An Ethical Analysis of Executive Suite (1954)

Executive Suite (1954) is a classic movie that begins with the following narrated prologue:

It is always up there close to the clouds on the topmost floors of the sky reaching towers of big business and because it is high in the sky you might think that those that work there are somehow above and beyond the tensions and temptations of the lower floors. This is to say that it isn’t so.

while various images of the tops of skyscrapers are being shown. At the end of the narration five ‘tower’ bells toll to usher in the credits the first being the title of the film; it’s followed by the names of the actors (which change with each chime): William Holden June Allyson Barbara Stanwyck Fredric March Walter Pidgeon Shelley Winters Paul Douglas Louis Calhern Dean Jagger and Nina Foch (etc.). The story begins with the CEO of Tredway (a leading furniture manufacturer) – who has yet to reveal his succession plan – dying on the way to a hastily established 6 PM Friday night meeting during which (ostensibly) he was to finally promote one of his five vice presidents to the vacant EVP position. The rest of the plot deals with the actions of those men (and some others) after they learn about their chairman’s death and the political wrangling that occurs among them to decide who should ascend to the top position within the corporation. Virtually every named character in the movie has to face an ethical situation (or three) in this drama before its “not too unexpected” Hollywood (e.g. happy) ending.

I’ve decided to list the moral issues below (in chronological order) before doing any analysis:

• Tredway’s only ‘external’ board member – George Caswell (Calhern) – is the first to realize that Avery Bullard (the 56 year old CEO without a succession plan) is dead. He immediately calls his broker to sell short as many shares of Tredway stock that can be sold before the market closes (which turns out to be 3700 shares; he anticipates a profit of $10/share); Caswell tells the broker to use his own name to conceal the transaction.
• An unidentified thief steals Bullard’s wallet which delays the identification of the body. This causes Caswell much grief until he reads (in the late edition of a newspaper) that the police found a monogram and cufflinks with the initials “AB” on the body; he is only too glad to inform them that the deceased was Avery Bullard (happy to facilitate the falling stock price he desires when the market opens again on Monday).
• Before learning that Bullard is dead the daughter of the company’s founder Julia Tredway (Stanwyck) who’d had a 10 year clandestine affair with the CEO before she’d been neglected by him per his devotion to the company appeared suicidal while peering over the office tower’s exterior balcony railing (we subsequently learn that her father had jumped to his death in this manner) and had threatened to dispose of her stock – a considerable percentage – to force him to pay attention to her. In fact she’d been contacted by Caswell (who’d wanted to arrange a private sale to cover his short sale) when he’d become nervous that Bullard was not the man he’d seen dead in the street.
• When Caswell learns through a late edition newspaper that Tredway’s CEO is indeed dead he celebrates the death with his ‘bimbo’ girlfriend in a restaurant with champagne.
• When Bullard doesn’t show for the 6 PM meeting it is cancelled. The controller Loren Shaw (March) insists on driving the VP of Sales JW Dudley (Douglas) to the airport for a business trip he’d professed to having scheduled. But Dudley had no intention of going to Cleveland so he walks through the front door and out the back to get into a taxicab. However Shaw witnesses this subterfuge because he’d pulled into a parking space per his own suspicions. Meanwhile Tredway’s VP of Design & Development McDonald ‘Don’ Walling (Holden) is frustrated that his latest experiment – put in jeopardy by his having to attend Bullard’s meeting – has failed. He’s angry at Shaw who’d denied him the equipment he’d needed and argues with his wife Mary (Allyson) before exiting their car to walk home alone.
• After learning of Bullard’s death Don goes to the home of Frederick Alderson (Pidgeon) whose 29 years with the company made him Tredway’s most senior VP and its treasurer to take him to the office tower where they find Shaw acting like Alexander Haig after President Ronald Reagan was shot (“I’m in charge”) by John Hinkley. Confirming his status as a number 2 (but never the top) man Alderson reacts badly and storms out. Shaw then asks for Don’s support – the controller is unashamed of his naked ambition wanting to be the next CEO – but the VP declines by (using Shaw’s own earlier words against him) saying that he “wants what’s best for the company”. So Shaw goes to Dudley’s secretary’s (Winters) flat so that he can catch the (married) VP of Sales in a compromising position and use it as leverage to secure his vote for the top job.
• Shaw tries to bully Bullard’s loyal secretary Erica (Foch) into providing any details she may have about the CEO’s relationship with the founder’s daughter ostensibly to abate any negative press but probably to use as a lever to gain Julia Tredway’s proxy.
• In his Haig-like moment Shaw not only shut down Walling’s experiments for future products but had also released the company’s latest earnings figures (early) to the press in order to try to soften the blow of the CEO’s death on the market. Caswell asks to meet with Shaw to try to ‘sell’ his board vote for 4000 shares but Shaw already knows about the short selling (through Julia Tredway and his own investigation) and wonders what the extra 300 shares are for. After some ‘negotiation’ Caswell realizes that his only chance of getting the shares is to support Shaw’s candidacy and hope for reciprocity. Caswell ‘leaves’ but Shaw sees his snooping shadow in the doorway so he asks his secretary to come in close the door while he tells her (loud enough for Caswell to hear) that he wants to investigate the director.
• Meanwhile Walling who was brought in by Bullard and had great respect for the man decides that he wants the CEO job for various reasons – including a discussion with some plant workers – but the timing is such that he doesn’t have time to explain it to Mary to whom he’d earlier mentioned turning down the job when Alderson had mentioned the possibility. When Alderson calls to ask Mary to tell her husband to delay the board meeting’s voting until he and the VP of Manufacturing Grimm (Jagger) can get there she decides not to do it because she’s afraid Don might be elected CEO. Alderson had called because he’d correctly surmised that Dudley was in Shaw’s pocket and he needed to retrieve Grimm (who’d had a close relationship with Tredway from the beginning and had resented ‘wonder boy’ Walling) and convince him of Don’s viability given Grimm’s own plans to retire.
• When Don arrives at the meeting-to-elect Tredway’s next CEO he finds only Caswell sitting in the boardroom already. Based upon the controller’s body language towards Dudley when they enter together Don realizes that the VP of Sales is under Shaw’s control. Shaw calls for a vote and when Don hesitates – per Alderson’s and Grimm’s absence – the controller asks Erica to recite the rules which state that a quorum is in effect per the 5 members present and that 4 votes out of 7 will be enough to choose a new CEO. With Julia’s proxy Dudley’s nomination and Caswell’s second Shaw pushes for and gets a vote. But when Erica unseals the ‘secret’ ballots she’s surprised to read an “Abstain” after Don’s ‘No’ and the three ‘Yeses’. Everyone suspects that Julia who had entered the room from Bullard’s former office after an argument with Don (he’d accused her of being unable to stab a dead man in the back in person when he’d learned that Shaw had her proxy) was the abstention. However in the men’s room during a break Caswell tells Shaw that – after realizing his position of power – he needed an assurance his short sale will be satisfied. The controller calls Caswell a fool while revealing an envelope that contains his signature as CEO selling him some of Julia’s shares. Meanwhile Don apologizes for an earlier outburst to Julia (she’d nearly committed suicide by jumping to her death until the tower bells tolled seeming to snap her out of the idea) and then meets with Mary in the anteroom where she confesses to withholding Alderson’s message. As encouragement she repeats his words to her from earlier (“nothing is impossible”).
• After the others arrive and Mary stops the door from closing so that she can listen in Don gets Shaw to describe his strategy for the company’s future; it amounts to little more than reducing costs to prop up the dividend quarter after quarter for the stockholders. In the process the controller reveals his lack of reverence for Bullard in front of Julia while Don – using Shaw’s own words – exposes the inadequacy of the strategy. After stating that the former CEO’s essence – which saved the company after Tredway’s suicide – was his pride Don lifts a second grade product (a table) that Shaw had supported and pulls it apart to show its inferior quality. He then proceeds to give an impassioned speech that pushes all the ‘hot’ buttons of those in the room appealing to everyone’s desire to have a quality product line again one that they can be proud of and requesting everyone’s help in the process. When Alderson proclaims “I’m with you Don” Dudley nominates Walling for CEO using the same words he had used earlier for Shaw and after Grimm seconds Alderson says “let’s make it unanimous”. Julia agrees; Caswell looks to Shaw who reluctantly nods and then Caswell nods also. When Caswell asks Shaw about the shares the controller tears up the envelope. Julia meets and then tells Mary how lucky she is to have Don while at the same time advising her about how lonely she’ll be and then asks her to tell her husband “thanks” for saving her life. After embracing his wife Don asks Erica to schedule a meeting Monday morning to appoint an EVP; he then asks Mary “who won?” (referring to their son’s baseball game earlier that day) and she responds with the double meaning “we did”.

While not every one of the bulleted paragraphs above contain an ethical situation most of them contain more than one. I included the additional narrative to help the reader make sense of the movie as well as my analysis. The above details the self-evident moral issues identifies the actors in each case and provides the relevant facts (and/or background information). Most of the issues are right-versus-wrong particularly those which involve Caswell Shaw and Dudley but there are a few right-versus-right issues to point out:

• Bullard’s secretary Erica choosing not to disclose any information about (her boss) CEO Avery Bullard’s relationship with (the daughter of the company’s founder) Julia Tredway to Shaw is a truth versus loyalty paradigm
• Don’s decision to pursue the vacant CEO job is evidence of his wrestling with the individual vs. community dilemma
• Controller Shaw’s strategy to cut costs and future investments such as Don’s experiments in order to continuously raise Tredway’s dividend is a short-term vs. long-term decision

I don’t believe that the justice versus mercy paradigm can be found within the story though a more ethical person in Shaw’s position could have let his knowledge of Dudley’s affair with his secretary remain private (without trying to use it for his own advantage) for such reasons … which is not to justify Dudley’s lying or Shaw’s spying in the matter. I’ve chosen these three to focus on because each requires a different resolution principle:

• When Erica chose not to tell Shaw about her former boss and Julia Tredway’s affair I believe she was using care-based thinking. The way Nina Foch plays the character it seems that Erica may have held a candle for Bullard also (e.g. she cries after learning of his death needing Don’s comforting shoulder to recover her composure); she may even have had an affair with the former CEO herself. Therefore it was easy for her to put herself in Julia’s shoes and apply the Golden Rule: “Do not do unto others as you would expect they should do unto you”. Since she hid with her emotions in the shadows of the executive stairwell after hearing of Bullard’s death she would prefer her feelings towards him would remain a secret … and those of Julia’s as well. As an aside for her efforts Miss Foch earned her only Oscar nomination in a film career that spans sixty years and nearly 50 movies.
• Shaw falls under the stereotype of a business professional that deals with numbers and (e.g. financial accounting) rules all day such that his ability to deal with people as anything more than “a means to an end” is inhibited. Therefore his short-term decisions as the company controller are driven by rules like “increase the dividend every year” regardless of the impact on Tredway’s manufacturing personnel who abhor producing inferior products and he devalues long-term possibilities (versus certainties) such as investing in Don’s experiments for future growth. His dealings with both Caswell and Dudley reflect his lack of compassion and a rules-based decision making mode which is ruthless per his pursuit of the top job. It seems likely that Shaw would never sell short on inside information (because it would be against the law) nor similarly cheat on his wife (if he even has one).
• Don’s decision to pursue the CEO’s job which would likely be personally injurious to his own life marriage and family life (which includes being able to spend time with his young baseball playing son) was clearly made while considering “what’s best for the greatest number of people” or ends-based thinking. He saw the writing on the wall for Tredway and its people under a Shaw (as CEO) regime: the future would be bleak because the company would not likely survive much longer. In effect Don decided to be a martyr of sorts to sacrifice his own preferences (and his family?) for the good of the company to take on the stress of being the top man to fulfill the original vision of the man he’d admired most in the world: Avery Bullard.

Before Don came to the realization that it was he and he alone that could save Tredway he and Alderson considered a couple of different ‘trilemma’ options. Alderson had made it clear that he and Bullard thought Don was probably the best candidate for the top job in five years time but unfortunately the CEO died prematurely. So Walling and Alderson decided to support Grimm for the job but neither knew that the Manufacturing VP was planning to retire (nor that Grimm resented ‘wonder boy’ Don). When they learned that Grimm was not an option they considered Dudley … that is until they learned that the VP of Sales was under Shaw’s influence (the reason for which they didn’t learn). When it was apparent that the trilemma solutions were nonstarters Don decided to pursue the CEO slot. Unfortunately with no sequel to Executive Suite (1954) it would be difficult to revisit his decision.

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© 2008 Turner Classic Movies – this article originally appeared on TCM’s official blog