Before he began a career as a screenwriter, Ernest Lehman worked as a journalist and stringer for press agent Irving Hoffman in New York. Drawing on his experience, he sold a novella to Cosmopolitan magazine in 1950 about a sleazy publicity flack and a megalomaniacal gossip columnist, based loosely on Walter Winchell. The controversial story eventually caught the eye of independent production company HHL, formed in 1953 by Burt Lancaster, his agent, Harold Hecht, and screenwriter-producer James Hill. The company had established itself through a string of hits, two starring Lancaster - Apache (1954) and Vera Cruz (1954), and one Oscar winner, Marty (1955). HHL had secured the rights to George Bernard Shaw's play The Devil's Disciple and to direct it, they contracted Alexander Mackendrick, who had made a name for himself in England with several critically acclaimed satires of British society, two of them starring Alec Guinness - The Man in the White Suit (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955). But by the mid-50s, the English film industry had fallen on hard times, and Mackendrick, despite being warned by others in Hollywood that HHL were "monsters" and not to be trusted, agreed to direct Sweet Smell of Success.

Between the publication of his story and HHL's interest in it, Lehman had become a much-in-demand screenwriter. So, when he sold the rights, he had enough clout to stipulate that he alone would write the script as well as produce and direct it. But upon his return from scouting locations in Manhattan, Lehman was told United Artists had changed their mind about distributing a film by a first-time director. Lehman suspected that HHL had undermined his project but without any powerful studio allies to support him he decided to abandon directing the film. At this point, HHL, who already had Alexander MacKendrick under contract (their mutual project, The Devil's Disciple, had been temporarily postponed) decided to let him direct Sweet Smell of Success. Mackendrick relished the challenge of moving from the Ealing comedies into the realm of urban melodrama. He and Lehman quickly set to work adapting the story for the screen, and for several weeks explored how to tell the story in strictly visual terms. But the tension of dealing with the erratic - and some said hugely egotistical - mandates of HHL began to have an adverse effect on Lehman. With a draft of the script finished and locations finalized, he resigned from the picture on his doctor's advice (he had developed a severe case of spastic colon) and took off for Tahiti. Meanwhile, James Hill stepped in as producer.

HHL decided the script needed further polishing, and turned to Clifford Odets with Mackendrick's wholehearted approval. Odets, the leading left-wing American playwright of the 1930s, had "sold out," according to many of his associates, by going to Hollywood in 1935 to write screenplays. Through a combination of political pressure and personal problems, his career had foundered, and he hadn't had a screenwriting credit since Humoresque (1947). Eager for the opportunity, Odets assured HHL he could do an overhaul on the script in two or three weeks. Instead, it took him four months to reconstruct the story from top to bottom, though he did stick to Lehman's basic plot outline (thus assuring the latter of a writing credit). However, Odets created new scenes and dialogue. Production began without a final version of the screenplay, while Odets - holed up in a New York hotel - fed new pages daily to the cast and crew that had to be cut and pasted into the shooting script. But Mackendrick, at least, found the ordeal worthwhile. "What Clifford did, in effect, was dismantle the structure of every single sentence in order to rebuild situations and relationships that were much more complex, had much greater tension and more dramatic energy," he said, acknowledging how much he learned from Odets. "What I began to recognize was that I was being given the privilege of watching the processes of a dramatic intelligence working out the "dialectics" of character interaction."

This was Odets major contribution; the film's sharp urban vernacular and the sense of tension he established between every character, however minor, in scene after scene. "If you're worried that my dialogue is overblown, too flowery and purple-passagey; well, don't worry, because the scenes are well constructed," Odets advised Mackendrick. "Play it fast, and don't pay attention to the words; just play the action, and it'll work." The finished product suggests Mackendrick took the advice seriously.

by Rob Nixon