Easy Living

Scripted by Charles Schnee (The Bad and the Beautiful, Two Weeks in Another Town) from an Irwin Shaw story, this might have been another Sweet Smell of Success with a lowdown angle on professional sport. Tourneur does his best (always concisely, sometimes brilliantly) as Mature's ageing football star gambles his life to ensure security while his wife (Scott) turns the screw on his troubles by ruthlessly pursuing fame as a designer. But studio interference and script compromises (notably in begging the question of whether the wife screws her way to success, and in treating her ambitions with routine bias) sugar the sourness.