Photo by Aubrey ReubenIn Sweet Smell of Success, John Lithgow (TV's "Third Rock Form the Sun," Hollywood's "The World According to Garp") plays J.J. 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, directed by Nicholas Hytner, has Titanic's Brian d'Arcy James as the slimy Sidney.
— By Christine Ehren
