Five Star Final (1931)

Directed by Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award recipient Mervyn LeRoy with an adaptation by Robert Lord (One Way Passage (1932)) this newspaper drama was nominated for Best Picture of 1931 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The most notable character in the film is played by Edward G. Robinson who along with his performance in another LeRoy picture that same year (Little Caesar (1931)) showed signs of his tremendous versatility early in his 5+ decade long film career. The fact that Robinson was NEVER EVEN NOMINATED for an acting Oscar is perhaps the greatest of the many oversights in the Academy’s storied history. Joseph Randall (Robinson) is an editor for the Gazette a rather trashy paper (the Gazette) he’d begun to clean up when his bosses – owner Hinchecliffe (Oscar Apfel) Robert French (Purnell Pratt) & Brannegan (Robert Elliott) in charge of circulation & advertising – convince him to find out "what ever happened to" Nancy Voorhees (Frances Starr) a paroled murderess who’d killed her husband 20 years ago and make a week-long story of it to sell more papers. Aline MacMahon is also notable in her film debut serving as Randall’s secretary with a conscience that reflects his own which is (at least temporarily) buried by the fear of losing his job. Another colorful character is George Stone who plays a slimy newspaper "handyman" in Randall’s employ that finds other methods including some outlandish ideas to enhance the Gazette’s circulation.

As it turns out the murderess’s daughter (the beautiful 17 year old Marian Marsh) is about to marry the son (Anthony Bushell) of wealthy parents. However neither the murderess’s daughter nor her prospective in-laws know of her mother’s past because Voorhees had remarried (H. B. Warner) which changed her name to Townsend. The daughter doesn’t even know that Townsend isn’t her father a superfluous plot point that is never learned nor exploited. Randall uses a new well endowed reporter Kitty Carmody (Ona Munson) and his wily though frequently drunken investigative veteran "Reverend" Isopod (Boris Karloff) to find the missing murderess and get today’s story. Naturally printing the story will affect the interested parties lives irreversibly so the former murderess and her current husband do everything they can to appeal to Hinchecliffe and Randall to stop the "five star final" (the last edition of the day). Of course the newspaper men run with it and achieve their desired circulation results which prompts even more drastic actions from (eventually) each of the three Townsends. The scenes in which Randall realizes he can’t wash his hands of his responsibility in the tragedy that befalls the Townsends are Robinson’s and the film’s most powerful. Too bad the editors of today’s formerly respected big name newspapers don’t (evidently) feel the shame nor the guilt for what their papers deem fit to print in this day and age!

Remade as a B movie five years later as Two Against the World (1936) which is also shown as One Fatal Hour (1936) on TCM.

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