How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
Director: David Swift
Year Released: 1967
Rating: 3.5
Lively satire of Machiavellian office politics and the desperation to - literally and figuratively - scale the floors of prestige; that it still works over twenty-five years later is due to its keen script and delightful songs (and some choreography by the late Bob Fosse). Robert Morse, who looks like the illegitimate love child of Alfred E. Neuman and Jerry Lewis, is perfectly cast (unlike in The Wrong Box) as the window-washer/mail-room boy who gets the girl, the job and everyone's respect in less than a week (Michelle Lee makes an open-minded and supportive companion). The various themes of nepotism, cunning and ruthlessness are subverted by pure-Broadway mockery; note, also, the prevalence of sexual harassment (the men freely ogle and pinch their secretaries) and how much we've since changed in that area (double entendres and racy jokes, today, can result in dismissal and lawsuits).
