The next thing I saw was where they had written identical stories for their respective papers, not about the execution but about a singer named Mabel Gaye who'd mysteriously dropped dead on stage, is that right? But how did they get from the execution to Mabel Gaye?
To answer your question a mere four years after you posed it: Mabel Gaye was a Broadway singer who, as near as I could make out, ended up killing her lover (or perpetrated some other "crime of passion").
The story Curt Devlin (George Brent) first composed (for his own newspaper) had him telling the editor over the phone something like "Her career began with a song on Broadway and ended with a song at 4:33am this morning" (I'm paraphrasing here). Of course, he meant to rewrite the story he gave to Ellen's (Bette's) paper so that it would be different than the one he filed for his own, but, of course, things got fouled up and the two stories were printed as dictated (i.e. they were exactly the same).
Anyway, the gist was that Mabel Gaye was a singer who went wrong and ended up in the electric chair as a result (just as you surmised in your later post).
One other thing:
What was the deal with Davis coming back in and fainting and her misogynist fiance had to cover for her -- was that about she'd witnessed an execution and couldn't handle it? because she's a woman, of course! (As if men never fainted or got sick at something like that)
You have to remember that the movie is all about Ellen and Curt competing against one another. Without Bette fainting at the beginning, how are we, the audience, to know that, compared to Curt, she is relatively green and inexperienced? The idea is that, as the film progresses, she becomes more and more savvy and, of course, ends up scooping him in the end.
(I mention this because I think you're being a little too hard on the screenwriters who came up with the plot in 1935. The important thing is that, in the end, Ellen becomes a
Front Page Woman exactly the way she set out to be.
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Molly-31
12 years ago
Thank you. I've answered questions on imdb many years after they were posted, too
You've got me?! Who's got you?!
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