Career is a 1959 blacklist film drama co-written by Dalton Trumbo and starring Dean Martin, Tony Franciosa, and Shirley MacLaine. The movie involves actor Sam Lawson (Tony Franciosa), bent on breaking into the big time at any cost, braving World War II, the Korean War and even the more recent blacklist, something that writer Dalton Trumbo knew all too well from being blacklisted himself.

Plot[link]

The supporting cast includes top-billed Dean Martin as actor-director Maurice "Maury" Novak, who works with Lawson at an early grassroots theatrical group later targeted as "subversive" for its liberal views. Novak left the theater to become a well known Hollywood director brought down by the blacklist himself. Shirley MacLaine plays Sharon Kensington, the alcoholic daughter of a powerful Broadway producer Robert Kensington, portrayed by Robert Middleton.

Lawson continually tries to establish himself as an actor, suffering the slings and arrows of rejection despite his dedication and passion for the theater. It costs him his first wife, played by Joan Blackman. Lawson's long-suffering agent Shirley Drake (Carolyn Jones) attempts to get him work and he slowly begins to rise, even managing to land work in a Kensington production. Just as he's about to land a major role in a TV series, his loyalty is researched and the ties to his allegedly "subversive" theater work with Novak are revealed. As Novak has been wrongly brought down, the now blacklisted Lawson, reflecting the realities of real-life blacklisted actors, is forced to take work as a waiter. In one sense this was among Hollywood's first direct documentations of the blacklist in a dramatic film.

Novak, himself on the skids, returns, vowing to start from the beginning, with a new off-Broadway theater and offers Lawson a chance to work together again. After agonizing, Lawson accepts the offer, and with the blacklist past, the new play becomes successful and heads to Broadway. With Lawson finally emerging as a major actor, Drake, who's fallen in love with Lawson, asks him in the final scene, thinking of his struggles and humiliation, if it was "worth it."

"Yes," says Lawson. "It was worth it."

The movie was written by Bert Granet, James Lee, Philip Stong, and Dalton Trumbo, and directed by Joseph Anthony.

Cast[link]

• Dean Martin ... Maurice 'Maury' Novak
• Tony Franciosa ... Sam Lawson
• Shirley MacLaine ... Sharon Kensington
• Carolyn Jones ... Shirley Drake
• Joan Blackman ... Barbara Lawson Helmsley
• Robert Middleton ... Robert Kensington
• Donna Douglas ... Marjorie Burke
• Jerry Paris ... Allan Burke
• Frank McHugh ... Charlie
• Chuck Wassil ... Eric Peters
• Mary Treen ... Marie, secretary to Shirley Drake
• Alan Hewitt ... Matt Helmsley
• Marjorie Bennett ... Columnist

Awards[link]

The film was nominated for three Academy Awards: ^[1]

• Best Art Direction (Hal Pereira, Walter H. Tyler, Samuel M. Comer, Arthur Krams).
• Best Cinematography (Joseph LaShelle)
• Best Costume Design (Edith Head)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Career at the Internet Movie Database