Just perfect...

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

1937's "Love is News" marked the second film to pair Tyrone Power and Don Ameche ("Ladies in Love" came first), but it was the first to offer Power top billing, which reportedly infuriated leading lady Loretta Young. She definitely comes off worst of the three, as heiress Tony Gateson, tiring of the gossip printed about her, getting even with hot shot reporter Steve Leyton (Power) by offering up a scoop for all the other newspapers, that she and Leyton are engaged. Naturally, this doesn't sit well with her former fiancée (George Sanders), but her uncle (Dudley Digges) plays along so far as to buy an interest in Steve's ailing paper, Don Ameche as the harried editor. The stars are able to carry the thin screwball plot, while the supporting players prove even better, in particular Slim Summerville's judge and Walter Catlett's fellow reporter. Fans of Lon Chaney Jr. will be most disappointed, as what would have been his first film under a two year contract with Fox found his role as an unbilled newsman left on the cutting room floor, a fate repeated in "That I May Live," "Born Reckless," and "Walking Down Broadway."

this film is hilarious from beginning to end. don ameche getting phone calls from MABEL...the two reporters in a laughing craze remembering old times......the jail scene the doors......Loretta young has got to be one of the best looking of all actresses. and good in comedy. as for TYRONE POWER may i say its not a good thing to see him so often on screen. we tend to look at only him and not the expressions of other actors. this man is perfection. and power handles comedy just as well as CARY GRANT. was going to give it a 10...but lets not go overboard. heard it has been remade as the wonderful urge....i got this one too and will watch it later. buy or watch this funny unpretentious little screwball comedy....you wont regret it

Why is it that in the old days, movies used people's private lives as front page news? Wasn't there a depression going on? A war about to break out in Europe? A big New York newspaper then has to focus on the life of a silly millionairess (Loretta Young) who has just broken off with a gold-digging Russian Count (George Sanders). Reporter Tyrone Power gets on her plane, gets her to talk, then gets the story to his editor (Don Ameche), on a break from saying "yes, dear" to his constant telephone calling nagging wife (whom, thankfully, we never see.) Young decides to get even by alerting the other local newspapers that she has become engaged to Power, which causes him havoc at every turn as he deals with sudden "celebrity status" and the fury of Ameche. Cute premise, yet beyond "today's newspaper, tomorrow's fish wrapper" premise, who would really care about such goings on when the world is in trauma? OK, in the society column perhaps, but on the front page? Oh, let's be real here! OK, this is just a film, a screwball comedy famous for such lapses of reality. Did audiences really think that a bunch of rich people would traipse all over New York looking for a forgotten man, or that a woman dying of uranium poisoning would become the darling of New York society? Yet, "My Man Godfrey" and "Nothing Sacred" were spoofing the ridiculousness of society and newspaper headlines with their farcism. The problem here isn't the premise, or even the stars; It would be great if the story appeared in another section BUT the front page. It is also very apparent that Loretta Young and Tyrone Power were one of the best looking screen couples of the 30's, and had TONS of chemistry. That made them box-office bonanza, and they could re-do "Abie's Irish Rose" and get away with it. But I don't think anybody believes that Loretta Young was anything like the rather brainless twit she plays here that would waste her entire life trying to make Powers' miserable by acting all lovey dovey and not end up falling in love with him herself. Tyrone Power comes off best; He is handsome without being embarrassed by it (like Robert Taylor was), and masculine without being ridiculously macho. He's just your average guy who happens to look like a movie star, that's all. His charm was very apparent and he comes off more likable than Ms. Young.As for Don Ameche, sadly, he is wasted here. There is no love triangle involving him; His role could have been played by any contract character actor. Even though he had been in films for only a year, it was apparent he was going places, so he is sadly wasted. George Sanders plays his typical Euro-Trash cad, not as deadly as in some of his other films, yet obviously out for his own gain. Walter Catlett is funny as a rival reporter who plays chess with Power using beer and whiskey as the pieces. It probably set off a trend of college parties where the winner gets drunk, and the looser ends up hang-over free. (Who's really the looser?) Then, there is the small town jail scene with Slim Summerville as the droopy faced judge who sentences Power and Young to do time for various crimes. (She was speeding; He was taking something out of her car at her request, which she later denied). The sequence is funny (featuring prison doors that keep falling off the hinges) yet unrealistic. Yet again, this is a screwball comedy, not at all to be taken as anything but a fantasy of what life is really like. Jane Darwell has a few amusing moments as Powers' landlady. Dudley Digges, usually cast as elderly villains, has a change of pace here as Young's likable uncle.The film was remade in 1948 (with an aging Power and Gene Tierney) as "That Wonderful Urge" that seemed even more out of place in Post-War America when there was more important things to go into the entire newspaper than stuff like this. This time, the heroine pretends their married, which adds some sexual tension into the midst. Comparing the two films on the DVD, "Love is News" comes off a bit better, though not much.

While watching Love is News, what I wished for was that this film would have been cast and directed by a whole different team. Because I like screwball comedy, it's hard to do, and requires a finesse, a light touch, and a specific feather tone from both director and actors to handle delicate material - like a soufflé - a little bit too heavy- handed, and it falls flat. With the exception of Slim Summerville as the small-town judge, the performances were uniformly bad. None of the very young and green principals knew how to handle comedy - so they just went broad and big - Don Ameche bellowed, Loretta grinned and mugged, and Tyrone Power was over-animated. Of course it was the director's fault - pump it up, give me bigger, bigger. But he was dealing with actors who were not natural comedians, whose charms were more in smaller gestures. I kept dreaming of the usual stable who could handle the material - Jean Arthur, Carole Lombard, Cary Grant, Melvyn Douglas - because the storyline was fun and sillilly amusing - an heiress turns the tables on a reporter, and decides to put him under the glare of publicity by planting a false story. I watched it all the way through, seeing potential in the script, and wishing it had been at another studio and cast differently, with a different director. I think it could have been a classic. There were priceless moments, from the fake car crash, to the jail scene, the airport scene - that with the right actors and a director like Mitchell Leisen or Greg LaCava or Howard Hawkes could have catapulted this film in a minor classic instead of an ersatz version of the classic screwballs by people who knew how to do it