Main Cast: Gregory Peck, Jennifer Jones, Fredric March, Marisa Pavan, Lee J. Cobb
Release Year: 1956
Country: US
Run Time: 152 minutes
Plot
This meticulous and unusually long cinemadaptation of Sloan Wilson's best-selling novel The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit stars Gregory Peck as an ex-army officer, pursuing a living as a TV writer in the postwar years. Hired by a major broadcasting network, Peck is assigned to write speeches for the network's president (Fredric March). Peck comes to realize that the president's success has come at the expense of personal happiness, and this leads Peck to ruminate on his own life. Extended flashbacks reveal that Peck had experienced a torrid wartime romance with Italian girl Marisa Pavan, a union that produced a child. Peck is torn between his responsibility to his illegitimate son and his current obligations towards his wife (Jennifer Jones), his children, and his employer. Among the many life-altering decisions made by Peck before the fade-out is his determination to seek out a job that will allow him to spend more time with his family, even if it means a severe cut in salary. The superb hand-picked supporting cast of The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit includes Ann Harding as March's wife, Keenan Wynn as the man who informs Peck that he'd fathered an Italian child, Henry Daniell as a detached executive, and an unbilled DeForrest Kelley as an army medic (who gets to say "He's dead, captain"!) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
If the passage of time has blunted the edge of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, it still holds more than enough rewards to bear watching. Chief among these is Gregory Peck's sterling performance in the title role. Peck was a tremendous talent but in some ways limited; there was a stolidness, sometimes a stodginess to his persona that got in the way of making him totally believable when he tried to stretch himself too much. That's not a problem here, as the role fits him as if it had been tailor-made for him. Peck's particular brilliance lies in the quiet strength that is so much a part of him and the way in which he uses subtle changes in that quietness to signal mammoth emotions. He's given ample opportunity to do so here, and the results are enthralling. Although co-star Jennifer Jones is disappointing (a fact that mars the effectiveness of the film), he gets extremely solid support from Marisa Pavan, Fredric March, Lee J. Cobb, Keenan Wynn, and just about everyone else in the film. (There's particularly fine work from Ann Harding, who seems especially in tune with the Peck manner of acting.) There's also some brilliant dialogue and character sketching from Nunnally Johnson, who also directs with a sure hand. Unfortunately, there are also a few sections where the screenplay stacks the deck a little too obviously, and when the tone gets a little preachy; it's also undeniable that a good 20 minutes could and should have been chopped away. That said, Flannel is still a powerful film with an exceptional performance from its star. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, by Sloan Wilson, is a novel about the American search for purpose in a world dominated by business. Tom and Betsy Rath share a struggle to find contentment in their hectic and material culture while several other characters fight essentially the same battle, but struggle in it for different reasons. In the end, it is a story of taking responsibility for one's own life. The book was largely autobiographical, drawing on Wilson's experiences as assistant director of the US National Citizen Commission for Public Schools.
Both movie and book became hugely popular. The novel continues to appear in the references of sociologists to America's discontented businessman. Columnist Bob Greene wrote, "The title of Sloan Wilson's best-selling novel became part of the American vernacular -- the book was a ground-breaking fictional look at conformity in the executive suite, and it was a piece of writing that helped the nation's business community start to examine the effects of its perceived stodginess and sameness."[2]
In 2002, the book was returned to print in a new edition with a foreword by author Jonathan Franzen.
Tom and Betsy Rath live in a rundown house in Southport, Connecticut around 1953. They have three TV-addicted kids (two girls and boy) and have money problems. Tom is 33 years old, a Harvard graduate. He barely survived as an Army paratroop officer during World War II, having fought in both the European and Pacific combat theaters (an unlikely scenario, but it sets the stage for his wartime love affair).
Tom has haunting flashbacks of the affair as well as his combat experiences — clearly the stuff of PTSD, as it is recognized today. He killed 17 men in combat. His stay-at-home wife only knows Tom is somehow "changed" since the war. She feels his job with a Manhattan charitable organization pays too little, so she and a fellow train commuter urge him to interview for a job at a New York-based television network.
Tom lands a public relations job for Ralph Hopkins, the top man at the network, an empire-builder surrounded by politicking yes-men. Hopkins is to propose the establishment of national mental health services to a group of physicians and offer his own prestige and network toward that end. Tom must solve how his boss can best present the proposal so that the learned doctors will rise in unison and appoint Hopkins to spearhead the campaign.
Hired on a six-month probationary basis, Tom reports to a humorless game-player who rejects five different drafts of the speech and ends up substituting one of his own. Hopkins is satisfied but Tom persuades him that the approach is all wrong, that it misrepresents Hopkins' qualifications to head the campaign. Tom's approach is much more sensible. Hopkins is impressed. Tom reminds him of his own son, who was killed in combat.
There are a number of subplots: (1.) An attempt by the caretaker of Tom's late grandmother to fraudulently inherit her home; (2) Hopkins' estrangement from his wife and daughter (who quits school to elope with an undesirable man), and (3) Tom's adulterous behavior during the war and an out-of-wedlock son conceived in Italy, whose mother is seeking monetary support at a most inconvenient time. Betsy goes berserk on hearing of this secret, but eventually calms down and understands mutual emotional support — not just mutual ambition — binding wife and husband.
In the end, seeing the example of how his boss's marriage and family life has been ruined by overwork, Tom wisely turns down a high-pressure position in order to work normal hours and spend more time at home.
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit II appeared in 1984 - by the time of the sequel a decade has passed in the story-line. Like the original novel, it too reflects on the general social attitudes of the time.
In popular culture
In a season-two episode of Mad Men ("Six Months' Leave"), comedian Jimmy Barrett (Patrick Fischler) refers to ad man Don Draper (Jon Hamm) as "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit" -- a reference to Draper's outward professional smoothness and tumultuous homelife.
In an episode of the documentary series Wings of the Red Star, narator Peter Ustinov refers to Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev as "The Red in the Gray Flannel Suit".
