Executive Suite

For other uses, see Executive suite (disambiguation).

Executive Suite
Directed by	Robert Wise
Written by	Ernest Lehman
Based on	Executive Suite 1952 novel by Cameron Hawley
Produced by	John Houseman
Starring	William Holden June Allyson Barbara Stanwyck Fredric March Walter Pidgeon Shelley Winters Paul Douglas Louis Calhern Dean Jagger Nina Foch
Narrated by	Chet Huntley
Cinematography	George J. Folsey
Edited by	Ralph E. Winters
Production company	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date	May 6, 1954 (1954-5-6)
Running time	103 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1,383,000
Box office	$3,585,000

Executive Suite is a 1954 American Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer drama film directed by Robert Wise and written by Ernest Lehman, based on the 1952 novel of the same name by Cameron Hawley. The film stars William Holden, June Allyson, Barbara Stanwyck, Fredric March, Walter Pidgeon, Shelley Winters, Paul Douglas, Louis Calhern, Dean Jagger, and Nina Foch. The plot depicts the internal struggle for control of a furniture manufacturing company after the unexpected death of the company's president. Executive Suite was nominated for multiple Academy Awards, including for Nina Foch's performance, which earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination.

This was Lehman's first produced screenplay, and its plot deviates substantially from the novel. He went on to write Sabrina, North by Northwest, West Side Story, and other films. The film is one of few in Hollywood history without a musical score.

Plot

In New York City to meet with investment bankers on a new bond issue, corporate bigwig Avery Bullard wires his secretary to call an executive board meeting for 6 o’clock. He’s president and driving force of the Tredway Corporation, a major U.S. furniture manufacturer in the bustling eastern Pennsylvania industrial hub of Millburgh. A short commuter flight will get him there just in time. Hailing a taxi, he drops dead in the street. As he collapses, his wallet flies. Filched by a bystander, it ends up empty, stuffed deep in a nearby wastebin. The body is admitted to the morgue as a John Doe.

George Caswell, a member of the Tredway board of directors and one of the financiers Bullard has just left, sees Bullard’s body in the street below. Sensing the opportunity for some easy money through a quick insider trade, he tells his broker to short sell as much Tredway stock as he can before the market closes that afternoon for the weekend, which he’ll buy back for 10 points less on Monday after news of Bullard's death has chopped its price.

The self-driven 56-year-old Bullard had never named a second in command after the previous executive vice-president had died. He’d just scratched the only outside board director off his short successor list, and appeared ready to see his choice for both in one rubber stamped that very evening.

When Bullard fails to arrive at company headquarters, the meeting is canceled. The public announcement of his death later that evening sets off a scramble among various Tredway executives for the top job.

Company comptroller Loren Shaw immediately seizes the power vacuum, making unilateral business decisions and coordinating Tredway’s public reaction. In so doing, he undercuts appalled longtime treasurer Frederick Alderson, a loyal Bullard wingman and putative heir. Diminished even in his own eyes, Alderson abandons his dream and embraces the role of kingmaker.

Among Shaw’s moves had been prematurely releasing a strongly profitable upcoming quarterly report to shore up stock prices in the wake of the Bullard shock. Ambitious, the single-focused, self-made bean-counter is fixated with generating short-term accounting gains and using them to reward stockholders at the expense of the quality of the company's products and long-term viability.

Shaw buys Caswell's vote for a promise to sell him unissued company stock to cover the short sell of securities he never owned, staving off both financial ruin and a career-ending scandal.

Cornering another vote, Shaw blackmails sales VP Walter Dudley after stalking him to a tryst with his secretary that very evening.

Lobby card with Louis Calhern as George Caswell, with Lucille Knoch

Alderson seeks out board member Jesse Grimm to stump him for the presidency, believing he’ll have enough votes in his pocket to deliver the top job. The venerable vice president of manufacturing, Grimm had already decided to retire, and rebuffs the prize. While no fan of Shaw, he is envious and resentful of “boy wonder“ research head VP Dan Walling and refuses to support his potential candidacy.

Convincing Alderson he’s not too green, Walling still throws his hat in the ring. A clueless Alderson rushes to the airport believing he can secure him Dudley‘s cinching vote.

Shaw gains the proxy of board member Julia Tredway, daughter of the company founder, major shareholder, and jilted longtime Bullard lover. Both grief-stricken and heartbroken, she wants the company out of her life after another traumatic abandonment by its leader: first by her father’s suicide, now by Bullard’s rejection and death.

At an emergency board meeting on Saturday evening, Shaw falls one vote short of a coup (Caswell having secretly held out to flex his leverage). Walling counters with a stirring vision for a revitalized company driven by new construction methods and a return to products everyone can be proud of. It sways Grimm, Dudley, and Julia over, and Walling is elected unanimously when Shaw concedes. He immediately orders a board meeting for Monday morning to name a new executive vice-president - Fred Alderson).

Cast

• William Holden as McDonald "Don" Walling, V.P. for Design and Development
• June Allyson as Mary Blemond Walling, wife of Don Walling
• Barbara Stanwyck as Julia O. Tredway, daughter and heir of Tredway's founder, and Bullard's mistress
• Fredric March as Loren Phineas Shaw, V.P. and Controller
• Walter Pidgeon as Frederick Y. Alderson, V.P. and Treasurer
• Shelley Winters as Eva Bardeman, secretary and mistress to Walter Dudley
• Paul Douglas as Josiah Walter Dudley, V.P. for Sales
• Louis Calhern as George Nyle Caswell, board member
• Dean Jagger as Jesse Q. Grimm, V.P. for Manufacturing
• Nina Foch as Erica Martin, secretary to Bullard and the Board of Directors
• Tim Considine as Mike Walling, son of Don Walling

• William Phipps as Bill Lundeen
• Lucille Knoch as Mrs. George Nyle Caswell
• Edgar Stehl as Julius Steigel
• Mary Adams as Sara Asenath Grimm, wife of Jesse Grimm
• Virginia Brissac as Edith Alderson, wife of Fred Alderson
• Harry Shannon as Ed Benedeck
• Raoul Freeman as Avery Bullard
• Chet Huntley as narrator (introduction)

• Source:, except where noted

Production

MGM production head Dore Schary originally intended to produce the film himself, but turned it over to John Houseman because he was too busy. Schary intended for the film to have no musical score, using only diegetic sounds such as bells, sirens, and the roar of traffic.

Executive Suite was the first film written by journalist Ernest Lehman, and made for MGM by director Robert Wise.

The all-star cast created problems in scheduling, since only a handful of the lead actors had any commitment to MGM. The logistics of scheduling were so complex that the studio had to set an "inflexible" starting date two months in advance of shooting, the first time that MGM had ever done so.

The film was planned to have 145 speaking parts, a record for MGM, but ended with just 66 actors listed in the credits, far fewer having speaking roles.

Locations

• Pennsylvania Power and Light Building, Allentown (Treadway Tower in the fictional Millburgh, Pennsylvania)
• Continental Bank Building (Steigel office, New York)
• Pacific Mutual Building, Los Angeles (Steigel building interiors)
• Long Beach Airport (Millburgh Airport)

Reception

Box office

The film was number one at the U.S. box office for four consecutive weeks during May 1954, grossing $1,845,000. According to MGM records, the film eventually earned theatrical rentals of $2,682,000 in the U.S. and Canada, and $903,000 in other markets, for a worldwide total of $3,585,000 and a profit of $772,000.

Critical reviews

Variety noted the overall enthusiastic reviews: “In nearly all keys [key cities] the pic has drawn enthusiastic crix [critics’] approval. This has helped considerably in smaller cities where reviews are followed faithfully.”. However, Bosley Crowther, writing in The New York Times called it "[A] pretty chilly succession of echoing rooms", and commented that "for all of Mr. Holden's fine oration the ideal of stouter furniture and a happier furniture corporation doesn't cause the blood to run hot." Crowther does praise the "quality production and general quality acting of the film", and calls it "a fair endeavor" but notes that "dramatically, it doesn't add up."

In January 1955 Fortune magazine published a four-page article, "The Executive as Hero", which praised the film, commenting that it "has set in motion the conflicts and collisions that give business its true drama."

The film has received critical acclaim from modern day critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives a score of 100% based on 9 reviews, with an average score of 8/10.

Awards and nominations

Award	Category	Nominee(s)	Result	Ref.
Academy Awards	Best Supporting Actress	Nina Foch	Nominated
	Best Art Direction – Black-and-White	Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons and Edward Carfagno; Set Decoration: Edwin B. Willis and Emile Kuri	Nominated
	Best Cinematography – Black-and-White	George Folsey	Nominated
	Best Costume Design – Black-and-White	Helen Rose	Nominated
British Academy Film Awards	Best Film from any Source		Nominated
	Best Foreign Actor	Fredric March	Nominated
Directors Guild of America Awards	Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures	Robert Wise	Nominated
National Board of Review Awards	Top Ten Films		5th Place
	Best Supporting Actress	Nina Foch	Won
Venice International Film Festival	Golden Lion	Robert Wise	Nominated
	Grand Jury Prize	The Acting Ensemble	Won
Writers Guild of America Awards	Best Written American Drama	Ernest Lehman	Nominated

TV series

Main article: Executive Suite (TV series)

More than two decades after their release, the film and novel were adapted into a weekly television series with the same title. Airing on CBS in 1976–1977, the TV version changed the fictional corporate setting to the Cardway Corporation in Los Angeles. Mitchell Ryan starred as company chairman Dan Walling, with Sharon Acker as his wife Helen and Leigh McCloskey and Wendy Phillips as his children, Brian and Stacey. Other series regulars included Stephen Elliott, Byron Morrow, Madlyn Rhue, William Smithers, Paul Lambert, Richard Cox, Trisha Noble, Carl Weintraub, Maxine Stuart, and Ricardo Montalbán.

Scheduling opposite Monday Night Football on ABC, and then The Rockford Files on NBC, doomed the show to poor ratings, and it was canceled after one season.

External links

• Executive Suite at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
• Executive Suite at IMDb
• Executive Suite at AllMovie
• Executive Suite at the TCM Movie Database
• Executive Suite at Rotten Tomatoes