Walk East on Beacon! (1952): Ordinary Citizens Versus Communists

The title Walk East on Beacon comes from a note that one of the characters, Professor Albert Kafer, receives from a communist spy ring that is trying to steal his and other scientists’ work on nuclear and space technology at the Montrose Laboratory in Washington, DC. Kafer lives in Boston, Massachusetts, however, and he is to walk east on Beacon Street in his adopted hometown to meet his mystery contact and receive further instructions. Kafer has become an easy target for the communists because his son Sam has been kidnapped off the streets of West Berlin, when it was still partitioned by the World War II Allied Powers, and is being held hostage. If Professor Kafer doesn’t cooperate, he will never see his son again.

The film’s title (Walk East on Beacon!) actually ends in an exclamation point, but I am deleting it to keep odd computer spelling autocorrections from taking over.

Before the emotional tug of Kafer’s human interest story becomes a prominent feature of the plot comes the opening sequences that explain why all the espionage and danger is happening in the first place. The story itself is based on an article by then director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) J. Edgar Hoover; his article “The Crime of the Century” had been published in The Reader’s Digest. Like Walk a Crooked Mile, Walk East on Beacon is a semidocumentary with a voice-over narrator. Both are postwar stories about the FBI battling communist spy rings trying to steal scientific secrets from U.S. government laboratories. After World War II, the United States was in the grip of the Cold War with the former Soviet Union, and peace and prosperity were accompanied by Soviet aggression and the threat of nuclear war. The national mood at the time was another perfect subject for film noir. Of course, Hoover wants his FBI to look good, and it does in both films. According to Hoover and Hollywood, viewers in the postwar period can be assured that their government is looking out for their best interests.

Click here for my article about Walk a Crooked Mile.

The opening credits in Walk East on Beacon appear over what looks like a puzzle piece on a gray background. As the credits roll, other puzzle pieces are added one by one until viewers see an aerial shot of Boston, Massachusetts. It’s a clever way to orient the story, especially if you are familiar with Boston landmarks from 1952. The film itself starts with photos of Washington, DC, J. Edgar Hoover (head of the FBI at the time) and FBI agents, and a voice-over narrator telling viewers that everyday citizens (“responsible and alert American”) have an equal and just as important part to play by supplying tips, as has happened in Boston, Massachusetts. The voice-over narrator clarifies any details that viewers are unfamiliar with or may have missed. In fact, the FBI’s story in this film starts with a woman leaving an anonymous tip with the Boston FBI office: She thinks that someone named Robert Martin is forcing her husband to work for an espionage ring.

Like Walk a Crooked Mile, Walk East on Beacon also begins with very official FBI agents going about their work. Robert Martin is already under surveillance and has been since the tip from the woman in Boston. Martin boards a Polish freighter in Boston harbor but never gets off. Someone named Michael Dorndoff does, and he is wearing Martin’s clothes. FBI agents working undercover follow Dorndoff and arrest him on the Boston Common, across the street from the Massachusetts State House. The two agents tailing Martin are using an ice cream truck, and it is the perfect decoy, especially in the 1950s, when such trucks selling an assortment of ice cream treats were more common.

Walk a Crooked Mile, released in 1948, is procedural and very serious. Walk East on Beacon, released four years later in 1952, is also very serious, but it seems to poke a tiny bit of fun at its own expense—and it’s not just the ice cream truck. The exposition is procedural, formal, professional, bordering on comical. FBI agents have a pencil sketch of J. Edgar Hoover in the background of their offices. Later in the film, for example, when one of the communist spies is arrested in Washington, DC, she launches into a tirade about ill treatment and complains that the FBI agents are nothing but vicious bureaucrats in suits. The agent who is interviewing her sits and listens patiently until she is through—and then asks her who her boss is.

(This article about Walk East on Beacon contains some spoilers.)

But the danger is very real and frightening for the character of Professor Albert Kafer. He is a mathematician at Montrose Laboratory and works on a secret classified project that goes by the name Falcon. Kafer is forced to work with the communists because they have his son, and they will kill him if Kafer doesn’t cooperate. Kafer may be not an ordinary citizen: He is a European émigré and he is a scientist working in a specialized field. But he calls the FBI because he is trying to do the right thing, the best thing. Inspector Belden interviews him and sets another part of the FBI investigation into motion. Kafer doesn’t want to get involved with the actual investigative work because he wants to keep his son alive, but he agrees to work with the FBI as long as his wife is kept out of it.

The entire investigation is set in motion because of the anonymous tip from a woman in Boston who is concerned about her husband and the coercion used to get him involved with espionage. Professor Albert Kafer agrees to help the FBI because he feels it is the best that he can do to protect his son and his work—and in that order. At one point, Inspector Belden tries to convince Kafer to cooperate with the FBI whatever the consequences, but Kafer reminds Belden that the only thing more important to him than his work is his family.

The postwar Cold War period may be frightening with the changing international situation, but ordinary citizens can do something about it, too. There’s a little more of a take-charge attitude for everyone, not just the U.S. government and the FBI in particular. In Walk a Crooked Mile, the murder of FBI agent Jimmy Colton near the Lakeview Research Laboratory in Lakeview, California, starts an investigation into his murder and another investigation into what the he might have been calling about in the first place. The FBI agents, with the help of a Scotland Yard investigator, are in charge and pursue leads. In Walk East on Beacon, the FBI is still in charge, but there is a frank admission that loyal American citizens can do a lot to provide help and information, and it all starts with that tip from one woman in Boston.

The storylines of individual characters in Walk East on Beacon are given more detail and thus more prominence in the narrative. Kafer is coerced into revealing secrets because he fears for his son’s life. A cab driver, Melvin Foss, is coerced because the spies have found out that he was a registered member of the Communist Party and they threaten to reveal this during the era of McCarthyism in the United States, when American Communists were ostracized and fired from their jobs. When cooperative American spy Robert Martin doesn’t produce the results that the communists want, he is shipped to Moscow (which I took to be a euphemism for “murdered”). FBI Agent Reynolds interviews Mrs. Martin at their home, but she cannot shed light on her husband’s activities because she had no idea that her husband was planning to board a freighter for Poland. All of these characters are under great strain, and part of it comes from the secrecy. It is a factor in their thinking and decisions.

These semidocumentary films noir about the FBI in the 1940s and 1950s can seem dry today. I imagine that they were both fascinating and horrifying, however, for postwar audiences facing a new and unknown world order that included the possibility of nuclear war. Compared to Walk a Crooked Mile, Walk East on Beacon interweaves several personal stories of its characters to keep the scientific and historical information from overwhelming the narrative, and it does so more effectively than Walk a Crooked Mile in 1948. Walk East on Beacon shows quite successfully why the science and technology matter and how they affect people’s lives in different ways. The personal stories help keep the suspense going once the exposition is done, for example:

◊ Will Sam Kafer, Professor Albert Kafer’s son, be rescued from his captors in Europe?

◊ Will the FBI break up the communist spy ring and intercept the theft of the classified formulas before they are in enemy hands?

◊ Will Professor Albert Kafer finally be free of the communists who eventually try to take him to Moscow against his will?

These two films—Walk a Crooked Mile (1948) and Walk East on Beacon (1953)—are only two examples of the semidocumentary style of films noir about the FBI and postwar espionage. Both were distributed by Columbia Pictures, but that is the only other detail that I could find in common for both films. They are only four years apart, but I think they show that films noir about the new threat of communism in the postwar period were getting better and better at telling their stories.

April 29, 1952, release date  •  Directed by Alfred L. Werker  •  Screenplay by Leo Rosten, Virginia Shaler, Laurence Heath, Emmett Murphy  •  Based on the story “The Crime of the Century: The Case of the A-Bomb Spies” by J. Edgar Hoover  •  Music by Jack Shaindlin, Louis Applebaum  •  Edited by Angelo Ross  •  Cinematography by Joseph C. Brun

George Murphy as Inspector James (Jim) Belden  •  Finlay Currie as Professor Albert Kafer  •  Virginia Gilmore as Teresa Henning/Millie Zalenko  •  Karel Stepanek as Alexi Laschenkov/Gregory Anders  •  Louisa Horton as Elaine Wilben  •  Peter Capell as Chris Zalenko/Gino  •  Bruno Wick as Luther Danzig  •  Jack Manning as Melvin Foss/Vincent  •  Karl Weber as FBI Agent Charlie Reynolds  •  Robert A. Dunn as Dr. Wincott  •  Vilma Kurer as  Rita Foss  •  Michael Garrettas Michael Dorndoff/Frank Torrance  •  Lotte Palfi Andor as Anna Kafer  •  Ernest Graves as Robert Martin  •  Robert Carroll as Boldany  •  George Roy Hill as Nicholas Wilben  •  Helen Mitchell as a lip reader  •  Westbrook Van Voorhis as the narrator

Distributed by Columbia Pictures  •  Produced by Louis de Rochemont and Columbia Pictures