How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying (1967) Every time a big hit Broadway show makes its way to the screen, critics and audiences weigh in on what they got right and what they got wrong.......
So we might as well weigh in too. "How To Succeed", which ran forever and won a Pulitzer Prize, got enough of the right stuff into its film version to make it one our long time favorites.
Casting the show's original lead actors is always a plus. Just as we couldn't imagine "The Music Man" without Robert Preston, 'How To Succeed' most wisely allowed the diminutive but powerhouse comic actor Robert Morse duplicate his lead role as J. Pierpont Finch.
A riotous, cheerful satire of big business corporate culture, the show and film chart the meteoric rise of Morse's Finch from lowly window washer to CEO in a matter of days........thanks to his constantly referring to a paperback guide to hoodwinking the office hierarchy to speed his way to power. (Think of Finch as ambitiously single minded version of the Jerry Lewis movie persona)
Before anyone thinks this idea unbelievable, before you let out a sarcastic, scoffing snort, think back to the grifter who conned his way into the White House in 2016.......yes, such lunacy can happen.
For the film adaptation, the show fell into the capable hands of writer-director David Swift, who specialized in bright bouncy, sharply technicolored Hollywood confections, like Disney's "The Parent Trap "and "Pollyanna" or the glossy Jack Lemmon comedies like "Good Neighbor Sam" and "Under The Yum Yum Tree".
In his use of physical comedy and a candy-coated visual style, Swift most resembled legendary animator turned director Frank Tashlin. (Swift himself put in some early career-time as an assistant Disney animator). And "How To Succeed" unfolds....uh swiftly, you might say, in a dazzling display of primary color production design.
The New York skyscraper offices of The Worldwide Wicket company (where none of its executives knows what the hell a wicket is) are a cartoonish delight to watch.......and Swift, never a subtle director, encourages his game enthusiastic cast to shamelessly ham it up, as if they're directly playing to the upper balcony seats back on Broadway.
Morse tears into the role of a unrepentant schemer who somehow remains puppy-dog lovable even as he connives and plots his promotions with Machiavellian fervor. Given that his office co-worker adversaries are mostly puffed up phonies, dumbells and simpering toadies, he encounters few obstacles.......except for the clueless blowhard company prez J. B. Biggley (Rudy Vallee, another welcome holdover from the show's cast) and the boss's sniveling nephew and his resident bimbo mistress (Anthony Teague and Maureen Arthur, both carrying on like live-action cartoons)
The only major downside we found here (as it so often is with show-to-movie transitions) - the pruning of lyricist-composer Frank Loesser's witty score. A bunch of songs didn't make it into the film, including our personal favorite, the "Coffee Break" (in which the workforce wailed and moaned at the thought of ever missing their mid-morning caffeine fix. Even more aggravating.....supposedly it was filmed, but cut and the deleted footage then forever lost.
The show's major showstoppers do show up, such as the ultra-catchy, now very prescient "A Secretary Is Not A Toy", the cautionary warning to male execs about the career-ending pitfalls of sexual harassment. (Also, it's the only number that makes an effort to replicate the unique, body-bending, signature dance moves of the show's original choreographer, Bob Fosse) And we defy anyone to sit through "The Brotherhood Of Man" number without joining in to sing along.
Call it silly, too overdone and obvious, but we love it anyway......and speaking of a moment way ahead of its time, check out the final shot, as Robert Morse's predatory Finch, always on the hunt for his next big upward move, flashes a knowing grin at his next target......4 stars (****).
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