["The Big Knife"] is an exposure of the movie capital which must take its place beside the exposures of the advertising business written by bright young advertising men and the exposures of the publishing business written by bright young publishers….

Most of us think of Hollywood as a place where mediocrity is overpaid—in money and in fame; but to Mr. Odets it is, instead, a place where genius is prevented from expressing itself. His hero is a fabulously successful young leading man of the films whose better self we are expected to take on faith while he, languishing under a fourteen-year contract assuring him several million dollars, laments that he cannot get away from it all into some world where he can indulge his natural integrity. (p. 340)

At one point in the action he remarks, very sagely indeed, that "there is nothing so habit-forming as money"; and...