home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century
/
TIME, Almanac of the 20th Century.ISO
/
1920
/
20page
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1994-02-27
|
3KB
|
63 lines
<text>
<title>
(1920s) The Front Page
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1920s Highlights
Theater
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
The Front Page
</hdr>
<body>
<p>(AUGUST 27, 1928)
</p>
<p> The Front Page. It has become customary to write plays which
instruct, while they gibe or cheer, in the rudiments of
exciting professions. The liquor racket, the theatrical
profession, the industry of the gangster, the sly legerdemain
of politicians, each has been subjected to severe and detailed
definition. More unscrupulous and exciting even than such are
the obscure, melodramatic to an extreme and too complicated for
complete exposition, concerns Hildy Johnson of the Herald and
examiner, engaged in reporting the execution of a feeble-minded
murderer. The locale of the play is Chicago, its scene the press
room in the Criminal Courts Building wherein Hildy Johnson and
his jargoning confreres occupy themselves with strong language
and unscrupulous efforts to intimidate the sheriff and the fat
flatulent mayor. When it is learned that the convict has broken
jail, all the newshawks scatter in the effort to discover him.
Hildy Johnson, whose plans are for an immediate marriage and
retirement from the newspaper business, watches them scamper off
and then makes ready to catch the New York train. As he opens the
press room door, the murderer who has climbed down from the
roof, enters the room by the window. Only a very bad reporter
could leave his job at such a moment. Hildy Johnson hides his
quarry in a roll-top desk and prepares to scoop the story.
</p>
<p> His impatient fiancee can see no cause in all this for
delaying their departure, nor can her maundering old mother. The
two of them wobble into the press room whence they are rudely
ejected by Walter Burns, the city editor of the Herald and
Examiner. Eventually the murderer is discovered in his lair, and
Hildy Johnson, deprived of his scoop, prepares to desert the
racket that enthralls him. His city editor hands him his watch
for a testimonial wedding present; then, loath to lose so able
an assistant, he arranges to have policemen board the reporter's
train and bring him back to town.
</p>
<p> The Front Page is full of expletives and nursery words such
as all reporters use outside their writings. These, if
understood, will cause horror to the imbecile portion of the
theatre-going public and will probably later be deleted from the
dialog. But The Front Page is not one of those delicately
perfect scrolls in which a changed syllable would mean
destruction. Noisy, rapid, robust, exciting, and too true to be
bad, it can stand a few unnecessary changes without wilting.</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>