"Get me rewrite!": Newspaper movies

Today's the day many of us settle in with the Sunday paper, and one of the news topics in the Seattle area is the probable closure of one of the two major daily newspapers, the Post-Intelligencer.  Unfortunately for people who like to read and write (myself included), this is a common story everywhere: the newspaper industry as we knew it is fading away.  So like I do in a lot of situations, I take solace in the movies, and the ones that captured the glamor and excitement of a past era.  (And when I was a kid, part of the glamor was that Clark Kent and Peter Parker worked at newspapers.).  Here are a few I came up with--I'm sure you can think of others.  --David

• His Girl Friday: Howard Hawks' 1940 adaptation of The Front Page (it was also adapted in 1931 starring Adolphe Menjou and 1974 starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau), starring Cary Grant as the editor and Rosalind Russell as his ace reporter, and ex-wife.
• Libeled Lady: Editor Spencer Tracy hires William Powell to seduce the woman who's suing his paper (Myrna Loy, during her Thin Man run with Powell)
• All the President's Men: Woodward and Bernstein (Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman) investigate the Watergate break-in for the Washington Post.
• Woman of the Year: Tracy is paired with Katharine Hepburn this time (and for the first of many times), as a couple balancing their marriage and newspaper careers.
• Absence of Malice: Sally Field plays a reporter investigating Paul Newman, and raises serious ethical questions in the process.
• Call Northside 777: Reporter James Stewart tries to prove the innocence of a death-row inmate.
• Lou Grant: 1977-82 television series starring Ed Asner as the character he played on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but this time working at the L.A. Tribune.
• Kit Kittredge: An American Girl: Young Kit (Abigail Breslin) fancies herself a reporter and sets out to prove it.
• The Paper: All-star vehicle about a New York tabloid.
• Ace in the Hole: Kirk Douglas plays a reporter desperate for a big story to revive his career.
• Newsies: Christian Bale is one of the newsboys protesting turn-of-the-century labor practices in this musical directed by Kenny "High School Musical" Ortega.
• Get a Life: More from the golden era of newspaper carriers.

Comments

[don ruhter on January 19, 2009 at 12:05 PM]

You forgot Humphrey Bogart in "Deadline USA"... It certainly deserves to be high up on the list.

d.

[todd on January 19, 2009 at 12:12 PM]

Citizen Kane!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Harry on January 19, 2009 at 12:21 PM]

Jack Webb Movie was called "-30-".

Made in 1959.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052526/

[LawHawkSanFrancisco on January 19, 2009 at 12:26 PM]

Don't forget the important part newspapers played in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

[ghh on January 19, 2009 at 12:27 PM]

I feel silly not recalling the name--but there's the classic comedy about a newspaper that offers an all expense paid vacation to NY for a dying person and the woman who fakes an illness to win the prize.
I think that movie also had the line, "Reporters! I'll tell you about reporters! The Hand of God, reaching down into the mire, couldn't drag one of them up to the depths of degradation!"

Also, The Night Stalker.

[David Drake on January 19, 2009 at 12:36 PM]

"Citizen Kane" , the greatest newspaper movie.

We will sure miss the newspapers. Can't imagine any of the plots of those movies working with bloggers.

[Ted Joy on January 19, 2009 at 12:56 PM]

The 1974 version of Front Page with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau and directed by Billy Wilder is definitely the best screen version of the best newspaper movie of all time.

There's another take on the original play that isn't half-bad -- Switching Channels with Burt Reynolds and Kathleen Turner (late 1980s, I think) but this time the setting is at a TV news operation so it might not count here.

[Lenny on January 19, 2009 at 01:10 PM]

I think you are missing Teacher's Pet: Clark Gable and Doris Day.

A quote (via IMDB): "Education teaches a man how to spell experience...A psychologist is a person who gives all kinds of advice about matters he knows nothing about...A reporter has to do a lot of sweating before he has the right to perspire...There goes the unpressed gentleman of the press...College is amateurs teaching amateurs how to be amateurs...".

[JoeNik on January 19, 2009 at 01:14 PM]

How about "Sweet Smell of Success"? Gritty tale about the real world of newspaper columnists. It help tame the power of Walter Winchell.

[RC Power on January 19, 2009 at 01:21 PM]

Don't leave out "Teacher's Pet" starring Clark Gable and Doris Day.

[James on January 19, 2009 at 01:23 PM]

Clark Gable was a newspaper man in "It Happened One Night."

[bfwebster on January 19, 2009 at 01:40 PM]

I've watched "Ace in the Hole" (1951) twice now in the last year, and it's about as cynical a portrayal of newspaper journalism -- and of human nature in general -- as you could ask for. Kirk Douglas is great. One of my favorite bits: watching the entrance fee to the Indian caves rise as events advance. You have to actually look for it -- the movie doesn't call attention to it -- but it's there nevertheless. ..bruce..

[Michael on January 19, 2009 at 01:45 PM]

A few more classics:

Five Star Final (1931) - Crazy pre-code film, newspapermen as bad guys, Edward G. Robinson & Boris Karloff

Foreign Correspondent (1940) - Alfred Hitchcock directs, American reporter vs. Nazis in London

Sweet Smell of Success (1957) - Tabloid evilness, greed, corruption, cynicism, Burt Lancaster & Tony Curtis

[Dusty on January 19, 2009 at 01:53 PM]

As newspaper movies go, Foreign Correspondent, directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940, really should rank up there ahead of His Girl Friday.

[TP on January 19, 2009 at 01:56 PM]

I've seen several of these and the one that is most like a newsroom is All The Presidents Men. I was a reporter (acutally a sports writer) for almost 15 years, and there was is very little glamour in newspapers. It's a lot of hard, hard work and stress, especially if you work in a multi-newspaper town, which I did. You were always wondering what the other guy had and if you were going to get scooped. You spent a lot of time on the phone cultivating sources. Zeal and the relentless pressure to be first often resulted in mistakes. ATPM depicted this with uncanny accuracy. The technology changed (I typed on computers instead of typewriters and carried a laptop as much as a notepad), but the atmosphere was the same.

[Justin Levine on January 19, 2009 at 02:19 PM]

"Zodiac"!!

Also have to agree with the others who brought up "Citizen Kane".

[comatus on January 19, 2009 at 03:22 PM]

Michael! Finally, another aficionado of "Five Star Final," my favorite American film. A savage tirade against populist journalism--or is it the other way around?

"God gives us heartache, and the Devil gives us whiskey."

Robinson at his best. Wow, could that man throw a telephone.

[FredTownWard on January 19, 2009 at 03:30 PM]

As someone who also likes to read and write, I find it difficult to work up any sympathy over the news that Yet Another American newspaper is closing because when the coroner finally files his report on the death of the American newspaper the cause of death will be suicide.

It is hard to imagine an industry more determined to go out of business rather than admit that half its potential customers might have a point: "If you don't like what we consider to be the news, then you can damn well read something else!"

Increasingly, half of the country is doing just that.

The other half, though ideologically sympathetic, has only only so much time and so much disposable income, and with virtually ALL newspapers competing for the same ideological niche, along with most of the news magazines, most of the radio news, most of the television news, and a significant majority of the Internet news, the future holds nothing but further shakeouts and closings.

Eventually someone will get smart and decide to try the much easier task of competing with one cable news network, one and a half newspapers, and a few assorted news magazines, radio talkshow hosts, and Internet news sites for conservative news customers,...

but of course most of the soon to be unemployed newspapermen and newspaperwomen will refuse to work for such inhuman monsters.

[roger franklin on January 19, 2009 at 04:00 PM]

"The harder They Fall'' isn't, strictly speaking, a newspaper movie, but Humphrey Bogart as the hungry-for-money ex-columnist selling his soul as a crooked boxing promoter's press agent is pretty darn good.

By the way, I was working at the new York Post when Ron Howard made "The Paper'', and give him credit for a thorough job, because he haunted the editorial floor for weeks observing and taking notes. That minor plot element concerning the too-precious copy editor who was threatening to sue over his uncomfortable, office-issued chair, well, all us old posties know who inspired that. I won't name him because he would sue the sun for allowing itself to be obscured by clouds, such is his litigious nature.

[Rich V on January 19, 2009 at 07:08 PM]

Meet John Doe! Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyk, Walter Brennen...

[Larry L on January 19, 2009 at 07:27 PM]

Not a newspaper movie per se, but "Come Fill the Cup" with James Cagney as an alcoholic city editor and Raymond Massey as the publisher is the epitome of the "hard bitten reporter" genre.

[Gerry on January 19, 2009 at 09:23 PM]

"Nothing Sacred" was the movie in which a small town girl (Hazel Flagg) fakes radium poisoning to win a trip to New York. Carole Lombard and Fredric March starred.

[Gerry on January 19, 2009 at 09:24 PM]

"Nothing Sacred" was the movie in which a small town girl (Hazel Flagg) fakes radium poisoning to win a trip to New York. Carole Lombard and Fredric March starred.