“All The News That’s Fit To Print"-And Then Some-The Film Adaptation of Ben Hecht And Charles MacArthur’s “The Front Page” (1931)

“All The News That’s Fit To Print"-And Then Some-The Film Adaptation of Ben Hecht And Charles MacArthur’s “The Front Page” (1931)

DVD Review

By Josh Breslin

[As of December 1, 2017 under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website, brought in to shake things up a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site administrator Allan Jackson was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, the habit of assigning writers to specific topics like film, books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade” all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]

The Front Page, starring Adophe Menjou, Pat O’Brian, produced by Howard Hughes, from the play by Ben Hecht and Charles Mac Arthur, 1931

[Greg Green, the new site administrator here who I knew by reputation over at the on-line American Film Gazette where he made that website a major source of current and old-time film reviews and related stories, has given the writers in this space, the old guard, Allan Jackson the previous administrator’s base of support, and the so-called Young Turks who called for a vote of no confidence in his leadership alike, the opportunity to express their sentiments about this recent rather quick change-over in management. I have been busy finishing up a major story about a young guy, a guy named Steve McQueen but who at the time went by the name Eric Holden for reasons known only to himself, and who many years ago looked like he would be a world-beater at stud poker, a game he had been a natural at. When he came up though against the wily reigning king of the hill he let his hubris (and his dick) get the best of him in  a big game in the Big Easy, in old time New Orleans, and sent him all the way back to cheap street, back to playing in gin mills in dink towns for milk money.

Thus I have not been on the inside of the controversy although I am ready to say a few words about the now, according to Zack James who should know, disappeared Allan whom I have known for many, many years going back to our first meeting days out West in the San Francisco Summer of Love, 1967 night. If we were in Cold War Russia Stalin 1950s time or even in our youthful radical ideologically pure 1960s time when we banished, maybe shunned is a better word I would be worried about Allan’s whereabouts but I am confident that he is just licking his wounds in some out of the way gin mill where they don’t ask questions and don’t take credit cards and has not been badly handled by the Young Turks as Fritz Taylor has insinuated on the basis of no facts.

Let’s get something straight first which may be, may have been confusing to casual readers, the Peter Paul Markin the now deposed site administrator is not the same Markin forever known as Scribe by his high school friends and by everybody else afterward when we all had monikers to reflect our desire to “reinvent” ourselves in those turbulent 1960s when we thought it safe to do so. The real Markin, let’s call him Scribe for reference is a guy I met out in San Francisco during the Summer of Love in 1967 when right after high school up in Maine I was kind of footloose and headed west to see what the whole thing was about. I went up to this psychedelically-painted bus parked in a small park on Russian Hill and asked this guy with long hair and longish unkempt beard for a “joint,” a marijuana cigarette. Without saying another word he passed me the biggest joint I had ever seen and then told me “don’t Bogart that joint” when you are done. We became, despite a few years age difference which probably didn’t matter as much then as now, fast and close friends, we had each other’s back in the working class lingo of the time.               

We both wound up travelling on the same Captain Crunch converted yellow school bus that I had seen on Russian Hill that day for the next two years until the Scribe got his draft notice and headed home, went into the Army, was a grunt in Vietnam, came back and was never the same. There is a lot more than that to what happened to him but if you check the archives here you will get plenty of stories about Scribe and how he fell down, how he couldn’t in the end relate to the “real” world, got so high on cocaine when that became the drug of choice amongst the brethren that he started dealing. Got big ideas about breaking out, making some serious easy street money but got nothing but two slugs to the head and an unmarked potter’s grave down in Sonora, Mexico.

Got missed every day since by me the last guy who saw him when we were living in Oakland together before he headed to Mexico and got missed by every guy he grew up with including a few writers here. Including Allan Jackson, whom I can now tell without revealing anything was, is the real name of the Peter Paul Markin who was the site administrator her for the past decade or more. He took that moniker to honor his, our fallen friend who whatever his short-comings and they were many taught us all a lot of stuff about living when he was in his prime.    

I see I have talked more about Scribe Markin than Allan and spent more space than it will take to do this review so I will leave off until some other time but know this whatever short-comings old Allan had, and they were many, even if he did in the end go crazy to go back to those 1960s which formed us older guys it was only because he, we got old, got old and that is all.  

****

The Fourth Estate, you know the press, the free and unfettered press as they like to call themselves, has been on a bumpy ride of late. Has taken flak from goofs at the top of the pyramid like that guy Trump who may be trumped long before his tenure is over down to the man on the street who can’t understand why facts should matter in an argument and are more than willing to cry to the heavens about “fake news” to solve every doubt, to back up every prejudice in their sainted brethren souls (or is it soles). But if art either imitates or reflects life, and I think the latter is true then this muddle of a free press and its detractors has a long genesis. And gets a heavy workout in this 1930s original male cinematic version of the classic Hecht-MacArthur play The Front Page. (That by the way is the Ben Hecht of the dramatic poster art work in defense of the martyred Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti whom he fought desperately to save from the executioner’s chair in 1927).       

As Pete Markin always encouraged us to do when he was around taking a cue from his old his school friend and fellow contributor to this space Sam Lowell let’s see how this one played out as a good example of the tension between free press and license to lie. Hildy Johnson, played by Pat O’Brian, ace reporter for a big Chi town paper, fictional paper so names don’t matter but call it Everypaper if you like) was both fed up with the hours working the police blotter for little scraps of vicious news to circulate to a hungry audience that needed some entertainment after their own long factory shifts and in love with some twist who wants him to settle down and get a real job. Walter Burns, played rather strangely for a Midwest Everypaper editor by Frenchman Adophe Menjou, wants him to slave away at the new news story for him. That tension will run the gamut of the film as an expression of the “buddy” aspect of this film.

Here is the newspaper end. Everybody in Chi town is waiting eagerly for one smuck and loser, Earl Williams, to take the big step-off, to get a jolt in the state’s electric chair after having allegedly killing a Chi town copper. Of course the smuck didn’t do it and in any case the Governor has sent down a reprieve. That however doesn’t stop the presses. No, not at all because once loser Earl Williams escapes from that Chi town jail and every city official  has egg on his face from the mayor down to the warden is scrambling like hell to find the bastard and mess him up good. Of course every newspaper in town in the times in this country when every hamlet and village had a least one hard copy newspaper and big Chi-type towns had plenty to fit whatever readership niche they were aiming for from high-brow Tribune efforts to police gazettes. Nevertheless high- brow or low newspaper, newspaper editor and cub reporter dreams of an exclusive. Hildy Johnson, maybe reluctantly, remembered that bride-to-be waiting for him, and Walter Burns are no exceptions. Even better they have one escapee Earl Williams in their clutches and if they can figure a way to get him out of the police blotter detail room and to a place where they can put even more egg on every city officials face so much the better. Watch this one to see in a funny way what was what in the days when newspapers, now under heavy assault from the Internet and social media, ruled the roost and gave out the news, fake or not.