Main Cast: Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Walter Pidgeon, Dick Powell, Barry Sullivan
Release Year: 1952
Country: US
Run Time: 118 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot
Kirk Douglas plays the corrupt and amoral head of a major film studio in this Hollywood drama, often regarded as one of the film's industry's most interesting glimpses at itself. Actress Gloria Lorrison (Lana Turner), director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan), and screenwriter James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell) are invited to a meeting at a Hollywood sound stage at the request of producer Harry Pebbel (Walter Pidgeon). Pebbel is working with studio chief Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas), whose studio is in financial trouble and needs a blockbuster hit. If these three names will sign to a new project, he's convinced that there's no way he can lose. But there's a rub -- all three of these Hollywood heavyweights hate Shields's guts. He dumped Gloria for another woman, he double-crossed Fred out of a plum directing assignment, and he was responsible for the death of James Lee's wife. All three are ready to tell Pebbel to forget it, until they hear the voice of Shields, calling from Europe to discuss the project by phone. The Bad and the Beautiful won five Academy Awards, including Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress for Gloria Grahame. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
Vincente Minelli's self-reflexive, highly stylized profile of a charmingly manipulative producer (Kirk Douglas) seeking a comeback is one of the most cynical and enjoyably trashy films that Hollywood has ever made about itself. Appearing during the height of noir, when the movie business was taking a more jaundiced view of itself in films like Sunset Boulevard (1950) and The Big Knife (1955), the film employs many of the stylistic and narrative techniques of Citizen Kane (1941) in portraying a similarly ruthless figure, yet turns Welles' theme inside out, presenting its back-stabbing protagonist as a charming rogue. Originally based on George Shaw's story, Tribute to a Bad Man, a thinly veiled take on Broadway producer Jed Harris, a tyrant whose evil nature was so familiar to theater folk that Laurence Olivier based his characterization of Richard III on him, it eventually mutated into a film a clef on well-known Hollywood players, with David O. Selznick the likely model for Douglas' Jonathan Shields. Its three acts are structured as a triptych of flashbacks in which Douglas attempts to seduce each of the three talents he discovered -- director Barry Sullivan, actress Lana Turner, and writer Dick Powell-- into returning to help him jump-start his moribund career, despite the way he's damaged their lives. As their stories unfold they reveal the energy, charm, panache, and high spirits of their former boss along with his shameless conniving, outright theft, and part-time pimping. But the perspective of the film, which he dominates completely, is that of an ex-Nazi who says, "Sure the Fuhrer was a bastard, but damn, he made things happen." Douglas has rarely been better, seizing every moment onscreen as if it were his last, and Gloria Grahame is excellent as the highly distracted writer's wife. Composer David Raksin's lush, harmonically inventive score is also among his most evocative, but the star of the film is Vincente Minelli. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
In Hollywood, screenwriter James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell), movie star Georgia Lorrison (Lana Turner), and director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan) each refuse to speak by phone to Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas) in Paris. Movie producer Harry Pebbel (Walter Pidgeon) gathers them in his office and begs them to help Shields out.
The backstory of their involvement with Shields unfolds. Shields is the son of a notorious old filmmaker who had been dumped by the industry. He was so unpopular that his son had to hire "extras" to attend his funeral. Shields is determined to make it in Hollywood by any means necessary.
In a flashback, Shields partners with aspiring director Amiel, whom he meets at his father's funeral. In a poker game, Shields intentionally loses money he does not have to film executive Pebbel so he can talk Pebbel into letting him work off the debt. Shields and Amiel learn their respective trades making low-budget films for him. Amiel decides he is ready to film a project he has been nursing along. Shields pitches it to the studio. He gets a large budget to produce the film, but has to betray Amiel by letting someone with an established reputation direct it.
Shields next encounters alcoholic small-time actress Lorrison, the daughter of a famous actor Shields admired. He builds up her confidence and gives her the leading role in one of his movies over everyone else's objections. When she falls in love with him, he lets her think that he feels the same way in order to get the performance he needs. After a smash premiere makes her a star overnight, she finds him with a beautiful bit player named Laila (Elaine Stewart). He drives Lorrison away, telling her that he will never allow anyone to have that much control over him.
Finally, Bartlow is a contented professor at a small college who has written a bestselling book. Shields wants to turn it into a film and have him write the script. Bartlow is not interested, but his shallow Southern belle wife, Rosemary (Gloria Grahame) is, so he agrees to do it for her sake. They go to Hollywood, where Shields is annoyed to find that her constant distractions are keeping her husband from his work. He gets his suave actor friend Victor "Gaucho" Ribera (Gilbert Roland) to keep her occupied. Freed from interruption, Bartlow has no trouble finishing the script. Rosemary, however, runs off with Gaucho and they are killed in a plane crash. When Shields slips and reveals his involvement, Bartlow leaves too.
Shields then decides to direct a film himself, instead of just producing it. But he botches it. Everybody else does admirably, but the result is a mess. Shields' stubborn refusal to release it leads to his bankruptcy.
The story comes full circle to the beginning. When all three reject Shields' offer to work together again, Pebbel sarcastically agrees that Shields "ruined" their lives. They are all now at the top of their professions. As they leave, Pebbel is still talking to Shields. Out of his sight, the three eavesdrop on another phone while Shields describes his new idea and become more and more interested.
There has been much debate as to which real-life Hollywood legends are represented by the film's characters. Jonathan Shields is thought to be a blending of David O. Selznick, Orson Welles and Val Lewton.[2] Lewton's Cat People is clearly the inspiration behind an early Shields-Amiel film.[3] The Georgia Lorrison character is the daughter of a "Great Profile" actor like John Barrymore (Diana Barrymore's career was in fact launched the same year as her father's death), but it can also be argued that Lorrison includes elements of Minnelli's ex-wife Judy Garland.[4]Gilbert Roland's Gaucho may almost be seen as self-parody, as he had recently starred in a series of Cisco Kid pictures, though the character's name, Ribera, would seem to give a nod also to famed Hollywood seducer Porfirio Rubirosa. The director Henry Whitfield (Leo G. Carroll) is a "difficult" director modeled on Alfred Hitchcock, and his assistant Miss March (Kathleen Freeman) is modeled on Hitchcock's wife Alma Reville.[citation needed] The James Lee Barlow character may have been inspired by Paul Eliot Green,[citation needed] the University of North Carolina academic-turned-screenwriter of The Cabin in the Cotton.
