Chicago Calling
7.1
“$53 means life or death to him!”
Bill Cannon (Dan Duryea) loses everything to alcohol: his job, his family, his self-respect. Soon after his wife and daughter leave him, he receives word his little girl has been injured in a car accident outside Chicago. His wife will call later with news, but Bill’s short the $53 he needs to keep his phone from being disconnected. Filled with anguish, he heads out onto the Los Angeles streets to find some way to come up with the cash. As his character encounters expected cruelty and unexpected kindness, Duryea takes what might have been mere melodrama and turns it into a perceptive examination of one shattered soul. The other fine star of this race-against-the-clock programmer is an unglamorous, lunch-bucket L.A. rarely captured on film.
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Cast
28 people
Dan Duryea
Bill Cannon
Known for
Scarlet Street
Winchester '73
Mary Anderson
Mary Cannon
Known for
Lifeboat
The Song of Bernadette
Peter Berneis
John Reinhardt
Also in
6 Hours to Live
The Climax
Robert De Grasse
Gordon Gebert
Bobby
Known for
The Narrow Margin
The House on Telegraph Hill
Heinz Roemheld
Kurt Hirsch
Ross Elliott
Jim
Known for
Tarantula
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
Arthur H. Nadel
Joseph Justman
Melinda Casey
Nancy Cannon
Known for
Billy the Kid Versus Dracula
Carrie
John Reinhardt Director · Peter Berneis Writer Heinz Roemheld Composer
United States release December 31, 1951 · Produced in United States
Production
Arrowhead Pictures
Production
United States
Produced in
Languages
Original language
English
Spoken on screen
English
Release dates
United States · December 31, 1951
Limited theatrical · Chicago, Illinois
United States
January 11, 1952 · Theatrical
Denmark
March 14, 1955
France
October 19, 2013 · Grand Lyon Film Festival
More from John Reinhardt
Other films they directed, best known first.
Some details come from TheTVDB.