Behind the News (1940) User Reviews

If there was ever a profession that needs integrity, it's journalism.

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 3 September 2023]

Character actor Frank Albertson is a decade too old to be believable as a recent college graduate brought onto a big city newspaper on a scholarship, coming into conflict with vet reporter Lloyd Nolan. Albertson tries desperately to get the hard drinking Nolan out of several scrapes, and the result is to his own detriment as the paper deals with the top story of the murder of two racketeers who had escaped from prison.

The film is decent for the most part but even at just 75 minutes seems too long, utilizing a radio broadcast of all things to have members of the newspaper staff acting out a comic strip for a small audience. It's just a silly unnecessary attempt to show the grown men goofing off and is out of place. The attitude of Nolan towards Albertson is stemmed from his integrity, but as it begins to aide him, Nolan changes his attitude.

A subplot involving a Mexican man framed for the murder and not even knowing that his innocent plea has been entered as a guilty one should have been expanded. Doris Davenport as Albertson's love interest, Robert Armstrong as the editor, Dick Elliot as a jovial journalist and Paul Harvey as the D. A. deserve singling out. As one of over a hundred films about the newspaper business made in the 1930's and early 40's alone, it's nothing special although it has its moments, even though it seems stifled in the mainly indoor setting.

Did You Ever Hear of Joseph Santley?

[boblipton · 7/10 · 1 December 2018]

Lloyd Nolan is a great reporter, but when he sends in an expense sheet that includes more than $200 of poker losses, Managing Editor Robert Armstrong gets mad. He saddles Nolan with a cub reporter, Frank Albertson, who is just out of journalism school, full of ideals. Nolan hates it.

It's a sturdy excursion into the land of THE FRONT PAGE, with tricks picked up from Hawks' HIS GIRL FRIDAY: corruption, cynicism and some great snappy patter. It's such a good movie that the Academy could not deny it at least an Academy Award nomination; it being Republic, however, they limited it to "Best Sound Recording;" can't let a major award go to a horse opera factory.

Everything works in this movie, even the veering into the serious subplot. Everyone deserves some praise, but on a project like this, the director deserves a lot, and that's Joseph Santley. He had entered show business as a child actor and made it to Broadway at the age of seven. He slid into the movies in the 1920s, and his first feature is his best-known one: THE COCOANUTS, starring the Marx Brothers. By the early 1930s, he was working for the larger minors, directing a varied mix of westerns, thrillers, comedies and even Judy Canova movies. He left the movies after 1950 and directed and produced for television, including episodes of THE COLGATE COMEDY HOUR with Martin and Lewis. He retired in 1962, lived with his wife of 54 years and died in 1971, aged 82.

That's a great career, what used to be called a trouper. Nowadays, of course, people think of directors as 'auteurs' and don't have respect for the craftsman who took what they were given and made the best movie they could with it. Sometimes, like this movie, Santley got what he needed to make a great picture and did so.