The world of newspapers is one of the great settings of noirs, and 1952’s Scandal Sheet is no exception. The twist here is ace reporter John Derek doesn’t realize the murderer he’s looking for is his boss, editor Broderick Crawford.
Derek is clearly a frustrated would-be detective. Visually, he made me wonder if this is what a child born of a union of Kyle MacLachlan and Sean Young might look like. He especially seemed to be channeling equal parts of MacLachlan’s roles in Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks. But Derek is crueler than either of those characters. We first see him getting details about a homicide from a woman on the scene whom he lets mistake him for a detective.
Almost as cold is photographer Harry Morgan, who says of the murder victim in the other room: “That wasn’t a bad looking dame. Shame the guy split her head open with an axe.” These two will also stage photos for publication, with Derek telling Morgan to get an axe and cover it with his blood and “if you can’t spare any, use some chocolate syrup or something.” Hey, it worked for the shower scene in Psycho.
This is the kind of material which is selling copies of The New York Express. Shareholders in the company may be furious at Crawford for the tawdry direction in which he’s taken the publication, but he reminds them the operation has started paying them dividends for the first time in years. There is even a giant wheel outside his office with a pointer indicating the current circulation and, when it reaches the top, he will get a huge bonus.
Unfortunately, he has accidentally murdered estranged wife Rosemary DeCamp who had abruptly reentered his life for the purposes of blackmail. When he left her, he not only relocated, but even changed his name. It is twenty years after he left her, yet the scars on her wrists are still clearly visible. She spotted him at an appalling “Lonely Hearts” dance arranged by the paper to exploit ugly, lonely dopes. When he meets her at her crummy rented room afterwards, she eschews the missed alimony and relishes the opportunity to drag his name through the mud all over town. In the resulting tussle, he shoves her away and the back of her head fatally connects with a metal pipe. He puts her in a bathtub to make it appear she slipped while bathing and whacked her head on the faucet. Going through her belongings, he tears off her dance identification pinned to her dress and pockets her wedding ring and a pawn shop ticket.
What he should have been prepared for was Derek playing detective at the site, especially since the man has a habit of getting to crime scenes before the authorities. I was amused by detective John Millican’s statement when he enters the room: “I just wanted to see if I could get to one of our calls before you did.” What he failed to see was Derek removing the safety pin and bit of paper still on the dress.
This evidence puts Derek on a trail of discovery which can only end with him discovering the killer is his boss, a man he highly respects. The most powerful moment in the runtime is watching Derek’s face as his delusions are shattered.
I have largely been indifferent towards this actor in most of the previous movies I have seen him in. Largely, I know him as the guy who married Bo Derek and directed some trashy features starring her. But this movie gives him a meaty role to play, and one with a solid character arc, as he goes from cocky and flippant to having greater concern for those around him.
The impetus for this change is the death of former reporter Henry O’Neill, for which he rightly feels some responsibility. Instead of listening to this drunk who once was a Pulitzer winner, he dismisses everything he says out of hand, though it will turn out the man knew the identity of the killer.
Fellow reporter Donna Reed takes Derek to task for this. Given she already has a deep contempt for the exploitive direction Crawford has taken the paper, she sarcastically advises Derek this could be an opportunity for him and his idol: “Have him give Charlie a fancy funeral. Great headline: The Express buries its castoffs. It’ll sell papers.” Given a headline like that, at least the one thing they weren’t buying was the lede. Reed’s cynical performance here shows a range of which I was previously unaware, and is largely counter to the entirely perky and wholesome image I had of her in my mind.
While I was impressed with the work of Derek and Reed, it is Crawford who commands every scene in which he appears. I am quite the fan of this actor who is little remembered today, as he was somebody who could play comedy just as effectively as he could dramas such as this.
It is also once again a pleasure to see Harry Morgan in a role quite removed from his time on M*A*S*H, both in the number of years passed and the difference in character. Even so, it is odd he could already have the voice and the general appearance of a cranky old man. All he was lacking at this point was the wrinkles, but he already has plenty to gripe about. He especially goes on at length about the ugliness of the people he was forced to photograph at that Lonely Hearts dance. The opportunity to get pics of a corpse which was just found is the better option in comparison: “Even dead, this dame is bound to have more glamor.”
Other, but more minor, cast members left an impression on me. O’Neill owns the few scenes where he appears as an obviously brilliant man brought low by alcohol and the changing nature of his profession. Katherine Warren is great in her only scene as Reed’s mother, though that is largely because the script gives her an especially memorable line. Reed asks her if it is OK for her to travel out of town with Derek to find the judge who married DeCamp to her eventual murderer, Warren says, “Just so long as he doesn’t misconstrue the meaning of the phrase ‘freedom of the press’”.
Lastly, this was the final screen appearance of bit player Garry Owen, in a movie which was posthumously released after his death from a heart attack at the all-too-young age of 49. Best known as the cabbie in Arsenic and Old Lace, he is here in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it bit where he’s in a gaggle of fellow drunks rounded up in a bar for Derek’s inspection.
Scandal Sheet is shockingly effective noir. I believed the characters and loved the sharp banter many of them are provided by the script. The plot is interesting, as we already know the killer, so it becomes a bit like Columbo, as we watch our heroes try to solve the mystery themselves. The movie is also shockingly prescient, with much being made about the decline of journalistic standards and the increase in outlets reporting on themselves. Even more forward-thinking is Reed’s callous observation of the Lonely Hearts dance: “This bribing of poor ignorant dopes into a public wedding is cheap, cruel and disgusting.” Wow—I didn’t expect this film to foretell reality TV shows like The Bachelor over a half century later.
Dir: Phil Karlson
Starring Broderick Crawford, Donna Reed, John Derek
Watched as part of the Powerhouse/Indicator UK (region B) Samuel Fuller: Storyteller, Volume Two blu-ray set