Call Northside 777

As the producers make patently clear at the outset, this picture is straight from the annals of the Chicago Times, depicting events that actually happened, and filmed in the authentic locals. Northside 777 is not the weather bureau but the home of a much more important item--a Wronged Woman, who will pay $5000 for the information that will free her son. Fascinated that such a situation could actually exist, and further stupified that the man was really cleared, Hollywood has gone overboard to make its point. The energetic exploits of a Chicago Times reporter, James Stewart, have been turned into a well-paced story that has everything but an orthodox West Coast ending. Therein lies its weakness.

Calling Northside 777 on a hunch of his editor, James Stewart finds a woman who has worked years scrubbing floors to free her jailed, but honest, son. The human interest aspects of this set-up sweep Stewart off his feet and he splashes the Hard-earned Heartaches across Chicago, little believing the son (Conte) is really innocent. Persuaded to dig deeper and talk with the prisoner, Stewart gradually turns from a skeptical, feature-conscious reporter into a citizen grieved by a civic unjustice and turns lower-case handsprings to right the wrong. After pacing the Polish quarter and fondling a Police Dept. switchboard, he finally finds the crucial clue in a tray of developer, and the man is freed.

Although filming real-life stories undoubtedly saves on that expensive cinematic item, imagination, it produces troublesome shortcomings. A documentary approach saves on sets and set-pieces, but the endings, as in real life, are either unconvincing or else must be picked over to be good box-office material. To show the mother scrubbing the floors in the end would be cinematic suicide, even though it's the truth.