He Walked by Night
| He Walked by Night | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by |
Alfred L. Werker Anthony Mann (uncredited) |
| Produced by | Bryan Foy Robert Kane |
| Screenplay by |
John C. Higgins Crane Wilbur |
| Story by | Crane Wilbur |
| Starring |
Richard Basehart Scott Brady Roy Roberts Jack Webb Whit Bissell |
| Music by | Leonid Raab |
| Cinematography | John Alton |
| Edited by | Alfred DeGaetano |
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Production
company |
Bryan Foy Productions
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| Distributed by | Eagle-Lion Films |
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Release date
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Running time
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79 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
He Walked by Night is a 1948 police procedural film noir, directed by Alfred L. Werker and an uncredited Anthony Mann. The film, shot in semidocumentary tone, was loosely based on newspaper accounts of the real-life actions of Erwin "Machine-Gun" Walker, a former Glendale California police department employee and World War II veteran who unleashed a crime spree of burglaries, robberies, and shootouts in the Los Angeles area during 1945 and 1946.
During production, one of the actors, Jack Webb, struck up a friendship with the police technical advisor, Detective Sergeant Marty Wynn, and was inspired by a conversation with Wynn to create the radio and later television program Dragnet.
He Walked by Night was released by Eagle-Lion Films and is notable for the camera work by renowned noir cinematographer John Alton. Today the film is in public domain.
On a Los Angeles street, Officer Rawlins, a patrolman on his way home from work, stops a man he suspects of being a burglar and is shot and mortally wounded. The minor clues lead nowhere. Two police detectives, Sergeants Marty Brennan (Scott Brady) and Chuck Jones (James Cardwell), are assigned to catch the killer, Roy Morgan (Richard Basehart), a brilliant mystery man with no known criminal past, who is hiding in a Hollywood bungalow and listening to police calls on his custom radio in an attempt to avoid capture. His only relationship is with his little dog.
Roy consigns burgled electronic equipment to Paul Reeves (Whit Bissell), and on his fifth sale is nearly caught when he shows up to collect on his property. Reeves tells police that the suspect is a mystery man named Roy Martin. The case crosses the paths of Brennan and Jones, who stake out Reeves' office to arrest and question Roy. He suspects a trap, however, and in a brief shootout shoots and paralyzes Jones. Jones wounds Roy, who performs surgery on himself to remove the bullet and avoid going to a hospital, where his gunshot wound would be reported to the police. With his knowledge of police procedures, Roy changes his modus operandi and becomes an armed robber. During one robbery he fires his semi-automatic pistol, and the police recover the ejected casing. Lee (Jack Webb), a forensics specialist, matches the ejector marks on the casing to those recovered in the killing of Officer Rawlins and the wounding of Sgt. Jones, connecting all three shootings to one suspect.
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Wikipedia