I am a long-time fan of The Naked City television series (1958-1963) and its motion picture progenitor of the same name, released in 1948. The character-driven TV show featured such up and coming actors as Robert Duvall, William Shatner, and Jon Voight.
But I have always been curious about the origin and the meaning of this strange title. It certainly had nothing to do with nudity. On the DVD of the movie, it was explained that the title came from a book of photographs by the New York photographer known as Weegee. Mark Hellinger, the producer of the film, borrowed the name from the book.
James Sanders, an architect and the author of Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies (Knopf, 2003), offers the following interpretation on one of the DVD's bonus features. Aside from being eloquent, it puts in a nutshell what the movie and the subsequent TV series were all about:
"The city is a body. It has been stretched out for us naked on the table. And the idea is that the city is an organism. It's basically a healthy organism. But like any [other] organism it can catch a disease. In this case, the disease is crime. When it does, the doctors go to work. And the doctors
are the police. They'll make it better again."
I couldn't have said it better myself.
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