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LeRoy's Five Star Final is a key forerunner, the camera contemplates the urban skyline and then rams into the face of a distraught witness, the press is there before the police. Amoral reporter (John Derek) and mordant photographer (Harry Morgan) on the crime scene, quite the enterprising duo: "Too bad the guy used an ax on her head. Spoiled some pretty pictures for me." Sensation drives circulation at the New York tabloid, the editor (Broderick Crawford) is its ruthless engine and the columnist (Donna Reed) its moral compass. The Lonely Heart ballroom just ahead of Marty, the editor's reunion with the wife he deserted (Rosemary DeCamp) ends with her dead from a cracked skull and him becoming the sweaty center of the greatest story of his career. "Don't count your steaks before you can hear the sizzle!" A sordid screen for sordid headlines and "the hunger of the public," the Samuel Fuller arena seconded by Phil Karlson. (Henry O'Neill's broken-down newshound anticipates Thelma Ritter's Bowery poetry in Pickup on South Street.) The dead woman keeps a tell-tale valise at the pawnshop, the ticket is between the dollar bills the culprit throws at the alky, thus the second murder. "There oughta be a special Pulitzer Prize for the world's biggest sucker." Plenty of vivid sketches, from the flirtatious morgue gremlin to the wino with the bleary stare to the New England judge with an exceptional memory. It builds to a killing scoop to complete the journalist's education, "all part of the job." Fuller has his own front of ink and blood in Park Row the same year, Lang in While the City Sleeps offers an analytical summation. With James Millican, Griff Barnett, Jonathan Hale, Jay Adler, Gertrude Astor, and Ida Moore. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |