When the big boss croaks, veepees maneuver to take the top slot in a furniture company. Ernest Lehman’s first big screenplay was brought to the screen by Robert Wise and a cast of All Stars: William Holden, June Allyson, Barbara Stanwyck, Fredric March, Walter Pidgeon, Shelley Winters, Paul Douglas, Louis Calhern, Dean Jagger and Nina Foch. Things get rough in the board room, but don’t worry — sound judgment and good ethics prevail, as always happens in American business. On home video for the first time in its original screen shape.

Executive Suite
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1954 / B&W / 1:75 widescreen / 104 min. / Street Date June 06, 2025 / Available at MovieZyng / 24.99
Starring: William Holden, June Allyson, Barbara Stanwyck, Fredric March, Walter Pidgeon, Shelley Winters, Paul Douglas, Louis Calhern, Dean Jagger, Nina Foch, Tim Considine, William Phipps, Edgar Stehli, Virginia Brissac, Willis Bouchey, John Doucette, Chet Huntley.
Cinematography: George Folsey
Art Directors: Edward Carfagno, Cedric Gibbons
Film Editor: Ralph E. Winters
Production Illustrator: Mentor Huebner
Screenplay Written by Ernest Lehman from a novel by Cameron Hawley
Produced by John Houseman
Directed by Robert Wise

Executive Suite is one of the earlier and better-remembered ‘business ethics’ films of the 1950s. Previous dramas almost always concentrated on private companies with a Big Boss, as in preCodes about powerful executives like Edgar Selwyn’s  Skyscraper Souls. Jean Negulesco’s  Woman’s World (1954) was a big business extrapolation of Joe Mankiewicz’s  A Letter to Three Wives: to choose its next general manager, a car company’s all-powerful president evaluates the candidate’s wives as his main criteria.

Honing his reputation as a maker of civilized but tough dramas, director Robert Wise emphasizes the extremes to which executives will go to win a coveted position. Executive Suite avoids most soap opera excess in its boardroom battle for control of a suddenly leaderless company. The subgenre was about to be reinvented in the wake of books like William Whyte’s nonfiction  The Organization Man (1956) and Sloan Wilson’s novel  The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955,   movie version 1956).  Going forward, films in this vein would debate the role of men (and women) in the new corporate beehive mentality.

Executive Suite does without the progressive theories. It is the work of Cameron Hawley, who turned to writing after 25 years’ service in a company that made products from cork.  We can’t quite imagine a scene with William Holden proving his mettle as an exec by tearing some champagne corks to pieces:

“See!  Look at this shoddy product!  How dare you stick that in a bottle of wine!”Actually, the dramatics of Executive Suite are more than convincing. The film’s swimming-with-sharks ambience will be familiar to anyone who has worked in a competitive company, or among the faculty of a college.

 

Millburgh is the home of the Tredway Corporation, which makes furniture. Its executive vice-president Avery Bullard drops dead on New York’s Wall Street, igniting a tempest back at its corporate headquarters in Philadelphia. It takes hours for Bullard to be identified, whereupon five Tredway VPs begin jockeying to fill the vacated position. Slick playboy George Caswell (Louis Calhern) sold his stock short, gambling that Bullard’s death won’t be detected before the market opens on Monday. The company’s numbers expert Loren Shaw (Fredric March) usurps temporary command, showcasing himself as Tredway’s obvious successor. This raises the ire of old salt Frederick Alderson (Walter Pidgeon), especially when Shaw cancels the molding experiments being conducted by R&D veep McDonald ‘Don’ Walling (William Holden). Shaw thinks he has the boardroom in his pocket. He makes a slick deal to secure Caswell’s vote. He uses implied blackmail to get the vote of salesman Walter Dudley (Paul Douglas), by barging in on Walter with his mistress Eva (Shelley Winters).

Don is all but fed up with the company. His patient wife Mary (June Allyson) first pushes him to go for the presidency, and then tries to keep him away from it. But the deciding vote is in the hands of Julia Tredway (Barbara Stanwyck), Avery Bullard’s frustrated long-term lover and the majority stockholder. Julia’s mind is in a fragile state when she shows up at the company headquarters. Loren Shaw has her proxy vote … or does he?

 

As lean and businesslike as a takeover deal, Executive Suite builds its story with maximum efficiency. A man falls dead on the sidewalk and before the ambulance comes one of his employees has concocted an insider scheme to profit from the news. Director Wise builds this opening as a POV shot from Avery Bullard’s POV, as done by  Rouben Mamoulian and  Robert Montgomery.   (A question about cinematic grammar: Bullard’s POV viewpoint continues after Bullard has expired. Does Executive Suite make an artistic case for Life After Death?)

Each candidate for the presidency is judged in terms of the woman in his life. Caswell ignores his trophy date to worry about his crooked, risky stock deal. Old Fred Alderson’s wife badgers him to pursue the top job that he should have had years ago. Walter Dudley’s mistress is a guilty liability. The calculating Loren Shaw seems to be the only candidate with no family life; he lives and breathes the company and behaves as if the presidency were already his. Deciding vote Julia Tredway just wants out of the firm that monopolized the attention of the love of her life. When Loren secures her proxy vote, she’s contemplating suicide.

 

Quiet boardroom veteran Jesse Grimm (Dean Jagger) is nearing retirement-age and no longer driven by personal ambition. Executive secretary Erica Martin (Nina Foch) knows some of the executives’ dirty secrets. She’s sickened by their barracuda behaviors but maintains a professional decorum. It looks like the sweaty Loren Shaw has the top slot sewn up.

That’s where Executive Suite stops being so uncompromising. In the early 1950s when anything critical of American institutions was politically suspect, most mainstream movies made a point of resolving ethical conflicts by re-affirming that justice and virtue will triumph. The obvious underdog winner at Tredway is young Don Walling, the only one of the VPs who rolls up his sleeves with the rank & file and is concerned about the good of all. Keen to improve the product, Don is experimenting with some kind of chemical process, either as a wood finish or a wood substitute. He grinds his teeth in frustration when he sees the other execs hatching their cheap schemes. Since it sounds like Loren Shaw wants to market cheap junk, Don might as well be wearing a halo on his head.

 

Another sign that Don Walling walks on water is that his mate is June Allyson, the quintessential Eisenhower-era super-wife. Being married to Allyson is like having the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval tattooed on one’s rump. A cheerful morale booster for the male ego, Allyson was wifey to the best of them. She charmed James Stewart’s  Glenn Miller into finding his magic orchestration, and served coffee while Alan Ladd blasted down more  Commie MIGs.

Allyson’s Mary Walling in Executive Suite is a bit more complex. Screenwriter Ernest Lehman measures Mary against the notion of ambitious ‘booster wives,’ game players forever maneuvering to help hubby secure the big promotion, plus the house and car that go with it. Mary initially offers some verbal jabs to spur Don to assert himself at the corporate level. When Don gets a negative response from an associate Mary pulls back on the reins, assuring her man that she’s all for him no matter what happens. Then Mary withholds a critical phone message, a choice she almost immediately regrets. The viewer must decide if Mary’s efforts are wifely support, or irresponsible meddling.

Filmdom’s ne plus ultra of the toxic booster wife appeared the next year, when José Ferrer directed June Allyson in  The Shrike. The movie makes pointed use of Allyson’s squeaky-clean image, as her character schemes behind the scenes to benefit her talented but (to her) insufficiently aggressive husband. Allyson’s cheerful/manipulative performance so disturbs, it makes us look for similar psychotic undercurrents in Allyson’s ‘straight’ wifey roles.

 

With MGM’s roster of contract talent all but empty, most of the cast had to be hired through individual negotiations. Thanks to ace producer John Houseman ( They Live by Night, Robert Wise has the benefit of some great players, the kind of take-charge talent the director needed on his side. Fredric March is so skilled that the obvious bad guy Loren Shaw never becomes a caricature. Barbara Stanwyck is third-billed but plays in only a handful of scenes; she had begun accepting semi-ensemble parts only a few years before. The sole acting Oscar nomination given to the film was for Nina Foch for supporting actress.

Director Wise’s films were always technically astute. He starts with the POV sequence in Manhattan, and then repeats his clock motif from The Set-Up with the ringing of a church bell on Wall Street. Executive Suite has no music score, an effective gambit. The only bad idea is bringing on a new star name with each peal of the bell. MGM executive Dory Schary took credit for not using music. He said that he assigned the movie to producer John Houseman,  Lust for Life) because he himself was too busy.

This was screenwriter Ernest Lehman’s first major film credit, and it’s a good one. (Spoilers) The last act builds considerable tension when the voting for Tredway’s new president goes into its final rounds. But the film’s grip on the audience slackens when Loren Shaw and the ‘upstart’ Don Walling go head to head. Shaw poses as the only adult in the room, but soon betrays his shallow ‘profits first’ philosophy. He fumbles and sweats as he defends his policy of making cheap furniture to hawk at cheap prices. Don Walling comes on like the wrath of God, smashing one of Shaw’s crummy tables and shouting about pride — pride in the workplace, pride in the knowledge that a superior American product is being made (no tears, please). William Holden puts a feral snarl into his voice to let us know that he has the drive and the guts to do what’s best for the company; we almost expect him to eyeball somebody and say, ‘If they move, kill ’em.’  Loren Shaw folds, Julia Tredway is given a new lease on life and Mary will be trading her cloth coat for fur, Checkers be damned. The show ends with the audience eager to rush out and buy American stock, any American stock.

 

Robert Wise keeps everything on the rails except for Barbara Stanwyck’s ‘hysteria’ scene, which gets a little too big; perhaps that particular part was a bit underwritten. Otherwise all the actors give better than average work. Shelley Winters is actually subdued, making the most of a less interesting ‘other woman’ role. Wise keeps the Little League subplot in its proper perspective, although the script makes it obvious that, like his son Mike (Tim Considine), Don must go for the big prize because he’s a fighter at heart. Good Old Mary helps little Mike practice his pitching and keep his eye on the prize. Mary wants her men to be fighters. It’s as if she were raising a pit bull, the next generation of uncompromising company men.

Executive Street is a finely crafted, very entertaining picture, with favorite actors scoring solid performances. By far the most disturbing film in the ’50s ‘business ethics’ subgenre is Fielder Cook’s  Patterns, a more ruthless look at the unreasonable pressures of company politics, written by Rod Serling. It doesn’t give a hang about flattering the American way of life, and shows good men thrown to the wolves. It stars Van Heflin, Everett Sloan, Ed Begley, Beatrice Straight and Elizabeth Wilson.

Don’t stop there … Executive Suite may have inspired a classic, wholly un- P.C. satire by Robert Downey Sr.. Backbiting ad agency careerists vote for a new president, and each tries to skew the tally by voting for the ‘token’ black board member because everyone assumes that nobody will vote for him. Unanimously elected, Putney Swope immediately institutes radical changes, starting by renaming the company ‘Truth and Soul Incorporated.’

 

Poor Nina Foch is far left in the line, marooned. But she got the nomination.. 

The Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray of Executive Suite is a truly welcome item that really snaps to life in HD. It’s finally remastered in its correct widescreen ratio; the 2007 WAC DVD was formatted flat full frame, and although it looked good enough that way, the drama now seems even more focused.  ^*

The soundtrack is particularly detailed in this film without a music score. The audio experts (Douglas Shearer, Conrad Kahn?) sometimes add low background presences that change when environments change. Most traditional audio tracks had been really basic. The reason some producers laid wall-to-wall music on their movies, was to avoid labor intensive sound work, with few sound effects beyond things like doorbells and phone rings.

The WAC recreates most of the extras from the old DVD. Director Oliver Stone’s commentary focuses on the venality of the various deals on screen, starting with George Caswell’s unethical stock sell-off. Stone’s basic assumption is that all business is EVIL. I’ve been on the receiving end of a nasty corporate decision or two, but the thesis still feels far too pessimistic.

The included trailer has a busy music track. In addition to a painful Pete Smith comedy short (in weak SD condition), we get a colorful Tom and Jerry cartoon (very nice in remastered HD).

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

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Executive Suite
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Audio commentary by Oliver Stone
Tom and Jerry cartoon Hic-Cup Pup
Pete Smith Specialty short subject Do Someone a Favor
Trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: July, 2025
(7355exec)

^*  After viewing and reviewing thousands of Warner DVDs, only a few have gone bad on me. Re-viewed a couple of years back, the Executive Suite DVD locked up partway through, I think at the layer change. It was only the second or third WB disc I’ve received that failed, in 25 years. A full list of ‘rotted’ WB discs has been circulating, a group of titles from a certain duplicator, in a certain year. I’ve tried to play maybe eight discs mentioned on the list as being no good … only two of my copies did not play.

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