Sidney Lumet’s 1975 bank robbery drama was an instant success, but it wouldn’t exist without the stranger-than-fiction failed heist of 1972 memorialized in the Life magazine story,The Boys in the Bank. If ever a movie was destined to be a critical and box office hit, it wasDog Day Afternoon. It reunitedSidney LumetwithAl Pacino, whom he had directedjust two years earlier inSerpico, and co-starred John Cazale as Pacino’s partner-in-crime. Frequent Pacino collaborator Martin Bregman co-produced the film with Martin Elfman, andthey brought the Life magazine articleby P.F. Kluge and Thomas Moore toCool Hand Lukescreenwriter Frank Pierson.
But even with all this star power (the cast is rounded out by James Broderick and Charles Durning),it’s the true story of what happenedAugust 22, 1972, at a Chase Manhattan Branch in the Gravesend neighborhood of Brooklyn that steals the show.
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Matter of Fact
Just before the closing of business hours on August 22, John Wojtowicz, Salvatore Naturile, and Bobby Westenberg walked into the Chase bank on Avenue P. Westenberg lost his nerve and fled almost immediately, but Wojtowicz and Naturile pulled guns on the bank manager, security guard, and five bank tellers. The pair were on the verge of escaping with nearly $40,000, but, thanks to a worried colleague of the bank manager, the police suddenly had the bank surrounded. For the next fourteen hours, Wojtowicz negotiated with police amidst a media circus and an ever-growing crowd of onlookers before robbers and hostages alike were escorted to JFK Airport, where Wojtowicz and Naturile believed they would be allowed to flee on a requisitioned jet. Instead, police and FBI agents collaborated in an ambush that left Naturile dead by gunshot wound and Wojtowicz surrendering himself.
A Motive with a Difference
As the hostage situation began to unfold, the first question was the motive, and the answer was unexpected: Wojtowicz, a Vietnam vet, hoped to use his share of the take to fund gender-affirming surgery for his trans wife, Elizabeth Eden, although Eden was unaware of any of the plan. Less is known about Naturile’s background (other than a long record of criminal charges and convictions ranging from truancy to narcotic possession), but his share was intended to help remove his two younger sisters from foster care.
In the film, the relationship between Wojtowicz, renamed Sonny Wortzik, and Naturile, is shadowy at best, with Wojtowicz acting as PR man and point of contact with the police, while Naturile sits quietly and cagily with the hostages, watching warily. In actuality, the two met at a gay bar in Greenwich Village, making it one of a number of details which were played down in the film to deemphasize Wojtowicz’s homosexuality.
The Showbiz Version of Events
So what was behind the muting of the details of Wojtowicz’s sexuality? Wojtowicz had previously been married to a woman he had two children with; he was divorced by the time of the robbery, although the film portrays him as still married, and features a distraught phone call with the mother of his children. Pacino may have been the reason. It’s been pointed out that this was one of the first portrayals of an open homosexual by a major star like Pacino (although it’s interesting to note that just five years later Pacino starred inCruising, which delves into the world of gay S&M and was originally given an X-rating). Pacino also nixed a kiss with Chris Sarandon, who played the film version of Elizabeth Eden, feeling it again pushed the issue too far, but the sweet, sadly comic phone call between the two characters ends up being as romantic as any kiss.
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No Hollywood Endings
Dog Day Afternoonwas nominated for six Academy Awards, winning for Best Original Screenplay, and six Golden Globe Awards as well. The fates of the real people behind the story were rather less glamorous. Sal Naturile lost his life in the 1972 ambush at 18 years old (John Cazale almost didn’t get the part due to being 39 years old at the time, but his acting abilities won out, althoughCazale himself was to die tragicallyof lung cancer in 1978.) John Wojtowicz was sentenced to twenty years in jail, inevitably serving only five. The money that Wojtowicz got for initially selling his story enabled him to pay for Elizabeth Eden’s surgery, but she ended up marrying someone else and died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1987. She and Wojtowicz remained friends, however, and he delivered the eulogy at her funeral.
Wojtowicz ended up largely unhappy with the film’s version of events, although he was pleased with both his and Eden’s portrayal. He condemned the film version of his ex-wife as driving him into Eden’s arms, when in fact that relationship was over before he’d even met Eden. (Wojtowicz’s wife herself sued Warner Bros. for invasion of privacy.) For a 15-minutes-of-fame that started with a bank robbery, Wojtowicz’s life upon his 1978 parole was an ever-downward trajectory. He failed (predictably) to get hired as a Chase Manhattan security guard, and a previous stint as a bank teller was not exactly helpful either. Warner Bros. had gotten some cooperation from him with a promise of 1% of the film’s profits, and although he had to sue the studio to get it, he eventually came away with $100,000. But by the time of his death from cancer in 2006, he was on welfare and living with his mother.
The Life magazine article that got the film version rolling mentions John Wojtowicz’s strikinglikeness to Al Pacino. But their paths diverged, and while Pacino’s star continued to rise, Wojtowicz’s flared out one day in August 1972.
