Newsies

D Magazine's 30th anniversary book leads off with Blackie Sherrod's "A Legend in?His Own Mind,"?a 1975 homage to Dallas prohibition-era reporter Jack Proctor. It's a fantastic read for anyone who's ever been in a newsroom or watched The Front Page.

These, I suppose, were The Good Old Newspaper Days. There were four[!] Dallas newspapers, all fiercely competitive; bootleg gin was a dollar a pint, delivered; hookers were a deuce; there was a place named the State Cafe where owners would let reporters eat on the tab until payday. And the Texas Centennial celebration had brought all sorts of interesting imports into town. Some, Proctor hinted darkly, were from Chicago and wore black suits all the time...

Jim Chambers, now chairman of the Times Herald, remembers one slow news day when Proctor and other cop shop authors were desperate for a story. Proctor went outside for a walk and noticed police property men dumping confiscated bootled whiskey on the curb. It was running in a rivulet down the sloped gutrter, underneath parked cars. He looked both ways, tossed a lighted match into the stream and raced to the telephone with FIERY HOLOCAUST SWEEPS COMMERCE STREET. The fire destroyed three cars.

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Speaking of The Front Page (the 1974 Billy Wilder/Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau version), it is a media movie must-see. The others?

• A Face in the Crowd
• The Paper
• Network
• All the President's Men
• Natural Born Killers

Comments

[Bruce]

Think I'd put Broadcast News on this list...

[Pegasus]

Actually, intentionally left off. I don't object to it, but it never really did anything for me.

Of course, lots o' folks would mock the inclusion of The Paper. But I think it captures really well the excitement of being in a newsroom on a big day. Plus, the scene that ends in Randy Quaid shooting a stack of papers to end the cacauphony (sp?) is priceless.

[mike]

La Dolce Vita.