Executive Suite (1954)

McDonald Walling: We'll have a line of low-priced furniture, a new and different line - as different from anything we're making today as a modern automobile is different from a covered wagon. That's what you want Walt, isn't it - what you've always wanted? Merchandise that will sell because it had beauty and function and value - not because the buyers like your scotch or think that you're a good egg. The kind of stuff that you, Jesse, will feel in your guts when you know it's coming off your production line. A kind of product that you will be able to budget to the nearest hundredth of a cent, Shaw, because it will be scientifically and efficiently designed. And something you will be proud to have your name on, Miss Tredway.

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McDonald Walling: The force behind a great company has to be more than the pride of one man; it has to be the pride of thousands. You can't make men work for money alone - you starve their souls when you try it, and you can starve a company to death the same way.
McDonald Walling: [picking up a small, flimsy table] And that's when we started doing things like this: the KF line. Walt, are your boys proud when they go out and sell this stuff? When they know the finish is going to crack, the veneer split off and the legs come loose?
Loren Phineas Shaw: Wait a minute, wait a minute. That's priced merchandise - it serves a definite purpose in the profit structure of this company. We're not cheating anyone.
McDonald Walling: Ourselves!
Loren Phineas Shaw: At that price, the customer knows exactly what he is going to get.
McDonald Walling: This!
[flips the table over, and easily tears off one of its legs]
McDonald Walling: This is what Tredway has come to mean!
[violently throws the leg against the wall]
McDonald Walling: And what do you suppose the people think of us when they buy it? How do you suppose the men in the factories feel when they make it? What must they think of a management that is willing to stoop to selling this kind of junk in order to add a dime a year to the dividend?

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McDonald Walling: If Bullock calls a meeting, he's got a good reason. He's a big man.

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This was one of the few Hollywood films of the era not to have a musical score. The opening credits are shown to the accompaniment of traffic noises and the tolling of a bell.
When William Holden returns home from the airport in this MGM film, we hear his baseball playing son singing off-camera the tune to "Singin' In the Rain," music by Nacio Herb Brown and lyrics by the head of the studio's celebrated musical unit, Arthur Freed. The song appears in many a film from The Hollywood Revue of 1929 to A Clockwork Orange, and most famously in the Gene Kelly MGM film of the same name.
According to Oliver Stone, who did the commentary on the DVD for this film, the beginning was narrated by Edward R. Murrow.
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