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Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Paul Douglas and Richard Basehart carry the movie on their shoulders ;the movie has got the three unities: time,place and(almost) action :I write "almost" because two minor subplots(Grace Kelly's appointment and the Jeffrey Hunters/Debra Paget romance)are mostly filler.All that remains is excellent:the film continues the tradition of the Freudian movie which thrived in the precedent decade with Hitchcock,Lang ,Tourneur and Siodmak and the actors direction is first class ;Douglas and Basehart hold the audience breathless and there's no lull:considering the limitations there are working under in space and in time,it's a true tour De force ;the interventions are brilliant:Mrs Moorehead is an actress who makes all her scenes count;even the sometimes bland Bel Geddes can play her game well.Douglas ,when he suggest the suicidal young man go fishing with him,becomes a new father for him,just like Cooper and Tone were new fathers for Cromwell in "lives of a Bengal Lancer";in "souls at sea" there is another father/son relationship.I have always loved Henry Hathaway's movies,from "Peter Ibbetson" TO "kiss of death" , from" the trail of the lonesome pine" to " true grit" (1969)and from "Niagara" to "legend of the lost" ."14 hours" is to be ranked among his best.

"Fourteen Hours" is a low budget offering with a simple plot and a relatively short running time but it's also an incredibly gripping drama about a disturbed young man who threatens to commit suicide by jumping off a skyscraper window ledge.The story's based on the real life incident which involved John Wilson Warde who on 26 July 1938 leapt to his death from one of the highest window ledges of the Hotel Gotham in New York City. Director Henry Hathaway filmed the action in a style which was very realistic and made good use of some strikingly effective camera angles. His approach was also one which avoided any tasteless sensationalism or sentimentality.Shortly after delivering breakfast to a hotel guest, a service waiter suddenly realises that the young man has stepped out onto the ledge outside of his room and is threatening to jump. The waiter reports what's happened to the hotel manager and at the same time, traffic cop Charlie Dunnigan (Paul Douglas) who is working on the street below, alerts his colleagues to what's going on before swiftly going up to the would be jumper's room. There Dunnigan poses as another hotel guest and starts a conversation with the troubled Robert Cosick (Richard Basehart) who despite Dunnigan's encouragement, refuses to step back into his room.Soon, the police, newspaper reporters and a couple of psychiatrists arrive, Dunnigan is ordered back to his traffic duty and outside a large crowd gathers and radio and television crews quickly set up their equipment. The psychiatrists discover that Robert is unwilling to speak to anyone but Dunnigan and so he's duly called back to the scene by Deputy Chief Moksar (Howard Da Silva).The police locate the young man's divorced parents but Robert only becomes more upset by the arrival of the hysterical Mrs Cosick (Agnes Moorehead) and also fails to communicate properly with his father (Robert Keith) from whom he's been estranged for many years. Next, Robert's ex-fiancée Virginia (Barbara Bel Geddes) is brought to the hotel but her intervention ultimately proves to be just as ineffective as that of his parents. Robert's predicament is eventually resolved but in a most unexpected way.In "Fourteen Hours", the despair of a solitary man on the ledge provides a stark contrast to the frantic activity of the large number of people in his hotel room. Similarly, this man's lonely and desperate life or death situation is seen as insignificant in a large city where the onlookers who watch him simply regard the whole incident as a gross inconvenience and even take bets on what time he'll jump.The story's subplots which involve a couple meeting in the crowd and falling in love and a woman changing her mind about proceeding with her planned divorce also emphasise how the lives of the city and its people drive relentlessly on because one person's crisis is totally insignificant in this kind of environment.Robert Cosick is a man with a history of mental problems and his instability at the time of his crisis on the ledge is explained as being caused by the inadequacies of his parents and the way he was treated by them.This movie has a cast who turn in some good performances but it's the contributions of Basehart and Douglas which really stand out. Basehart looks genuinely tormented and anxious and it's understandable that the strongest bond that he forms is with a man who has the type of qualities which would normally be associated with those of a conventional good natured father figure. Douglas is also excellent as the kindly and modest man who puts his sound personal qualities to good use in what for him is a very challenging situation.

I believe the revolving door in the hotel lobby was actually on the Hollywood set because I have never seen such a door that rotated both directions. You can see the handles on the door which would be for CCW rotation (normal) which it does early in the film. Towards the end, Dunnigan's son comes thru the door and he and his father go back out with it rotating CW. Real doors had a mechanism to prevent this because of the potential danger to users.WW II 60 inch searchlights did not have an exposed knife switch that turned them on. They had an enclosed switch due to the danger of exposed electrical contacts. The knife switch was something Hollywood stuck of the outside of the real switch in order to make the plot work. The light was probably turned on at another switch off camera. If you look carefully when the boy jumps and hits the switch, you can see a couple of black cables that were added and just tied on to the real ones (which are silver colored).

Henry Hathaway is the director of Fourteen Hours, which stars Richard Baseheart as Robert Cosick, the young man threatening to jump from a Manhattan skyscraper. Paul Douglas is police officer Charlie Dunnigan who discovers the man and tries to talk him into coming off the ledge. The drama and setting are enhanced by the massive crowd of onlookers who are attracted by the great media circus playing out. Douglas is supposed to be an older man but in fact was only seven years older than Baseheart, who at 37 played the role of a younger man. Douglas was a highly-competent supporting actor from the fifties who would have gone on to greater roles except for his death in 1959 at age 52. Other supporting actors are Agnes Moorehead as Mrs. Cosick (the mother), Robert Keith (the father), Grace Kelly, Jeffrey Hunter, Martin Gable, Barbara Bel Geddes (the girlfriend) and others. Baseheart was something of a Hollywood idol in his day and died after completing the narration for the opening ceremonies of the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984.The story captures the skyline of New York, its people and media as the drama gives an air of immediacy to the suspense of whether or not the man will jump from the building. There are a number of close calls as various characters try to persuade the young man to come in off the ledge. It is Saint Patrick's Day and people have gathered in the streets for the parade but find themselves watching the disturbed character high above them. Day becomes night and one couple fall in love during the viewing of the ordeal. We learn about the boy's history, his upbringing, the parents, and the girlfriend. The media show presents the young man as a sympathetic character with crowds warning him about the police as they move towards him overhead and women calling radio stations with proposals of marriage...a slice of New York at mid-century. The movie is still great entertainment today, if not quite up to the calibre of the movie The Naked City, made three years earlier.