-30- (1959)

(On Cable TV, March 2020) At this point in my exploration of Classic Hollywood, I almost live for those hidden gems in the margins of the official canon we remember from past decades. Something very much like -30-, a thoroughly satisfying newsroom thriller that nonetheless feels practically unknown these days. I think that some of this may be due to a title (Dash three zero dash, newspaper shorthand for “end of story”) that’s nearly impossible to search online; some of it to a less-than-stellar box-office performance; and maybe also because it’s a somewhat average film that just happens to hit a lot of my buttons. I mourn, for instance, the disappearance of newsroom dramas—I like that subgenre a lot, and anything even feeling like one automatically gets a few points from me. I’m also a sucker for time-compressed films, and this film barely fits within a single nighttime shift with a cavalcade of subplots to fill the running time. Jack Webb stars, directs and produces the film in a very efficient fashion: despite the fast pacing of the film, there are few stylistic flourishes even if the script crackles with pretty good repartee. Looking at some of the film’s contemporary reviews, I see that many critics dismissed the film’s outdated throwback to 1930s newsroom tropes despite taking place in the late 1950s. That kind of criticism is virtually irrelevant today, as one period blurs into another and we don’t really care as much as to whether it’s twenty years out of date or just an entertaining-enough script. The soundtrack isn’t bad, and the entire narrative has enough energy to make it to the morning. It reminded me a lot of 1994’s The Paper, and that’s another plus-for-me aspect of the film that may not work as well on others. But who cares about the others? -30- is my TCM discovery of the week, and one more reason to keep watching even if I think I’ve seen most of the classics.