John Reinhardt's Chicago Calling (1951)

 Chicago Calling is a downbeat film about an alcoholic, (Bill Cannnon,played with subtlety and intelligence by Dan Duryea), in Los Angeles whose wife Mary (Mary Anderson) and young daughter Nancy (Melinda Casey) have left him to live with Mary's parents in Chicago because after all his lies Mary has "lost faith" in Bill.  Bill goes on a drunken binge and when he finally wakes up there is a telegram from Mary telling him that they have been in an automobile accident and Nancy is in the hospital; Mary will call him later.  Unfortunately Bill's phone has been cut off because the bill hasn't been paid and even after robbing Nancy's piggy bank Bill can't raise nearly enough money to pay it and he has no idea how to reach Mary.  Then Bill's odyssey to raise the fifty-three dollars he needs to pay his phone bill begins and it lasts all day and night, as banks and loan companies laugh at him, welfare would take weeks before he received anything and his one drinking buddy, who works as a short-order cook can't afford to help him.  A waitress at a lunch wagon (Marcia Mae Jones) gives him five bucks but that's all the money he can find.

As he walks through Los Angeles in despair he is accompanied by his dog, Smitty, who is accidentally hit by a young boy, Bobbie(Gordon Gebert) on his bicycle.  The dog is unharmed and Bobbie offers to loan him the money that he's saved from working at a produce store.  Bill relunctantly agrees but when they get to Bobbie's house his guardian sister has hidden the money so Bobbie steals the money from his sister's boyfriend and he and Bill go to a Holllywood Stars baseball game, where Bobby loses the money; they find it at the lost-and-found where the clerk says "you must be in a good place," which convinces Bill to tell Bobbie to return the money and then Bill finds a one-night job on a construction crew.  When Bill gets home the phone rings and the phone guy says he fixed it for Mary's call to come through that day.  Just then the cops arrive to take Bill in; he had been reported for theft.  The phone rings and the cops let him answer and the news from Mary is not good, based on Bill's responses.  Bill's despair deepens and he leaves when the cops let him go, on an apparently aimless walk, with Bobbie following him.  

The cinematographer is Robert De Grasse, who made a film with Douglas Sirk, The First Legion, also in 1951, and had been making movies starting in the 20's.  Bill Cannon's apartment was in a seedy section of Los Angeles, Bunker Hill, and Reinhardt and De Grasse capture the poverty and desperation of the area with their location shooting.  Duryea is remembered by most people for his superb slimeball roles, as in Fritz Lang's The Woman in the Window (1944) and Anthony Mann's Winchester '73 (1950) but in Chicago Calling he is a sympathetic and resilient character, even though he has brought all his problems on himself he deserves one's sympathy and understanding for the moral lessons he teaches the fatherless Bobbie and for his fight for survival in a mostly heedless world.