How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
Description
Big business means big laughs as Robert Morse schemes and scams his way to the top in this bold andbawdy musical that celebrates the Great American Corporate Wayand lampoons it at the same time. With musical supervision by the legendary Nelson Riddle (Pal Joey), this tune-filled comic gem is a goldmine of great Frank Loesser (Guys and Dolls) songs, including “I Believe In You,” “Rosemary” and “The Company Way.” Written, produced and directed by David Swift (The Parent Trap) and based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway hit, this classic musical is “bristling with humor, romance and song” (The Hollywood Reporter)! The story charts the meteoric riseof an ambitious window washer (Morse) who, with the help of a simple guidebook, gets the job, gets the girl (Michele Lee), gets the raise and gets the attention of the Big Boss (Rudy Vallee) himselfall by his second day at work! Now it’s only a matter of hours before he goes from zero to CEO!Amazon.com
This fizzy musical was a Broadway smash in 1962, and boy, is it a product of its era. Executive washrooms, gray-flannel-suit businessmen, hip-swinging secretaries–they’re all preserved in the movie’s brightly colored amber. J. Pierpont Finch (Robert Morse) is the window washer who climbs the corporate ladder in a few days, guided by a how-to book. The Frank Loesser songs are great fun, the Bob Fosse dances are very clever and mod, and the gaudy set design may have given Andy Warhol a few ideas. The jack-in-the-box performance of the elfin Robert Morse doesn’t seem toned down from his Tony-winning stage turn; think Mickey Rooney doing Jerry Lewis. Still, Morse is a unique presence, and his mad little solo dance down a real Manhattan street is an interlude of sublime daffiness. Grand old crooner Rudy Vallee shines as the president of Worldwide Wicket, barking his beloved alma mater’s fight song: “Groundhog! Groundhog!” –Robert Horton
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After working with Blue Eyes, Nelson Riddle got a suitably inflated impression of himself, and he took it out on one of Frank Loesser’s best scores with a big dose of bombast. Why use understatement when you can have a symphonic orchestra doink and boink all over the place? That Riddle got himself in over his swelled head was no clearer than when he decided to replace the quote from Grieg’s Piano Concerto in “Rosemary” with something better. As Pauline Kael said of Rex Harrison in the film version of My Fair Lady, everyone here seems to have done this a million times already — Rudy Vallee is in bad voice here — but Robert Morse is Old Faithful, singing well if a bit too cuddly for a thirty-five-year-old. Like Rykodisc’s other “MGM” albums, this is straight from the LP masters, complete in this case with several truncated tracks and not-quite-top-notch sound. Stick with Victor’s five-star ‘61 cast album.
P. S. Was Robert Q. Lewis really as smarmy as I remember him?
Rating: 3 / 5
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
After working with Blue Eyes, Nelson Riddle got a suitably inflated impression of himself, and he took it out on one of Frank Loesser’s best scores with a big dose of bombast. Why use understatement when you can have a symphonic orchestra doink and boink all over the place? That Riddle got himself in over his swelled head was no clearer than when he decided to replace the quote from Grieg’s Piano Concerto in “Rosemary” with something better. As Pauline Kael said of Rex Harrison in the film version of My Fair Lady, everyone seems to have done this a million times already — Rudy Vallee is in bad voice here — but Robert Morse is Old Faithful, singing well if a bit too cuddly for a thirty-five-year-old. Like Rykodisc’s other “MGM” albums, this is straight from the LP masters, complete in this case with truncated cues and not-quite-top-notch mixing. Stick with Victor’s five-star ‘61 cast album.
P. S. Was Robert Q. Lewis really as smarmy as I remember him?
Rating: 3 / 5
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
While both are definately excellent, the stage version of How To Succeed is far superior. The recent revival far surpasses the original as Robert Morse is positively trampled by Matthew Broderick and even Rudee Vallee himself is made to look small in the face of Ronn Carroll’s JB Biggley. I am currently playing the role of Biggley in my school’s production and find the revival superior to the original, however, the original is still a classic and should be revered for what it is … one of the most enjoyable musicals ever made!
Rating: 3 / 5
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
“How to Succeed…” on film is not a total disaster. There are some very good moments in it, such as Rudy Valee hamming it up in “Grand Old Ivy” and Robert Morse doing the same in “Brotherhood of Man” and “I Believe in You”, but some moments in the film are completely uncalled for.
Michelle Lee singing “I Believe in You” as a romantic song towards the end of the Act I absolutley ruined the sardonic, unromantic tone of the show. This scene, while only lasting three minutes, ruins the entire story and concept.
Most of the songs sung by Lee’s Rosemary from the stage play are also cut from the film, ruining her characther, turning her into a sympathetic romantic lead, not a tough as nails broad.
Bud Frump is also given less to do here. His two big numbers are cut, making him more of a straightfoward antagonist than a comic villan.
While Morse, Sammy Smith, Valee and Ruth Kobart are preserved wonderfully on the screen, the rest of the film flops rather badly.
Rating: 3 / 5
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
The movie is one of the best. Robert Morse is simply spectacular. The songs are great! The DVD version is disappointing. Picture quality, not up to par. Also, it’s in MONO, not STEREO. I suppose the original movie was MONO, but perhaps there is a master tape of the songs in STEREO. If so, I would have expected them to have been redubbed in stereo. Finally, only a widescreen version is on this DVD. I like it when both the widescreen and regular (panned and scanned) version are included.
Rating: 5 / 5
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying