Bogart and 'Deadline USA': Why Some of Us Got Into the Newspaper Biz
Posted: 12/29/2007 | By: Dennis Anderson
So, my friend Greg Mitchell earlier this month retrieved from long ago movie time (in a column for E&P) a story that tells us something about how big media works today, with its pack journalism, sensation of the momentary hot story fueled by hysteria and personal tragedy that can be exploited by the scheming careerists of media land. Find an overdosed centerfold or an abducted innocent on a cable news outlet and you will be in the middle of Billy Wilder's "Ace in the Hole" (aka "The Big Carnival").
But there's another, more optimistic, Hollywood cult classic that I would like to tout: "Deadline U.S.A."
My honorable discharge cashiered me out of the Army about a year after Richard Nixon resigned as president. A year or so into finding my vocation the Academy Award for Best Picture went to the movie from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's "All the President's Men." And what a movie it was. It filled the ranks of journalism schools and any number of us tugged at our muttonchop sideburns while stalking a college president in search of Nixonian treachery.
But the movie that snagged a bunch of us at the frat pad of journalism guys through a haze of beer and stale cigarettes was viewable only on TV and usually at 1 a.m.
"Deadline U.S.A." starred Humphrey Bogart reprising what Rick Blaine from "Casablanca" would have moved onto if he shifted his idealism from winning World War II to running a newspaper. There are similarities.
Jackpot. A movie with Bogie as a managing editor at a big, quality daily that was going to be auctioned into oblivion by clueless newspaper heirs who wanted to cash out. Sound familiar?
Oh, and Bogie as editor Hutcheson is a cheerful workaholic with a stained trenchcoat and an ex-wife who likes him fine, but left him for steadier company because she couldn't remember what he looked like.
That was newspapering. Ahem, that is newspapering.
The great thing about the relatively few great newspaper movies as opposed to buddy cop action flicks and superhero movies is that newspaper movies are about fallible people who actually do this work. Up on the screen, the characters may be a little idealized, like in "All the President's Men," but the thrills in the movie come from the thrill of chasing the stories that actually make a difference in people's lives.
That's why they keep remaking "The Front Page." Some of what Ben Hecht wrote about way back when is stuff that we still write about now. Press hysteria, pack journalism, executions set for midnight, freeing an innocent man. It's nuts, but it really happens. It happens a lot more often than those car crashes that get filmed in endless rotation.
So in "Deadline U.S.A.", there really is a deadline. The news room gang has to bust the Mob in Anytown U.S.A. before the big daily gets acquired by a rival paper so it can be shut down.
It's Bogart all right. Trench coat, cigarette, tough and tender. The writer-director was Richard Brooks, a Marine veteran of the Pacific War who went on to win an Oscar for "Elmer Gantry" and direct Robert Blake in "In Cold Blood."
In "Deadline U.S.A." Brooks was all over the American experience. Bet he could have ginned up a great movie about Blake's murder trial.
Unlike Billy Wilder's ironic and astrigent take on press in "Ace in the Hole" and his "Front Page" remake with Walter Mathau and Jack Lemmon as the madcap editor-reporter team, the Bogart-Brooks collaboration is about the high purpose and idealism of journalism. In that way it's more like "President's Men" and Ron Howard's great '90s take on New York tabloid news, "The Paper," where the newsies prove the kids didn't kill the tourist.
"Deadline" is about what we do when we're working a story that will blow the lid off this town. It's about newspapers tilting with the powers that be, finding the bosses and exposing them and sticking up for the little guy. So, "Deadline U.S.A." is really homage to the way it was supposed to be -- to the way it is supposed to be.
Funniest scene? Editor Bogart orders a photographer to head to the courthouse and shoot a picture of mob boss Rienzi coming down the steps after beating the rap. The photographer refuses, fearing he'll get beat up.
"You're fired," Bogart decides, just like that.
He orders up another photographer, and then hardboiled Bogie orders yet another photog -- to get a shot of the mobster beating up the paper's backup photographer.
Inspiring scene? A young wannabe cub writer shows up at the saloon where Bogie and Jim Backus and Ed Begley Sr. are lifting glasses to the publisher -- a very Katherine Graham-like Ethel Barrymore -- who has been outvoted by her feckless children in her attempt to keep the paper going.
Bogie quizzes the aspiring journalist. Does he know foreign affairs and history? Does he speak a foreign language? What's his knowledge of economics and politics and political science? All the novice has is earnest desire but with the clock running, the editor gives him a shot, assuring him "This is the greatest profession."
Do enough of us remember that now? Do we believe it? We better.
There's a big payoff scene -- reminiscent of "The Godfather" -- where a hit man disguised as a police officer fires away in the press room. How about this? The contract shooter actually falls into the press web. The press was mightier than the sword. Brooks knew how to set up a spectacular finish.
The mob boss, who's been trying to charm, threaten, bribe, cajole and sweet-talk editor Bogie into backing off (no sale) finally shouts over the telephone a question above a high-pitched whine that if you've heard it you know what it is.
"What's that noise?" the mobster shouts through the phone.
Over the spin-up of the web, editor Bogie answers, "It's the sound of the presses, Rienzi. And there's nothing you can do about it."
Think this is corny? That it's hopelessly romantic? Find the flick and even without the beer and cigarettes, you'll thrill to the idea that "Deadline U.S.A." captured why a lot of us wanted to get into this business in the first place.
But there's another, more optimistic, Hollywood cult classic that I would like to tout: "Deadline U.S.A."
My honorable discharge cashiered me out of the Army about a year after Richard Nixon resigned as president. A year or so into finding my vocation the Academy Award for Best Picture went to the movie from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's "All the President's Men." And what a movie it was. It filled the ranks of journalism schools and any number of us tugged at our muttonchop sideburns while stalking a college president in search of Nixonian treachery.
But the movie that snagged a bunch of us at the frat pad of journalism guys through a haze of beer and stale cigarettes was viewable only on TV and usually at 1 a.m.
"Deadline U.S.A." starred Humphrey Bogart reprising what Rick Blaine from "Casablanca" would have moved onto if he shifted his idealism from winning World War II to running a newspaper. There are similarities.
Jackpot. A movie with Bogie as a managing editor at a big, quality daily that was going to be auctioned into oblivion by clueless newspaper heirs who wanted to cash out. Sound familiar?
Oh, and Bogie as editor Hutcheson is a cheerful workaholic with a stained trenchcoat and an ex-wife who likes him fine, but left him for steadier company because she couldn't remember what he looked like.
That was newspapering. Ahem, that is newspapering.
The great thing about the relatively few great newspaper movies as opposed to buddy cop action flicks and superhero movies is that newspaper movies are about fallible people who actually do this work. Up on the screen, the characters may be a little idealized, like in "All the President's Men," but the thrills in the movie come from the thrill of chasing the stories that actually make a difference in people's lives.
That's why they keep remaking "The Front Page." Some of what Ben Hecht wrote about way back when is stuff that we still write about now. Press hysteria, pack journalism, executions set for midnight, freeing an innocent man. It's nuts, but it really happens. It happens a lot more often than those car crashes that get filmed in endless rotation.
So in "Deadline U.S.A.", there really is a deadline. The news room gang has to bust the Mob in Anytown U.S.A. before the big daily gets acquired by a rival paper so it can be shut down.
It's Bogart all right. Trench coat, cigarette, tough and tender. The writer-director was Richard Brooks, a Marine veteran of the Pacific War who went on to win an Oscar for "Elmer Gantry" and direct Robert Blake in "In Cold Blood."
In "Deadline U.S.A." Brooks was all over the American experience. Bet he could have ginned up a great movie about Blake's murder trial.
Unlike Billy Wilder's ironic and astrigent take on press in "Ace in the Hole" and his "Front Page" remake with Walter Mathau and Jack Lemmon as the madcap editor-reporter team, the Bogart-Brooks collaboration is about the high purpose and idealism of journalism. In that way it's more like "President's Men" and Ron Howard's great '90s take on New York tabloid news, "The Paper," where the newsies prove the kids didn't kill the tourist.
"Deadline" is about what we do when we're working a story that will blow the lid off this town. It's about newspapers tilting with the powers that be, finding the bosses and exposing them and sticking up for the little guy. So, "Deadline U.S.A." is really homage to the way it was supposed to be -- to the way it is supposed to be.
Funniest scene? Editor Bogart orders a photographer to head to the courthouse and shoot a picture of mob boss Rienzi coming down the steps after beating the rap. The photographer refuses, fearing he'll get beat up.
"You're fired," Bogart decides, just like that.
He orders up another photographer, and then hardboiled Bogie orders yet another photog -- to get a shot of the mobster beating up the paper's backup photographer.
Inspiring scene? A young wannabe cub writer shows up at the saloon where Bogie and Jim Backus and Ed Begley Sr. are lifting glasses to the publisher -- a very Katherine Graham-like Ethel Barrymore -- who has been outvoted by her feckless children in her attempt to keep the paper going.
Bogie quizzes the aspiring journalist. Does he know foreign affairs and history? Does he speak a foreign language? What's his knowledge of economics and politics and political science? All the novice has is earnest desire but with the clock running, the editor gives him a shot, assuring him "This is the greatest profession."
Do enough of us remember that now? Do we believe it? We better.
There's a big payoff scene -- reminiscent of "The Godfather" -- where a hit man disguised as a police officer fires away in the press room. How about this? The contract shooter actually falls into the press web. The press was mightier than the sword. Brooks knew how to set up a spectacular finish.
The mob boss, who's been trying to charm, threaten, bribe, cajole and sweet-talk editor Bogie into backing off (no sale) finally shouts over the telephone a question above a high-pitched whine that if you've heard it you know what it is.
"What's that noise?" the mobster shouts through the phone.
Over the spin-up of the web, editor Bogie answers, "It's the sound of the presses, Rienzi. And there's nothing you can do about it."
Think this is corny? That it's hopelessly romantic? Find the flick and even without the beer and cigarettes, you'll thrill to the idea that "Deadline U.S.A." captured why a lot of us wanted to get into this business in the first place.