Tödlicher Skandal

A tabloid magazine threatens to ruin a television performer's career in "Slander," a 1956 film starring Van Johnson, Steve Cochran, Ann Blyth and Marjorie Rambeau.

Well, first of all, it should have been called "Libel" which refers to the printed word; slander refers to the spoken. You'd think after years of dealing with both, someone at MGM would have known the difference.

Steve Cochran plays the head of this trash magazine, a type of periodical nowadays so common one doesn't even blink. In the film, his magazine was the pioneer, probably modeled after the real-life "Confidential." As in the film, a host of me-toos followed - in the '50s, this included "Whisper" and "Quick" magazines. These mags released Rory Calhoun's criminal record, accused Lisabeth Scott of using the services of call girls, that sort of thing. Something about the black and white format of the early tabloids made them even sleazier than "The Enquirer" types today, which deal mostly with gossip, hospital records sold to them by the hospital staff, and outing of celebrities. Eventually celebrities fought back by breaking their news first on talk shows.

H.R. Manley (Cochran) believes that everybody has some dirt in their past, and he's after a huge female film star. He knows that a children's TV performer, Scott Martin (Johnson) grew up with her and knows about a problem in her past. He finds out that Martin himself spent four years in prison for armed robbery and intends to print that story and ruin his career if Martin doesn't tell him what happened to his childhood friend. Does he save himself and let her career be sacrificed? His decision leads to tragedy.

Cochran is cold as ice as Manley and handsome in a George Clooney-Tyrone Power kind of way. His facial expression never changes, nor does his smooth voice. He's a man with a dead soul. His mother, played by Marjorie Rambeau, is against what he does to make a living. Rambeau, a favorite actress of mine, is excellent. Van Johnson and Ann Blyth are the Martins; Blyth is really more suited for society women - she's very pretty and also not the warmest person to stand before a camera. But she does a good job, as does Johnson, who is very well cast as a family man and children's entertainer.

The story is dramatized in a somewhat extreme way. It will definitely hold your interest, though the ending could have been better.

Though Van Johnson is the subject of the Slander, the driving force behind this film is Steve Cochran as the cynical publisher of a supermarket tabloid magazine. He's one scary dude who has no feelings and no one can reach him, not even his mother Marjorie Rambeau.

Back in 1957 Confidential Magazine which was the prototype of things like the National Enquirer of today was publishing all kinds of exposes on celebrities. Cochran's rag is also looking to do an expose on Van Johnson who is a newly popular host of a kid's show. Back during the Depression he committed a holdup and did his time and Cochran wants an to expose him. Cochran though will back off if he will give him some dirt on another girl who grew up on his block who became a big movie star.

Cochran is such a rat that he approaches Johnson through his wife Ann Blyth. This raises all kinds of issues in their marriage.

Slander also makes some subtle references to the tactics of the House Un American Activities Committee and how they would 'trade up' with immunity if someone would give them a bigger prize.

Johnson and Blyth turn in some good performances, but it's really Cochran you have to watch. He will thoroughly creep you out.

A family friend obtained an invitation for my mother and me to visit Ann Blyth on the set during the making of this film. She was very gracious and I can recall being amazed at the mask-like makeup required for the lights and black-and-white cameras of the day. I couldn't see how she could move one of her facial muscles! The scene being shot involved Marjorie Rambeau coming to the door of the Martin family residence to, if I recall correctly, apologize for her son's depredations upon the career and reputation of Mr. Martin, played by Van Johnson. When I saw the completed film in a theater, I was surprised at how much emotional distress Ann was able to convey through that thick layer of William Tuttle's makeup. Miss Rambeau, by the way, was quite enjoying her return to the spotlight and, between takes, vastly amused the crew with her exclamations of appreciation for the little hand-held battery-operated fan that had been given her. Van Johnson was on the soundstage that day but was schmoozing in his dressing room/trailer with a production executive and didn't emerge once during that long afternoon. Both he and his co-star, Miss Blyth, were often underrated by critics and reviewers in their day, although TIME magazine gave this modestly budgeted production a good review, with praise for all the performers in the cast.

I heartily concur with the first posted comment. Far from being "superficial" as Leonard Maltin's review describes it; "Slander" is a smart, straightforward drama, well acted by all the leads and expertly crafted by veteran director Roy Rowland.

Steve Cochran, generally an inarticulate brute in films, here plays the slick, debonair owner of a notorious gossip magazine who is anxious to break a big scandal to reverse a recent decline in sales. He zeroes in on children's entertainer Van Johnson, a decent, stand-up guy who nonetheless has a secret in his past which would most likely end his suddenly flourishing television career if found out. Johnson can save himself and his family from disrepute if he "trades" Cochran damaging information he has about a popular movie actress he knew while growing up in a tough neighborhood years ago.

The movie chronicles this moral dilemma in a balanced, intelligent way, methodically laying the emotional and intellectual groundwork for the difficult choices the major characters end up making. It's one of those nifty little flicks that reminds one of some efficient piece of machinery - no wasted motion.

Cochran once again is excellent. His technique is exceptional, unerring. He's got this guy, a bullying, insecure poser, down. Watch the scene in the restaurant where he finds out that he's being bumped from a TV talk show due to a fellow guest's refusal to appear on the same program with him. Just before the steely resignation and the business-like thirst for payback, he's hurt, like a little boy who finds out he hasn't made first team. Johnson and Blyth are appealing as the devoted husband and wife, as is the child actor Richard Eyer, who plays their son.

But special mention has to go to the great Marjorie Rambeau, sort of a Susan Sarandon type in her younger days, here she plays Cochran's weary, alcoholic, deeply ashamed mother. Her impossibly large, sad, soulful eyes aptly foreshadow the tragedies that follow.

Not without interest and surely applicable Today, this expose of Tabloid Journalism and what used to be called "Scandal Sheets/Rags" is cold and overly sentimental at the same time. It never seems to find its groove and what is left is a noble, cheap looking misfire.

Van Johnson's Character is sugary sweet, His Wife is barely memorable, and the Son is used for a most overwrought and ludicrous ending. There is some edge to the Movie but it wavers sometimes, with some stiff situations and the look of a TV Production.

Worth a view for its B-Movie effort done by a Major Studio that couldn't seem to go all the way with anything more than the weakest and predictable of conclusions. It is Melodramatic when it should have been darkly cynical. The TV appearance by the Star, unintentional or not, is eerily reminiscent of Nixon's Checkers Speech.

By the way, Slander is Spoken...Libel is Written.