A young female reporter is fired from a big city newspaper, then decides to take over a troubled small town newspaper. She encounters difficulties with small town politics, getting advertisers to help keep the paper afloat, and issues with 1930s feminism in the resistance she receives from the town's residents to her attempts to run the newspaper.

This film is amazing and not very well known. Why not? Peggy Shannon is like a Rosalind Roussell on a budget. And Sterling Holloway is here, in all his glory... is this an openly gay character? If not, it is about the closest we probably see in this era.

A great story through and through, and well worth a peak if you can find a copy. It is available as a bonus feature of "Deluge", though frankly it is much better than the main film!

Peggy Shannon's career may have been almost at an end by 1934 but her films with independents ("False Faces", "Deluge", "The Devil's Mate") gave her some of her more substantial roles. "The Back Page" is no exception being about a female editor who exposes the corruption that is rife in a small town. Films had come quite a way in the couple of years since "Exposure" which showed Lila Lee, owner of a struggling newspaper, as being almost a damsel in distress who caves in when macho journalist Walter Byron comes along.

Gorgeous Peggy Shannon plays ace reporter Jerry Hanson who is devastated when her first big scoop is ordered to be killed because one of the recipients is very influential in the city. In disgust she heads to the hometown of her reporter boyfriend (always reliable Russell Hopton) to take up the editor's job of the rag, tag and bobtail local "The Apex Advocate". Once she overcomes the old owner, Sam Webster's (Claude Gillingwater) objections that because she is a girl, she will be no good, Jerry finds a huge story that is being smothered, once again because of the undue influence of the town's leading citizen, Martin Blake (who else but Edwin Maxwell). He has put about a story that the town is sitting on oil and encouraged most of the town's people to put their life savings into the stock. Webster doesn't believe it but he is over a barrel; he owes Blake money so the paper can't afford to be impartial. Blake is not happy with the spruced up Advocate, all thanks to snappy Jerry who believes there is oil in the town but now Blake is putting about that he will do the right thing by the town by buying up their "worthless" stock so he doesn't see them out of pocket!!

This is just a grand little story and proves once again that poverty row didn't necessarily mean poverty in production or talent and could sometimes be more cutting edge in dealing with the woman's angle than some of the more prestigious studios. Aside from those stars mentioned there is the always quirky, always welcome Sterling Holloway with his "I'm Bill Giddings - that's Giddings with a zzzzz"!!!

"Back Page" is a very low-budget film from tiny Pyramid Productions. And, because it's a very cheap B-movie, the cast is mostly made up of unknowns and a few scenes where folks flubbed their lines were STILL included in the movie!

The story begins with a lady reporter becoming angry with the newspaper owner, as he killed her story and she resented it. Since she's tired of beig a little fish in a little pond, she takes her friend's suggestion to go to a tiny paper in order to run things herself. Soon Ms. Hampton is the managing editor and the tiny fly-by-night paper is growing very quickly. But there are some dishonest folks in town who are determined to take over the paper and stop its crusading ways.

At about 24:55 and 55:25, some lines were badly blown. But the director didn't bother re-shooting it...most likely because Pyramid couldn't afford it! This, combined with a mediocre story about a plucky lady reporter, consign this to the category of a time-passer and nothing more. Not terrible but not all that good either.