The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
Directed by Nunnally Johnson
Written by Nunnally Johnson from a novel by Sloan Wilson
1956/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental
Tom Rath: The most significant thing about me so far as the United Broadcasting Corporation is concerned is that I am applying for a position in its Public Relations Department and after a reasonable period of learning I believe I could do a good job. I will be glad to answer any other questions relevant to this application for employment but after giving it serious thought I am unable to convince myself that any further speculation on my importance could be of any legitimate interest or value to the United Broadcasting Corporation.
This story about readjustment to home life after WWII has “important motion picture” written all over it. I don’t know how important it is but it’s watchable if over-long.
Tom Rath (Gregory Peck) has settled down to life with his wife Betsy (Jennifer Jones) and three children. As the film begins, he has a “safe” job at a foundation and is pulling in $7,000 a year. Betsy is dissatisfied with their house and his salary. She is also disappointed with his lack of ambition. Throughout the movie, she will not hesitate to say exactly what she is thinking at all times. Tom decides to interview for a job in public relations at a broadcasting company.
Despite his lack of experience, he gets the job. The company’s CEO Ralph Hopkins (Fredric March) takes an instant liking to him, based largely on Tom’s resemblance to the son he lost in the war. Tom is assigned full time to Hopkins’ pet project, a campaign for a national program on mental health. Tom’s direct supervisor (Henry Daniell) is jealous and attempts to keep Tom’s ideas from getting to Hopkins.
In the meantime, Tom has received an inheritance from his grandmother. It’s not the fortune Betsy was hoping for, but an old house on 27 acres. Betsy gets the bright idea of subdividing the land and has a new project. But ghosts of Tom’s WWII past materialize and the marriage is threatened. With a host of great supporting actors including Arthur O’Connell, Lee J. Cobb, Gene Lockhart, Keenan Wynne and, as welcome blast from the past, Ann Harding as Fredric March’s estranged wife.
This movie is 2 1/2 hours long and I have not begun to summarize the complicated plot. For one thing, I have left out long stretches of flashbacks to WWII. I felt the movie would have been improved by trimming it by at least half an hour.
Betsy is an assertive modern-style woman but for some reason she really got on my nerves. Maybe it was Jones’s performance although the commentator on the DVD I watched said that Johnson was much harder on the wife than the novelist had been. Other than that, I enjoyed but did not love the film.
Trailer
