The film drew mixed reviews. Pauline Kael called it a “chic crappy movie.” “Possibly the most under-plotted, underwritten, over-photographed film of the year,” Roger Ebert declared. “Which is not to say it isn’t great to look at.” Made for $4.3 million, the film grossed $14 million, and Bostonians were delighted to see their city in a major Hollywood production. During the premiere, the crowd cheered and gasped as much for tense plot points as for cameos by local residents. Of course, many extras were annoyed by their absence from the finished product. “They cut off my face, but you can hear me all right,” one insisted.
Trustman scored again with his script for Bullitt, also starring McQueen, later that year. But he didn’t enjoy the celebrity (Boston papers covered his messy divorce), and keeping his on-screen avatar happy could get tricky; Trustman refused McQueen’s order to write him a screenplay in which the main character was a “loser.” His output devolved into B-movies. The phone stopped ringing. “Movies are commercially packaged dreams,” Trustman would later write in The Atlantic, “and as long as people are packaging dreams, other people will pay the price to open the package and see the dream.”
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SOME DREAMS ARE NIGHTMARES. Another major motion picture emerging from the city that year grew not from a pleasant reverie but from a waking horror.
Between 1962 and 1964, thirteen women in the Greater Boston area were murdered in their homes, without any sign of forced entry. The papers attributed the crimes to the “Sunset Killer,” the “Phantom Stranger,” and the “Mad Strangler” before the simplest moniker won out: the Boston Strangler. Even after the media warned them never to open their doors to strangers, the murders continued. “HYSTERIA SOLVES NOTHING,” one Boston Herald headline read, stirring up more hysteria. Landlords installed bigger, better locks. Some women acquired tear gas or guard dogs; others packed up and left town. And in a city where the Watch and Ward Society had primly banned suggestive entertainment for years, the crimes of a sexual deviant must have been particularly unsettling.
The murders were still happening when the first dramatization surfaced in 1964. Victor Bruno starred in The Strangler, whose title character The New York Times described as “a corpulent young man with a fetish for dolls and fingers that tingle toward the opposite sex.” The film stoked the tangible aura of fear in Boston, floating wild guesses as to the type of sicko responsible.
Next up: the true-crime literary version. “My interest was not so much in writing a book about the Boston stranglings as it was to write about what happens to a great city when it is besieged by terror,” author Gerold Frank wrote in the preface to 1966’s The Boston Strangler. While accounts of real-life atrocities have always found readers, it’s around this time that a subgenre emerged: the true-crime nonfiction novel, most often credited to Truman Capote’s 1965 bestseller In Cold Blood. Right on its heels, though, was Frank’s book, and its loose ends made for an even more chilling read. “If the reader is left feeling that there is more to be known, that the authorities are not quite satisfied,” one review read, “it is only because such is the case.”
Frank rooted his story in firsthand accounts and interrogation transcripts. By the second half of his investigation, there was a likely suspect in custody. Shortly after Chelsea, Massachusetts, native Albert DeSalvo confessed to being the one and only Boston Strangler, he signed a release granting Frank exclusive and perpetual rights to publish biographical material about him.
DeSalvo was born in 1931. His father beat everyone in the family and regularly brought home prostitutes, making no attempt to hide them from his children. Albert’s early forays into shoplifting and animal torture led to reform school. Afterward, he joined the army, meeting his wife-to-be, Irmgard, in Germany before settling in Malden, Massachusetts. The couple had two children together, and he appeared to be a doting husband and father. But DeSalvo led a disturbing double life.
It started with the Measuring Man incidents. In this ruse, DeSalvo showed up unannounced, claiming to be “Johnson” from “The Black and White Modeling Agency.” He complimented the woman who answered the door, took her measurements, and promised her modeling work, before parlaying the moment into sex. The success of this bizarre scheme speaks to DeSalvo’s natural charm. Next came the Green Man crimes, in which DeSalvo donned a green workman’s jumpsuit and pretended to be a maintenance man, gaining access to women’s apartments and raping them. “I’m not good-looking, I’m not educated, but I was able to put something over on high-class people,” DeSalvo explained upon his capture in 1961. “They were all college kids and I never had anything in my life and I outsmarted them.”
DeSalvo often said strange things to his victims, suggesting a man in agony over his compulsions. Once, running out of a victim’s apartment, he yelled, “Don’t tell my mother!” Sometimes he would go home and “cry like a baby” as he watched his crimes reported on TV. But it’s what happened after his admission to the Green Man crimes that triggered a lifetime of second-guessing.
In October 1964, DeSalvo broke into a Cambridge house and sexually assaulted a newlywed. He was arrested and sent to Bridgewater State Mental Institution for an evaluation. There, DeSalvo began dropping cryptic comments and boasts. One doctor noted he was a manipulative attention grabber with “an extensive need to prove what a big man he was.” “I’m known as the Green Man now but soon I’ll be known by another name,” he told a social worker. The following March, DeSalvo confessed to being the Boston Strangler to an up–and-coming lawyer named F. Lee Bailey. There are three prevailing theories regarding his confession: (1) he was the killer, or one of the killers, and couldn’t resist taking credit; (2) he lied about it, for attention; (3) he was encouraged to confess by his ward mate, George Nassar, a criminal with a high IQ, who some believe committed the murders himself.
State Assistant Attorney General John Bottomly, chief of the Boston Police “Strangler Bureau,” arrived at Bridgewater to interrogate DeSalvo. In the opinion of one Bridgewater doctor, DeSalvo had a legitimate photographic memory, and thus had no problem doling out details to Bottomly. Was DeSalvo vividly recounting memories, or just stories he had been told? Adding to the murk was the fact that Bottomly had never conducted a criminal investigation in his life; while getting inside DeSalvo’s head, he was also unwittingly providing the man with new information.
Published in late 1966, The Boston Strangler was an instant bestseller. It took readers right up to the moment when DeSalvo was judged competent to stand trial for the Green Man crimes. Outside of his confessions, there was no substantial evidence with which to try him for the stranglings. But the Green Man trial would serve as a proxy for Strangler guilt in the public’s mind. This is precisely what DeSalvo wanted, it seemed: the notoriety without the electric chair. In his mind, the sale of his life story as the Boston Strangler would support his family forever and make him a star. “If a man was the strangler, the guy who killed all those women,” DeSalvo asked, “would it be possible for him to publish his story and make some money with it?”
The Green Man conviction, the exhaustive news coverage, and Frank’s bestseller all shaped public perception. What cemented it was The Boston Strangler, the 1968 film based on the book. It was, in many ways, far more damning than Frank’s scrupulous account, removing all doubt about DeSalvo’s guilt. Arriving in the fall of 1968, The Boston Strangler would be America’s first trial-by-movie.
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DIRECTOR RICHARD FLEISCHER initially hired acclaimed British playwright Terence Rattigan to work on the Strangler script, but the result was unfilmable, to say the least: Instead of detectives using brain work to collar the killer, a computer generates the name of the suspect: “Darryl Zanuck”—the same name as one of the founders of 20th Century Fox, for some reason. Rattigan also raised eyebrows when he repeatedly asked Gerold Frank about the size of DeSalvo’s penis. Rattigan was replaced.
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br /> Fleischer went with an unexpected actor for the lead. “What’s a nice guy like Tony Curtis doing strangling women, even if it is only a film?” one newspaper joked. Fleischer had a discomfiting take, claiming the star “has the same attractive personality, the same appealing charm that could allow a man to talk his way into any woman’s apartment.”
Curtis, forty-two, had made his name in both comedy and drama over his career. But the drag blast Some Like It Hot became his calling card after its release in 1959, and by the mid-sixties, he wasn’t finding parts with gravitas. “I wanted to play DeSalvo so much I would’ve spent three years in jail as compensation,” Curtis said. In lieu of the slammer, Curtis gained fifteen pounds, studied medical records, wore ankle weights to alter his gait, and installed brown contact lenses. He visited crime scenes and devoured all the coverage.
The actor was in the middle of a divorce. A “shy girl from Cambridge” was spending a lot of time at his suite. His accent was passable. The film was already behind schedule. “There’s a little bit of the Boston Strangler in everyone,” Tony Curtis would later declare.
Fleischer was flummoxed when the police announced their refusal to assist the on-location shoots. Additionally, Boston’s finest forbade the use of real police cars and uniforms, and wouldn’t let the designers photograph the inside of the police station to make replicas. There were more difficulties afoot, including the fact that no one knew how explicit the movie could be. Fleischer would shoot a scene for maximum gruesomeness, then again in a tamer fashion, in case the censors were looking to snip.
Meanwhile, others hinted that lawsuits might be ahead, depending on how the film turned out. Attorney General Edward Brooke made it clear that if the script did not accurately reflect his association with the case, there might be trouble. 20th Century Fox offered Brooke $50,000 to work on the film, then $100,000, to no avail. Edmund McNamara of the Boston Police Department was less subtle, threatening massive legal trouble if the movie even implied his existence. Attorney General Elliot Richardson said the film might adversely influence a future trial. John Bottomly, one of two actual participants who couldn’t resist working on the film, protested this objection, pointing out that no public official in the movie explicitly says that DeSalvo is the Strangler.
Production wrapped in February and the filmmakers traveled back to the West Coast. In the summer of 1968, Albert DeSalvo asked a judge if he could see the movie in advance of its release. The request was part of a preliminary injunction to prevent the film from being screened anywhere in Boston.
When the film opened in October, the city didn’t roll out the red carpet the way it had for Trustman and Jewison’s caper. Critics were frosty as well. “There have been lots of movies about murders, but very few about real murders, using real names, while they are still a daily memory for the living,” Roger Ebert wrote. “The problem here is that real events are being offered as entertainment. A strangler murdered 13 women and now we are asked to take our dates to the Saturday night flick to see why.” Unlike Frank’s book, the movie version was “a deliberate exploitation of the tragedy of Albert DeSalvo and his victims.”
As the camera closes in on Curtis’s face one last time, Fleischer shoehorns a call to action: “The film has ended, but the responsibility of society for the early recognition and treatment of the violent among us has yet to begin.” Some writers fell for the messaging. “The film is—although I hesitate in using this word—entertaining as an excellent character study,” wrote a Daily Illini reviewer. “And it surely does serve as a public service—not only for young girls threatened by social deviates, but for understanding the criminally insane.”
For Digby Diehl at the Los Angeles Times, however, the movie set a shocking precedent for libel-as-entertainment. DeSalvo had not been found guilty of any of the actions he’s shown carrying out in the film, Diehl wrote, warning that “anyone could stand next before the celluloid jury.” Curtis, who so passionately believed the role would revive his career, must have been disappointed, but it went beyond bad reviews for the actor. Shortly after the release of the film, Curtis began to receive anonymous letters in the mail with cryptic messages. “You’re not the Boston Strangler, I am.”
Albert DeSalvo sued for $2 million in damages after he was unable to prevent the film from screening in Boston. “DeSalvo said the film portrays him as a ‘vicious and depraved individual’ and that it shows a ‘reckless disregard for the truth,’” the Globe reported. Albert H. DeSalvo v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and the Walter Reade Organization would be the last time he appeared in a courtroom. It was during this case that certain testimonies called into serious question DeSalvo’s identity as the true strangler. Bridgewater State Hospital’s Dr. Ames Robey said he didn’t believe DeSalvo committed the murders, calling him “a very clever, very smooth compulsive confessor who desperately needs to be recognized.”
But James Lynch, 20th Century Fox’s lawyer, built a strong case, attempting to show that DeSalvo approved the project and encouraged its creators, even making a leather wallet for director Richard Fleischer. DeSalvo and Detective Phil DiNatale, the only other real-life participant who assisted in the creation of the film, had exchanged many letters, one in which DeSalvo promised the detective complimentary tickets to see the movie. DeSalvo’s lawyer insisted that his client be able to view the film, but the judge disagreed. Albert DeSalvo returned to Walpole State Prison to serve out his life sentence.
On November 25, 1973, he placed a call to Dr. Robey, the Bridgewater psychiatrist who doubted Albert was the strangler. DeSalvo now wanted to entrust him with some important information. He would not tell him the specifics over the phone, so the doctor promised to visit him first thing the next morning. “He was going to tell us who the Boston Strangler really was, and what the whole thing was about,” Robey later said. The next morning while preparing to head to Walpole, Robey saw the news on TV: Albert DeSalvo had been found murdered in his cell. Among his belongings, investigators found a poem that Albert had written.
Here’s the story of the strangler yet untold
The man who claims he murdered 13 women, young and old
Today he sits in a prison cell
Deep inside only a secret he can tell
People everywhere are still in doubt
Is the strangler in prison, or roaming about?
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IN FEBRUARY 1967, a month after Fox purchased the rights to Gerold Frank’s book, Albert DeSalvo and two other inmates escaped from Bridgewater State Hospital. For twenty-four hours, the city of Boston was once again in the grip of strangler terror. His cohorts were caught drinking in a bar in Waltham. DeSalvo was found wearing a stolen sailor’s uniform in a store in nearby Lynn. Upon capture, he told reporters that he had escaped to call attention to the terrible conditions at Bridgewater. “Maybe people will know what it means to be mentally ill,” he said, calling out the insufficient rehabilitation tools offered to him at Bridgewater.
While DeSalvo was criticizing the hospital on the nightly news, a few miles away, a former attorney named Frederick Wiseman was editing documentary footage he had shot at the same hospital the previous year. The finished product, Titicut Follies, would bolster DeSalvo’s argument tenfold. Many of the politicians and doctors involved in the DeSalvo/Strangler case were also major players in the subsequent legal debacle surrounding Titicut Follies, and the documentary can seem like a shadowy real-life counterpart to the big-budget feature.
Filmed at Bridgewater while DeSalvo was an inmate awaiting trial for the Green Man crimes, Titicut Follies kicked off Wiseman’s unparalleled fifty-year career as a documentarian. But for decades, you couldn’t see it: In January 1968, the film was permanently banned from being screened in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by Judge Harry Kalus, who described it as a “nightmare of ghoulish obscenities.”
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FREDERICK WISEMAN WAS a Yale-educated Boston University law professor before he dove into filmmaking. Almost thirty and bored with teaching, he began taking his students on field trips to Bridgewater State Hospital in the late fifties to show them how the state treated the criminally insane. It was a place where chaos had ruled for decades. In the 1880s, Bridgewater was a co-ed facility where inmates raised livestock and harvested crops; one historian wrote that “convalescing patients mingled with violent ones, inmates damaged much of the asylum property, the atmosphere was disorderly, and the patients were clearly not under firm control.” A Globe profile from the early sixties called it a “colony of lost men,” noting that one patient had been picked up for vagrancy in 1901 and remained there ever since.
Wiseman’s interest in filming at Bridgewater had an antiauthority slant, but since the hospital was in dire need of renovations, Superintendent Charles Gaughan supported the project, hoping it would force his superiors to see the difficulties his staff endured. The film would be “about a prison and the people who are in it and those that administer it,” Wiseman petitioned Governor John Volpe, promising that “no people will be photographed who do not have the competency to give a release.”
After a year of meetings, Wiseman’s three-person crew commenced filming in April 1966. Gaughan was pleased that “the movie men” could capture some of the institution’s annual spring talent show, known as “Titicut Follies.” (“Titicut” was the Native American name for the land upon which the hospital was built.) Because inmates and staff both participated in the hospital variety show, and everyone is in costume, it’s difficult for a viewer of the film to ascertain their real-life roles. This unsettling confusion is how the finished documentary begins.
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