Many of you may have heard that there's a movie filming scenes right here in Woodhaven. The romantic comedy Morning Glory starring Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton was scheduled to film scenes on and around 94th Street -- here is one of the signs that were posted on Jamaica Avenue:
It sparked a few conversations about films being shot in our area, or Woodhaven's connection to movies -- so we decided to start a series of updates examining the topic. And our first entry is straight out of left-field -- a great little film that most of you have probably never seen.
In Fourteen Hours (1951), Paul Douglas stars as a traffic cop named Charlie Dunnagan who is pressed into emergency duty when a young man, played by Richard Basehart, climbs on to a ledge and threatens to jump. The drama plays out high above the streets of Manhattan as the officer attempts to relate on a personal level with the troubled young man. One by one, friends and relatives are brought in -- but they only seem to exacerbate the problem. Only Charlie Dunnagan seems to have any success, and for fourteen hours, he speaks to the young man.
Fourteen Hours is notable because it marked the screen debut of Grace Kelly. It's a good drama, well shot and is definitely worth viewing. Okay, so by now, you're wondering -- where's the Woodhaven connection? Well, it turns out that this story is based on a real life incident which happened on July 26th 1938. The city came to a halt as a young man named John William Warde stood on a ledge, threatening to commit suicide. And in real life, the police officer that stayed with him throughout this ordeal was named Charles V. Glasco -- and Officer Glasco was a resident of Woodhaven! Below is a real-life picture of the incident, when Mr. Warde's sister was pleading with him to come in. And below is our Woodhaven resident, Officer Glasco, handing a telephone to Mr. Warde. Click Here to Order Fourteen Hours Through Amazon Spoiler Alert! If you don't want to know how the movie ends, compared to how it played out in real-life -- then stop reading here. The rest of you can scroll down a bit. Okay, in the movie -- the young guy trips and falls but is saved when he gets caught in the safety net they had set-up on the floors below his ledge. In real life, the man jumped and passed away. The way the story goes, according to Wikipedia: The film originally ended with Robert falling to his death. Both endings were shot, and Hathaway preferred the realistic ending that showed Robert falling to the ground, as occurred in the Warde incident. However, on the same day the film was previewed, the daughter of Fox president Spyros Skouras jumped to her death. Skouras wanted the film shelved, but instead released Fourteen Hours six months later with the ending that showed Robert surviving his fall. The incident was the subject of a story in The New Yorker called "That Was New York: The Man on the Ledge" -- and we managed to find a copy of that article as it was appeared in the June 19, 1949 edition of The Sydney Morning Herald.
If you have any comments, or would like to suggest other projects, drop us a line at info@projectwoodhaven.com or projectwoodhaven@aol.com .
