SYNOPSIS
(Not for Publication)
Oscar night.
In Santa Monica, the auditorium is ablaze with light. Fans pack bleachers and strain against police lines, roaring with excitement at each new arrival. The roar hits new heights for Frankie Fane (STEPHEN BOYD), favorite in the polls to win the Best Actor Award.
Hymie Kelly (TONY BENNETT) knows what winning means to Frankie: “You’re one of the chosen five. Been quite a climb, Frankie. Down at the bottom, scuffling for dimes . . . .”
It was more than a scuffle in Clinton, Kentucky, Hymie taking tickets, Frankie spieling for Laurel Scott’s (JILL ST. JOHN) act. The roadhouse owner tries to “stiff” them out of their share, and though he warns that he and the sheriff are partners, Frankie smashes him unconscious, takes his money. On the outskirts of town, Sheriff Hightower’s (BRODERICK CRAWFORD) car is on them. Hightower slugs Frankie for “resistin’ arrest,” relieves him of the money. The charge is “prostitution and procurin’.” With logic, they jump bail and make it to New York by bus and thumb.
Laurel gets work with Grobard (ED BEGLEY) in a Greenwich Village spot. Frankie meets Kay Bergdahl (ELKE SOMMER) at a party. Kay’s offer of a job where she works followed by her slapping him for making passes, is beyond Frankie’s understanding. Back in the shared apartment, Laurel charges Frankie with living off her while he “runs around with Village chicks.” She orders him out. Hymie comforts her, but points out a fact – Frankie won’t be back. Laurel, in tears, confides that she is to have Frankie’s child.
At the dress manufacturers, Kay saves Frankie’s job when he slugs a salesman, but Frankie makes trouble for her again by scoffing at actors rehearsing a knife fight, staging a vicious attack on one of them, when he accompanies her to deliver costumes of her own design to an off-Broadway theatre. Watching the episode from a seat in the darkened auditorium, drama coach Sophie Cantaro (ELEANOR PARKER) is impressed, seeks out Kay and Frankie, proposing to help him become an actor. She coaches Frankie, gets him a small part. She takes her agent-friend, Kappy Kapstetter (MILTON BERLE) to see the play and persuades him to take Frankie as a client. She denies her interest is other than professional – though later her actions cancel this denial.
At the Hollywood studio, producer Kenneth H. Regan (JOSEPH COTTEN) talks about Frankie as if he weren’t there, as “meat,” but, despite his misgivings, is persuaded by Sophie and Kappy to pick up his option. As his career begins to build, Frankie sends for Hymie – a friend to be near and act as a sort of public relations man among other chores. Frankie inquires about Laurel. Hymie is brief: “I married her. She died.”
On a studio-arranged date with film star Cheryl Barker (JEAN HALE), a part of the buildup to stardom, Frankie discovers the secret of making headlines when he provokes Cheryl into clubbing him with her bag. Before he can afford them, he has a Rolls, women, a mansion, a yacht, and Sam (JACK SOO) to care for him.
Then Cheryl, as Frankie once did, “needs to be seen.” Frankie is her escort to the Gold Room. He denies to Hedda Hopper (HEDDA HOPPER) Cheryl’s hints of a romance between them, leaves to dance with Kay. When her escort cuts in, Frankie returns to Cheryl. To her complaint of lack of attention, he dumps her salad in her lap and stalks out.
He waits outside Kay’s apartment for her return, takes her to his yacht to “talk about us.” Kay says there is no “us,” that he is everything she loathes. When he goes from Kay’s rebuff to Sophie, Sophie is at first hurt by his long absence, then forgiving. But the next morning he is cruel in his blunt statement that this is the “fadeout.”
Through an oversight of an employee, the studio fails to notify Frankie by the legal date that his option has been picked up. Though it is strongly against Kappy’s character to “take advantage,” Frankie refuses to sign a waiver and demands that the agent renegotiate his contract with Regan.
Kay, who came to Hollywood as a sketch artist on Edith Head’s staff, learns that Frankie is responsible for her promotion to designer, call him to thank him and apologize for her words on the yacht. Frankie invites her to the bullfight in Tia Juana. Their seat companions are Barney Yale (ERNEST BORGNINE), a private detective, and his wife, Trina (EDIE ADAMS), who ask Kay and Frankie to be witnesses for their divorce, which the couples follow with a nightclub celebration. Trina babbles to Frankie about a Chester Tumwater, who will keep her in her declining years, while Barney dances with Kay. Frankie cuts in, dances Kay out the door. Though they start the drive back to Los Angeles, Frankie’s urgent “Marry me – tonight,” prompts their return to Tia Juana. Barney and Trina witness the ceremony. The morning after the honeymoon night, Kay is hurt by Frankie’s urgency to get back because of “contract troubles.”
Regan tells Kappy and Sophie that the only Fane pictures which have made money are those starring him with proven boxoffice greats; even “Breakthrough,” for all its critical acclaim, is dying in theatres. Though Kappy might have persuaded him favorably, Sophie’s reinforcement over-balances Kappy’s defense and Regan rejects the thought of any contract for Frankie. Frankie seeks escape from reality with women, Kay waiting at home, troubled, rejected. Kappy gives it to him straight – no money, back taxes to pay, commissions due Kappy, overdrafts for the cost of high living, “Breakthrough” dying. Though Frankie scorns a short-scheduled picture, and no others are offered because the word is out that he is boxoffice poison, Kappy gets him consideration for a television pilot.
Once again Frankie is “meat,” waiting it out as he is “talked about” for the pilot by the potential sponsor, Orrin C. Quentin (WALTER BRENNAN), the Network representative James Peterson (JAMES DUNN); account men from the advertising agency and Kappy. Then Frankie is called out of the meeting for a telephone call from Hymie, almost incoherent with excitement: “You’ve been nominated for an Oscar! . . . for ‘Breakthrough’!” Frankie walks out on the television deal, indifferent to what it does to Kappy. He knows that only winning the Oscar counts. He plans a campaign with Hymie – trade ads, local publicity. Then he pays Barney Yale to leak the story of the arrest for prostitution and procuring, the jumped bail.
Incensed by the headlines, Hymie worries for Frankie, calls it “the lowest kind of politics.” He learns from Frankie that the actor blew the whistle on himself to create the impression of a smear by one of the other four nominees, turning Academy voter sympathy to Frankie. Frankie is superb with the press - the story is true, but he and Hymie are not guilty of the charges and the girl, Laurel, can’t defend herself because she is dead. To a newsman’s question, Frankie says he cannot believe that any of the other nominees would have tried to smear him.
At the party he gives for Frankie, Regan brushes aside his thanks. He interprets the smear as throwing mud at the Academy, and will not have the Oscar tarnished. And for all his dislike of Frankie, he will not stand by and allow him to have a raw deal. After the party, Frankie is stunned to find Kay plans to leave him, and terrified by Hymie’s news that Barney Yale wants to see him. Barney is standing by his code not to reveal who hired him; but if Frankie doesn’t hand over an additional $15,000 within the next 48 hours, Barney will reveal who didn’t hire him.
Kappy refuses to give Frankie the money, instead hands him his agency release. Regardless of Frankie’s Oscar chances, Kappy wants no more part of him, has no more time for him. Wanting Barney stopped, Frankie draws Hymie, for just a fleeting moment, into the thought of helping to “get some guys to do it.” Then Hymie pulls himself free, and flees. Frankie finds Trina, promises her anything if she will help him. She shrewdly concludes that Frankie must be Barney’s client. She is an extra player, ambitious. With the Oscar, Frankie will be a big man in town. She confides that some of Barney’s shakedown loot, never reported for income tax, is in the safety deposit box under the name of Chester Tumwater. Frankie goes to Barney, smashes him across the room, tells him he knows about “Chester.”
As Frankie and Kay are at dinner, Hymie arrives, drunk. Hymie tells all – that Laurel died because of Frankie’s baby, that it was Frankie who hired Barney, that Frankie wanted Barney killed. Frankie knocks Hymie against the wall, and Hymie, staggering to his feet, grabs a side table and smashes it into Frankie’s back, knocking him to the floor. Before his is able to rise, Hymie kicks him in the ribs. What she has learned is the end for Kay, too. Frankie staggers after them as she leaves with Hymie, shouting, “Run . . . go on and run! Who the hell needs you! . . . this damned town wasn’t trying to pull your guts out . . . .”
It is Oscar night. Merle Oberon, the presenting actress, comes from the wings. “The nominees for the best actor are . . . .” She reads the five names. “And the winner . . . .”
As she opens the envelope handed her by the man from Price-Waterhouse, Frankie rises like a sleep-walker from his seat. As the winner runs down the aisle and onto the stage to accept the Oscar, others see Frankie standing, rise, too, and the applause grows into a standing ovation.
There is shocked disbelief in Frankie’s face as the winner, holding the golden statuette, speaks his thank you into the microphone. Slowly Frankie sinks into his seat, a broken, lonely man.