A tautly written tale of a movie producer (Douglas) down on his luck who tries to talk three outstanding filmic talents -- director Barry Sullivan, actress Lana Turner, and screenweriter Dick Powell -- into working on his new comeback picture. The problem, as illustrated in three lengthy flashbacks, is that all the talent feel they've been hosed by Douglas in the past.<br /><br />Douglas inherited his father's crummy B picture studio and made it Big in Hollywood terms -- that is, big in quality, big in gross. He lifted Sullivan out of obscurity, then dumped him unceremoniously in favor of better-known directors. Sullivan went on to a successful career of his own but still resents his rough handling.<br /><br />Turner was a drunken wannabe talent, wasted on booze, mooning over the portrait of her father who was a great star of the silver screen. Douglas shakes her out of her lifelong funk by dumping her in the swimming pool and coaxing a magnificent performance out of her before dumping her for some bit-playing whore. She goes on to become a box office star.<br /><br />The last story belongs to Powell as a Southern college professor whose novel has just won a Pulitzer. Douglas tricks him and his cooing Southern belle wife, Gloria Grahame, into moving to Hollywood and writing a screenplay. The giddy Grahame present difficulties. She's always interrupting Powell and he gets no work done. Douglas hauls Powell away in seclusion to finish the script and secretly arranges for the notorious womanizer, Gilbert Roland, to keep Grahame happy in Powell's absence. Grahame and Roland are accidentally killed and when Powell finds out about the sub rosa arrangement he belts Douglas and goes on to a successful career as novelist and screenwriter.<br /><br />The plot is taut. There's hardly a wasted moment or an adventitious word. This relentless plot adds polish to the story but makes the film look and sound like the carefully executed Hollywood production that it is. I don't think a Pulitzer Prize winner like Powell would (or could) have written it. Faulkner couldn't do it. Compare it, if you feel like it, to "On the Waterfront", for an example of what I mean, released two years later.<br /><br />A certain gloss to a production isn't necessarily bad. This is a smooth machine and if we can see things coming from a considerable distance, so what? Kirk Douglas's character is fascinating. He lives almost entirely for the movies he produces. His attitude towards everyone around him is dispassionate, almost surgical. And when he himself directs a movie that doesn't work, he shelves it, although the move means near bankruptcy. "I shouldn't have shot the movie," says Douglas, "I should have shot myself." He's no more gentle with his self esteem than he is with anyone else's.<br /><br />Douglas is good in the role of the unscrupulous operator, of course. That phoniness behind the grin and the dimpled chin seems almost built into his persona. He's made a career out of being con men. Along with "The Big Heat," this is Gloria Grahame's best performance too. It's a little hard to imagine Lana Turner going on to a big career after her encounter with Douglas, just as it is hard in real life. Maybe I'm picky but aside from "The Postman Always Rings Twice," she always embarrassed me when she was on screen.<br /><br />The rest of the supporting cast is made up of old reliables who cannot be critiqued. What are you going to do -- complain about the performance of Walter Pidgeon as the dignified, well-meaning, nervously fidgeting, money-managing courier between Douglas and the others? Or Paul Stewart as the publicity man with his New York drawl about to burst with Weltschmerz? Impossible.<br /><br />Smooooth, man.