Spätausgabe

The story holds true just as much today as it did when it was made. Powerful newspapers will stop at nothing, it seems, in the name of circulation. Scandal sells. The best scene in the whole movie is when Jenny confronts each of the three protagonists with the question, "Why did you kill my mother?". Randall, realizing what he has caused to happen, attempts to kill the story, then turns in his resignation. (Or maybe he realized just how much power he held in his hands and wanted no more of it.) This movie shows that the pen, indeed, is mightier than the sword.

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.

Five Star Final (1931)

There is one main reason to watch this—Edward G. Robinson. I almost didn't continue after the first fifteen minutes because this newspaper office drama was so filled with convenient stereotypes and one-liners it was drab.

Then came the obsessive-compulsive reporter played by Robinson, Mr. Randall. He's intense, and he's not in the movie nearly enough. There is a wonderful quirky part by Boris Karloff (a few months before doing Frankenstein's monster). And a slew of decent smaller parts keep it interesting like Aline MacMahon, playing a stenographer (and in her first film role) and Marian Marsh who plays the daughter with increasing intensity right up to the highly volatile last scene.

This is the heyday of the unsung Mervyn LeRoy, a director with at least two unsurpassed movies ("Three on a Match" and "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang"), not including his work on "Wizard of Oz." He has a dozen other really good films to his name, and this one survives despite some filler and a slightly functional approach to the acting and staging. This was the day when directors (and their crews) were pressed to shoot movies in a couple weeks or so, and it shows.

I only wish you could see the second half of this movie alone. It gets more dramatic, and more intense (and the one painfully wooden actress dies), and it really drives home the point against yellow, abusive journalism. The first half is stale enough to turn off a lot of viewers, I'm sure, and it brings down my overall impression of the totality. Luckily, if you make it to the end, you nearly forget the forgettable beginning and will leave with a good taste in your mouth.

And all the drinking in the movie? "God gives us heartache, and the devil gives us whiskey," Randall says as he downs a shot. He's seems to be standing at an ordinary bar, not an illegal speakeasy. But the year is 1931, just before the end of Prohibition. (The premiere was September 1931.) Drink is a frank and normal reality in much of the movie as people swig from bottles in their desk and meet at the bar after work, and it's an eye-opener to counteract the more extreme portrayals of alcohol in the movies. And of course, it's normal for the viewer in the theater at the time as well, part of the general feeling that the time had come to change the laws (which Roosevelt did in early 1933).

So, see this if you like pre-Code films, but stick it out through the more mundane parts. It's worth it.

Five Star Final according to Edward G. Robinson in his memoirs was a favorite role for him. He enjoyed having to go through a film without once taking up a weapon. But Robinson did have a weapon at his disposal here, one deadlier than the tommy gun. The power of yellow journalism to ruin and destroy lives for the sake of circulation.

Circulation is down at the New York Graphic, the sleazy tabloid where Robinson is the hardboiled editor. Publisher Oscar Apfel decides to rake over a 20 year old murder, one of those where are they now pieces. A woman killed a man who got her pregnant and refused to marry her and another man stepped up to the plate and raised her baby girl as his own. The couple, H.B. Warner and Frances Starr have lived quietly and anonymously on the west side of Manhattan the daughter, Marian Marsh is about to marry Anthony Bushell the son of a manufacturer.

The poking and prying of Robinson's reporters results in tragedy. It also gives Robinson a severe attack of conscience, encouraged by his girl Friday, Aline McMahon.

Stealing the film in the small part he's in is Boris Karloff as disgraced seminarian who affects the guise of clergyman to get the story he's after. It's one of Karloff's best non-horror film roles, he's positively creepy in the part.

The reason for Karloff's disgrace is sexual one and getting Karloff's mojo going as well is Ona Munson who also has a great part as the Nellie Bly of the tabloids. She tops Karloff in what she'll do for a story.

Five Star Final is a hard hitting well acted drama that does tend to go a bit overboard into melodrama, especially when H.B. Warner and Frances Stark are on screen. It was nominated for Best Picture of the year, but lost to the immortal classic Grand Hotel. It was later remade five years later as Two Against The World with Humphrey Bogart taking the Robinson part and the locale changed from a newspaper to a radio station.

I can easily see Five Star Final being remade for this century with the protagonist being the owner/operator of an internet website. The media may have changed, but sleaze is still sleaze.

Five Star Final (1931)

*** (out of 4)

An editor (Edward G. Robinson) at a sleazy newspaper makes a mistake by bringing a 20-year-old murder case back to the headlines. Earlier this year I watched the remake One Fatal Hour with Bogart, which pretty much followed this film word for word but this one here is slightly better due to the rich performance from Robinson and a powerful ending attacking the media. Some racy Pre-Code dialogue centered around a gay reporter is pretty eye catching as is the pre-Frankenstein performance by Boris Karloff as a drunken reporter.