Power of the Press ** (1943, Guy Kibbee, Gloria Dickson, Lee Tracy, Otto Kruger, Victor Jory) – Classic Movie Review 12,015

Director Lew Landers’s 1943 Columbia Pictures American black and white crime drama film Power of the Press stars Guy Kibbee, Gloria Dickson, Lee Tracy, Otto Kruger, and Victor Jory.

Otto Kruger plays a World War Two American isolationist press boss called Howard Raskin, who is prepared to kill to get what he wants. He has the isolationist New York Gazette paper’s publisher murdered just as he was about to change the paper’s policy and support the US war effort, and frames ex-employee Jerry Purvis (Larry Parks), and then starts printing sensationalist fake news of the crime to boost circulation. But managing editor Griff Thompson (Lee Tracy) and patriotic regional small-town newspaper publisher Ulysses Bradford (Guy Kibbee) show that there are nice people in the newspaper world and come in to find the culprits.

A likely story from writer Sam Fuller, who should have known better because he worked his way from journalism to Hollywood.

Alas, Kruger overacts terribly as the villain in an already overheated tale, with, understandably in 1943, a lot of heavy-handed World War Two propaganda in the screenplay, which now dates it badly.

It stars Guy Kibbee as Ulysses Bradford, Gloria Dickson as Edwina Stephens, Lee Tracy as Griff Thompson, Otto Kruger as Howard Raskin and Victor Jory as Oscar Trent. Also in the cast are Don Beddoe, Douglas Leavitt, Larry Parks, Frank Sully, Minor Watson, Eddie Laughton, Edmund Cobb, Ivan Miller, Lee Phelps, Frank Yaconelli, and Rex Williams.

Power of the Press is directed by Lew Landers, runs 64 minutes, is made and released by Columbia Pictures, is written by Sam Fuller (story) and Robert Hardy Andrews (screenplay), is shot in black and white by John Stumar, is produced by Leon Barsha, is scored by Paul Sawtell (uncredited), John Leipold (composer stock music), Leo Shuken (composer stock music) and Morris Stoloff (musical director), and is designed by Lionel Banks.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,015

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