Flaxy Martin (1949)

I wanted to see Flaxy Martin because of Zachary Scott. I think he is an underrated actor, and I always enjoy his films. Scott is often associated with playing creepy cads, probably because of his outstanding performance as Monte Beragon in Mildred Pierce (1945). But many of his roles, including his roles in films noir, don’t always involve thugs or cads. In Flaxy Martin, he plays Walt Colby, a lawyer who gets in over his head as legal counsel for Hap Richie, a club owner who sometimes resorts to illegal activities to get what he wants. It doesn’t help that Colby has fallen in love with Hap’s girlfriend, the Flaxy Martin of the film’s title.

Flaxy Martin has shown up from time to time at the Internet Archive, which is where I saw it, but films sometimes come and go at the archive, and Flaxy Martin is no exception. I found it at the archive twice, then it disappeared twice. If a film disappears before you have a chance to see it, try searching on the film’s title once again at the archive’s website to find out if it has been reposted. Flaxy Martin sometimes shows up on the television station Movies!, as it did earlier this week and will again tonight (July 16, 2026) at 10:15 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. Check the website here for the schedule.

The film has one of the most startling openings I have ever seen. The credits roll while a familiar theme plays on the soundtrack. The music is close to a film noir theme often used by Twentieth-Century Fox. If you are a fan of The Dark Corner (1946), a Fox noir, and have seen it as often as I have, you will recognize the musical theme to Flaxy Martin. (The same theme is also used for other Fox noirs.) The credits end, the music stops, and the film cuts to a window in the middle of being shot out and its glass shattered. Once the shooting stops, a man jumps out of the window and runs down the dark city street. The transition is jarring, and it is perfect for film noir.

The man escaping through the shattered window is Caesar, criminal associate of Hap Richie. Richie wants lawyer Walt Colby to get Caesar off the hook. Colby protests: He never agreed to be a lawyer for anything or anyone else besides Richie’s businesses, but Richie insists. Colby relents, but the conflict between the two men is already set up before viewers realize that Colby is in love with Richie’s girlfriend, Flaxy Martin. Martin is not loyal to anyone but herself, and she is the femme fatale of this film. This isn’t giving anything away: Viewers can see this almost from the start. After Colby visits Caesar in jail, he calls Martin, who is entertaining Richie, and both of them are entertaining various ways to play Colby.

(This article about Flaxy Martin contains spoilers.)

Before Caesar’s trial begins, Richie and Martin enlist a woman named Peggy Farrar to give false testimony. With this surprise witness, the case against Caesar goes south, and Caesar is acquitted. Richie is thrilled with the result. Colby knows that he has been double-crossed with a witness who gave false testimony. The district attorney isn’t happy with the verdict either and suspects foul play on the part of Caesar and Richie. Colby warns Richie about Farrar: She wants more money now, and she told Colby about her deal with Richie and lying on the stand. Colby threatens to leave and talk to the D.A. Richie finally agrees to cancel his contract with the Richie syndicate, but he hatches a plan to set up Colby.

Richie calls Caesar for “a little job,” and Peggy Farrar is fished out of the river the next day. Two police detectives go to Farrar’s apartment to start their investigation. One of them finds a marriage license for Farrar Martin’s name as witness on it. Martin is the logical next step in their investigation. Martin goes to Colby for help. She wants Colby to leave Richie out of it, but Colby doesn’t think that is a good option because there is too much circumstantial evidence.

Walt Colby is so smitten with Martin that he offers to confess to Farrar’s murder and shield Martin and Richie from any involvement. He is convinced that he will succeed in diverting the case because there is no evidence against him. When the two detectives show up, Colby turns himself over to them.

This was one plot point that I found a bit hard to believe. Did Colby’s ego get in the way of his good judgment? Colby is convinced that he can escape a guilty verdict not only because he is innocent but also because he plans to defend himself. But perhaps love really is blind because he never foresees how Richie and Martin will double-cross him: Fred Banford, a cab driver, is hired by Richie to testify against Colby at his trial. Branford maintains that Colby killed Peggy Farrar, and not in self-defense. Colby realizes that Richie and Martin have set him up. He is found guilty and sentenced to twenty years in prison.

Sam Malko visits Colby in prison. This is Malko’s first appearance in the story, but he is at the prison because he feels that he owes Colby a favor. Colby helped his wife and children when he was in legal trouble. Malko overheard Caesar talking about Colby taking the rap for him, and he sees Flaxy Martin with Hap Richie, who comes to his garage all the time. It doesn’t make sense, according to Malko, because he always thought that Martin was Colby’s girlfriend. If Colby had any hopes about Martin before Malko’s visit, they are shattered now.

Colby escapes from a train while he is being transferred from the courthouse jail to prison after his sentencing. He walks away from the tracks and flags down a car driven by Nora Carson. He collapses in the road, and Carson brings him home to recuperate. Carson tells him that the D.A. is quoted in a newspaper article as saying that he thinks Colby is innocent. She also tells him why she brought him home to recuperate: “I guess you want to know why I helped you. Well, let’s just say it’s because I’m a sucker. I happen to feel sorry for anyone who runs away from something. I know what it is to run away.”

Carson’s nosy next-door neighbor calls the local sheriff because she is suspicious of Carson’s visitor. Carson tells the sheriff that Colby is her brother dropping in for a visit. Then Roper, another of Hap Richie’s associates, shows up, ready to use his gun. Roper takes the sheriff’s gun and orders him to use his handcuffs to cuff Colby and Carson together, then he locks the sheriff in a closet. (I did wonder at this point what happened to the nosy neighbor. Why isn’t she watching out for the sheriff now?)

Colby and Carson escape, take Roper’s car, talk their way out of a police roadblock, and head back to New York City to ask Malko for help getting out of the handcuffs. Colby wants to talk to Caesar, but he is dead, shot in the back, by the time Colby arrives at his walk-up apartment. Caesar’s (old, black, landline) phone rings, and Colby picks up the receiver, just to listen. It’s Roper, and he knows Colby is listening on the phone. Colby has no choice but to leave Caesar’s apartment, which leads to a rather lengthy cat-and-mouse chase between him and Roper.

Flaxy Martin has heard what happened to Caesar and Roper at Richie’s club, and she arrives home to call Richie and tell him that she is leaving town. By this time, Colby is hiding in Martin’s apartment (he escaped Roper), and he overhears her talking to Richie. Martin tries to insist that she loves Colby, but he is not as easy to convince anymore. Richie arrives, and Martin pulls a gun and tries to double-cross both of them. Martin shoots Richie and kills him, and Colby takes her gun. He calls the police and leaves her to face them alone. He returns to Malko’s garage to see Nora Carson. But Carson isn’t interested in running away anymore. She tells Colby, “Nobody ever ran away and ever had anything but bad dreams. I’ve had enough of them.” Carson leaves without Colby, and Malko is on hand to set Colby straight. He tells Colby that Carson loves him and that he shouldn’t let her get away. Colby agrees, and he and Carson get their happy ending. But this is film noir: They have to face the police and their questions first.

The plot of Flaxy Martin is not as complicated as those of other films noir, but it still pays to see it more than once to catch all the details. For example, the first time that I saw it, I couldn’t figure out why Sam Malko took such an interest in Walt Colby’s predicament. His visit to Colby in prison is his first screen appearance, and there didn’t seem to be any backstory between them. It was only on a second viewing that I heard Malko say that he feels he owes Colby a favor because of his help in the past.

A second viewing also cleared up some of my confusion about Nora Carson’s reasons for not wanting to go on the run with Walter Colby at the end of the film. In the middle of the film, she tells Colby that she understands the need to run away because she has done it herself. But in Malko’s garage, she tells him that she doesn’t like his plan to run away. What was she thinking? It turns out that I missed some important lines of dialogue: Carson is tired of running. She is in love with Colby and doesn’t want to keep moving. She would rather settle down and forego the bad dreams that plague people on the run. Malko sets Colby straight and helps him see what his future could be.

Maybe I would have had an easier time following the film’s dialogue if I had had a DVD copy that came with subtitles. The Internet Archive doesn’t have captioning, but free is free and hard to beat.

It was a pleasure to see the film more than once, in spite of a few fuzzy plot points. Zachary Scott is fantastic in the role of Walter Colby, and Tom D’Andrea is the same as the trustworthy Sam Malko. He shows the right amount of hesitation about helping Colby and Carson when they arrive in handcuffs at his garage before helping them in the end. Virginia Mayo has the title role, and she is entirely convincing as the femme fatale playing two men against one another. But the film isn’t really hers. Zachary Scott is the true lead, the true star, which just added to the fun for me.

February 15, 1949, release date  •  Directed by Richard L. Bare  •  Screenplay by David Lang  •  Based on a story by David Lang  •  Music by William Lava  •  Edited by Frank Magee  •  Cinematography by Carl Guthrie

Virginia Mayo as Flaxy Martin  •  Zachary Scott as Walter (“Walt”) Colby  •  Dorothy Malone as Nora Carson  •  Tom D’Andrea as Sam Malko  •  Helen Westcott as Peggy Farrar  •  Douglas Kennedy as Hap Richie  •  Elisha Cook Jr. as Roper  •  Douglas Fowley as Max, the detective  •  Monte Blue as Joe, the detective  •  Jack Overman as Caesar  •  Max Wagner as Charles McMahon  •  John Harmon as Fred Branford  •  Harlan Warde as McClane, assistant district attorney

Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures-First National Pictures  •  Produced by Warner Bros. Pictures-First National Pictures

Newspaper Noir in 1952: Deadline-U.S.A., Scandal Sheet, and Assignment-Paris

My last three articles were about Deadline-U.S.A., Scandal Sheet, and Assignment-Paris—all released in 1952 and all examples of newspaper noir. That is, all are stories about newspaper reporters and their work publishing the news of the day. I hadn’t planned on writing about newspaper noir three consecutive times, but because it has worked out that way, it seemed like a good opportunity to investigate newspaper noir, a subgenre of film noir, a little bit.

◊ Deadline-U.S.A., released March 14, 1952

◊ Scandal Sheet, released January 16, 1952

◊ Assignment-Paris, released September 4, 1952

I tried an online search for newspaper noir and didn’t find much information about this type of film. But I did find one article about journalism in noir at the website Heart of Noir. Click here to visit the site for more information.

Deadline-U.S.A., Scandal Sheet, and Assignment-Paris are certainly not the only films about newspapers and reporters. Heart of Noir lists many examples of newspaper noir, and it looks like I have more films noir to see. At Heart of Noir, the criterion for categorizing a film noir as a newspaper noir is simply that “[a]t least one character works in journalism.”

Although I am not a big fan of categories, as I have said/written many times before, I’d like to think that the one character and their work for a newspaper are not the only criteria that make a film a newspaper noir. The character and their newspaper work should at least be the main parts of the film’s narrative, which would thus include the newspaper and its one or more employees as vital parts of the story. So I would limit the category a little more: I wouldn’t call a film noir a newspaper noir if only one of the characters happened to work for a newspaper.

I realize that the designation of a film as newspaper noir (or even as film noir) is subjective. Fans have definite opinions—and that’s one of the things that makes writing about noir interesting for me.

And then there is the term newspaper noir trilogy, which is applied specifically to three of Fritz Lang’s films. I have already written about all three:

◊ The Blue Gardenia, released March 28, 1953

◊ While the City Sleeps, released May 16, 1956

◊ Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, released September 13, 1956

The Blue Gardenia explores the public’s appetite for sensational stories and a newspaper reporter’s willingness to pander to those appetites. In While the City Sleeps, a newspaper’s reporters learn of a serial killer terrorizing young women in New York City. The paper’s owner decides to create the position of executive director and give it to the person who learns the killer’s identity first, thus setting up a fierce competition and putting lives at risk.

A newspaper publisher in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt maintains that an innocent man can be arrested, convicted, and executed on circumstantial evidence alone. He nominates his future son-in-law to be the innocent suspect in his experiment that involves the very real crime of murder. The publisher’s plan is really an obstruction of justice and manipulation of public opinion and the justice system.

It isn’t uncommon for film noir to feature newspaper reporters, and this makes sense. Reporters function much like private detectives and police investigators who search the dark and shadowy side of human nature for a living. Reporters search for the truth (not always true in noir, of course) and publish stories about what they find. But they also have to pay attention to what the public wants and is willing to pay for, and the tension between the two can sometimes get in the way of honesty and the pursuit of justice in the public arena.

This tension is part of the narrative in Scandal Sheet, although I would say that Mark Chapman, editor in chief at the New York Express and one of the main characters in the film, cares a lot less about the truth and a lot more about selling newspapers and increasing circulation. His newspaper sponsors publicity stunts that are also meant to increase sales and have nothing to do with a search for the truth and informing the public. His blatant manipulation of the public to make more money and sell more newspapers sounds like the modern version capitalism applied at times to social media and reality television.

Deadline U.-S.-A. is a film about the feared decline of the free press in the United States. The villain this time is not a single person but the prevailing trend of corporate consolidation and its effect on newspapers and their ability to maintain their independence. This is another modern theme: Large corporations and people with a lot of money (and political connections) are controlling more and more markets when it comes to news in 2026.

Assignment-Paris is a bit different from Deadline-U.S.A. and Scandal Sheet. This time, the villain is the communist regime in Hungary and its clampdown on the press, both domestically and internationally. The hero is a lone foreign correspondent from the United States who wants to report the facts and is repeatedly blocked and persecuted for trying to do his job. He is successful in the end, but he pays for it with his health and almost with his life. Again, the theme is surprisingly modern.

All three films—Deadline-U.S.A., Scandal Sheet, and Assignment-Paris—are modern in their take on human nature and the news. The same can be said of Lang’s newspaper noir trilogy. The themes in newspaper noir are still relevant today, even though newspapers are not nearly as ubiquitous as they once were.

The three screenshots are from Assignment-Paris (1952), Deadline-U.S.A. (1952), and While the City Sleeps (1956), respectively.

Assignment-Paris (1952)

Dana Andrews is one of my film noir favorites. He gets top billing in Assignment-Paris, and I looked forward to seeing him. I wasn’t disappointed. As newspaper reporter Jimmy Race, Andrews is brash and bold, probably things that earned Americans a not-so-great reputation around the world after World War II. Reporter Jimmy Race is a familiar American archetype, and the character should be a familiar one to U.S. audiences. The narrative is set firmly in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union in the immediate postwar period. It is almost a history lesson as well as a fictional story.

Assignment-Paris is available for free online. Click here to see it at the Internet Archive.

The narrative begins with a street-level shot outside the New York Herald Tribune offices in Paris, France. A voice-over narrator explains to viewers that the newspaper’s offices are connected by direct wire to all the major capitals on the European continent, which in 1952 included countries in Western and Eastern Europe. The narrator also says, “Into these offices early last year came a phone call that made the most shocking headlines of the day. This is the story of the man who tried to break through an iron wall of censorship to the facts behind that headline.” The “iron wall” is a reference to the Iron Curtain, which separated West from East during the Cold War.

Getting accurate news out of the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries was difficult if not impossible during the Cold War. Censorship was common. The scenes in the film showing the reports and broadcasts of Western foreign correspondents working behind the Iron Curtain being monitored in real time were based on fact. This important point is evident in the film’s narrative from the beginning.

Newspaper reporter Barker at the Herald Tribune’s Budapest office calls the office in Paris to announce that American Robert Anderson’s trial in Hungary is complete and that Anderson has been found guilty of spying on the Hungarian government. Barker also reports that Anderson confessed, of his own free will, to being a spy and to working for the U.S. government. Nicholas Strang, the editor in chief at the Paris office, is highly skeptical that Anderson spoke of his own free will at this trial. He knows how countries behind the Iron Curtain operate, and he is sure that Anderson is not guilty of anything.

Nicholas Strang wants Jeanne Moray, also a Herald Tribune reporter, to go to the Hungarian embassy as soon as she arrives from Budapest. When her plane lands in Paris, she gets a phone call instructing her to go to the embassy. She is followed by a stranger at the airport. Viewers know that he is significant and dangerous by the focus of the camera on him and the foreboding music accompanying it.

While Moray tries to get a meeting with the Hungarian ambassador at the embassy, Jimmy Race steps up to do the same. He says that he is a reporter from the United States and wants to hear the latest news about the American sentenced for spying. Neither of them have any luck, but Race refuses to leave, which gives him an interview with a Parisian gendarme. Moray acts as a translator. This is their first meeting, and Race seems already to be attracted to Moray, although he doesn’t know yet (because he is relatively new in Paris) that they work for the same newspaper.

Back at Strang’s office, Moray insists that she was working on a very important story before Strang pulled her out of Budapest and back to Paris. During their conversation, Race arrives and learns that Moray is a fellow reporter and employee. Race got an interview with the ambassador, but it was an argument about Race’s tactics, not a statement about Anderson’s sentence. During this argument, Mrs. Anderson called the ambassador about her husband, and Race got a few comments from her, enough for a newspaper story.

Race tries to get some information about Moray from Sandy Tate, the fashion designer for the Herald Tribune. He wants to know if Moray and Strang have a serious relationship outside the office. This sets up the romantic triangle between Nicholas Strang, Jeanne Moray, and Jimmy Race. This particular plot thread seems almost like an afterthought, as if a romantic angle were added for human interest, because the chemistry seems almost nonexistent on-screen.

(This article about Assignment-Paris contains spoilers.)

A man named Grisha works in the reference room at the newspaper. His young son Jan, who is maybe six or seven years old, arrives with two paper bags containing food for his father. Viewers know Grisha’s character is important because the narrative includes him interacting with his son specifically, but it is not until late in the film that they and the newspaper reporters working at the Herald Tribune learn that he is Gabor Czek, one-time confidential aide to Prime Minister Ordy of Hungary.

In spite of what Sandy Tate had to say about Nicholas Strang and Jeanne Moray, Jimmy Race shows up at Moray’s apartment and insists that they have dinner together. She relents, and she tells Race that she learned of an unsubstantiated rumor in Budapest about the Hungarian prime minister, Andreas Ordy, talking to Josip Broz Tito, prime minister of Yugoslavia, about forming an alliance against Jospeh Stalin, the president of the Soviet Union. This meeting and alliance would have been considered treasonous by Stalin. As president of the Soviet Union, he would have also been the leader of all the so-called satellite countries in Eastern Europe. While Race and Moray talk, Anton Borvich, an important Hungarian government official, sends over a bottle of champagne and then approaches their table to ask Jeanne Moray to meet him for dinner.

Nicholas Strang and the U.S. ambassador to Hungary are in Strang’s office listening to the radio broadcast of the Hungarian ambassador’s statement. The U.S. ambassador tells Strang that Anderson is a pawn in a much larger game. Anderson was alleged to be a smuggler on the black market in Hungary, although he wasn’t tried for smuggling. The Hungarian government is using Anderson for trade concessions or perhaps an end to Voice of America broadcasts. (If the Hungarians could have waited more than seventy years for the second Trump administration, they might have had better luck!)

The suspicious man following Moray in the airport tells Borvich in Borvich’s office that he found nothing when he searched Moray’s apartment. They are looking for something specific, but neither one says what it is. Borvich tells the man to return to Hungary. Borvich then talks to Ordy by phone, and Ordy tells him that he just learned that Czeki is still alive (at this point in the film, Czeki’s identity is still a mystery to viewers). They wonder if Moray is back in Paris to meet Czeki. Ordy wants Borvich to find Czeki before Moray does. Borvich has Moray followed again, but by two different men, not the suspicious one from the airport. He’s back in Budapest, ready to start surveilling Jimmy Race when he finally gets to Budapest.

The Paris office learns that Barker, the Herald Tribune correspondent for Hungary, is in the hospital in Budapest. Strang wants to send Race to Budapest, and Race is happy to accept. He doesn’t realize that he is under suspicion by the Hungarian authorities because he spends so much time with Moray. They reason that he must know something, too, and they think she knows how to find Czeki. Borvich continues to have Moray surveilled. Moray is worried about Race going to Budapest, and she is right to be worried. Race will be under surveillance by the Hungarian secret police as soon as he steps foot on Hungarian soil. The suspicious man at the airport is back in Budapest, and he is now tailing James Race.

A man arrives in Race’s Budapest office looking for Barker. When Race tells him that Barker is in the hospital, he leaves abruptly. The second time this man comes to Race’s office, he tells Race that he is an antiques dealer and that he has a package, a gift, that he wants Race to give to Barker. Race agrees to do so. The man also hands him a business card; on the card is written “Anderson is dead.”

By now, the major plot threads have been established, and viewers know that Race is in danger in Budapest. Jeanne Moray is being followed in Paris, and she is in danger there, too, even though she is not working behind the Iron Curtain at this point. Viewers in 1952 would have known most of the background political details of the film; they were living with them every day and reading about current events in the newspapers. When Race visits Barker in the hospital, they very likely would have taken it for granted, for instance, that the male nurse in constant attendance was really a Hungarian government agent. Barker and Race act under that assumption, too.

Before his hospitalization, Barker was working with the Hungarian underground to get accurate information out of the country. Race assumes this role and doesn’t hesitate to take Barker’s place. The so-called antiques dealer is really a contact for the underground, and this character is Race’s initial point of contact. This clandestine activity is what gets Race arrested and Barker killed. Barker does return to Paris, but he is dead of a heart attack. And he arrives with nothing but his passport—no luggage, no clothes except what he is wearing.

But the passport photo is hiding a negative, which is what Barker and now Race have been trying to get out of Hungary. The negative shows Tito, Ordy, Borvich, and a fourth man standing together after their meeting to conspire against Stalin. It is the kind of evidence that could get all four men killed. Nicholas Strang and Jeanne Moray go to Borvich’s office to confront him, but Borvich tells them that the photo simply shows four men standing together.

But the true identity of Gabor Czeki, who has been working at the Herald Tribune as Grisha all this time, is revealed and changes everything. Czeki was a confidential aide to Prime Minister Ordy, and he was the one to draw up the agreement between Ordy and Tito. He is also the one whose testimony will be believed by Joseph Stalin in Moscow.

I have to admit that I found it a little hard to believe that the Hungarians never found Czeki at the newspaper offices themselves. They knew his daughter, so I wondered why they never followed his children. Even if Czeki slept at the newspaper offices, his son Jan delivered his food there. Maybe Jan was too young at the time of the Czeki family escape for anyone else to know what he looked like as a young boy. For a long while, the Hungarians thought Czeki was dead, so maybe they just let go of that investigation. This detail is not explored in the film so I can only guess.

Czeki’s testimony and his copy of the agreement make him a wanted man by the Hungarian government, who most certainly plan to kill him once they find him. But Czeki is willing to return to Hungary voluntarily as long as his children can be resettled in the United States. He will be exchanged for Jimmy Race, who has been tortured while in prison. His return to Paris is a little bit better than that of Barker. Race isn’t dead; he’s just catatonic and can only repeat the lines fed to him by his Hungarian government captors.

The story in Assignment-Paris is based on current events for 1952, something audiences at the time would have known well. The film is a postwar, Cold War story, and some of the names that the characters mention and terms that they use may be unfamiliar to modern-day viewers. Here is a list of some of those terms and people. Click on those in color for more information:

◊ The Cold War was a period of intense rivalry for world power between the United State and the Soviet Union, which included their respective allies.

◊ Joseph Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union until his death in1953, one year after the release of Assignment-Paris.

◊ Josip Broz Tito was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary and politician who led Yugoslavia as prime minister from 1943 to 1963.

◊ Dwight D. Eisenhower was the thirty-fourth president of the United States. You can also click here to read his speeches at the Eisenhower Presidential Library.

◊ Jeanne Moray talks about working for the Underground during World War II. In France, it would have been referred to more commonly as the Resistance.]

Jimmy Race’s condition after his release from the Hungarian prison and handover to his colleagues at the Herald Tribune might seem outlandish today, but it reminded me of two much more recent cases. U.S. citizen Otto Warmbier was arrested, tried, imprisoned, and tortured in North Korea in 2016. He was eventually released in even worse condition than that of Jimmy Race to U.S. custody in 2017. Click here for more information and an unfortunate reminder that the tactics portrayed in Assignment-Paris are still in use around the world today. And recall James Foley, the reporter who was killed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the Middle East in 2014.

As I said, Dana Andrews is one of my favorites; however, I wasn’t quite as enamored of his character, Jimmy Race, in Assignment-Paris. Race is supposed to be a brash reporter from the tough East Side neighborhood of New York City, and he is certainly that. Andrews plays the part just as I imagine he was supposed to. But there was something about him that seemed to cross the border between arrogance and confidence. I wasn’t sure what Jeanne Moray saw in him, and the two didn’t have much chemistry on-screen.

Audrey Totter was great as the fashion editor at the Herald Tribune, however, and I wish that she had more scenes. I have seen her play the femme fatale in many films noir, so it was refreshing to see her in a role that was nothing like her usual. Totter’s character, Sandy Tate, is in love with Nick Strang, another pair that seemed to have no on-screen chemistry whatsoever. Perhaps if Totter had had more scenes in the film, this relationship would have had more spark.

I shouldn’t quibble about the lack of romance. Assignment-Paris is not really about romance at all. It’s a postwar, Cold War story that is stark and unflinching. As a Cold War newspaper story, it is a rousing success. I enjoyed it, even though some of the details were uncomfortable reminders that some things haven’t changed all that much.

But that’s noir, isn’t it.

September 4, 1952, release date  •  Directed by Robert Parrish  •  Screenplay by William Bowens, Walter Goetz, Jack Palmer White  •  Based on the novel Trial by Terror by Pauline Gallico and Paul Gallico  •  Music by George Duning  •  Edited by Charles Nelson  •  Cinematography by Ray Cory

Dana Andrews as Jimmy Race  •  Märta Torén as Jeanne Moray  •  George Sanders as Nicholas (Nick) Strang  •  Audrey Totter as Sandy Tate, fashion editor  •  Sandro Giglio as Grisha, newspaper reference room  •  Donald Randolph as Anton Borvich  •  Herbert Berghof as Prime Minister Andreas Ordy  •  Ben Astar as Minister of Information Vajos  •  Willis Bouchey as Biddle, a newspaper editor  •  Earl Lee as Dad Pelham  •  Joseph Forte as Barker  •  Pál Jávor as Laszlo Boros, the tailor  •  Georgiana Wulff as Gogo Czeki  •  Peter J. Votrian as Jan Czeki  •  Jay Adler as Henry, the bartender  •  Leon Askin as Franz, one of two men sent by Borvich to tail Moray  •  Victor Sutherland as Larry O’Connell  •  Hanna Axmann as Oster

Distributed by Columbia Pictures  •  Produced by Columbia Pictures

Scandal Sheet (1952)

Like Deadline-U.S.A., Scandal Sheet is a newspaper story that was also released in 1952. Deadline-U.S.A. was released two months after Scandal Sheet and was the subject of my last blog article.

Scandal Sheet has an engrossing story that I enjoyed, even though I am not a big fan of Broderick Crawford. He, as managing editor Mark Chapman, and Donna Reed, as newspaper reporter Julie Allison, play roles that are probably familiar to film noir and classic film fans. The character with the transformational arc is Steve McCleary (played by John Derek). McCleary is a young reporter who idolizes his mentor just a bit too much and pays the price for it. The treatment of female characters is a bit of a drawback for modern-day viewers, but the grab for publicity at all costs (more details later) holds up surprisingly well.

Scandal Sheet is available for free online. Click here to see it at the Internet Archive.

The film starts with a distraught woman describing the aftermath of a murder. She thinks that she is talking to a police officer, but she is really talking to Steve McCleary, newspaper reporter for the New York Express. McCleary never bothered to correct her misperception, which infuriates her when she learns of her mistake. Newspaper photographer Biddle takes her picture after she starts screaming at McCleary in frustration (because the emotion, whatever the reason for it, will sell newspapers). When Lieutenant Davis arrives on the scene, the woman is so distraught that she is bent over, sobbing into her hands. Lieutenant Davis knows McCleary and Biddle’s tactics from past experience and threatens to arrest them both the next time.

This opening is dramatic and unsettling, and it tells you almost all you need to know about McCreary and Biddle and their work ethic—or lack thereof. On their way back to the newspaper offices, McCreary phones in his latest story to his boss and mentor, Mark Chapman. Chapman is keeping the newspaper’s stockholders waiting while he talks to McCleary. When he does show up at the board meeting, he shouts down protests from the stockholders about the New York Express turning into a tabloid. He uses increased circulation numbers and large dividend checks to the stockholders as the bases for his arguments.

Newspaper staff (including Chapman, Allison, McCleary, and Biddle) are heading that night to the newspaper-sponsored Lonely Hearts Ball. It is a publicity stunt intended solely to increase newspaper subscriptions. Any two people who meet the night of the ball and agree to marry in front of cameras win prizes, like expensive furnishings and household appliances. (This type of publicity should sound familiar to modern viewers. It is eerily similar to The Bachelorette/The Bachelor franchise.) The stunt is made even worse when it becomes clear that Mark Chapman is promising more than he is willing to deliver to the ball’s attendees.

Julie Allison makes it clear at the Lonely Hearts Ball that she is already sick of the lies and deception. She has already soured on the night’s events because of a chance meeting on the street outside the New York Express offices, when she, Chapman, and McCleary met Charlie Barnes, a reporter who once won the Pulitzer Prize and is now an alcoholic. He is doing some research for Allison, but he wants to work full-time again. Mark Chapman agrees to hire him but then later tells Allison and McCleary that he has no intention of doing so. Allison is dismayed and wants to tell Barnes so that he doesn’t get his hopes up, but Chapman and McCleary defend themselves by saying that Barnes needs hope, even false hope (in other words, their lies), to live on. Then they rush Allison into a cab.

(This article about Scandal Sheet contains spoilers.)

Charlotte Grant attends the ball and spots her estranged husband—Mark Chapman. She corners him, and he agrees to meet her at her rented room. He is hateful to her; he tells her that she was a mistake and that he is glad to be rid of her. He’ll grant her a divorce, finally, after twenty years of estrangement. (It helps to keep in mind that divorces weren’t granted so easily in the 1950s, and divorce carried more of a stigma at that time.) She threatens to tell her story all over town and to the other newspapers. He gets even angrier, shoves her, and accidentally kills her when she falls and hits her head. Mark Chapman cleans the room and takes everything that he can find that would incriminate him. He also takes a claim ticket from Pete’s Hock Shop. Then he leaves his wife’s body in her rented room.

McCleary and Biddle arrive at the scene of Grant’s death, and McCleary is not convinced that her death is an accident. Against the orders of Lieutenant Davis, he snoops around and finds the Lonely Hearts Ball pin on one of Grant’s dresses. He takes it and decides to write a lead story about Charlotte Grant’s death. At the morgue, he uses the promise of box seats at the World Series to bribe the coroner, Doc O’Hanlon, to conduct an autopsy. Doc O’Hanlon discovers that Grant’s death is more likely murder. When McCleary proposes the story idea to Mark Chapman, Chapman agrees. He cannot resist the lure of a sensational story, a way to keep increasing newspaper sales.

The rest of the film mostly follows McCleary’s investigation into Charlotte Grant’s death, with each development a new front-page story to keep the public interested and buying newspapers. He and Julie Allison clash over his methods, but as the investigation tightens around Mark Chapman and others feel the ripple effects of his investigation, McCleary begins to see the consequences of his actions from a new perspective. This new perspective comes into sharper focus after the death of Charlie Barnes: Julie Allison accuses McCleary of being partly responsible for his death because he refused to believe him, to take him seriously, and to give him any respect.

McCleary wants to continue writing about what he now calls the Lonely Hearts killer. He convinces Allison to join him in the investigation, this time because he wants to solve Barnes’s murder, ease his conscience a bit, and win over Allison. First, he needs Mark Chapman’s okay, and he goes to Chapman’s home to do so. Again, Chapman agrees. I have to admit that I was a little surprised that Chapman didn’t kill McCleary when they were alone in Chapman’s home. It would have been the perfect opportunity, even if people would have put two and two together eventually. But maybe Chapman cared more for his protégé than he ever mentioned in the film.

McCleary and Allison finally discover the truth about Mark Chapman and his failed marriage to Georgia Grant. McCleary is utterly dismayed by the revelation that Chapman is the killer because he put his trust and his career in Chapman’s hands. Chapman won’t go quietly, however. When he is confronted by a witness in front of his employees and the police, he pretends to shoot at them. He aims down, however, and is promptly killed by Lieutenant Davis. It’s the first instance that I can recall of a “death by cop” in a film noir.

I mentioned the treatment of the female characters, and there were many instances of bad treatment that made me squirm. Here are some examples:

◊ Steve McCleary’s pet nicknames for Julie Allison: princess, baby, tiger, kiddies (Allison and Charlie Barnes), kitten. He pooh-poohs Allison’s ideas about respecting other people’s feelings and their ideas, and there is one scene in the newspaper office where he spends most of it with his hand on her neck.

◊ During the Grants’ argument in Charlotte Grant’s rented room, Mark Chapman calls Charlotte a “neurotic screwball” because, of course, she is solely responsible for his miserable treatment of her and their failed marriage. Mark Chapman treats a lot of the characters badly—unless they can give him something that he wants.

◊ Biddle the newspaper photographer, calls his photo subjects, mostly the bodies of murdered women, scarecrows.

Scandal Sheet predates the Me Too movement by many years. I noticed the poor treatment of female characters, and particularly of Julie Allison by her coworkers, the first time that I watched the film, but it becomes almost impossible to ignore on repeat viewings. I enjoyed the main narrative of the film very much, but the way women were treated generally in the 1950s is something to be aware of when watching Scandal Sheet.

The Lonely Hearts Ball, the publicity stunt intended solely to increase newspaper subscriptions, was a surprise because it sounded so familiar. And it is not just The Bachelorette/The Bachelor franchise that it reminded me of. That one came to mind because of the mention of romance and marriage in the ball, but almost any game show and reality television show could have come from the same idea. The scenes involving the Lonely Hearts Ball in Scandal Sheet also made me squirm, but not only because the idea of making people do stunts for prizes was objectionable; it was the way it was treated by most of the main characters. Chapman especially was prone to calling the attendees, indeed all the newspaper’s readers, slobs behind their backs. He wasn’t a fun character to spend eighty-two minutes with.

But every film noir needs a villain, and this one (with its villain) is a good one. The story is a bit of a history lesson, with its examination of corrupt newspaper practices. Journalism may be in disarray in the twenty-first century, but the behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing seems to have been transferred (too) easily to new businesses (social media) and applied in new ways.

Click here for more information at Wikipedia about the long history of tabloid journalism. Note the brief discussion of “catch and kill” in relation to famous people who have been accused of mistreating women, often criminally.

Scandal Sheet is a social justice film about the newspaper industry, its business practices, and its publicity stunts. But I’m sure its filmmakers never intended the film to be a lesson about the way women were treated on the job and in general. Modern-day viewers will notice it, though.

January 16, 1952, release date  •  Directed by Phil Karlson  •  Screenplay by Ted Sherdeman, Eugene Ling, James Poe  •  Based on the novel The Dark Page by Samuel Fuller  •  Music by Morris Stoloff, George Duning  •  Edited by Jerome Thoms  •  Cinematography by Burnett Guffey

Broderick Crawford as Mark Chapman/George Grant  •  Donna Reed as Julie Allison  •  John Derek as Steve McCleary  •  Rosemary DeCamp as Charlotte Grant  •  Henry O'Neill as Charlie Barnes  •  Harry (Harry) Morgan as Biddle, newspaper photographer  •  James Millican as Lieutenant Davis  •  Griff Barnett as Judge Elroy Hacker  •  Jonathan Hale as Frank Madison  •  Jay Adler as Bailey  •  Don Beddoe as Pete, the owner of the hock chop  •  Charles Cane as Heeney, the bar owner  •  Katherine Warren as Mrs. Allison  •  Ida Moore as Nellie  •  Cliff Clark as Doc O’Hanlon  •  Ralph Reed as Joey, copy boy  •  Pierre Watkin as Baxter, newspaper reporter

Distributed by Columbia Pictures  •  Produced by Motion Picture Investors