Headline Crasher (1937)

The Worst Film Ever

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

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

If this film had been made over at MGM this might have been a Hardy family feature. Frankie Darro is doing his best Mickey Rooney imitation and all we would have to do is make Richard Tucker a judge like Judge Hardy who was running for United States Senator and we would have Lewis Stone.The resemblance between Headline Crashers and a feature with the Hardy Family from Carvel is substituting Muriel Evans for the judge's secretary and Cecilia Parker could fit in nicely. And of course the film would benefit from the filet mignon of the MGM production values versus the hog's liver values of poverty row Conn films.Frankie Darro is being mercilessly conned by people who are trying to get dirt on him to ruin his father's chances for re-election. At the same time bank robber John Merton is out of jail and he wants to settle with Tucker for putting him there as a prosecutor. The two plot elements collide at Tucker's vacation lodge. There's also a nice part for Eleanor Stewart, Merton's moll who is the one who gets Darro's hormones raging which starts everything in the first place. She'd fit perfectly in a Hardy film tempting young Andy.The film had possibilities, at a big studio this would have been something more.

Scenarist Harry O. Hoyt's chief claim to fame is that he directed "The Lost World" (1925). Here we find him credited for adapting the Peter B. Kyne story, "Motion to Adjourn". This minor movie (it runs less than an hour) stars Mickey Rooney imitator, Frankie Darro, as the diminutive, pugnacious, skirt-chasing son of a United States senator who is up for re-election. To complicate matters, a mobster whom the senator sent to prison in his pre-election days, has been released and is out to exact revenge. This part would seem to be a natural for John Merton, but here he seems to be playing at half-steam. Anyway, as part of his plot, he decides to kidnap little Frankie. But the youth, of course, has other ideas. We've seen this story a hundred times before, so it's up to the players to make it reasonably interesting. This they do – and it's good to see some of our favorite character actors such as Dick Curtis, Jack Ingram and Charles King in minor roles. This is also the only movie credit for an actor named Wayne Bumpus! He plays a newspaper photographer. A very good print of the movie is currently available as a bonus on Alpha's "Star Reporter" DVD.

Well, we've got a senator up for re-election, a newspaper out to bring him down for headlines' sake, a gangster with a grudge out on parole...nothing too earth shattering. At the center of the story: the senator's son, the senator's secretary, and a newspaper reporter out for a good story. All pretty standard ingredients; all pretty ably carried out here. The senator's son is played with some enthusiasm by the dashing Frankie Darro, who has some trouble catching a break in this story but persists nevertheless. Muriel Evans, as the senator's very able secretary, also does well. Kane Richmond, as a reporter whose duty to drum up news events eventually bumps up against his sense of justice, takes longer to come around to the side of justice...but it's a 56-minute movie, which doesn't leave a whole lot of time for the suspense to build.The trio of stars actually interact well and do succeed in making us root for them down the stretch. A few laughs, a little witty banter, a few standard gangster snarls--it's all a quite enjoyable if slight concoction.