Ten years back, Edward G. Robinson played a tabloid editor under director Mervyn LeRoy in FIVE STAR FINAL/’31*, a superior Warners Early Talkie that warned about the unchecked power of the popular press. Now, they repeat roles at M-G-M in this inferior mediocrity. This time, Eddie G., just back from WWI, ankles his stuffy old newspaper to invent the tabloid format, scruffy, illustrated & scandal-happy (Think New York Daily News, but here ironically named The Mercury*) taking along cub reporter William Orr & lovelorn acolyte Laraine Day. (Day does nothing for Eddie, but then she did nothing for anyone.) Writing up the news before it’s happened and dishing on society nabobs, they not only make a splash, but ruffle the feathers of businessman Edward Arnold, the shady ‘pal’ who put up the cash for Robinson and thinks he not only owns, but also runs the paper. Robinson disagrees; and puts his life on the line to prove it. Fun to hear a young Marsha Hunt singing so well as she pivots from bloated Arnold to bland Orr, but the only true surprise comes in seeing how quickly LeRoy devolved from shiny boy wonder at ‘30s Warners to go-along corporate player at M-G-M in the ‘’40s.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: *As mentioned, FIVE STAR FINAL, still moving and thoughtful. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/10/five-star-final-1931.html
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Ironic because ‘Mercury’ was the name chosen by Orson Welles for his various outfits (stage, screen, radio, recording) whose first Hollywood project, out two months before this, was that other 1941 newspaper story CITIZEN KANE. If you ever wanted to know why Hollywood felt so threatened by Welles, and why they needed to quash him, compare this nonentity with the Welles classic. The two films not so much playing by separate rules, but playing different games. And Welles might have pulled it off if WWII hadn’t stopped cinematic advances in their tracks for much of the ‘40s.
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