Book Description
The Faber Classic Screenplay Series presents the very best writing from the history of cinema.

Sweet Smell of Success is the smartest, most cynical American film of the 1950s. Written by Ernest Lehman (North by Northwest, The Sound of Music) and the celebrated leftist playwright Clifford Odets, it is a vicious dissection of the world of public relations and journalism which conjures up a wprld of creeping hysteria and acid disenchantment. Tony Curtis playing the Scuttling press agent Sidney Falco, and Burt Lancaster as the colimnist J.J. Hunsecker, gave the performances of their careers.

With a specially commissioned introduction by Lehman, and an appreciation of the film's director, Alexander Mackendrick, by James Mangold.



About the Author
Ernest Lehman lives in Los Angeles, California. One of the most critically and commercially successful screenwriters ever to work in Hollywood, his movie scripts include Sabrina, The King and I, Somebody Up There Likes Me, West Side Story, Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf, and Portnoy's Complaint.

Known primarily as one of the great American playwrights--his classic dramas in Waiting for Lefty and Rocket to the Moon--Clifford Odets also wrote or co-wrote 18 movies for film and television.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

With lines so sharp you could shave yourself with them, Sweet Smell of Success is the smartest, most cynical American film of the 1950s. A scathing vivisection of the world of PR and journalism, Sweet Smell of Success defined the era it portrayed with this stunning screenplay.