User Reviews

I enjoyed this film very much. Among its delights is an impressive performance by Linda Watkins (who?) as the heroine. Watkins is attractive, energetic and a good actress. For some reason, after making a handful of films in the early 1930s, she dropped out of sight for twenty years, then reappeared in bit roles on television. 'Sob Sister' shows that she could have had a major Hollywood career.

We start out splendidly, with impressive opening credits (more elaborate than usual for the Fox Film Corporation) resembling a newspaper's display ad. Then we're firmly in 1930s newspaper-movie territory, as men wearing snap-brim trilbies indoors are shouting into black Bakelite candlestick telephones. The candlestick phone is the emblematic symbol of all those newspaper movies, so I was delighted by one scene in this film in which a newspaper editor (Charles Middleton, oddly cast but effective) talks into a phone while an enormous shadow of a candlestick telephone looms behind him. Ironically, Middleton is using a cradle telephone.

The movie starts out with rival reporters covering the murder of a young woman, and invading her family's privacy to get a scoop. This sequence made me uneasy for purely personal reasons: in 1975, as a Fleet Street stringer, I covered the murder of heiress Lesley Whittle, and this movie brought back some unpleasant memories for me. But soon enough the plot moves in another direction, involving a kidnapped child.

SLIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD. Watkins and James Dunn (excellent, as usual) are the rival reporters. This is one of those movies in which a woman, competing against several men, beats them at their own game by playing dirtier. Several competing reporters get a big story in a remote location; there's only one telephone line in a 17-mile radius. Watkins gets to the phone first, so the reporters from all the other papers patiently wait their turn as she phones her editor. But once she's finished, she cuts the phone line so that nobody else can use it. Speaking of limited telephone access, Ward Bond plays a motorcycle cop who has to contact headquarters by cadging a nickel so he can use a coin phone. Times have changed!

There are some extremely impressive sets in this movie (including a multi-storey courtyard), and some very impressive camera movement through those sets. I was also impressed by a rooftop set (filmed on a soundstage, masquerading as outdoors) with forced-perspective models of the distant skyscrapers. Some of the sets in this movie are TOO impressive: Watkins is a newspaper reporter, presumably with the tiny salary to match, yet somehow she lives in an enormous elaborate apartment with a fireplace. Her bathroom has a washbasin and a radiator, but no discernible toilet. (Ah, 1930s Hollywood!)

Practically every actor in this cast gives an excellent performance, notably Edward Dillon (who?) in a comedy-relief role that turns out relevant to the plot, and George E. Stone. Stone usually played ineffectual weaklings; here, he's very impressive as a criminal behind bars who still exudes menace. (In real life, Stone had a few gangster friends.) Maurice Black is good as a thug who's nicknamed Gimp even though he has only a very slight limp. More positively, there's a scene in which Watkins is bound and gagged, and (for once) a character in a movie has been gagged properly. Watkins's arms are tied behind her back; she frees herself by burning the ropes, and the sequence is filmed brilliantly, showing that a genuine flame is burning dangerously close to the actress (not a stunt double).

One thing that I DON'T like about old Hollywood movies is the visual device of a front-page headline to convey information which is important only to the characters in the movie, not to the public in general. 'Sob Sister' ends with Dunn and Watkins — two lowly newspaper reporters — getting married, and somehow this minor event rates the entire front page of a newspaper. I couldn't buy that bit, and earlier in the film I couldn't believe that the romance of these two obscure journos would rate a mention in the column of (fictional) Broadway journalist Winch Markel, an obvious amalgam of real showbiz columnists Walter Winchell and Mark Hellinger.

Despite a few implausibilities, almost everything here is a non-stop delight. Why isn't 'Sob Sister' better known? I'll rate this movie 9 out of 10. Get me Rewrite!

In the musical "Chicago", the character of "Mary Sunshine" is described as a "sob sister", a reporter of the tragedies of celebrities and non-celebrities alike that the public can't help but take a fascination to. Times haven't changed in 80 years; In fact, they've gotten worse. Here, two rival newspaper reporters end up as neighbors and begin dating, even though the female reporter has vowed not to end up like one of her "victims". As the story begins, this female reporter gets the scoop on the family of a murdered girl by pretending to be an old friend of hers. She keeps the other reporters from getting the story out by snipping the wire of the phone she has just used! And to think that in 1930, women were still considered the gentler sex! James Dunn (best known as the father in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn") and an obscure actress named Linda Watkins are the rival reporters here, and they go at it from beginning to end to scoop each other even though its obvious that their relationship is more than platonic. One of them observes that if sex isn't a lethal weapon, then there have been a lot of innocent victims out there.

Minna Gombell is great as the wise-cracking neighbor who constantly pops into visit Watkins by simply stepping onto her fire escape and entering Watkins' apartment through her window. There are several funny exchanges involving an exasperated neighbor trying to sleep as Watkins, Gombell and Dunn speak to each other through their windows. The camera pans up, down, and across to each of their windows like a searchlight. Pretty innovative considering how many films of this year were still filmed statically like stage plays. Fox films also used a nice touch in the credits by filming down the movie's newspaper advertisement. It's still no "Front Page", but its still worth a view of how early talkie cinema could move fast, making it appear more like films from a few years down the road.