David Hast: Scott, have you seen The Front Page?
Scott Vander Werf: I've seen The Front Page, the original 1931 version. And also, I think the first time that I saw it was the 1974 version directed by Billy Wilder with Walter Mathau and Jack Lemmon. And then, of course, His Girl Friday, the Cary Grant, Rosalyn Russell classic that we've already talked about, which is a reimagining of The Front Page. I've seen that many times.
DH: Yeah, well, that's the 1940 Howard Hawks classic. We did our show on Howard Hawks and talked about it, you know, one of the greatest screwball comedies. I think the 1931, which was the first, it was originally a stage play in the late 20s and then this adaptation. I, in many ways, think it's every bit as good as the remake, His Girl Friday.
SVW: Well, I have to say, when I watched it in preparation for our conversation, I was actually, it was not as enjoyable as I anticipated. The thing was, after I watched it, I kept thinking about it. And of course, that's the sign of a movie that's making an impact on you as a viewer. And then when I went back and read about it, I realized there were things that kind of went over my head in terms of…because it's so fast in terms of what people are saying and doing. So there are things that I didn't realize as I was watching it. So I actually should go back and watch it. The other thing is I saw it on Pluto, which is a free streaming service, it's also available on Tubi and it wasn't the greatest print.So that also can kind of affect your viewing experience.But one of the things that I found that was really interesting is that it really, to me, looks very primitive.And so, this is like at the beginning in terms of not just screwball comedy, but also like the beginning of sound cinema.
DH: Yeah, it's, well I should say first of all, if you're willing to pay $3.99, you should be able to see it on places like Apple TV or Amazon, so you don't need a subscription service to see this movie, and those are gonna be better prints. I watched one of those. Yeah, it is kind of at the beginning of everything. I mean, the pre-code era,sound starts in the late 20s, but really sound isn't entirely there until about 1930 in all movies.And...so this pre-code era before the production code is like 1930 to mid-1934. And this is an early 1931 film, I believe. So yeah, there are things where they're trying to figure it out.Let's say what this movie is: This movie is, in many ways, just a flat-out classic. It's the first great “newspaper picture.” And let's take ourselves back to the 1930s and 40s. Newspapers were everywhere. Major cities like New York or Chicago had a dozen newspapers.You even as a town like, we'd have to look it up where we live, Grand Rapids, Michigan, I wouldn't have been surprised if there were three or four papers in the 1930s.
SVW: Well, I know that there was the Grand Rapids Herald and the Grand Rapids Press, and there probably were others as well.
DH: So newspapers were, I mean, that was the source of news. There was no TV. There was no internet.And newspapers...you know, were daily papers. Some of them did multiple issues. And so this whole thing, this whole newspaper genre was really born with this film and many followed it. But it was tremendously influential. You know, it always the newspaper pictures and this one is has that model features like a sarcastic, hard drinking, cynical reporter who'll do anything for his story and an editor who'll do anything to keep him on the job. And that's what this one's about. We have, you know, the reporter who wants to quit.The great thing about the remake in 1940 in His Girl Friday is they make the reporter a woman and they make Cary Grant and Rosalyn Russell divorced, a divorced couple who still love each other. But this went back to the original, the reporter and the editor are both men, but you can tell there's a great deal of affection between them and Walter Burns will do anything to keep Hildy Johnson from leaving the newspaper and getting married.
SVW: And when you say anything,it's he'll do really terrible things to him that makes their relationship very interesting.
DH: Yeah, Hildy decides he's going to quit the newspaper, move to New York with his new bride and take a job in an advertising agency, just like settle down.And Walter Burns, you know, first he tries to avoid Walter, then Walter gets him a little drunk and reminds him how exciting his life is now and how boring it's going to become. And he actually, we find out earlier from all the reporters who are at City Hall that one time he had a guy like arrested and charged with assault to keep, have one of his reporters, to keep him thrown in jail so he couldn't leave the paper. And he tries to do, he threatens Hildy with the same thing. He pulls a fake fire alarm in Hildy's neighborhood and then he threatens to tell, you know, I guess he has more authority because he's an editor so that people are always calling him sir and everything.And obviously the cops and firemen all know him and he could just go to the cops and say, oh, this guy pulled the fire alarm and have him thrown in jail so he can't quit the paper.
SVW: We also should mention that this is based on a play, the 1928 play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. And I wonder to what degree the
this dynamic is in the play itself. don't know because we don't have the play.
DH: Yeah, but they you know it it is it what I like about it besides the fact that you know it one other thing is is there's these characters, it's a newspaper picture, but they also established the technique in the precedent for incredibly fast overlapping dialogue that became a standard in screwball comedy and this is 1931 and they are talking fast, you know, and it's funny and it's irreverent and, you know, stuff that would be censored later on when the code came along. And on top of that, I think they're doing amazing stuff with the filmmaking. You know, when the sound movies first started, when they very first started, it was a huge step backwards for what movies look like because they didn't know how to move the camera around and put mics on booms and stuff, stuff that's standard now, or to dub the sound in later.Everything got really stagey. You saw people just sitting at tables with mics hidden inside flowerpots between them. This movie is kind of showing off, like, hey, we've figured it out. So there's all these long tracking shots with sound, with dialogue, they're talking as they're walking. And they're like, yeah, we got the hang of this.I mean, circular tracking shots and really fast editing, montages of closeups of all the reporters.It's just, I mean, it's like not boring to watch.
SVW: There's also some scenes where all of a sudden there's just a quick edit to a closeup and then it goes back to the scene that before the closeup so it's almost these shots that are inserted into longer shots. And it's not just this one reporter and his editor. There's a whole group of reporters who are hanging out in the press room that's right next to the jail. In fact, there's a huge part of the beginning of the film where you don't even meet Hildy. It's just all of his fellow reporters who are talking about him and receiving these phone calls from the editor who's looking for the guy. And he's calling all the individual reporters who work for different newspapers. But they're all hanging out playing cards and drinking and smoking.
DH: Yeah, and yeah, so we should finish the summary because obviously there's this kind of backstory to the whole thing about Hildy is gonna get married and leave and quit the paper, but the main plot revolves around this wrongly accused guy named Earl Campbell who's gonna be executed the next day. The sheriff and the mayor want to have time, they've delayed his execution for murder to be right before the election because they know they're going to get lots of votes and get reelected based on hanging this guy. The movie starts the opening shot and opening scene of the movie is they're testing the gallows out in the courtyard below where the press room is. So Earl Campbell escapes and that that's what the movie revolves around and how Hildy gets involved the editor gets involved and how they you know work to expose the corruption among the politicians. So yeah, you can see how it was a stage play, because almost all of it takes place in this press room in City Hall. But they really do turn it into a film, by the way they shoot it.
SVW: So one of the things in terms of watching this film that went over my head is something that you just mentioned. And that's the fact that the guy that's on the run is wrongfully accused. I thought that he actually, I can't remember, I mean, I don't remember hearing any confirmation that he didn't actually shoot a police officer.
DH: No, you're right. He isn't wrongfully accused, but they're not looking at all the stuff the way the all the different aspects of it because it turns out that there's a possibility the governor's actually going to commute his sentence and not have him hung.And the politicians try to cover that up.So he he did commit the killing right, but there's other circumstances around it that that somehow make it, you know, that he doesn't deserve the fate he's getting. That's maybe a little weakness in the plotting, but…
SVW: And then, when he escapes, he actually shoots somebody else. And when he's talking about it later about, he said he didn't realize he'd shot the guy until after he had.
DH: Right. They handed him a gun. It was really dumb. He was supposed to be, it was a psychiatrist trying to get him to reenact the shooting and they hand him a gun. You know, I mean, they were kind of asking for it in a weird way.But one of the things I love is just the writing is so good. I mean, this is maybe the second or third time I've seen it.I picked up so much this time that I didn't remember. I didn't pick up other times. mean, everything from the cliche where the editor, you know, stopped the presses. Walter Burns is on the phone. He's like, “tear out the whole front page, Johnson's got the lead.”You know, they're going to do that and when Hildy says he's going to get married and become going to the advertising business. One of the reporter says “you'll be like a fire horse tied to a milk wagon.” I don’t get that reference, but you get the idea.And one of my favorite lines, I had to look this up, I still can't find out what it means, Hildy says “I've been a newspaper man for 15 years. It's a cross between being a bootlegger and a galloofer what the heck is a galloofer?
SVW: We’ll have to look that up.
DH: I looked everywhere I could, I could not find that slang word.
SVW: Well, and in terms of the fact that these are all reporters, and this is kind of like in the other film that we're going to talk about as well. Yeah, the movies go on forever and you don't see anybody writing. And then when you finally see Hildy at the typewriter, he is typing in such he is not typing. If you know typewriting,even if it's the way he's doing it with two fingers, he's basically just tapping the keys. This is just aside in terms of watching it. And by the time you get to His Girl Friday, they've got it down. They have people who actually can type really super fast and you see that they're typing.Whereas here it's like, it's just all of a sudden he's gonna bat out this story and it's in the room with the editor and he's just like,brrrr…..but I'm typing in a way that's even faster than anyone could actually.
DH: But that's good. See, I didn't even notice that. What I noticed was, you know, I'm just watching the dialogue between the two and watching the scene play out. You know, along with it is this incredibly fast sound of of a typewriter, a manual typewriter, which is what you associate with a newspaper picture. Right. So, speaking of newspaper pictures, let's talk about the other one, which is a more serious drama also from 1931. So also a pre-code film, also full of things that would be banned a few years later; booze, speakeasies, lots of sexual innuendo and direct talk.
SVW: Also another one based on a play, this one by Lewis Weitzelhau. Ah, okay.
DH: This one was directed by Mervyn Leroy and it is Edward G. Robinson. I think he did it right after he did Little Caesar. So Little Caesar is one of the seminal gangster films. It's one of the first great gangster films. I mean, it's before Scarface. I think Scarface is probably greater film, but Little Caesar was first on the scene in 1931, one of the first gangster films, and it made Edward G. Robinson an instant star. And he's the star of this as the managing editor of a newspaper.
SVW: Five-Star Final. And I didn't realize, you don't get into the film,it's into the film when you realize what is a five-star final?It's the fifth printing of the day that goes out at midnight.
DH: Yeah, that's again, these daily newspapers in the big cities would do multiple editions each day. I mean, I'm sure they repeated, know, a lot of the content was the same in each edition, but as they got new news, I mean, I think they're accurately showing us, it's probably faster and more exciting than it really was every day, but they were gathering news all day long, I imagine some reporters did a couple of stories in a day.
SVW: And you see in the opening scenes where how as a business that this was very competitive.
DH: Yeah, and that's what the movies about. So it shows that it's super. Yeah, the opening scene. Well, you want to talk about what happens in that opening scene?
SVW: Well, it's essentially showing you sort of the the seamier side of the business where these thugs are basically going to a new stand owner. And because he doesn't have the paper that they work for that's up front, know out front that they end up vandalizing his newsstand,
DH: Right. It's so competitive and so what we find out is that the publisher of this paper the Gazette Hinchcliffe He wants to get the circulation up. He doesn't care about journalistic integrity. And so how do you do that? You run more sex scandal violence. He says, can increase our circulation and at the same time raise sex to a dignified attitude. Yeah, right. And he tells the editor, played by Edward G. Robinson, the paper's been too formal. And Randall, the editor, goes, yeah, like a newspaper.And Hinchcliffe orders Randall, orders Edward G. Robinson to go back and revisit this 20-year-old story about a stenographer who killed her boss clearly in self-defense.And Randall has been doing actual news stories about political affairs, world affairs. He calls his boss the “Sultan of Slop.” And when he's told to do this scandal story, you see just for a second, a little hesitation. Once or twice, you see him thinking about it for about one second. But he goes along. He proceeds to embrace this assignment fully and put all his journalistic know-how, dirty tricks, everything into it. So that's one of the ironies and tragedies of this movie is that Edward G. Robinson just completely goes along with it.
SVW: Yeah, and I agree with you there, but I think one of the things, the feelings I had when the movie started was I almost got the feeling that, this is a guy who's on his way out the door, that there's something, the way that he's presented at the beginning of the film, the fact that he's another person who's bein…the people are trying to find him just like Hildy the reporters be trying to be found by the editor in the front page. The publishers trying to find his…
DH: He’s out in a speakeasy at the beginning getting a drink, right?
SVW: But from the get go before this this is even introduced to him it seems like he is you can tell that there's that he is having a crisis of conscience.
DH: Yeah, I think you're right but then he doesn't challenge it. I mean he really doesn't know. He just goes ahead and they find this poor woman who's, you it's been 20 years,she's married and she has a child. The child was born out of wedlock to the boss. I mean, it's implied that he probably raped her or something, right? Which led to her killing him. And she's got a daughter and the daughter's about to get married. And no one knows about this terrible thing in her past and she's got a normal life again now and a little bit of happiness, and they drag it all out again and put it on the front page.And so this is an early example of showing how the media will do anything for money. They don't care. In that sense, it's still very timely.
SVW: Well, and the other thing that in terms of in comparison to the front page, there are moments where the reporters in the front page are all basically spinning things out of…they show you that both these films do not really paint journalism in a positive light. They show that it's the idea in terms, and we can see this in the history of yellow journalism and tabloid journalism. In fact, they even refer to their own newspapers as tabloids.
DH: I think what you might also be thinking of too is one of the good characters. This is Boris Karloff, isn't this, right before he did Frankenstein. So he's not well known, but he plays a really creepy character. But another character who's big in this movie is Aileen McMahon, which is not a well-known name now, but I think we've mentioned her in a couple other shows because she was a big actress in the pre-code era. I think that's what, that's where you see his conscience kind of, because she sees eye to eye to him and maybe they even have a little romantic kind of sense between them. And he says to her, “you sit there like a visible conscience” because she totally doesn't approve that they're going to ruin this poor woman's life. She says, “I think you can always get people interested in the crucifixion of a woman.” But then Robinson, you think he's going to come around, but he doesn't. He's like, “ideals won't put a patch on your pants.” And then he says, “God gives us heartache and the devil gives us whiskey.” He's just cynical and he goes along and he makes it all happen.
SVW: And Miss Taylor also says other things throughout till the end of the film in terms of like pointing out how women are end up being victims in some way, or form.
DH: We also see him hire at the beginning a woman. He hires a woman as a reporter who's clearly been sent to him and is only being hired because she's sexy. Although then she turns out to be a real reporter. I thought they were just hiring her, you know, for her looks and she was going to be like, they were going to make fun of her and have her be incompetent. But he immediately sends her out on the job. That was kind of like having it both ways.
SVW: So another thing that went over my head, just like the idea that thethe man on the run in the front page is wrongfully accused. Here, I don't remember ever getting a sense of anything about this so-called murder that happened 20 years ago, whether it was in self-defense, how this person…I mean, obviously when they show you, when you meet the woman, when you meet the character, she's obviously living a good life with a good, know, and has built up a family and built up something out of whatever happened, whatever tragic thing happened. And she was acquitted. I mean, we find out that she was acquitted from the murder. She was not convicted.But I don't remember hearing any information to give me like what happened. What were the circumstances?
DH: No, it was there. It was pretty quick. It was a couple of lines, but they talked about women being exploited and put in these positions by their bosses because it was their boss.And yeah, they made it unlike the Earl Campbell murder in The Front Page where yeah, they don't. He did clearly shoot this. I think was a policeman. It’s definitely expressed that she was, you know, made the victim, a woman crucified like the secretary says.
SVW: And in terms of The Front Page, I mean, that's one of the examples of the racism in the film because one of the reporters, the group reporter says, “oh, he killed a colored policeman.” And then somebody says, “yeah, that's all he did” as if, know, okay, this is an African American policeman. It's not the same as killing a white policeman.
DH: Yeah, we didn't mention that. You brought it up now, but yeah, The Front Page does have, it's interesting. There's just several lines that we would think now are just completely racist, right?Just the way, and what's weird about it is I don't think it's meant to be a racist movie. But it's you this is almost a 100 year old movie and you just see how in white culture, you know that that it's just you know, using the term “white” to mean “normal” stuff like that.
SVW: Well, and then and also I should mention some since we're talking about a policeman getting shot.None of the police officers, none of the law enforcement are presented in any positive light in either of these films.
DH: No, and that that certainly is another feature of pre code right.
SVW: The policeman is not your friend in these movies.
DH: Right, yeah. I mean, think pre-code movies, beside being more open sexually and with language, they're also more political and more cultural in ways that sort of got sanitized in what we still love as classic Hollywood, the 30s, 40s, 50s, but it started to change in the 50s. Yeah, so these are two newspaper pictures, a wonderful, wonderful genre that really I mean, it existed well into the 50s. I mean, what are some of the great newspaper genres of later eras, right? Things like All the President's Men.
SVW: I was going to mention that.
DH: Even now, Spotlight. Stuff like that. I mean, there's still newspaper movies. I don't know how much longer newspapers seem to be, you know, a threatened form of media these days, but it's, it's a…but they were huge in the golden age of Hollywood.
SVW: And I have to clarify or qualify my viewing experience was such that, I mean, I was interested as I was watching them, but I didn't and was not as entertained as I thought I was going to be. But then in the days following, I watched both of them the same night. And the days following, I just kept thinking about the movie. they lodged in my brain.
DH: I mean I could see not enjoying Five Star final because Five Star final is a is a drama and it is painful in many ways what happens in that movie. But maybe I because I've seen the front page a couple times I just think it's hilarious and just a classic
SVW: And in terms of like his girl Friday. I remember all of the zinging dialogue I totally picked up in this case.I'm like “what did that guy say?”
DH: It's even faster in this movie I think.
SVW: Yeah, so that's where a re-watch would be and with a better print would probably benefit me.
DH: Yeah, I mean, for anyone who thinks that movies from the old, old days are stodgy, mean, this is, nobody taught, dialogue is never this fast anymore.
SVW: All right, well, thanks for joining us.
DH: Thanks, Scott.
