Murder in the Big House

This is quite comparable with "His Girl Friday" a few years earlier, it is the same kind of virtuoso journalism with the dialog rocketing like crossfire all through, and the story is ingenious and interesting. A new journalist happens to get the chance of a first rate scoop, when he notices irregularities in a prematurely executed convict, who had something to tell and had threatened to do it, if he was executed. He didn't have to do it, as the journalists posthumously found it out anyway by clever tactics and maoeuvres, and the road through this mess of smokescreen jungles is a sustained thriller, Van Johnson doing his first great lead, followed by many others, in spite of his rather undramatic appearance but demonstrating his stage presence entirely by his integrity and personality. It also reminds very much of Richard Brooks' "Deadline" ten years later, an even more advanced virtuoso journalism thriller, while this one has a good position between the two chief masterpieces in the genre.

I'm not sure if Johnson had already signed with MGM or did so afterwards, but this was a dandy role to open his film career with - the lead in one of WB's many hour long B features of the 30s and 40s. This has an alternate title of "Born For Trouble" which makes no sense given the subject matter.

A man who is convicted of killing a crusading district attorney is scheduled to die in the electric chair the following day. He tells his lawyer that if his sentence is not commuted to life that he will spill all he knows to the papers about the syndicate that hired him to commit the killing right before he is executed. He has previously promised "Scoop" of the Morning News that any singing he does will be an exclusive for him.

So the governor does not commute the guy's sentence. But for some reason "Scoop" is drunk the night of the execution, so reporter Gladys Wayne grabs the ticket to the execution out of Scoop's pocket and gives it to Bert Bell (Van Johnson), who wants to be hired by the Morning News, and tells him to come with her, this is his big chance. Why is it not her big chance? Why does Scoop decide to go on a bender on the biggest night of his career? We only have 60 minutes folks. You'll have to see "My Girl Friday" or "Come Fill the Cup" if you want answers to those kind of newspaper caper questions.

But the murderer isn't executed and doesn't have time to tell all to the tabloids, because according to the warden the man was struck by lightning through the window of his cell and killed. Bert Bell takes a photo of the dead man while nobody is looking, and when he gets back to the paper notes that the marks on the man definitely look like those of a man killed in the chair not killed by lightning. But people were in the actual death chamber testing the electric chair at the time the man died, so nobody could have dragged him in, electrocuted him, and dragged him back to his cell. So Bell is on the case to figure out what happened.

This is an action packed little B that kept my interest throughout. I'd highly recommend it not only because it is interesting but it shows Van Johnson had what it took from the very beginning.

Prisoner Dan Malloy is set to get the electric chair. He calls in intrepid reporter Scoop Conner to ask about a pardon from the governor. When Scoop gives him no chance, he tells Scoop that he's got names and he's ready to take them all down. He keeps threatening to squeal and then lightning strikes. New reporter Bert Bell is eager for a big assignment from managing editor Pop Ainslee and Gladys Wayne falls for him.

It starts out with an interesting premise but it slowly grinds down as it goes along. It's a crime B-movie. It's not the worst but it isn't the best. I don't think there are any stars. This could work if it has more fun with the material. It seems to try but non of the actors are able to exceed beyond the rat-tat-tat of the reporter standard characters.

This 1942 Warner Bros. B movie was Van Johnson's first major role and even given the limitations of the plot he displays the boy-next-door likeability that was soon to make him an MGM star. Unfortunately Faye Emerson is miscast in the typical tough-girl-heart-of-gold role that made Jean Arthur famous. Fans of newspapermen stories will not be disappointed, however. They'll find the usual suspects: the wise-cracking card-playing police reporters, the irascible editor-in-chief, the prison warden, the crooks that we love from FRONT PAGE and countless other 1930s movies. Ruth Ford who was Zachary Scott's wife at the time has a small role as Irene Gordon. The film was directed by B.Reeves Eason, more famous as one of the best second-unit directors in town. He staged the chariot race in the 1925 BEN HUR, the charge in THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE (1936) and the burning of Atlanta in GWTW (1939).

If "The Front Page" had been written by the boys at Warner Brothers instead of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur; and if Howard Hawks going over it with his script girl and converting it into "His Girl Friday" had been Briny Foy's boys and girls in the B unit at Warner Brothers; and if it had starred Faye Emerson and Van Johnson in his debut as a leading man, instead of Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, it might have turned out pretty much like this movie, a decent locked room mystery with great visuals by cinematographer Ted McCord.

Unfortunately for this movie, none of that stuff is true and this might be worth a look to see Miss Emerson in a role with some snap in it. Alas, that's for the guys like me who will look at dental x-rays. Go look at the Hawks version again.