Manhattan Is My Beat

nowadays?”
    “Because it was also the first of the
bad
independents. You’ve seen it?”
    “Four times.”
    “What, you also tell your dentist to drill without novocaine? Well, if you saw it that many times, you know it didn’t quite get away from the melodrama of the big studio crime stories of the thirties. The director, Reinhart, couldn’t resist the shoeshine boy’s mother falling downstairs, the high camera angles, the score hitting you over the head you should miss a plot twist. So other films got remembered better. But it was a big turning point for movies.”
    His enthusiasm was infectious. She found herself nodding excitedly.
    “You ever see
Boomerang?
Elia Kazan. He shot it on location. Not the greatest story in the world for a crime flick—I mean, there’s not much secret who did it. But the point isn’t what the story was but
how
it was told. That was about a real crime too. It was a—whatta you call it?—evolutionary step up from the studio-lot productions Hollywood thought you had to do.
Manhattan Is My Beat
was of the same ilk.
    “Oh, you gotta understand, the era had a lot to do with it too, I mean, shifting to movies like that. The War, it robbed the studios of people and materials. The big-production set pieces and epics—uh-uh, there was no way they could produce those. And it was damn good they did. You ask me—hey, who’s asking me, right?— but I think movies like
Manhattan
helped move movies out of the world of plays and into their own world.
    “
Boomerang. The House on 92nd Street
. Henry Hathaway did that. Oh, he was a gentleman, Henry was. Quiet, polite. He made that film, I guess, in forty-seven.
Manhattan Is My Beat
was in that movement. It’s not a good film. But it’s an important film.”
    “And they were
all
true, those films?” Rune asked.
    “Well, they weren’t documentaries. But, yeah, they were accurate. Hathaway worked with the FBI to do
House
.”
    “So, then, if there was a scene in the movie, say the characters went someplace, then the real-life characters may have gone there?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Did you know anyone who worked on
Manhattan?
I mean, know them personally?”
    “Sure. Dana Mitchell.”
    “He played Roy, the cop.”
    “Right, right, right. Handsome man. We weren’t close but we had dinner two, three times. Him and his second wife, I think it was. Charlotte Goodman we had signed here for a couple films in the fifties. I knew Hal of course. He was a contract director for us when studios still did that. He also did—”
    “
West of Fort Laramie
. And
Bomber Patrol
.”
    “Hey, you know your films. Hal’s still around, I haven’t talked to him in twenty years, I guess.”
    “Is he in New York?”
    “No, he’s on the West Coast. Where, I have no idea. Dana and Charlotte are dead now. The exec producer on the project died about five years ago. Some of the other studio people may be alive but they aren’t around here. This is no business for old men. I’m paraphrasing Yeats. You know your poetry? You studying poets in school?”
    “Yeah, all of them, Yeats, Erica Jong, Stallone.”
    “Stallone?”
    “Yeah, you know,
Rambo
.”
    “Your school teaches some strange things. But education, who understands it?”
    Rune asked, “Isn’t there anybody in New York who worked on the film?”
    “Whoa, darling, the spirit is willing but the mind is weak.” Weinhoff pulled out a film companion book. And looked up the movie. “Ah, here we go. Hey, here we go.
Manhattan Is My Beat
, 1947. Oh, sure, Ruby Dahl, who could forget her? She played Roy’s fiancée.”
    “And she lives in New York?”
    “Ruby? Naw, she’s gone. Same old story. Booze and pills. What a business we’re in. What a business.”
    “What about the writer?”
    Weinhoff turned back to the book. “Hey, here we go. Sure. Raoul Elliott. And if he was credited as the writer, then he really wrote it. All by himself. I know Raoul. He was an old-school screenwriter. None of this pro-wrestling for credits you see now.” In a singsong voice Weinhoff said, “ ‘I polished sixty-seven pages of the tenth draft so I get the top credit in beer-belly extended typeface and that other hack only polished fifty-three pages so he gets his name in antleg condensed or no screen credit at all.’
Whine, whine, whine
… Naw, I know Raoul. If he got the credit he wrote the whole thing—first draft through the shooting script.”
    “Does he live in New York?”
    “Ah, the poor man.