Back Page (1933)

Very Cool!!!

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

A young female reporter is fired from a big city newspaper, then decides to take over a troubled small town newspaper. She encounters difficulties with small town politics, getting advertisers to help keep the paper afloat, and issues with 1930s feminism in the resistance she receives from the town's residents to her attempts to run the newspaper.This film is amazing and not very well known. Why not? Peggy Shannon is like a Rosalind Roussell on a budget. And Sterling Holloway is here, in all his glory... is this an openly gay character? If not, it is about the closest we probably see in this era.A great story through and through, and well worth a peak if you can find a copy. It is available as a bonus feature of "Deluge", though frankly it is much better than the main film!

Peggy Shannon did a nice job as a reporter, Jerry Hampton, who was fired from a big city newspaper and becomes the editor of a small town paper. Shannon has a certain charm and sparkle that enhance the movie; her reporter character is not rough edged or somewhat brassy like a Torchy Blane but neither is she silly or vapid. She also has a certain comedic touch - I thought the extended scene between Sterling Halloway and her was funny and well done by both of them. The movie starts and finishes with showing the impact of power and influence on what stories newspapers will print. I can't decide if the ploy Jerry uses at the end of the movie to ensure a happy ending for the good guys was a case of quite rightly and nicely hoisting the nasty guys on their own petards or unethical. Worth a watch.

Peggy Shannon's career may have been almost at an end by 1934 but her films with independents ("False Faces", "Deluge", "The Devil's Mate") gave her some of her more substantial roles. "The Back Page" is no exception being about a female editor who exposes the corruption that is rife in a small town. Films had come quite a way in the couple of years since "Exposure" which showed Lila Lee, owner of a struggling newspaper, as being almost a damsel in distress who caves in when macho journalist Walter Byron comes along.Gorgeous Peggy Shannon plays ace reporter Jerry Hanson who is devastated when her first big scoop is ordered to be killed because one of the recipients is very influential in the city. In disgust she heads to the hometown of her reporter boyfriend (always reliable Russell Hopton) to take up the editor's job of the rag, tag and bobtail local "The Apex Advocate". Once she overcomes the old owner, Sam Webster's (Claude Gillingwater) objections that because she is a girl, she will be no good, Jerry finds a huge story that is being smothered, once again because of the undue influence of the town's leading citizen, Martin Blake (who else but Edwin Maxwell). He has put about a story that the town is sitting on oil and encouraged most of the town's people to put their life savings into the stock. Webster doesn't believe it but he is over a barrel; he owes Blake money so the paper can't afford to be impartial. Blake is not happy with the spruced up Advocate, all thanks to snappy Jerry who believes there is oil in the town but now Blake is putting about that he will do the right thing by the town by buying up their "worthless" stock so he doesn't see them out of pocket!!This is just a grand little story and proves once again that poverty row didn't necessarily mean poverty in production or talent and could sometimes be more cutting edge in dealing with the woman's angle than some of the more prestigious studios. Aside from those stars mentioned there is the always quirky, always welcome Sterling Holloway with his "I'm Bill Giddings - that's Giddings with a zzzzz"!!!

A very good second feature about a young woman, fired from her big-city newspaper job, who takes over a small town paper and makes a go of it. If you are used to seeing precode movies from big studios with large budgets, you may have issues with the barebone values of this production, but it is worth a look, if only to see if you will enjoy this sort of socially responsible movie.The strong script includes some real insight into the problems of getting advertisers, small town politics and 1930s feminism. Unhappily, Peggy Shannon, in the lead role, is not up to the part and Sterling Holloway has an obnoxious comedy part, but the rest of the cast is excellent and the issues raised will not be totally alien to the modern viewer.