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Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
In Sidney Lumet's crime drama, based on a real-life
situation in August of 1972:
- hyperactive, anti-social Sonny Wortzik's (Al Pacino)
armed robbery of the First Brooklyn Savings Bank (FBSB) during
a heat wave, when innocent hostages were taken; Sonny was accompanied
by his friend Salvatore "Sal" Naturale (John Cazale),
but the third person in the trio chickened out and nervously fled
- Stevie (Gary Springer)
- the scenes of Sonny's continued dialogue and negotiations
with Police Detective Sergeant Eugene Moretti (Charles Durning) handling
the case from the bank's exterior, surrounded by massive numbers
of police officers
- Sonny's chanted shouts of "Attica! Attica! Remember
Attica!" (a reference to the recent Attica prison riot in New
York in 1971) to encourage a mob of curious onlookers outside the
bank to cheer for him
- after paying for a pizza delivery, Sonny tossed wads
of bank cash into the air outside the bank, causing the crowds to
become more crazed
- the revelation of the alleged motive for the robbery
- to pay for the sex re-assignment surgery for Sonny's wife, a pre-operative
transgender woman named Leon Shermer (Chris Sarandon) ("I was
a woman trapped in a man's body"); this was revealed by Sonny's
impassioned police telephone call conversation to his transvestite
lover Leon outside the bank, in which Leon claimed that Sonny had
promised to purchase a sex-change operation for $2,500 dollars; during
the later phone conversation, Leon admitted that Sonny had been abusive
and caused him to check into the psychiatric ward of Bellevue Hospital
with suicidal tendencies; the phone call ended with Leon's simple
farewell: "Goodbye, huh?"
About Leon Shermer
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Leon's Wedding Photo
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Leon (Chris Sarandon) on Phone With Sonny
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- the concluding scene of the two robbers (with the
remaining hostages) driven to JFK Airport in a limousine to escape
on a plane, when driver Agent Murphy (Lance Henriksen) at the wheel
took an opportune moment, reached for a hidden weapon, and shot
Sal in the forehead - and Sonny was arrested (with a gun held to
his head
- the epilogue in the ending subtitles: Sonny was sentenced
to 20 years in prison, Angie (Sonny's first wife) and her children
were living on welfare, and Leon had her sex reassignment surgery
and was living as a woman in New York City
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Armed Bank Robbery
Police Detective Sergeant Eugene Moretti (Charles Durning)
Sonny with Sal
"Attica! Attica!"
Killing of Sal in Airport Limousine
Sonny Arrested
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