Deadline – USA **** (1952, Humphrey Bogart, Ethel Barrymore, Kim Hunter, Martin Gabel, Ed Begley, Warren Stevens, Paul Stewart) – Classic Movie Review 7610

Writer-director Richard Brooks’s tremendous 1952 film noir crime drama Deadline – USA [aka Deadline] stars Humphrey Bogart as tough, crusading editor Ed Hutcheson, who sends his reporters to expose crime and corruption.

However, the owner Margaret Garrison (Ethel Barrymore) tells him that the newspaper has to shut as it is about to be sold. But, against orders, Bogart prints one last story, naming racketeer Tomas Rienzi (Martin Gabel), trying to link him to a woman’s murder. He has three issues left to do so before the end of the New York paper The Day.

Brooks’s newspaper story is hard-hitting, literate and intelligent and rings the changes on all of the genre’s usual clichés, giving Bogart and Barrymore ideal and useful roles that they grab eagerly. Kim Hunter is excellent, too, as Hutcheson’s estranged wife Nora, Gabel is powerful and convincing as the gangster Rienzi, and Paul Stewart, Martin Gabel, Joe De Santis, Jim Backus and Ed Begley all make a strong impression.

Deadline – USA (1952) stars Humphrey Bogart and Ethel Barrymore, and also in the cast are Kim Hunter, Ed Begley, Warren Stevens, Paul Stewart, Martin Gabel, Joe De Santis, Jim Backus, Joyce MacKenzie, Audrey Christie, Fay Baker, Carlton Young and Selmer Jackson, with Phillip Terry as Nora’s fiance Lewis Schaefer, Tom Powers as Andrew Wharton, Willis Bouchey as Mr Henry and Fay Roope as Judge McKay. And James Dean appears in a tiny non-speaking role in the film as a press copyboy.

Deadline – USA [aka Deadline] is directed by Richard Brooks, runs 87 minutes, is made and released by 20th Century Fox, is written by Richard Brooks, is shot in black and white by Milton Krasner, is produced by Sol C Siegel, is scored by Cyril J Mockridge and Sol Kaplan, and is designed by Lyle R Wheeler.

The Day is loosely based on the New York Sun, which closed in 1950. It was edited by Benjamin Day, hence the fictional paper’s title.

Surprisingly, given its pedigree and quality, it was for long a neglected film until its DVD and Blu-ray debut in 2016.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7610

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com