- Based on a true story and directed by Henry Hathaway, whose The House on 92nd Street pioneered the semi-documentary style of film noir, Call Northside 777 relates the tale of a wrongfully jailed man and the relentless reporter who works to free him. As far as the audience can tell, Frank Wiecek (Richard Conte) had nothing to do with the murder of a Chicago policeman back in 1932, but when a speakeasy proprietor named Wanda Skutnik (Betty Garde) fingers him, Wiecek and his friend Tomek Zaleska (George Tyne) find themselves railroaded into serving a 99-year sentence at Joliet. Eleven years later, Frank's mother Tillie (Kasia Orzazewski) places a classified ad in the paper offering $5,000 to anyone with information about the crime. You see, she had to work for over a decade washing floors to earn that much extra money.
- News reporter P.J. McNeal (Jimmy Stewart) first hears about the ad from his editor, Brian Kelly (Lee J. Cobb), whose gruff exterior masks some genuine sympathy for Frank and his mother. McNeal is initially skeptical, but meetings with Tillie, Frank, and Frank's remarkably supportive ex-wife Helen (Joanne De Bergh) slowly convince McNeal that Frank may actually be innocent. It also doesn't hurt that Frank easily passes a lie detector test (administered by the actual inventor of the polygraph, Leonarde Keeler!). As the state's attorney (John McIntire) and other higher-ups pressure McNeal to drop the story, his only option is to present evidence of Frank's innocence to the state pardon board. Now it's just a matter of actually finding that evidence.
- Although I'm not convinced that Call Northside 777 is actually film noir -- a murder and a dimly-lit apartment hallway are really the only ingredients on display -- it is a decent enough drama helped considerably by Stewart, Conte, and Cobb, each of whom has enough charisma to carry a film on their own. Apparently, this was also the first Hollywood film to feature abundant location filming in Chicago, which lends it an air of authenticity that the plot wouldn't have earned on its own. True to life, the slow parts of McNeal's investigation are slow and the exciting parts are exciting, although surely I wasn't the only audience member who thought of a much simpler solution to the newspaper identification problem near the film's end. Once Jimmy Stewart launches into his contractually obligated self-righteous monologue, the audience can predict which verdict the pardon board is going to deliver.
- Based on the real Chicago case of Majczek and Marcinkiewicz.
