Five Star Final

Five Star Final (1930), a melodrama by Louis Weitzenkorn. [Cort Theatre, 175 perf.] Caring only about circulation, the callous newspaper owner Bernard Hinchcliffe ( Berton Churchill) orders his editor, Randall ( Arthur Byron), to revive the sordid, long‐buried story of Nancy Vorhees ( Merle Maddern), who had been acquitted of the charge of shooting her lover. Nancy is now married to Michael Townsend ( Malcolm Duncan) and is preparing for the wedding of her daughter Jenny ( Frances Fuller). When a reporter visits her, she gives him a picture of Jenny, thinking it is for the marriage notices. Learning the truth, Nancy begs Randall to kill the story, but he insists it is still news. The story is published on Jenny's wedding day, and Nancy and Michael commit suicide. Jenny comes to the newspaper office to kill Randall but, learning that Randall has quit in revulsion, walks away. Richard Lockridge of the Sun observed that the A. H. Woods–produced play displayed such “scathing contempt for tabloid journalism and its supporters that in the end only a few charred bones remain to mark the place.” The Theatre Guild had produced a similar play the night before, Claire and Paul Sifton's Midnight, which some critics thought had more literary value. But the dramatic effectiveness of Weitzenkorn's play succeeded, while Midnight failed. Louis WEITZENKORN (1893–1943) was born in Wilkes‐Barre, Pennsylvania, and later studied at Columbia. He was primarily a newspaperman but wrote several plays, of which this alone was successful.