Dial 1119 (1950)

I saw Dial 1119 for the first time about ten years ago, and I honestly couldn’t remember much about it. I’ve seen it a couple more times recently, and I was pleasantly surprised. The film is short, only about seventy-five minutes long, and it is undoubtedly a B movie, even though it was produced and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, a big-name studio. Its themes are sophisticated for a B film produced seventy-five years ago. These themes are revealed through the storyline and the characters’ conversations—no voice-over narrator is needed to explain anything to viewers.

(This blog post about Dial 1119 contains all the spoilers.)

Some of the characters (Harry, Helen, Skip, Chuckles) who are hostages or victims later in the film are briefly introduced at the start of the narrative to give viewers their separate backstories, and each short sequence shows the characters interacting with others in their lives. Viewers learn about these characters, but they still don’t know a whole about them—not yet anyway. The storyline begins in earnest with Gunther Wyckoff, the main character, on a bus heading to Terminal City.

A woman passenger sitting on the bus next to Gunther offers him part of her sandwich, but he barely acknowledges her. He has his eye on the bus driver’s gun in a holster at the front of the bus. He is so intent on it that even his seatmate notices it. When the bus pauses for a five-minute stop, Gunther steals the gun. When the bus reaches its destination and the bus driver confronts him, Gunther shoots and kills him. No one hears the gunshot because another bus driver is honking impatiently to get moving in the queue to drop off passengers. Gunther has time to walk away before anyone notices him or the female passenger can talk to police officers.

Gunther Wyckoff is in Terminal City to visit Doctor John D. Faron, who is a police psychiatrist. The doctor is not at his office at the Criminal Courts Building, and he isn’t at home either. Gunther notices the Oasis Bar across the street from the doctor’s apartment and heads there to keep watch for Faron. Since the murder of the bus driver and the honking of another bus’s horn, the soundtrack is incredibly quiet, so much so that I thought the DVD I was watching had been damaged. The quiet is very unsettling, but that is the point.

It isn’t long before police officers are investigating the murder of the bus driver, and isn’t long before they identify Gunther Wyckoff as the murderer. His fingerprints are on file because he has already been incarcerated for murder at the Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He has escaped to find Doctor Faron.

Gunther uses the Oasis Bar as a lookout point for the doctor. He notices the bar’s air conditioner and the ribbon fluttering outside its vent. The incident shows something is off about Gunther (besides murder, that is), and the ribbon and the air conditioner actually play a part in the story later. When the news about the bus driver’s murder and Gunther Wyckoff’s involvement is broadcast on the television at the Oasis Bar, Chuckles, the bartender, recognizes Gunther. Chuckles has his own gun on a shelf behind the bar, and he hopes to use it to stop Gunther, but Gunther shoots and kills him before he has the chance to help himself and the others. Helen is already in the bar, and she screams when Chuckles is killed. Her scream is heard by passersby outside on the street, and one of them hails an officer.

Gunther orders everyone who is still in the bar to stay put and takes them all hostage. The five hostages include:

◊ Freddy, who is a woman and a regular customer at the bar

◊ Skip, the waiter, who works for Chuckles

◊ Helen, who is meeting Earl, not a female friend of hers as she promised her mother earlier in the evening

◊ Earl, who is just trying to get Helen to go away with him and doesn’t care about her

◊ Harry, a newspaper reporter

Chuckles, the bartender and owner of the Oasis Bar is already dead. His murder is one of the reasons that the others are taken hostage.

Police officers gather outside the Oasis Bar, as does a crowd of civilians. One of the officers on hand for the quickly developing hostage situation is Captain Keiver. Doctor Faron finally arrives on scene and stops to talk to the captain. Both Doctor Faron and Captain Keiver are already familiar with Gunther Wyckoff because Keiver testified against him and Faron’s professional opinion kept Gunther from being executed three years earlier, something Captain Keiver isn’t very happy about. This time, Keiver wants to do everything he can to make sure that no additional people are hurt, including Doctor Faron. He refuses to allow the doctor to enter the Oasis Bar and talk to Gunther, even though Gunther has already made this specific request. But he will allow the doctor to talk to Gunther on the phone.

The film makes a couple of interesting statements about television journalism and bystander behavior. A bus for Channel 11, WKYL television, pulls up to the scene—or as close to the scene as the police allow. The television reporters are intent on setting up a live feed and broadcasting the action as it happens. They aim for sensationalism, which isn’t hard for them to do with a convicted murderer holding hostages. Many of the bystanders on the street about a block away from the Oasis Bar treat the hostage situation as a spectacle, something for their entertainment. An ice cream truck even drives up to sell assorted frozen treats to the crowd and make some money. People start buying as soon as the truck stops. With the remove of a television broadcast and the luxury of snacks to purchase, the civilian bystanders can afford to be a little distracted, and they show less and less concern for the plight of the hostages.

Doctor Faron and Captain Keiver discuss Gunther Wyckoff and their options. They point out opposing arguments about law and order versus social justice, punishment (including the death penalty, which was more common in the United States in 1950) versus compassion. Their conversations present some philosophical arguments, and here is one example:

• Doctor Faron: “. . . We no longer execute the sick. We’re not in the Middle Ages.”

• Captain Keiver: “I’m not arguing morality. If Gunther Wyckoff had gone to the chair, the life of one man, maybe two—maybe all the people in that bar would have been spared tonight.”

• Faron: “Hank, listen to me for just a moment. Wyckoff has always been unbalanced. Most of us are, in one way or another. But the pressures of tension and circumstances made this boy a killer.”

• Keiver: “This is not news to me.”

Gunther Wyckoff is apparently suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He remembers his World War II military service in battle vividly, and he is having trouble adjusting to civilian life. He tells this to the hostages, and he describes one battle in particular very convincingly. In the middle of his monologue, Gunther notices that the air conditioner has been turned off: The ribbon is no longer fluttering. He shoots Officer Ulrich, who is in the air-conditioning duct attempting to confront Gunther and free the hostages. Captain Keiver learns that Ulrich is wounded and will be lucky to survive the ride to the hospital; thus, he is likely to be Gunther’s third victim just that day.

Doctor Faron disobeys Captain Keiver’s instructions to stay away from the Oasis Bar and approaches the bar with the intention of talking to Gunther Wyckoff in person. The television crew captures his approach while he is on the street and broadcasts it live on television. Gunther is pleased when he sees the broadcast on the bar’s television and allows the doctor to enter the bar.

Gunther tells Doctor Faron that he wanted to meet him in person because he wants to kill him. Doctor Faron wants to help him, but Gunther feels that the doctor tricked him the last time (when he was incarcerated three years ago). This time, he wants everyone to know “the truth.” But Doctor Faron reminds Gunther that he was never a soldier:

• Faron: “You never were a soldier. You were drafted and wanted to go but you were rejected. Weren’t you, Gunther?”

• Wyckoff: “Doctor, you better shut up.”

• Faron: “You couldn’t face the reason they rejected you. You went out of your head. You killed. Then to justify a killing you knew was wrong, you invented a dream. You made yourself believe you were a soldier.”

Gunther shoots Faron to keep him from talking any more. He doesn’t want to hear the truth and never did. He has used the war to convince himself that he was indeed drafted and served in battle. As a soldier, he would have killed without criminal consequences, but as a civilian who kills, he most certainly does face those consequences. Doctor Faron insists on the truth, which Gunther cannot bear, so he shoots and kills the doctor (his fourth victim in one day).

Now Gunther wants to kill the hostages because they heard what the doctor said, and he knows that they believe the doctor and not him, just like people did before, as he says. He orders them to stand at the bar, and Freddy notices, in the mirror behind the bar, the gun that Chuckles keeps on a shelf. When Skip rushes Gunther, she grabs the gun and shoots Gunther. Gunther is only injured, however, and runs out of the bar to be killed in a hail of police fire. The hostages return to their everyday lives and concerns rather quickly. The police officers outside the bar break up the crowd, telling the bystanders, “Break it up. Party’s over.”

The film does make some negative observations about human nature, especially for people who are in proximity to danger, who are observing it from behind the safety of a police barricade or through a television broadcast. But it also says something about how humans shy away from the unpleasant. It even showcases an extreme case in Gunther Wyckoff, who invents a false story for himself so he doesn’t have to face a truth he doesn’t want to believe or so he won’t have to take responsibility for his actions.

One of the plot details that I especially enjoyed was that Freddy, one of the female bar patrons, is one of two people who save themselves and the rest of the hostages. Freddy is the one who reaches over the bar and grabs it off the shelf when Skip, a bartender working for Chuckles, jumps Gunther. I also enjoyed the thoughtful conversations between Doctor Faron and Captain Keiver, two people who take their jobs seriously and weigh the consequences of their actions. The issues they raise are not resolved in the film. And how could they be? Captain Keiver’s job and his responsibilities are very different from those of Doctor Faron. It’s even more enjoyable to follow a story like this one that presents real-life issues and lets viewers mull them over for themselves.

Dial 1119 was a pleasant surprise. I enjoyed the story, which kept me guessing. I didn’t know how it would end. The themes about PTSD and mental illness are surprisingly sophisticated, and Marshall Thompson gives a wonderful performance as a young man who has lost touch with reality. I read a review online (and I wish I could remember where online) in which the writer thought that James Dean would have made a better Gunther Wyckoff. But I disagree. Now, I have to admit that I have never been a huge fan of James Dean, but I don’t think he would have given the kind of subtle performance that Marshal Thompson did. Like the female passenger on the bus riding with him to Terminal City, you know that there is something wrong about Gunther Wyckoff, but you cannot put your finger on it right away.

November 3, 1950, release date  •  Directed by Gerald Mayer  •  Screenplay by John Monks, Jr.  •  Based on a story by Hugh King, Don McGuire  •  Music by André Previn  •  Edited by Newell P. Kimlin  •  Cinematography by Paul Vogel

Marshall Thompson as Gunther Wyckoff  •  Virginia Field as Freddy  •  Andrea King as Helen  •  Sam Levene as Doctor John D. Faron  •  Leon Ames as Earl  •  Keefe Brasselle as Skip  •  Richard Rober as Captain Henry (“Hank”) Keiver  •  James Bell as Harrison (“Harry”) D. Barnes  •  William Conrad as Chuckles, the bartender  •  Dick Simmons as the television announcer  •  Hal Baylor as Lieutenant Whitey Tallman  •  Barbara Billingsley as Dorothy, secretary to the newspaper editor  •  John Maxwell as Frank, the managing editor

Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer  •  Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Guilty Bystander (1950)

Guilty Bystander may be the most noirish film noir I have seen so far. The filmmakers decided to shoot the film on location in New York City, and that decision certainly helped them achieve a gritty verisimilitude, in spite of using actors in the leading roles who were well known in 1950. The griminess felt real, even from the viewer’s seat.

Guilty Bystander is available for free online. Click here to watch it at the Internet Archive. If you would like to watch the film with Spanish subtitles, click here.

But on-location shooting wasn’t the only reason Guilty Bystander is so noirish. The two main characters, Max and Georgia Thursday, are flawed in very noir ways. Max Thursday (played by Zachary Scott) is a disgraced police detective who was suspended from the force because he shot Red Folger after drinking on the job; a newspaper reporter discovered the facts and published them, forcing Max’s boss, Captain Mark Tonetti, to suspend him. Max turns to the bottle to console himself, and it isn’t long before he leaves his marriage to Georgia (played by Fay Emerson) to live in the Riverview Hotel, a flophouse near the Brooklyn Bridge, where he lives and scrapes out a living as its house detective.

(This article about Guilty Bystander contains spoilers.)

All this information is part of Max’s backstory, which viewers learn as the film progresses. The narrative actually begins with Georgia Thursday looking for her husband one evening because she is desperate for help finding their young son Jeff. She arrives at the Riverview Hotel, obviously alarmed at the living conditions. She cannot help herself from wiping her fingers when she touches a banister. Georgia has to rouse her husband from a drunken stupor to convince him to help her. The only clue she has about Jeff’s disappearance is a note in which her brother Fred Mace claims to be going on an errand and taking Jeff with him. They were supposed to be back by dinner, but that was more than twenty-four hours ago.

Max Thursday is not such a dedicated drunkard that he isn’t moved by his wife’s distress and the plight of their son. Neither he nor Georgia seem to care too much about Fred, except that his involvement just makes the alarm they feel even more pronounced. Max may be a disgraced police detective, but he jumps into the investigation knowing that he still has the skills and wherewithal to do some good. Both parents can feel some relief knowing that Max is on the case.

But Max isn’t exactly a gentleman. Yes, he loves his wife and son, and he would do anything to protect both of them. But that is actually part of his problem. He is not above telling Angel, one of the leads he is following in his investigation, that he and she should move to Florida and live on the beach for the rest of their lives. To make his act more convincing, he kisses her passionately (enough) while they are on their way to find his brother-in-law. He promises Angel the world because he wants her to lead him to Fred. He will tell her anything as long as he can find Fred and thus his son.

And just in case viewers aren’t convinced that Max Thursday is a heel, he tries to save himself when two thugs show up at the bottom of a staircase by shoving Angel down into them and running up the stairs. By this point, Angel is distraught because she knows she has been taken in by yet another creep. In fact, I was sure that the two thugs would kill her and Max, but no. She runs off shrieking about her close call with death and the betrayal by Max. After all of this, I could still root for Max because I was really rooting for Jeff. Without Max, Jeff could be gone forever, and without his quest for Jeff, Max would be nothing but a corrupt cop who got what he deserved.

And to say that Max is vital to the investigation is not an understatement. The police are on the case, but they do have other priorities, and his wife Georgia does nothing to help, other than showing up at the start of the film and asking Max to get involved. And yet she is not exactly the sweet woman waiting at home for her husband to get his work done. Later in his investigation, when Max returns to her apartment with a gunshot wound in his upper arm, she tends to it expertly enough to extract the bullet.

Max threatens to stop investigating. He cannot even carry a gun anymore since his suspension and so he cannot defend himself. He believes that is how he was wounded in the first place. He knows that he drinks too much and has the shakes, which would affect his aim. When Max feels that he will never find Jeff, Georgia hurls angry statements at him such as “You haven’t gone as far as you can until you’re dead,” “If you haven’t got a gun, go without one,” and “You can’t walk, crawl. But you’re going to bring Jeff back.” Her arguments about Max continuing his investigation have their intended effect: Max is apparently susceptible to a bit of emotional manipulation. Why should Georgia care what happens to Max as long as their son is safe?

Smitty is the proprietor of the Riverview Hotel, where Max lives, and she helps Max with his investigation by providing information. Her position running the flophouse makes her privy to gossip and pertinent information, but she also encourages Max to drink whenever she can. Sometimes he gives in, which adds to the complexity of his investigation and brings him back to the attention of the police and Tonetti, his former boss. Max was the last person to see one of his leads, Doctor Elder, before Elder was found murdered. Max is a strong suspect given his background on the police force and the fact that he accepted Elder’s offer of alcohol when they met. Tonetti wants Max to leave the investigation of his son’s disappearance to the police force, but he lets Max go, his prime suspect in Elder’s murder, for lack of concrete evidence against him.

The search for his son leads Max to a smuggling ring that deals in guns and illegal drugs—and murder. Doctor Elder is his first lead, and the alcohol that the doctor convinces Max to drink tastes a bit like licorice. Audiences in 1950 must have known what Max was referring to when he mentioned the taste of licorice because no other mention is made of this substance, so I did a little research. The alcohol was probably absinthe, and Wikipedia offers a lot of information about it, including bans on its production and consumption. (Click here to read more; scroll down to the subsection called “Bans” if you want that information specifically.) Thus, Max probably guessed right away that Doctor Elder dealt in illegal substances, and 1950 audiences probably would have guessed the same.

The only false note in the film was the ending. Max is suddenly cleaned up and dressed in a suit, and he and Georgia arrive to find Jeff safe and sound, just as Fred Mace had told Max he would be. The happy family walk away down the street together. There is even a moment when the little boy struggles out of Faye Emerson’s arms and reaches his arms up to Zachary Scott to be picked up and held. It’s a charming moment that I think had more to do with the little boy (no credit line for Jeff) and Zachary Scott than it did with Jeff and Max Thursday. In fact, I wondered if the little boy was related to Scott or possibly his own son. But “charming” is hardly a way to describe Guilty Bystander overall. It’s the ending that everyone wants, to be sure. But it comes with no transition, no explanation about Max’s seemingly sudden transformation. The ending felt tacked on, or maybe any intervening scenes had been cut for the sake of brevity.

Guilty Bystander has only recently been restored and made available for viewing. I found this information courtesy of Eddie Muller and his discussion of the film for the program Noir Alley at Turner Classic Movie (TCM). Click here for the YouTube version of Muller’s introduction to the film, which includes lots of information about the writers of the novel that the film is based on and the film’s producers. Muller’s outro (click here) provides more information about the restoration of this film.

In spite of all his flaws, Max is determined to find his son. And Zachary Scott is perfect in this role. I have always been a fan of Scott’s, and I always look forward to seeing a film with Scott in any role, lead or supporting. His performance in Guilty Bystander does not disappoint. It’s a great story, too. The happy ending may not match the rest of the story, but the rest of the story and Zachary Scott’s performance are the reasons to see Guilty Bystander.

April 20, 1950, release date  •  Directed by Joseph Lerner  •  Screenplay by Don Ettlinger  •  Based on the novel Guilty Bystander by Wade Miller  •  Music by Dimitri Tiomkin  •  Edited by Geraldine Lerner  •  Cinematography by Gerald Hirschfield, Russell Harlan

Zachary Scott as Max Thursday  •  Faye Emerson as Georgia Thursday  •  Mary Boland as Smitty  •  Sam Levene as Captain Mark Tonetti  •  J. Edward Bromberg as Otto Varkas  •  Kay Medford as Angel  •  Jed Prouty as Dr. Elder  •  Harry Landers as Bert  •  Dennis Patrick as Fred Mace, Georgia’s brother  •  Ray Julian as Johnny  •  Elliot Sullivan as Stitch Olivera  •  Garney Wilson as Harvey  •  Donald Novis as Detective Johnson  •  Jesse White as the man in the bar  •  Scott Landers as Shaunessy, the police officer in the jail cell  •  Lester Lonergran as the coroner  •  Lou Herbert as a police detective

Distributed by Film Classics  •  Produced by Edmund L. Dorfmann Productions, Laurel Films, New York Film Associates

 

The Killers (1946)

August 30, 1946, release date

Directed by Robert Siodmak

Screenplay by Anthony Veiller, John Huston

Based on a 1927 short story “The Killers,” by Ernest Hemingway, in Scribners Magazine

Music by Miklós Rózsa

Edited by Arthur Hilton

Cinematography by Woody Bredell

Burt Lancaster as Pete Lund/Ole “Swede” Andreson

Ava Gardner as Kitty Collins

Edmond O’Brien as Jim Reardon

Albert Dekker as “Big Jim” Colfax

Sam Levene as Lt. Sam Lubinsky

Vince Barnett as Charleston, the Swede’s prison cellmate

Virginia Christine as Lilly Harmon Lubinsky, the Swede’s former girlfriend, now Sam Lubinsky’s wife

Charles D. Brown as Packy Robinson, the Swede’s boxing manager

Jack Lambert as “Dum Dum” Clarke

Donald Mac Bride as R. S. Kenyon, Reardon’s boss

Charles McGraw as Al

William Conrad as Max

Phil Brown as Nick Adams

Jeff Corey as “Blinky” Franklin

Harry Hayden as George

Bill Walker as Sam

Queenie Smith as Mary Ellen Daugherty (also known as Queenie)

Beatrice Roberts as nurse

John Miljan as Jake the rake

Vera Lewis as Ma Hirsch

Produced by Mark Hellinger Productions

Distributed by Universal Pictures

The Killers opens with two men driving at night; the camera is perched in the backseat so viewers see the road and the signs, one of which lets them know they are entering Brentwood, New Jersey, The music is dark and ominous, with bass notes and horns. The killers are the first characters to appear on-screen. After driving into Brentwood, they walk to the Tri-State Gas Station and then cross the street to Henry’s Diner, where they harass the owner, a customer, and the cook. They are in town to find the Swede and kill him, and they don’t bother to hide this fact. The Swede attempted once to double-cross Colfax, the leader of a payroll heist, and to steal Colfax’s girlfriend Kitty. Colfax isn’t going to let the Swede get away with trying to cheat him.

(This blog post about The Killers contains spoilers.)

The only customer in the diner, Nick Adams, happens to be the Swede’s friend and coworker. Once the killers realize that the Swede isn’t coming into the diner to eat, they leave, and Nick runs to the Swede’s boarding house to warn him about the men looking for him.

• Nick: “Swede, I was over at Henry’s. A couple of guys came and tied up me and the cook. They shoved us in the kitchen. They said they were going to shoot you when you came in for supper. Well, George thought I ought to come over and tell you.”

• Swede: “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

• Nick: “I can tell you what they look like.”

• Swede: “I don’t want to know what they’re like. Thanks for coming.”

• Nick: “Don’t you want me to go and see the police?”

• Swede: “No. That wouldn’t do any good.”

• Nick: “Isn’t there something I can do?”

• Swede: “There ain’t anything to do.”

• Nick: “Couldn’t you get out of town?”

• Swede: “No. I’m through with all that running around.”

• Nick: “Why do they wanna kill you?”

• Swede: “I did something wrong . . . once. Thanks for coming.”

• Nick: “Yeah. It’s all right.”

Some think of the Swede as the character caught in an existential dilemma in The Killers. They point to this conversation as evidence of his resignation to his fate, and there’s no doubt that he doesn’t put up any resistance. When the killers find him, they complete the job they were hired to do and take off. But for me, the Swede is just reacting to his circumstances. He has done something wrong in the past, but he never takes responsibility for the crimes that he has committed. He simply acquiesces to death at the hands of the killers, who aren’t on a path that cannot be changed because fate has put them on it; they’re simply doing the job they have been hired to do. In existentialist thought, the universe is indifferent to humankind, neither benevolent nor hostile. The Swede’s universe is decidedly hostile to him, and he simply tires of running away from it.

The character in The Killers who seems closest to being caught in an existential dilemma in the film is Jim Reardon, the insurance company investigator played by Edmond O’Brien. He’s the one who plods through each day in the insurance company bureaucracy and the one who does his job for small rewards (getting a paycheck and saving the company policyholders from a fraction-of-a-cent increase in their premiums). He accepts the responsibility of the choices he has made: He chose his job, and so he fulfills the requirements of his job as best he can. For Jim Reardon, the universe of the film is indifferent to the fact that he is involved in a Sisyphean task of returning each day to do his job. Yes, he is ultimately a success because of his perseverance: He solves the puzzle of the Swede’s crime and of his murder. But solving the puzzle isn’t the most important thing; what’s important is the process, and Reardon never gives up on the process. The near-meaninglessness of his bureaucratic job is summed up in the final conversation between him and his boss, R. S. Kenyon.

• R. S. Kenyon: “Owing to your [Reardon’s] splendid efforts, the basic rate at the Atlantic Casualty Company, as of 1947, will probably drop one-tenth of a cent. Congratulations, Mr. Reardon.”

• Jim Reardon: “I’d rather have a night’s sleep.”

Kitty Collins is the quintessential femme fatale. She lures the Swede into a hopeless romantic affair, and she double-crosses him and the others involved in the payroll heist. But Kitty doesn’t remain loyal to either the Swede or Colfax. When Colfax has been shot by Dum Dum Clarke and is dying on the staircase in the house that he shares with Kitty, Kitty wants only to save herself:

• Kitty: “Jim! Jim! Tell them I didn’t do anything. Jim, listen to me. You can save me. Jim, do hear me? Tell them I didn’t know those gunmen were coming. Say, ‘Kitty is innocent. I swear, Kitty is innocent.’ Say it, Jim. Say it. It’ll save me if you do.”

• Lieutenant Sam Lubinsky: “Don’t ask a dying man to lie his soul into hell.”

But that’s exactly what Kitty wants if it means avoiding conviction and a prison term.

I really enjoyed the double crosses and the twists and turns of the plot. The Killers kept me guessing until the very end when I saw it the first time. But to gain a better understanding of the Swede’s despair, Jim Reardon’s bureaucratic progression through his investigation, and the lengths to which Kitty will go to save herself, it’s worth seeing The Killers a second time.