The Hucksters - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

Although Louis B. Mayer had chosen carefully—and spent lavishly—on a property to launch Deborah Kerr and re-launch Clark Gable after his wartime absence from the screen, The Hucksters was not well received by contemporary critics, and was held at arm's length by the moviegoing public.

Life magazine, which had excoriated the Wakeman novel, didn't miss a beat when it said: "The movie version of the famous attack on the advertising business fails to live up to its own ads" and called it " cynically exaggerated study of big business and big advertising."

Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times that it was simply too much Gable. "nless you like Clark Gable very much, you are going to find him monotonous in this hour-and-fifty-five-minute film... is off the screen for all of five minutes—maybe eight. The rest of the time, he's on." He liked Deborah Kerr rather more: "We could do with a little more of her. Not that her rather radiant passion for this well-tailored roughneck makes much sense, but Miss Kerr is a very soothing person and she elevates the tone of the film." He saved his biggest praise for Greenstreet and Menjou, calling their contributions "entertaining and fascinating."

Variety was lukewarm on both Gable and Kerr. "Somehow Clark Gable just doesn't quite take hold of the huckster part in signal manner. Same goes for Deborah Kerr who is a shade prissy for her volatile romantic role." Like the Times, they were more enthusiastic about the supporting cast: "Sydney Greenstreet's portrayal of the soap despot emerges as the performance of the picture, as does Keenan Wynn as the ham ex-burlesque candy butcher gone radio comic. Ava Gardner is thoroughly believable as the on-the-make songstress; Adolphe Menjou is the harassed head of the radio agency which caters to Evans' whilom ways because it's a $10 million account." Finally, there was an observation, politely put, that no doubt crossed the minds of many 1947 moviegoers: "Gable looks trim and fit but somehow a shade too mature for the capricious role of the huckster who talks his way into a $35,000 job is a killer with the femmes...."

Indeed, Gable's interaction with the two females in the story generated commentary. When it came to the romance between Vic and Kay, Life magazine stuck to its negative guns: "The love story is stupefyingly dull. Opposite the ladylike Deborah, Clark Gable's mannered virility seems embarrassing—something that never happened to him alongside such tough Tessies as Joan Crawford and Jean Harlow in his greater days." But others applauded Kerr and the pairing: The Hollywood Reporter called Kerr "a charming English star... a delightful personality in her American debut." The New York Herald-Tribune called the Gable-Kerr pairing "ideal", saying "she made an impressive bow on the U.S. screen." Ava Gardner biographer Lee Server noted the chemistry between Vic and his old flame Jean Ogilvie: Gable and Gardner "proved to be a wonderful pairing, with an on-screen spark between them that revealed their genuine amusement and easy pleasure in each other's company."

Despite the best-selling longevity of its source novel, The Hucksters finished only 12th at the box office for 1947, earning but $4.7 million. Topping that list was another soldiers-come-home tale, The Best Years of Our Lives, earning more than twice that. Author Denise Mann suggests that Vic Norman's unsavory side might have held The Hucksters back: "Clark Gable's unheroic ad-man as post-war returning hero may have contributed to the smaller returns." It also "was a total failure in the foreign market, which in those days knew nothing about American advertising or commercial broadcasting."

Judgment about The Hucksters has mellowed over the years. Halliwell's Film Guide calls it "good topical entertainment which still entertains and gives a good impression of its period", also praising the performance of Greenstreet. The current New York Times capsule summary calls it "one of Clark Gable's best postwar films, as well as one of the finest Hollywood satires of the rarefied world of advertising."