You know, it sure seems that the more films I see from the 1930s & 40s, the more I'm becoming convinced that this so-called "Golden Age" of movies was, in fact, not as "golden" as some people would like to imagine it to be.

Yes. I'll agree that there were certainly some real gems from that particular era of film-making - But, what I'm beginning to discover is that for every precious gem that is so fondly remembered, there remains a literal quarry full of nothing but ordinary stones and pebbles that would best be ground up into gravel.

In other words - The mediocre & forgettable b-movies of those days of yesteryear definitely out-number the gold by, at least, 10 to 1. I ain't kidding here.

Power Of The Press was, in its own way, something of a dramatic social commentary. Its story concerned the political machinery behind honest, fair-minded news-reporting, as opposed to the denial of freedom of speech through selling the gullible public narrow-minded bias and manipulative propaganda.

Unfortunately, this rather run-of-the-mill picture lacked conviction and a substantial enough bite to its seemingly dire message.

I suppose that a lot of this picture's mediocrity could be rightfully blamed on the "Hayes Code" (which was in full-force at the time). This vicious, self-righteous censor board trampled on hundreds of well-meaning movies from this era and, pretty much, reduced them to their pitiful toothless state.

Power Of The Press (which had a running time of only 64 minutes) was directed by Lew Landers who churned out dozens of low-budget movies throughout the 1930s & 40s.

Landers died in 1962 at the age of 61.

Capra-esque (in fact, Capra even directed a movie with the same title years earlier) story of a humble small town editor trying to take down a big city isolationist publisher. The plot is fairly engaging and the script has some snappy lines, but it's all so thick with propaganda that it's hard to take seriously. Otto Kruger is so malicious and devious, he might as well be wearing a swastika on his arm. Heck, they practically call him a Nazi in a half dozen different ways anyway. Still, as heavy-handed and hokey as it is, it's kind of fun, and I enjoyed Gloria Dickson's performance as the loyal, brassy secretary (shades of Jean Arthur in MR. SMITH). The best of the three early features in the Sam Fuller box set, even if that's not a tough contest to win.

This film is part of a Sam Fuller DVD collection that was recently released. However, unlike most of the films in the set, he only wrote this film--he did not direct it.

The film begins with the owner of a New York newspaper coming to realize that his paper has betrayed the public's trust by distorting stories in order to sell papers. He's about to give an important speech and decides to use this platform to announce important changes to the paper. However, he is shot and killed and the amoral man who was about to get fired for what he's done to the paper is now in charge. Little does he know that the boss dictated a new will before dying--leaving the paper to an honest small-time publisher (Guy Kibbee--in a rare dramatic role).

The purpose of the film is to discuss the abuse of the first amendment's freedom of the press. At times, it draws a parallel to the yellow journalism and half-truths of Nazi Germany. In many ways, the film is an attack on extreme nationalism and implies, quite rightly, that Americanism is best exemplified by an open mind and a desire to print the truth. Sadly, the sort of distortions and manipulations shown in this film are not exactly things of the past--though I assume newspapers don't hire hit-squads like they did in this film! The movie is quite entertaining though it does on a bit strong and seem a bit idealistic. However, despite the heavy-handed ending, the film is quite entertaining and a nice low-budget film from Columbia.

By the way, another reviewer said that this film effectively killed Otto Kruger's career. Though it could be argued that the quality of the scripts he got after this film might have declined, it certainly didn't ruin his career as he has more than 60 credits following "Power of the Press".