As part of its all-Deborah Kerr day, TCM showed "The Hucksters" at midnight last Sunday, the day of the ballyhooed opening of the new (third) season of "Mad Men." About the Madison Avenue geniuses of soap jingles, the 1947 movie is underrated on its own terms and contrasts usefully with "Mad Men."
Like Don Draper in "Mad Men," but even more so, army veteran Vic Norman is the movie's informing personality and Gable is great in the role. Maybe that's because he is playing a version of himself. With his dashing looks and charm, and his ultra-male confidence, Vic can talk his way from being, say, a nobody who can drive a truck to being Hollywood's acknowledged "king," the very embodiment of Rhett Butler. The script does nice things with the notion that sincerity is something you can imitate or simulate. Looking for work as the movie begins, Gable buys a new necktie, because it makes him look sincere. I wondered whether Lionel Trilling saw the movie, which anticipates an argument he makes in "Sincerity and Authenticity."
Gable can sell nearly anything to almost anyone. and when he walks into an ad agency and demands to see the top man, he naturally walks out with the firm's biggest account. Don Draper has epiphanies that guide him unerringly;
Gable has his swagger and charm and uses shrewd psychological ploys to get people to do his bidding. He can make a veiled threat sound like a pep talk to get a guy to do the right thing, can bet a nothing hand as if he were holding a straight flush, can con an agent into a rock-bottom contract for the agent's client -- in this case a second-rate comedian named Buddy Hare (played by Keenan Wynn). The stand-up comic in "Mad Men" is nasty. Buddy Hare is just juvenile.
The movie has Sydney Greenstreet, always fun to watch, as an entertainingly boorish villain, on whose oversized white hat Gable pours a pitcher of water. The hero as a good guy with a conscience who turns his back on Mad Ave: Gable makes impressive speeches ("your foreman is fear") after deciding that he'd rather have a defeated opponent's "forgiveness" than his "respect" and be sincere instead of playing at it. The movie -- which exists on the edge between comedy and drama -- was adapted from a novel that was undoubtedly angrier and more biting.
As befits Hollywood's "king," Gable is regaled with a double dose of frabjous femininity. He has Deborah Kerr, a general's widow, on one arm, and Ava Gardner as night club singer Jean Ogilvie on the other. In the terms proposed by "Mad Men," he gets to woo the high-slung proper Jackie ("I like being on a pedestal, but don't overdo it") and to revisit a romance with soulful, low-slung, big breasted Marilyn ("the cocktails are in the icebox"). The plot obliges Gable to be honorable, Gardner to be understanding, a model drinking buddy, and demure Kerr in her stud earrings and short hair to win the man. Kerr is a wonderful actress, easy to embrace in her convertible under the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. Her best moment: "Stop being a breadwinner and kiss me." But Ava is a rare enchantress. She is 24 and this is her breakout film. Her best moment: when she-- the former Mrs. Artie Shaw and the future Mrs. Frank Sinatra -- explains that singing on the beat (as in George M. Cohan's "Over There") is square. "Modern singing is soft and off the beat," she says. But of course Gable, hep from the start, knew that all along.
-- DL