Bob Camardella Remembers "He Walked By Night" (1948)

He Walked by Night is a 1948 American police procedural film noir directed by Alfred L. Werker and an uncredited Anthony Mann.  The film, shot in a semidocumentary tone, is loosely based on the real-life actions of Erwin "Machine-Gun" Walker, a former Glendale, California police department employee and World War II veteran who unleashed a crime spree of burglaries, robberies and shootouts in the Los Angeles area between 1945 and 1946.

During production, actor Jack Webb met the film's police technical advisor Marty Wynn and was inspired by a conversation with Wynn to create the radio program Dragnet, which later became the first modern police television drama.
He Walked by Night was released by Eagle-Lion Films. The film is notable for its camerawork by renowned film noir cinematographer John Alton.
Today the film is in the public domain.

Plot

On a Los Angeles street, Officer Rob Rawlins, a patrolman on his way home from work, stops a man whom he suspects of being a burglar and is shot and mortally wounded. The minor clues lead nowhere. Two police detectives, Marty Brennan and Chuck Jones, are assigned to catch the killer, Roy Morgan, a brilliant mystery man with no known criminal past. Morgan is hiding in a Hollywood bungalow and listening to police calls on his custom radio in an attempt to avoid capture. His only relationship is with his small dog.