Rent Headline (1943)

Bold Face Crime - Headline review by CH

A newspaper editor called Ellington (John Stuart) is so often late at work that his wife (Antionette Cellier) visits a smooth-talking acquaintance (Anthony Hawtrey) one evening. Nothing happens, though it could have done so one might surmise, for there now arrives an earlier friend, who had become more than that, indeed pregnant, a fate which brings her a fatal bullet - and he is on the run.

All of which is of interest to Ellington’s paper, where a star reporter is Brooksie (the ever-suave David Farrar) who never quite gets to spend enough time with somebody else on the paper (Anne Crawford).

Such a set-up does not take long to establish. All of it is done with some style if not exactly the brio of His Girl Friday - although there is some good badinage with a rival’s reporter, Wiilliam Hartnell whose face is so constructed that a vital bone could be called the sardonica.

At less than seventy-five minutes (no newspaper copy editor could sigh, “much more is there?”, things move briskly (the director is capable if unsung John Harlow) Much of it takes place, one way and another, on the telephone, with several moral quandaries and a train ride as evocative of 1943 as a small cinema at Waterloo (in making this film, the producers evidently obeyed the edict: don’t mention the war, and it could be taking place a decade earlier).

A sometimes surprisingly louche scenario, this side of noir, with a key part played by a bespectacled obsessive (Richard Goolden), all capably brought to the screen, Headline is more than a soft feature.

Comedy Thriller. - Headline review by Steve

Modest but exciting murder story set in a busy newspaper office. It feels like a low budget copy of a Hollywood screwball thriller, as phlegmatic crime reporter David Farrar tracks down the elusive witness to a killing, while sparring/flirting with newsroom Girl Friday, Anne Crawford.

And they are a lot of fun together, spitting out the fast rat-a-tat dialogue with cheerful zest. Farrar also quarrels agreeably with rival newshound William Hartnell, as they compete for a lead from the eccentric support cast.

A curiosity is that Headline was made in 1943, but Farrar and Hartnell are not in uniform. Nor is Crawford driving a general around in a staff car. There is no evidence of the war to be seen.

The main flaw is a truly appalling fistfight between Farrar and the desperate killer on a late night train. This isn't a profound film. Nothing is meaningfully at stake. But it is unfaltering, engaging entertainment and B director John Harlow tells the story with suspense and clarity, if not style.