Call Northside 777

Call Northside 777 (1948)

It couldn't happen... but it did!

In 1932, a cop is killed and Frank Wiecek sentenced to life. Eleven years later, a newspaper ad by Frank's mother leads Chicago reporter P.J. McNeal to look into the case. For some time, McNeal continues to believe Frank guilty. But when he starts to change his mind, he meets increased resistance from authorities unwilling to be proved wrong.

Date of release
1948-02-13
TMDB
6.7 / 10 (184)
Runtime
1h 51m
Genres
Crime, Drama
Director
Henry Hathaway

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Chicago

Call Northside 777 is a 1948 American docudrama film directed by Henry Hathaway. The film parallels the true story of a Chicago newspaper reporter who proved that a man jailed for murder 11 years previously was wrongly convicted. James Stewart stars as the persistent journalist and Richard Conte plays the imprisoned Frank Wiecek. Wiecek is based on Joseph Majczek, who was wrongly convicted of the murder of a Chicago policeman in 1932, one of the worst years of organized crime during Prohibition.

Production

20th Century-Fox reported on January 24, 1947, that Call Northside 777 would be filmed in the semi-documentary manner. Fox had obtained the necessary legal clearances from the persons involved in the story and had dispatched producer Otto Lang and writer Leonard Hoffman to gather material for the film in Chicago. Eventually Quentin Reynolds and Jay Dratler joined Hoffman in writing the script.

According to a March 7 report in The New York Times, Fox had named Henry Fonda to play the lead in Call Northside 777, which would precede Chicken Every Sunday and Lone Star Preacher on Fonda's schedule. However, a month later Fonda was cast as the star of Daisy Kenyon. Two months afterward Fox replaced Fonda in Call Northside 777 with Jimmy Stewart. Lloyd Nolan was originally tabbed to play the role of Brian Kelly, but Lee J.

Call Northside 777 was shot extensively in Chicago. Views of the Merchandise Mart as well as Holy Trinity Polish Mission can be seen throughout the film.

Aside from Chicago, locations for Call Northside 777 included Santa Monica and also the Illinois Stateville Prison "Roundhouse" annex, which was closed in 2016 but briefly reopened in 2020 for COVID-19 housing. (The prison "Roundhouse" was a panopticon cellblock, built according to ideas originated by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham).

Screenwriters on Call Northside 777 took liberties in a number of areas to make what they believed would be a more compelling story for a theater audience. Among them was that while Wiecek's innocence is determined by enlarging a newspaper headline to catch a key witness lying about a minor point, the real life Majczek's innocence was established by locating the original arrest report that corroborated Majczek's assertion that the speakeasy propr…

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