O Mercador de Ilusões (1947)

Curiosidades

The Hucksters is a 1947 American comedy drama film directed by Jack Conway and starring Clark Gable and Deborah Kerr, her debut in an American film. The supporting cast includes Sydney Greenstreet, Adolphe Menjou, Ava Gardner, Keenan Wynn, and Edward Arnold. It was produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The movie is based on the novel The Hucksters by Frederic Wakeman Sr., a skewering of the post-World War II radio advertising industry with Gable's character alternating in pursuit of Kerr and Gardner.

Production

Frederic Wakeman's novel The Hucksters (1946) spent 35 weeks in the top stratum of The New York Times Fiction bestseller list, aided perhaps by its raunchy, racy controversy. Life magazine called the book "last year's best-selling travesty" and even Clark Gable, who would eventually star in its film adaptation, said "It's filthy and it isn't entertainment." Life's and Gable's literary sensibilities to the contrary, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer paid $200,0…

Screenwriter Luther Davis and the novel's adapters Edward Chodorov and George Wells had "an extensive laundering job" to do to bring the project into compliance with Louis B. Mayer's tastes and the Hays Office's policies. They had to eliminate the graphic (for 1946) sexual scenes, and they changed the book's Mrs.

Even in 1947, there were "fears about reprisals from MCA" over the portrayals of Stein and Wasserman, and Vic avers on several occasions that "Dave Lash is an honest man" when the dispute arises over the Buddy Hare contract. The other problem was Lash/Stein's ethnicity: in the novel, Vic tells Lash people will call his honesty into question because he is a Jew; Davis removed all references to Lash's ethnicity and made him a kid who had been in tr…

Once the toned-down screenplay was finished and Clark Gable's comfort with it secured, producer Arthur Hornblow Jr. made his final casting decisions and "assembled an exceptional supporting cast" featuring Sidney Greenstreet, Adolphe Menjou and Edward Arnold, Keenan Wynn and the then "still-unknown Ava Gardner." MGM executives had selected The Hucksters as the debut Hollywood film for Kerr, who had drawn attention for her appearances in ten films…

As the start of production neared, Ava Gardner grew nervous about appearing with Gable, an actor she had idolized since childhood. Hornblow asked Gable to call her, and he told her: "I'm supposed to talk you into doing this thing. But I'm not going to. I hated it when they did that to me. But I hope you change your mind, kid, I think it would be fun to work together." The two remained friends for the rest of Gable's life.

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