“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)
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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.
