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The Front Page is a 1974 American black comedy-drama film directed by Billy Wilder and starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.^[3] The screenplay by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond^[3] is based on Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's 1928 play of the same name, which inspired several other films and televised movies and series episodes.^[4][5]

Plot[edit]

Chicago Examiner reporter Hildebrand 'Hildy' Johnson (Jack Lemmon) has just quit his job in order to marry Peggy Grant (Susan Sarandon) and start a new career, when convict Earl Williams (Austin Pendleton) escapes from death row just prior to his execution. Earl is an impoverished, bumbling leftist whose only offense is stuffing fortune cookies with messages demanding the release of Sacco and Vanzetti, but the yellow press of Chicago has painted him as a dangerous threat from Moscow. As a result, the citizenry are anxious to see him put to death.

Earl has not left the jail, and enters the prison pressroom while Hildy is alone there. Image line fl studio 20 fruity edition review. Hildy cannot resist the lure of what could be the biggest scoop of his soon-to-be-over career. Ruthless, egomaniacalmanaging editor Walter Burns (Walter Matthau), desperate to keep Hildy on the job, encourages him to cover the story, frustrating Peggy, who is eager to catch their train. When Earl is in danger of being discovered, Mollie Malloy (Carol Burnett), a self-described '$2 whore from Division Street' who befriended Earl, creates a distraction by leaping from the third-floor window.

When Earl is caught, Hildy and Walter are arrested for aiding and abetting a fugitive, but are released when they discover that the mayor and sheriff colluded to conceal Earl's last-minute reprieve by the governor. Walter grudgingly accepts that he is losing his ace reporter and presents him with a watch as a token of his appreciation. Hildy and Peggy set off to get married, and Walter telegraphs the next railway station to alert them that the man who stole his watch is on the inbound train and should be apprehended by the police.

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The Front Page (1931) 'A Picture That Has Cracked This Shock-Proof Town Wide Open!' NR 1 hr 41 min Mar 19th, 1931 Drama. Movies Like The Front Page.

Cast[edit]

• Jack Lemmon as Hildebrand 'Hildy' Johnson
• Walter Matthau as Walter Burns
• Susan Sarandon as Peggy Grant
• Vincent Gardenia as Sheriff 'Honest Pete' Hartman
• David Wayne as Roy Bensinger
• Allen Garfield as Kruger
• Charles Durning as Murphy
• Herb Edelman as Schwartz
• Austin Pendleton as Earl Williams
• Carol Burnett as Mollie Malloy
• Martin Gabel as Dr. Max J. Eggelhofer
• Harold Gould as The Mayor
• John Furlong as Duffy
• Jon Korkes as Rudy Keppler
• Cliff Osmond as Officer Jacobi
• Lou Frizzell as Endicott
• Paul Benedict as Plunkett
• Dick O'Neill as McHugh
• Biff Elliot as Police Dispatcher
• Barbara Davis as Myrtle

Allen Jenkins, who had appeared in the 1928 original production, plays a small role as a stenographer. It was his last film role, he died in July 1974.^[6]

Production[edit]

The original play had been adapted for the screen in 1931 and as His Girl Friday in 1940. Billy Wilder was quoted by his biographer Charlotte Chandler as saying, 'I'm against remakes in general . because if a picture is good, you shouldn't remake it, and if it's lousy, why remake it? . It was not one of my pictures I was particularly proud of.'^[1]

After years of producing his films, he passed producing chores to Paul Monash and concentrate on screenwriting and directing when Jennings Lang suggested he film a new adaptation of The Front Page for Universal Pictures. Android file transfer doesn t work. The idea appealed to Wilder, a newspaperman in his younger days, who recalled, 'A reporter was a glamorous fellow in those days, the way he wore a hat, and a raincoat, and a swagger, and had his camaraderie with fellow reporters, with local police, always hot on the tail of tips from them and from the fringes of the underworld.' Whereas the two earlier screen adaptations of the play were set in their contemporary times, Wilder decided his would be a period piece set in 1929, primarily because the daily newspaper was no longer the dominant news medium in 1974.^[1] Ring of odin.

Wilder hired Henry Bumstead as production designer. For exterior shots, Bumstead suggested Wilder film in San Francisco, where the buildings were a better match for 1920s Chicago than was Los Angeles. The final scene on the train was filmed in San Francisco, where a railroad enthusiast provided a vintage railway car for the setting.^[1] The interior shot of the theater in an earlier scene was done at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. The opening credits scenes were filmed at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner.

Wilder and Diamond insisted their dialogue be delivered exactly as written and clearly enough to be understood easily. Jack Lemmon, who portrayed Hildy Johnson, later said, 'I had one regret about the film. Billy would not let us overlap our lines more. I think that would have made it better . I feel it's a piece in which you must overlap. But Billy, the writer, wanted to hear all of the words clearly, and he wanted the audience to hear the words. I would have liked to overlap to the point where you lost some of the dialogue.'^[1]

Two characters not in the play were added to the film. Dr. Eggelhofer, a character only mentioned in the play, appears in the film as an eccentric, sex-obsessed Freudian psychiatrist whose theories are utterly incomprehensible to Williams.^[7] The other character added is Rudy Keppler, an young reporter who is seduced in the bathroom by the older reporter Roy Bensinger.^[7] In the play, the character of Bensigner was portrayed as effeminate and rather high-strung, suggesting he is gay, but in the film, he is portrayed as a stereotypical campy homosexual whose effeminacy and mincing manners leave no doubt about his sexuality even if he is not explicitly described as gay.^[7] Diamond and Wilder also worked in several 'in jokes' to the film, such as describing Burns as still being upset with the loss of his star reporter Ben Hecht (who did work as a newsman in 1920s Chicago) to a Hollywood studio.^[8]

Because of Wilder's tendency to 'cut in the camera', a form of spontaneous editing that results in a minimal footage being shot, editor Ralph E. Winters was able to assemble a rough cut of the film four days after principal photography was completed.^[1]

While the film was Wilder's first to show a financial return since Irma la Douce (1963) (and his last box office hit of any convenience), the director regretted not sticking to his instincts over remakes.^[1]

Reception[edit]

Box office[edit]

Video maker for laptop. The film earned North American theatrical rentals of $7,460,000.^[9]

Critical reception[edit]

Vincent Canby of The New York Times thought the story was 'a natural' for Wilder and Diamond, who 'have a special (and, to my mind, very appealing) appreciation for vulgar, brilliant con artists of monumental tackiness.' He continued, 'Even though the mechanics and demands of movie-making slow what should be the furious tempo, this Front Page displays a giddy bitterness that is rare in any films except those of Mr. Wilder. It is also, much of the time, extremely funny.' He described Walter Matthau and Austin Pendleton as 'marvelous' and added, 'Mr. Lemmon is comparatively reserved as the flamboyant Hildy, never quite letting go of his familiar comic personality to become dominated by the lunacies of the farce. He always remains a little outside it, acting. Carol Burnett has an even tougher time as Molly Malloy . . . This role may well be impossible, however, since it requires the actress to play for straight melodrama while everyone around her is going for laughs . . . Mr. Wilder has great fun with the period newspaper detail . . . and admires his various supporting actors to such an extent that he allows them to play as broadly as they could possibly desire.' He concluded, 'The hysteria is not as consistent as one might wish, nor, indeed, as epic as in Mr. Wilder's own One, Two, Three. The cohesive force is, instead, the director's fondness for frauds, which, I suspect, is really an admiration for people who barrel on through life completely intimidating those who should know better.'^[10]

The British television network Channel 4 called it the 'least satisfying screen adaptation of Hecht and MacArthur's play,' saying it 'adds little to the mix other than a bit of choice language. The direction is depressingly flat and stagy, Wilder running on empty. While it is easy to see why he was attracted to this material . . . he just does not seem to have the energy here to do it justice. Matthau and Lemmon put in their usual faultless turns, but cannot lift a pervading air of pointlessness.'^[11]

TV Guide rated the film 2½ out of four stars and noted, 'This slick remake of the ebullient original falls short of being the film it could have been, despite the presence of master filmmaker Wilder and his engaging costars . . . Despite the obvious charismatic interaction between Lemmon and Matthau, the film is oddly stilted. In an overly emphatic turn, the miscast Burnett easily gives the most awful performance of her career. She projects only one emotion - a gratingly annoying hysteria. One never enjoys the film so much as when her character throws herself out of a window.'^[12]

Burnett said in This Time Together that she was so displeased with her performance that when she was on an airplane where the film was shown, she apologized on the plane's intercom.^[13]

Awards[edit]

The film was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy but lost to The Longest Yard, and Lemmon and Matthau, competing with each other for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, lost to Art Carney in Harry and Tonto.

How to cheat slot machines. Wilder and Diamond were nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Comedy Adapted from Another Medium but lost to Lionel Chetwynd and Mordecai Richler for The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.^[14]

Wilder won the David di Donatello Award for Best Director of a Foreign Film, and Lemmon and Matthau shared Best Foreign Actor honors with Burt Lancaster for Conversation Piece.

Home media[edit]

GoodTimes Entertainment released the Region 1 DVD on June 17, 1998. The film is in fullscreen format with an audio track in English and subtitles in English, Spanish, and French. On May 31, 2005 it was re-released in a widescreen edition DVD by Universal Home Video. Kino Lorber released the film on Blu-ray on August 6, 2019.

See also[edit]

Trivia[edit]

Movie The Front Page

The song performed by Peggy Grant is 'Button up your overcoat', published in 1928, and was originally first introduced by vocalist Ruth Etting.

References[edit]

1. ^ ^abcdefghChandler & Wilder 2004, pp. 278–285.
2. ^ ^abThe Front Page, Box Office Information. The Numbers. Retrieved July 7, 2012.
3. ^ ^ab'The Front Page'. Turner Classic Movies. Atlanta: Turner Broadcasting System (Time Warner). Retrieved October 27, 2016.
4. ^New York Magazine Staff 1993, p. 177. sfn error: no target: CITEREFNew_York_Magazine_Staff1993 (help)
5. ^'Results list for show title 'The Front Page''. IMDb.com. Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Retrieved 1 April 2018. Note: several items on the IMDb listing appear to feature plots with no relevance to the topic of this article; for those items, only the titles are the same.
6. ^https://travsd.wordpress.com/2019/04/09/allen-jenkins-fifty-years-a-mug/
7. ^ ^abcPhillips 2010, pp. 308.
8. ^Phillips 2010, pp. 307.
9. ^'All-time Film Rental Champs', Variety, 7 January 1976 p 44
10. ^Canby, Vincent (December 19, 1974). 'Movie Review The Front Page (1974) Wilder's Uneven Film of 'Front Page':The Cast'. The New York Times.
11. ^Channel 4 review
12. ^TV Guide review
13. ^Thomlison, Adam. 'TV Q & A'. TV Media. Retrieved 2013-06-24.
14. ^'Writers Guild of America archives'. Archived from the original on 2006-10-01.

Sources[edit]

• Chandler, Charlotte; Wilder, Billy (2004). Nobody's Perfect: Billy Wilder, A Personal Biography. New York City: Applause Theatre and Cinema Books. pp. 278–285. ISBN978-1557836328.
• 'Television Highlights'. New York. New York City: New York Media, LLC. August 30, 1993. p. 177.
• Phillips, Gene (2010). Some Like It Wilder: The Life and Controversial Films of Billy Wilder. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. ISBN978-0813173672.

External links[edit]

• The Front Page on IMDb
• The Front Page at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Front Page at AllMovie

The Front is a 1976 comedy-drama film set against the Hollywood blacklist in the 1950s. It was written by Walter Bernstein, directed by Martin Ritt, and stars Woody Allen and Zero Mostel.

Several people involved in the making of the film—including screenwriter Bernstein, director Ritt, and actors Mostel, Herschel Bernardi, and Lloyd Gough—had been blacklisted. (The name of each in the closing credits is followed by 'Blacklisted 19--' and the relevant year.) Bernstein was listed after being named in the Red Channels journal that identified alleged Communists and Communist sympathizers.^[1]

Because of the blacklist, a number of artists, writers, directors and others were rendered unemployable, having been accused of subversive political activities in support of Communism or of being Communists themselves.

Plot[edit]

In New York City, 1953, at the height of the anti-Communist investigations of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), television screenwriter Alfred Miller is blacklisted and cannot get work. He asks his friend Howard Prince, a restaurant cashier and small-time bookie, to sign his name to Miller's television scripts in exchange for ten percent of the money Miller makes from them, i.e. to serve as a 'front' for Miller. Howard agrees out of friendship and because he needs the money. The scripts are submitted to network producer Phil Sussman, who is pleased to have a writer not on the television blacklist. Howard's script also offers a plum role for Hecky Brown, one of Sussman's top actors.

Howard becomes such a success that Miller's two fellow screenwriter friends hire him to be their front too. Para jugar gratis. The quality of the scripts and Howard's ability to write so many impresses Florence Barrett, Susser's idealistic script editor, who mistakes him for a principled artist. Howard begins dating her but changes the subject whenever she wants to discuss his work.

As investigators expose and blacklist Communists in the entertainment industry, Hecky Brown is fired from the show because six years earlier he marched in a May Day parade and subscribed to The Daily Worker, although he tells the investigators he did it merely to impress a woman he wanted to lay. In order to clear his name from the blacklist, Hecky is instructed to find out more about Howard Prince's involvement with the Communist Party, so he invites him to the Catskills, where Hecky is booked to perform on stage. The club owner short-changes Hecky on his promised salary, and when Hecky confronts him, the club owner fires him, denouncing him as a 'communist son of a bitch'. The professional humiliation and the inability to provide for his wife and children take their toll on Hecky and he kills himself by jumping out of a hotel window.

Howard witnesses other harsh results of the investigative actions of the communist-hunting 'Freedom Information Services' on the network's programming. Suspicion is cast his way, and he is called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He privately tells Florence that he is not a writer, just a humble cashier.

Howard decides that he will respond to the Committee's questions evasively, enabling him to neither admit nor deny anything. After briefly enduring the HUAC questioning – including being asked to speak ill of the dead Hecky Brown, and being threatened with legal consequences for his admission of having placed bets in his capacity as a bookie (which is illegal), Howard takes a stand, telling the Committee that he does not recognize their authority to ask him such questions, and telling them to 'go fuck yourselves' before leaving the interrogation room. The film ends as Howard is taken away in handcuffs, with Florence kissing him good-bye and many protesters cheering him on.

Cast[edit]

• Woody Allen as Howard Prince
• Zero Mostel as Hecky Brown
• Herschel Bernardi as Phil Sussman
• Michael Murphy as Alfred Miller
• Andrea Marcovicci as Florence Barrett
• Remak Ramsay as Francis X. Hennessey
• Marvin Lichterman as Myer Prince
• Lloyd Gough as Herbert Delaney
• David Margulies as William Phelps

Reception[edit]

Critical response[edit]

Critical reception of The Front was divided between those who thought it effectively and amusingly dealt with the topic of McCarthyism and those who thought it a superficial gloss instead of a pithy statement about the McCarthy era. In 1976, reviewing it for The New York Times, Vincent Canby acknowledged the film's lack of direct political commentary: 'The Front is not the whole story of an especially unpleasant piece of American history. It may be faulted for oversimplification. Mr. Ritt and Mr. Bernstein, veterans of the blacklist are not interested in subtleties. Yet, even in its comic moments, The Front works on the conscience. 'It recreates the awful noise of ignorance that can still be heard.' (Canby, 1976)^[2]Pauline Kael wrote in praise of the film and the performance of Woody Allen in particular: 'At its most appealing, this movie says that people shouldn't be pressured to inform on their friends, that people shouldn't be humiliated in order to earn a living. Humbly, this film asks for fairness.When you see Woody Allen in one of his own films, in a peculiar way you take him for granted; here you appreciate his skill, because you miss him so much when he's offscreen.'^[3]

Roger Ebert dismissed the political value of The Front: 'What we get are the adventures of a schlemiel in wonderland'. He felt that the Woody Allen character was too comic and unconvincing a writer to represent the true nature of 'front' writers. He added that Hecky Brown was a worthwhile character: 'The tragedy implied by this character tells us what we need to know about the blacklist's effect on people's lives; the rest of the movie adds almost nothing else'.^[4]

As of May 2020, The Front holds a rating of 71% on Rotten Tomatoes from 24 reviews.^[5]

Accolades[edit]

For The Front, Walter Bernstein was nominated for the 1977 Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay^[6] and Zero Mostel was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor.^[7] Andrea Marcovicci was nominated for the 1977 'Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress'.

Historical basis[edit]

The movie draws from real life incidents in its depiction of the characters. A scene in which Hecky (played by Mostel) goes to entertain at a mountain resort, and then is cheated out of part of his fee, is based on an incident described by Bernstein in his memoirs Inside Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist. In the book, Bernstein describes how Mostel came to entertain at the Concord Hotel in the Catskills, where he used to entertain as a rising comic because he desperately needed the money. The manager of the Concord promised him $500, but when he arrived, reduced that to $250, according to Bernstein. In the movie, Hecky has a violent scene when, after the performance, he learns he has been cheated. In real life, Mostel was told before the performance and acted out his hostility during the performance by cursing at the customers, who thought it was part of the act.^[1]

Hecky Brown, and his suicide, was based on blacklisted actor Philip Loeb, a personal friend of Mostel who was investigated by HUAC and fired from his leading role in the television series The Goldbergs in 1951.^[8] He committed suicide in 1955.^[9] Mostel personally was motivated to participate in the project because he wanted to educate future generation of Americans. As he pointed out in his biography by Jared Brown, 'It's part of this country, and a lot of kids don't even realize that blacklisting ever existed.'^[8]

An informal collective of the blacklisted writers Bernstein, Arnold Manoff and Abraham Polonsky is portrayed in an early scene in which the Murphy character, modeled on Bernstein, introduces the Allen character to two other blacklisted writers.^[10] https://bestiload172.weebly.com/blog/rules-of-spanish-21.

Musical adaptation[edit]

In 2008, a musical adaptation of The Front had a workshop in New York City. The musical, also titled The Front (or, alternatively, Lucky Break^[11]) had music and lyrics by Paul Gordon and Jay Gruska, with a book and additional lyrics by Seth Friedman, and its workshop was co-directed by John Caird and Nell Balaban, starring Brian d'Arcy James as Howard Prince, Richard Kind as Hecky Brown, and Jayne Paterson as Florence Barrett.^[12]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^ ^abBernstein, Walter (1996). Inside Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN978-0-394-58341-9.
2. ^Canby, Vincent (October 1, 1976). 'Screen: Woody Allen Is Serious in 'Front'. The New York Times.
3. ^Kael, Pauline (April 1980). When the Lights Go Down. Henry Holt & Co. Reprinted from The New Yorker.
4. ^Ebert, Roger (October 22, 1976). 'The Front'. rogerebert.com.
5. ^http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/front
6. ^Hollywood's Darkest Moment: An evening with blacklisted screenwriter Walter Bernstein and a special 40th anniversary screening of 'The Front'. Oscars.org website
7. ^Sachleben, Mark (2004). Seeing the Bigger Picture: Understanding Politics Through Film & Television. Peter Lang. p. 324. ISBN978-0-820-46248-6.
8. ^ ^abQuin, Eleanor 'The Front'. Turner Classic Movies.
9. ^'Autopsy Ordered by Police in Death of Philip Loeb'. Broadcasting Telecasting. September 5, 1955: 9. Retrieved September 2, 2015.Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
10. ^Buhle, Paul (2003). Hide in plain sight : the Hollywood blacklistees in film and television, 1950-2002. Wagner, Dave. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 2. ISBN1-4039-6144-1. OCLC51586908.
11. ^jaygruska.comhttps://jaygruska.com/projects/theatre/lucky-break/. Retrieved 2020-04-08.Missing or empty |title= (help)
12. ^Jones, Kenneth (March 3, 2008). 'Inspired by the Film, New Musical The Front Gets Caird-Directed Reading March 3'. Playbill. Retrieved 2020-04-08.

External links[edit]

Movie The Front Page Cast

• The Front on IMDb
• Nilan, Jack. 'McCarthyism and the Movies'. jacknilan.com