Waste of Money.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This film is very well done. But I have to say that as it has the 1946 date, and came out in 1947, it was done before the big 'purge' that started in 1948. After that year, Hollywood felt it had to knuckle under to the new political agendas of our nation, and could no longer lightly or even comically criticize big business tycoon, Madison Avenue or the new 'religion' that held making money was all.The performances of all the stars, from Gable to Gardner, but especially Kerr are exceptional; every possible nuance of their responses to each other is made very clear, and yet one cannot know in the course of the film just where it will be going. Keenan Wynn's small role is incredibly well done. I'd never seen it till it appeared recently on TCM. Bravo to them for screening it.

Clark Gable is in good form playing an advertising ace, unemployed after spending the last four years in the Army, talking his way into a top Wall Street radio and print agency and landing the company's biggest account: Beautee Soap, run by a despicable, disrespectful tyrant. Sydney Greenstreet is the spitting, bug-eyed soap czar who keeps all his yes-men clucking like frightened geese, and his scenes around the conference table very nearly go over the top (but their payoff is in the finale); Deborah Kerr is a glamorous war widow whom Gable chases; and young Ava Gardner is well-cast as a nightclub singer--and Gable's rebound girl after Kerr plays tough-to-get. It's a slick, handsome piece of refined goods, not satiric as one might expect, though not quite stuffy, either. There are leisurely laughs, a cute sequence with Gable and Gardner on the train to Hollywood, and a satisfying wrap-up. If the picture doesn't exactly deliver fireworks, it does gives us Gable nicely contemplative, blowing kisses at the girls while at the same time re-examining his place in the work force. **1/2 from ****

The Hucksters, a really good film about the advertising game, became instantly dated almost from its release. A new box with both voices and pictures was invading American living rooms in 1947 just around the time this fine film was released. So a film about advertising for the radio became immediately dated.The situations and the ethics involved in those situations however are still as real today as they were post World War II.Clark Gable who had done three years service in World War II brings just the right dimension to the character of Vic Norman who is anxious to restart his career in the advertising game. But also having been fighting against tyranny overseas, you know it's only a matter of time before he and Sydney Greenstreet clash head on.I don't know what deal Louis B. Mayer made with Jack Warner to get Greenstreet over to MGM for his part as Evan Llewellyn Evans the soap king, but it was well worth it. Next to his movie debut as Casper Guttman, this is Greenstreet's best moment on screen. Greenstreet is the sadistic tyrannical head of a soap manufacturing firm who delights in making everyone jump at his slightest whim. The one who jumps the highest is Adolphe Menjou. This is also one of Menjou's finest roles as Kimberley the head of the agency that has Greenstreet's account and where Gable wants to work. Menjou is one ulcer driven man who started his agency with Greenstreet's account and has now worked himself into virtual slavery for the big money Greenstreet pays him. Menjou is quite an object lesson for where you could go wrong in the advertising game.Both Deborah Kerr and Ava Gardner are in this film as Gable's love interests. This was Kerr's first American film and she basically set her image of refinement in this film. She's the English widow of an American general from World War II and Gable meets her by trying to sell her on endorsing Greenstreet's soap.This was Ava Gardner's first big role in a major film and even with a dubbed voice for singing, she's just fine as the nightclub singer who's got a big old thing for Clark Gable. This was the first of three films she did with Gable, besides Lone Star and Mogambo. Their chemistry is pluperfect.One of Greenstreet's whims is getting a radio show for a second rate burlesque comedian played by Keenan Wynn. Wynn himself has an interesting part. He's a second rate talent at best and you can see he really knows it. Yet he bluffs his way through life with a certain braggadocio which is charming in its own way.And Wynn isn't so totally offbase with his dream either. Five years before Buck Privates hit the screen, second rate burlesque comedians were what you would have described Abbott and Costello. Why shouldn't Keenan Wynn dream of their kind of success.Whenever I watch The Hucksters I'm reminded of Bewitched. Remember that Darren Stevens is also in the advertising game and half the plots of that show involved him dealing with a difficult client and Samantha working things out with a bit of nose magic. What was Bewitched in fact, but witchcraft and advertising.I'm sure dealing with Greenstreet, Gable wished that either Kerr or Gardner had a little nose twitch magic that he could have used with the soap king. Failing that he has to take a direct approach.And that folks, is something to sit through this very fine film to see.

One cannot but help comparing this film to John Hustons's The Night of Iguana, which also had Deborah Kerr and Ava Gardner in major roles. In both films the two ladies are a delight to watch even in the year 2000. This film suffers from the lack of good direction, compared to Huston's work, that was propped up by the director who provided more than the sum of the actors contributions. What is notable is that both Kerr's and Gardner's talent were latent but did not bloom in this film, while Huston's direction of the two ladies in Iguana brought out their maturity years later. Kerr and Gardner are mesmerizing to watch with or without a good director.P.S. Sidney Greenstreet is more interesting as an actor to watch than Clark Gable.