In their only joint project Susan Hayward and Kirk Douglas do yeoman service in Top Secret Affair which was a project originally intended to reunite Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall as a screen team. It's interesting to view it and imagine Bogey and Bacall as the general and the publishing tycoon.
The only other female publishing tycoon that comes to mind on the big screen is Angela Lansbury in State Of The Union. Later on the small screen we saw the patrician Nancy Marchand in Lou Grant. Hayward tends more to the Lansbury model.
She's got a project in which the current administration which was headed in real life by a five star general named Eisenhower has messed up in her view. She wanted an industrialist friend of her late father appointed to the International Atomic Energy Agency and instead the administration appointed a two star general war hero in the person of Kirk Douglas. Hayward's not taking this lying down, she and her news magazine are going to do a number on Douglas if they can dig up the dirt or create some.
Ironically enough Eisenhower never met a businessman he didn't like and he would just as soon have appointed an industrial tycoon instead of one of his military comrades in real life.
But Kirk is one two star hunk of man and Hayward first relents. But when he turns her advances down she's on the warpath with more of a vengeance than ever. In a moment of indiscretion he had confessed a wartime affair with a spy and she spills the beans. It's the man in the White House himself who bails him out in the end.
This was Kirk Douglas's second venture at comedy and his first since My Dear Secretary nine years earlier. As he was playing against his dynamic self, it worked to a large degree. Susan got to play a drunk scene in her second film in a row, having gotten an Oscar nomination for the far more serious I'll Cry Tomorrow. It's pretty funny when she tries to drink Douglas under the table at a nightclub which she considers her theater of war.
Three supporting performances are worth noting. Roland Winters is great as a bottom feeding Senatorial inquisitor in the manner of Joe McCarthy. Paul Stewart has some of the best lines in the film as Hayward's managing editor and that woman did need some managing. But best of all is Jim Backus as the army publicity man straight from Madison Avenue with a bird Colonel's eagles on his shoulder. Not a combat veteran in the classic sense by any means.
Top Secret Affair is not the best work that either of the stars did, but it should definitely satisfy their fans.
The only other female publishing tycoon that comes to mind on the big screen is Angela Lansbury in State Of The Union. Later on the small screen we saw the patrician Nancy Marchand in Lou Grant. Hayward tends more to the Lansbury model.
She's got a project in which the current administration which was headed in real life by a five star general named Eisenhower has messed up in her view. She wanted an industrialist friend of her late father appointed to the International Atomic Energy Agency and instead the administration appointed a two star general war hero in the person of Kirk Douglas. Hayward's not taking this lying down, she and her news magazine are going to do a number on Douglas if they can dig up the dirt or create some.
Ironically enough Eisenhower never met a businessman he didn't like and he would just as soon have appointed an industrial tycoon instead of one of his military comrades in real life.
But Kirk is one two star hunk of man and Hayward first relents. But when he turns her advances down she's on the warpath with more of a vengeance than ever. In a moment of indiscretion he had confessed a wartime affair with a spy and she spills the beans. It's the man in the White House himself who bails him out in the end.
This was Kirk Douglas's second venture at comedy and his first since My Dear Secretary nine years earlier. As he was playing against his dynamic self, it worked to a large degree. Susan got to play a drunk scene in her second film in a row, having gotten an Oscar nomination for the far more serious I'll Cry Tomorrow. It's pretty funny when she tries to drink Douglas under the table at a nightclub which she considers her theater of war.
Three supporting performances are worth noting. Roland Winters is great as a bottom feeding Senatorial inquisitor in the manner of Joe McCarthy. Paul Stewart has some of the best lines in the film as Hayward's managing editor and that woman did need some managing. But best of all is Jim Backus as the army publicity man straight from Madison Avenue with a bird Colonel's eagles on his shoulder. Not a combat veteran in the classic sense by any means.
Top Secret Affair is not the best work that either of the stars did, but it should definitely satisfy their fans.