Sweet Smell of Success: And Other Stories

Best known as the basis for the classic film starring Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster, and soon to be a major Broadway play, Sweet Smell of Success is a dark and gripping novella about media manipulation and the will to get ahead—by any means necessary.

Lehman scathingly depicts the dark side of success through the twisted relationship of Sid Wallace, an ambitious publicist, and Harvey Hunsucker, a powerful and vindictive gossip columnist, fashioned after Walter Winchell. As scandals are manufactured and reputations ruined for sport, the story spirals downward toward one last, savage act of revenge. As brutally honest as Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust, Sweet Smell of Success is one of the most enduring and provocative stories in the literature of show business.