Jerry Strong has one weak spot: paying attention to his family. He’s married to Claire, a wonderful wife who fully supports him though his buddy Waddell has a not-so-secret crush on her. This triangle comes full circle in the third act. Swift direction from Russel Mack allows the fast talking Strong (Charles Bickford) to assert his Walter Huston-ish persona while wonderful camerawork by legendary DP Karl Freund frames the film and allows the camera to feel alive with movement. The only source I could find was a low-resolution VHS rip that smothered his deep focus compositions in a blur of pixels: I hope someday to discover a decent print to really enjoy the photography!
The story involves Jerry Strong, a big newspaper editor on a small-town rag, whose yellow journalism leads to an increase in sales but a decrease in salary...as in zero. He’s fired and moves his family to NYC looking for stories of real life and death, splashing the headlines with guts and gore. He rises like a Daily Comet with an icy core just a hard, but as his need for sordid headlines subsumes him and his family suffers, the more this nucleus disintegrates. His best friend and reporter pal Waddy (Pat O’Brien) joins in this celestial orbit but he’s the one who crashes to Earth...or more precisely, the Atlantic. Strong’s wife Clair (Rose Hobart) stands by Jerry and even spurns the slight advance from Waddy and is fully supportive of her husband even though she’s against the move to the Big Apple. Their two children are precious, so the tragedy of the little boy comes like the hammer blow in the first scene. Soon, Strong is caught up in a scandal himself as he attempts to break a Beauty Contest fraud ring, and his deaf attorney resorts to bribing a jury member to ensure an acquittal. But it’s OK, in Pre-Code it’s immorality for the sake of Justice! After all, we know Strong was setup by the gang and that he’s innocent of Rape and Assault. We also get to see Strong’s little boy fucking die on camera as Strong holds a puppy, hoping to cheer up his dying son. Now, Pre-Code films can be tragic but even so, most children who perish are not shown on screen, it’s either elided or the DP focuses upon reaction shots of parents or doctors. Not here, Freund gets his close-up in the boy's face as he expires. Fucking Hell, this film has guts.
But we should have expected this, as the film begins with domestic violence and a brutal hammer murder by none other than an uncredited Glenda Farrell! And it’s as gruesome as it sounds: we see her knock on a hotel door and swing the hammer and hear cries of anguish. Then a man comes running out with blood streaming from his head and down his face. Waddy shows up before the police and we get an awesome reveal: the camera tracks a POV shot from Waddy’s perspective, looking around the room. We see blood and a pair of splayed stocking legs on the bed so the murderer must have committed suicide, right? Nope. The camera tracks up in this slow continuous shot until we see a woman reflected in the mirror, seated with her head down. Holy shit, she murdered her husband and his mistress!! When we next see her husband, a white sheet covers his body which is prone on the lobby couch and blood seeps through the shroud, like a period that ends a sentence. Then, as the final act draws to a close, we get Waddy on a transatlantic flight with a German aviator, engines screaming through a bad storm until a fuel line breaks. Strong and his newspaper cohorts are communicating with him and publishing Extras every hour, scooping the other papers. Of course, Waddy was talked into this by Strong, another sacrifice for circulation. We get another great composition by Freund as the two realize they cannot survive the crash into the ocean, framed in a medium close-up with both men in focus side-by-side, their eyes already peering into the great beyond. The pilot tips the nose of the plane downward and we get to see the miniature plummet into the roiling waters.
Strong has lost everything: his child, his wife and his best friend all because of his narcissism. I don’t believe he ever did this for the bonus (he ends up giving one check to his wife and declining the other) but to prove to himself he’s tougher than everyone else. This is his moral downfall. It’s just that everyone else suffers too.
Final Grade: (B)