Back in Circulation

A great deal from the classic newspaper story The Front Page goes into this film Back In Circulation. Before Rosalind Russell played Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday there was Joan Blondell in this film blazing an underappreciated trail for Russell with her portrayal of a tabloid reporter covering a murder trial.

Blondell who is second billed to Pat O'Brien playing her editor is the heart of this film. She gets an assignment to cover a case involving the death by poison of a wealthy man who married a young wife. Margaret Lindsay is the widow and at first Blondell rips her apart in the press and the stories and pressure from her paper are responsible for her arrest.

But as the trial goes on Blondell gets a change of heart and starts questioning Lindsay's guilt. She is very silent and obviously at least to the movie audience covering something up.

Curiously enough Pat O'Brien who was Hildy Johnson in the first film adaption of The Front Page played editor Walter Burns on stage. In this film I think we are seeing a bit of what O'Brien was like on stage in The Front Page.

Still it's Joan Blondell who drives this film and it is a must for her fans.

Ace reporter Joan Blondell drives through the night and breaks some rules to get the story on the big train wreck. Back at the paper, she expects kudos--but boss Pat O'Brien does nothing but complain. Blondell is insulted, O'Brien insists that he appreciates her work, and they get all lovey-dovey for about two seconds...and then O'Brien tells her that she looks tired and she stomps out of his office, slamming the door and breaking the glass.

Both stars are energetic and talk fast but the characterizations are not subtle in this noisy newspaper drama. O'Brien is exceedingly bossy and unpleasant as the demanding editor; Blondell is just not believable as the hardboiled reporter who for some reason has a soft spot for her crabby boss.

The plot involves a murder investigation by Blondell and the paper. Having received an anonymous tip, Blondell stops a funeral and convinces the coroner to do an autopsy. Sure enough, the guy was poisoned. Could the murderer have been Margaret Lindsay, the beautiful widow? John Litel, the doctor who attributed the death to a heart attack? The paper pushes hard for Lindsay's indictment for the murder but just when it's almost too late, Blondell starts feeling guilty and wonders if Lindsay is innocent after all....

An interesting cast includes Regis Toomey, Eddie Acuff, and George E. Stone as various newspaper employees. Ben Welden plays a casino owner who, in one of the picture's many ridiculous sequences, visits O'Brien's office to help identify a suspect and then is held at gunpoint by O'Brien to prevent him leaving and talking to other papers' reporters.

A fast paced newspaper drama with these stars sounds like great fun. Unfortunately, the obnoxious characters and poor plot pretty much sink it.

This is in many ways typical of the comedy/drama/love story/mystery/social message low budget very entertaining movies that Warner Brothers so excelled at in the 1930's. Having been done before in some variation as The Front Page, Front Page Woman, and One Fatal Hour, 1937's Back In Circulation is equally entertaining. Most notably due to the delightful Joan Blondell, a very engaging and effective actor. Her wonderful performance in Back in Circulation makes this one of my favorite movies from this era.

Like all of the other incarnations of this basic premise, this screenplay has its own unique set of characters and circumstances. Joan Blondell plays "Timmy" Blake, the star reporter for The Morning Express, who is possessed of an utterly inexplicable crush on her boss, Bill Morgan (Pat O'Brien), your basic jerk, and we are told that she has in the past gone to great lengths to get the scoop, including stealing evidence and committing perjury. During the course of our story, however, her conscience begins to catch up to her when she finds herself convinced of the innocence of wealthy Arline Wade (Margaret Lindsay), a woman accused of murder that is all but convicted in the pages of The Morning Express. Naturally it is Timmy's cleverness and resourcefulness that gets the story in the Express in the first place, and it is she who must solve the mystery in order to extricate Ms. Wade from a miscarriage of justice. This is all done with appropriately placed poignancy and lighthearted comedic overtones. Timmy belting a sleazebag gigolo unconscious with her perfect right hook ("Beg pardon?") and her screaming "fit" in the street during the scene that leads us into the movie's conclusion are particularly hysterical.

Yes, the story is full of laughably implausible peculiarities (it is obvious movie producers of that era did not consider their audiences as savvy as those of today). On what planet would a struggling reporter living in a two-room apartment be able to afford a closet full of designer gowns and a maid?! These were real reporters, mind you, not the pampered addle-brained news spokes-models of today. It is likewise ridiculous to imagine that a reporter armed with nothing more than an anonymous note (another plot hole, we never are told where this note originated) could walk into a coroner's office and have a burial stopped and demand an autopsy be performed. It's a testament to how entertaining this film is that you don't really notice this sort of thing until after the movie is over and you've had time to think about it.

I am unsure how Pat O'Brien scored top billing in this vehicle, as it would be lost without brilliant and beautiful Joan Blondell, who appears in nearly every scene and certainly outranks O'Brien in both screen time and importance to the plot. The cast is filled out quite nicely with familiar faces from Warner Brothers stable of commendable talent, including John Litel, Ben Welden, and Granville Bates as the coroner. Also keep your eyes on the uncredited generic reporters that make up the press pool in the Plattstown sequences, one of them is DeWolfe (later William) Hopper, who in twenty years time would become Paul Drake on the TV series "Perry Mason".

This is a quite unpleasant picture which paints the newspaper industry in a particularly bad light. Joan Blondell plays a character different to the usual bubbly screen persona we're used to. Along with Pat O'Brien, she's a gutter journalist working at a muck-raking scandal rag ruining people's lives without any cares.

If you've seen Mervyn LeRoy's excellent FIVE STAR FINAL made in 1931 this will make you a little depressed. That film was a scathing attack on the disgusting and disreputable practices of the gutter press but six years later it looks like its message was ignored. It's not just the fact that nothing seems to have changed, this picture presents its protagonists as nice, fun-loving regular guys and even tries to inject some elements of comedy. There's no condemnation of these unpleasant people, they don't change, they're the same scumbags at the end as they are at the beginning. The unfunny comedy relief doesn't help - it actually feels quite out of place and a little disrespectful.

After destroying someone's life, Joan Blondell's character does try to make amends but not because she thinks it's the right thing to do, she does this just to make herself feel better about herself. She and Pat O'Brien do put in what feel like authentic performances which does let you engage with them - although you don't really want to.

It's a reasonably well made picture but there's an undercurrent of sourness to this.

If you are a fan of 1930's Warners, you can't miss this one. Joan Blondell is Timothea "Timmy" Blake, ace reporter for editor Pat O'Brian's headline screaming tabloid. The plot races around a "show girl with a past", the improbably cast, sweet-faced Margaret Lindsey accused of poisoning her no-good older husband whom nobody misses. Timmy doesn't buy it, but she helped build the case for indictment. Lindsey is in love with the good doctor John Litel for some reason even though he seems a bit thick. Go figure. It's all wrapped in a furious flurry of patented Warner's can't -wait -to -get -home speed with what must be 14 lbs. of dialogue crammed into an hour- fifteen or so. It's Blondell's movie and she is feisty, sexy, always surprising and has a mean right hook. Pat O'Brian was some kind of master at machine gunning lines out of an immobile face. For a big man who moves slowly, he can sure cut with the greased patter. The WB character roster, always a reason to watch these films, is well-represented by Regis Toomey, Eddie Acuff, and the always amusing Granville Bates. You won't have a chance to breathe.