News Is Made at Night (1939) User Reviews

A newspaperman tries to engender headlines and save someone at the same time

[blanche-2 · 6/10 · 1 December 2021]

In one night, I saw a movie about a taxi driver and another about a newspaper publisher, two major characters in the 1930s.

"News is Made at Night" stars Preston Foster and Lynn Bari. Foster plays Steve Drum, who is fighting for a stay of execution for a convicted murderer. And he does just about anything to get that stay, including faking an affidavit from someone admitting to the murder, and getting an actor to stage a deathbed confession.

Lynn Bari is the aggressive young woman from a home town newspaper who is out to prove her value to the paper.

The film starts out with Preston Foster saying he doesn't hire women. When she one-ups him, he hires her.

This movie follows in the steps of The Front Page, Five Star Final, and how many other films. However, the cast is likeable, particularly Preston Foster, despite his male chauvanism.

Newspapers and newspapermen have always been fodder for stories and were prevalent in the '30s, as were runaway heiresses and taxi drivers. It's very hard, once you have the original - i.e, The Front Page and It Happened One Night, etc., to do anything fresh. It was really up to the casts and directors of these films to make them interesting.

Would have made a great "His Girl Friday" prequel!

[mark.waltz · 6/10 · 1 June 2018]

Ever since "The Front Page" and "Five Star Final", movies about journalists have dramatized the often shallow industry of reporting the news and the scandal sheets which profit from exploiting the private lives of private citizens, both celebrities and regular folks. But every now and then comes along a film that shows the real importance of journalism, whether it be a political expose like "All the President's Men" or the lesson of journalistic integrity like "Absence of Malice". For older films, the emphasis was on the scandal sheets, often exploiting the personal tragedies of the rich and famous, but in some cases, covering important stories that lead to the exposure of corruption in politics or the revelation in a murder case of "who dune it?" This is the later, a tough, direct to the point mixture of comedy and mystery where reporter Preston Foster strives valiantly both through his integrity and own ego to find a way to prove a convicted killer on death row was framed.

Then along comes Lynn Bari, who could easily be a younger version of the Rosalind Russell character of Hildy Johnson in "The Front Page" remake "His Girl Friday" where one of the tough newspaper reporters was actually a woman, one so good at her job that her boss didn't want to lose her to an institution called marriage. I instantly saw the Bari character as Russell, young and ambitious, coming to New York City from Detroit, and striving to get a job on Foster's newspaper. But as good a journalist as he is, Foster is still a misogynist, and not willing to take the chance on a female reporter no matter what her credentials are. She begins to scoop him on his quest of exposing the real killer, managing to get onto the newspaper staff against his will, and showing him that she has what it takes to get the story out. In fact, several times, he overhears her on the phone and begins to steal her ideas, something she catches onto very quickly, but wisely doesn't expose him on before she finds the final detail to prove that she had the right tools to getting to the truth in the first place.

The film starts off a bit ordinary but as you get into the story, you begin to see how fleshed out these characters are. For all his male chauvinism, Foster is actually a likable fellow, and Bari proves that she's not some namby pamby sob sister, but a serious journalist who would be a credit on any newspaper. The script goes into great detail as to how they try to out-scoop each other but secretly admire the other's feistiness and guts and determination.The supporting cast is filled with many great character actors, and the script is rich with tough talking, streetwise characters that would be comfortable in any Damon Runyeon story. The script hits some real tense moments by having the prisoner on death row going in and out of his cell as the warden postpones the execution thanks to Foster's manipulation, but then having the execution back on schedule. I didn't see the identity of the real guilty party coming at all, so this was one time where the script was two steps ahead of me, keeping me guessing until the end.