Movie |
Police Procedural | Cop-killer
Disclaimer: All content and media belong to original content streaming platforms/owners like Netflix, Disney+ Hotstar, Amazon Prime Videos, JioCinema, SonyLIV etc. 91mobiles entertainment does not claim any rights to the content and only aggregate the content along with the service providers links.
Best Police Film | 1949
Technical advisor for the film was Sgt. Marty Wynn of the Los Angeles Police Dept. During the course of shooting, he fell into conversation with Jack Webb, then the star of radio's "Jeff Regan, Private Investigator", who had a small part in the film. Wynn suggested that Webb do a radio series based on actual police files. Thus was born the idea for "Dragnet," which debuted on NBC radio about four months after this film was released.
Loosely based on the real-life 1946 crime spree of Erwin "Machine Gun" Walker (1917-2008). Unlike the character in the film, Walker was captured, tried, and sentenced to death for first-degree murder. On 4/14/1949, two days before his scheduled execution, Walker attempted suicide, and the execution was postponed. A psychiatric board pronounced him insane, and he was sent to the Mendocino State Hospital for the next 12 years. Declared sane again in 1961, his sentence was commuted by the governor to life without parole. From 1970-74,he filed several motions to appeal his case, twice making it to the California Supreme Court. The second time, the court vacated the "without parole" part of his sentence. Walker applied for, and was granted, parole in 1974. He then legally changed his name and worked as a chemist. He died in 2008.
This film served as something of a template for "Dragnet," which debuted on radio the following year, right down to the fact that a disclaimer appears at the beginning informing the audience that the names have been changed to protect the innocent.
This was a historical film in that it was the first to use the Los Angeles underground sewer and storm-drain system and its series of canals and tunnels as a backdrop.
The subterranean chase scenes convinced a Warner Bros. executive to use the storm drain tunnels under Los Angeles for the climactic scenes in Them! (1954). That film's original story idea to have the giant ants invade New York City's subway system was scuttled partly due to budget constraints, but mainly because of the horrified reaction of NYC transportation secretary William J. Daley to the suggestion.
"Narrator: And so the tedious quest went on. Sergeant Brennan wore out his shoes and his patience going from police station to police station, checking photos until his eyes were blurry. For police work is not all glamour and excitement and glory. There are days and days of routine, of tedious probing, of tireless searching. Fruitless days. Days when nothing goes right, when it seems as if no one could ever think his way through the maze of baffling trails a criminal leaves. But the answer to that is persistence and the hope that, sooner or later, something will turn up, some tiny lead that can grow into a warm trail and point to the cracking of a tough case."
"Narrator: The work of a police, like that of woman, is never done."
