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.
The movie and book have become hugely popular, and the book continues to appear in the references of sociologists to America's discontented businessman. 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 1955. They have three TV-addicted kids (two girls and boy) and have money problems. Tom is 33 years old, a Harvard graduate, and barely survived as an Army officer during World War II. He fought in both the European and Pacific combat theaters (an unlikely scenario, but it sets the stage for his wartime love affair). About the first third of the movie presents haunting flashbacks to the affair as well as his combat experiences — clearly the stuff of PTSD, viewers recognize today. His stay-at-home wife, who only knows Tom is somehow "changed" since the war, feels his job with a Manhattan charitable organization pays too little, and 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 working in a staff position for the top man at the network (Fredric March), an apparently affable empire-builder surrounded by politicking yes-men who is to propose the establishment of nationally improved mental health services to a group of physicians and offer to put his own prestige and network toward that end. The problem Tom has to solve is how the top network man can best present the proposal to the learned doctors so that the doctors will rise in unison after the speech and appoint the network top man to spearhead the campaign. Meanwhile, as a subtext to the various plot lines of this mid-1950s film the mental health theme frames the struggles of just about every character (including even the TV-addicted kids).
Hired on a six-month probationary basis, Tom reports to a humorless game-player who rejects five different drafts of the speech created by Tom and ends up substituting one of his own. Eventually, the top network guy and Tom agree that the approach approved so far is all wrong in that it casts the network guy as an ignoramus who is in no way qualified to spearhead the campaign. Tom's approach is much more sensible: offer to run political ads in favor of the establishment of government-funded mental health programs. It would be an offer the doctors could not refuse.
Sidebar plots include (1) an attempt by the caretaker of Tom's late grandmother to fraudulently inherit her home (where Tom and his family live) in place of Tom; (2) the estrangement of Tom's network boss from his wife and daughter, due to his years of workaholic absence (the daughter quits school to elope with an undesirable man); and (3) Tom's earlier adulterous behavior and his out-of-wedlock son who was conceived in Italy during the war at a time of great stress, who pops up years later as an issue in a letter from the boy's Italian mother seeking monetary support for the boy at a most inconvenient time. Betsy goes berserk on hearing of this secret, but eventually calms down and seems to "grow up" and finally understand 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 had been ruined by overwork, Tom wisely turns down a high-pressure traveling position in order to work normal hours and spend time with his family, which now can be a place of healing for its members and by implication also for the broader restless culture.
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 its prequel, this novel too accurately reflects on the general social attitudes of the time.
In popular culture
In episode 2.9 of Mad Men ("Six Months' Leave"), comedian Jimmy Barrett (Patrick Fischler) refers to Don Draper (Jon Hamm) as "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit" -- a reference to Draper's outward professional smoothness and tumultuous homelife.
