YMMV / How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

• Adaptation Displacement: Based on a parody advice book that nobody remembers anymore.
• Award Snub: The musical won the Pulitzer Prize, but the award went only to Frank Loesser and Abe Burrows and left off credited co-writers Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert, on the basis that Burrows had written most of the final book based on an unproduced play by Weinstock and Gilbert.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The Pirate Dance.
  • Also "Coffee Break," as it does nothing to further the story and serves no purpose. It's almost as though the show itself was taking a coffee br-wait a minute...
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Mr. Ovington has less than half a dozen scenes, but is very well-liked for being savvy about how to counter Finch and his trickery due to reading the same self-help book as Finch.
• Funny Moments: Anything involving Groundhogs and Chipmunks.
• Informed Attractiveness: Hedy La Rue is considered to be the hottest woman at the company, odd given there are usually a lot of pretty actresses hired as the secretaries, and her appearance in the 1966 adaptation looked very Day Glo and had a voice that could scare away bears.
• Magnificent Bastard: J. Pierrepont Finch, a window washer in New York City, decides to make a name for himself in the world of business through illegitimate means. Beginning by pretending to know the president of the company, Mr. Biggley, to get a job in the mailroom, Finch later turns down an offer to head the department, making his supervisors promote him to a junior executive for his "selflessness". After discovering that his new secretary is Mr. Biggley's mistress, he tricks her into flirting with his supervisor, getting him fired and taking his job. Forging a fake connection with Mr. Biggley by pretending to share his alma mater, Finch outs the Vice President of Advertising as an alumnus of a rival school and takes his job, later conning Mr. Biggley by stealing a coworker's idea and passing it off as his own. When the idea falls apart, Finch saves his own job by outing his coworker Bud Frump as Mr. Biggley's nephew to the Chairman of the Board, who then fires Frump and, upon his retirement, has Finch take his former position.
• Memetic Mutation: "Brotherhood of Man" was used in a ton of other productions, including The Drew Carey Show and 30 Rock.
• Questionable Casting: Darren Criss had a run of a few weeks in the 2011 revival. While not a bad singer, his vocal range is more suited for pop hits and not for the stage.