Newsmen on Hearst's Chicago Herald-American remember fondly The Front Page, written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, onetime colleagues, and still never pass up an opportunity to play cops & robbers. Six weeks ago, Managing Editor Harry Reutlinger saw his chance again when a used-car dealer named Robert L. Knetzer,charged with swindling customers out of about $1,500,000 (TIME, Oct. 25, 1948), escaped from a Springfield, Ill. jail. Reutlinger called in his star crime reporter, Leroy ("Buddy") McHugh, and gave him the kind of assignment that Herald-American staffers often get but seldom succeed in: find Knetzer, badly wanted by the FBI.
McHugh knew...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
