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    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1960s
    Movies - 1960s Movies - P 2 Mins Read

    Putney Swope (1969)

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    The chairman of a multi-million-dollar advertising company unexpectedly dies mid-sentence, forcing the remaining members of the board to vote for who shall replace him by means of a secret ballot.

    The catch is that the bylaws of the corporation prohibit voting for yourself. So everybody votes for the one person who they’re certain won’t get in – the one token black member of the board: Putney Swope (Arnold Johnson).

    So Swope becomes the new CEO with a landslide. His motto is “Rockin’ the boat’s a drag. You gotta sink the boat!” He promptly fires all of the white executives (except one), renames the agency ‘Truth & Soul Inc’ and hires a young, idealistic and politically militant black staff who want to tell the actual truth in advertising.

    Truth & Soul Inc refuse to take accounts from cigarette manufacturers, liquor companies or the war machine. They become so successful that the government becomes alarmed.

    Eventually, everyone becomes corrupted, even Putney himself, who takes to dressing like Fidel Castro.

    It’s a whirlwind of late 60’s counterculture. biting satire, golden one-liners, a pot-smoking dwarf President of the USA and an oriental man throwing firecrackers on the floor who Putney describes as “a one-man Pearl Harbor” (a scene recreated in the 1997 film Boogie Nights).

    Nathan
    Stanley Gottlieb
    Elias, Jr.
    Allen Garfield
    Joker
    Archie Russell
    Bissinger
    Ramon Gordon
    Hawker
    Bert Lawrence
    Mr Syllables
    Joe Engler
    Putney Swope
    Arnold Johnson
    Elias, Sr.
    David Kirk
    Mr Cards
    Don George
    Wing Soney
    Tom Odachi
    Wing Soney, Jr.
    Ching Yeh
    Mr Major
    Spunky-Funk Johnson
    Pittsburgh Willie
    Joe Fields
    Putney’s Bodyguard
    Buddy Butler

    Director
    Robert Downey Sr.

    Video

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