Ambição de Mulher

I Can Get It For You Wholesale is the story about how dress designer/model Susan Hayward, salesman Dan Dailey, and dressmaker Sam Jaffe pool their talents to form their own company to be just one more in the center of the fashion industry on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan. This film came out in 1951 and over 60 years later it's one of the few things about New York City that hasn't changed.

Other than the automobiles that part of New York City also has the same look to it as well and this is a film that could be done today. Only the garment workers will change, they'll be black and Hispanic and Asian women on those sewing machines now.

Dailey and Hayward are an unlikely pair. He's in love with her, but he's a chauvinistic lunkhead. Hayward steps into a part that a decade earlier Barbara Stanwyck would have been cast in. She's a model who knows she can design and models have a short shelf life for careers. She's ambitious and thinks of her partnership as a stepping stone. Further up the food chain is department store owner George Sanders fresh off his Oscar win in All About Eve. If she can only become the exclusive designer for his stores.

The plot of the story is somewhat unreal especially when the better angels of Hayward's nature come out in the end. But soon to be blacklisted writer Abraham Polonsky is best at capturing the mood and feel of the garment industry at the time. The industry was a huge employer of women, but it was controlled by men. Something that young Edythe Marrener of Brooklyn would have grown up with before she became Susan Hayward. Girls in high school in New York City looked for employment there upon graduation and new job aspirants were coming out every year.

I Can Get It For You Wholesale is a look at New York in the middle of the last century. Real kudos should also go to Sam Jaffe who is the wise old father figure for both Dailey and Hayward and to Marvin B. Kaplan whose deadpan delivery of their office boy gave him a breakthrough role in a stage and screen career.

A must for Susan Hayward fans like me.

In full Susan Hayward splendor, Susan stars as a coarse, ambitious, tough broad determined to get ahead. She starts out as a model, but her talent and passion lies in fashion designing instead, so she recruits producer Sam Jaffe and salesman Dan Dailey to join her in an entrepreneurial adventure. The film shows the backstage world of fashion design: the backroom deals, numbers and money and business side to things rather than just the fluffy beautiful fabrics.

How much is someone willing to sacrifice to achieve their dreams? Give up love, family, and ethics? Sell one's soul to the devil, fictionally represented by the ever-smooth George Sanders in the film. Susan Hayward is fantastic in her blind ambition; she's the perfect bad girl you hate to love. If you like Suzy, add this one to your list. I also really like the setting; countless Hollywood movies take place behind the scenes of a filmset, and not many showcase the same environment of the fashion world. It's really interesting, and groundbreaking to place a woman in such an ambitious role at that time.

I should note that I haven't read the book on which Michael Gordon's "I Can Get It for You Wholesale" is based, or seen the stage adaptation. This look at the high-pressure world of designing clothes casts Susan Hayward as a dress designer not about to let anything stand in her way. A possible snag arises in the form of some men with whom she's been in relationships.

Undeniably, a lot of the material is dated. I guess that's bound to happen with any movie released way back when. It's not even really a good movie or a bad one; it simply it what it is. A time capsule, if you will. Worth seeing as a look at how things were back then. The rest of the cast includes Dan Dailey, Sam Jaffe, George Sanders and Marvin Kaplan (apparently best known for "Alice", but I mainly know him as a garage owner in "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World").

PS: Michael Gordon was the grandfather of Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Also, Eda Reiss Marin (Ms. Marks) played the babysitter in "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead", and also appeared in "Ghostbusters" as Louis's neighbor who opens her door and briefly sees the monster.

Hard to see anyone but the forceful Susan Hayward in the role of the lovely, but willful Harriet Boyd. Usually, it's men who get the blind ambition part. Not here. Instead, it's a woman dress designer in pursuit of riches and fame. Trouble is she's willing to sacrifice her two partners (Dailey and Jaffe) in the process. It's they, however, who help get her started by partnering-up in a little dress-making company. She's doubtless got talent as a designer, but they all work hard to get things off the ground. Now, however, she's willing to dump them and their business so she can join up with the king of the industry, the super-slick JF Noble (Sanders), and the big- time. Poor Teddy, he fell for her during their time together and thought it was mutual. Now, however, she's ready to transfer her affections as well as her talent. So how will all this turn out.

It's a sometimes gritty screenplay from the blacklisted Abe Polonsky, Force of Evil (1948). I suspect he was thinking expose of big business and did the best he could for the time (1951). And catch that Hollywood ending which I suspect he and director Gordon finessed as best they could. Anyway, Hayward's fine in a basically unsympathetic role. Ditto Dailey as the sympathetic Ted, while movie vet Jaffee gets to be the reliable voice of reason, along with Marvin Kaplan as comedy relief. The film really benefits from the behind-the-scenes look at what some call the rag business. I especially like Ted's brief glad-handing sales tour of the South where he works up a smiling sweat.

All in all, the 90-minutes is an entertaining character study and look inside a major industry, one that I suspect is still relevant.

Susan Hayward is a determined, talented and ambitious woman in "I Can Get it for You Wholesale," a 1951 film which also stars George Sanders, Dan Dailey and Sam Jaffe. The title comes from the novel but the actual plot is only very loosely taken from the book.

The beautiful Hayward plays Harriet Boyd, a dress model in a small business in New York's Garment District. She talks the owner (Sam Jaffe) into putting up some money and going into business with her so that she can launch her own line. She gets the top salesman (Dan Dailey) to do the same, and she manipulates her own sister into offering insurance money for Harriet's share in the business. Harriet's ability and drive get the business going, and she's all work. Though Danny Sherman (Dailey) is in love with her, she gives him the brush-off. The two eventually stop speaking when Danny catches having dinner with a wolf-like buyer (Harry von Zell). One night, at a big buyer's dinner, she meets J.F. Noble, the head of Noble's Department Store, probably comparable to Saks Fifth Avenue. She wants to launch a line of gowns, which will mean getting out of her contract with her partners. Noble wants more than Harriet's gowns; he wants Harriet as well.

This is a very good drama with fine performances from everyone involved. Hayward, of course, carries the film as a driven woman who ends up having to question not only what she really wants but her own ethics and sense of responsibility. Sanders is great as the elegant Noble, representing, in a way, the devil, who knows Harriet's heart but wants her to sell her soul. Sam Jaffe is perfect as the grandfatherly boss, and Dan Dailey steps out of his dancing shoes and proves himself a good leading man.

Highly recommended and a must for Hayward fans.