John Wojtowicz

John Stanley Wojtowicz (March 9, 1945 – January 2, 2006) was an American bank robber whose story inspired the 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon.^[1]

Background

Wojtowicz, the son of a Polish father and an Italian-American mother, married Carmen Bifulco in 1967. They had two children, and separated in 1969. Wojtowicz later met Elizabeth Eden in 1971 at an Italian feast in New York City. The two had a public wedding ceremony in 1971.^[2]

Bank robbery

On August 22, 1972, Wojtowicz, along with Salvatore Naturale and Robert Westenberg, attempted to rob a branch of the Chase Manhattan bank at 450 Avenue P in Gravesend, Brooklyn. The heist was meant to pay for Eden's sex reassignment surgery.^[2] Wojtowicz and Naturale held seven Chase Manhattan bank employees hostage for 14 hours. Westenberg fled the scene before the robbery was under way when he saw a police car on the street. Wojtowicz, a former bank teller, had some knowledge of bank operations. However, he apparently based his plan on scenes from the movie The Godfather, which he had seen earlier that day. The robbers became media celebrities. Wojtowicz was arrested, but Naturale was killed by the FBI during the final moments of the incident.^[3]

Arthur Bell, a respected Village Voice columnist and investigative journalist that knew Wojtowicz (and was tangentially involved in the negotiations), reported that paying for Eden's sex change was only peripheral to the real motive. The attempted heist was, in fact, a well-planned Mafia operation that went horribly wrong. ^[4]

According to Wojtowicz, he was offered a deal for pleading guilty which the court did not honor, and on April 23, 1973, he was sentenced to 20 years in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary, of which he served five.^[5] He made $7,500, which is approximately $40,000 today, by selling the movie rights to his story. He also received 1% of the movie's net profit. Ultimately, this helped finance Eden's sex reassignment surgery. Wojtowicz was released from prison on April 10, 1978, but was rearrested in 1986 for violating his parole.^[6] Elizabeth Debbie Eden died of AIDS-related pneumonia in Rochester, New York, on September 29, 1987.^[7]

Dog Day Afternoon

Wojtowicz's story was used as the basis for the film Dog Day Afternoon. The movie was released in 1975, starring Al Pacino as Wojtowicz (called "Sonny Wortzik" in the film) and John Cazale, one of Pacino's co-stars in The Godfather, as Naturale. Eden, known as "Leon" in the film, was portrayed by actor Chris Sarandon.^[8]

In 1975, Wojtowicz wrote a letter to The New York Times out of concern that people would believe the movie version of the events which he said was only 30% accurate. Wojtowicz's main objection was the inaccurate portrayal of his wife Carmen Bifulco as a plain, overweight woman whose behavior led to his relationship with Elizabeth Eden, when in fact he had left her two years before he met Eden. Other concerns he had that were fictionalized in the movie were that he never spoke to his mother and that the police refused to let him speak to his wife Carmen. In addition, the movie insinuated that John "sold out" Sal Naturale to the police, and although he claimed this to be untrue, several attempts were made on John's life following an inmate screening of the movie. He praised Pacino and Sarandon's characterizations of himself and Elizabeth Eden as accurate. In a 2006 interview, the screenwriter of the movie, Frank Pierson, said that he tried to visit Wojtowicz in prison many times to get more details about his story when he wrote the screenplay but Wojtowicz refused to see him because he felt he was not paid enough money for the rights to his story.^[9]

Later years

In 2001, The New York Times reported that Wojtowicz was living on welfare in Brooklyn.^[10] John Wojtowicz died of cancer on January 2, 2006, in his mother's home, at the age of 60.^[11]

Documentaries

Wojtowicz was the subject of three documentaries: The Third Memory (2000), Based on a True Story (2005), and The Dog (also known as Storyville: The Great Sex Addict Heist) (2013).

The Third Memory (1999), directed by artist Pierre Huyghe and first exhibited in a museum context at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and The Renaissance Society in Chicago (In the format of a two-channel video), taking Dog Day Afternoon as its starting point,^[12] it depicts Wojtowicz reacting the events of bank robbery with actor look-a-likes and props on a reconstruction of the set of Lumet's film. Juxtaposed with footage from Dog Day Afternoon, it demonstrates that Wojtowicz's memory appears to have been irrevocably altered by the film about his life.^[13] For example, he speculates that Richard Nixon ordered the FBI to kill Salvatore because the TV coverage of the bank robbery was cutting into Nixon's convention acceptance speech in Miami.^[14]

The Dog, ten years in the making by directors Allison Berg and Frank Keraudren, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2013.^[15][16]

References

Notes

Further reading

• John Wojtowicz, "Real Dog Day Hero Tells His Story", Jump Cut, no. 15, 1977, pp. 31–32.
• "Dog Day Anniversary", August 22, 2007.
• "Littlejohn & the mob: Saga of a heist". First-person account by Arthur Bell, Village Voice reporter and Gay Liberation activist, of his acquaintance with Wojtowicz and his involvement in events. Published by the Village Voice, August 31, 1972.
• Paul Guzzo, "Man recalls time with famous bank robber", Tampa Tribune, September 20, 2014.

External links

• John Wojtowicz at the Internet Movie Database
• Federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator - Search for John Stanley Wojtowicz or number 76456-158