The Dangerous Stranger
About The Dangerous Stranger
A police officer stands in front of a class and tells the children not to take a ride or a gift from a stranger. He then acts out cases of children who did, and who were not seen again.
Cast & crew
More about The Dangerous Stranger
Sid Davis directed and produced the short after the November 1949 abduction and murder of six-year-old Linda Joyce Glucoft in Los Angeles by Fred Stroble. Davis, then a stand-in for John Wayne, said his own six-year-old daughter Jill did not listen to his warning. Wayne loaned him $1,000. Davis went on making children's instructional shorts at about that cost each.
Themes
Making
Wayne's loan covered the picture. Davis used the same thousand-dollar scale for the educational shorts that followed.
Notes
- The Glucoft case is the stated reason Davis made the film, not a story inside it.
- The on-screen lecture is the whole short: the officer, the classroom, and the staged examples.
Scenes
- The officer tells the class what happened to children who got into a stranger's car.
