Word: balestrero
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...wholesome family life (one wife, three sons). Born in New York City of immigrant parents, he worked his way through college (Niagara University) and law school as a lifeguard and merchant seaman. As a lawyer, he got some national attention for his conscientious - and ultimately successful - defense of Christopher Balestrero, a musician who was the victim of a mistaken-identity arrest...
...Wrong Man (Warner). When the true story of Manny Balestrero was printed in the newspapers a few years ago, it made a strange and haunting tale. On the afternoon of Jan. 13, 1953, Balestrero, an $85-a-week bass player at Manhattan's crusty, upper-crust Stork Club, went to the office of a Long Island insurance company to raise a small loan on his wife's policy. The next evening he was arrested and "positively identified" by two of the insurance company's employees as the man who months earlier had robbed the office at gunpoint...
...true story, Balestrero's ordeal had drama, heart tugs, near tragedy, even, with his wife better, an upbeat ending. As fiction, with Henry Fonda playing Balestrero, the drama, heart tugs and near tragedy have been dissipated. Director Alfred Hitchcock, in a change of pace from his usual suspense formula, seems to have been so impressed with having a true story to tell that he gave it a completely literal rendering. Turning the story into fiction without fictionalizing, he stripped it of its emotional impact; by sticking to the facts, he missed the truth...
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