King of the Newsboys

... in this rather confusing entry from Republic Pictures and director Bernard Vorhaus.

Mary Stephens (Helen Mack) and Jerry Flynn (Lew Ayres) are two poor kids in love in New York City. Jerry has a bunch of ruffian friends and only works sporadically. Mary's home life looks like Joan Crawford's in the first part of Mannequin - Mom is beat down by life, dad's hobbies are drinking and making more siblings for Mary that he won't support, and they all live in a run down tenement. She decides she can't wait around for Jerry to make good and so she decides to become the kept woman of the world's most unthreatening looking gangster, Wire Arno (Victor Varconi). This is not a decision she makes cavalierly.

Jerry decides to show Mary he can make good - more for revenge than to get her back - and becomes a hard selling newsboy. He's good at hawking papers and gets his gang of ruffian friends in on the enterprise. And then a confusing twist - He marches into the office of the newspaper owner and says that with a turn to yellow journalism, not just in sales but in content, he can up circulation dramatically and wants a dollar for every account in increased circulation. The surprise here - The owner of a major newspaper looks at a newsboy with no experience in publishing, editing, or writing and says- "OK then". And thus suddenly Jerry is running the newspaper.

So soon Jerry is in the high life and as part of that high life runs into Mary and her gangster boyfriend, who turns out to be much more threatening than he looks. Complications ensue.

Lew Ayres is the only big name in this, and both he and the rest of the rather obscure cast acquit themselves well, it is just the several confusing plot turns that seem like hand waving to get the plot to where it wants to go that hold it back. For example, as I mentioned before, the movie needs to have Jerry doing well, so they have him hired to run the newspaper where he had formerly been a newsboy even though he had nothing in his background or experience that would lead you to believe that he would be a success at that.

There is one rather odd feature of the film - In the couple of scenes where somebody takes a direct punch to the face or body, the camera pulls away and you only see an insinuation of the blow. I'm not sure if that was because of some aspect of the production code with which this film was dealing.

Republic Pictures which normally was in the B western business did this urban drama that more properly belonged over at Warner Brothers. King Of The Newsboys stars Lew Ayres as a rough young man from 11th Avenue looking to move up in the world to impress the girl next door Helen Mack. The problem is that Ayres ain't moving fast enough to suit her and she's starting to step out with gangster Victor Varconi.

Ayres starts a circulation business from one newstand and that has him branching out into publishing a racetrack sheet something like the old Morning Telegraph. That also has him bumping up against Varconi and Ayres has now taken up with society girl Sheila Bromley.

If this had been done at Warner Brothers, Jack Warner would have offered it on the spot to James Cagney and Cagney would have turned it down. In the economical tradition of Herbert J. Yates and Republic Studios, King Of The Newsboys looks like it was shot on a weekend commuting between the track and the studio for interiors.

Still the stars and a host of good character actors like Horace McMahon, Jack Pennick, and Billy Benedict pull it through.

Even though this film is a little dated, the basic premise still works. Lew Ayers plays the blue collar guy with dreams and plans to marry his sweetheart, played by the beautiful Helen Mack. Unfortunately, Helen's character wants to have the finer things in life and leaves the life she has for one of money and powerful men (albeit a gangster). Lew's character feels betrayed and sets out to prove to himself (and mostly to his ex-girlfriend) that he can succeed and to show her that he doesn't need her. He starts a newspaper distribution company, and soon has made it the largest distributership in town. He is jealous of Helen's new boyfriend and ends up trying to show Helen what a mistake she made. Alas, as with all stories like this, both characters realize soon enough (the hard way) that what is truly important is each other and that happiness can not be bought for any price. Of course, this realizaton comes after both have lost everything that they worked hard for. The movie is quick paced and covers a lot of ground. There is so much good material for a much more detailed film. Helen shines in her dramatic role. She has a lot of the time in the film to showcase her abilities and strength as an actor - and does so well. Lew Ayers does a great job portraying the blue collar type. He surprised me in his role as a rough and tough guy. I think his acting is underrated and this movie role makes him shine. My only complaint is that this movie QUICKLY wraps up. In one short scene all loose ends are tied up. I think the ending does not do justice to this film. I wanted to see more of the resolution of the problems and how the two main characters resolved their differences.

I viewed this on Netflix yesterday.

The production values are quite a bit better than almost any "Republic" picture I have ever seen. It is still not Warner Brothers, but it comes reasonably close.

The film has two genuine stars Lew Ayres and Helen Mack and a reasonably good supporting cast. The cinematography and editing are quite good.

This could have been a great and classic movie, but there are some big problems. The biggest is that the movie is a serious social drama in the "Dead End" tradition for the first 45 minutes, then switches to broad, almost slapstick, comedy for 15 minutes, before turning into melodrama for the last 10 minutes. My best guess about this odd mix is that someone got scared at "Republic" that they were producing an art film that audiences wouldn't like and decided to throw in some "hilarious" material. The comedy isn't bad, it is just that it does not belong in this movie.

Lew Ayres is a terrific actor, as anyone who has seen "Johnny Belinda" or "All Quiet on the Western Front" can testify. However, he seems tentative in his performance here. In a couple of scenes, he seems almost to be doing a James Cagney impression. Possibly, the director told him to do it like Cagney and Ayres did it exactly like Cagney. In most scenes he is fine. Helen Mack does not look as good as she does in "She" or "Milk Way," but that may be the part. She is a tough gal trying to climb out of the mean streets of 11th Avenue in New York. It makes sense that she looks rough rather than glamorous. At one point, she does a "going mad" scene that comes out of nowhere and seems more bizarre than powerful. I guess the build up to the scene got left on the cutting room floor.

In any case the movie is interesting and worth watching. At least for a few minutes it foreshadows Citizen Kane (1941) in the wonderful montage sequences of Jerry Flynn building his newspaper empire. There's a very sweet scene with Alison Skipworth who plays Flynn's Foster mother Nora. She intervenes with a judge just when the judge is about to give Flynn three years in jail for hitting a cop. Skipworth hits some nice notes in the scene. Sheila Bromley does a good job with her small role as a high society women who has a fling with Flynn.

The movie should have been a classic gangster film with good gangster Flynn battling bad gangster Wire Arno (Victor Varconi). The problem was perhaps the new enforced Hayes Code (1936) which cracked down on violence in movies. Instead of people being shot, we just have some scuffles and fights. Also, it is about good gangster Flynn muscling in on bad gangster Wire's territory -- horse racing. It is a rather odd plot development that takes away some sympathy from the hero. It is a little confusing why they decided to switch from the standard formula of having the bad bad guy trying to take over the good bad guy's action. See "the Roaring Twenties" for example, where Humphrey Bogart takes over James Cagney's taxi enterprise.

Anyways, the movie is reasonably fast paced and entertaining at one hour and nine minutes, but it is not the classic it should/could have been.