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
