The Hucksters (1947)

(On Cable TV, October 2022) I’m hardly the first one to make the link, but there’s still something delicious about watching The Hucksters and seeing Clark Gable play Mad Men’s Don Draper more than a decade before the 1960s. Here, Gable is a capable marketing executive who, returning from WW2, starts from the very bottom and works his way up the corporate chain, encountering romance, difficult clients, promotional opportunities, a trip from Radio City to Hollywood, and ultimately a crisis of conscience. (So, well, not like Don Draper.)  Along the way, we get a look at the men of the radio advertising industry at the end of the 1940s, and a bit of sharp satire along the way thanks to the novel from which the film was adapted. While Gable is easily ten years too old for his character, he remains his usual suave scoundrel here, and he’s supported by noteworthy performances from Sydney Greenstreet, Deborah Kerr, Ava Gardner and Adolphe Menjou. Time has been kind to The Hucksters—it was a commercial and critical disappointment upon release in no small part due to inflated expectations and heightened marketing: but twenty-first century viewers are free to approach the film as “just another classical Hollywood film” and be pleasantly surprised at the result.