WORLD TOUR Day 18 - Chicago, Illinois
BEFORE: Continuing the theme or reporters and trials, I've made it to Chicago. Chi-Town, the Second City, the Windy City, that Toddlin' Town, the...damn, I know there's another nickname, but it's not coming to mind. I visited Chicago once, went up in the Hancock Tower, visited the Field Museum. Geez, I must have done some other stuff there too, but it was probably a decade ago.
Linking from "The Night of the Hunter", Robert Mitchum was also in the 1957 film "Fire Down Below" with Jack Lemmon (last seen in "Days of Wine and Roses").
THE PLOT: Hildy Johnson is the top reporter on a Chicago newspaper during the 1920s. Tired of the whole game, he's determined to quit his job to get married. His scheming editor, Walter Burns, has other plans though.
AFTER: It's fairly obvious this story started out as a stage play - the majority of the action takes place in one room, the press room at a prison, where a killer is scheduled to be executed the next morning. Maximum dialogue, minimum sets. From the same stage designer who brought you "12 Angry Men" - with jurors sequestered in a room together, so the stagehands never have to change the set during intermission.
The reporters from the various Chicago newspapers are all there, ready to phone in what the condemned man will have for his last meal, along with other details of his final hours and his hanging. And each reporter is cribbing story details from the others, while putting his own spin on the day's events, making up details if necessary.
The Examiner's reporter is nowhere to be found, because he's fallen in love and wants to quit and move to Pennsylvania and work at an advertising firm. (Which is ironic to me, because Chicago is home to some of the biggest advertising companies in the U.S.) So this is a love story in a way, but it's really about the love between the news editor and his star reporter - in much the same way that the same two actors expressed love and camaraderie in the play + film "The Odd Couple". The editor does whatever he needs to do - begging, complimenting, insulting, to get his man out to the prison.
The Examiner's mission seems to be proving that the whole political system is corrupt - including the Sheriff (the de facto prison warden) and the Mayor. Well, this is Chicago, so they're probably right. But what should be a snappy commentary on Chicago politics turns into a farce of sorts, with slamming doors, people hiding in confined spaces, and a lot of yelling and cursing in 1920's slang.
There are a ton of middle-aged character actors here, and usually I dig that sort of thing, but here they're all trying to out-emote each other, and they all do this by becoming mad and yelling in cartoonish fashion - all that's missing is animated steam coming out of their ears. It's unfortunate that so much of what we "know" about the 1920's probably just comes from old Keystone Cops shorts and sped-up newsreels.
Still, there's some funny stuff here. But I bet this remake was filmed directly after "The Sting" became a success. There's some overlap in the setting and time period and the films share a couple actors, I think.
NITPICK POINT: At no point in this film does anyone ever dial a phone, or ask an operator for a connection. Were these phones all dedicated lines from the reporters to their newspapers, or was the dialing just left out for the sake of efficiency? Similarly, no one ever seems to make a mistake while typing or ever needs to change a typewriter ribbon or dislodge a stuck key. That happened to me all the time when I was a kid, learning to type on an old manual typewriter.
Also starring Walter Matthau (last seen in "Earthquake"), Carol Burnett (last seen in another farce, "Noises Off!"), Vincent Gardenia (last seen in "The Hustler"), Susan Sarandon (last heard in "Cats & Dogs"), Charles Durning (last seen in "North Dallas Forty"), Harold Gould (last seen in "Inside Daisy Clover"), Austin Pendleton (last seen in "Searching for Bobby Fischer"), David Wayne and Paul Benedict (Mr. Bentley from "The Jeffersons", last seen in "The Freshman")
DISTANCE TRAVELED TODAY: 388 miles / 625 km (Moundsville, WV to Chicago, IL)
DISTANCE TRAVELED SO FAR: 4,342 miles / 7,000 km
RATING: 6 out of 10 bylines
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