A lady publishing mogul in 1957! How shocking! Well, this is a comedy so I guess it was okay.
Susan Hayward is playing Dottie Peale, a magazine owner and editor who is angry that a family friend was passed over for a position in favor of Major General Melville Goodwin (Kirk Douglas). She and her team invite Mel to her home for an in-depth interview. In truth, she plans to use her journalism skills to dig up dirt about the general and publish a scathing expose complete with photographs. Mel is wise to her from the get-go, yet Dottie still gets him into some silly situations.
Despite Mel’s derogatory remarks (he compares women to poodles at one point), they fall in love. However, Mel is instantly ready to break it off just as Dottie is ready to give him a good article. She instead goes back to her scandal cover story and includes a top secret story that Mel told her in confidence. Mel changes his mind, wanting to marry Dottie, however, the magazine is about to run. This scandal ends up angering their readership and Dottie’s team tells her to apologize to Mel in the magazine. Oh, and there’s a Senate hearing over her printing classified stories.
At first, I thought his was going to be a story about how a woman journalist went to far because she was a woman. I kept waiting for more sexist remarks about how a woman shouldn’t run a magazine because she’s too emotional. Still, it’s pointed out that Dottie making rash decision and refusing to apologizing for her mistakes is not a “female issue”. Instead, it is established that she comes from a long line of family members with the same traits who all ran the magazine before her. The movie also brings up questions of interview ethics. Apparently, the words “off the record” didn’t exist yet. I agree that Dottie should have given up her place as publisher for not showing good judgement as a writer and journalist.
