Crass and competitive, New York Express editor Mark Chapman is a big man, a winner. Standing before a graph noting the newspaper’s rising circulation, talking a mile a minute, Chapman makes his case before the indignant biddies and squeamish elitists who own the paper, highlighting editorial strategies that resulted in increased circulation: “We played down the presidential appointments and concentrated on the Gorilla Man killings.” When they protest the paper’s fallen state, he reminds them how much they like their dividend checks. Men like Mark Chapman provide results: The NYX’s daily circulation is already over 600,000; if Chapman can take the NYX over 750,000 he’ll earn a massive bonus.
Hotstuff reporter McCleary is Chapman’s protege, his go-to guy. McCleary enjoys his job, thriving in the fast-paced environment. The bright-eyed baby-faced scoopster to whom success seems so natural smiles his way though his work day, never getting his hands dirty, even when they’re all over the great unwashed. The cold-hearted Chapman, who in contrast seems to celebrate the exploitation of the peons he covers, takes pride in McCleary’s work, so much that their relationship reflects that of a father and son. Railing against the out-of-touch owners who would compromise their creative vision, Chapman fashions he and McCleary as crusaders in a noble cause and cites majority ownership as a goal once he cashes in his bonus. Later, Chapman quips about the time when McCleary will be in charge of his own paper.
Good girl Julie Allison is a feature reporter and the film’s ethical voice. She sees Chapman as a heartless ogre and tries to talk sense into McCleary. A battle for the young reporter’s soul ensues. Julie is friends with Charlie Barnes, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter now out of a job because of his rampant alcoholism, a beautiful soul, a romantic everyman. Julie taps Charlie as a source, slipping him ten bucks for his effort. As Barnes runs into the Express crew on their way to dinner, he waxes on about the old days and asks Chapman for a job. Chapman leads him on and promises to call. Once Charlie is gone, he quickly denounces him as an “alchie” and a “rummy” and makes it clear he has no intention of using him.
Chapman organizes a Lonely Hearts Dance offering a public wedding giveway, but he despises the pathetic losers who attend. The wife of his youth is among the rabble and recognizes the man who deserted her 20 years ago, only she knew him as George Grant. Chapman is reluctant to be seen together in public, so they have it out in her dingy apartment. Marks still visible on her wrist indicate past abuse. Chapman says she bores him, and he’s man eager to get rid of bores and nuisances, to have his lawyer take care of things. He tries to pay her off, but she’s a feisty fighter who threatens to spread his story around town. A physical altercation breaks out and she ends up dead. He manipulates the scene to cover up the crime, making it appear she slipped in the tub. Meanwhile, he takes her suitcase, filled with incriminating evidence, to the Pete’s Hock Shop. He also rips the “Lonely Hearts Club” tag from her dress and pulls the wedding ring from her finger, tearing up the tag and dropping the ring down the sewer.
Always one step ahead of the cops, McCleary finds the top of the tag and its fastening pin still attached to her dress and sneaks off. McCleary seems to be having the time of his life as he works the folks down at the mortuary, flirting with the old clerk and buttering up the mortician with sports tickets. When the police think accident, he knows better. The body was already dead before it was placed in the tub. McCleary matches the photo of the corpse with Charlotte’s photo from the gala. With a major scoop in place, McCleary takes it to Chapman, proudly and impressively recounting the entire tale exactly as it happened. Chapman squirms but knows better than to stand in the way of a fresh catch like the “Ms. Lonely Hearts” murder. When pressed by Julie on the ethics of exploiting the poor woman’s death, Chapman agrees that the paper should pay for Ms. Lonely Heart’s funeral.
Charlotte’s suitcase wasn’t in her room, so McCleary’s next mission is to find it. Chapman discovered a Pete’s Hock Shop pawn ticket among Charlotte’s belongings, so he sneaks off to check it out, only to be scared off by a few cops inside the store. As her turns away, good ‘ol Charlie Barnes greets him, eager to follow up on the job offer. Charlie no sells the brush off; Chapman can’t shake him. They are seen together by one of Charlie’s friends, a wino witness. In disgust, Chapman shoves some money at Charlie, who doesn’t even want it, but the pawn ticket was wedged between the bills. Charlie, instincts still in tact, puts two and two together and quickly cashes it in, finding two photos and a few other personal belongings inside the suitcase. The first photo features a wedding; the wife is clearly a young Charlotte, but the husband’s face is obscured. Another, a honeymoon shot, clearly pictures young Chapman as George Grant. Charlie phones Julie immediately, but the noisy drunks in the saloon he’s calling from make it difficult to make his pitch. Julie puts McCleary on the phone, respecting that it’s his case. McCleary doesn’t take Charlie seriously and even puts Chapman on the phone as he passes by. Chapman brushes him off again, but not before hearing that Charlie knows the killer’s identity. Not getting the response he had hoped for, Charlie threatens to take the story to The Daily Leader. Charlie places one of the photos in his waistband and the other in the case, which he leaves behind the bar, but Chapman is waiting for him outside The Leader. Backing him down into a dark alley, Chapman congratulates Charlie on his dynamite scoop. Charlie retorts, “You wanted to be a big man . . . and now you’ll be famous beyond your wildest dreams.” Chapman does him in, leaving with the photo that was on Charlie’s person, the shot that identified him as George Grant.
McCleary, seemingly touched by what happened to poor Charlie, picks up where the old guy left off; following the trail back to the bar, he eventually finds the case and with it the other half of the pawn ticket and the remaining wedding photo. McCleary forces Chapman’s hand into publishing the photo, but with his face obscured, it’s still a longshot he’ll be identified despite a $1000 reward put up by the paper. With daily circulation zipping past 720,000, Chapman is sweating it out but hanging in there. McCleary finds the wino witness at the bar, but he wants to describe the killer to the boss, the man who’ll pay out the money. Standing face to face with Chapman, he describes the killer as like Chapman in every way, but he doesn’t actually out him. Chapman is finding it harder and harder to keep it together.
Devastated over Charlie’s demise, Julie resigns. McCleary apologizes and encourages her to join him in the quest to find the killer, proposing they head to Connecticutt, where documents among Charlotte’s belongings indicate the wedding took place 20 years ago. Chapman tries to talk McCleary out of it, arguing that it’s best to stay close to the scene of the crime, but McCleary insists he follow his gut, reminding Chapman that it was him who taught the lesson to never give up.
Chapman calls to check to see if Hacker, the priest who married him, is still in business but is told not in the last five years. Meanwhile, ten days later, McCleary and Julie still haven’t found the man despite pressing flesh and posting fliers with the wedding shot. Finally, the retired judge spots one of the fliers. They bring the old judge back to the city, and Chapman offers to take Hacker in. While Hacker doesn’t immediately recognize Chapman, his voice gives him away. Chapman pulls a gun but is unable to pull the trigger on McCleary, instead reminding his protege of his promise that someday McCleary would run into a really great story: Chapman recites the opening graf of the cover story chronicling his own arrest. As the cops enter his office, he shoots at an officer’s foot and gets plugged. As the story breaks the next morning, NYX daily circulation soars past 750,000.
For all his big man bluster, Chapman lacks the expert obfuscation tactics of Earl Janoth, the big man behind The Big Clock, who uses his media empire to deflect suspicion after he murders a woman from his past. Chapman is too bound by his sensationalist ethos to manipulate the investigation like the mogul Janoth, who can pursue pet projects on a whim. Chapman was born to sell papers and deals with obstacles the only way he knows how, to squash them like the competition. While Janoth is pinning the crime on a patsy, Chapman is out whacking winos with his bare hands. Jannoth, however, is a spoiled, helpless child without smooth second-in-command Steve Hagan, who does the dirty work for him, but Chapman’s second isn’t a cover up guy, he’s an uncoverer, closer to George Stroud, the hard-working journalist who almost falls prey to Janoth’s set up, than Hagan.
Chapman willingly tramples nobodies on his way to the top, feeling no sting of remorse over their destruction, feeling only, when pushed, narcissistic love for his prodigy, even though the attributes Chapman instilled in his protege lead to his capture. McClearly is both the Monster and Walton–an offspring of Chapman’s ambition, but also a witness to its destructive potential. Will McCleary turn the ship around and head for safe harbor (both Julie and her ethics) or sail for the Pole (maybe 1,000,000 daily)?
