Trivia for
Call Northside 777 (1948)

photos

board

trailer

details

• Thelma Ritter's role as the police captain's secretary was mostly deleted from the released print, but she can still briefly be seen and heard in one scene in which she tells James Stewart the captain will see him in his office.
  
  
• The man administering the polygraph test to convict Richard Conte, was the actual inventor of the polygraph or lie detector machine, Leonard Keeler. He plays himself in the movie.
  
  

• SPOILER: Frank's name in real life was Joseph Majczek. After being released from prison in 1945, he worked as an insurance agent in Chicago. For his wrongful imprisonment, the State of Illinois awarded him $24,000, which Majczek gave to his mother Tillie. Majczek eventually remarried his wife with whom he had divorced while he was in prison. His last years were spent in a mental institution; he died in 1983.
  
  

• SPOILER: The man imprisoned with Frank/Majczek, Tommy, whose name in real life was Theodore Marcin, was released from prison in 1950, five years after Majczek. Marcin was awarded $35,000 from the State of Illinois for his 17 years of imprisonment.
  
  
• SPOILER: Although much of the film's drama derives from the attempts to enlarge a photo of a newspaper being held by a newsboy in the street in order to see its date and thus determine the date the photo was taken, in actuality this enlarging wasn't really necessary at all. Since the layout of a newspaper's front page changes daily, and was visible in the photo without high magnification, even if blurry, it would have been clear enough to disclose which day's issue it was when compared to archival copies, especially since it was surmised what day it was, and what day's newspaper was actually seen, thus making the comparison very simple and straightforward. The high technology enlarging process was a key dramatic sequence in the film, but a concocted and unnecessary procedure, since the question of the newspaper's (and photo's) date could have been easily determined by direct and less dramatic low tech comparison.
  
  

Related Links