| Five Star Final | |
|---|---|
 Broadway program cover | |
| Written by | Louis Weitzenkorn |
| Date premiered | December 30, 1930 |
| Place premiered | Cort Theatre |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Melodrama |
Five Star Final is a play written by Louis Weitzenkorn. The story is a melodrama about the evils of tabloid journalism. Producer A. H. Woods staged it on Broadway, where it was a hit, running for 175 performances.
An unscrupulous newspaper publisher decides to boost circulation by reviving an old scandal involving Nancy Voorhees, a woman who was accused of murdering her lover twenty years before. Although she was acquitted by a jury, Nancy fears the damage a revival of the story could cause her family. She is married and has a daughter who is about to have her own wedding to a wealthy young man whose family would not approve of Nancy's past. Nancy begs the assigned reporter not to pursue the story, but he refuses. When the story is published on their daughter's wedding day, Nancy and her husband commit suicide. The daughter seeks out the reporter to kill him for vengeance, but discovers that he is wracked with guilt over what he has done.
Producer A. H. Woods acquired the rights to the play in 1930. At first his intention was to co-produce the play with William A. Brady and have it appear at Brady's Playhouse Theatre. [1] However, this plan fell through and the production finally opened at the Cort Theatre on December 30, 1930, with just Woods producing. Worthington Miner directed. Arthur Byron played the reporter and Merle Maddern played Nancy. [2]
Weitzenkorn was busy revising the script up until the premier, and apparently after as well. Reviewers complained that the first performance was insufficiently rehearsed, and descriptions of the scenes on opening night differ from what was done later. [2] [3]
The characters and cast from the Broadway production are given below:
| Character | Broadway cast [4] |
|---|---|
| Mr. Arthur Loveland Weeks | Sydney Booth |
| Exchange Operator | Lillian Bronson |
| Randall | Arthur Byron |
| Philip Weeks | King Calder |
| Hinchecliffe | Berton Churchill |
| Brannegan | Frank Dae |
| Colby | Kenneth Dana |
| A Policeman | Mike D'Arcy |
| Pearl | Amy Dennis |
| Michael Townsend | Malcolm Duncan |
| Jenny Townsend | Frances Fuller |
| Minerva | Georgette Harvey |
| Undertaker | Fred House |
| Harold | Richard Huey |
| Luella Carmody | Laurie Jacques |
| Ziggie Feinstein | Allen Jenkins |
| Jerry | P. J. Kelly |
| Arthur | Alvin Kerr |
| Mrs. Arthur Loveland Weeks | Kathryn Keyes |
| Rooney | Bruce MacFarlane |
| Nancy Voorhees Townsend | Merle Maddern |
| Miss Edwards | Madeleine Marshall |
| Trixie | Dorothy McElhone |
| Rev. T. Vernon Isopod | Alexander Onslow |
| French | Henry Sherwood |
| Miss Taylor | Helene Sinnott |
The play received reviews that treated it as a justified indictment of sensationalist journalism, albeit with some reservations. [3] [5] In The New York Times , reviewer Brooks Atkinson took exception to uneven writing and performances, but described it as an "exposé" that deserved consideration "whatever your opinion of the dramatic workmanship". [2] In an article several days later, Atkinson said the play was sometimes as sensationalistic as those it condemned, but it "strikes a crushing blow" against the press. [6] In the Outlook and Independent, Otis Chatfield-Taylor described the production as flawed in several ways, but nonetheless "something very much to be seen" for its "moments of undeniable drama and pathos" and its "violent polemic" against journalistic scandal-mongering. He praised the work of Woods, Miner and the cast. [7]
The play was adapted as a movie twice. The 1931 movie Five Star Final was directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starred Edward G. Robinson, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture at the 5th Academy Awards. In 1936 the play was again adapted for a movie, this time titled Two Against the World . William C. McGann directed and Humphrey Bogart starred.
The Front Page is a Broadway comedy about newspaper reporters on the police beat. Written by former Chicago reporters Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, it was first produced in 1928 and has been adapted for the cinema several times.
Five Star Final is a 1931 American pre-Code drama film directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Edward G. Robinson, Aline MacMahon, and Boris Karloff, about the excesses of tabloid journalism. The film was written by Robert Lord and Byron Morgan based on the 1930 play of the same name by Louis Weitzenkorn; the title refers to the contemporary practice of newspapers publishing a series of editions throughout the day, marking its final edition front page with five stars and the word "Final." "Five Star Final" is also a font introduced during World War I and favored by newspapers at the time for its narrow type.
Whoopee! is a 1928 musical comedy with a book based on Owen Davis's play, The Nervous Wreck. The musical libretto was written by William Anthony McGuire, with music by Walter Donaldson and lyrics by Gus Kahn. The musical premiered on Broadway in 1928, starring Eddie Cantor, and introduced the hit song "Love Me or Leave Me", sung by Ruth Etting.
The Women is a 1936 American play, a comedy of manners by Clare Boothe Luce. The cast includes women only.
Glenda Farrell was an American actress. Farrell personified the smart and sassy, wisecracking blonde of the Classical Hollywood films. Farrell's career spanned more than 50 years, appearing in numerous Broadway plays, films and television series. She won an Emmy Award in 1963 for Outstanding Supporting Actress for her performance as Martha Morrison in the medical drama television series Ben Casey.
Albert David Hedison Jr. was an American film, television, and stage actor. He was billed as Al Hedison in his early film work until 1959 when he was cast in the role of Victor Sebastian in the short-lived espionage television series Five Fingers. NBC insisted that he change his name and he proposed his middle name and he was billed as David Hedison from then on. He was known for his roles as the titular character in The Fly (1958), Captain Lee Crane in the television science fiction drama Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964–1968), and CIA agent Felix Leiter in two James Bond films, Live and Let Die (1973) and Licence to Kill (1989).
Elmer Rice was an American playwright. He is best known for his plays The Adding Machine (1923) and his Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of New York tenement life, Street Scene (1929).
Helen Chandler was an American film and theater actress, best known for playing Mina Seward in the 1931 horror film Dracula.
William Lee Tracy was an American stage, film, and television actor. He is known foremost for his portrayals between the late 1920s and 1940s of fast-talking, wisecracking news reporters, press agents, lawyers, and salesmen. From 1949 to 1954, he was also featured in the weekly radio and television versions of the series Martin Kane: Private Eye, as well as starting as the newspaper columnist Lee Cochran in the 1958–1959 British-American crime drama New York Confidential. Later, in 1964, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and a Golden Globe for his supporting role in the film The Best Man.
Machinal is a 1928 play by American playwright and journalist Sophie Treadwell, inspired by the real-life case of convicted and executed murderer Ruth Snyder. Its Broadway premiere, directed by Arthur Hopkins, is considered one of the highpoints of Expressionist theatre on the American stage.
Indians is a 1968 play by Arthur Kopit.
Philip Jerome Quinn Barry was an American dramatist best known for his plays Holiday (1928) and The Philadelphia Story (1939), which were both made into films starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.
Kenyon Nicholson was an American playwright and screenwriter.
The New Yorkers is a musical written by Cole Porter and Herbert Fields (book). Star Jimmy Durante also wrote the words and music for the songs in which his character was featured.
Elena Miramova was a Russian-born actress and playwright.
Of Mice and Men is a play adapted from John Steinbeck's 1937 novel of the same name. The play, which predates the Tony Awards and the Drama Desk Awards, earned the 1938 New York Drama Critics' Circle Best Play.
Ashley Elizabeth Atkinson, known professionally as Ashlie Atkinson, is an American character actress who works in movies and television – as well as in theater. Atkinson is known for her work as Ace on Happy!, Peaches in the Netflix film Juanita, as Connie in the Spike Lee film BlacKkKlansman, and Janice in the fourth season of Mr. Robot.
Within the Law is a play written by Bayard Veiller. It is the story of Mary Turner, a sales clerk who is wrongly accused of stealing and sent to prison. Upon her release, Turner sets up a gang that engages in shady activities that are just "within the law". After the police try to entrap her, she is mistakenly accused again, this time for murder, but she is vindicated when the real killer confesses.
Louis Weitzenkorn was an American writer and newspaper editor. He wrote a play about journalism, Five Star Final, that became a hit on Broadway in 1931. It was adapted as a movie, and Weitzenkorn subsequently wrote several screenplays.
The Big Knife is an American play by Clifford Odets. Directed by Lee Strasberg, who had worked with Odets at the Group Theatre, and starring fellow Group Theatre alumnus John Garfield. The play debuted at Broadway's National Theatre on 24 February 1949 before closing on May 28th after 109 performances. The Big Knife marked the return of Odets to Broadway after a six-year hiatus in which he toiled in Hollywood as a screenwriter and motion picture director. The play concerns the disillusionment of a movie star with the Hollywood's studio system and disgust with himself, as he has lost his idealism in the pursuit of success.