Sat 28 Jul 2012
Movie Review: NEWS IS MADE AT NIGHT (1939).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[5] Comments
NEWS IS MADE AT NIGHT. 20th Century Fox, 1939. Preston Foster, Lynn Bari, Russell Gleason, George Barbier, Eddie Collins, Minor Watson, Paul Harvey, Richard Lane, Charles Lane, Betty Compson, Paul Fix. Screenplay: John Larkin. Director: Alfred L. Werker.
Of all the thousands (millons?) of sites on the Internet, I believe the one I visit the most is IMDB, even more than Wikipedia, but excluding (of course) my own blog, the one you’re reading right now.
Back in the olden days, you’d watch a movie on the late show, try to catch the list of credits as they flashed by, and if you were lucky, you might recognize some the cast from other pictures you’d seen them in. You’d know the top two or three stars, of course, but not the ones listed any farther down than that.
For example, you might have known who Preston Foster and Lynn Bari were, but the rest of the names in the credits above? Mission: Highly Unlikely. I’ll let you have the honors on seeing what you can learn about them, but they were all professionals in the movie business, with lots of credits, and they – all of them – are part of what make this relatively low-budget movie so enjoyable.
Preston Foster and Lynn Bari are included in that last comment, of course, but what IMDB cannot do is help you find out what other movies they may have made together, unless there’s some way to do that that I don’t know about. What I do know is that they teamed up once before, in a movie called Chasing Danger, and that’s because I reviewed it here on this blog earlier this month.
I enjoyed watching that one, but all in all, I think I enjoyed this one more. In fact, I know I did, because News Is Made at Night falls into the category of a detective mystery tackled by a pair of newspaper people, one of my favorite kind of stories — lacking a PI anywhere in sight, that is.
Foster plays the hard-nosed editor who isn’t above the cheapest of tricks to get a story (publishing phony affidavits on the front page to stir up trouble; using an extension line to impersonate the acting governor to grant a reprieve to a convicted killer at the last minute; that sort of thing) while Lynn Bari plays the brash lady reporter whom Foster won’t hire because he doesn’t hire women.
Lynn Bari, of course, won’t be put off for any reason anything like that, nor is she above a little minor blackmail when she gets wind of one of Foster’s schemes.
Any movie that begins with a small plane strafing a prison yard has something going for it already, but the snazzy snap crackle and pop of the “animosity†between Foster and Miss Bari keeps the movie moving right along, even though the plot itself is rather ordinary and somewhat confusing, at that.
(Something to do with a gang of gangsters trying to run a town, or are they merely dirty politicians? Either way, they are all busy trying to gun each other down for most of the film’s 70 minute length.)
But believe it or not, there is a pretty good detective story that emerges from all this gang-oriented violence – not one worthy of a Christie or Carr, mind you — but if you’re a fan of detective fiction more than out and out crime fiction, you’ll find the ending satisfactory in that regard too — as well as the romance we all know is what this movie is really all about.
PostScript: I am amazed at how many posters and movie stills I found of this slightly obscure film — more, in fact, than I could use. On the other hand, there are no reviews or external links on IMDB to this movie. This one will be the first.
July 29th, 2012 at 5:27 pm
IMDB does have an advanced search feature that allows you to find instances when two people worked together. It is at http://www.imdb.com/search/common.
Foster and Bari were also in Secret Agent of Japan in 1942.
July 29th, 2012 at 5:41 pm
This is one of the big pluses there are about doing a blog like this. I can ask a question and someone will come up with an answer, almost always. Thanks, Joel!
The link to this search page is hidden way down at the bottom of the IMDB home page in the fine print.
You can also type in two movies and get a list of all the cast and crew members who worked on both. For CHASING DANGER and NEWS IS MADE AT NIGHT, they were:
1. Preston Foster
2. Lynn Bari
3. Arthur Rankin, Actor
4. Eugene Borden, Actor
5. Richard Day, Art Director
6. Thomas Little, Set Decorator
7. Samuel Kaylin, Music Department
8. Sol M. Wurtzel, Producer
9. Helen A. Myron, Costume Designer
10. William H. Anderson, Sound Department
As for SECRET AGENT OF JAPAN, I have that on DVD, and I just may review that one next.
February 7th, 2015 at 11:46 pm
bought a 14′ by 10″ movie lobby card today for this movie. THANKS FOR THE BLOG!
February 8th, 2015 at 12:23 am
I’m wondering if you mistyped that, Steve, as 14 feet is rather long. Even if only 14″ by 10″, it’s a great acquisition. Congratulations!
And thanks for getting me back to the comments for this review. I’d forgotten all about that IMDb link, and I’m glad to be reminded of it again.
September 25th, 2017 at 9:47 pm
How fun! My grandfather was John Larkin (the writer). I went down an Ancestry.com rabbit hole and ended up here. I had not heard of this one of his.