Sede de Escândalo

Five Star Final (1931)

*** (out of 4)

An editor (Edward G. Robinson) at a sleazy newspaper makes a mistake by bringing a 20-year-old murder case back to the headlines. Earlier this year I watched the remake One Fatal Hour with Bogart, which pretty much followed this film word for word but this one here is slightly better due to the rich performance from Robinson and a powerful ending attacking the media. Some racy Pre-Code dialogue centered around a gay reporter is pretty eye catching as is the pre-Frankenstein performance by Boris Karloff as a drunken reporter.

This Oscar-nominated film (Best Picture) shows the dark side of journalism as a paper delves into the past of a woman (Frances Starr) who was impregnated by her boss and acquitted of his murder.

Edward G. Robinson (Little Caesar) is a newspaper editor that is interested in boosting circulation and is not concerned with the lives he destroys in the process. He goes after Nancy Voorhees (Starr), who is now Nancy (Voorhees) Townsend and is not concerned that she has not told her daughter (the doll-faced Marian Marsh), who is now about to me married, about her past.

Robinson was absolutely brilliant in the role and ably assisted by Boris Karloff and Oscar-nominated actress (Dragon Seed) Aline MacMahon in her first film.

A classic showing the seedy side of journalism.

Ordered to up the sleaze quotient for increased circulation, New York "Gazette" newspaper editor Edward G. Robinson (as Joseph W. Randall) dredges up the story of a local woman who shot her adulterous lover dead, and earned a scandalous reputation. The serialization sells newspapers, but the subject Frances Starr (as Nancy Voorhees) has changed her life with second husband H. B. Warner (as Michael Townsend); moreover, the couple has kept the sordid past secret from pretty daughter Marian Marsh (as Jenny), who is about to marry handsome high society's Anthony Bushell (as Phillip Weeks). When boozy staff reporter Boris Karloff (as Isopod) absconds with Ms. Marsh's picture, the consequences could prove tragic...

This is a fine if dated early "talkie" with a message still reverberating. The ensemble cast, sometimes venturing into melodramatics with understandable verve, is fun. Successful Broadway star Aline MacMahon makes an impressive film debut as Mr. Robinson's lovelorn secretary. Director Mervyn LeRoy moves it nicely and includes some rich "split-screen" work.

******** Five Star Final (9/10/31) Mervyn LeRoy ~ Edward G. Robinson, Frances Starr, Aline MacMahon, Boris Karloff

This largely forgotten film stars Edward G. Robinson and was one of the Best Picture Oscar nominees in 1931-1932. Robinson plays the editor of a newspaper whose publisher instructs Robinson to come up with a story that will increase circulation. Robinson's solution is to track down a woman who killed the father of her child twenty years before when he refused to marry her, but she was acquitted, largely because of her child. She has since married, and her daughter is on the eve of her own marriage and has no idea of her mother's past. Robinson's "what ever happened to" idea is a success, but at a horrible cost to the family involved.

Not on DVD or VHS, the film uses some techniques that were rather odd for Warner Bros at the time, considering that their urban dramas usually were very fast-paced. To begin with, the film makes a big production of introducing Robinson to the audience, having the other players talk about him at length, and even showing a shot of just his hands as he washes up before he makes his big entrance. Then - the whole movie proceeds to switch its dramatic center more to the family that Robinson's newspaper is writing a scandal piece on and its tragic effect on them.

Robinson and Boris Karloff - in an odd turn as an alcoholic reporter just prior to his star-making role in Frankenstein - have acting in the age of sound down to a fine art. However, the actors playing the roles of the family targeted by Robinson's scandal sheet seem to be hold-overs from the silent era, the best known being silent star H.B. Warner. Their speech is somewhat slow and over-dramatic, and their gestures exaggerated, but not ridiculously so. This might have been to contrast them with the hard-boiled occupants of the newsroom, but it makes the film look like it has two entirely different directors.

Five Star Final according to Edward G. Robinson in his memoirs was a favorite role for him. He enjoyed having to go through a film without once taking up a weapon. But Robinson did have a weapon at his disposal here, one deadlier than the tommy gun. The power of yellow journalism to ruin and destroy lives for the sake of circulation.

Circulation is down at the New York Graphic, the sleazy tabloid where Robinson is the hardboiled editor. Publisher Oscar Apfel decides to rake over a 20 year old murder, one of those where are they now pieces. A woman killed a man who got her pregnant and refused to marry her and another man stepped up to the plate and raised her baby girl as his own. The couple, H.B. Warner and Frances Starr have lived quietly and anonymously on the west side of Manhattan the daughter, Marian Marsh is about to marry Anthony Bushell the son of a manufacturer.

The poking and prying of Robinson's reporters results in tragedy. It also gives Robinson a severe attack of conscience, encouraged by his girl Friday, Aline McMahon.

Stealing the film in the small part he's in is Boris Karloff as disgraced seminarian who affects the guise of clergyman to get the story he's after. It's one of Karloff's best non-horror film roles, he's positively creepy in the part.

The reason for Karloff's disgrace is sexual one and getting Karloff's mojo going as well is Ona Munson who also has a great part as the Nellie Bly of the tabloids. She tops Karloff in what she'll do for a story.

Five Star Final is a hard hitting well acted drama that does tend to go a bit overboard into melodrama, especially when H.B. Warner and Frances Stark are on screen. It was nominated for Best Picture of the year, but lost to the immortal classic Grand Hotel. It was later remade five years later as Two Against The World with Humphrey Bogart taking the Robinson part and the locale changed from a newspaper to a radio station.

I can easily see Five Star Final being remade for this century with the protagonist being the owner/operator of an internet website. The media may have changed, but sleaze is still sleaze.