Screen Capture Theatre: "Scandal Sheet," or Greed All About It

From out of the blue of the western sky comes ... Screen Capture Theatre! Today's entry: the 1952 film ... 

"Scandal Sheet" takes place in a mythical world
where people read newspapers.

Rush Limbaugh -- I mean Broderick Crawford -- plays
 Mark Chapman, hard-driving newspaper editor.

Chapman has made the New York Express a circulation
juggernaut by emphasizing misleading headlines ...

... sensational stories ...

... and a comics page with "Marmaduke." People just
love that doggone pooch!

The stockholders don't like Chapman's sleazy approach, but they very much like their big dividend checks. Chapman's goal is to reach 750,000 -- readers, not scowls.

The newspaper's star reporters are Donna Reed,
biding her time until a sitcom comes along ...

... and John Derek, biding his time until
he marries someone named Bo.

At a lonely hearts dance sponsored by the paper,
Chapman runs across the wife he abandoned years ago.

They begin discussing old times.

But Chapman's wife's head gets discussed right into
an iron pipe, and she is seriously killed.

At least it makes for a nice story.

Derek and his photographer sidekick, Col. Potter
from "M*A*S*H," set out to solve the case.

You'd sweat, too, if you felt the long arm of justice reaching right up into the bowels of your guilty conscience.

In the end, the reporters get their man ...

... and the circulation of the Express
finally reaches 750,000 because of the story ...

... and the addition of "The Lockhorns" to
the comics page.