The House on 92nd Street

Plot

In 1939, American standout university student Bill Dietrich (William Eythe) is approached by Nazi recruiters due to his German heritage. He feigns interest, then notifies the FBI. FBI agent George Briggs (Lloyd Nolan) tells him to play along.

Dietrich travels to Hamburg, Germany, where he undergoes six months of intensive training in espionage. He is then sent back to the United States to set up a radio station and to act as paymaster to the spies already there. He is told that only a "Mr. Christopher" has the authority to change his assignment.

Dietrich manages to pass along his microfilmed credentials to the FBI; they are altered so that instead of being forbidden to contact most of the agents, he is authorized to meet them all. In New York, his contact, dress designer Elsa Gebhardt (Signe Hasso), is suspicious of the modification and requests confirmation from Germany, but communication is slow. In the meantime, she has no choice but to give Dietrich full access to her spy ring. When questioned, Dietrich's other legitimate contact, veteran espionage agent Colonel Hammersohn (Leo G. Carroll), denies knowing Mr. Christopher's identity.

In a separate development, a German spy is killed in a traffic accident; the FBI finds a secret message among his possessions stating that Mr. Christopher will concentrate on Process 97. Briggs is alarmed because he is aware that Process 97 is America's most closely guarded secret.

When the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States enters the war. Most of the spies Dietrich has identified are immediately picked up, but Gebhardt's ring is left alone, in the hope of flushing out Mr. Christopher.

Gebhardt gives Dietrich papers to transmit immediately to Germany; they contain part of Process 97, a key part of the atomic bomb project. Dietrich steals a cigarette butt he notices in non-smoker Gebhardt's otherwise empty ashtray. The FBI traces this tiny clue to Luise Vadja, and from her to her supposed boyfriend, Charles Ogden Roper (Gene Lockhart), a scientist working on the atomic bomb. Roper breaks when he is picked up and shown a message from Germany ordering his liquidation after he has completed his mission. Roper confesses to have hidden the last part of Process 97 in a book at a bookstore from which a man believed to be Mr. Christopher was just filmed leaving. That is enough for Briggs, who then orders the arrest of Gebhardt's ring.

It is just in time for Dietrich. Gebhardt finally receives a reply from Germany, confirming her worst fears. She injects Dietrich with scopolamine in an attempt to obtain information, but her building is surrounded by government agents. Gebhardt orders her underlings to hold them off while disguising as a man and tries to sneak out with the vital papers. Unable to get away, she returns, only to be shot by mistake by one of her own men. The rest are captured, and Dietrich rescued.

Cast

Production and background

The House on 92nd Street is the first film noir produced by Louis De Rochemont, credited as a pioneer of the semidocumentary style police thriller.

TCM's host, Robert Osborne, said that the film is based on the real life case of William G. Sebold. He also said that they used real FBI agents and with real footage taken by the FBI. Sebold was involved in bringing down the Duquesne Spy Ring in 1941, the largest convicted espionage case in the history of the United States. On January 2, 1942, 33 Nazi spies, including the ring leader Fritz Joubert Duquesne (also known as "The man who killed Kitchener"), were sentenced to more than 300 years in prison. One German spymaster later commented that the ring’s roundup delivered ‘the death blow’ to their espionage efforts in the United States. J. Edgar Hoover called his concerted FBI swoop on Duquesne's ring the greatest spy roundup in U.S. history.

Lloyd Nolan would reprise his role as Inspector Briggs in the sequel, The Street with No Name (1948). In that film, Briggs and the FBI agents would take on organized crime. The actual house used in the filming of the movie stood at 53 E 93rd street. It is no longer there - it is now a pathway leading to premises behind the original house.

Critical response

Thomas M. Pryor, film critic for The New York Times wrote, "The House on Ninety-second Street barely skims the surface of our counterespionage operations, but it reveals sufficient of the FBI's modus operandi to be intriguing on that score alone."

Although praised when released in 1945, the film when released on DVD in 2005 received mostly mixed reviews. Christopher Null, writing for Filmcritic.com, writes, "today it comes across as a bit goody-goody, pandering to the FBI, pedantic, and not noirish at all."

Accolades

Wins

Radio adaptation

The House on 92nd Street was presented on Stars in the Air May 3, 1952. The 30-minute adaptation starred Humphrey Bogart and Keefe Brasselle.