Power of the Press

I hate movies like this because it could have been made today. So totally relevant.

Power of the Press is from 1943, directed by Lew Landers with a story by the great director Sam Fuller.

During WWII, the publisher of the isolationist tabloid, New York Gazette, is murdered as he was making an announcement about a change in the paper's policy and his intent to support the US in the war.

The publisher has left his interest in the paper, a controlling percentage, to Ulysses Brand, a friend who is a small town paper editor. He comes up against Otto Kruger as the managing editor. One reviewer commented that he might as well wear a swastika on his arm. He's aided and abetted by Victor Jory.

This film has been called Capraesque. It's overly preachy with a lot of propaganda. In Capra's hands, it would have been better. The cast is good, with Lee Tracy and Gloria Dickson as the publisher's secretary. She is 25 here, but a very mature looking leading lady. Sadly she died two years later in a fire.

What it has going for it is the prediction of fake news, Fox and the Murdochs. Frightening.

The Power of the Press is one the many anti-isolationist movies to come out in the year 1943. However when one watches this hard impact melodrama you can help but feel that director Lew Landers put too much propaganda into the film. If handled better it could have been one of the greatest cinema masterpieces of all time. Otto Kruger was so badly panned by critics for his performance in this movie that his career never really recovered.

The movie itself was just ok, with below avg acting, but the movie's message is excellent. Amazing, issues of the 40s are still issues in 2020. I think this movie should be a requirement for every journalist in school and for all the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, ABC and NBC anchors, editors and owners.

Capra-esque (in fact, Capra even directed a movie with the same title years earlier) story of a humble small town editor trying to take down a big city isolationist publisher. The plot is fairly engaging and the script has some snappy lines, but it's all so thick with propaganda that it's hard to take seriously. Otto Kruger is so malicious and devious, he might as well be wearing a swastika on his arm. Heck, they practically call him a Nazi in a half dozen different ways anyway. Still, as heavy-handed and hokey as it is, it's kind of fun, and I enjoyed Gloria Dickson's performance as the loyal, brassy secretary (shades of Jean Arthur in MR. SMITH). The best of the three early features in the Sam Fuller box set, even if that's not a tough contest to win.

In this movie written by Samuel Fuller, New York newspaper publisher Minor Watson realizes his isolationist editorial policy is wrong. He is about to change everything about the way he runs his paper..... and is killed, quite obviously by people working for the new publisher, Otto Kruger. But his secretary, Gloria Dickson, shows up in the office of Guy Kibbee, editor, publisher, and everything but press operator of a tiny rural paper, with instructions to take over the big paper and make things right. Kibbee has a lot of opposition, especially from managing editor Lee Tracy, whose attitude is to accuse today and retract tomorrow if necessary; just get the big, circulation-boosting headlines! Kibbee's idea of getting as many facts as possible, especially about Larry Parks, accused of murdering Watson, seems old-fashioned and weak.

Given the news of the past few years, my ear pricked up when Kibbee referred to "fake news". He -- or Fuller -- didn't mean it in the sense of some alternate offering of facts. Fuller was a newspaperman himself, straight out of Park Row and a fan of full-blooded and outright bloody journalism. But he believed in getting his facts straight, and knew that the strength of this country lies not in slogans or strong men, or money, but in ordinary people who when told the truth understand it, and do the right thing.