Scandal Sheet (1952 film)

Plot

A newspaper man, Mark Chapman (Broderick Crawford), takes over an ailing New York daily newspaper, the fictional New York Express, and revives it as a scandal sheet by staging a number of publicity stunts. The man's wife, whom he left penniless years ago, resurfaces and threatens to blackmail him. He kills her, accidentally, but then tries to cover it up. Meanwhile, the paper's star reporter Steve McClearly (John Derek) begins investigating the unsolved murder. As McClearly, and feature writer Julie Allison (Donna Reed) dig deeper, the noose begins to tighten around Chapman's neck.

A former Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Express, Charlie Barnes, who has become alcoholic, stumbles upon Chapman in the Bowery, who gives Barnes a cash handout. Accidentally included in the handout is a pawn shop receipt for the dead woman's suitcase. Barnes claims the suitcase and finds that Chapman is the murderer, and calls Allison and McCleary. McCleary thinks that Barnes is too drunk and is calling in a phony story, which angers Barnes and makes him threaten to take the story to a competitor, the fictional Daily Leader. Chapman hears about Barnes going to the Daily Leader. He accosts Barnes near the newspaper's headquarters and kills him. McCleary and Allison take a trip to Connecticut to find the judge who married the mystery woman and Chapman, brings the judge back to the Express, who identifies Chapman as the groom, but under a different name.

Cast

Production

Film rights to Sam Fuller's novel were sold for $15,000 to Howard Hawks during the war. After the war Fuller did a treatment and Sidney Buchman wrote a script, which Hawks then sold to Edward Small for $100,000. John Payne was originally offered the lead, then Dennis O'Keefe and Orson Welles were announced as stars.

Critical response

Film critic Bosley Crowther was lukewarm about the film, writing, "The ruthlessness of tabloid journalism, as seen through the coolly searching eyes of Hollywood scriptwriters (who naturally shudder with shock at such a thing), is given another demonstration in Columbia's Scandal Sheet, a run-of-the-press melodrama which came to the Paramount yesterday. But apart from a bit of tough discussion of the public's avid taste for thrills and chills and a few dubious hints at tabloid techniques, there is nothing very shocking in this film ... The moral of all this dismal nonsense, we would gather, is meant to be that corruption breeds corruption. The moral is okay. Enough said."

Critic Dennis Schwartz called the drama a "hard-hitting film noir thriller" and liked the camera work. He wrote, "Burnett Guffey's splashy black-and-white photography is filled with New York City atmosphere and the whirlwind energy buzzing around a press room."

Preservation

The Academy Film Archive preserved Scandal Sheet in 1997.