THE stage drama, Late Night Final was, our theatre critic noted back in November 1931, gripped and held the imagination. “It is powerful,” he wrote, “even if its portrayal of ‘yellow’ journalism is stark and repulsive.” A few lines earlier, he had observed that the play, about American journalism, revolved around circulation figures: “Human dignity and human life are sacrificed for the extra hundred thousand copies, and everything and almost everybody is brutally frank.”

Louis Weitzenkorn’s play, which featured three revolving stages, had been a critical and popular hit before it arrived at Glasgow’s Alhambra Theatre. Wrote our critic: “The ‘Evening Gazette’, in its efforts to modernise a serial based on a twenty-year-old murder, hunts down the woman - now happily married - associated with the crime, and tragedy follows. A managing editor is disillusioned, and after some plain speaking vacates his chair. That, in effect, is the story.

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Herald Diary

“Godfrey Tearle [seen her on the right] provides the driving power. He is, of course, the employee of a dollar-hunting proprietor and a ruthless figure in control of the ‘tabloid’ journal, which he eventually despises and leaves. His portrayal of the role is masterly in the extreme. He typifies the prevalent idea of American driving power, and his acting when overtaken by remorse at the tragic happenings which his actions involve is of the standard associated with his name.”

Clare Harris, who played the woman with a past, interpreted her role most successfully, “and on her first appearance in Glasgow won the applause of the audience. There are reporters and photographers - fanciful, one would hope - to whom nothing is sacred, and a newspaper proprietor who is unscrupulous as some of his staff.”