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

Call Northside 777 (1948)

James Stewart gets top billing for Call Northside 777, even though his two previous films, Magic Town and It’s a Wonderful Life, were financial flops. Stewart wanted to play the role of investigative reporter P. J. McNeal (aka Mac, aka James) in Call Northside 777 precisely because it was different compared to his previous roles and because he hoped it would tweak his on-screen image and give it a boost. The role is different for Stewart, although the on-screen persona for which he is most famous does get to shine through toward the end, when he tries to convince members of the Illinois prison board to examine the new evidence that he has found in the Frank Wiecek case.

In spite of its poor showing at the box office, It’s a Wonderful Life was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and James Stewart was nominated for Best Actor. I am guessing that Stewart’s acting and reputation still had some cachet at the time. And, of course, It’s a Wonderful Life is a holiday standard today.

The film starts with a voice-over narrator explaining the city’s history in brief (very brief!), starting with the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, which allowed the city to rebuild itself. Scenes for the film are mixed with actual newsreel footage. The Prohibition years were the most violent, and the year 1932 was exceptionally violent. This leads right into the topic of the film: December 9, 1932, the date of the murder on which the film is based. In the film, two men enter Wanda Skutnik’s store, which is a front for a speakeasy. They shoot Patrol Officer John Bundy, who had entered the store just minutes earlier to get in from the cold.

The Chicago police get the name of Tomek Zaleska from a tip. When they learn that he had spent the night of December 9 with his friend Frank Wiecek, they bring in Wiecek and his wife Helen for questioning. Small insignificant points in Frank’s story differ from that of his wife, and so he is charged with murder, along with Zaleska, and both are convicted. Both maintain throughout that they are innocent.

Eleven years later, Brian Kelly, the city editor for the Chicago Times, sees an ad in the classified section that gives the film its title:

“$5000 reward for killers of Officer Bundy on December 9, 1932. Call Northside 777. Ask for Tillie Wiecek, 12–7 p.m.”

He decides that McNeal should investigate the ad. At the time, even eleven years after the trial, almost everyone in Chicago would have been familiar with the real-life story and would have remembered it.

McNeal finds out that Frank’s mother, Tillie Wiecek, placed the ad. She has worked and saved for eleven years washing floors to offer the reward money. Tillie believes in her son and knows that he is innocent. McNeal sees the human interest potential in the story and writes a newspaper article about Tillie Wiecek. Newspaper readers love the story, and many of them write and call in to the newspaper about it.

(This article about Call Northside 777 contains spoilers.)

City editor Kelly wants McNeal to write a follow-up story, and McNeal decides to go to the Illinois State Penitentiary at Stateville to interview Frank Wiecek. Wiecek maintains his innocence, as he has always done. He tells McNeal the following: (1) The judge in the case, Judge Moulton, thought that Wiecek and Tomek Zaleska were innocent; (2) Wiecek’s court-appointed lawyer was a drunk; and (3) Wanda Skutnik, the eyewitness at the trial who claimed that she saw Wiecek and Zaleska shoot the patrol officer, couldn’t identify Frank Wiecek and Tomek Zaleska at first, but then she did identify both in court.

McNeal’s second article about Frank Wiecek is another success, and his boss Brian Kelly wants him to continue writing articles on the Wiecek case. McNeal isn’t very happy about continuing the series because he doesn’t believe in Wiecek’s innocence at first. He’d rather focus on what he thinks are more pressing matters in the city. So he decides to interview the ex-wife to see why she divorced Frank Wiecek. Maybe she has some information that will give a negative slant to the Wiecek case, McNeal can end the series once and for all.

Helen Wiecek has since remarried and goes by the name Helen Rayska. When McNeal visits her at her home, he learns that it was Frank’s idea for Helen to divorce him so that their son would no longer have what some saw as a cop killer’s last name. Frank didn’t want his son to be bullied by other students at school.

McNeal’s feelings about the Wiecek case begin to change at this point. He writes another article, this time about Helen Rayska. His articles still revolve around the human interest aspects of the case, but he starts to see the value of continuing to investigate because so many people close to Frank believe in him so strongly.

The next time that McNeal meets Frank Wiecek at the state prison, it’s at the invitation of Frank himself. Frank tells McNeal that he doesn’t want him writing any more articles about his ex-wife and his son. He is adamant about protecting both; that was his whole purpose in obtaining a divorce. Newspaper publicity is just bringing more attention them and revealing their true identities. McNeal decides to talk to Tomek Zaleska, who also continues to maintain his innocence. This meeting pushes McNeal to continue probing, and his investigation comes down to the eyewitness Wanda Skutnik, who now goes by the last name Siskovich.

McNeal discovers that Skutnik was coached by a police captain about her testimony in court. It’s possible, too, that she was paid to identify Frank Wiecek and Tomek Zaleska as the killers. He becomes more and more dedicated to finding out the truth, even putting his own life in danger when he confronts police officers and residents in the Polish neighborhood of Chicago. He is blocked at almost every turn, and he never does discover who killed the patrol officer, but he does learn that both Wiecek and Zaleska were wrongly convicted.

Call Northside 777 is based on a real case about two wrongly convicted men in the killing of a police officer in 1930s Chicago. Click here for more information at Wikipedia about the arrest and conviction of Joseph Majczek and Theodore Marcinkiewicz, whose case formed the basis for Call Northside 777 (1948) and inspired the film Railroaded! (1947). Click here for even more details about the case from the School of Law at Northwestern University. Click here to see my article about Railroaded!

I always feel that the audio commentary is worth a listen, and the commentary provided by James Ursini and Alain Sliver is no exception. According to Ursini and Silver, the film mostly sticks to the facts of the original case, with a few exceptions. One is the use of the newspaper photograph as evidence at the end of the film. Here are a few additional points they make about Call Northside 777:

◊ The scenes in the prison were shot in the actual prison. The case on which the film is based led to many reforms in Illinois. The case was rather famous at the time, and many audience members would have known something about it.

◊ The real-life inventor of the polygraph, Leonard Keeler, plays himself. Keeler invented the polygraph when he was twenty-two, but he was forty-four when the film was shot. The polygraph scene is long by modern standards. It was a new technology at the time, and audiences then would have been interested in the details of its use.

◊ The film used real locations, real Chicago police officers, and real inhabitants of Chicago’s Polish neighborhood. A lot of the actors in supporting roles were Chicago locals.

◊ James McGuire, the real-life reporter who was the basis for the McNeal character, was suspicious that two men convicted of killing a police officer didn’t get life but instead got a sentence of ninety-nine years each. [The article at Wikipedia mentions that McGuire was suspicious about the outcome of the trial because Joseph Majczek and Theodore Marcinkiewicz didn’t get death sentences. The death penalty was still in wide use in the 1940s.]

◊ Karin Walsh was the real-life editor, but the character in the film is a male because of stereotypes at the time. Lee J. Cobb plays the city editor, Brian Kelly. Cobb named names to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and tarnished his reputation by doing so.

◊ Helen Walker plays McNeal’s wife, but she usually played femme fatales. The role of Mrs. McNeal was a change for her.

James Stewart is fantastic in the role of McNeal, and the same can be said about all the actors in their roles. Helen Walker may have been playing a role against type, but she is very good at giving McNeal a softer edge, even before he comes around to seeing the potential in the human interest side of Wiecek and Zaleska’s story and way before he begins to believe in the innocence of both men.

Kasia Orzazewski matches James Stewart’s level of acting in her performance of Frank’s mother, Tillie Wiecek (based on the real-life mother Tillie Majczek). She inspires McNeal to investigate her son’s false imprisonment, and she eventually becomes one of the reasons that he becomes emotionally invested in the Wiecek case. At one point in McNeal’s investigation, he believes that he has exhausted the last possibility, the last hope for Frank’s release. The scene where he visits Tillie to break this news is very simple. It’s just the two of them in her small, bare living quarters, and it is incredibly moving.

But there is little doubt that Stewart carries the film. Most of the narrative is the story of McNeal’s investigation, which eventually becomes a search for justice. It is a powerful story, and its basis in fact just adds to that power.

The scenes shot on location and the voice-over narrator’s introduction give the film a semidocumentary feel, which is especially evident in the prison scenes and in McNeal’s investigations in the Polish neighborhood. In addition to being a great story, Call Northside 777 gives viewers a glimpse of history, a glimpse into Chicago’s past. If you are interested in history like I am, the history behind the story is an added plus to seeing the film.

February 1, 1948, release date  •  Directed by Henry Hathaway  •  Screenplay by Jerome Cady, Jay Dratler  •  Based on a 1944 Chicago Daily Times articles by James P. McGuire, Jack McPhaul  •  Music by Alfred Newman  •  Edited by J. Watson Webb Jr.  •  Cinematography by Joseph MacDonald

James Stewart as James (P. J.) McNeal  •  Richard Conte as Frank Wiecek  •  Lee J. Cobb as Brian Kelly  •  Helen Walker as Laura McNeal  •  Betty Garde as Wanda Skutnik  •  Kasia Orzazewski as Tillie Wiecek  •  Joanne De Bergh as Helen Wiecek  •  Michael Chapin as Frank Wiecek Jr.  •  Howard Smith as K. L. Palmer  •  Moroni Olsen as chair of the pardon board  •  J. M. Kerrigan as Sullivan  •  John McIntire as Sam Faxon  •  Paul Harvey as Martin J. Burns  •  George Tyne as Tomek Zaleska  •  Michael Chapin as Frank Wiecek Jr.  •  Leonarde Keeler as himself  •  E. G. Marshall as Rayska  •  Thelma Ritter as the receptionist  •  Lionel Stander as Corrigan, Wiecek’s cellmate  •  Truman Bradley as the narrator  •  Samuel S. Hinds as Judge Charles Moulton

Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation  •  Produced by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation