Better In Your Head?--THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT

 

Spoiler Alert: once you stop running, you begin learning.

THE BOOK-Written by Sloan Wilson, released 1955

THE MOVIE-Directed & written by Nunnally Johnson, released 1956

THE STORY-Behold the overextended man! He wishes to connect and disconnect at will; if only life would allow him the pleasure! Hard to play when the world runs on work. So many responsibilities to fulfill, so many obligations to honor. Maybe more money will help. Which means more work. How, after all, can a man receive more without first giving more?

MIND THE GAP-Sloan Wilson's novel penetrated pop culture basically instantly. The title became shorthand for the discontented American businessman struggling to balance the personal with the professional. Protagonist Tom Rath stood in for thousands of young, middle-class husbands and fathers who'd traded in the foxhole for the cubicle...the helmet for the fedora...the journey for the destination. Men who walked miles on the treadmill to keep flab at bay, ignorant of the views they'd lose in the process.

Beyond dropping tidy insight into still-pertinent topics (PTSD, a woman's role in a man's world, the immediate threat of war versus the gradual threat of capitalism) the novel is also highly entertaining. For the first half, anyway. For the second half, it converts to "admirable." That's not exactly going from honey to haggis, but it is disappointing Wilson couldn't sustain the momentum.

Third book in the BIYH series featuring an ink-related mishap. 

Movie followed book quickly, and audiences ate up Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones as the little couple that could (even if they shouldn't). Peck didn't fucking miss, did he? No, he didn't, and is rightly regarded as a legend in the industry. Jones, one of Hollywood's most inaccurately-ranked actresses, handles the role of "wife whose devotion does not preclude a desire for bigger, brighter and better" with endearing gumption. Frederic March does squat for me as the beleaguered boss.

Nice seeing Keenan Wynn here, two years away from beginning his mission to appear on every TV show aired between 1958 and 1994.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-Sixteen years after writing one of the most famous adaptations I've no interest in covering for this series, Nunnally Johnson tackled a timely bestseller and earned enough commercial goodwill to helm four more flicks before planting himself permanently at the writing desk. Wisely, he cast established names and kept the story uncomplicated. Unwisely, he didn't challenge the novel's greatest flaw--the ending. An intended lesson in domestic compassion, the conclusion of TMITGFS shrivels under the glare of most modern lights. Worse, it undercuts the mature and fascinating material which preceded it, and left me feeling my head rested on rotten vegetables stuffed into a silk pillowcase.

Book wins, and it's not particularly close. The film's well-written, well-shot, well-scored, and well, I was bored by frame fourteen. Oddly, Peck's magnetic performance is a big part of the underwhelming feeling. Tom Rath's search for purpose is heightened or hindered by his anger and cynicism. And Peck could pull off anger...see The Gunfighter. Peck could pull off cynicism...see Old Gringo. But sometimes Peck pulled off neither...see The Man In the Gray Flannel Suit. Perhaps more a fault of the director in this case?