Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 9-October-11
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Scandal Sheet (1952)

The gritty drama Scandal Sheet is a good example of poetic justice as the basis for a gripping story. The protagonist Mark Chapman (well played by Broderick Crawford) is a boor without scruples who unintentionally designs his own hell. Mark recently took over a New York newspaper and turned it into a gossip rag. Instead of politics or current events, he splashes his front page with murder and sex with no regard for his subjects' well-being. Like today's reality show producers, he even creates situations with the potential for tawdriness, such as a "lonely hearts" dance where desperate strangers can get married on the spot. Although some of the paper's stockholders disapprove of his methods, he has boosted readership to an all-time high. He considers this success because a newspaper is a business and the only thing an editor should worry about is profit — and how he can pocket a chunk of it for himself.

Mark relies on a crack reporter named Steve (John Derek) who can sniff out death and degradation like a dog can sniff out vomit. Flashing a boyish twinkle from behind impossibly long eyelashes, Steve is the kind of guy whom neither men nor women can resist, who annoys people a lot of the time but always gets what he wants because he's smart, persistent, and upbeat. Even his girlfriend Julie (Donna Reed), a fellow reporter, feels as exasperated with him as smitten. They particularly disagree about their boss. Steve admires everything Mark does, whereas Julie thinks he's a sleazebag.

Mark descends into a tailor-made hell when his past life rears its ugly head and he commits murder to keep it secret. However the corpse he leaves in a bathtub is right up his tabloid's alley. Within hours Steve is all over the case, finding clues and forming conclusions well ahead of the police. Mark knows that his protégé will stop at nothing to uncover the gory details, but how to rein him in without arousing suspicion? As Steve investigates with the help of a veteran reporter who lost his career to alcoholism (Henry O'Neill), Mark's panic rises in step with his readership. He becomes his own best-selling headline. There's nowhere to go but down, yet he digs the hole deeper trying to save himself. His fall is a juicy bit of irony which Scandal Sheet milks for all its worth.

Copyright © 2011 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.