Executive Suite

Executive Suite is a 1954 American MGM drama film directed by Robert Wise and written by Ernest Lehman, based on the novel of the same name by Cameron Hawley. The film stars William Holden, Barbara Stanwyck, Fredric March, Walter Pidgeon, Shelley Winters, and Nina Foch. The plot depicts the internal struggle for control of a furniture manufacturing company after the unexpected death of the companys CEO. Executive Suite was nominated for multiple Academy Awards, including for Nina Fochs performance, which earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination.

While in New York City to meet with investment bankers, 56yearold Avery Bullard, president and driving force of the Tredway Corporation, a major furniture manufacturing company in the town of Millburgh, Pennsylvania, drops dead in the street. As he collapses in the street, he drops his wallet. It is picked up by a bystander, emptied of its cash, and shoved into a wastebasket. Without the wallet, there is no way to immediately identify the body as Bullard.George Caswell, a member of the Tredway board of directors and one of the investment bankers with whom Bullard had just met, sees what he believes is Bullards body in the street below their offices and decides to profit from the information. He engages a broker to make a short sale of as much Tredway stock as he can before the end of trading that Friday afternoon. Caswell plans to make an easy profit and cover the sale by buying Tredway stock at a 10point discount on Monday, when news of Bullards death will presumably push the stock price down. Caswell begins to doubt that it was Bullard who died, but when he reads in a newspaper that the man had the initials A.B. on his clothes and cufflinks, he calls the police to tip them off to the identity of the deceased. ........

Source: Wikipedia