Frank Capra and the image of journalists in American film.

• Author: Saltzman, Joe
• Position: Entertainment

PETER WARNE is a son of a bitch. There is absolutely no reason anyone should like him. He is a cynic with no regard for the truth; a brash opportunist who will stop at nothing to get what he wants; an amoral, alcoholic rogue who will lie, cheat, do anything to get a scoop for his newspaper; a big-city, wisecracking shyster who talks fast, thinks fast, works fast, often lives by his wits, and won't take any crap from anyone. Yet, as played by actor Clark Gable, written by Robert Riskin, and directed by Frank Capra in "It Happened One Night" (1934), he is irresistible.

Warne may be cocky, but you sense he is a good guy, maybe even an idealist who has a love-hate relationship with the newspaper world of scoundrels. He may secretly even want to do what he considered to be the noble thing, and quit the newspaper racket. He is, as pop culture social commentators Peter Roffman and Jim Purdy have put it, the roguish shyster trying to become a knight in shining armor, a part of the corruption of the city, yet somehow above it, a combination of the illicit appeal of sin with the moral righteousness of being superior to those around him.

Warne is a prototype of the male newspaper reporter in motion pictures, an image of the newshawk, part of a gallery of journalists created out of past stereotypes and presented as fresh and seemingly spontaneously by Capra, one of the most popular American directors in cinema history, and his writers, who were responsible for much of what Americans thought they knew about journalists in the 20th century. Those familiar images still focus our thinking today, whether they be the energetic, opportunistic reporter who would do anything for a scoop; the cynical big-city newspaper editor committed to getting the story first, even if it means strangling his reporters to do it; the tough, sarcastic sob sister trying desperately to outdo her male competition; or the morally bankrupt, ruthless publisher who uses the power of the press for his or her own ends.

Americans' perceptions of journalism and journalists were indelibly imprinted on the national psyche through the popular Capra films, which brought reporters, columnists, editors, and media tycoons to flesh-and-blood life from the late 1920s through the 1930s and 1940s and into the early 1950s. These images of the journalist, complete with every cliche of the newspaper world, originated in hundreds of novels and silent movies in the early years of the 20th century. They were polished up, honed, and presented to the public in unforgettable ways by Capra and his writers, who were either former journalists or playwrights who spent a good deal of time with newspaper friends and were no strangers to the language and mores of the city room.

Although there were many other movies involving journalists, including "The Front Page" and "Five Star Final," two popular Broadway plays turned into seminal talking pictures in 1931, few had the popularity or influence of Capra's. With the exception of the multiple images in film of gossip columnists based on Walter Winchell, the images of the journalist the public remembered came primarily from Capra movies.

In nine major films--starting with "The Power of the Press" in 1928, continuing through the much-copied "It Happened One Night" in 1934, and ending with the lackluster "Here Comes the Groom" in 1951--Capra and his writers created big-city, smart -alecky journalists and their greedy bosses. Many of the archetypes created in these pictures were reinvented in later decades and, with little variation, turned into radio and television newspeople who were just as circulation-hungry and cynical as their prototypes. Capra made more than 50 movies, 36 of them feature films, between 1926 and 1961, and social critic-historian Ray Carney believes he "had a profound emotional and psychological effect on more than three generations of American audiences."

From the beginning, Capra had an intimate relationship with newspapers. As a youngster, he peddled the Los Angeles Times for 10 years, stuffing the papers--inserting one section of the Sunday edition into the other--each Saturday night from 9 p.m. until 2 a.m. The smell of newsprint was all over him. One of his biographers, Joseph McBride, said Capra even had a fleeting youthful ambition of becoming a reporter for a daily newspaper.

Capra's best friend was Myles Connolly, a Boston Irishman and hard-boiled newspaper reporter for the Boston Post. Like so...