Paper Orchid (1949) User Reviews

Not Your Standard Newspaper Movie

[boblipton · 7/10 · 4 January 2020]

When the newspaper owner dies, his widow takes over, determining the paper will be run on strict, moral lines. Her first step is to fire managing editor Hugh Williams and replace him with Walter Hund. Williams fumbles around a bit, and eventually lands a job on a competing paper. At this point, gossip columnist Hy Hazell finds that her tenant is dead with his throat cut.

It's a most peculiar murder mystery, in that most of it is about the newspaper industry and the people who work in it, their relationships and habits. It's certainly not a new approach, but it doesn't have the stereotyped characters who make up the traditional newspaper mystery movies. Instead, it's full of disagreeable sorts, like interfering publishers, whining lawyers, reporters who get drunk after the work day is over, reporters who get their facts wrong... basically a human enterprise filled with realistic humans. It's also filled with some fine actors in minor roles, like Garry Marsh, Sid James, and Vida Hope. People behave like people... or at least they behave in ways other than the usual movie stereotypes.

Director Roy Ward Baker certainly keeps things clattering along. Even the small parts, played by actors who never became household names get their chance to show there are no small parts, only short ones: when the camera is focused on you, you're the star.

And that's how you make a superior movie.

Didn't Quite Know Whether It Was a Romantic Comedy or a Murder Yarn!!

[kidboots · 7/10 · 17 December 2020]

Because the murder doesn't take place until more than half way through it's almost as though this film doesn't quite know what it wants to be - is it a racy newspaper adventure that Hollywood did so well in the 30s and 40s with beauteous Hy Hazell as Stella in the role that either Bette Davis or Glenda Farrell would have made their own? She gets a job on a paper with false references - suave Hugh Williams is her boss but changes are imminent with the death of the paper's owner. His widow takes charge and one by one the reporters find themselves wending their way to the rival paper.

Suddenly an artist, a "lame dog" being championed by a dizzy news photographer is found murdered in Stella's flat and things turn dramatic. The film had been bouncing along and I think at 90 minutes it was too long to sustain the light weight plot and the murder investigation seemed like an after thought. Sid James is fabulous, he has a couple of those famous chuckles but it's interesting that he seemed to be thought of as a heavy in the early part of his career. Not really a "heavy" here but his character has a lot of light and shade as Freddy Evans, a news hound who falls for Stella deeply, too deeply for this light weight yarn.

strong dramatic performance from Sid James

[malcolmgsw · 6/10 · 11 June 2015]

Whilst this is a fairly routine newspaper murder mystery film,nevertheless it contains a fine dramatic performance from,of all people,Sid James.he plays a news editor hiding a dark secret.The plot is routine.Hy Hazell is a woman journalist who has an artist for a lodger,one day she comes back and finds his throat cut.Since there seems to be no other suspects out there Hazell becomes the prime focus of police attention.The film is not in any event about the murder so much as how Hugh Williams,can keep his knowledge of the crime secret form the police and other journalists to enable him to get a scoop.Whilst not one of the leading players,James's character is nonetheless central to the climax of this relatively unknown film.

Just rare, that's all.

[searchanddestroy-1 · 17 March 2014]

I watched it just because it was a rare Roy Ward Baker's film. And not a horror flick please. So, I went to it. This director gave us good feature before his Hammer period: just remember INFERNO, MORNING DEPARTURE, A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY, DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK...

So, I decided to try this one.

I got bored, I must admit. A story around a female reporter accused of a murder, she of course did not commit.

Talkative and boring for me. But I would not say it is bad and not Worth. No one has commented it yet, so I do it. But I have never liked UK stuff from the thirties and forties. This feature makes no exception.