Career is a 1959
blacklist film drama co-written by
Dalton Trumbo and starring
Dean Martin,
Tony Franciosa, and
Shirley MacLaine. The movie involves actor Sam Lawson (Tony Franciosa), bent on breaking into the big time at any cost, braving
World War II, the
Korean War and even the more recent
blacklist, something that writer Dalton Trumbo knew all too well from being blacklisted himself.
Plot
The supporting cast includes top-billed Dean Martin as actor-director Maurice "Maury" Novak, who works with Lawson at an early grassroots theatrical group later targeted as "subversive" for its liberal views. Novak left the theater to become a well known
Hollywood director brought down by the blacklist himself. Shirley MacLaine plays Sharon Kensington, the alcoholic daughter of a powerful
Broadway producer Robert Kensington, portrayed by
Robert Middleton.
Lawson continually tries to establish himself as an actor, suffering the slings and arrows of rejection despite his dedication and passion for the theater. It costs him his first wife, played by
Joan Blackman. Lawson's long-suffering agent Shirley Drake (
Carolyn Jones) attempts to get him work and he slowly begins to rise, even managing to land work in a Kensington production. Just as he's about to land a major role in a TV series, his loyalty is researched and the ties to his allegedly "subversive" theater work with Novak are revealed. As Novak has been wrongly brought down, the now blacklisted Lawson,...
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