When Bernard Hinchecliffe, the owner of the tabloid newspaper the New York Evening Gazette , pushes for increased circulation, Joseph Randall, the paper’s managing editor, reluctantly digs up a twenty-year-old murder case involving Nancy Voorhees, who shot her unfaithful husband. Randall’s secretary, Miss Taylor, who is secretly in love with him, disapproves of the planned article, but Randall goes ahead with it, assigning an unscrupulous reporter named Isopod to pose as a clergyman to get into Nancy Voorhees’ home. Her old identity hidden, Nancy is now happily married to Michael Townsend, who gave up his social position to marry her, and is planning her daughter Jenny’s wedding to society bachelor Phillip Weeks. The Townsends mistakenly think that Isopod is an assistant of the minister who is marrying Jenny and confess their fears of having Nancy’s past exposed. Randall prints Isopod’s story and when Phillip’s parents read the news they demand that the wedding be cancelled. In total despair, Nancy commits suicide and when Michael finds her body, he too kills himself. Kitty Carmody, one of Randall’s heartless reporters, finds the bodies, photographs them, and the Townsends once again make the headlines. Phillip stands up to his parents and insists on marrying Jenny, but in an uncontrollable rage, she goes to Randall and demands at gun point that he and the newspaper take responsibility for her parents’ deaths. Fortunately, Phillip arrives and stops her from killing Randall. Randall accepts his guilt and quits the paper, followed by Miss Taylor. More on Wikipedia
Festival Film- Awards & Festivals
Academy Awards, 1931- Nominee: Best Picture
Watch Five-Star Final (1931)
