Five Star Final

This Oscar-nominated film (Best Picture) shows the dark side of journalism as a paper delves into the past of a woman (Frances Starr) who was impregnated by her boss and acquitted of his murder.

Edward G. Robinson (Little Caesar) is a newspaper editor that is interested in boosting circulation and is not concerned with the lives he destroys in the process. He goes after Nancy Voorhees (Starr), who is now Nancy (Voorhees) Townsend and is not concerned that she has not told her daughter (the doll-faced Marian Marsh), who is now about to me married, about her past.

Robinson was absolutely brilliant in the role and ably assisted by Boris Karloff and Oscar-nominated actress (Dragon Seed) Aline MacMahon in her first film.

A classic showing the seedy side of journalism.

Ordered to up the sleaze quotient for increased circulation, New York "Gazette" newspaper editor Edward G. Robinson (as Joseph W. Randall) dredges up the story of a local woman who shot her adulterous lover dead, and earned a scandalous reputation. The serialization sells newspapers, but the subject Frances Starr (as Nancy Voorhees) has changed her life with second husband H. B. Warner (as Michael Townsend); moreover, the couple has kept the sordid past secret from pretty daughter Marian Marsh (as Jenny), who is about to marry handsome high society's Anthony Bushell (as Phillip Weeks). When boozy staff reporter Boris Karloff (as Isopod) absconds with Ms. Marsh's picture, the consequences could prove tragic...

This is a fine if dated early "talkie" with a message still reverberating. The ensemble cast, sometimes venturing into melodramatics with understandable verve, is fun. Successful Broadway star Aline MacMahon makes an impressive film debut as Mr. Robinson's lovelorn secretary. Director Mervyn LeRoy moves it nicely and includes some rich "split-screen" work.

******** Five Star Final (9/10/31) Mervyn LeRoy ~ Edward G. Robinson, Frances Starr, Aline MacMahon, Boris Karloff

A powerful, uncompromising early look at "Yellow Journalism" which made a great enough impact at the time to be counted among the year's best films at the Academy Awards – to say nothing of the rush of similar pictures which followed in its wake, culminating in Howard Hawks' masterpiece, HIS GIRL Friday (1940).

Edward G. Robinson is re-united here with the director of LITTLE CAESAR (1930), the film that made him a star, and delivers another great performance which is sufficiently nuanced to anchor the somewhat melodramatic plot in reality. Supporting him, among many others, are Aline MacMahon as his long-suffering secretary who's secretly in love with him and Boris Karloff in a marvelous turn as the most shamelessly hypocritical reporter on the newspaper's payroll. The cynical, rapid-fire dialogue gives it an edge and an authenticity that's almost impossible to recapture these days and, needless to say, became one of the key elements in this type of film.

The film features a number of good scenes but the highlights would have to be: the split-screen technique introduced to shut out the former convict, who is now being hounded by "The Gazette", from having a conversation with either the owner of the paper or its news editor (Robinson); the lengthy and heart-breaking scene in which the female ex-convict's husband (played by the ever-reliable H.B. Warner) bids farewell to their daughter and her soon-to-be husband without letting them in on the fact that the woman has committed suicide and that he intends to join her soon after; the hysterical tirade at the end by the daughter when she finally confronts the men who have destroyed her life, a brave tour-de-force moment for Marian Marsh (familiar to horror aficionados from SVENGALI [1931], THE MAD GENIUS [1931] and THE BLACK ROOM [1935]) who had so far only rather blandly served the romantic interest of the plot; the final shot of the picture, with the latest issue of "The Gazette" being swept into the gutter by street-cleaners along with the rest of the garbage, thus leaving no doubt whatsoever as to where the film-makers' true sentiments lay.

This largely forgotten film stars Edward G. Robinson and was one of the Best Picture Oscar nominees in 1931-1932. Robinson plays the editor of a newspaper whose publisher instructs Robinson to come up with a story that will increase circulation. Robinson's solution is to track down a woman who killed the father of her child twenty years before when he refused to marry her, but she was acquitted, largely because of her child. She has since married, and her daughter is on the eve of her own marriage and has no idea of her mother's past. Robinson's "what ever happened to" idea is a success, but at a horrible cost to the family involved.

Not on DVD or VHS, the film uses some techniques that were rather odd for Warner Bros at the time, considering that their urban dramas usually were very fast-paced. To begin with, the film makes a big production of introducing Robinson to the audience, having the other players talk about him at length, and even showing a shot of just his hands as he washes up before he makes his big entrance. Then - the whole movie proceeds to switch its dramatic center more to the family that Robinson's newspaper is writing a scandal piece on and its tragic effect on them.

Robinson and Boris Karloff - in an odd turn as an alcoholic reporter just prior to his star-making role in Frankenstein - have acting in the age of sound down to a fine art. However, the actors playing the roles of the family targeted by Robinson's scandal sheet seem to be hold-overs from the silent era, the best known being silent star H.B. Warner. Their speech is somewhat slow and over-dramatic, and their gestures exaggerated, but not ridiculously so. This might have been to contrast them with the hard-boiled occupants of the newsroom, but it makes the film look like it has two entirely different directors.

Viewed this film years ago on a late late T.V. show and was able to tape it. The author of the original play, Louis Weitzenkorn, was once the managing editor of the New York Evening Graphic, a yellow journalism tabloid which gave him the idea for the main character of Hinchecliffe former publisher of the New York Mirror. The film was remade as Two Against the World in 1936. Bernard Hinchecliffe(Oscar Apfel) owner of the notorious scandal sheet, the GAZETTE and his managing editor, Joseph Randall(Edward G. Robinson), is ordered to boost the circulation by doing a story on the Vorhees case. Years ago, Nancy Vorhees(Francis Starr) murdered the man who betrayed her. Randall seeks the services of T. Vernon Isopod (Boris Karloff), an expelled divinity student. Isopod disguises himself as a clergyman and enters the Townsend home, gaining their confidence. Ona Munson, veteran film actress of the 1930's and 1940's along with Boris Karloff fullfil their newspaper duties perfectly. Five Star Final is a great film classic because of the great acting of Edward G. Robinson.