callnorthside777

In films today, newspaper reporters and journalists in general are usually portrayed as selfish, evil
and obnoxious opportunists who care nothing about human decency. Fifty years ago however,
reporters were crusaders for truth and justice and loved by the public. Upon returning from service
in World War II, Jimmy Stewart took the role of reporter P.J. McNeal in “Call Northside 777.”

The movie was based on the true story of a reporter who took it upon himself to exonerate a man
who had been sent to prison some years ago for murdering a cop. In the movie, McNeal is
assigned to follow up on an ad in the paper from the mother of Frank Wiecek, the man imprisoned
for cop killing years ago. She’s offering thousands of dollars for evidence that leads to his release.
McNeal thinks that it’s a dead end human-interest story and nothing more, but as he starts to dig
deeper, he discovers that there may be something to Mrs. Wiecek’s crusade and he starts hound
dogging the streets hoping to dust off the facts.

In the course of the investigation, he encounters resistance from a police department that resents
his efforts to exonerate a convicted cop killer and a state government that doesn’t want to admit
mistakes or go easy on convicted felons. McNeal refuses to be stopped and against all odds keeps
pushing the government and society with his articles to plead the case of Frank Wiecek.

This movie is truly fascinating. Half drama and half documentary, it provides audiences of today
with a revealing look at the newspaper business of pre-digital America as well as a glimpse of what
was then the revolutionary lie detector. In the film, McNeal arranges for Wiecek to take a lie
detector test, and the filmmakers not only got the actual lie detector in the film, but also featured its
inventor to star in the film as the lie detector operator alongside Stewart. Another nice
technological sequence involves McNeal sending a photograph over the A.P. wire service to
another newspaper. This kind of technology had been in place for some time in America, but had
not been seen up close by people outside the news industry.

Stewart gives a great performance as the initially cynical but eventually determined McNeal and
Richard Conte (“13 Rue Madeleine”) plays Wiecek as a sad but resigned man who would rather
stay in prison unjustly forever before allowing his son and ex-wife to be smattered all over the
newspapers and exposed to public ridicule.

The one drawback to the movie is the fact that there are places where it moves very slowly.
Director Henry Hathaway doesn’t have a consistent pace to the picture, but in the places where the
human drama is given a chance to play out, Stewart and Conte bring viewers attentions to their
apex.

“Call Northside 777” is an interesting entry in the film noir genre. A true story expertly retold with
believable acting, if some sluggish pacing in places.