the audience applauded

Powerful

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

I was interested in this film for two reasons - I like Edward G. Robinson very much, and just last year, I saw Marsha Hunt at Paramount's 100th anniversary party, 95 years old, with all her marbles, looking marvelous. It is wonderful to see her here, at the age of 23.Unholy Partners takes place after World War I, when a newspaper man, Bruce Corey (Robinson) returns from the conflict - but not to his old reporting job. He wants to start a different kind of newspaper -- more of a tabloid, something people can fold over and read easily in the subway. But he doesn't have the money. He approaches a crooked gambler, Merritt Lambert (Edward Arnold) and wins the $250,000 from him that he needs, making them partners. Corey starts the paper along with his secretary (Laraine Day) and an assistant, Tommy (William T. Orr). Conflicts arise when Lambert objects to the investigation of certain stories that involve him.This is a good film, somewhat melodramatic, with a pretty Hunt singing "After You've Gone" - she had a wonderful voice - as she plays Gail Fenton, who is dating Lambert, but has drawn the interest of Corey's assistant (Orr). If you baby boomers will think back, you may remember that at the end of every TV series produced by Warner Brothers there was the name Wm. T. Orr - Orr became a very successful executive producer. Robinson, Arnold, Day, and Orr are all very good.This film came out around the same time as Citizen Kane so probably got lost in the shuffle, not that it's anywhere near as good. The interesting thing is they talk about the end of tabloid era. Little did they know that we're still in it, worse than ever.The paper Corey starts, The New York Mercury, was based on the newspaper The New York Mirror. One of the reviews mentions reading the Sunday funnies. I did too. It was a fun paper.

Edward G Robinson (Corey) returns from the war and is offered his old job back at the newspaper he used to work for. However, he has bigger ideas and wants to run his own newspaper now. The only way he can get financing to start his business is to come to a deal with gangster Edward Arnold (Lambert). They become 50/50 partners in the business - the unholy partners of the title. Robinson is one of these do-gooder types who wants to clean up the city and so, when Arnold - his financier and number 1 gangster in town - tells him to back off from a story, he disobeys him coz he wants to see justice done. What a knob-head. He is basically begging to be killed off. Whether he does get what's coming to him is up to fate.This is pretty predictable stuff with a corny ending. Robinson is good as always but Arnold is better. Thank God he is in the film. He has a sort of Raymond Burr deep voice and big thuggery frame and makes a good baddie. The rest of the cast are OK, although William T. Orr (Tommy) is slightly annoying at times. The film is not particularly good and there is no need to see it again. It finishes and then you sling it onto the junk pile - if you have any sense. Robinson's character is unconvincing and the final line is pure cheesiness. It's not a disaster but there's not a lot to say about it. Everyone has done better and it's a forgettable affair.

This film is not perfect, but it is gritty enough to be real, in the style that is more in keeping with films of the later 40s. The two Edwards play well off each other, and it is a shame that they didn't make more films together. Although it was not a strong film for the female cast, it did give Laraine Day and Marsha Hunt some scope to show they were more than the dolly-birds that many directors took them to be. Call me superstitious, but three of the main cast were born in 1917 and all 3 lived to 2002, with the two lasses still going strong. Perhaps it is a sign that the director chose some strong actors to make this film hum along effectively. As to its portrayal of the paper business, it is highly contemporary in its grasp of how media men prefer to make the news than report it. The very fact that Miss Hunt and her husband, Robert Presnell were allegedly blacklisted for their communist (for this read, Liberal) sympathies in the 1950s is an ironical grasp of the power of the press over any idea of truth or talent over power and influence. Mervyn LeRoy remains an icon of morally strong, but unsentimental film-making in what is often a candy-coated world. 9 Stars.

Potentially interesting story of go-ahead newspaperman Robinson and gangster Arnold as co-owners of groundbreaking tabloid newspaper, wrecked by reducing almost everything to melodrama. Despite the shadowy George Barnes cinematography and great performances by leads and supporting cast, the glossy MGM house style takes the sort of ripped-from-headlines story that director Leroy used to do at Warner Brothers -- often starring Robinson -- and reduces it to mush.