Murder in the Big House

This is quite comparable with "His Girl Friday" a few years earlier, it is the same kind of virtuoso journalism with the dialog rocketing like crossfire all through, and the story is ingenious and interesting. A new journalist happens to get the chance of a first rate scoop, when he notices irregularities in a prematurely executed convict, who had something to tell and had threatened to do it, if he was executed. He didn't have to do it, as the journalists posthumously found it out anyway by clever tactics and maoeuvres, and the road through this mess of smokescreen jungles is a sustained thriller, Van Johnson doing his first great lead, followed by many others, in spite of his rather undramatic appearance but demonstrating his stage presence entirely by his integrity and personality. It also reminds very much of Richard Brooks' "Deadline" ten years later, an even more advanced virtuoso journalism thriller, while this one has a good position between the two chief masterpieces in the genre.