Deadline-U.S.A. (1952)

In his audio commentary on the DVD for Deadline-U.S.A., Eddie Muller claims that the film is not a noir. Then about fourteen minutes into the film commentary, he states that he scheduled the film to open his 2008 Noir City Film Festival in San Francisco. I have said (written) many times that I’m not a big fan of categories for film, and maybe Muller feels as ambiguous about film categories as I do. But no matter what category you want to put it in (drama, crime thriller, film noir, fictional commentary on the state of the newspaper industry), Deadline-U.S.A. is a great film. And in spite of being produced in 1952 and in black and white, it’s a film with a modern theme: the decline of the free press in the United States.

The film starts with a Senate commission hearing, which is attended by the press and is filmed by television cameras. A reporter from the Day, George Burrows, is in the courtroom taking notes while Tomas Rienzi testifies about spending money to influence an election, a charge he denies. When Burrows gets back to the newspaper offices to talk to the managing editor, Ed Hutcheson, Hutcheson learns that the newspaper is about to be sold to Lawrence White, owner of a rival and competitor called the Standard.

The Standard is the opposite of the Day: it is a tabloid full of sensationalism and yellow journalism. Ed Hutcheson laments how readers want horoscopes, dream interpretation, comics, and so on. He wants to fight the sale of the Day, but the heirs, the widow and two daughters of the original owner, are determined to sell. It is now Hutcheson’s job to tell the employees that the newspaper will be sold and that they will lose their jobs.

Hutcheson goes “home” to his ex-wife Nora. It’s home to him because he still loves Nora, but they are divorced and living separately. She wishes he hadn’t come to visit, but he stays. He is too drunk to argue when she arranges their separate sleeping accommodations. The next morning, Ed gets a phone call about George Burrows, the newspaper reporter, who is found in an industrial park after a beating by Rienzi’s men. Ed runs off, and Nora is reminded why they divorced in the first place. When they do finally meet for dinner, Nora has just enough time of Ed’s time to announce that she plans to remarry before Ed gets another phone call and rushes off about another important story.

This latest story involves a murder mystery, and the reporter who wants to follow the lead is the only female reporter at the Day: Mrs. Willebrandt. An unidentified woman was found in the river wearing only a mink coat, and Willebrandt found out that the woman’s mother, Mrs. Schmidt, arrived at the morgue to identify her daughter. Willebrandt is convinced that the mother knows a lot more than she is telling. The daughter, Bessie, used the name Sally Gardner, and Willebrandt believes the mother and the daughter’s alias are two details that will be part of a great story.

(This article about Deadline-U.S.A. contains some spoilers.)

Several story threads are thus introduced in the film: Tomas Rienzi, organized crime, and general corruption; the impending sale of the Day and the attendant legal wranglings that Ed Hutcheson hopes will thwart the inevitable; the possibility that Ed and Nora Hutcheson can renew their romance and marriage; and the mystery of the unidentified woman found in the river. Some are more closely connected than others, but all are wrapped up by the film’s end, including the legal case concerning the sale of the Day to Lawrence White of the Standard.

The probate court decides that the sale to the Standard should go through, but Ed Hutcheson stands up in court to defend the Day. He invokes the readers, the employees, the unfinished business concerning Thomas Rienzi, and the paper’s desire to expose Rienzi’s corruption. He also defends a free press, competition, the marketplace of ideas, all of which sound like arguments that could be made today about the media. Earlier in the film, Hutcheson tries to convince Garrison’s heirs not to sell, and he made similar arguments then, too. Unfortunately, he cannot stop the sale.

But Hutcheson isn’t going to let the Day fade away quietly. He prints an editorial about Tomas Rienzi, Rienzi’s corruption, and its effects on the life of the city. He doesn’t use his own name in the byline; he uses John Garrison’s. John Garrison was the owner of the Day and died eleven years earlier. When he finally discovers hard evidence of Rienzi’s crimes, he publishes the story, and it’s just in time for the newspaper’s final edition. The evidence comes from Mrs. Schmidt, mother of the murdered girl. She has her daughter’s diary, and she is not afraid about publication of some of the details it contains. She trusts the newspaper, not the police, because she has read the Day for thirty-one years; it was how she learned English after immigrating to the country.

As I mentioned, the DVD comes with audio commentary by film historian Eddie Muller. Just like his other commentaries, Muller’s commentary for Deadline-U.S.A. is a lot of fun to listen to and is packed with information about many aspects of the film. The film has a special significance for Muller because he grew up around newspapers thanks to his father, who wrote about boxing, and because he himself worked in journalism, all of which makes his commentary that much more entertaining. Here are just a few of the facts Muller discusses in his commentary:

◊ The offices of the New York Daily News were used for the location shootings for the newspaper: the press room, printing rooms, trucking, and so on.

◊ The director Richard Brooks starts the story with a congressional hearing, which was common in film and on television in the 1950s.

◊ The newspaper business allowed Richard Brooks to survive the Great Depression. He worked for the New York World after it had been folded into the New York Telegram. The real-life story about Joseph Pulitzer and the New York World story is used in the film. The story about the newspaper’s heirs was based almost exactly on the story of Pulitzer’s heirs. Margaret Garrison is a stand-in for Joseph Pulitzer.

◊ Richard Brooks wrote the part of Ed Hutcheson for Humphrey Bogart, and he had to fight Darryl Zanuck to cast Bogart. Bogart is perfect for the role because he could portray cynicism and idealism at the same time on-screen. Bogart as Ed Hutcheson voices a lot of Joseph Pulitzer’s editorial philosophy.

◊ Richard Brooks cares less about organized crime than he does about the decline of newspaper journalism. Richard Brooks’s ideas about merging newspapers as a threat to democracy are prescient.

Because of the different story threads, the narrative seems to jump from one plot detail to another, and Deadline-U.S.A. is another film where viewers really have to pay attention to all the clues and remember names and details. Seeing the film more than once is a big help, but that shouldn’t be a hardship because the film is so good. Humphrey Bogart is great in the role of Ed Hutcheson. The supporting cast is filled with several film noir regulars like Paul Stewart, Martin Gabel, and Tom Powers. Ethel Barrymore plays the role of the widowed heir Margaret Garrison. She, Bogart, and the supporting cast all give strong performances (probably no surprise to fans of film noir and classic films).

Deadline-U.S.A. is one of those films that viewers have to watch carefully because every detail counts, and repeat viewings are well worth the time. The role of Ed Hutcheson is a bit different for Humphrey Bogart, but that just makes the film all the more interesting. It’s amazing that so many of his lines could be repeated today and remain true about the free press in the United States—almost three-quarters of a century later.

March 14, 1952, release date  •  Directed by Richard Brooks  •  Screenplay by Richard Brooks  •  Music by Cyril J. Mockridge  •  Edited by William B. Murphy  •  Cinematography by Milton R. Krasner

Humphrey Bogart as Ed Hutcheson  •  Ethel Barrymore as Margaret Garrison  •  Kim Hunter as Nora Hutcheson  •  Ed Begley as Frank Allen  •  Warren Stevens as George Burrows  •  Paul Stewart as Harry Thompson  •  Martin Gabel as Tomas Rienzi  •  Joseph De Santis as Herman Schmidt  •  Joyce MacKenzie as Katherine (aka Kitty) Garrison Geary  •  Audrey Christie as Mrs. Willebrandt  •  Fay Baker as Alice Garrison Courtney  •  Jim Backus as Jim Cleary  •  Carleton Young as Crane, Garrison’s daughters’ lawyer  •  Selmer Jackson as Williams  •  Fay Roope as Judge McKay  •  Parley Baer as the headwaiter  •  John Doucette as Hal  •  Florence Shirley as Ms. Barndollar  •  Raymond Greenleaf as Lawrence White  •  Tom Powers as Andrew Wharton  •  Thomas Browne Henry as Fenway  •  Phillip Terry as Lewis Schaefer, Nora’s fiancé  •  Joseph Sawyer as Whitey Franks  •  Lawrence Dobkin as Larry Hansen, Rienzi’s lawyer  •  Clancy Cooper as Police Captain Finlay  •  Willis Bouchey as Henry  •  Joseph Crehan as White’s city editor  •  Kasia Orzazewski as Mrs. Schmidt  •  Norman Leavitt as a newsroom reporter

Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox  • Produced by Twentieth Century Fox

Appointment with Danger (1950)

I have seen Alan Ladd in several films now, and he has become one of my noir favorites. He can play both sides of the law with an equal amount of cynicism. His role in Appointment with Danger is Al Goddard, a U.S. postal inspector, and he is definitely on the right side of the law, and he is definitely very cynical.

The film opens in a semidocumentary style, with different interior and exterior shots of the largest post office building in the country. Viewers also see postal workers at work. A voice-over narrator explains the working of the post office in general, then points out that postal inspectors are members of the oldest police force in the United States. Appointment with Danger is the story of one postal inspector, and it starts on a rainy summer night in Gary, Indiana.

This narrated opening is a bit bland, I must confess. But once the action starts—with Postal Inspector Harry Gruber already dead in Gary, Indiana, and his body being dumped in an alley in nearby La Porte—the switch in tone is dramatic. The dramatic tension is accentuated because a nun, Sister Augustine, stops at one end of the alley where two men are trying to hide Gruber’s body. She struggles to open her umbrella in the pouring rain. One of the men, George Soderquist, arrives to help her, and she asks him about the man slumped against their car. Soderquist explains that the man is very drunk. But Sister Augustine doesn’t buy the story. She very soon reports the incident to a nearby police officer on a motorcycle, who chases after the fleeing car. Harry Gruber’s body is eventually found in the alley, and Sister Augustine is now a key witness.

Al Goddard is newly arrived in La Porte from Chicago, Illinois. His boss, Maury Ahearn, is a new arrival as well. Goddard’s reputation has preceded him; everyone in La Porte already knows that he is hard and unfeeling. The secretary in the La Porter branch office tells the investigators who arrive with Gruber’s effects that Goddard has ordered “a small boy with mustard” for lunch. When they bring the evidence into Ahearn’s office, Goddard implies that they are not doing their jobs well enough or they would have found the nun, their key witness, by now.

Al Goddard wants to get the job done and that’s all. Maury Ahearn warns him about antagonizing others on the case. Ahearn has to leave town, and on the way to the airport, he and Al Goddard have a conversation about the case and Goddard’s general attitude. Here’s an excerpt:

• Maury Ahearn: “You’ve been chasing hoodlums for so long, you don’t know how to treat ordinary people. Warm up, will ya?

• Al Goddard: “Sure, I’ll fall in love for ya.”

• Maury Ahearn: “I don’t think you could because you don’t know what a love affair is.”

• Al Goddard: “It’s what goes on between a man and a .45 pistol that won’t jam.”

To say that Goddard is all business would be an understatement.

Goddard is efficient and knows what he is doing. He takes a taxi to investigate known locations behind the killing of Harry Gruber, and he arrives by chance at the railway stop in La Porte. He takes the train from La Porte to Fort Wayne Junction. At Fort Wayne Junction, he questions two railway workers, one of whom saw two nuns board a bus. Goddard takes a bus from Fort Wayne Junction to Belle Isle, where he stops in front of a convent, church, and school. There, naturally, he finds Sister Augustine.

(This article about Appointment with Danger contains some spoilers.)

Part of the charm of the Appointment with Danger is Al Goddard’s character transformation: He starts to care about the welfare of Sister Augustine. Their banter back and forth throughout the film is humorous. But Goddard’s gets off to a rocky start with her, just as he manages to do with everyone he meets. When he first meets her and asks about her whereabouts the night of the murder, Goddard makes the usual bad first impression:

• Sister Augustine: “I got off the train to get Sister Paula some medicine. She wasn’t feeling so well.”

• Al Goddard: “Neither was the guy in the alley. He was a dead government agent by the name of Harry Gruber.”

• Sister Augustine: “Oh. Did he have a family?”

• Al Goddard: “What’s the difference, Sister? He’s just as dead either way.”

• Sister Augustine: “Not quite, Mr. Goddard.”

Al Goddard and Maury Ahearn work with a local homicide detective Dave Goodman. They all wonder about the following: Why did two gunsels kill Gruber? Why did they dump his body out of town instead of leaving town, as most murderers do? What is it about La Porte that is keeping the criminals in town? Maybe something to do with the postal service and something that Gruber was investigating? They eventually narrow their search to three individuals: Earl Boettiger, who is the ring leader of a big heist planned for La Porte; Joe Regas, who would have been just as happy to have gotten rid of Sister Augustine from the start; and George Soderquist, who helped Sister Augustine with her umbrella. Al Goddard insinuates himself into the gang to learn their plans, and the chase is on.

Jan Sterling plays Dodie, the femme fatale and the girlfriend of the criminal ringleader and mastermind, Earl Boettiger. But her role of femme fatale is a bit unusual. She isn’t completely loyal to Boettiger. When she overhears Goddard warning the police and his boss about a change in the heist plans, she doesn’t bother to tell Boettiger anything about it. She confronts Goddard after his phone conversation, and she tells him that she won’t rat on Boettiger because he has always treated her well. When Goddard points out that she could be considered an accessory to a crime. She decides to do her civic duty; she reports the crime to a government agent: Goddard! She doesn’t care that he already knows all about it. She tells Goddard that she hopes Boettiger survives and kills him. Then she leaves to start packing, get out of town, and save herself.

Jan Sterling’s character isn’t the only unusual feature of this noir. Now that I have seen several of Alan Ladd’s films noir, many of them are unusual in this respect: He rarely has a romantic lead, unless his costar is Veronica Lake, that is. In Appointment with Danger, the lead opposite Al Goddard is a nun, hardly a romantic prospect. In This Gun for Hire (1941), Veronica Lake plays Ellen Graham, a woman who helps Alan Ladd’s character, Philip Raven, Ladd’s breakout film noir role. But she is not his costar, nor does she play his girlfriend in their first film together (it’s the one exception to the Veronica Lake as Alan Ladd’s costar and romantic lead). Alan Ladd gets fourth billing in This Gun for Hire, but the film launched him to stardom. He does get the girl, that is, any character played by Veronica Lake, at least after This Gun for Hire. In the next two films noir that they starred in together, The Glass Key (1942) and The Blue Dahlia (1946), the romantic subplot involves their respective characters.

And then there is Chicago Deadline (1949), in which Alan Ladd plays Ed Adams, a newspaper reporter investigating the death of a young woman, Rosita Jean d’Ur, who is found alone in a shabby hotel room. Donna Reed plays Rosita Jean d’Ur, who is already dead at the start of the film. Ed Adams and viewers get to know her only through flashbacks.

There is one detail about Appointment with Danger that does not stand the test of time at all, and that is its portrayal of the nuns. Sister Augustine and Mother Ambrose are portrayed as simple innocents who are horrified by violence and who are protective of children. This part of the film I found hard to swallow, coming as I do from a 2025 perspective. I kept thinking what a farce this portrayal of nuns is, now that we know both nuns and priests have been accused, some even convicted, of abuse against children around the world. In 1950, a nun in a traditional habit was assumed to be a good person, one even with exceptional moral character. But this just kept getting in the way of my enjoying the film as much as I did the first time I saw it many years ago. The fact that I spent some years under the tutelage of nuns has colored my perspective, I admit. But I think many people today would find the portrayal of the nuns as wide-eyed innocents a little tough to take.

April 7, 1950 (United Kingdom), May 9, 1951 (United States), release dates  •  Directed by Lewis Allen  •  Screenplay by Richard L. Breen, Warren Duff  •  Music by Victor Young  •  Edited by Le Roy Stone  •  Cinematography by John F. Seitz

Alan Ladd as Al Goddard  •  Phyllis Calvert as Sister Augustine  •  Paul Stewart as Earl Boettiger  •  Jan Sterling as Dodie  •  Jack Webb as Joe Regas  •  Stacy Harris as Paul Ferrar  •  Harry Morgan as George Soderquist (credited as Henry Morgan)  •  David Wolfe as David Goodman, homicide detective in Gary, Indiana  •  Dan Riss as Maury Ahearn, chief postal inspector  •  Harry Antrim as Postmaster Taylor  •  Geraldine Wall as Mother Ambrose  •  George J. Lewis as Leo Cronin  •  Paul Lees as Gene Gunner

Distributed by Paramount Pictures  •  Produced by Paramount Pictures