Copyright 11 March 1954 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Roxy: 12 March 1954. U.S. release: March 1954. U.K. release: August 1954. Australian release: 3 June 1954. Sydney opening at the Regent. 11 reels. 8,359 feet. 93 minutes.SYNOPSIS: When Corporal Johnny Leatherby (Ted Avery) is kidnapped by East Berlin Reds after saying goodnight to his German sweetheart, Kathy Gerhardt (Marianne Koch), trouble really begins. His father, Charles Leatherby (Broderick Crawford), a tycoon from Toledo, Ohio, arrives in Berlin to get his boy back through his powerful political influence. State Department's Fred Hobart (Casey Adams) takes him to see the C.I.C. man working on the case, Colonel Steve Van Dyke (Gregory Peck), in whose office works a U.S. secretary, Ricky Cates (Rita Gam), and M/Sergeant Eddie McColloch (Buddy Ebsen).NOTES: Fox's 7th CinemaScope feature. Jed Harris and Tom Reed were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Motion Picture Story, losing to Philip Yordan's Broken Lance. Producer/screenwriter Nunnally Johnson's debut as director. COMMENT: A dull slice of Cold War propaganda which forces the viewer to sit still while the players ping-pong incessant information dialogue across the CinemaScope screen. Almost no action, despite actual location filming in Berlin. A dull, cliché-ridden, jingoistic and simplistic script, compounded by even duller direction. Peck is dull too. And with lines like he has, who can blame him? But we expected more from Sweden's top actress Anita Bjork, here making her Hollywood movie debut. "Miss Julie" is wasted in a thankless role. The Broderick Crawford character holds out a promise of bombastic fireworks, but even this fizzles out. Miss Gam is likewise not utilized, whilst Peter Van Eyck is made to mark time in an equally small, utterly thankless role. At least Buddy Ebsen is occasionally if rather mechanically amusing, especially given the uninspired and even embarrassingly trite material he's forced to work with. Walter Abel is also cast for comic relief but he performs consistently poorly. Clarke's photography is early CinemaScope grainy, whilst the music is appropriately flag-waving.

The Cold War was settling in for a deep freeze when Night People was made in 1953. The story is about the kidnapping of an American corporal on occupation duty in Berlin and the efforts by our military to get him back.Mind you this isn't any ordinary corporal. Turns out he's the son of Broderick Crawford who is doing a light version of his junk tycoon from Born Yesterday. As it is explained in a line which audiences today might not get, 'he plays golf'. That he was a businessman who played golf was meant that he played regularly with the most famous golfer in America. You could not go a week in the USA of the Fifties without reading in the newspapers or hearing on radio or television about President Eisenhower tearing it up at some golf course. No one born after 1956 or so would possibly grasp the meaning of that description.So Crawford goes to Berlin to get some action and he runs into Gregory Peck of the Provost Marshal's office who does things in his own time and won't be bullied or influenced. Peck's role calls for him to be soldier, diplomat, and psychologist all in one. But he's a professional and he carries it off despite a few unexpected wrinkles. One of them turns out to be Anita Bjork who has been working both sides of the Cold War in an effort to obtain her much needed absinthe.Aiding and abetting Peck in his attempt to free the corporal are Rita Gam as his girl Friday, Sgt. Buddy Ebsen, Peck's non-com aide, and army doctor Walter Abel who has to be on standby at the climax of the film. Why is that, you have to watch Night People to find out, but Abel's needed for a potential emergency.Berlin ever since the airlift was at the center of the Cold War with the Russians. The wall had not been built yet and after that things kind of settled to an uneasy acceptance until the fall of the Soviet Union. Night People is an average Cold War drama made better by the presence of some A list cast members and a tightly edited script by Nunnally Johnson who also directed.

It seems that someone pulled the plug on 1954's "Night People." There is a very good plot here about a young American soldier being kidnapped by the Communists in post-World War 11 East Germany. Broderick Crawford, in his usual tough no nonsense portrayals, comes to Berlin to make sure that no one is goofing off on getting his son free as well as to show that his a lot of political ties.What I found interesting here is that the usual gang buster Crawford quiets down and even changes his opinion once he finds out the elements of the entire story. Seems that the East Germans want to exchange his son for an elderly couple, the wife was British and the husband was a German army official, blinded by the Nazis. Appears that the British wife was informing allied intelligence of Nazi activities during the war.Peck is in his usual fine form as someone seeking justice and finding out along the way that his German female assistant is not everything she was cracked up to be.The film needs to have excitement with such a plot but we don't get it at all. Even the drinking of the poison is not shown with any zest at all.

This is an extremely well done motion picture. The first directorial job of longtime writer Nunnally Johnson revealed a fine talent which created suspense and captures the audience minds without resorting to chases and explosions. Everything happens indoors, and it is question of brains not of fists.A magnificent job by Broderick Crawford and Gregory Peck, and a well done investigation into cold war minds, all about the kidnapping by the Russians of an U.S.Corporal in Berlin, in order to exchange him for a couple of elderly Germans wanted supposedly by former Nazis in the service of the Soviets. Everything works wonderfully, until one asks why didn't the Russians kidnap the couple in the first place and save all the trouble.Curiously, this was nominated to an Oscar for best original story... It lost, and the award went to Philip Yordan for Broken Lance, which was based not on an original story but in the screenplay Yordan had written in 1949 for House of Strangers, from a story by Jerome Weidman.