Executive Suite

Executive Suite is a movie about a struggle for power between commercialism and idealism in a large business, and it is therefore truly unfortunate that the people who made the film had no idea at all of the nature of idealism. This defect has long troubled the moviemakers, a group of people fatally fascinated by what they do not understand. Such unrequited love once resulted in Communist screen-writers who made a thousand dollars a week; now it takes the somewhat more dangerous form of pictures like "Executive Suite."

The movie is concerned with the sudden death of the president of the Treadway Furniture Corporation and the subsequent maneuverings as the seven-man board of control tries to name a successor. The situation is a patently false one, since for some obscure reasons the next president must be named within a day of his predecessor's death.

Despite its phoniness-or perhaps because of it-this is just the sort of plot that appeals to ostentatious writers and directors. They glow with the prospect of putting seven people in a situation that is both temporally and spatially confined, and then developing their characters. The amount of character that can be developed when you have 104 minutes to split up among seven characters is at best small, and it is no wonder that for the most part the big names involved in Executive Suite are propping up card-board people.

In rapid sequence the camera scans the seven leading personalities and their reactions to the president's death. The Playboy Financier (Louis Calhern) dabbles in bonds and women from the Stork Club, the Trusted Vice-President (Walter Pigeon) looks faithful, the Hearty Sales Manager (Paul Douglas) learns of the death in his secretary's apartment, and the Dead Man's former Mistress (Barbara Stanwyck) tears her hair. Only Frederick March, as the scheming comptroller who wants the presidency, has the time and the talent to develop his role.

The failure of these hastily-sketched characterizations might be permissable if the central figure, played by William Holden, had any depth or truth in him. But MGM's conception of a youthful engineer who doubles as vice-president in charge of research is more embarrassing than inspiring more Hollywoodish than Ciro's. Everything that the movie does to make Holden the hero produces the opposite reaction. His nuzzling wife (June Allyson) is sickening in her devotion, and his slimy son is repugnant in his Little League uniform.

When Holden steps into his den, its walls and floors covered with handsome futuristic designs, and murmurs, "This has been the only thing that has kept me going," one suddenly feels an overwhelming aversion to modern design. When Holden shouts inscrutable formulae and numbers into a telephone, one sickens of enlightened science and engineering. When Holden's loyal employees crowd around him to seek advice and solace, one longs for the Marley-Scrooge days when employees knew their place. When Holden orates about the necessity for expansion and research in modern industry, one feels a quick sympathy for William McKinley and Mark Hanna.

In brief, by espousing liberalism Holden makes conservation very attractive. He is so clean-cut that he is greasy. He is so sincere that he is glib. The friendship he shows for the factory workers stems from the overwhelming consideration that "Happy workers are efficient workers," not from any basic sympathy with others. Frederic March's evil comptroller seems the only honestly motivated person in the movie; Mr. Holden is just the ruthless comptroller with a Business School education. MICHAEL J. HALBERSTAM '53