Stubs - Five Star Final

Five Star Final (1931) Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Marian Marsh, H. B. Warner, Anthony Bushell Directed by Mervyn LeRoy Screenplay by Louis Weitzenkorn. Based on the play Five Star Final by Louis Weitzenkorn (New York, 30 Dec 1930). Produced by Hal Wallis (uncredited). USA Run time: 89 minutes. Black and White. Drama.

Warner Bros. was a studio that didn’t shy away from social protest films. No other studio would have released such films as I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), The Public Enemy (1931) and Heroes for Sale (1933). Five Star Final represents a different kind of protest film, that against tabloid journalism, an issue that seems as fresh today as it did in 1931.

When the circulation for The Evening Gazette drops, French (Purnell Pratt) and Brannagan (Robert Elliott), who run advertising and circulation, tell Bernard Hinchecliffe (Oscar Apfel), the newspaper’s publisher, that it is due to Randall's (Edward G. Robinson) trying to get the paper “on the up and up,” reduce the sensationalism and improve the reporting. Hinchecliffe decides to right the wrong by dredging up a 20-year-old murder and making it into a series and morality tale. Randall, who had covered the story for another paper, is reluctant to do it.

In happier times, Michael Townsend (H. B. Warner), and Nancy Voorhees
 (Frances Starr) play cards agains their daughter Jenny (Marian Marsh)
and her fiancee Phillip Weeks (Anthony Bushell).

A stenographer, Nancy Voorhees (Frances Starr), shot her boss after he reneged on his promise to marry her. Her pregnancy won the jury’s sympathy, and she was acquitted. In the meantime, Voorhees has married Michael Townsend (H. B. Warner), who raised the daughter as his own. In fact, Jenny (Marian Marsh) knows nothing about her mother’s past and is engaged to be married the next day to Phillip Weeks (Anthony Bushell), the son of a manufacturer father (David Torrence) and a mother (Evelyn Hall) who has one eye on the society pages.

Kitty Carmody (Ona Munson) (l) was hired for as much as her
figure as her writing talent. Miss Taylor (Aline MacMahon) (r) looks on.

Randall accepts the assignment and assigns two reporters to the story, Kitty Carmody (Ona Munson), who Hinchecliffe wants to hire as much for her figure as her previous work on a Chicago paper, and T. Vernon Isopod (Boris Karloff), an unscrupulous reporter who had once been a divinity student. While Carmody doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere, Isopod, as he’s called, gets an interview disguised as a minister working for the church where the wedding will take place.

Randall (Edward G. Robinson) assigns T. Vernon Isopod
 (Boris Karloff), an unscrupulous reporter to the story.

Having seen a notice about the series in The Evening Gazette, Nancy fears that the truth will come out. Hoping that a member of the church will help them, the Townsends confess their story to Isopod, all of which makes good fodder for the next edition of the paper. As soon as Isopod leaves, Michael and Nancy figure out they had put their trust in the wrong person, since he seemed to be unfamiliar with the bride and bridegroom to be.

The Townsends reach out to the church for help but get Isopod instead.

When the story breaks the next morning, the Weeks show up to tell the Townsends that the wedding is off, even while Jenny and Phillip are down at City Hall getting their wedding license. Still hoping that the clergy can help him, Michael heads down to the Church and talks to the reverend who will be officiating the wedding. He promises to see what he can do.

Nancy Voorhees (Frances Starr) calls the paper.

Meanwhile, Nancy tries to call the paper directly. She tries to speak to Hinchecliffe, who is busy worrying about circulation, doesn’t want to talk to her and sends her to Randall. Randall, meanwhile, is dealing with his own issues and doesn’t want to talk to her either and his assistant, Miss Taylor (Aline MacMahon), hangs up on her. Undeterred, Nancy calls back and gets the same run around again, only this time, Miss Taylor, who has a conscience, makes Randall take the call. He tells Nancy that he can’t help her and hangs up.

Distraught, Nancy, seeing no other way out, commits suicide by ingesting poison. When Michael comes home, he finds his wife. But soon afterward, Phillip and Jenny return on their way to the church. Michael, who has already decided to join his wife in suicide, tells them that Nancy has gone to pick up something at the store. He manages to use a telephone call to pretend that he has to take money to her.

Once Phillip and Jenny leave for the church, Michael goes into the bedroom and takes his life the same way Nancy had.

Soon after, Carmody, along with a photographer from the newspaper, breaks into the apartment and discovers the dead couple. She immediately calls Randall, who is excited about the story and wants to play it up big.

The story has already hit the streets when the Weeks come to tell Jenny that they don’t want Phillip to marry her. Phillip, to his credit, loves Jenny and doesn’t want to call off the wedding. He even tells his parents off before they leave.

While he is outside dealing with his parents, a distraught Jenny grabs a gun from the desk and escapes out the back of the building.

Meanwhile, back at the paper, Randall is not happy about what has happened and wants to kill the series about the Voorhees murders. Hinchecliffe wants to get French and Brannagan’s input. Both men are ecstatic about the jump in circulation and want to discuss an idea that Isopod has had about doing a series telling Nancy’s authorized story. The idea would be to pay Jenny $1200 for her mother’s story.

Jenny arrives at the newspaper distraught about her mother's suicide.

They are all in Randall’s office when Jenny arrives. French and Brannagan flee but the other men are left to deal with her. She grows angrier as she asks them why they killed her mother. While Isopod is obviously scared and speechless, Hinchecliffe offers nothing but empty platitudes. Randall is the only one who tells her the truth that her mother was killed to increase circulation. Jenny is not happy with the answers and pulls a gun, planning to shoot them.

Phillip arrives in time to disarm Jenny.

Just at that moment, Phillip arrives and disarms her. He takes her away but threatens the men that he’ll kill them if they ever mention his wife’s name in the paper.

Randall habitually washes his hand throughout the movie.

Only Randall feels guilty about what has happened and after denouncing Hinchecliffe to his face, offers his resignation. He orders Miss Taylor (Aline MacMahon) to write the resignation letter. While Randall is washing his hands, something that he does habitually throughout the movie, the phone rings. The night city desk tells Randall about a “love nest killing”, a murder/homicide. Randall tells them to play it up really big before telling him to take the story to Hinchecliffe “and shove it up his...” throwing the phone through his glass office door on the missing word.

He grabs his coat and hat and leaves and a smiling Miss Taylor, who's been in love with him for years, follows.

The film ends with a copy of the Evening Gazette, with the headline “Suicide victims buried” being swept away down a filthy gutter.

When it was released on September 10, 1931, the film got generally strong reviews. Mordant Hall, the film reviewer for The New York Times, gave a positive reviewing, comparing it favorably to a contemporary film about yellow journalism. He writes of Five Star Final, “It is a picture which in the matter of production and acting takes its place beside the film of Front Page."

Five Star Final, made on a budget of $310,000, made $822,000 at the box office and earned an Academy Award nomination for Outstanding Production at the fifth annual awards covering 1931/1932, losing to Grand Hotel (1932). It would also later be remade in 1936 as Two Against the World, starring Humphrey Bogart, with the setting changed from a newspaper to a radio station.

The film came out in a breakthrough year for its star Edward G. Robinson. He had already made Little Caesar and Smart Money that year and this film would cement him as not only a movie star but as one of the better actors of his day. He plays Randall as a sarcastic, hard-hitting editor who eventually realizes when his zest for the story has gone too far. His constant hand washing is not only a good bit of business but it can be seen as the editor trying to clean out his guilty conscience over the job he does.

Boris Karloff plays T. Vernon Isopod in Five Star Final.

Boris Karloff, who had also appeared in Smart Money with Robinson, was on the verge of stardom. Even Hall mentions in his review that Karloff “is now at work as the monster in the picturization of Frankenstein" without knowing the career change that role would have on the actor. His Isopod is a rather despicable character; not only is he depicted as a womanizer, he is also willing to pretend to be a man of God in order to get a story and to then try and make more money on the tragedy of Nancy’s suicide.

Marian Marsh was all of 17 when she made this film. Born Violet Ethelred Krauth in Trinidad to a German chocolate manufacturer, her family moved to Boston at the outbreak of World War I. Two of her sisters were involved with entertainment. Her older sister, called Jean Fenwick, was a contract player with FBO Studios and another sister, Harriet, was a chorus girl who danced in Earl Carroll's Vanities under the name Jeanne Morgan.

In 1918, while she was attending Hollywood High School, Marsh was approached by silent screen actress Nance O'Neil, who offered her speech and movement lessons. With her help and that of her sister Jean, Marsh secured a contract with Pathé, where she was featured in many short subjects under the name Marilyn Morgan.

After small roles in Howard Hughes’ Hell's Angels (1930) and Eddie Cantor's lavish Technicolor musical Whoopee! (1930), Marsh landed a contract at Warner Bros., who changed her name to Marsh. AFI, in their write up about the film, noted that Five Star Final was the first film in which actress Marian Marsh was billed under that name.

Beautiful, Marsh was also a pretty good actress as well. Her performance as Jenny is multi-layered as she goes from carefree and happy to depressed and distraught. In her final scene, she comes close to, but stops short of, chewing the scenery in what turns out to be a powerful performance for the young actress.

Anthony Bushnell, who played Phillip, was a British-born actor who had been in American films since 1929, though the scenes he shot for Jealousy (1929) were re-shot with Fredric March at the insistence of the film’s star Jeanne Eagels. Most of his early films had him playing military roles. In addition to Five Star Final, Bushnell appeared in Journey's End (1930), Three Faces East (1930) with Erich von Stroheim, Chances (1931) with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Vanity Fair (1932) with Myrna Loy, and A Woman Commands (1932) with Pola Negri, which was her first sound picture.

After a stint in Hollywood, he returned to England and appeared in films there up until World War II. After the war, he developed a partnership with Laurence Olivier, and was the associate producer of Olivier’s Hamlet (1948), and later as associate director on two more films, which Olivier both directed and starred in, Richard III (1965) and The Prince and the Showgirl (1957).

Here, he gives a solid performance as Phillip, the fiancé who stands by Jenny in her darkest hour and despite the disapproval of her parents.

It should also be noted that this is the first film appearance of Aline MacMahon, whom you may know best from Golddiggers of 1933 (1933) and Heat Lightning (1934), in which she starred in one of the last films to be released before the Production Code took full effect. Not a newb to acting, MacMahon plays Miss Taylor, Randall’s assistant, who just happens to be in love with him. Miss Taylor is also a philosopher about all things, including the newspaper business. She gets to speak one of the more true lines in the film:

Miss Taylor: I think you can always get people interested in the crucifixion of a woman.

Five Star Final plays out against the backdrop of a working, though tabloid newspaper that uses tactics such as contests, invented by Ziggie Feinstein (George E. Stone), including a proposed taxi cab race between Brooklyn and Manhattan. The race would involve 1,000 taxis driving four abreast during the day. The paper seems comfortable with the fact that “only 100 people would die” as a result. Anything is a go as long as circulation goes up.

Ziggie also has another more ominous job at the paper, which is to use thugs to have the Gazette get prominent placement at the city’s newsstands. As depicted in the film, when one newsstand operator refuses to cow-tow, his newsstand is wrecked. This illustrates a newspaper desperate to do anything to make a sale in what was then a crowded and cutthroat daily newspaper business.

You also get the feel, good or bad, for what it might have been like to work for a newspaper in the early 1930s and by that, I mean the office part of the job as well as the reporting. The film is full of one-liners, jokes, asides, slang and double-entendres with sexual, social, and ethnic allusions. Women are seen as much as objects; as noted above Kitty Carmody (Ona Munson), a well-endowed reporter is hired to replace a flat-chested one. Carmody is also eye candy for the wandering eyes of Isopod, whom we gather feels her up when the two take a taxi cab ride together.

The film also contains a sequence that while impressive today, was also acknowledged as such by reviews of the day. As Hall describes it in his review, “There is an adroitly filmed scene in which the screen is divided into three sections. Hinchecliffe is at his desk on one side, Randall is in his office on the other and the distraught Nancy Voorhees Townsend is in the centre. She telephones to Hinchecliffe, but he will not talk to her. The call is switched to Randall, who likewise refuses to harken to her plea to stop the story.”

Five Star Final is somewhat heavy-handed in its treatment of the subject matter but what might have come across as crusading in 1931 is still very entertaining and relevant today. The film is fast-paced, with well-developed characters, good acting and should keep your attention throughout. If you like newspaper-based dramas, and/or the films of Edward G. Robinson, you should enjoy this film.