The final episode of the Naked City as a half hour program starring James Franciscus aired June 23, 1959. "A Wood of Thorne" is an unusual episode for three reasons: It takes place in real time; it takes place in one room; it features only two actors.
Instead of going out with a manhunt, a car chase and/or a hail of bullets, all set against NYC landmarks -- as was the Naked City's trademark-- the series ends with a psychological talk-fest about a "kept" woman's struggle with doing the right thing to save a condemned man's life.
At the beginning, Bert Leonard talks windows in a dark NYC, and refers to a "Wood of thorns, with Sleeping Beauty locked inside."
That would be the actress known professionally as Cara Williams:
Cara Williams was born in 1925 and turned 96 this year (2021). She was once married to John Drew Barrymore, son of Jack and Dolores, and father of Drew Barrymore (and others!) But in this episode, she is Lois Heller.
This hostile woman will smoke and drink, and drink, and drink some more, through the whole episode as James Franciscus fights to persuade her to save a condemned man's life by telling the truth at the last minute.
This episode is highly unusual for the Naked City, as it has no location shots. Aside from the opening external view of windows in the dark of night, the entire performance takes place in one room of an apartment.
It also features only two main actors, with Harry Bellaver's Frank Arcaro putting in a brief appearance at the door.
There are many close-ups of this "hard" woman who drinks and drinks (did I mention she drinks?) and fortunately some nice well-lit close-ups of James Franciscus' Jimmy Halloran, as we won't see him again.
A full three minutes in, there has been no dialogue other than the opening narration. The character of Lois Heller has a jazz record playing while she smokes and drinks. At the three minute mark, we see the headline that the story will revolve around:
Ms. Heller burns the paper, and more close-ups of her heavily made-up face leave viewers wondering about her connection to the condemned man.
The episode takes place in real time, which adds to the stage play feel. It is just after 10:30 when we first see the clock. Halloran will inform us that they pull the switch at 11.
When Halloran shows up, she tells him to drop dead. He sticks his foot in the door and responds with, "You wish!" -- which I had thought was a more modern expression. One of the many joys of "old" film and television is hearing which expressions were in use. In case my time travel dream ever comes true, I wouldn't want to "out" myself in 1959 with "future" language. Now I know "you wish!" can travel with me.
Halloran is here on behalf of the rights of the man in the electric chair. Both he and this woman know the man scheduled to die didn't commit the crime. This isn't the first time Jimmy has gone against department protocol and gotten personally involved. He's a sensitive guy and he fights for what he believes in.
For some reason, I am fascinated by watching him toss his hat. The director (or maybe just the director of photography?) was too, as we see Halloran remove his hat in the background, but then go in for a closer look as he tosses it with attitude.
The woman threatens to call the cops. Irony. It's the era when women like her had to remove an earring before using the phone. Halloran turns her music off.
Is that one of those pull-down lights? I had a mid-century light hanging over the bed in the house we rented long ago, and you could raise or lower it. Might not be that at all. Has Halloran's left eye been pulled down too? Odd image!
"Just how much do you think you can drink in 21 minutes?" Sounds like a challenge and she accepts.
She asks him, "Who gave you Gabriel's horn, huh?" I'm going to say that's part of the odd Silliphant Language that many point out in the Route 66 dialogue -- who talks like that? And then I'll attain that magic time travel to 1959 and find everyone saying it....
Miss Heller (as he calls her) reminds him that he arrested the man about to die. "You in the forty-dollar suit and the run-down heels and the ruptured conscience." $40 translates to $375 today, so I think that's a "cheap suit" remark? Or maybe it's a "moderately priced" remark. Remember how the series started with Jimmy living on Long Island?
He switches off her music yet again as she threatens him not to. He comes out with, "There's a better beat. It's the clock!" When actors deliver scripted lines, they never make the performance errors of real speech. No mistaken words, no mispronunciations, no thoughts that begin but then the speaker gets stuck, and fortunately, no "uh, um, uh, um...." "Hollywood" (here being "New York") wouldn't be nearly as fun if it were anything like the real world.
He used to think women weren't as tough as men, but it's not true. It's all propaganda. Here comes the Silliphant -- that should be a noun on its own. The Silliphant: the philosophy of screenwriter Stirling Silliphant as presented in the dialogue of his produced scripts, most notably The Naked City and Route 66.
Stirling Silliphant's views on women are heavily vocalized through the dialogue. The "Women According to Stirling Silliphant" theme would continue in the Route 66 TV series that he, Bert Leonard, and Sam Manners went on to produce. Were Silliphant's views typical of his era? He was 41 at the time of this episode. In his late 50s he married a Vietnamese teenager and started a second family, as one does. How would Silliphant himself have come across had he been the central character in a screenplay crafted by another psychology-based writer?
What a prize to have your dialogue pass through the smoker's lips of James Franciscus.
One source estimated Franciscus to be a four-pack-a-day guy. That's jaw-dropping for even most smokers. Doing some smokers' math, that would be 80 per day, and say one takes ten minutes (?), that would mean 800 minutes, divided by 60 minutes per hour, over 13 hours, but some of that time he's eating or in the shower, and he had four daughters -- I'd like to think he spent some quality time with them that didn't involve his child's hand in one hand and a cigarette in the other -- so let's say he had one every 12 minutes. That's five per hour, and he'd need 16 hours to reach 80 cigarettes, which gave him eight hours to sleep. That works. (In my world, numbers up to ten get spelled out; all else gets digits!)
By now I've lost track of her drinks. There is a vertical white line running through the print here. I'm not convinced RLJ Entertainment (or maybe they just distribute?) did any restoration here, as so many episodes seem terribly dark. This series deserves high quality restoration, but the profit margin just isn't there.
She wonders if this reading he did about how "hard" women are told him why they're so hard.
The man who could have been Dr. Kildare.
I love when they name prices. He estimates her luxury apartment is $400 a month. That's $3750 in 2021. The internet tells me that is in fact the median rent for an apartment in Manhattan today.
With 17 minutes to go, she heads for the balcony and he calls the warden's office at Sing Sing.
Then finally, FINALLY, he gets to light up. He had all those lines to deliver. All those "you disgust me" expressions to make. The man has been waiting something like eight minutes for this.
"How many of those people down there would buy a ticket to our little play up here?" That's what you call a self-own isn't it? How many tickets would you need to sell to get some lighting in here? Not sure if it's the lack of restoration or The Naked City was always The Dark City as well?
Here Halloran gives a little speech, and it sounds like a cross between Jack Webb and Rod Serling. And he could pass for either of them here in the dark.
She gets some great lines here: "You guys ought to come down off your white horses and get with it. Cut out the fancy speeches about why we're here and where we're going and what it's all about. Any ten-year-old kid will tell ya how you got here. Now you tell me where we're going and what it's all about and who cares!" I'd have to recite that until I was completely bored with it so that I could deliver it without laughing. That's the real job of the actor: deliver it like you mean it. Don't evaluate it. Just deliver it like you mean it. Any ten-year-old kid? So much for the 50s being some golden age of innocence.
Sing Sing calls back and Halloran gets her to bring her drink over to the phone and listen to the warden addressing the witnesses for the execution.
If only Jimmy could have done one season of the hour-long format. Even one. Or come back as a featured guest star on a few episodes? Yeah, yeah, there's Mr. Novak, but he's not a cop. And that's a few years later. Wish me luck finding the short-lived The Investigators, 1961. Jimmy puts some tongue in it.
Will she be persuaded by the gravity of the execution procedure details?
I should check the James Franciscus Shrine or the other terrific James Franciscus blogger I found to see if "Goey" ever played the Devil anywhere. He should have. Highly recommended TV movie: One of My Wives is Missing, with fellow Twilight Zone alumnus Jack Klugman.
Jimmy would never be this young again.
One of the great pities of The Naked Gun being in black and white, and unrestored (or needing to be better restored) darkness is that Franciscus' blue eyes look brown.
If she has been moved, it doesn't show. She's got to have music.
She wants to pretend it's going to be midnight New Year's Eve. Did it really take her all those drinks to notice Jimmy is hot?
Just kidding! She likes underworld creeps. Jimmy gets her drink thrown in his face.
Backhand her, Jimmy!
He's a gentleman. He backs down.
The ugly clock of impending doom:
"What's your first name?" "Jim!" No Jimmy for this dame. He's got a gun! Oh yeah...
She just doesn't care. He is thinking about the boy about to die. She says he thinks too much.
That's a rather terrifying freeze frame as Jimmy clears the bar.
At last the screaming begins!
Frank Arcaro arrives to retrieve Jimmy. "Look, kid...." They've tried to cover for him at the precinct, but if this gets downtown...
Much to Frank's surprise, Halloran is staying!
But kid, if you do this, you're all finished on the force.
But if the kid in the electric chair dies, and Jimmy could have saved him but didn't.... Surely Frank knows Jimmy by now.
Halloran tries to hand in his gun and badge.
Then the pleading starts.
Just one word from her could reopen the whole case.
But Nicky has been good to her. "Oh yeah, a prince."
Now she's got him pouring her a drink. How much can this lush put away?
"This apartment stinks. Men stink." The apartment is a prison. Nick's the warden. Meanwhile, the warden in Sing Sing is also looking at 11 o'clock.
"I'm a woman, and that's the worst thing that can happen to a girl." Insert laugh track here?
Listen to Jimmy.
"When they burn out his brains, you'll die. Inside, you'll die."
So if she saves the kid, Nick will kill her. If the police pick him up, what about his friends. Is Jimmy going to stand guard the rest of his life?
SPOILERS AHEAD. Ending revealed!
Lady, make that call.
But then it rings!
Three minutes to go and Nick calls her. Yes, he did hear a man's voice. No, she's not drunk. She uses the expression "that'd be telling" -- how Prisoner of her! She ends things with Nick, with whom she'd never talked more than a minute apparently (how did that work?) and then tries to place an emergency call to the governor.
Badge 41367 steps in to make it sound less like a crank call. A stay of execution, "please, hurry." Now it all comes down to the operator's speed and who's on the other end. So I guess we never actually know.
Even the credits are too dark. The end of the original Naked City half-hour series starring James Franciscus.
