User Reviews

"Deadline U.S.A" is the story of a newspaper facing extinction, though it delves into a neat little crime story that graces page one prominently during it's final days. What's interesting is that the gangster drama doesn't involve Humphrey Bogart as a mobster or a law man; he's the editor of 'The Day', a paper put on the selling block by an owner family at the advice of their financial attorney. The family's matriarch, portrayed by Ethel Barrymore eventually sees the light of 'Day' so to speak, as you know she will. Her conversation with Bogey near the end of the film is a classic tribute to freedom of the press and the role of newspapers as society's watchdog.

There's another side story going on as well, though it's not entirely necessary. Ed Hutcheson (Bogart) attempts to reconcile with ex-wife Nora (Kim Hunter), and though it appears he's hit a roadblock, winds up winning her back in the end. It's never made clear however what the turning point in the relationship was, since Nora was planning to remarry and abruptly changed her mind.

Classic film fans will enjoy seeing Ed Begley and Jim Backus in roles as newspapermen employed by 'The Day'. The mobster being investigated by the paper is portrayed by Martin Gabel. It was with a bit of discomfort watching Bogey's character get into the back seat of Gabel's car to 'go for a ride'. That scene could have gone either way, especially since editor Hutcheson felt compelled to crack wise with a goon who had murder included in his resume. As for the rough stuff, that was generally handled by Tomas Rienzi's main henchman Whitey, Joe Sawyer in an uncredited role, but a Warner Brothers mainstay nonetheless.

With the clock running out on the newspaper, and a judge siding with the sellers, Hutcheson gets to the finish line with his page one story with damning evidence of Rienzi's complicity in the death of his hush hush girlfriend and her brother. But the film ends so abruptly, there's no time to reflect on the bittersweet finale, not even a shot of Bogey and his ex getting back together for a feel good moment.

If you enjoyed this film, you might want to check out another lesser known Bogart movie titled "Two Against The World", it also goes by "One Fatal Hour". There he finds himself in another media forum running a radio station. Like "Deadline U.S.A." though, it may be difficult to find since neither has been commercially released. You'll have to keep your eyes peeled for a cable presentation, or source it from private collectors.

A really great movie for one of Bogart's last pictures. His character is hard-nosed, but low key, a man who doesn't feel the need to prove how tough he is. An excellent supporting cast includes such reliable actors as Paul Stewart, Ed Begley,and Jim Backus as newspaper staff, with Joe DeSantis as the weaselly crook in hiding. Ethel Barrymore is superb as the widow of the paper's founder, watching as her obnoxious daughters sell off the paper they care nothing about. Martin Gabel hits just the right note as mob boss Rienzi, smiling and affable one minute, snarling and growling threats seconds later.

One of the best scenes has Rienzi pick up Bogart's editor Hutchinson off the street and offer him a drink in his luxurious limousine. Bogart asks half seriously if he's being ' taken for a ride', and Rienzi claims he's not a gangster. Moments later, Rienzi loses his temper and smacks Hutchinson in the face. Hutchinson smiles that crooked Bogart grin and says, " That's more like it", telling Rienzi he's showing his true colors at last. The would be respectable businessman is nothing more than a gangster, after all.

This movie is both an antique, in the way it shows how big city dailies were still operating fifty years ago, and surprisingly up to date in its concern with how the public often doesn't really care about the news, and that a lot of what's packaged as news is just entertainment. Bogart's great speech at the hearing to determine the paper's future is a rouser, as he talks about the importance of a free press.

This movie deserves a wider audience on home video than its occasional cable TV showings. It's a great Bogart vehicle, and a fascinating story of the newspaper business, and just a fine picture in general.

Have you noticed that almost all of Bogie's very BEST and most gritty performances were when he played characters that were dedicated to a noble cause? Rick Blain in CASABLANCA goes without saying... even tho Rick doesn't admit until the end that he IS dedicated to ANY cause.

Charlie Allnut in THE African QUEEN once again became dedicated (at the insistence of Kate Hepburn) to the cause of sinking the Louisa.

Tho his cause was a twisted one born of psychosis, Lt. Commander Philip Francis Queeg was utterly committed to the cause of making the USS Caine acceptable to his impossible standard of perfection.

In his last film THE HARDER THEY FALL we again see the cynical, world weary Bogie who seems to be part of the problem, but who in the end lets his conscience and character win out; he does what he sees as RIGHT, no matter what the personal cost.

Even in his most underrated performances in the cheap, throwaway films like BATTLE CIRCUS, Bogie was at his hard boiled best as a dedicated MASH surgeon. Alan Alda probably took a lot of his character Hawkeye from Bogie's performance.

Playing the crusading newspaper editor Ed Hutchinson in DEADLINE USA Bogie gives us a tour de force performance, clothed in the utter, incorruptible purity of an honest man who is fighting naked evil in the form of corruption by a gang boss who controls a city's underworld... as well as some of it's most prominent public institutions.

In this one I'm strongly reminded of Jimmy Stewart's hard boiled, cynical reporter in CALL NORTHSIDE 777; Stewart was another actor who really got his teeth into a part where he was on a crusade of some sort.

Bogie hated phony movie tough guys, but oddly he came off as one in a lot of non-gangster roles; his demeanor was so imposing that without violence he could radiate strength and integrity... along with a world weary cynicism that made him seem all the more powerful. In DEADLINE USA we get it FULL STRENGTH and undiluted as he opposes Tomas Rienzi. Violence directed AT him makes him appear all the stronger; the sequence in Rienzi's car where Bogie gets struck across the face with the newspaper shows it; Hutchinson never even flinches at the blow. He only smiles and sneers "THAT'S the Rienzi I like to see".

Bogie's at his BEST in the final scene in the press room... there's BEAUTY in the utterly cynical contempt in his voice as he answers Rienzi's phone call with "Hello Baby..." . We KNOW that Bogie has all the cards in his hand now, and Rienzi's threats are meaningless when Bogie says "That's the PRESS, Baby, the PRESS... and there's NOTHING you can do about it. Nothing". That line makes us want to stand up and CHEER... no matter what may happen to Bogie, he's left us a gift. Right has triumphed.

This is one of his BEST films. It's a great example of why Humphrey Bogart is still, 50 years after his death, one of Hollywood's brightest shining stars.

It all seems a little antique now -- newspapers and the power they wielded. It's probably difficult for anyone growing up now to grasp the fact that the radio and newspapers were virtually the only sources of news available to most people.

For a few cents you could buy a paper that not only presented you with current events but a crossword puzzle, the race results, tomorrow's weather, a political cartoon, an editorial about the latest geopolitical crisis or about the disrepair of the local sewer system, the exact times of sunrise and sunset, the names of ships entering the harbor, your horoscope, Lala Divoon being seen at 21 with handsome young Lance Aryan, and finally you could keep track of Dick Tracy and find out of Lil Abner got Mammy Yokum out of Dogpatch. So the significance of The Day in the daily life of ordinary people is hard to figure in an age when television itself is being replaced by the internet as a prime source of information.

"It takes talent to get the news, write it up, and back it up with research," editor Bogart tells the suits that control the money. "Back it up with research." Those were the days. Now any idiot can get on social media and print a rant about the hollow earth hypothesis and he can depend on certain of those among us to gobble it up. But the business that Bogart describes has its weaknesses too. The news may offend powerful gang figures like Rienzi (Martin Gabel) who owns judges and other high-echelon bureaucrats and can cause a lot of trouble, say, by murdering some of the paper's informants. ("I tole you I din't want no violence -- not yet anyways!")

Gabel's slapping Bogart across the face with a copy of The Day is small potatoes. Gabel has an egregious tendency to throw his corpses into the Hudson River clothed in nothing but a mink coat, or seeing to it that they tumble down into some kind of garbage disposal unit or horizontal milling machine in the press room.

All of this michigas irritates Bogart because at the same time he's coping with the mafia he's trying to save The Day from being acquired and disposed of by the competition. Also pressing on him is the fact that his wife, the infinitely appealing Kim Hunter, has divorced him and is about to marry her boss, an unworthy snooty dude wearing a permanent smirk of triumph.

The drama is alloyed with some comedic moments -- exchanges between Bogart and his elderly secretary, Miss Barndollar, who is compliant to a fault and entirely literal. And there are occasional wisecracks. Some goons posing as cops kill an informant. When the police show up, a detective snarls at one of the paper's editors, "Can't you tell a hoodlum from a real cop?" "In THIS town? (pause) Yes, sir."

Despite the most strenuous efforts of Bogart and his ally Ethel Barrymore, The Day comes to an end, but it's spirit lives on, inspired by a brave old immigrant lady who provides the evidence that sinks Rienzi. The brave old immigrant lady, here known by the cognomen of Mrs. Schmidt, is played by Kasia Orzazewski, born in Poland, who was Richard Conte's floor-scrubbing mother in "Call Northside 777." It's the kind of role any normal human being would want. You need an old immigrant lady? You call Kasia Orzazewski's agent. She didn't make that many movies -- a half dozen or so -- but for a couple of years she was the go-to brave old immigrant lady. She gets to provide the final encomium to the free press.

This cast, by the way, includes myriad supporting actors of note at the time, too many to list here. They play it in the classic style, delivering the goods like UPS drivers. The direction by Richard Brooks is the same, flawless, without inspiration, and politically correct in a reassuring way that makes one yearn for the years of confidence, faith, fortitude, and Mammy Yokum.

A hardworking newspaper editor faces pressure from all quarters when a number of simultaneous developments look set to have a devastating impact on his life and the lives of the 1500 people who work with him. For some time, "The Day" had been striving to expose the crimes of New York's leading racketeer but on the same day that the state Senate Committee is forced to drop all charges brought against him, the newspaper is suddenly threatened with closure and the editor's ex-wife (who he's desperate to reconcile with), announces that she's planning to remarry as soon as possible. This perfect storm generates numerous plot strands and the ways in which they're so expertly weaved together, is one of this movie's best qualities.

Editor of "The Day", Ed Hutcheson (Humphrey Bogart) is frustrated when he hears that notorious mob boss Tomas Rienzi (Martin Gabel) has escaped justice yet again and then attends a meeting during which it becomes clear that a dispute between the late owner's widow, Margaret Garrison (Ethel Barrymore) and her two daughters is likely to culminate in the imminent closure of the publication. After imparting this information to his fellow employees and attending a wake for the paper, he goes to see his ex-wife, Nora (Kim Hunter) who had divorced him because his commitment to his job had been so great that it had completely ruined their relationship. Nora still cares for Ed and allows him to stay at her apartment overnight but recognising that they have no future together, has recently agreed to marry her boss.

Next morning, Ed is informed that the reporter he'd assigned to work on the Rienzi investigation, had been found badly beaten-up by the racketeer's thugs and this fires him up to devote all the resources he possibly can to discovering some evidence that can finally bring the full extent of Rienzi's crimes out into the open.

Ed is an idealist who strongly adheres to the ethos of his newspaper by believing in the value of a free press, being totally committed to printing the truth and consistently avoiding sensationalism. This sets him apart from Ethel's two daughters who are only interested in getting richer by selling "The Day" to the publishers of its main rival who simply want to close it down to boost the circulation of their own paper.

The Rienzi investigation takes an interesting turn when it emerges that a young woman whose drowned body had recently been recovered from a local river was, in fact, the gangster's mistress who had spent some of the money that he'd given her for safe-keeping and that her brother, Herman (Joe De Santis), had also been involved in facilitating her murder. When Herman agrees to tell his story for a large pay-off, it seems that a breakthrough has been reached but this proves to be a false dawn and it's only when an unexpected person steps forward with some compelling documentary evidence, that Ed feels able to go to print with the kind of story that will ensure that "The Day" goes out with a bang.

The fact that this movie delivers its rather involved story in such a punchy way without ever compromising on character development is very impressive and testifies strongly to the quality of Richard Brooks' writing and direction. Powerful performances by its talented cast make all the characters seem very credible and the atmosphere of the busy newspaper office is brilliantly recreated on-screen. Humphrey Bogart's exceptional performance as the energetic, fearless and very determined editor also plays a huge part in driving the whole production forward and as well as being enjoyable to watch, is also worthy of far greater recognition than it's ever been given to date.