Madison Avenue

Dana Andrews is an ambitious public relations man in "Madison Avenue," a 1962 film that also stars Eleanor Parker, Jeanne Crain, Eddie Albert, Kathleen Freeman, Howard St. John and Henry Daniell. By 1962, this was no longer an A cast, and this is a second tier film at best. Andrews romances reporter Peggy Shannon (Crain) and public relations firm owner Anne Tremaine (Parker) as he makes his way up the corporate ladder with the goal of landing a huge milk account away from his old boss. He becomes the puppet holding the strings of the head of the company (Albert) and, in a desperate attempt to keep the account, pimps out Anne to him in a not too subtle scene.

Though a '62 film, it's made in black and white and feels like a '50s movie - possibly because corporate ambition was a '50s topic with films like "Executive Suite" and "Woman's World." The acting is good but the story is slow in spots, and I felt at the end like the writer just decided to stop writing. The whole thing was kind of a shrug without enough bite or top level stars to make it really powerful.

Is it worth seeing? Yes, Andrews is solid, it's always worth it to see Parker and the always beautiful Crain, and a delight to see character actor Henry Daniell so late in his career. It's mildly entertaining, which is more than I can say about a lot of films made today.

I don't know. I watched this movie because I loved the cast: Dana Andrews, Jeanne Crain, and Eleanor Parker. But this movie is just kind of blah. It's supposed to be about ad executives dating and fighting it out over a "great" story. The plot is almost as confusing as it is pointless. I liked it, for the two or three good moments between Crain and Andrews (and since they made STATE FAIR together I can forgive them just about anything) but poor Eleanor Parker is totally wasted here. She's her usual, beautiful self, but it's a dumb part in a stupid movie. (Thank goodness, she got her role in THE SOUND OF MUSIC only three years later.) Crain was reaching the end of her career by 1962, and she and Andrews only made one more film together: HOT RODS TO HELL (don't even get me started on that fiasco). So all in all, MADISON AVENUE is nice, for the sole purpose of seeing pretty Jeanne Crain, handsome Dana Andrews, and beautiful Eleanor Parker - but not much else.

Dana Andrews plays a rather amoral advertising man who is more of a promoter than anything else. Oddly, much of what he does throughout the film is done as a bet with another advertising man. To prove a point (a very VAGUE one), Dana goes to work for a very small advertising agency run by Eleanor Parker. Through all of his efforts, the small agency becomes a contender by lifting the very eccentric (i.e., possibly crazy) owner of a small dairy to national prominence. All the time, he tries to romance boss Parker as well as Jeanne Crain who he strings along very cruelly.

The film appears to be an indictment against the advertising world, though the way the film goes in the last 10 or 15 minutes rather muddles this point. Despite spending HUGE amounts of energy to best the man he is betting against AND despite being on the cusp of fame and fortune, Andrews' character then behaves so uncharacteristically and irrationally that I felt the plot really needed a re-write. It just wasn't convincing and I went from liking the movie initially to just wanting it all to end.

All in all, some very good actors were given a rather limp script. The overall efforts are watchable, but only just.

Well, I must admit that I watched this movie, only because it is the last one directed by the bland and lame director Bruce Humberstone, who was far more inspired by this CHARLIE CHAN movies, back in the thirties, and some other features in the meantime: FURY AT FURNACE CREEK. His only and unique masterpiece was I WAKE UP SCREAMING, of course, and I have a bit tenderness for SOUTH SEA SINNER and the several Tarzan adventures he also made in the late fifties. So, I am totally amazed that he was involved in such a sophisticated drama speaking of business, business and business, where glamor shines by its superb absence.... What the f....happened to him, regarding to his filmography? Imagine John Ford finishing his career with a musical...But Henry Hathaway ended his with a lousy Blaxploitation movie.

The mark of 6 out of ten refers to the quality of the DVD and not the actual film. The quality of the print of this Fox MOD DVD for this interesting film is not bad but has unfortunately "been modified to fit your screen". Too bad Fox took the cheap and easy way out. That being said,if you put your screen to zoom it does not seem as badly stretched as with most other films. When you watch the opening credits, without the zoom on, you can see that their is indeed a problem. As this will probably be the best we can expect for any type of authorized DVD release, it is still worth a purchase. It is just too bad that this black and white cinemascope film could not have been presented in all it's natural glory.