Clash by Night (1952); and a businessman being blackmailed amid the corporate politics of Executive Suite (1954).

He plays a corporate executive again in my favorite Douglas film: The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956). Paired again with Judy Holliday, Douglas plays a well-meaning CEO who doesn't realize that his board of directors is fleecing the company's stockholders. He and Holliday form one of the great screen couples. It's a shame he didn't reprise his Born Yesterday role opposite her. Allegedly, Douglas declined the part (eventually played by Broderick Crawford) because it was reduced for the film version.

When Paul Douglas died of  a heart attack at 52, he was being considered for the Fred MacMurray role in The Apartment (1960). He had just appeared in an episode of The Twilight Zone called "The Mighty Casey." When the episode was completed, Rod Serling noted that Douglas didn't look well. A few days later, Douglas died. Serling used his own money to reshoot the show with Jack Warden in the Douglas role.

Paul Douglas was married five times. He walked down the aisle with actress Jan Sterling in 1950; they were married at the time of his death.