Friday, November 1, 2013

Old Dude, Old Movies - "Scandal Sheet"

Released in 1952, this is an intense picture that film noir fans will like. Broderick Crawford leads a strong cast. John Derek. Donna Reed. Harry Morgan. Rosemary DeCamp. This team is first-rate. The story is taut and suspenseful. Well-done, all around.

Crawford is "Mark Chapman", the editor, heart and soul of a formerly esteemed New York paper that turned into the gossip rag named in the title. Derek is "Steve", the star reporter who aspires to be just like his boss. Steve is a streetwise punk reporter who doesn't mind being unscrupulous in order to scoop the competition.  Morgan is Steve's sidekick photographer "Biddle", capable but jaded by seeing too many murder scenes. Reed is "Julie", the features writer and product of a finishing school. She's deeply disillusioned by the paper's slide into low-brow tabloid journalism.

The paper is running roughshod over the community, but Chapman doesn't care as long as the paper's net worth continues to grow. The paper is increasingly profitable, the stockholders cash the dividend checks (even as they complain about the tone of the paper), and he's a big man in the city.

He manipulates his readers in big ways and small. The paper even stoops so low as to put on a "lonely hearts" dance (young folk, ask your grandparents or other seniors about this). In his cynical way, Chapman wants to manipulate the gathering into fodder for several sensational front-page stories. Lonely men and women of all shapes and ages have gathered, with the hope of finding love. Off to one side, a middle-aged lady named "Charlotte" (DeCamp) takes in the proceedings. Eventually, she gets up the nerve to approach Chapman, and coerces him into talking. Later that evening, Charlotte ends up dead.

This type of lurid, salacious story is the type Steve loves to chase. With Biddle in tow, Steve runs all over town after clues. He is every bit as tenacious as his boss, and he knows breaking this case before any other paper (or even the police) will put bonuses in his pocket as well as Mark's. "Charlie Barnes" (Henry O'Neill), a former colleague who's down on his luck, has evidence identifying the murderer. Charlie's penchant for drink has killed what was a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting career. Even now, as Charlie tries to tell Steve and Julie what he has, his fondness for booze undermines his veracity. Charlie their doubt & decides to take his information to a rival paper. As he approaches the building of the rival paper, a shadowy figure lures Charlie into an alley. Charlie gets bludgeoned to death, and the headlines get even more feverish.

As Steve gets closer, Mark also realizes his professional dream of actually owning the paper comes within reach.  Mark directly profits from his low-brow approach to handling news, but he has secrets that could ruin it all.

Finally, Steve finds another person who can identify Charlotte's killer. The climax is tense, and the look on Steve's face when the killer is confirmed is priceless.

This is a great movie. The more I see Derek's work as a younger actor, the more I like it. He had a way with the young, sharp-dressed supremely confident guy. He held his own and then some with pros like Crawford and Reed. If you love film noir and get a chance to see this film, do it.

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