Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man.
DVD Review
The Wrong Man, starring Henry Fonda, Vera Miles, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, screenplay by Maxwell Anderson, Warner Brothers, 1956
Yah, they, the they here meaning the New York City cops, the fuzz, New York’s finest, the big bad blue line, the line that keeps eight million stories from totally being about guys croaking each other (and gals too) back to Adam and Eve time, got the wrong guy on that Associated robbery (armed from what I heard, Christ, armed for nickels and dimes, a couple of hundred bucks max, which might have been some dough back then but is strictly walking daddy money now), some square gee from over in Jackson Heights, a guy named Manny. Yah, a square named Manny (played by Henry Fonda) who kept nine to five hours, except he worked in some two- bit house band playing some sad ass bass, no be-bop Dizzie or hothouse Coltrane rip stuff just trip over your partner, your drunk partner, dance plug music, for the Mayfair swells over at the Stork Club so his nine to five was night time. And except that he was a gee that was in the wrong place at the wrong time when he tried borrow a little dough off of his wife’s insurance policy for coffee and cakes (okay, okay some wife’s serious dental work) from Associated over in some sleaze back alley office building filled with failed dentists, fledgling lawyers, repo men, and claims adjusters. And surprise, surprise since Associated had dough on the premises right in the cash drawer they got knocked over a couple of times by some desperate junkie looking for some next fix dough. Strictly low-rent stuff.
But here is where the wrong time and place come in. The clerks, the female clerks, swore on seven, hell, seventy bibles, that Manny was the guy, the right guy, and told the cops the story that way. And the cops bought it. Bought it number one because no right gee like Manny could be that right, although with all the up front and personal shots of him sweating things out he could have been the guy for a while even in my jaded book, and number two bought it because, well, because it cleared up about a half dozen unsolved armed robberies in the neighborhood with one hand. So they, the cops, showed our boy Manny what justice New York- style looked like (although any amateur or even a fledgling lawyer from that sleaze- ball office building could have had him habe’d out in about fifteen minutes with no third degree, and no heavy lifting) walking him down the line from the third degree room to the police jail to felony court to the big house to bail all in a day’s work. And they were feeling pretty good because they had their man solid.
Of course square gees like Manny are from jump street about the penal system so it looks like curtains for Manny until a little luck comes his way. But that luck, actually some wrong gee that anybody could tell was a wrong gee, needing fix or whatever, went back on the prowl and got nabbed. And those clerks, female clerks, who swore on those seventy bibles that Manny was the one saw the error of their identifications. But here is the really interesting, and sad, big sad, part of this film ((hell, even I knew Henry, oops, Manny was going to walk), Manny‘s ever-loving wife (and mother of his two boys), Rosa (played by Vera Miles), flipped out over the Manny going to the big house scene. I mean really flipped out. See she in her tried and true 1950s golden dreams perfect housewife and companion though she was to blame for Manny’s downfall and nothing could break her from that belief after she worked herself into a lather over her trivialness and such, her bad wife-ness, jesus, well, nothing except a couple of years at a sanatorium to work thing s out.
So New York’s finest got the wrong guy, not for the first and not for the last time. And the Rosas of this world paid the price, not for the first or last time either. And hence this true story film from thriller-master Alfred Hitchcock.
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