He Walked By Night

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He Walked By Night (1948)

American police procedural film noir.

This film-noir film, told in semi-documentary style, follows police on the hunt for a resourceful criminal who unleashed a crime spree of burglaries, robberies, and shootouts in the Los Angeles area.

Loosely based on the real-life 1946 crime spree of Erwin “Machine Gun” Walker (1917-2008). Unlike the character in the film, Walker was captured, tried, and sentenced to death for first-degree murder.

On 4/14/1949, two days before his scheduled execution, Walker attempted suicide, and the execution was postponed. A psychiatric board pronounced him insane, and he was sent to the Mendocino State Hospital for the next 12 years. Declared sane again in 1961, his sentence was commuted by the governor to life without parole.

From 1970-74,he filed several motions to appeal his case, twice making it to the California Supreme Court. The second time, the court vacated the “without parole” part of his sentence. Walker applied for, and was granted, parole in 1974. He then legally changed his name and worked as a chemist. He died in 2008.

This film served as something of a template for “Dragnet,” which debuted on radio the following year, right down to the fact that a disclaimer appears at the beginning informing the audience that the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Technical advisor for the film was Sgt. Marty Wynn of the Los Angeles Police Dept. During the course of shooting, he fell into conversation with Jack Webb, then the star of radio’s “Jeff Regan, Private Investigator”, who had a small part in the film. Wynn suggested that Webb do a radio series based on actual police files. Thus was born the idea for “Dragnet,” which debuted on NBC radio about four months after this film was released.

First credited appearance of Jack Webb.

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