| Night People | |
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1954 British movie poster |
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| Directed by | Nunnally Johnson |
| Produced by | Nunnally Johnson |
| Written by | Nunnally Johnson Jed Harris (story) Tom Reed W.R. Burnett (uncredited) |
| Starring | Gregory Peck Broderick Crawford Anita Björk Rita Gam Walter Abel Buddy Ebsen |
| Music by | Cyril J. Mockridge |
| Cinematography | Charles G. Clarke |
| Editing by | Dorothy Spencer |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | March 12, 1954 |
| Running time | 93 min. |
| Language | English |
Night People is a 1954 motion picture drama starring Gregory Peck, Broderick Crawford, Anita Bjork and Buddy Ebsen, directed by Nunnally Johnson. It was co-written by Jed Harris, a noted theatrical producer.
The story is set in Berlin during the years following World War II. Peck plays a counter-intelligence officer of the United States Army. At the time this movie was made, Berlin was a divided city but not yet isolated by the Berlin Wall.
Night People was filmed on location in Berlin, and is not available as of 2010 on DVD.
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Allied enemies kidnap Corporal John "Johnny" Leatherby, a young American soldier in West Berlin. Lt. Col. Steve Van Dyke, the American provost marshal assigned to investigate, learns through his East German contact Frau "Hoffy" Hoffmeir that the soldier has been kidnapped by East German agents who want to trade him for a pair of elderly Germans. At the same time, the Soviet Union has closed border posts into Berlin, suggesting an impending international crisis. Johnny's father, Charles Leatherby, is a wealthy and politically influential industrialist from Toledo, Ohio and flies to Berlin to bully the military bureaucracy into finding his son. Accustomed to being in charge and never refused, he issues a demand that the military attempt to bribe the East German government using Leatherby's money. Van Dyke is offended by Leatherby's arrogance and ignorance. ("You're a big wheel in the axle grease business. You're a personal friend of Senator...McDinglehoffer," he scoffs.)
They go to dinner at the Katacombe restaurant, ostensibly to discuss the proposed swap, accompanied by Van Dyke's assistant, M/Sgt. Eddie McCulloch. In actuality, Van Dyke wants Leatherby to see the cost of the trade: the elderly female piano player and her blind husband (his eyes gouged out by the Nazis during the war) demanded for Johnny's return. When the Americans move to detain them for forged identity papers, the couple attempts suicide by using strychnine. Van Dyke has them taken to a U.S. military hospital under the care of Major Foster, the cigarette-mooching doctor in charge. The husband is near death. The wife is in better shape and conscious, and Eddie discovers in interrogating her that she is actually English and demanding to talk to someone in British Intelligence. Van Dyke recognizes that he could be in legal jeopardy if the British determine he is using one of their citizens as a player in a "swap shop." The woman identifies herself as Rachel Cameron, wife of Gen. Gerd von Kratzenow, an anti-Nazi conspirator, and reveals that the people wanting them are not Russians but former Nazis working now with the communists.
Leatherby begins to understand the complications involved. (Van Dyke tells Eddie at one point, "You're right, this deal is getting trickier than a basket full of eels.") Friends are often really enemies, and adversaries sometimes secret allies. Van Dyke learns that his friend and Soviet counterpart, Col. Lodejinski, has been betrayed attempting to escape to the West and has committed suicide with his whole family. He also is told that Rachel Cameron acted as a spy for the Allies during the war. Van Dyke considers submitting to the demands and trading the elderly couple for the soldier. He provides Leatherby with this stark choice. While using Hoffy, with whom Van Dyke had once engaged in an ill-advised love affair, as an intermediary, he causes jealousy on the part of his secretary, Ricky Cates. Hoffy's loyalty comes under question; she is the common thread in so many twists. Van Dyke arranges for Johnny to be delivered by Russian ambulance to the American hospital to complete the trade, but concocts a dangerous double-cross in which he has to intentionally poison himself to succeed.
The screenplay was developed under the title The Cannibals, a phrase used in the dialogue to describe the kidnappers of Corporal Leatherby. In July 1953 the New York Times reported that the title was changed to Night People to avoid audiences anticipating "an African adventure." The title was taken from a property already owned by Fox, a science fiction vehicle that was to star Richard Widmark but which was never produced.
Nunnally Johnson had been seeking a project to break into directing, and approached Darryl F. Zanuck to direct Night People. Zanuck was amenable, but informed him that Peck had contractual rights to veto the studio's choice of director and might not want someone without experience. However, Peck and Nunnally Johnson were friends and had worked together on The Gunfighter in 1950, which Johnson had produced and re-scripted. Peck's confidence in him was so high that he readily approved him for his directorial debut.[1]
Despite this, rumors were published in The Hollywood Reporter in September 1953 that the two had seriously feuded. A possible source was Peck's initial doubts about Johnson's overall abilities, but these were soon dissipated and the pair worked amicably.[1] Together they had also had to overcome several squabbles on the set with Fox staffers over costuming and other intrusions. One biographer reported that Peck became so angry over one dispute that he channeled his anger into a scene in which his character rebukes Broderick Crawford's, and filmed ten pages of script in two hours. Johnson and Peck teamed together again in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.[2]
The movie's exteriors were filmed on location in Berlin, while interiors were filmed at the Geiselgasteig Studios in Munich over a five-week period in the summer of 1953, at a cost of $800,000, shot in the new wide-screen format of Cinemascope.[3] Filming was sometimes made difficult by the tensions existing in Berlin between the United States and the Soviet Union. In one scene filmed near the Brandenburg Gate with realistic props, the film crew came under close scrutiny by numerous armed Russians suspicious of the activity.[1]
Peck stated that the role of Steve Van Dyke had been one of his favorites, because his lines were "tough and crisp and full of wisecracks, and more aggressive than other roles" he'd portrayed.[3]
Jed Harris and Tom Reed were nominated for an Academy Award for best writing, motion picture story.
The film opened in New York on March 12, 1954, to favorable reviews, but was not well-received by the public. It placed fifty-second in gross box office receipts for 1954.[3]
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