Hudsucker Industries is the name of the giant corporation where most of the story of The Hudsucker Proxy takes place. Although this film was released by the Coens in 1994, they have had the idea for the story since the late 1980’s. They have made references to Hudsucker Industries in earlier films. An example of this would be the factory workers in Raising Arizona (1987) wearing “Hudsucker Industries” uniforms.

Background information about Hudsucker Industries is very limited in the audience. We do know that it has obviously been around for some time. On December 1^st, 1958, Waring Hudsucker, tired of his lifestyle, jumped out of the tall corporate headquarters in Manhattan and fell 44 floors to his death (45 counting the mezzanine). Norville Barnes was placed as its new CEO by Vice President Sidney J Mussburger to make stock prices fall, so he could become the majority shareholder. The company did hit hard times about having a mail clerk become the CEO, but he invented the hula-hoop, and the company thrived. Meanwhile, a young reporter has been undercover and writing news reports making him out to be incompetent. The bad press, plus Barnes being declared mentally unstable by a psychiatrist, caused much trouble in the company. Barnes, however, ends up pulling through. He invents the Frisbee, and Hudsucker Industries continued to thrive.

Hudsucker Industries is a massive setting. On the bottom floor is the mail room. This is where Barnes started working. Things are run on a pretty tight shift down there. The massive volume of mail being delivered in on a daily basis shows how large the company really is. The hustle and bustle of the mail room is a sharp contradiction to the nice, large offices of the 44^th floor (45 counting the mezzanine). The president and vice president’s offices are on this floor. Their offices have copious amounts of space. The shadow of the minute arm on the clock is quite present in the vice president’s office, thus showing the extended reach and power he has. The elevator itself is an interesting setting. The elevator boy Buzz is constantly sucking up to the big shots of the company, just showing how one’s job might be lost if the wrong thing is said.

Hudsucker Industries is a symbol of American life. The concept behind it is loosely based on the large movies satirizing corporations of the 1930s, such as Frank Capra’s You Can’t Take It With You (1938). It fills the role of Goliath in the classic David and Goliath story. The members on the board care less about a human life than they do their profits. The fact that this film was made in 1994 and set in the past shows that things in 1994 were not much different from the setting of the film (1958). Hudsucker Industries is a company representing everything vile and pernicious about capitalism. And, borrowing from classic Capra tradition, it functions well as the villain in a story that shows that one man can change everything, no matter how powerful his enemy might be.

- Dale Maxfield