Never Fear, The Newsies Are Here!
An in-depth look into one of my favorite musicals
Note: this post features spoilers for both the movie and play, so if you haven’t seen them and don’t want to be spoiled, stop reading!
Hello, friends! Today I’m going to talk about the incredible Newsies franchise and share my opinions on the play and movie.
There’s a whole lot to get into today, so let’s dive in!
Newsies in Real Life:
Did you know that the newsies strike was actually REAL? The people organizing it were mainly poor orphans in New York. The newsies (newspaper boys and girls) worked for the biggest corporations in the state, most notably The New York World, The New York Sun, The New York Journal, and many others during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Many newsies were without families or homes, but the newspaper companies still considered them cheap child labor, which was yet to be outlawed. (And if you’re wondering why the newsies weren’t put on orphan trains like many other children in New York, there were twenty to thirty THOUSAND children living on the streets in the 1870s. As immigration increased, the number of orphaned children did too. There was no way all of them could be put on orphan trains.)
Before the Spanish-American War in 1897, the newsies paid 50 cents for 100 papers, which meant they could buy two papers for a penny. They sold the papers a penny apiece and were allowed to keep the extra money. But when the Spanish-American War came, the newspaper companies decided to increase the newsies’ price to 60 cents for 100 papers, cutting the newsies’ profit down to forty cents. The newsies didn’t complain because the headlines were often good and they could sell more papers.
The businesses profited from the newsies because they were receiving a fixed amount of money from hundreds of newsies every single day. Joseph Pulitzer (who owned the New York World) and William Randolph Hearst (who owned the New York Journal) were constantly trying to make more money than each other, which often resulted in a loss of profits for both of them as they tried to win by spending more money on buying each other’s editors and reporters to get the best edge. This resulted in the decision to keep the 60 cent price after the war ended in 1899. Many newsies, who had profited from the glitzy headlines the war had brought them, now found themselves scrambling to make any money at all.
The newsies decided to go on strike. Their organizer was Louis “Kid Blink” Balletti, an Italian newsboy who was not, in fact, an orphan, but an immigrant who lived with his family in an apartment complex. Balletti partnered with David Simmons (a Jewish boxer), and many others. Balletti and Simmons were thrown out of the strike’s leadership positions after allegedly betraying the strike by selling newspapers. (Kid Blink would later have criminal charges against him in 1912 and die from tuberculosis in 1913.)
Ed “Racetrack” Higgins and Spot Conlon took over the strike’s leadership, and Racetrack was the voice of the strike from then on. The strike was not won entirely by the newsboys – after two weeks, Hearst and Pulitzer agreed to a refund: the unsold papers could be returned and the newsies would get money back. This was done without the permission of the union itself, but many newsies went back to work and the strike was ended.
If you’d like to learn more about the real-life newsie strike, this article was super helpful!
Turning Real Life Into A Movie:
All the information above was taken into consideration when Bob Tzudiker and Noni White began to write the screenplay that would end up being the 1992 movie Newsies. Balletti was changed to dashing eighteen-year-old Jack Kelly (played by Christian Bale), who is the leader of the strike in the movie and longs to find his family out west in Santa Fe. He is aided by his best friends, Davey Jacobs (based on David Simmons and played by David Moscow) and Crutchie (based on “Crutch” Morris and played by Marty Belafsky). The movie also features Davey’s brother Les (Luke Edwards), Davey’s sister/Jack’s love interest, Sarah (Ele Keats), and Medda Larkson (played by the very famous Ann-Margret – the role was like Taylor Swift having a bigger singing part in The Giver.)
Many of the elements were kept the same – the newsies struck against higher prices, Pulitzer and Hearst constantly battled each other for superiority, and the newsies stuck together through thick and thin. But there were also differences: like Jack’s family being criminals (or Jack not even being his real name), the lack of feminist girl characters that aren’t just there to fall in love with, or how they never really addressed the Refuge as the horrible place it was.
The movie, while successful today, was a flop at the box office – it made $2 million dollars, which wasn’t even a FIFTH what it cost to make the movie ($15 million). Everyone was disappointed, until people began to rewatch it and put on local stage productions of the movie. Eventually Disney stepped in to create a script of its own, and the Broadway production was born.
From Screen to Stage:
The Broadway production was everything the movie had been lacking: it sprung the musical movie up from the depths of “movie musical failure” to “Give it a little tweaking and it’ll be AMAZING!”
The play was reworked again and again. Almost all of the songs from the movie were cut from the play, and the few that weren’t cut had lyrics changed to better fit the production’s needs. Most of the songs you hear in the play are ones you won’t find in the movie.
Along with the songs, a few new characters were added that changed the script completely. The biggest change was Katherine Plumber, the New York Sun reporter, who was a conglomeration of Bryan Denton, the original Sun reporter in the movie, and Sarah Jacobs, Jack’s love interest in the movie. This helped the storyline make more sense (and add a shocking reveal when Jack realizes that Katherine is actually Pulitzer’s daughter…dun dun dun…).
The play debuted in 2011 at the Paper Mill Playhouse as a trial run, and much to everyone’s surprise, it did so well Disney offered to put it on Broadway for thirteen days. After those thirteen days were up, Disney would either remove the show from Broadway or continue its production until an indefinite date.
Newsies the Broadway production did SO well that it ran on Broadway for over two years and played over 1,000 shows. In the original cast, Jeremy Jordan played Jack, Kara Lindsey played Katherine, Ben Fankhauser played Davey, and Andrew Keegan-Bolger played Crutchie, alongside many other talented actors and dancers.
The production took $5 million to make, but unlike the movie, Disney quickly gained the same amount of money in seven months of the musical, making it the fastest Broadway musical to turn such a big profit. The play would go on to be filmed and turned into a movie in 2017, bringing back the original cast and filming for four days to get the camera angles and experience of the play just right. The recording of the play is now on Disney+.
My Takeaway on Newsies (and Closing Statement)
There’s a lot to be said about both Newsies productions. One was technically a failure…and the other one did very well. Is that because the play is better than the movie? Or is that just because it had a new audience?
In my opinion, both the movie and play are good adaptations of a real event that happened almost a century before the movie was even created. Sculpting an entire plot from the small amount of information available is not easy. Newsies the play had a different audience than Newsies the movie, but the play had the edge up, because the amount of people who had seen Newsies the movie and LIKED it were more likely to see the play with their friends and family.
That being said, there are a few strengths and issues from both I’d like to highlight.
I will forever be a little sad that there wasn’t more female representation in the movie. The play does a good job of adding more female roles, but there are only three big female roles in the movie: Sarah, Medda, and Mrs. Jacobs. And the even sadder part is that we didn’t get to know each of them very well. I would have loved to see more behind the scenes of Medda’s establishment (she literally owned the joint!), or learned more about Sarah and her job.
The play and movie balance each other out in terms of character. Jack Kelly is the same barebones character in both, but the movie really brings out his soft side, and the play has Jack as a little more rough-and-tumble kind of guy. Both work in terms of context!
Les is perfect in both.
Because the strike is such a huge part of the storyline, we never really get more about the other newsies – even Crutchie, who’s gone for most of the second half. I might just be saying this because I’m a writer, but I’d love to know how the newsies got their nicknames,and what their personalities and dreams are like. They’re such a big part of the play, and I wish we got more about them!
I’m writing this after having watched both the movie and play adaptations (and talking about it) with my musicals class. The class has been amazing so far, and I’ve really enjoyed learning about musicals through a critical lens.
I’d love to know your thoughts on the Newsies franchise! Have you watched either of the adaptations? What did you think? Feel free to drop a comment below with your thoughts.
I hope everyone has a wonderful day – thanks for reading, and keep on being kind! 💖
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