Big News

Big News casts Robert Armstrong and Carole Lombard as a pair of reporters married to each other but working for rival papers. If you expect to see the gifted comic Lombard from such future classics as My Man Godfrey and Twentieth Century Big News will disappoint you greatly. This one is strictly the show for Armstrong.

Armstrong drives his editor Charles Sellon to distraction with his drinking and carousing and it certainly is wearing on his marriage to Lombard. But as he says speakeasies are great place to pick up stories and Armstrong has been successful.

A particular speakeasy owner Sam Hardy is the leader of a narcotics ring in their town and Armstrong has the goods on him. Hardy tries something stupid, he goes to the newspaper office and murders the editor and frames Armstrong for the crime. But naturally our intrepid reporter is too smart for Hardy.

Big News is little more than a photographed stage play and the original play was no world beater either. It never holds your interest in the way such other films like Detective Story, Dead End, Rope, or Rear Window do that are all almost exclusively on one set.

Big News is directed by Greogry LaCava who also did My Man Godfrey. Whatever he brought out in Lombard for that film stayed buried here. In fairness to Carole, she was not given much to work with.

Still it's 1929 and movies were learning to talk. Films like Big News show how much was left to learn.

Robert Armstrong and Carole Lombard star in this early talky about the newspaper business. Armstrong plays an obnoxious drunk who, inexplicably, Lombard loves. He constantly shoots off his mouth and you wonder why the paper puts up with him. By the end of the film, however, he's redeemed himself and shows that he's a darn find newspaper man.

The film is odd in the way it portrays Armstrong as a relatively high-functioning and lovable alcoholic. In some ways, it seems to excuse his addiction and presents a very odd and convoluted message. It's also odd in that one of the characters seems to be that of a very manly lesbian. Both are things you never would have seen in a Hollywood film once the toughened Production Code was enacted in mid-1934--when alcoholism needed to be punished and lesbians needed to vanish.

So is the film any good? Well, in spots it's quite good and in others it lets the viewer down. A few of the performances are poor (such as when the murder is discovered near the end of the film) but the overall plot is engaging and worth seeing. But, for 1929, it's actually quite good--had it been made a year or two later, I would have given it a slightly lower score.

For folks like me who simply watch too many movies, it also was a thrill to see Tom Kennedy play a SMART policeman—as he almost always played very stupid ones!

A semi-alcoholic news reporter finds himself suspected of the murder of his editor. Lively but slight tale that might have benefited from a stronger leading man than Robert Armstrong. Doubtful that his sloppy suit-and-tie-wearing female colleague would have made it into the picture post '34.

The plot elements of this movie, in my mind, take second place to the repartee, or verbal fencing, that takes place among various characters. One character is always needling another; each tries to top the others in snarky insults. I suppose this is where the "comedy" label comes from.

For instance, there's the repartee among the various reporters on Robert Armstrong's newspaper. Cupid Ainsworth (a large fat woman) comes in, saying she's late because "I couldn't find a cab." Armstrong responds, "You mean you couldn't find one to fit you."

Ainsworth gives as good as she gets, however. When Armstrong comes back into the office after being bawled out by his wife, she says, "Well, well, well! Here comes the lion with the lamb's haircut!" (Ainsworth gives a very memorable performance in this movie, in my opinion.)

When Armstrong goes into the editor's office to get bawled out, Ainsworth cries, "Hold on boys, we're going around a curve!" (To me, that was better than Bette Davis' famous line, "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night!")

Tom Kennedy is in the movie, playing a cop. (I always think of Kennedy as Gahagan, from the Torchy Blane movies.) Armstrong refers to Kennedy as "Flatfoot," and he growls, "Lay off the puppies!"

Armstrong and his even-more-drunken buddy get into a battle of wits in a speakeasy with members of a drug-dealing gang. Armstrong says, "I recently heard of two hop-slingers who were punished by being put in a barrel with a skunk. Fortunately, the skunk died." His buddy responds, "He was probably bored to death by their repartee."

I think this movie has a quite adult sensibility as regards inter-personal relationships and conversation. (Adult meaning "adult," not "dirty.") It's not a Pollyanna or Hollywood sensibility -- there's friction and oneupmanship among various characters. That makes a refreshing change. Kennedy's cop role is also more adult than his slapstick-ish Gahagan roles. I like the whole tone and atmosphere of this movie.

I always enjoy seeing Armstrong, who is perhaps best known as the impresario who brought King Kong back from his island. He was a quite prolific actor, and always interesting.

George ("Gabby") Hayes is also here briefly, and I'm always fascinated to see him in a movie, beardless and in an adult, not slapstick-ish role.

In the end, the murder is pinned on the actual perpetrator (yay!), and Armstrong and his wife are reconciled. I like a movie with a happy ending, and to see justice is done.

This movie, to me, is enjoyable, adult, and fun every time I see it.

BIG NEWS (Pathe, 1929), directed by Gregory LaCava, is vintage/early talkie newspaper melodrama taken from the stage play reportedly titled "For Two Cents" by George S. Brooks. Probably inspired by the more famous Ben Hecht / Charles MacArthur 1928 play of "The Front Page" that became the basis of the 1931 screen adaptation starring Adolphe Menjou and Pat O'Brien, BIG NEWS (its new yet more appropriate title) stars Robert Armstrong in a stage to screen adaptation set mostly inside an editorial room/office with reporter/editor/publisher types giving that actual newsroom feel with stories behind it.

Plot development introduces the workers of The Express newspaper as they start off their rainy morning in the editorial room: Hansel (Louis Payne), the publisher; J. W. Addison (Charles Sellon), the editor-in-chief who's hard of hearing; Vera (Cupid Ainsworth), a heavy-set manly-dressed columnist of advice to the lovelorn column; O'Neill (Wade Boteler) the city editor, and Steve Banks (Robert Armstrong), a reporter found sobering up on the sofa inside Addison's office. With his weakness for liquor, Steve's strength is getting the scoop, although his wife, Margaret (Carol Lombard), working for the Morning Herald, has out scooped him with her narcotics ring story he is assigned to do. Married two years, Margaret comes to the office to tell Steve she wants a divorce. Though she feels he's a great reporter, she finds him irresponsible and refuses to wait to see him reach the drunken path of fellow reporter Deke Thomas (James Donlan). Although there are others who want Steve Banks fired, it's Joe Reno (Sam Hardy), its leading advertiser and owner of a neighboring speakeasy, The Reno Cafe, who arranges that for suspecting Steve's hunches are getting too close to the truth about him. Told by Addison he's nothing but a bum newspaperman and insult to his profession, Steve angrily walks out of the office to prove his theories about him are false. Acquiring a written statement from a Rose Perotti that could put Reno and his gang to prison, Banks returns to find Addison's office with police, co-workers and all the evidence pointed towards Steve for his murder for which he is innocent.

Other members of the cast include Warner Richmond (District Attorney Phelps), Gertrude Sutton (Helen), Clarence Wilson (The Coroner) and Tom Kennedy (Thomas Ryan), a police officer whose name is purposely misspelled in articles written by Steve Banks. Look quickly for future film stars as George, later "Gabby" Hayes (sans beard) of movie westerns fame Hoffman, a reporter; and the youthful Lew Ayres briefed in two scenes as a copy boy.

Unlike most early talkies from 1929, the 66-minute edition of BIG NEWS is faster-paced than most, thanks to the fine direction by Gregory LaCava, best known for his comedy classic MY MAN GODFREY (Universal, 1936) that co-starred Carole Lombard (billed Carol in BIG NEWS) whose madcap performance earned her her only Academy Award nomination as Best Actress.

While Armstrong and Lombard were paired in total of four movies during the 1928-29 season, to date, BIG NEWS and THE RACKETEER (1929) are the only ones available for viewing either on limited video cassette or DVD format releases. (*** Bylines)