Best movies & TV Shows like The Big Story

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Big Story Starring Burgess Meredith, Norman Rose, Ben Grauer, James Dean, and more. If you liked The Big Story then you may also like: You're Telling Me, Wake Up and Live, Winchell, Queen for a Day, Kentucky Moonshine and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

TV show

Based on a popular radio series, each show tells a different reporter's Big Story, a true story selected from newspapers across the United States. Comments from the actual reporter open and close each show but the permanent narrator drives the plot line and a featured actor dramatizes the reporter's role.

The Big Story
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You're Telling Me

Hubert Abercrombie Gumm, a flighty, eccentric screwball acquires a job as an executive at a radio station at the insistence of his only-slightly less eccentric aunt Fannie Handley, who is married to one of the company owners. After mixing up the script pages to the various radio programs, Hubert sets out to get the name of a returning explorer on a contract for the radio station. Other than the title, this film has no connection at all to the 1934 W.C. Fields film of the same title even though some sources give the plot of the Fields' film as the plot of this film.

Wake Up and Live

Satire on radio, built around the supposed feud between bandleader Ben Bernie and journalist Walter Winchell.

Winchell

The true story of the influential and controversial columnist, Walter Winchell.

Queen for a Day

Adapted from the TV and radio series of the same name, the producer of said show reads letters from three woman providing the framing story for this melodrama anthology film. The tales focus on parenting and family struggles.

Kentucky Moonshine

The Ritz Brothers pretend to be Kentucky hillbillies in order to get a booking on a radio show.

Ace in the Hole

An arrogant reporter exploits a story about a man trapped in a cave to revitalize his career.

The Big Broadcast

The top brass at a radio station believe their popular new star singer is paying more attention to his love life than to his career.

A Boy Named Sue

A Boy Named Sue chronicles the transformation of a transsexual named Theo from a woman to a man over the course of six years. Following Theo's physiological and psychological changes during the process, as well as their effects on his lesbian lover and community of close friends, A Boy Named Sue tells a story about gender identity, relationships, and how even things that seem permanent can change.

Chillerama

It's the closing night at the last drive-in theater in America and Cecil B. Kaufman has planned the ultimate marathon of lost film prints to unleash upon his faithful cinephile patrons. Four films so rare that they have never been exhibited publicly on American soil until this very night! With titles like Wadzilla, I Was a Teenage Werebear, The Diary of Anne Frankenstein, and Zom-B-Movie, Chillerama not only celebrates the golden age of drive-in B horror shlock but also spans over four decades of cinema with something for every bad taste.

Tailspin Tommy

A young mechanic gets a job with a small airline, which he helps win a mail contract. A rival airline plots to destroy it in order to get the contracts for itself.

Dream Girl

A young woman spends much of her time fantasizing about what might be, but a realistic admirer tries to convince her to live the life she has.

Big Town

A newspaper editor goes on an anti-crime crusade, but gets carried away.

The Star Maker

This is a film about the life of Gus Edwards, a well known vaudeville composer, entertainer, and producer.

Twenty Million Sweethearts

Unscrupulous agent Rush Blake makes singing waiter Buddy Clayton a big radio star while Peggy Cornell, who has lost her own radio show, helps Buddy.

Give Out, Sisters

The Andrews Sisters headline this musical. They play the lead act at a popular nightclub. The trouble begins when they hire a few students from a financially foundering dance school for their newest production. One of the dancers, a rich young socialite, desperately wants to be in it too, but her prurient maiden aunts refuse to allow her to disgrace their family by becoming a common chorine. She and the club owner (who must have the aunt's permission because the girl is underage) try to convince them, but it's not easy.

Father Was a Fullback

Coach George Copper's college football team is losing game after game, much to the dismay of stiff-and-stuffy but influential alumni Roger Jessup, and also having trouble at home with his oldest daughter, Connie. The team keeps losing and Coach Cooper is about to lose his job as his efforts to win the last game of the season, against the team's Big Rival, end in disaster. But, unknown to he and his wife, Elizabeth, Connie has sold an article, called "I Was a Bubble Dancer" to a 'True-Confession" magazine, and the girl-who-couldn't-get-a-date becomes suddenly popular and, because of her, the high-school football star from another town decides to play his college-ball for Coach Cooper. Jessup is forced to keep Cooper on as the school's football coach.

Partners in Time

Squire Skimp has a new plan to swindle the people of Pine Ridge. However, Lum has something more important on his mind. He has to tell a young engaged couple on the verge of breaking up the story of how the Jot 'em Down store first started (through flashbacks). Based on characters from the popular "Lum and Abner" radio program of the time.

The Witching

With Halloween only hours away, the members of a popular podcast, The Witching Hour, gather to swap scary stories in the dark. But they bargain for more than just ratings when they venture to the site where the Woodland Valley Witch was brutally murdered.

Tokyo Rose

Lotus Long plays the title role, an American-educated Japanese woman broadcasting enemy propaganda to American troops. Captured GI Pete Sherman is one of a group of POWS slated to be interviewed on Tokyo Rose's radio program. Instead of advising his comrades to surrender (as ordered), Sherman uses his innate Yankee knowhow to hoist the treacherous deejay on her own petard. Managing to make his escape, Sherman hooks up with the Japanese Underground, convincing anti-militarist Charlie Otani to aid in a kidnapping plot aimed at Tokyo Rose.

Behind The Headlines

A radio reporter sets out to rescue his ex-girlfriend when she is kidnapped by gangsters.

Larceny on the Air

A doctor working with the Bureau of Pure Foods and Drugs, uses radio broadcasts to expose fraudulent patent medicines.

Fit for a King

Newspaper reporter "Scoops" is sent out on assignment, to investigate the failed assassination attempts on Archduke Julio. Trying to get the story, he runs into Jane Hamilton who is really Princess Helen. He doesn't realize that she is the story: a princess in exile, in danger of assassination; and, falling in love with "Scoops", while engaged to a prince.

Riding on Air

Smugglers are using a device for controlling airplanes in flight, and newspaper reporters from Chicago are vying for the story. Reporter Elmer Lane is out to scoop rival reporter Betty Harrison, and capture her heart in the process.

I Cheated the Law

An attorney (Tom Conway) learns he was duped into being his gangster murder client's (Steve Brodie) alibi.

The Corpse Came C.O.D.

Rival reporters (George Brent, Joan Blondell) investigate a Hollywood star (Adele Jergens) and the box she receives with a dead man inside.

Sing, Baby, Sing

The "Caliban-Ariel" romance of fiftysomething John Barrymore and teenager Elaine Barrie is spoofed in this delightful 20th Century Fox musical. Adolphe Menjou plays the Barrymore counterpart, a loose-living movie star with a penchant for wine, women, and more wine. Alice Faye plays a nightclub singer hungry for publicity. Her agent (Gregory Ratoff) arranges a "romance" between Faye and Menjou. Eventually Faye winds up with Michael Whalen, allowing Menjou to continue his blissful, bibulous bachelorhood. Sing, Baby, Sing represented the feature-film debut of the Ritz Brothers, who are in top form in their specialty numbers--and who are awarded a final curtain call after the "The End" title, just so the audience won't forget them (The same device was used to introduce British actor George Sanders in Fox's Lancer Spy [37]).

George White's Scandals

Reporter Miss Lee is looking for a story and approaches George White as he's assembling the latest edition of his famous revue. As it turns out, she has lots of backstage gossip to choose from

Police Story

Police Story is an anthology television crime drama. The show was the brainchild of author and former policeman Joseph Wambaugh and represented a major step forward in the realistic depiction of police work and violence on network TV. Although it was an anthology, there were certain things that all episodes had in common; for instance, the main character in each episode was a police officer. The setting was always Los Angeles and the characters always worked for some branch of the LAPD. Notwithstanding the anthology format, there were recurring characters. Scott Brady appeared in more than a dozen episodes as "Vinnie," a former cop who, upon retirement, had opened a bar catering to police officers, and who acted as a sort of Greek chorus during the run of the series, commenting on the characters and plots.

The Twilight Zone

A 2002 revival of Rod Serling's 1950/60s television series, The Twilight Zone, with actor Forest Whitaker assuming Serling's role as narrator and on-screen host.

The Hunger

The Hunger is a British/Canadian television horror anthology series, co-produced by Scott Free Productions, Telescene Film Group Productions and the Canadian pay-TV channel The Movie Network. Though it shares a title with the feature film The Hunger the series has no direct plot or character connection to the film, and was created by Jeff Fazio. Originally shown on the Sci Fi Channel in the UK, The Movie Network in Canada and Showtime in the US, the series was broadcast from 1997 to 2000, and is internally organized into two seasons. Each episode was based around an independent story introduced by the host; Terence Stamp hosted each episode for the first season, and was replaced in the second season by David Bowie. Stories tended to focus on themes of self-destructive desire and obsession, with a strong component of soft-core erotica; popular tropes for the stories included cannibalism, vampires, sex, and poison.

People Magazine Investigates

Uncover the heart-wrenching true stories behind crimes that transcended headlines and became part of popular culture. Exclusive first hand interviews reveal shocking twists, new evidence, and unexpected resolutions.

Wild West Chronicles

Once a feared lawman, the legendary Bat Masterson trades his sheriff's badge for a pen and becomes a newspaper reporter. He now travels the frontier to chronicle the amazing true stories of the Wild West and bring them to life once more.

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