Sweet Smell of Success
Publicist Sidney Falco races to sabotage a jazz guitarist’s courtship of his boss’s sister, risking his conscience and livelihood as the ruthless columnist J.J. Hunsecker wields deadly media power to crush anyone who defies him.
“Beware these “Gentlemen” of the press!”
Synopsis
J.J. Hunsecker, a powerful New York City newspaper columnist with a strong influence over public opinion through his Broadway coverage, is at odds with his younger sister, Susan, who is in a relationship with up-and-coming jazz guitarist Steve Dallas. Hunsecker disapproves of the romance and enlists publicist Sidney Falco to devise a way to end the relationship, regardless of the tactics required.
Credits
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How many hands made this film
The scale of the collaboration
Principal cast & crew: 19
These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.
Why a floor?
This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.
Craft leads on file
Shot by James Wong HoweScored by Elmer Bernstein
Box Office
1957 · Box office
📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.7× its budget
Why 2.5×?
Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).
Worldwide gross
$2.5M
Also known as
- Dein Schicksal in meiner Handde
- Le Grand Chantagefr
- Piombo roventeit
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Cast & Crew
19 unique people credited
Top billed cast
Directors
1Writers
2Producers
1Other crew
5Parents Guide
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