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Harrison's Reports (1956) - The Wrong Man

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"The Wrong Man" with Henry Fonda and Vera Miles

(Warner Bros., Jan. 26; time, 105 min.)

Grim but absorbing melodramatic fare is offered in "The Wrong Man," which relates the real-life experience of Manny Balestrero, a New York musician and family man, who was wrongfully accused of a series of holdups and made to stand trial for the crimes. Told in effective documentary style against authentic backgrounds, it is a distressing and harrowing account of the mental anguish suffered, not only by the innocent man, but also by his distraught wife, whose despair and despondency brought about her mental breakdown and eventual confinement in a sanitarium. His innocence is established toward the finish when the real thief, whom he resembled closely, is caught, but his gaining his freedom does not necessarily end his plight on a cheery note, for he still remains a man who had been broken in spirit and who was faced with the problem of restoring his wife to health. Henry Fonda and Vera Miles are highly effective in the principal roles, but stories about human suffering are, as a general rule, depressing, and this one is no exception:—

Fonda, a musician employed in the Stork Club, finds himself faced with a large dentist bill and goes to the branch office of an insurance company to make a loan on his wife's policy. There, he is recognized by several employees as the man who had robbed their office and they notify the police. Picked up for questioning, Fonda, despite his protests of innocence, is positively identified by several victims as the holdup man, and his fate seems sealed when his hand printing proves similar to that of the holdup man's actual note. Arrested and held for the Grand Jury, Fonda is released on bail furnished by a brother-in-law. Together with Vera, his wife, he visits Anthony Quayle, a lawyer, who believes him to be innocent and who establishes that Fonda and his wife had been vacationing on an upper New York farm on the day of the holdup. On Quayle's advice, they go to the farm and, from the register, learn the addresses of two men who could swear that they had been there on the particular day in question. They visit the two addresses only to learn that both men had died. This turn of events makes Vera despondent and she ends up in a sanitarium as a result of a mental breakdown. After many agonizing months the case finally goes to trial, but an improper question by a juror compels the judge to declare a mistrial. With his fate still in doubt, new hope rises for Fonda when a thief who looked very much like him is caught robbing a store. The victims identify him as the culprit who had committed the crimes charged to Fonda and admit that they had made a mistake. His innocence established, Fonda sets out to repair the damage done to his life.

It was produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, from a screenplay by Maxwell Anderson and Angus MacPhail, based on a story by Mr. Anderson.

Family.

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