The Hudsucker Proxy - Plot

Plot

In December 1958, Norville Barnes, a business college graduate from Muncie, Indiana, arrives in New York City looking for a job. He struggles, due to lack of experience, and becomes a mailroom clerk at Hudsucker Industries. Meanwhile, the company founder and president, Waring Hudsucker, unexpectedly commits suicide by jumping out of a top-floor window. When Sidney J. Mussburger, a ruthless member of the board of directors, learns that Hudsucker's stock shares will be sold to the public soon, he mounts a scheme to buy the controlling interest in the company: he will temporarily depress the stock price by hiring an incompetent president to replace Hudsucker. Shortly before his last meeting, Hudsucker sent Mussburger a top-secret communication called a "Blue Letter", which Norville is assigned to deliver. After meeting Norville, Mussburger selects him as a proxy for Hudsucker.

Across town, Amy Archer (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a brassy Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Manhattan Argus, is assigned to write a story about Norville and find out what kind of man he really is. She gets a job at Hudsucker Industries as his personal secretary, pretending to be yet another desperate graduate from Muncie. One night, Amy searches the building to find clues and meets Moses, a man who operates the tower's giant clock and knows "just about anything if it concerns Hudsucker." He tells her Mussburger's plot and she takes the story back to her Chief, but he does not believe a word of it.

The other executives decide to accept Norville's invention for the hula hoop, in the hope that it will depress the company's stock. However, the hula hoop brings the company greater success than before. Amy is infuriated over Norville's new attitude and leaves him. Buzz, the eager elevator operator, pitches a new invention: the flexi-straw. Norville does not like it and fires Buzz. Meanwhile, the Hudsucker janitor, Aloysius, discovers Amy's true identity and informs Mussburger. Mussburger reveals Amy's secret identity to Norville and tells him that he will be dismissed as president after the new year. Mussburger also convinces the board that Norville is insane and must be sent to the local psychiatric hospital.

On New Year's Eve, Amy finds Norville drunk at a beatnik bar. She apologizes, but he storms out and is chased by an angry mob led by Buzz, who was led by Mussburger to believe that Norville stole the hula hoop idea. Norville escapes to the top floor of the Hudsucker skyscraper and changes back into his mailroom uniform. He climbs out on the ledge, where Aloysius locks out Norville and watches as he slips and falls off the building at the stroke of midnight. All of a sudden, Moses stops the clock and time freezes. Waring Hudsucker appears to Norville as an angel and tells him that the Blue Letter that was supposed to be delivered to Mussburger contains a legal document indicating that Hudsucker's shares would go to his immediate successor, which is now Norville. Moses fights and defeats Aloysius inside the tower, allowing Norville to fall safely to the ground. Norville and Amy reconcile. As 1959 progresses, it is Mussburger who is sent to the asylum while Norville develops a new invention "for kids," a flying disc of some kind that will ultimately turn out to be a frisbee.