Sweet Smell of Success

“Beware these “Gentlemen” of the press!”

In 1950s New York, J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) writes a Broadway column that decides who gets noticed and who gets buried. His younger sister Susan (Susan Harrison) is seeing a jazz guitarist, Steve Dallas (Martin Milner), and J.J. wants it ended, so he hands the job to a press agent, Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis). Alexander Mackendrick sets the story among columnists and publicists who will do almost anything to stay on the right side of one man's opinion.