For many years, newspaper movies were a Hollywood staple. I made my own career choice largely due to three great newspaper movies: Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent (1940) with Joel McCrea; Come Fill the Cup (1951) with James Cagney; and Deadline U.S.A. (1952) with Humphrey Bogart. Indeed, the deal was sealed for me upon hearing a tipsy Bogart as managing editor of The Day make this incisive comment to a young journalism school graduate seeking a job: “Newspaperman is the best profession in the world.”
Most newspaper films are not of recent vintage. Yet, many are pure gold. They range from comedy in His Girl Friday (1940); to treachery in Absence of Malice (1981); to catching a killer in Call Northside 777 (1948); to the pathos of Lonelyhearts (1958) and Salvador (1986).
Also included are four of the best movies of all time: Citizen Kane (1941); Sweet Smell of Success (1957); The Killing Fields (1984); and the tingling Defense of the Realm (1985) with Gabriel Byrne, Greta Scacchi and Ian Bannen (the latter, incidentally, my very favorite newspaper film—done-up as only the British can).
Other fine foreign vehicles are Canada’s crackerjack The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1964), England’s So Well Remembered (1947) and Front Page Story (1954).
But to many critics, the best newspaper movie of all was 1976’s All the President’s Men, detailing how two hungry, young Washington Post reporters uncovered the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard M. Nixon. In this stunning Academy Award-winning film, the nefarious deeds of Nixon’s “White House plumbers” were exposed by Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) under the guidance of their irascible editor, Benjamin Bradlee (Jason Robards, Jr.). It also made the phrase “follow the money” synonymous with illegal activity and transformed the title of a porno flick, Deep Throat, into a term for a deep, dark news source. Such is the lasting effect of carefully crafted cinema.
Of perhaps equal importance, the work of “Woodstein” (Bradlee’s nickname for the newshounds whose efforts won a Pulitzer Prize) was responsible for a renewed interest in journalism as a worthwhile career choice. Their hard-nosed digging to unearth the facts on Watergate and the disastrous cover-up sparked a surge in investigative reporting.
The movie skillfully explores the machinations of the big-time print media. In addition to recreating the atmosphere, it accurately portrayed the frustrations of interviewing, reporting and writing that are part-in-parcel of everyday journalism.
Frank Wills, the black security guard who noticed masking tape over a lock on a door to offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., played himself in a cameo. Others in the sterling cast included best supporting actress nominee Jane Alexander, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Ned Beatty, Robert Walden, Stephen Collins, Meredith Baxter and Hal Holbrook (the latter’s “Deep Throat” both creepy and memorable).
Great newspaper films such as All the President’s Men tell stories many people know something about and usually present them in a plausible manner. Equally important, many offer some of cinema’s biggest stars frequently appearing as realistic journalists.
