Slander Reviews

An attack against the gossip magazines that thrive on creating scandals and ruining people's lives. In this case, Johnson is the victim of a particularly ruthless publisher, Cochran, who exercises his egocentricities by printing slanderous items. He threatens to reveal that Johnson was convicted for armed robbery as a teenager unless Johnson supplies him with behind-the-scenes gossip about a Broadway star. Johnson refuses and is quickly fired from the television job he struggled so hard to obtain. Even sadder is the death of his son, who is run over as he runs from teasing youths. But Cochran gets his when his mother, Rambeau, apparently guilt-ridden at the monster she brought into the world, shoots her son. Though the plot is contrived and too much of it depends on dialog, it makes its point.