Corporate Sharks Swim Offshore

The Power and The Prize (1956) Means Business

Another big loser ($838K) in losing year that was 1956, referred to since as annus horribilis by which television had penetrated whole of the country. The Power and The Prize had a negative cost of $1.4 million, a minimum you'd then-spend for presentable Metro product, but too much for this black-and-white Cinemascope drama with so little earning potential (only $575K in domestic rentals, $540K foreign). For latter market, MGM tread lightly, The Power and The Prize cautious not to give offense in Euro/UK depiction. Robert Taylor is the company man gone overseas to put over a refinery deal (in Africa, a spot regarded OK for a worldwide corporate community to graze on) with partnering Sir Cedric Hardwicke, a rock of rectitude to flatter Brit business dealings. Offshore grosses were protected further by letting Taylor love interest Elisabeth Mueller be impossibly noble as refugee from continental hardship, with wartime stopover in German concentration camps. What was done to her there is mentioned, but not stressed. Only one bad apple among offshore associates will be allowed (a lecherous VP). Otherwise, it's the Americans that are ugly (boardroom shark Burl Ives) or at the least misguided (Taylor, who'll be straightaway enlightened). The Power and The Prize is a real suck-up to integrity Euros have that we lack. So did facts at the time back this portrayal?

Taylor's a little old for what is essentially a Bill Holden part (in fact, Holden had more or less played it for Metro in 1954's Executive Suite). Bob closes the gap, however, with another of his customarily fine postwar performances. MGM valued this star, kept under pact after letting most names go. Even Gable had been scotched from contract pay as Taylor soldiered on, a succession of hits in Quo Vadis, Ivanhoe, Knights Of The Round Table, making him a better bargain than Hollywood's one-time King. We think of 50's Taylor mostly in breastplates, but it was noir and modern-set conscience stories where he'd thrive best, The Power and The Prize, Rogue Cop, Party Girl, numerous others backing placement of RT as seminal dark dweller. Taylor was another who'd underplay because he never considered himself much of an actor. That, of course, works now to benefit of all his output.

The Power and The Prize posits corporate life as all-consuming, but in the end productive and necessary. Burl Ives, otherwise a despot and spirit breaker, gives reasoned account of why America needs men like him to keep the country great. It's like listening again to Bogart's same message in Sabrina from 1954. Hollywood might point up excess in tycoons, but wouldn't condemn a system they represented. After all, that was a movie industry's system as well. A man must give heart and soul to the company, and should he marry, well, the wife must be vetted as well. That was lesson Clifton Webb taught in Woman's World (again 1954), and few outside presumed Pinkos would argue against it. Latter is among issues aired in The Power and The Prize, Taylor wanting to bring alien bride Mueller to our shore, but first having to clear her of suspected moral lapse, plus likely Communist sympathies. The Power and The Prize puts across fear everyone then felt over merest suggestion they might be disloyal, tycoon spouse Mary Astor saying at one point that suspicion alone, minus further evidence, could break anyone targeted. Had MGM topper Dore Schary forgot the Waldorf agreement he'd entered into? The Power and The Prize streams at Warner Instant in HD and is available from their Archive on DVD.