Side Street (1950) Classic New York Noir

I first wrote this (orange text) back on May 19, 2011 (and posted on the SLWB) after I first viewed this little gem. 

Director: Anthony Mann (Noirs -The Great Flamarion, Two O'Clock Courage, Desperate, Border Incident, Reign of Terror, Raw Deal, T-Men, Railroaded!, The Tall Target, Devil's Doorway, The Furies), with Farley Granger, Cathy O'Donnell, James Craig, Paul Kelly, Edmond Ryan, Paul Harvey, Jean Hagen, Charles McGraw, Adele Jergens, Harry Bellaver, and Whit Bissell. 

Part-time mailman Granger impulsively stealing $30,000 of blackmail money from a ring led by a crooked lawyer, and finding himself caught between the crooks and the cops.

Holy Shit another great NYC Noir that I've never heard of, this one with the benefit of a big budget that Kubrick didn't have for Killers Kiss. Great atmospheric location shots juxtaposed with seedy apartment interiors. A highlight is the grand finale cab vs. cop cruiser chase, through the narrow, deserted, Sunday morning streets of lower Manhattan, the high angle overhead shots make look like rats running around an elaborate maze, for me it equals the excitement of chase in McQueen's Bullitt but in a different way. 

Written by Sydney Boehm (a Philadelphian) and based on his own story. Boehm was prolific, accounting for nine or more Film Noir including notably The High Wall, Mystery Street and The Big Heat along with one Transitional Noir Sylvia.

The Cinematographer was Joseph Ruttenberg (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Waterloo Bridge) and the Music was by Lennie Hayton.

The film opens with an aerial shot of Manhattan and a Voice Over narration by Paul Kelly. I had to check that to make sure, because to me, it sounded in my memory, very similar to Mark Hellinger's VO for both The Naked City film and later TV show. 

No surprise, both men born just a few years apart on either side of the turn of the century, 1899 for Paul and 1903 for Mark, and both were raised in New York City on either side of the East River. Paul a barkeepers son on the Brooklyn side Mark, son of a real-estate lawyer on the Manhattan side. They both have a distinct overall blended and moderated New York accent. 

Being a New York City boy, born and raised, you are going to get a review with a slight New York bias.

The aerial shot nd VO for Side Street is an obvious homage similar opening of The Naked City.  The Naked City's aerial was filmed before the one that is always usually cited as being the first in Film Noir, the opening sequence in They Live By Night. 

It could possibly be just a question of method of conveyance. A plane's unmistakable drone can be heard during The Naked City narration, but there is an opening score used during the opening of They Live By Night (which has been noted, was achieved by helicopter). There is silence during Side Street's opening sequence narration. The aerial shot for Side Street looks fairly stationary though which makes me think that it also was copter shot. 

Side Street has a lot of stars that contribute to the overall Noir cinematic memory of the work. Farley Granger (Rope, They Live by Night, Strangers on a Train, Edge of Doom, The Naked Street) as Joe Norson, Cathy O'Donnell (They Live by Night, The Amazing Mr. X, Detective Story) as Ellen Norson, James Craig  (The Strip, A Lady Without Passport, While the City Sleeps) as Georgie Garsell, Paul Kelly (The Roaring Twenties, Flying Tigers, Fear in the Night, Split Second) as Captain Walter Anderson, Jean Hagen (The Asphalt Jungle, No Questions Asked, The Big Knife) as Harriet Sinton, Paul Harvey as Emil Lorrison, Edmon Ryan (Mystery Street, Highway 301) as Victor Backett, Charles McGraw (13 Classic Noir) as Detective Stanley Simon, Edwin Max (12 Classic Noir) as Nick Drumman, Adele Jergens (7 Classic Noir) as Lucille "Lucky" Colner, Harry Bellaver (4 Classic Noir and Naked City TV series) as Larry Giff, cab driver, Whit Bissell (12 Classic Noir) as Harold Simpsen, chief teller, John Gallaudet (3 Classic Noir) as Gus Heldon, bar owner, Esther Somers as Mrs. Malby, Ellen's mother, Harry Antrim (10 Classic Noir) as Mr. Malby, Ellen's father, Ben Cooper as the young man at the dry cleaner, King Donovan as Detective Gottschalk, David Bauer as Smitty, the cab driver, and Lower Manhattan cira 1949-50.

The Story

Manhattan. Bagdad on the Hudson. The City. To most New Yorkers in the 4 other boroughs going to "The City" means Manhattan. Manhattan has  many neighborhoods. 

We open on a "God's Eye" view of Mid-Town Manhattan. Hovering circling over what was then, the tallest building in the world. The Empire State.

The Empire State corner of 5th Ave & 34th St. 6th Ave at extreme rt with Broadway angling eastward

The opening credits appear. We cut to a hover over the first Hudson River piers just north of The Battery. There's two United Fruit Company "Banana Boats" unloading at their docks and warehouse at the beginning of West Street. 

United Fruit Company Piers

We cut across the Lower Manhattan financial district towards the East River. Just after the "Directed by Anthony Mann" credit, the three skyscraper's we see left to right are the pointy topped Manhattan Company Building at 40 Wall Street. The round-ish topped building in the middle is 20 Exchange Place, aka the City Bank-Farmers Trust building, then the spired Cities Services Company building. We can actually see the the 2nd Ave el's Hanover Square Station and the beginning of the Coenties Slip "S" Curve. 

 Coenties Slip "S" Curve 2nd Ave el begins lower lt. Hanover Square Station above.

The last lines of The Naked City are, in a way apropos here, "There are eight million stories in the naked city." This is gonna be another... The films can dovetail one into the other.

Captain Walter Anderson: [voice-over] New York City: an architectural jungle where fabulous wealth and the deepest squalor live side by side. New York: the busiest, the loneliest, the kindest, and the cruelest of cities. I live here and work here. My name is Walter Anderson. I'm one of an army of twenty thousand whose job is to protect the citizens in this city of eight million. So, twenty-four hours a day you'll find our men on Park Avenue... Times Square... Central Park... Fulton Market... the subway. Three hundred and eighty new citizens are being born today in the city of New York. One hundred and sixty-four couples are being married. One hundred and ninety-two persons will die. Twelve persons will die violent deaths. And at least one of them will be a victim of murder. A murder a day, every day of the year, and each murder will wind up on my desk.

It was a NYC setback law (1916 Zoning Resolution) that was responsible for the ziggurat style architecture above, (it allowed more sunlight down into the streets) by the mid 1950s developers bastardized the setback requirements by adopting the use of plazas or low-rise buildings surrounding a monolithic tower centered on the lot.

We get a series of short vignettes of the city life and police force that protects it at work. A cruising patrol cat. Various beat cops on the job.

Central Park with the twin towers of the Majestic at 115 Central Park West in the bg.

Times Square the corner of Broadway and W 45th

Fulton Fish Market

Central Park with the slope roof Hampshire House at 150 Central Park South to lt.

South Street Stew Bums & Brooklyn Bridge

Joe Norson. Ex gas jockey. Part time letter carrier. A happily married Joe Schmo. Wife Ellen. A baby is on the way. To make do, he lives in her folks apartment. A cozy setup. Ellen's father is a NYC transit motorman whose biggest complaint seems to be his transfer to the eastside avenue line. He lives on the Eastside, so what's the beef? Probably, because its too lose to home?

  

As Joe delivers mail on various routes (he fills in for sick or vacationing mailmen) he daydreams. He wants to make his wife happy, he wants to buy her one of the fur coats he sees in Saks Fifth Avenue  windows. From all travel agencies that used to dot Mid-town he to take Ellen to Europe on a vacation. 

The fur coat in the 49th Street side window of Saks 5th Ave.

Sidewalk Superintendents with the spired Foley Square U.S. Courthouse & Manhattan Municipal Building at right

Joe, next taking over a Lower Manhattan route, stops by the Criminal Court House at 100 Centre Street, and kibitzes with Charlie a beat cop he knows. They are typical sidewalk superintendents kvetching about their fellow sidewalk superintendents while leaning on a sawhorse watching Con Ed crew jack-hammering up the street. (Notice in 1949-50 nobody is wearing hard hats).

Bright eyed bushy tailed Joe (Farley Granger) spilling his dreams to Patrolman Charlie

James Westerfield as Patrolman Charlie lt.

Joe tells Charlie his daydreams. Charlie responds, that his are finally coming true, he's retiring and moving, he and the wife, to the Sunshine State, Florida.

Joe continues down his route. At the building at 138 Centre Street Joe delivers mail to various offices by usually slipping their mail under their doors, at Attorney at Law Victor Backett's office he finds the door open and Brackett conversing on the phone while the thuggish ex-con Georgie Garsell is using an electric shaver looking on. 

Edmon Ryan as Victor Backett,

Joe enters and flops Brackett's mail on the desk. Joes flop motion tips over one of those large brown accordion sided legal envelopes, standing upright on the desk top. It falls to the floor. When it hits, two one hundred dollar bills pop out. Joe, instinctively reacting, reaches for the envelope and money. Garsell steps on his hand and tells Joe that he will take care of it. Garsell, bends over sweeps the bills back into the legal envelope, then opens a file cabinet door and places the envelope inside. Joe leaves the office but that casually dropped two hundred dollars is now etched on his brain. $200 in 1950 was worth $2,460 dollars today. 

James Craig as Georgie Garsell left

Victor is on the phone with his hooker gal pal Lucille 'Lucky' Colner. (This was Noir made during the MPPC so everything is vague and not spelled out, designed so "salacious subjects" will sail right over the heads of your general low I.Q. audience). Lucky had been screwing married big shot Wall Street broker Emil Lorrison. 

Lorrison gets secretly photographed (by Garcell) having all kinds of nasty sexual congress i.e. going "around the world" with Lucky Lucy in her apartment. As soon as Brackett gets the negatives developed he sent copies to Lorrison. Brakett's demand is for $30,000 to be delivered today. 

Victor Backett: [on phone] ... don't worry baby, just do what I tell you and Lorrison won't be a bit of trouble.

Lucille 'Lucky' Colner: I am worried, I'm scarred to death...  What would happen if Lorrison... 

Victor Backett: [implied] Don't you trust me? Don't you love me?

Lucille 'Lucky' Colner: But of course I do honey. Why do you think I going through with this... alright. How soon are you sending George over?  Alright Vic, but as soon as this is over lets get out of here...

Victor Backett: Any place you say Lucky, Havana, Miami, you name it and we'll do it. I'll... catch you later. [hangs up phone]

Georgie Garsell: [who has been listening] Havana, Miami... by way of the East River.

Adele Jergens as Lucille "Lucky" Colner

Georgie heads up to Lucilles. Lucille finishes grooming her dog and gets ready for the confrontation.

Georgie arrives and waits in Lucky Lucy's "love nest" for Emil to show with the dough. Lucky is grooming her Lhasa Apso when Emil comes ringing. She lets him in as Georgie go hides in another room.

Emil Lorrison: [making a blackmail payoff to his mistress] I couldn't raise the whole amount, only half. That's all I'll be able to raise. 

Lucille 'Lucky' Colner: Oh, come on now, sweetie. That isn't what Dun and Bradstreet says. They give you a double "A" rating.

Emil Lorrison:  Those ratings mean nothing. Fifteen thousand was all I could manage. [angrily] he entire affair was a filthy frame-up!

Lucille 'Lucky' Colner: [with contempt] Take a look at yourself, Grandpa. First you sell yourself I'm nuts about you, crazy for your manly charms. And now you think this is bargain day. Well, go on down to Gimbel's Bargain Basement! You're in the wrong department! Take that other fifteen grand out of your pants or get out! I got a dinner date.  [pauses, continues with a smirk] I could do business with your wife.

Emil wants to see the photos and the negative. Georgie opens the door a crack tosses out the envelope. s Emil checks the contents Georgie sticks out his hand holding a revolver. No funny stuff.

Paul Harvey as Emil Lorrison

A night passes. The next morning we are on the East River. Brooklyn side, between the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridge and just South of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. We are on a Port Authority snagboat. 

 

The Driftmaster snagboat with the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges in the background. The three skyscrapers on the right are 20 Exchange Place, Cities Services Company building, and the Manhattan Company building.

"Hey, there's a body down here."

The Drifmatster. It is colleting flotsam and jetsam. In one of the first really authentic New York accents one of the crew yells out "Hey, there's a body down here."

Tits up

A blonde is floating tits up among the garbage and the seaweed. Lucky Lucille has run out of luck.

Later that same day Joe is back on his Center Street route. Back again at the last building on his route, He is about to shove Victor Backett's mail under his door, and as his hand, holding the mail, rests against the bottom of the door panel it pushes open. It was unlocked and a note on the door window addressed to Georgie explains that "I'll be back in 15 minutes." 

Temptation

Joe looks from the note to the file cabinet draw that holds the two hundred dollars. He's got less than 15 minutes. He only has fifty cents in his pocket. It's easy money. 

It starts going down the road to Noirsville when he decides to open the file draw and grab that envelope. He gets a reprieve when he pulls on the draw handle and finds that its locked. Saved. Joe resigns himself to living his Joe Schmo life, but as he is leaving the office he spots a fire ax on the wall out in the hall. In a simple twist of giving in to temptatious fate, he grabs the ax off the wall and uses the pick-shaped pointed poll to easily pry open the file draw. Joe grabs the whole accordion file puts it in his mailbag and scoots out of the building bumping into Garsell who is coming in the entrance. 

Joe heads to a building he knows on Oak Street, where he can get up up to the roof. He takes out the file and fishes around for the two bills, instead he combs out $30,000 in banded packs of $5000 each. 

In 1950 that is worth a cool $369,000 at today rates. Joe is dumbfounded. Thinking quick, he shoves the stacks into his pockets, stashes the accordion file in a nearby roof vent, and heads uptown to his Midtown East neighborhood. 

At the apartment, he takes out the money, removes a couple of hundred dollar bills, and wraps the rest into a cardstock package wrapped in tissue paper and string. He takes this, and puts it into a travel bag and covers it with clothing. 

When Ellen comes home he tells her a bullshit story that he ran into his old Sargent Ben, who gave him a job up in Schenectady, and gave him a $200 dollar advance. But, the catch Joe tells her, is that he has to leave on the train tonight with Ben so that he can show him around. He scoots.

Cathy O'Donnell as Ellen Norson

At the neighborhood bar, PJ Clarke’s Tavern at 915 Third Avenue he nervously gives the give the package to bartender Nick Drumman, his buddy. He tells Nick its a nightgown present for his wife, and that he cant hide it at the apartment without her finding it and ruining his surprise. 

Edwin Max as Nick Drumman bartender right

Nick is suspicious but stashes it in  cabinet behind the bar. Joe then checks into the Meyer’s Hotel, a flop hotel down on the corner of South Street and Peck Slip. He spends a restless night.

 Meyer’s Hotel

Meanwhile the NYPD is ramping up the murder investigation of Lucille Colner. They find her address book and checking the leads. Detective Simon actually interviews Brackett and Lorrison. Lorrison tells Simon that he doesn't know her and his that his name is in many address books, while Brackett tells him that he got Lucille off on  misdemeanor charge once.

The next morning when Joe arrives back at the apartment he finds out that Ellen had their baby. He rushes down to Belleview Hospital sees his son and Ellen and has a change of heart. He decides to give back the money. Big mistake. Of course it doesn't go well, in Noirsville it never does.

Noirsville

3rd Ave. el through P.J. Clarke's door window 55th street Manhattan.

Snagboat crewman with Brooklyn Dumdo waterfront and Manhattan Bridge in background.

2nd Ave. el & train passing in background - Lower Manhattan

Gansevoort street with Cunard Pier to left

1949 Ford Patrol Car at Old Slip & Front Street with 2nd Ave. in background.

 32nd Street & 1st Avenue.

Harry Bellaver as Larry Giff

 West Street, and the old West Side Elevated Highway

 Dave’s Auction and General Merchandise Shop left, at 70 Vesey Street

Jean Hagen as Harriet Sinton

West Houston & West Street

 Dave’s Auction and General Merchandise Shop, at 70 Vesey Street

 

Mobil gas station by the Park Row on-ramp to Brooklyn Bridge in front of 1 Centre Street, with City Hall Station 3rd  Ave el in background.

Under West Side Elevated Highway

Old Corvington-style NYC lamppost in background

Bloomfield St, looking towards the Hudson

Cunard Pier left and the West Washington Market right.

 Cab turning east onto Reade Street from West Street.

3rd Ave el with Chrysler Building on 42nd Street in background

Staten Island Ferry pulling into Whitehall Terminal - South Ferry 

Desoto Sky View Taxi

The Driftmaster Captain

Looking east on Exchange Place 

Taxi tip Federal Hall at 26 Wall Street

West 44thb Street & Fifth Ave.

Wall Street with Trinity Church in background

 Broad Street subway entrance

This film hits on all cylinders. Director Anthony Mann and Cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg do  great job capturing the look and feel of mid century New York City.  Farley Granger pretty much carries most of the film. Cathy O'Donnell provides the emotional grounding of love and family, while the rest of the outstanding cast just enhance the story even those in small cameos. 10/10.

* For New York City transit fans this film probably depicts the last year and a half of service for the 2nd Ave el where you see trains on the el during the Lower Manhattan taxi chase. Filming on Side Street was between 21 April 1949 - 8 June 1949. 

The last day of service to South Ferry was on December 22, 1950. Also in a similar vein the film The Killer That Stalked New York (1950) has as scene of Evelyn Keyes standing on the Chatham Square Station (junction of the 2nd & 3rd Ave els where trains would either go down to South ferry or to the City Hall Terminal). The view looking south (below) shows the North end of the same line that is depicted in Side Street. 

Evelyn Keyes in The Killer That Stalked New York

The Killer That Stalked New York was filmed between 29 November 1949 - 24 December 1949. Too bad the chase didn't extend down to South Ferry it would h been nice to see what it looked like in 1949. The 3rd Ave el (depicted during the P.J. Clarke's sequences and in the neighborhood where Joe and Ellen live with her parents) ran from City Hall station to the Bronx, the Manhattan section lasted until 1955 the Bronx into the 1970's.

3rd Ave el Evelyn Keyes segment "The Killer That Stalked New York"