Joe wants to bet their entire first week""s salary at the dog races ("put the whole bundle on Greased Lightning").Director Mann brought some of the characteristics of his previous film-noirs to this modernized western, borrowed from his own gritty, low-budget classics such asT-Men (1947)andRaw Deal (1948).In his time, Howard Beale had been a mandarin of television, the grand old man of news, with a HUT rating of 16 and a 28 audience share.The film received a total of four Academy Award nominations, with no wins: Best Actress for Baker, Best Adapted Screenplay for Tennessee Williams, Best Cinematography (Boris Kaufman), and Best Supporting Actress (Mildred Dunnock).The charming film about clashing ideologies (Soviet communism vs.capitalism) begins with Garbo portrayed at first as a humorless, cold, curt, deadpan, and seriously-austere Russian envoy (in a parody of her own stiff onscreen image), who soon melts and is transformed and softened by Parisian love (and a persuasive playboy Count) into a frivolous, romantic figure and converted Communist.