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Dirty fingertips are all one gets from newspapers, says Havelock Ellis, the editor of the Evening Gazette (Edward G. Robinson) is first seen vigorously washing his hands. Circulation's down so "human interest" stories are in under the aegis of "the sultan of slop" (Oscar Apfel), the sleazier the better. The case is a two-decade-old scandal reheated for readers, the gal (Frances Starr) who once shot a heel and whose daughter (Marian Marsh) is about to marry into society. Boris Karloff as a grimy newshound named Isopod dons bogus clerical collar to infiltrate her lair, the tabloid bombshell writes itself, as the saying goes. "I think you can always get people interested in the crucifixion of a woman." A jeremiad on yellow journalism, whipped up in Mervyn LeRoy's own blur of melodrama and sensationalism. The editor professes moral nausea but still sends forth his muckrakers, one (Ona Munson) barely flinches when stumbling upon a couple of corpses and another (George E. Stone) puts his feet up on his desk while planning a dangerous taxi race. The lovelorn secretary (Aline MacMahon) plays "visible conscience," spitting out the truth once tipsy. "What do you think you are, a critic?" The centerpiece finds the desperate "murderess" trying to call the paper to halt the tell-tale edition, suspended in the split screen between bored switchboard operators and disinterested publishers until she's alone in the middle of the frame, sandwiched by blackness. A phone crashing through a glass door conceals a profanity à la The Front Page, pages are swept down the sewer for the benefit of Pollack's Absence of Malice. "Well, there's some guys that furnish the manure, and there's some guys that grow the flowers." With H.B. Warner, Anthony Bushell, and Purnell Pratt. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |