Exclusive *** (1937, Charles Ruggles, Fred MacMurray, Frances Farmer, Lloyd Nolan) – Classic Movie Review 7223

Director Alexander Hall’s bright, lively, strongly cast 1937 Paramount Pictures black and white movie Exclusive is an authentic-seeming melodrama about rival newspapers, enriched with showy performances from Charles Ruggles as newspaper proprietor Tod Swain and Frances Farmer as his daughter Vina Swain, who decides to go to work for a tatty tabloid rival, owned by gangster Charles Gillette (Lloyd Nolan) to spite her boyfriend.

Fred MacMurray gives an agreeable performance as Farmer’s quarreling investigative editor fiancé Ralph Houston, working for the competing newspaper. Farmer and MacMurray make a good team as the quarreling lovers.

It is a forgotten film but it deserves to be better known as it is notable for Farmer, making stylish work of an unsympathetic role, though it is especially notable as a rare straight role for Ruggles, who responds to this idea with outstanding work.

Also in the cast are Fay Holden, Ralph Morgan, Horace McMahon, Edward H Robins, Harlan Briggs, Willard Robertson, William Mansell, Gaylord Pendleton, Chester Clute, Irving Bacon and Benny Bartlett, with Cornel Wilde (uncredited) as a reporter.

Exclusive is directed by Alexander Hall, runs 86 minutes, is made and released by Paramount Pictures, written by John C Moffitt, Sidney Salkow and Rian James, based on the play by John C Moffitt, is shot in black and white by William C Mellor, produced by Benjamin Glazer, scored by John Leipold and Milan Roder, and designed by Hans Dreier and Ernst Fegté.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7223

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