Stop the presses: My all-time favorite newspaper movies
I think I first fell in love with the idea of being a newspaperman after watching “The Adventures of Superman” as a kid. Reruns of the 1950s George Reeves series aired every afternoon on WGN-Channel 9 in the ’60s, and I remember watching all of them with unbounded fascination.
Call it fate, but I always found myself drawn more to Clark Kent, the “mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper,” than to the Man of Steel. Clark was always so cool, so intelligent and so dashing in those horn-rimmed glasses and fedora. Years later I came to wonder why you hardly ever saw an actual copy of The Daily Planet, or why Clark and Lois and Jimmy never seemed to have any deadlines. But if being a reporter meant getting paid to go out on exciting adventures and finding things out before anybody else, I knew that was for me!
As I got older, movies began to play a bigger role in defining my image of a newspaperman. They also provided a richer understanding of the power of journalism to do good as well as its power to corrupt. At countless points during my career, I witnessed instances of real life imitating cinema art. Practically every editor I ever worked for reminded me of some character I’d seen in the movies.
With deference to my esteemed colleagues Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper, I would never presume to declare the best movies in any category. But I do feel qualified to list the movies I enjoy most about the newspaper business. (If my list leans toward film noir, I suppose it’s because I’ve always been partial to that genre.) In no special order, here are my 10 all-time favorite films about the Fourth Estate:
- Citizen Kane (1941) Orson Welles’ tour de force, inspired by the life of publishing giant William Randolph Hearst, is the grandest of all newspaper movies. Yet it remains as fresh and entertaining as ever. Early on, the young Charles Foster Kane writes to his guardian: “I think it would be fun to run a newspaper!” Fun indeed. Buy or rent the DVD with Roger Ebert’s splendid audio commentary track.
- Ace in the Hole (1951) It’s the great Billy Wilder at his most cynical, with Kirk Douglas at his most ferocious. As a down-on-his-luck reporter, Douglas exploits a man trapped in a collapsed cave to boost his own career. Every subsequent media circus that springs up around a person supposedly in peril (right up to last fall’s Balloon Boy hoax) was foreshadowed here.
- Deadline USA (1952) Humphrey Bogart plays the screen’s greatest crusading newspaper editor, trying desperately to fight the mob and keep The Day from being liquidated by its founder’s heirs. Ethel Barrymore is the regal model for publishing matriarchs from the Washington Post’s Katharine Graham to Nancy Marchand’s fictional Mrs. Pynchon on “Lou Grant.” This movie should be mandatory viewing in every journalism class and every newsroom in the country.
- His Girl Friday (1940) Howard Hawks’ brilliant remake of the Chicago newspaper classic “The Front Page” changes the role of hard-boiled reporter Hildy Johnson from male to female, and casts Rosalind Russell opposite Cary Grant, who’s Russell’s editor and ex-husband, Walter Burns. The hilarious rapid-fire dialogue and breakneck pace will leave you breathless.
- Call Northside 777 (1948) Shot in documentary style on location in Chicago, it’s a virtual time capsule of the city in glorious black and white. James Stewart plays a composite of real-life Chicago Times reporters Jack McPhaul and James McGuire, who helped free a man wrongly convicted of murdering a police officer. Click here to read Tribune uber-blogger Eric Zorn’s recent followup with the exonerated man’s son.
- Sweet Smell of Success (1957) Burt Lancaster is so utterly evil and sadistic as powerful New York gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker that it makes you believe every sordid tale ever told about Walter Winchell and his ilk.
- All the President’s Men (1976) The Robert Redford/Dustin Hoffman movie about Watergate (and the book it was based on) made investigative reporting sexy and made superstar heroes out of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Largely because of them, enrollment in journalism schools across the country swelled.
- Scandal Sheet (1952) Broderick Crawford plays a magnificently surly editor on a mission to raise circulation (and make his bonus) even if it means transforming a once-respected newspaper into “a disgusting tabloid pandering to the passions of the base moron.” John Derek is his young protégé who stops at nothing to get to the bottom of a sensational murder.
- Continental Divide (1981) I never bought John Belushi as a Mike Roykoesque columnist — or as a romantic leading man — for one second. But all of the movie’s newsroom interiors were shot at the old Chicago Sun-Times Building on Wabash Avenue. For a fraction of a second, I’m visible as an extra in the background.
- North by Northwest (1959) OK, this Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece isn’t a newspaper movie by any stretch of the imagination. But it is my No. 1 favorite movie ever. And there’s one brief moment that always gives me a thrill: Just after his run-in with a menacing crop duster in an Indiana cornfield, Cary Grant returns to the Ambassador East Hotel to find a copy of the Chicago Sun-Times with the headline: “Two Die As Crop-Duster Plane Crashes And Burns.” Product placement doesn’t get any better than that.
See you back here on Monday with a review of the 10 biggest Chicago media stories of the decade. Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all!
24
12 2009
blogs.vocalo.org
If I may be so presumptuous to speak for many of your fans, we are all quite happy that you grew up to be Chicago’s Clark Kent. Happy Holidays, Mr. Feder!
Feder rules! Roba-booey!
How long until you criticize Vocalo or CPR?
Thanks for the list. Some I had never heard of, but am looking forward to viewing. Feder, thanks for such informative posts and keeping your pulse on the industry. Merry Christmas to you too.
Great list, Clark! Looking forward to Monday’s list! Happy holidays!
Everybody on my floor used to read at least one daily mewspaper. Now I have lost my regular newspaper person. Only about 3 readers are left. Down from 12. I guess we get all of our news, opinions, and even gossip from elsewhere.
I am sad to see the end of the newspaper as we used to know it. The paper of today has so little left of what I looked forward to every day. The essence and juice has been sucked out.
Criticize CPR? Can’t imagine why Rob would want to think something’s amiss with cardiopulmonary resuscitation, although even I disagree with how to ADMINISTER it. You would like to have some type of siphoning tube rather than lip-to-strangerdanger-lip contact, for the germ-o-phobes among us. Maybe like a remote car starter.
Thanks for the newspaper movie memories. I love them too… and the only one on your list that I haven’t seen is “Scandal Sheet” with Broderick Crawford. I’ll have to hunt it down.
As you may imagine, I also love old time radio shows about newspapers and newspaper men. Naturally, “Superman” is on my list, as is “Big Town” (CBS 1937-1945, NBC 1948-1952)which originally starred Edward G. Robinson as Steve Wilson, managing editor of the crusading Illustrated Press. Wilson fought racketeers before and after WW II and Nazis during the war.
Another favorite was “The Big Story” (NBC 1947-1955) which offered dramas based on real-life newspapermen and the biggest stories of their careers. The actual reporter involved would appear at the end of the show and receive a $500 reward from the show’s sponsor, Pall Mall cigarettes.
There was even a daytime drama soap opera dealing with a newspaperman, “Front Page Farrell” (MBS 1941-1942, NBC 1942-1954). It originally starred Richard Widmark as as David Farrell, “handsome young star reporter” for the Brooklyn Eagle.
There’s more, but that’s the -30- mark for now.
Your column is still the first thing I read every morning. Greetings of the season to you and continued success in the new year.
Great list! Your blog is a great way to enjoy to enjoy morning coffee. Happy Holidays!
what about me?
http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/blogshakalaka
“news without hd makeup. it’s yesterday’s news but so am i.”
as for this post, i grew up in the ’60s, too. how come i never ran into you?
roger ebert is great on the “citizen kane” dvd, but his commentary on the dvd is duplicated to a great extent by someone else whose name escapes me at the moment. (both, for example, explain the light in the window image.)
i enjoyed your list. i just wish you had taken the opportunity to list some of the worst newspaper movies of all time because, as you know, this new medium you’re in permits you to say when a movie is sh–.
since you went off on a tangent on “north by northwest,” so will i. walker percy noted that the only way you can really enjoy the grand canyon is by having the scene from “north by northwest” filmed there. practically no one can merely appreciate the canyon for what is, least of all tourists who, in their anxiety to capture the moment, “entomb” the canyon in a camera. walker percy wrote a lot about our hapless attempts to capture authenticity. in fact, he wrote a great novel called “the moviegoer,” speaking of the topic of today’s post. to paraphrase percy, we’re all moviegoers, even those of us who don’t go to movies.
It’s not enough any more to give ‘em just news. They want comics, contests, puzzles. They want to know how to bake a cake, win friends, and influence the future. Ergo, horoscopes, tips on the horses, interpretation of dreams so they can win on the numbers lottery. And, if they accidentally stumble on the first page… news!
what about accuracy?
“north by northwest” has a famous scene at mount rushmore. i must have been thinking of another cary grant movie south by southwest of there when i mentioned the grand canyon. probably “the philadelphia story.”
vocalo.org does not regret the error.
Robert Feder + Horn Rimmed Glasses + Fedora. Hmmm….George Reeves has nothing on our Robert Feder!!
I wanted to be the guy to correct Bruce. Dad-gummit!
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to you and yours, Mr. Feder. :-)
Looking forward to seeing some of those movies for the first time. Interesting list. And it is great hearing from Chuck Schaden. Merry Christmas to everyone.
The Paper?
“MIracle of the Bells” starred Fred McMurray as a cynical PR guy in love with Alida Valli, a starlet from a small coal town who dies just after completing a movie about Joan of Arc. He orchestrates a national campaign to get her movie released after the studio head (Lee J. Cobb) shelves the picture for fear bad pub. Frank Sinatra plays the young parish priest of her home town church. Philip Ahn has one memorable scene where the two share their dreams. From a script by Ben Hecht, based on a novel by Russell Janney.
Robert,
You are the perfect example as to why we need newspapers and newpapermen (if that’s a real word).
Merry Christmas and best wishes to all.
Doug Squiers
Kalamazoo
A recent New Yorker cartoon features Superman on a psychoanalyst’s couch. “I’m doing all right,” the caption reads, “but Clark Kent can’t find a newspaper that’s hiring.”
Excellent list. Just saw Scandal Sheet a few months ago, and was amazed at its timeliness. Off the top of my skull, I can only think of a couple additions: David Fincher’s “Zodiac” and Sam Fuller’s “Park Row.”
There must also be dozens of memorable newspaper characters in movies otherwise not mainly about journalism. Wallace Shawn as L’Oiseau in Alan Rudolph’s “The Moderns,” and Angela Lansbury and Van Johnson in Capra’s “State of the Union” come to mind. Speaking of Capra, mention should also be made of the attempt to use a Boy Scout paper to bring down a corrupt political machine, with startlingly ugly results (anyone who still thinks of Capra as a middlebrow cornpone optimist should take another look at that scene).
The early scenes in “The Paper” still capture what it’s like to be a city editor. It’s like directing traffic at O’Hare.
I love romantic comedies where one or both of the lovers is a reporter– “It Happened One Night,” “Christmas in Connecticut,” “I Love Trouble,” “Mr Deeds Goes To Town”– lots more.
Someone needs to do a Requiem for Newspapers film festival :)
I love your rationale for interjecting “North by Northwest” as it is on my TOP TEN movie list. Also among my favorites is “Deadline USA.” Bogart makes a speech about what newspapers should be, corny but a lot of fun. I know you can’t include everything, but I would have included “Meet John Doe”. Two other flicks, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” (Edward Arnold plays a power-hungry newspaper publisher/editor in both) and Hitchcock’s “Foreign Correspondent” should be right up there.
“His Girl Friday” is an incredibly well-written and acted movie. Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant were never better. One of my all-time favs.
Teacher’s Pet, with Clark Gable and Doris Day, was also an amusing movie about a cynical newspaper editor.
Does TV count? I nominate The Wire for its stark portrayal of the Baltimore Sun’s decline, and the City Room’s “all-hands-on-deck” attempt to keep covering the news as the paper collapsed around them.
Can’t believe 1994’s Ron Howard flick, The Paper, didn’t make the list! Michael Keaton, Robert Duvall, Glenn Close? Great movie, and probably the last made at a time when a newspaper was considered the authority, the last of an era befoe the Internet came of age.
Kudos for including “Deadline U.S.A.” which is scheduled to run on Turner Classic Movies on Dec. 30, but leaving out the Clint Eastwood flick “True Crime” is a real omission.
How do you do it? Your column gets better every day.
Thanks for a wonderful read. As a newspaperman in love with newspapers, I’ll watch anything that has a newspaper angle (I decided to go to journalism school in part because of the old “Lou Grant” show). Though not in the league of “Deadline USA” or “Ace in the Hole,” the Jack Webb-directed “-30-” has some great newspaper elements. The British version of “State of Play” is a better drama, but the end credit sequence in the U.S. version (with Russell Crowe), showing the story going from computer to plate to print and onto the trucks, is a great salute to the analog powerhouse that is the creation of a daily newspaper. The one newspaper movie people like that is a dud for me is “The Paper” – I never believed Michael Keaton for a moment.
Great Caesar’s ghost. Great picks.
Hey, don’t forget “Libeled Lady,” with Spencer Tracy, Myrna Loy, William Powell and Jean Harlow. Great romantic comedy with a strong newspaper theme!
I agree with Chase. “The Paper” was terrific. Great scene where Michael Keaton yelled, “Stop the presses”!
The 1931 version of The Front Page with Adolphe Menjou and Pat O’Brien was one of my favorites – along with Deadline, USA, Call Northside 777 and His Girl Friday. I had planned a career in newspaper (editing, not reporting) so that I could yell “Stop the presses!”. But by the time I got to my Medill “teaching newspaper” internship, radio and TV had usurped the immediacy of reporting. I opted for radio’s “This just in”. Never regretted it, but I don’t miss it either, I’m afraid. Web work is much more fun and a lot like what I originally set out to do.
Good to see your column thriving again.
SCANDAL SHEET isn’t as well-known as some of the other titles on your list, but the movie does touch upon journalistic issues that are still relevant. Additionally, the murder angle in the film eerily foreshadows certain aspects of the Drew Peterson case (in regards to the death of Kathleen Savio).
HIS GIRL FRIDAY was based on THE FRONT PAGE, co-written by Ben Hecht, a former Chicago newspaperman. Hecht’s (humorously) cynical attitude toward his past profession is also evident in his screenplay for NOTHING SACRED (1937) and its lighter remake, LIVING IT UP (1954). In both, the lead character is misdiagnosed with a fatal condition and a New York reporter hopes to increase his paper’s circulation by exploiting the human interest (i.e., death watch) angle. In NOTHING SACRED, one character offers this observation regarding newspaper men: “The hand of God, reaching down into the mire, couldn’t elevate one of them to the depths of degradation!”
On various occasions, news reporters have been portrayed by comedians such as The Three Stooges (CRASH GOES THE HASH, CRIME ON THEIR HANDS), The Bowery Boys (NEWS HOUNDS) and Bob Hope (THEY GOT ME COVERED). You’ll know better than I as to whether these are instances of art imitating life.
The focus so far in this discussion has been misplaced exclusively on print and broadcast, so you all have missed the greatest newspaper movie that centered on photography: “The Public Eye,” a 1992 bio-pic of the immortal Arthur Felig, known as Weegee, and played to perfection by Joe Pesci. Weegee defined the crime photographer in the 1950s, and today in retrospect, his photos capture the very essence of big city life while probing the nature of art and the artist. If you haven’t seen it, rent it now…and forget “Citizen Kane,” the single most over-rated, overacted and over-produced movie of any genre.
THE PUBLIC EYE is indeed a fine, well-crafted film, but it’s only loosely based on the life and career of Arthur Felig (Joe Pesci plays a character named Leon “Bernzy” Bernstein). As a movie bio, it’s about as accurate as any other “inspired by” dramatization. There’s still room (and need) for a definitive look at Weegee; a documentary would probably be the best (cinematic) way to pay tribute to him.
I like Call Northside 777 because of its Chicago connection. Having a paper route when I was a kid in the 60s made me a fan of all well made newspaper movies. Back in those slower times a paperboy would receive his several dozen or so copies of the paper early enough in the day so that he could sometimes learn of important events before most other folks did.
Wrapping dozens of papers with the screaming headlines on the day JFK was killed burned the event into my memory.
My father was a printer for the Chicago Sun Times in the 60s and he tried to teach me how to fold a pressman’s hat but I could never get the hang of it. Maybe I’ll look for some online instructions and give it another try.
Three days ago, I saw Northside 777 for the first time. Great scenes of 1948 Chicago in the beginning.
Am I the only one who noticed Lee J. Cobb say “Soldiers” Field?