I CAN GET IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE (1951)

The novel this movie was based on was also the basis for a 60's Broadway musical which helped launch Barbra Streisand's career, but this film version is strong enough to stand on its own, even though it seems to be largely forgotten today. The film is set in New York City's garment district and stars Susan Hayward as an ambitious model who wants to break out on her own and design the kind of dresses that she has been modeling. With chutzpah, sex appeal, and some calculated lies, she manages to steal two men from a dress house to help her start her own company: old-timer Sam Jaffe, a dressmaker, and energetic Dan Dailey, the company's star salesman. She also lies to her own sister to get some seed money. Hayward flirts a bit with Dailey, but is mostly aboveboard with him about her overriding concern for the company's success. Nevertheless, Dailey falls for her, even as she begins plotting to leave the company and do exclusive, upscale designs for department store owner George Sanders. Hayward and Sanders (who also engage in some hard-nosed flirtation, with both knowing exactly what the score is) conspire to break her contract with her company, betting that Dailey will let her go, but instead Dailey and Jaffe risk bankruptcy to keep their integrity.

Hayward is excellent and quite believable both in her steely strong outward persona and in her more vulnerable moments. Dailey does a nice job as the confident salesman, who's not above using his sex appeal to get what he wants almost as much as Hayward does. Marvin Kaplan, who will be recognized for many of his TV and movie roles as a mousy nerd (he was a regular customer on TV's Alice), is funny in a small role as an assistant who falls for Jaffe’s daughter (Barbara Whiting, real-life sister of singer Margaret Whiting). Sanders is his usual reliable self; there seems to be a bit of an ALL ABOUT EVE-type dynamic in the conniving between Sanders and Hayward, although he's not as caddish as he is as Addison DeWitt. Mary Philips, who plays Hayward's mother, reminds me of Thelma Ritter. The plotline involving Hayward's sister and brother-in-law gets dropped halfway through, but otherwise, the whole thing plays out quite nicely. Recommended. [FMC]