Naked City (TV Series) Beyond Truth (1959) User Reviews

Did the wrong man serve time for manslaughter? Halloran confronts a moral dilemma.

[mbrachman · 9/10 · 24 June 2020]

A year after his release from prison after serving a term for vehicular manslaughter and drunk driving, Arnold Fleischman (Martin Balsam, one of the finest American character actors of the latter half of the 20th century) has a recurring PTSD-like nightmare in which he yells at his friend, Max (Gerald Price), to look out while Max is apparently driving Arnold's car. Arnold's wife, Betty, is convinced that her husband has been the victim of gross injustice and that it was in fact Max who was at the wheel when a young girl was killed.

Betty, over her husband's objections, will not let it go, and takes her concerns to the NYPD, where Det. Lt. Parker (Horace McMahon) hands the case off to Det. Halloran (James Franciscus), who agrees to re-investigate the case on his own off-time. With the help of his colleague Det. Arcaro (Harry Bellaver), Halloran interviews the bartender (who witnessed the drunken party Arnold and Max attended that night and observed them leaving together), Max's ex-wife, and Max himself, who is in complete denial about his role in the tragedy and insists that the right man went to prison.

After gathering this evidence, Halloran talks to Arnold himself, who gives the young detective an answer that surprises and dismays him. Did Halloran do the right thing? Did Arnold?

Trivia note: Balsam won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1966 (for 1965 films) as the more-responsible elder brother of free spirit Murray Burns (Jason Robards) in the film version of "A Thousand Clowns." Balsam's character was named Arnold Burns.

What's done is done I can't change it now

[kapelusznik18 · 6/10 · 9 March 2014]

****SPOILERS**** After serving a six year stretch for running down a ten year old boy in the streets of NYC kindergarten school teacher Arnold Fleischer, Martin Balsam, wants to put that all behind him and continue with his life. It's Arnold's old lady Betty, Phyllis Hill, who want's the police to reopen the case feeling that he was framed and took the rap for it. It turns that Arnold's former co-worker at a toy company Max Bushwald, Gerald Price, was behind the wheel dead drunk and ran the boy down. At first not at all interested in the case NYPD Detective Jimmy Halloran, James Franciscus, soon realizes that there's something to Betty's story and goes all out to exonerate her husband. The problem is that Arnold is more then satisfied with the sentence he received feeling that he deserved it even though he was, as we & Det. Halloran soon find out, was totally innocent! The very fact that he let Max drive his car was enough for him to pay the price of his freedom.

With Det. Halloran doing everything he can to get Arnold to change his mind and have his conviction overturned Arnold is steadfast to keep things they way they are. It's true that Max was behind the wheel of the death car and got away with his crime, a hit & run as well as DUI, of homicide. But the truth is that he really didn't. He now has to live with what he did for the rest of his life. As for Arnold he rightly feels that exonerated or not for what happened happened and nothing can change it. So why open up new wounds and rub salt in them when there starting to heal.

Unusual "Naked City" episode for its time, in the 1950's, that has a person get away with a crime that he in fact committed and an innocent person end up paying for it. But it was Arnold's sense of justice and mercy, for his friend Max, that equaled everything out. Whatever Max did he'll eventually end up paying for it one way or another. As we see that what he did and got away with had changed his life for the worst. A lot worse then what Arnold went through in taking the blame for his actions.

Food for thought, or audience manipulation?

[lor_ · 27 December 2023]

Stirling Silliphant dares to turn a police procedural show's format on its head in "Beyond Truth", its title forecasting that this episode will delve into philosophical issues that extend way beyond enforcing the law and meting out justice. As Franciscus sums up in an intentionally unsatisfying, open ending: "I'm not sure about what's truth, what's justice", as he drops working on a cold case.

Martin Balsam gives a strong performance (demonstrating how having top actors as guest stars is so important on a show like this, even though often not adhered to in casting) as an ex-con who is leading a productive life for his family, providing therapy to crippled children, but his wife (nicely played by Phyllis Hill, ex-wife of Jose Ferrer) is dead-set on clearing his name for a crime she's sure he did not commit.

McMahon is tough on Hill and reluctantly assigns the cold case of clearing her husband to Franciscus, who gradually becomes a crusader, out to find and prove the truth of what really happened in Balsam's manslaughter conviction and bringing the guilty party to justice. But Balsam won't cooperate, and eventually (using powerful Silliphant dialogue) convinces Jimmy that it's best to let well enough alone, rather than rock the boat in some crusade for "the truth".

It's a message that goes against the whole point of TV crime shows, where getting all the facts and punishing the guilty is the whole point and the source of audience satisfaction and closure, week after week. And with Gerald Price as a disgusting, instant heavy cast as the true culprit, Silliphant and veteran director John Brahm almost seem to be thumbing their nose at the viewer, expecting one to accept a finish to the show that's letting him go free when to quote would-be dictator Trump so many decades later, he should rot in hell.