Five Star Final 
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
Written by Byron Morgan and Robert Lord from a play by Louis Weitzenkorn
1931/USA
First National Pictures (Warner Bros.)
First viewing/FilmStruck
[box] Brannegan: For 2 cents I’d smash your face in.
Joseph W. Randall: You’d do anything for 2 cents.[/box]
Excellent cast gives this early Warner Bros. social realist melodrama some pizazz.
Joseph Randall (Edward G. Robinson) is the city editor of a sleazy tabloid. The bosses decide that the paper is losing circulation because it is not quite sleazy enough. They want to resurrect the 20-year-old Nancy Voorhees story in which a secretary killed the boss who had impregnated her. They will bill it as a cautionary tale. Randall goes along and assigns sleazy hypocritical reporter Isopod (Boris Karloff) to dig up new dirt on the old story.
Isopod tracks down the secretary and finds she is now married to Michael Townsend (H.B. Warner). Her illegitimate daughter Jenny (Marian Marsh), who does not know her true parentage is about to marry the son of a wealthy stuck-up family. Tragedy ensues when the paper prints the story over a mother’s pleas. With Aline McMahon in her screen debut as Randall’s secretary.
This movie clearly betrays its stage roots with a lot of static long takes. But with Robinson in command there is considerable dynamism in the acting. The supporting cast is A-OK Warner Bros. quality to boot.
Five Star Final was Oscar-nominated for Best Picture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0qL1fs1c6k
Trailer- lots of spoilers
