The rest of his professional life was spent commuting between London and Los Angeles. His first film after his initial return to the United States was "Sweet Smell of Success" (1957), produced by Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Productions (HHL). This was a critically successful film about a press agent (Tony Curtis) who is wrapped up in a powerful newspaper columnist's (Burt Lancaster) plot to end the relationship between his younger sister and a jazz musician. Mackendrick got along poorly with the producers of the film because they felt that he was too much of a perfectionist. After "Sweet Smell of Success", he went back to England to make the second HHL film, "The Devil's Disciple" (1959), but he was fired a month into production owing to lingering tension from their first project together. Mackendrick was devastated. In the same period, Mackendrick assisted Dutch film maker Bert Haanstra with the production of the comedy film, "Fanfare" (1958).