Five Star Final
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
Written by Byron Morgan and Robert Lord from a play by Louis Weitzenkorn
1931/US
First National Pictures (Warner Bros.)
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental
Miss Taylor: I think you can always get people interested in the crucifixion of a woman.
Mervyn LeRoy and company deliver a hard-hitting social consciousness film about the gutter press.
Joseph Randall (Edward G. Robinson) is managing editor of a tabloid rag. The paper’s owners are concerned about declining circulation and come up with the loony and heartless idea of resurrecting a 20-year-old murder case. A jury acquitted a young woman named Nancy Voorhees after she killed her employer who had impregnated her. Randall is ordered to find out what happened to the woman and her baby. He sends out unscrupulous reporter T. Vernon Isopod to dig up the dirt.
Voorhees married a man named Thompson (H.B. Warner) and the couple raised her daughter Jenny (Marian Marsh) as their own. They have had a happy life and now Jenny is engaged to marry the son of a high society family. Isopod poses as a preacher and the Townsends assume he has come to call about the wedding. This gives the paper enough to print a story with lurid headlines. Much tragedy ensues. With Aline MacMahon in her film debut as Randall’s adoring but disgusted secretary.
This is heavy on the melodrama but is saved by the excellent performances of Robinson, MacMahon and Marsh. Worth seeing.
Five Star Final was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0qL1fs1c6k
Spoilerish
