Scandal Sheet (1931) Feathers Love Nests
Tab editor George Bancroft's credo is, if it's news, we print it, and never mind human casualties. Of course, he'll be hoisted upon his petard in a third act, that the fun for waiting an hour and fifteen minutes for the telegraphed payoff. What's wrong with formula when good enough people play it? Besides Bancroft, there is Kay Francis (what's she doing with him?, we, and she, asks), Clive Brook (him the interloper to Bancroft home/hearth/wife). There is noise of final editions shouted by newsboys, presses stopped so new dirt can be shoveled onto front pages --- when did extras fade from real-life sheets? Newspaper yarns couldn't help at least seeming authentic thanks to much of H'wood writing pool migrating from the trade. Scandal gather is shown on merciless terms, the mother of a suicide auctioning photos and poetry of her just-dead son to scribes scrambling for a spiciest headline. Heartlessness is coin of the realm for press jackals, and we're meant to be but barely shocked by their business as usual. This was cynicism of a deepest kind, talkies a fresh messenger to a public torn loosefrom age of innocence that was the silent era.
Scandal Sheet was first-foremost a vehicle for George Bancroft, a big galoot, said then-boy Budd Schulberg (in a later, and fine, memoir), and oblivious to what laughing stock he was among wiser heads on the
