About three years ago, I watched Two Against the World for the first time as part of a retrospective on the films of Humphrey Bogart. I found that film repellant at the time, mean-spirited, and cynical. Its look at radio news and the callous attitude about what is and is not acceptable for a program to run left me cold and angry. I gave the film a bit of a scathing review and moved on, hoping I would never have to see it again. Turns out the joke was on me because I had completely forgotten that that film was a remake of an earlier film that might one day come across my screen at a later date. Because the original film had a different title, I was not prepared for it until I started watching Five Star Final and discovered, to my dismay, that this was what I was going to be analyzing today.
The plot is much the same as Two Against the World, though the media format is a bit different. Joseph W. Randall (Edward G. Robinson) is the managing editor of the New York Evening Gazette tabloid newspaper, a sleazy company that he has been trying to legitimize by reducing sensationalism and improving reporting. But sacrificing sleaze for real stories has been cutting into the paper’s bottom line dramatically. Publisher Bernard Hinchecliffe (Oscar Apfel) plans to boost sales by running a series of articles on a 20-year-old murder where a woman killed the father of her illegitimate child when he refused to honor his promise to marry her. The woman was acquitted by a jury of her peers, and an update to this story seems like something the readers of the Gazette will find juicy and salacious.
The woman in question, Nancy Townsend (Frances Starr), has since married and raised her daughter, Jenny (Marian Marsh), without the knowledge of her mother’s past nor that her step-father is not her biological father. Now Jenny is engaged to a wealthy young man from a prominent family, Philip Weeks (Anthony Bushell). When word gets to Nancy that the Gazette will be publishing a scandal story on this old case, she and her husband, Michael (H.B. Warner), believe this could ruin their reputation and put their daughter’s marriage and happiness in jeopardy. When unscrupulous reporter T. Vernon Isopod (Boris Korloff) arrives at their door pretending to be the clergy, they assume he is the one who will be officiating their daughter’s wedding the following day and confide in him their fears as well as other details in the hopes he could appeal to the paper, in the name of the church and of human decency, to not run the story. He uses their confidence to get details, including her daughter’s and her fiancé’s name.
As the story goes out into the world, Philip’s parents arrive uninvited and attempt to put an end to the engagement. Nancy calls the Gazette in a futile attempt to get Randall to see reason and mercy and stop the stories, but her pleas fall on deaf ears as this story has boosted circulation of the paper. But Randall is not without his own sense of right and wrong, and the weight of what he is doing is beginning to weigh heavily on him. As things go further and further down the rabbit hole, he begins to realize that he has taken things too far and this is the kind of thing that he cannot wash from his hands.
One of the things I disliked about Two Against the World was my inability to buy the motivations of Humphrey Bogart’s character. There was not enough time dedicated to building him up into a believable person, and when he turns on his employers, it was not believable. That is not the case in this earlier adaptation. That is not to say that Randall is a more sympathetic character, though. He is just as guilty as the man who signs his paycheck. He knows what he is doing and pushes on anyway. When Nancy first calls into the paper, he does everything in his power to ignore those calls, ignoring the desperate pleas of a woman who is undeserving of this treatment. She has already done her time and was acquitted, and he is putting her back on trial, this time in the court of public opinion. Randall washes his hands excessively, which is obvious biblical symbolism, too. This is a clumsy choice that goes back to the original play, but Robinson makes the most of it and outshines what Bogart did with this part a few years later.
This film is taking swipes at sensationalistic media and tabloid journalism, but, to be honest, this is an easy target, and it needs to be smarter than it is to really be effective. This is especially true now that we are nearly a hundred years down the road from this film’s release. Paparazzi reporting has only gotten worse over the years, even causing celebrities, including Princess Diana’s, deaths. Portraying the tabloid media as thugs and degenerates is nothing new or original. We get everything from goons being sent to a newsstand to rough up a vendor for not prominently displaying the Gazette to Isopod sexually harassing a woman while riding in a car. There is even mention of a female reporter being fired because she was not shapely enough for the men in the office. All of this is to sell the Gazette as being a place filled with degenerate reporters, and it is as blunt of a point as can possibly be presented to us.
Unfortunately, even though Randall is better developed in this film than his counterpart in Two Against the World, he is still an unlikable character overall. His actions and unwillingness to back off drive Nancy to suicide, leading to the most disturbing moment in the whole picture when Jenny and Philip come over and her stepfather has to pretend his wife is out shopping instead of dead in the other room. This film cannot overcome this level of mean-spiritedness inherent in the plot. This goes back to the play and really cannot be overcome even with better writing and actors. It makes for an unpleasant viewing experience.
The finale is the best part of the picture, when Jenny shows up at the paper with a gun demanding why these men “killed my mother.” Hinchecliffe is there, as is Randall and Isopod. Only Randall feels bad for what has been done. Hinchecliffe is still thinking about the increase in circulation and wants to offer her a cash buyout thinking she would be willing to go on record and tell her side of the story. This is callous and a level of inhumanity that simply boggles the mind yet I know there are people out there that think along these lines. Randall expresses his own guilt to her and he means it, but as soon as she leaves, Isopod and Hinchecliffe drop the façade of caring whatsoever about her feelings.
This is a level of satire that is so dark and depressing that the film just becomes an unpleasant experience overall. It’s better than the Bogart adaptation by a good margin but is still something that I find so distasteful that I do not wish to ever revisit either film again. Satire needs to be biting and sharp, over-the-top yet smartly written to get its points across. This is not quite that. Instead, it is obvious and just an overall depressing viewing experience.
Academy Award Nomination:
Outstanding Production: Hal B. Wallis
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Release Date: September 26, 1931
Running Time: 89 Minutes
Not Rated
Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Marian Marsh, and Boris Karloff
Directed by: Mervyn LeRoy
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