Park Row is a key film in Samuel Fuller’s always captivating and idiosyncratic career. It’s always one of his very best up they’re with such classics as Shock Corridor, The Big Red One and The Naked Kiss. It’s one of his earliest films which was made after a succession of War films and a couple westerns such as his extremely successful The Steel Helmet and it’s companion film Fixed Bayonets! and the still radical interpretation of the Jesse James story I Shot Jesse James.
Sam said his favourite of all of films he made was Park Row. It was a passion project and a very nostalgic look at the time of headline grabbing journalism. Sam was a journalist himself in the 1920s and 1930s (a copyboy at the age of 12) till he joined the army during WW2. It was a truly independent film which Sam financed sorely by himself, it was roughly $200,000 + his $1000 fee which was for liquor and fine cigars. He was offered a big budget film, which Gregory Peck after the success of The Steel Helmet but turned it down in favour of his own project.
The film is set in 1886 and it’s about a reporter Phineas Mitchell (Gene Evans) who is fired from his job at newspaper The Star. He goes to a bar to drown his sorrows but a man called Steve Brodie rushes in claiming to have jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge. Phineas tells him he has lost his job. A friend of Phineas called Charles A. Leach (Forrest Taylor) also in the bar tells him his dreams of starting his own newspaper.
They decided to start the newspaper that night and Charles has the printing press, offices and money necessary to do so. They hire all their newspaper pals in the bar on the spot. A policeman comes into the bar to find Steve Brodie for jumping off the bridge and now they have a FRONT PAGE STORY for the first issue of their paper The Globe. The Globe becomes a sensation, which it’s headlines and it’s multiple daily copies with only the front page changed! Phineas’ ex boss (of newspaper The Star) the femme fatale like Charity Hackett (Mary Welch) is getting jealous of the success of the paper and her superior decide to kill The Globe with many tactics including stopping supplies of ink and paper and later violence.
The film has wonderful cast full of bit players who only got their due in this probably due to the film’s budgetary constraints. It’s was all filmed on one set for similar reasons. It’s wonderfully written almost screwbally at times which reminds me of the legendary script of His Girl Friday. However it’s not a comedy but more in the way of the dialogue in spoken, it’s stylistic. It is also a very contemporary film a way cause it’s partly about the corporate money coming into journalism, which diminished the type of journalism Fuller loved. It’s a remarkable 8 reeler, which should be rediscovered over and over again.
Ian Schultz
Rating:12A
UK Re-Release Date: 22nd October 2012
Directed By: Samuel Fuller
Cast: Gene Evans, Mary Welch , Bela Kovacs
Buy:PARK ROW (Masters of Cinema) (DVD) [1952]
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