Scandal Sheet
An exploitative managing editor of a New York newspaper murders his long-forgotten wife and must rein in the reporters who are attempting to solve that very crime. 1 HR 22 MINS 1952 Columbia
FILM NOIR/DARK CINEMA
by Gary Svehla
8/17/20267 min read
Story
Over the film footage of newspaper presses running, we have the credits for this picture, intercut with actual newspaper pages and set to dramatic music. Glancing downward from a panoramic aerial shot of the city, a black car, sirens blaring, approaches a low-rent apartment building. Running upstairs, a distressed woman admits to seeing her brother-in-law with blood on his hands yelling, “I did it!” But the men are not policemen; they are reporters grabbing a story. One of the reporters is Steve McCleary (John Derek, husband of Bo), and his photographer is Biddle (Henre Morgan). In the car, Steve calls his editor, Mark Chapman (Broderick Crawford), with the hot tip he gathered.
An elderly, smartly dressed woman is ranting at a Board meeting about how this once respectable newspaper has been allowed to turn into a scandal sheet, an exploitative newspaper. Mark Chapman rises to defend himself when the woman personally challenges him. The publisher was tired of operating at a loss, so he brought Mark Chapman in as managing editor to turn things around. Chapman says we’re in the business of “satisfying the hunger of the people for thrills, escape, and news.” Since Mark’s entrance, newspaper sales “have risen 110 percent.” Chapman offers to quit today if the Board of Stockholders does not support him, and he abruptly leaves.
Steve, returning to the newspaper office, chats with reporter Julie Allison (Donna Reed), who is working on a story. Julie, tired of looking at Chapman all day, discovers she has lost a bet with Steve and must pay for dinner for both men. A former reporter, Charlie Barnes (Henry O’Neill), now an alcoholic, gets ten bucks from her for doing research for an article and asks Mark for a job. But Chapman secretly tells Julie he would never hire an alcoholic for the paper. The threesome goes to the newspaper-sponsored Lonely Hearts dance to get another story. Julie refuses to get stories that exploit people.
A woman at the affair, Charlotte (Rosemary DeCamp), recognizes Mark but calls him George. Mark tells Charlotte that George is dead, and she asks him to come to her place to talk about the situation. Meeting her later, Mark says, “Now that you found me, what do you want?” She asks him, "Did you change your name? Right after you left me?” Mark is disgusted with his wife and pulls out his wallet. He throws some bills at her. She shows Mark her wrist scars from when she tried to commit suicide over him. Mark barks that his attorney will offer her a divorce and generous alimony. He soon slaps Charlotte, and she threatens to expose the truth and ruin him. So, in a rage, Mark pushes her, and she hits her head against a metal pipe, killing her. Mark then takes any identifying objects from her person and purse and leaves.
Soon, Jane Doe’s murder surfaces: a woman they believe slipped in the bathtub and bashed her head. But she really is Charlotte, Mark’s wife, whom he murdered. Steve presents the story to Mark as it has the potential to sell a lot of stories. Pretending to be delighted with the story, Chapman is actually sweating bullets. Charlie goes to cash in a pawn shop ticket for a suitcase, and he discovers a photo of Mark Chapman’s wife, and she resembles the Lonely Hearts murder victim. Charlie, buying a drink, calls Julie and asks her to take credit for the story, but first they must meet so he can share the killer’s identity. He says this story will put both of them on top. When Steve and Mark enter, Mark discovers Charlie knows too much.
Charlie is walking down the street when Mark emerges from the shadows. Marks asks Charlie about the story he’s got. Mark realizes the money he gave Charlie, out of sympathy, must have had the pawn ticket mixed in. Mark searches Charlie and retrieves the story. Then Mark slugs Charlie over the head twice with a metal object and leaves the body. But his corpse is soon recovered and brought to the morgue. Julie is rightfully upset at Steve for not respecting Charlie enough to listen to his story.
Steve recovers the suitcase from the bar and shows Mark a photo of the killer inside. Even though we can clearly see Charlotte’s face, the man-killer’s face is turned and unable to be identified. She married in 1931, and Steve assumes the actual killer met up with Charlie yesterday. Mark is once again acting nervous and guilty.
Steve has gathered all the derelicts who might know Charlie in a downtown bar. The men are asked where they last saw Charlie. One boozer who saw Charlie with another man will only identify him for money, and he’ll only tell Steve’s boss. Steve immediately hustles him to the newspaper office. The derelict, Bailey (Jay Adler), vaguely describes the man as looking like Mark Chapman, but further identification is sketchy, and he is readily dismissed.
Julie’s resignation letter is being held by one of Steve’s colleagues in hopes that she will soon come to her senses. Steve soon goes to Julie’s apartment. He mentions her resignation, and she cites the fact that everyone was exploiting Charlie to make money. But Steve confesses he is a new reporter and an ethical one at that. Steve invites Julie to accompany him to Connecticut to identify the man in the photo, the killer. Chapman is leery of Steve’s plan but lets Steve pursue the man’s identity.
One judge telephones Steve to tell him he married the couple in 1931, to come over to his house. Mark, still appearing very nervous at the home office, fortifies himself with a stiff drink or two. Placing a pistol inside his suit jacket, he confronts both Steve and the judge. Steve now knows the man was George Grant. The judge is sure he can identify George Grant when he sees him again, but Mark Chapman doesn’t ring any bells. But suddenly the judge addresses Chapman as Mr. Grant. Chapman suddenly draws a gun on the threesome. Suddenly, two policemen enter the scene, and Chapman reads Steve the lead on the story, revealing himself as the killer. Then Chapman fires at the detective's legs and feet, and the cop finishes off Chapman. We cut to the presses revealing the front page of tomorrow’s newspaper, the revelation of the Lonely Hearts killer, and the subscription base keeps growing higher as credits appear.
Critique
Scandal Sheet, a 1952 film noir, lays out a traditional noir picture. Director Phil Karlson came into his own principally during the decade of the 1950s, directing such hard-hitting noirs as Dark Alibi, Scandal Street, Kansas City Confidential, 99 River Street, 5 Against the House, The Phenix City Story, and The Brothers Ricco. This was one of Karlson’s earlier assignments.
Casting Broderick Crawford as the starring newspaper editor was more than risky, for Crawford was a bombastic, unsubtle, barking-out-lines-of-dialogue actor when they simply could be delivered. As soon as Steve McCleary started to aggressively pursue the murder of the Lonely Hearts victim, Chapman overacts and plays his character with so much guilt it’s a wonder that McCleary didn’t immediately figure things out. Crawford could paint his character in broad strokes, but he lacked nuance and mostly shouted his lines. Brod Crawford was consistently good in his roles but was limited as an actor.
In fact, the supporting or character roles mostly stand out in this movie. Take, for example, Donna Reed, America’s sweetheart, who here plays a young reporter with her morals and principles still intact. She wishes to encourage an older newspaper man who has fallen on hard times. The other employees think of this reporter as a fallen drunk, a man rendered unreliable, and secretly make the butt of jokes behind his back. This man, Charlie Barnes, is brilliantly performed by Henry O’Neill, who plays a fallen soldier trying to get a handle on his former dignity and self-worth. He is a supporting player who plays the moral center of the movie. The characters in this movie who realize there is more to journalism than making a buck are overshadowed by those who will sell their soul for a story.
The pivotal moments of the movie are Steve McCleary's transformation from a soulless reporter who looks to Mark Chapman as a mentor to a reporter with backbone and morals. And principles. And capturing the killer, Mark Chapman, isn’t really what the movie is about. It is about an exploitative reporter discovering his soul and becoming a responsible one. Even moments before committing suicide by cop, Chapman is composing the story of his capture for Steve, still mentoring his star reporter to the very end.
Phil Karlson manages to craft a very twisty and suspenseful movie with a limited talent leading man, making the screenplay bristle with irony and suffuse it with tension. The “B” picture plays off the bombastic editor who murders his wife against a former ace reporter who is the butt of jokes and doesn’t have the dignity of simply listening to him, and tries to hold a stranglehold over Steve McCleary, trying to mold him into an exploitative reporter instead of becoming a true journalist. This noir is so much more than solving the murder of the Lonely Hearts killer. Every aspect of the screenplay involves moral decisions. It is a little Columbia picture that rises far above the programmer stage.
MARK CHAPMAN (BRODERICK CRAWFORD) CONFRONTS CHARLIE BARNES (HENRY O'NEILL).
REPORTER STEVE MCCLEARY (JOHN DEREK) STANDS WITH REPORTER JULIE ALLISON (DONNA REED)
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