Hollywood crime films a direct result of tabloid journalism

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Hollywood rips another movie from the tabloid headlines! For years, the film industry has taken real events that fueled story after story in the tabloids and turned them into escapism for the general public. Nancy West, an associate English professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, found this trend originated with Hollywood crime films from 1920 to 1960.

"When people hear the word tabloid, they think trashy, smarmy, and untruthful," West said. "But the New York Daily News was a success in its heyday. People read the tabloid to be entertained. People need to realize that many wonderful films, such as Public Enemy and Scarface, are based on tabloid journalism."

One example, according to West, is the Ruth Snyder Incident of 1927. Snyder, a Queens, N.Y. housewife, and her lover Judd Gray, a corset salesman, murdered Ruth’s husband Albert, the art editor of Motor Boating magazine, for the insurance money. The crime sparked a media frenzy. Hollywood, fueled by the public’s obsession over Snyder, made more than a half dozen films from 1929 to 1946 based on the event, including Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice.

West argues that with these types of real life crossovers between film and tabloid journalism came film noir, the dark mood, style and tone of many American crime and detective films, and the femme fatale, the alluring actress who leads the weaker male character to his ruin.

"If you look at the tabloid photos of the era, you’ll see a striking similarity between them and the look of film noir," West said. "You’ll also notice that the tabloid’s glorification of the female murderess, like Ruth Snyder, is a direct link to Hollywood’s obsession with the femme fatale."

West also points out that it was not only Hollywood that greatly benefited from tabloid journalism. According to West, official crime scene photos of today weren’t, at one time, standard procedure, but become so when law enforcement personnel noticed the value of narrative and evidential photos used by tabloids.

West, along with former MU graduate student Penelope Pelizzon, is writing a book on the subject titled, Tabloid Dreams & Celluloid Fantasies: NY Newspaper Culture and the Hollywood Crime Film, which is due to be completed next year.

2002

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Nancy West
English Department

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