The movie is based on the novel The Hucksters by Frederic Wakeman Sr., a skewering of the post-World War II radio advertising industry with Gable's character alternating in pursuit of Kerr and Gardner.

The film revolves around Victor Norman (Clark Gable), a World War II veteran and radio advertising executive.

The call causes chaos, and Victor offers to recruit Mrs. Kay Dorrance (Deborah Kerr), a widow of noble British birth and the wife of a WWII U.S. general, for a Beautee Soap campaign targeting Manhattan socialites.

Evans summons Victor and Kimberly and reveals his desire for a new radio variety show featuring Buddy Hare (Keenan Wynn), a C-list comedian.

In Hollywood, Victor and his team work on creating the radio show, but they exclude Hare due to his obnoxious behavior and tired jokes.

However, a legal issue threatens the contract with Buddy Hare, and Victor uses cruel innuendo and implied blackmail against Lash to secure the deal.

Frederic Wakeman's novel The Hucksters (1946) spent 35 weeks in the top stratum of The New York Times Fiction bestseller list,[2] aided perhaps by its raunchy, racy controversy.

Life magazine called the book "last year's best-selling travesty"[3] and even Clark Gable, who would eventually star in its film adaptation, said "It's filthy and it isn't entertainment.

[4] Screenwriter Luther Davis and the novel's adapters Edward Choderov and George Wells had "an extensive laundering job" to do to bring the project into compliance with Louis B. Mayer's tastes and the Hays Office's policies.

[5] They had to eliminate the graphic (for 1946) sexual scenes, and they changed the book's Mrs. Dorrance from a married woman into a war widow — so she and Vic "could live happily ever after.

Even in 1947, there were "fears about reprisals from MCA"[7] over the portrayals of Stein and Wasserman, and Vic avers on several occasions that "Dave Lash is an honest man" when the dispute arises over the Buddy Hare contract.

"[9] Director Jack Conway, an MGM regular with credits stretching back to the silent era, brought this, his penultimate film, in on Mayer's August 1947 timetable.

Not that her rather radiant passion for this well-tailored roughneck makes much sense, but Miss Kerr is a very soothing person and she elevates the tone of the film."

Like the Times, they were more enthusiastic about the supporting cast: "Sydney Greenstreet's portrayal of the soap despot emerges as the performance of the picture, as does Keenan Wynn as the ham ex-burlesque candy butcher gone radio comic.

Ava Gardner is thoroughly believable as the on-the-make songstress; Adolphe Menjou is the harassed head of the radio agency which caters to Evans' whilom ways because it's a $10 million account."

Finally, there was an observation, politely put, that no doubt crossed the minds of many 1947 moviegoers: "Gable looks trim and fit but somehow a shade too mature for the capricious role of the huckster who talks his way into a $35,000 job [and] is a killer with the femmes...."[16]

Opposite the ladylike Deborah, Clark Gable's mannered virility seems embarrassing—something that never happened to him alongside such tough Tessies as Joan Crawford and Jean Harlow in his greater days.

[18] The current New York Times capsule summary calls it "one of Clark Gable's best postwar films, as well as one of the finest Hollywood satires of the rarefied world of advertising.