The dangers of an improperly selected metric! What are you looking at?!
Scandal Sheet (1952) is a tightly plotted and wound crime drama that depends intimately on the inferior position of women in the time period in which it is set. Mark Chapman has been climbing the ladder at the local big newspaper, and is now the editor who has been saving the paper’s financial bacon by pushing it into trash journalism and sensationalism.
The latest story is about a Lonely Hearts Club jonesing to marry at least one new couple, formed that night, by bribing them with various consumer items. Chapman’s the host, so he brings along a photographer, out to photograph everyone, and a reporter, Steve McCleary, to write up the new, happy couple. They look more desperate and befuddled than anything, but what they hey. Right?
And then chaos springs forth. Mark Chapman, hard-driving bachelor, isn’t actually Mark Chapman, he’s actually George Grant, who abandoned his wife, Charlotte, twenty years earlier, after she refused to grant him a divorce. He changed his name, left her penniless, and exited the state. And here she is at the event!
Oh, and she’s bitter. Oh so bitter.
Later, at Charlotte’s hotel room, following mutual threats, she loses the scuffle and ends up dead. Chapman makes it look like an accidental drowning, but it’s reporter McCleary and sidekick photographer who get to the crime scene before it’s cleared. McCleary has help in the form of Julie Allison, feature writer, who is frustrated with the drift of the paper into sensationalism, with the way she’s treated by everyone male, and how her insights into just about everything are considered worthless. Even about the boss.
But then Charlotte’s suitcase, full of marriage memorabilia, shows up at a hock shop, leading to the murder of a drunken old ex-journalist, and the trot turns into the gallop, and Chapman, who sees riches in his future, keeps dodging the metaphorical bullets, while firing off a few tangible bullets of his own.
Will the noir triumph? Or will the good guys get away with being utterly blind? Something of an ode to the infallibility of the boss, this tight, well plotted and acted drama would have been better without the near-inevitable putdowns of the ladies.
But, in the end, the storytellers acknowledge, ever so grudgingly, that injustice, and how that injustice translates to Oh, shit! moments.
It’s not quite deep enough to be recommended, but there’s not a lot to criticize here. Enjoy!
