One of Edward G. Robinson's favorite films. In Robinson's autobiography, he says: "I loved Randall because he wasn't a gangster. I suspect he was conceived as an Anglo-Saxon. To look at me nobody would believe it, but I enjoyed doing him. He made sense, and thus I'm able to say that Five Star Final is one of my favorite films."
"The Evening Gazette" is based on the real-life "New York Evening Graphic", the most sensational of all the "Front Page"-era tabloid papers (critics called it the Porno-Graphic). The paper, owned by Bernarr Macfadden, was published from 1924-32. At the time this film was made, the Graphic had been losing circulation, because its new editor had been trying to make it a more respectable paper, just like in the film. The paper was best known for its "composographs", composite photographs used to create an otherwise unobtainable illustration. Louis Weitzenkorn, who wrote the original play, had been a reporter and managing editor on the "Evening Graphic".
Prior to its release, the film was attacked by censors as "exceedingly dangerous" due to its negative depiction of the press. The censors also objected to the character of Isopod (Boris Karloff). In the earlier drafts of the script, the character of Isopod is a defrocked Catholic priest who betrays his ministerial oath, frequents saloons, and sexually assaults a female reporter in a taxi cab. His role in the film was significantly revised to be less villainous.
Upon the film's release, press baron William Randolph Hearst deemed the film to be an assault upon his Hearst-owned newspapers known for their muck-raking stories and vicious tactics. Hearst pressured the mayor of Boston to ban the film and to issue a public statement decrying its "false" depiction of journalism.
The title springs from the days when competing newspapers would publish multiple editions throughout one day with the final printing of the day bearing the legend "Five Star Final".