Cash McCall

Cash McCall by Cameron Hawley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I arrived at this by a circuitous route. From the entry in Miss Liberty's Guide to Film: Movies for the Libertarian Millennium on "Executive Suite", I recognized it as one I had seen the end of in adolescence but could not identify. I not only got to see the whole movie, but learned that it and "Cash McCall" were from "novels by Cameron Hawley".

Ayn Rand must have loved Hawley's books... businessmen as heroes!

I was stunned when I realized Hawley's audacity in waiting until the book is more than a quarter done to actually bring the mystery man everyone has been talking about "onstage". I was surprised that it did not begin "Who is Cash McCall?"

I was also thrilled by the novel's lapidary descriptions of the characters and their surroundings. His incisive portrayal of the Philadelphia aristocracy makes the "Boston brahmins" look companionable.

Sadly, I found the film version with James Garner and Natalie Wood not nearly as good as that of "Executive Suite".... the screenplay slants it to look more like a romantic comedy than an encomium to American business. Read the book first, if you can find it.

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