El cuarto poder

Over and over...Money is the root of all evil.

Helen Grant needs money and her writing assignment will not be published for over a year.

Enter Burt Lancaster, head of a vicious gossip newspaper that is in the process of destroying an alcoholic actor.

He promises Helen the world. He lures her out to California where he wines and dines her. Beautiful house, expense account, good schools for her son, great salary, great everything. Lead us not into temptation, but Helen will not be delivered from evil.

Lancaster had hired her because she is best friends with the actor he wants to destroy-Robert Urich along with his wife, her college room mate played nicely by Lauren Hutton.

When Helen destroys papers that show that Hutton is paying the insurance on her husband's contract, Lancaster makes sure to write the story stating that Helen had written this up. This destroys her friendship as well as the Urich character, who suffers a fatal heart attack.

At the funeral, Hutton spits at Helen. Helen takes pictures of the deceased and hands them over to Lancaster exclaiming that she wants the job. She has become a real stinker now. Money is certainly the root of all evil.

Though she is third billed, Pamela Reed is the real star of this unpleasant but apparently realistic and very well-acted movie.

Disclosure: I was once a "World Famous Psychic" for Globe magazine. But I have two friends who wrote for the National Enquirer. I know stories from them that give me insight into the accuracy of "Scandal Sheet."

One friend had been a journalist, had even been among the last to leave Vietnam; there's even a photo of him on the Internet in his war correspondent costume -- and over his real name.

When he went from his Los Angeles home to Florida to work for the Enquirer, he changed his last name. Understandably, in my opinion.

He was sent, as one of his first assignments, to New York to do a story on Gregory Peck, who was making a movie. He spoke to Mr. Peck in the lobby of their hotel and Mr. Peck very politely said, "I never speak to that publication," a common enough retort, I believe.

My friend called down to Florida to explain and was told, "Hey, you're supposed to be a reporter. Get that story!"

He then called Mr. Peck's room, and this time Mr. Peck was not so polite in his refusal.

My friend couldn't take any more and resigned from the Enquirer. And took a job at the Weekly World News.

The other friend told interviewees he was from a certain news agency, and probably told most of them he would sell his story to whoever would take it -- which was always the Enquirer.

He told me of getting a 3 a.m. phone call from an irate Whoopi Goldberg, giving him a sound reaming for interviewing her daughter.

There really is not much honor or honesty in those supermarket tabloids, and "Scandal Sheet" does a good job of demonstrating that.

I cannot warmly recommend the movie, except to say it is awfully well done, the acting is great, some of the scenery, that around Santa Barbara, is beautiful, but the ugliness barely qualifies as entertainment.

If you do want to see it, it's available at YouTube. I saw it on a DVD, which I'm donating to my local Friends of the Library. I don't want it in my house.

There is what I think an important point to be made about this TV movie which has not been touched on in any of the few comments made so far. It is that the superb character actor Burt Lancaster resumes here in 1985 the rôle of the similar character he played in "The Sweet Smell of Success", so many years before in 1957. As can only be expected with a low budget TV film, it is no artistic masterpiece like the earlier work, but all the same, well worth seeing.

The all-powerful gossip columnist of the first film, J.J.Hunsecker and Fallen,the editor of the yellowest of gossip magazines in this one, are both manipulative, calculating, and ruthless, but the first rôle was shown as being far more complex, so that Lancaster would have been able to play the more straightforward second rôle standing on his head, as they say.

Lancaster, as J.J.Hunsecker, is not only a megalomaniac, who bullies politicians and forces the ambitious Tony Curtis, his minion and errand boy, to commit despicable acts of betrayal and deceit and finally arranges for him to be savagely beaten by the police and thrown into clink, but he also appears to be a psychopath, with an unpleasantly more than brotherly love for his young sister, always ready to commit a crime at one remove to achieve his sinister ends.

On the other hand,Lancaster as Harold Fallen in "Scandal Sheet", is very "correct", quite unemotional, impassive, and not even contemptuous or verbally disrespectful as he schemes and uses his bag of dirty tricks single-mindedly to obtain, through his equally unscrupulously staff, who hate one another and probably him too, some new eye-catching story such as an interview with the late Grace Kelly by a self-styled spiritual medium on a Californian beach, a story about siamese twins who died on being separated but were "stuck back together" again by one unspeakable male reporter in the same coffin to make a good photo, or the trials and tribulations of an ex-alcoholic and ailing filmstar trying with the aid of his loving wife to make a come-back.

Fallen is always soft-spoken, calm and cautious as he goes about trying to get his filthy rag off the presses. He is a malignant force rather than a personality, who does what he feels he has to do, deploying others to do the actual dirty work, so that he seems hardly to be more blameworthy than a spitting cobra blinding its enemies or prey with its venom - that is just the nature of the beast. This character is also reminiscent of Mephistpheles, emissary of Lucifer the arch devil, whether in the "Faust" of Goethe or the "Doctor Faustus" of Marlowe: calm, logical, seducing with "offers you can't refuse", all without ever raising his voice, his blood pressure or even his eyebrows.

Burt Lancaster was great in Sweet Smell of Success. The producers of this film, Scandal Sheet, try to reproduce that chemistry with Burt Lancaster as the publisher of a major scandal sheet. Tabloids now are digital, but that does not reduce their popularity. The vast majority of US citizens are less than college-educated, and are working class stiffs who need a bit of excitement in their lives once in awhile.

Tabloids, digital or in print like the one portrayed in this 1980s film, gave these working class people something easy on the mind to read and contemplate. They were not about to read War and Peace with their meatloaf. Lancaster is good here, as is Pamela Reed, as the legitimate writer who understandably takes a high-paying job on the West Coast to write for a magazine she has ethical problems with. A preposition is a bad word to end a sentence with. Just let that go by. Oh God, now I am stuck with this endless poor joke I put in. Help! Someone stop me from going off. OK, enough; I will get back to the review before the article is over.

Anyway, Burt and Pamela are very good in their roles, but the film is a bit predictable (unlike Sweet Smell of Success). Other than that, an enjoyable 90 minutes of watching two very good professional actors.

In a recent biography of Burt Lancaster , Henry Winkler who was the producer of Scandal Sheet said that he wanted Burt Lancaster for the part of the supermarket tabloid media mogul in the film. Winkler said he imagined what J.J. Hunseker which was one of Lancaster's most acclaimed roles in the 50s in Sweet Smell Of Success would do in this day and age's media.

I think Scandal Sheet provides the answer as Lancaster channels his old role as the Broadway gossip columnist based on Walter Winchell to the 80s. Here Lancaster is the mega rich owner of a supermarket channel rag and he hires Pamela Reed who is a freelance writer published in more respectable journals for his publication. Reed is a single mother of Bobby Jacoby and there are way too much fringe benefits and salary to refuse.

The real purpose in hiring her was to get the inside dope on fading film star Robert Urich. Reed knew Urich and his wife Lauren Hutton back in the day.

Hutton has been offered a big movie role, but she won't do it without Urich and no movie company will insure him. Hutton has put up her salary as the guarantor of Urich. As for Urich he's a man trying to kick the alcohol habit. It all ends badly.

The lure of money and the good life it can bring is the real subject of Scandal Sheet and Pamela Reed is the real protagonist of the movie. The reason for watching Scandal Sheet is to see how she handles it. Integrity is nice and honorable, but it can be expensive.

The Urich/Hutton part of the story is based I believe on Greta Garbo and John Gilbert. Garbo tried to rescue Gilbert who was falling into dissipation as his career was circling the bowl after talkies came in. She insisted on and did Queen Christina with Gilbert and while he got good reviews it did nothing to save his career. There's a bit A Star Is Born in this as well.

In the supporting cast look for Peter Jurasik as Lancaster's second in command. What a lizard that one is, but a great performance.

Scandal Sheet is a disturbing, but excellent made for TV film.