…The early morning hours of January the fourteenth, nineteen hundred fifty-three, a day in the life of Christopher Emanuel Balestrero that he will never forget…
Trailer for Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Wrong Man” (1956)
Note: In the embedded Instagram post below, I tried to tag the location of the place where the events of the film happened, but the closest I could get was the nearest subway station.
There’s a person behind all those commemorative street signs in New York, and I’m glad that I became familiar with one of them.
I ended 2020 by watching a series of classic thriller films with my family. It seemed appropriate for the year. The last film we watched in its entirety was “The Wrong Man” — I can’t say “Shall We Dance” (1939) since it played between the years, plus I’ve already seen it. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, the film tells the story of a night club musician who goes to jail after two insurance clerks mistake him for a look-alike serial robber, and the ordeal of clearing his name drives his wife, who was the reason why he went to the insurance clerks, to feeling guilt and insanity. Henry Fonda plays Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero, the titular character — the real-life musician’s name is spelled as “Emmanuel,” though trailer and credits spell it with one-less “m” — while Vera Miles plays his wife, Rose.
Let’s just say things got weird when we noticed certain locations were that of the Elmhurst-Jackson Heights-Woodside section of Queens, and I just had to see the specific place the movie was filmed to believe it. There’s a commemorative street sign that was erected in 2014 to prove it. Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero is immortalized in film and sign, but I wonder how many people know of this happening.
Up until I watched the film, I thought “Coming to America” (1988) was the only major movie that was filmed in the area, but also considering what happened to Balestrero, gracious! Anthony Quayle plays real-life attorney Frank D. O’Connor, and though I know that he was a once a state senator and gubernatorial candidate, his performance in the film let me understand the public figure, who has a playground named after him across Elmhurst Hospital, better.
I’ve tried to imagine Henry Fonda, Vera Miles, and Alfred Hitchcock in the area with a film crew, but it’s hard to do so without imagining the neighborhood in black and white.
Note: I wasn’t aware that I missed a spot on Balestrero’s right hand until I posted the art on the gram, so the Twitter version has the corrected version.
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Dearest Reverie 