According to the Hollywood Reporter, the movie The Naked City, has been chosen by the Library of Congress and added to the National Film Registry…
An excerpt from The Hollywood Reporter article, written by Brooks Boliek:
“When narrator/producer Mark Hellinger tells us, “There are 8 million stories in the Naked City; this has been one of them,” we know we’ve been on a trip to the dark side. Director Jules Dassin captured the spirit of film noir, using documentary techniques to tell the story of a murder and its investigation. It forever changed the way police were portrayed in film…
“No one had done a film where the real hero was a hard-working police detective, like the ones I knew in Brooklyn,” said Malvin Wald, one of the film’s writers. “We knew we were making a new genre that became the police procedural.”
Wald told The Hollywood Reporter that his knowledge of Brooklyn, the filmmakers’ willingness to learn how the police really operate and the fact that he’d been a postal inspector, “a civil servant, just like them,” managed to get him unheard-of access to active cases.
“When I met Inspector (Joseph) Donovan (of the NYPD), he said to me, ‘Oh, you picture guys always make cops looks so stupid like we couldn’t find a sail in the Navy yard,’ ” Wald said.
The title and famous voice-over had their own share of serendipity. The title came from a book of pictures made by the street photographer Weegee. “It was just such a great title, very poetical,” he said.
Wald said he filled several notebooks while combing the streets with the cops. Wald and Hellinger were talking about them, when Hellinger asked if he had any good stories.
“I told him I guess I had 8 million stories,” Wald recounted. “He said, ‘Don’t give me 8 million, give me one.’ Later, he called me and said he remembered what I said and he was going to use it.””
“No one had done a film where the real hero was a hard-working police detective, like the ones I knew in Brooklyn,” said Malvin Wald, one of the film’s writers. “We knew we were making a new genre that became the police procedural.”
Wald told The Hollywood Reporter that his knowledge of Brooklyn, the filmmakers’ willingness to learn how the police really operate and the fact that he’d been a postal inspector, “a civil servant, just like them,” managed to get him unheard-of access to active cases.
“When I met Inspector (Joseph) Donovan (of the NYPD), he said to me, ‘Oh, you picture guys always make cops looks so stupid like we couldn’t find a sail in the Navy yard,’ ” Wald said.
The title and famous voice-over had their own share of serendipity. The title came from a book of pictures made by the street photographer Weegee. “It was just such a great title, very poetical,” he said.
Wald said he filled several notebooks while combing the streets with the cops. Wald and Hellinger were talking about them, when Hellinger asked if he had any good stories.
“I told him I guess I had 8 million stories,” Wald recounted. “He said, ‘Don’t give me 8 million, give me one.’ Later, he called me and said he remembered what I said and he was going to use it.””
Weegee was very proud that Mark Hellinger choose, and bought, the name Naked City, and boasted about it many years later… and this perhaps predicated his move to Hollywood a few years later.
WEEGEEWEEGEEWEEGEE 
