Photo by Paul Kolnik
Lithgow (TV's "Third Rock Form the Sun," Hollywood's "The World According to Garp") plays Hunsecker, the egomaniacal 1950s gossip journalist (read Walter Winchell) who makes and breaks careers in the dark, cynically comic story first written as a novella by Ernest Lehman. The 1957 film starred Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis (as a toadying press agent, Sidney Falco). The new Marvin Hamlisch-Craig Carnelia-John Guare musical has Titanic's Brian d'Arcy James as the slimy Sidney. Sweet Smell of Success, directed by Nicholas Hytner, opens March 14 at the Martin Beck Theatre.
