The film was directed by Vincente Minnelli, written by George Bradshaw and Charles Schnee, and stars Lana Turner, Kirk Douglas, Walter Pidgeon, Dick Powell, Barry Sullivan, Gloria Grahame and Gilbert Roland.

The Bad and the Beautiful was created by the same team that later worked on another film about the seedy film business, Two Weeks in Another Town (1962): director (Vincente Minnelli), producer (John Houseman), screenwriter (Charles Schnee), composer (David Raksin), male star (Kirk Douglas), and studio (MGM).

Both films also feature performances of the song "Don't Blame Me", by Leslie Uggams in Two Weeks and by Peggy King in The Bad and the Beautiful.

In Hollywood, director Fred Amiel (Sullivan), movie star Georgia Lorrison (Turner), and screenwriter James Lee Bartlow (Powell) each refuse to speak by phone to Jonathan Shields (Douglas) in Paris.

Movie producer Harry Pebbel (Pidgeon) gathers them in his office and explains that Shields has a new film idea and he wants the three of them for the project.

When one of their films becomes a hit, Amiel decides they are ready to take on a more significant project he has been nursing along, and Shields pitches it to the studio.

Shields gets a $1 million budget to produce the film, but betrays Amiel by allowing someone with an established reputation to direct.

Finally, Bartlow is a contented professor at a small college who has written a bestselling book for which Shields has purchased the film rights.

The film was based on a 1949 magazine story "Of Good and Evil" by George Bradshaw, which was expanded into a longer version called Memorial to a Bad Man.

It concerned the will and testament of a New York theatre producer who tried to explain his bad behavior to three people he had hurt: a writer, actor and director.

He says Bushman told him his career faded away because "at the height of his fame, he inadvertently offended the all-powerful Louis B. Mayer by keeping him waiting a few minutes.

"[9] An uncredited Lucy Knoch plays the blonde dancing with Gaucho; she is frequently assumed by modern audiences to be Kim Novak because of the resemblance.

[14] Gilbert Roland's Gaucho may almost be seen as self-parody, as he had recently starred in a series of Cisco Kid pictures, though the character's name, Ribera, would seem to give a nod also to famed Hollywood seducer Porfirio Rubirosa.

[15] The James Lee Bartlow character may have been inspired by Paul Eliot Green,[citation needed] the University of North Carolina academic-turned-screenwriter of The Cabin in the Cotton.

But Bartlow also resembles novelist William Faulkner, who worked on many of Hollywood's best movies—and had an easier relationship with the industry than he did with his wife.

The title was changed to The Bad and the Beautiful at the suggestion of MGM's head of publicity Howard Dietz who took it from F. Scott Fitzgerald.

[1] On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 80% from 49 reviews with the consensus: "Melodrama at its most confident, The Bad and the Beautiful is an ode to moviemaking that offers unblinking insight into the ugly egos that have shaped Hollywood history.

"[17] At the 1953 ceremony, actress Gloria Grahame's performance as Rosemary Bartlow, which occupied only just 9 minutes and 32 seconds of screen time, was at the time the shortest performance to ever win an Academy Award, a record she held until the 1977 ceremony when Beatrice Straight won Best Supporting Actress for Network and set a new record of 5 minutes and 2 seconds.

[18] David Raksin wrote the theme song "The Bad and the Beautiful" (originally called "Love is For the Very Young") for the film.

Upon first hearing the song, Minnelli and Houseman nearly rejected it, but were convinced to keep it by Adolph Green and Betty Comden.

[29] A number of film music experts and composers, including Stephen Sondheim, have highly praised the theme.