‘Changeling’: Fact Behind The Fiction

‘Changeling’, Clint Eastwood’s latest effort starring Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich, is based on the sad tale of Christine Collins, a woman whose son was murdered and replaced by another child in a horrific case of LAPD corruption. In this special feature, we will investigate how closely Eastwood stayed to the true story.

See the FILM REVIEW for background to the film

The Characters

The film’s main characters are largely reproduced faithfully, allowing of course for artistic embellishments and dramatisations. Christine Collins, Walter Collins, Arthur Hutchins, Reverend Gustav Briegleb, Captain J.J. Jones, Captain James E. Davis, the attorney S.S. Hahn, Gordon Northcott and Sanford Clark were all real characters.

Despite the paucity of material on the personalities involved in this 1928 case, it appears that at least Jones, Briegleb, Hahn and Northcott were characterised faithfully. Captain Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) was indeed a callous police captain who operated under Chief James “Two Guns” Davis of the LAPD, itself an institution that was corrupt, brutal, violent and murderous. Davis’ men were licensed, indeed, encouraged to shoot to kill anyone in the act of committing a crime. They were in fact a gang of hitmen with badges, a legitimised posse of gunslingers carrying out personal vendettas and selling their protection to the city’s criminals. Adverse publicity made the LAPD anxious for a quick PR success, hence their intolerance of Christine’s dissent. Christine Collins filed a civil suit against Jones for incompetence, apparently winning $10,800, although it is unclear whether the money was actually paid out. Chief Davis was dismissed, but later reappointed by the equally corrupt (or at the very least, incompetent) Mayor of LA, Frank Shaw.

Reverend Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich) is depicted as a radio preacher in ‘Changeling’, although none of the 176 mentions of him between 1921 and 1943 in the Los Angeles Times report that fact. His good friend, Methodist minister R.P. Shuler, did however conduct a radio ministry. They were both community activists and partners in highlighting the corruption of the police and city officials.

Although Briegleb is played by the exuberant Malkovich, it appears that he really was a larger-than-life character, once raiding a gambling operation in a circus tent with Shuler, and barely escaping serious injury when its patrons moved to attack them. He railed against vice, lewd dancing, gambling and Hollywood morality. There are unsupported accounts that he was anti-Semitic, but he was ahead of his time in how he viewed women and their role in society and he champions Christine Collins’ case against the LAPD through the film.

Sammy “S.S.” Hahn (Geoff Pierson), the attorney who takes up Christine’s case on a pro bono basis was also a flamboyant character with a penchant for the theatrical. He took up the cases of some of the most famous and controversial people of his day, including hoaxer Aimee Semple McPherson and convicted murderess Louise Peete, one of only three women ever executed in California. He had a sharp wit and an oratorial manner, and although enjoying relatively little screen time in ‘Changeling’, his character was given ample dimension by Pierson. Hahn committed suicide in 1957 by tying two concrete blocks around his neck and jumping into the deep end of a swimming pool.

Gordon Stewart Northcott, one of the men eventually charged with the ‘Winehouse Murders’ was brought alive by the immense talents of Jason Butler Harner, and from contemporary accounts, it appears that he got it spot on. Dr. S. M. Marcus, an LA psychiatrist who examined Northcott prior to the trial, declared that he possessed three of the nine classifications of the “constitutional psychopathic inferior”. He was “a pathological liar, a criminalistic individual and a sex deviate”.
He loved the media attention he got at the trial, grandstanding and sending detectives on wild goose chases in search of more bodies. He undertook his own defence after firing three court-appointed defence attorneys in succession; while defending himself, he put himself on the stand as a witness, asked himself questions, and then answered himself. Northcott, as was shown in the film, did also toy with Christine Collins, alternately admitting and denying the murder of her son throughout the trial.

Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) herself is a relative enigma, as little or no information can be found on the public domain on her, possibly because unlike the others, she was less of a public figure. Scriptwriter J. Michael Straczynski (TV’s ‘Babylon 5’) based his portrayal of Christine on actual transcripts of the Collins hearing, and photographs of her show a determined, steely woman – the strength in her set jaw and flinty eyes belie the trauma she has undergone.

According to Northcott’s final notes left in his cell, he did not think she believed him when he assured her that her son was dead, and she never stopped searching for him. Jolie’s portrayal of the development of a woman, from timid single mother to indomitable crusader via trial by fire and ordeal, is as persuasive, human and emotional as possible.

A major character that is missing is Northcott’s mother, Sarah Louise Northcott, who confessed to the murder of Walter Collins, and was sentenced to life in prison for her crime. She initially confessed to all the murders to save her beloved son Gordon, but was only convicted for Collins’, as she was adamant that she had delivered the fatal axe blow. She served no more than 12 years of her sentence before being released on parole, and she probably died four years after her release.

The Facts and Events

While Straczynski sticks true to the story, around 90% of it at least, there are some important occasions where he departs from the actual events, the major one being the omission of the character of Sarah Louise Northcott. Also, in the film it is implied that Northcott murdered up to 20 boys before being apprehended. This was based on the unsound testimony of Sanford Clark, and no hard evidence was ever adduced to support this claim. Northcott was convicted for the murders of three people: the Winslow boys, Lewis and Nelson, and an unidentified Mexican ranch hand, possibly a Jose Gonzales who was 15. His mother, Sarah Louise, was convicted for the murder of Walter Collins.

The supposed bodies at the ranch never amounted to more than a finger, scraps of hair, a piece of scalp and a piece of skull. There were three empty open graves, and it is a likely assumption that Northcott, having taken fright at Clark’s disappearance, moved the bodies out into the Mojave desert. The number of 20 was also more likely to have been the number of missing children at that time: it would have been a reasonable, though unfounded, speculation that Northcott was responsible, but certainly he did not hang for the murder of 20.

There is nothing to support the ending of the film either where, five years after the trials and execution, David Clay, a boy thought to have been murdered by Northcott, turned up alive and well. In the film, this supposedly gave encouragement to Christine to go on searching for Walter in the hope of finding him, but in reality she needed no motivation. She spent the last documented years of her life pursuing the civil suit against Captain Jones and the city in hopes of using the damages to keep the search going. In any case, the sordid story of Northcott died with him on the scaffold – only he truly knows how many and who he killed.

A throwaway line uttered by the impostor Arthur Hutchins, the true changeling of the film, could have benefited from either more elaboration or its exclusion. As Hutchins was being bundled on to the train with his real mother, amidst the flashing bulbs and yelling reporters, he cries “it was the police who made me do it!” This raises interesting questions of whether the police were complicit in the deception, or whether it was the precocious young scamp who cooked up the whole story and maintained the subterfuge till the very end.

If Eastwood/Straczynski had intended the issue to be raised, they should have elaborated a little, otherwise they risk muddying the facts of the case. Either way, there is nothing more to suggest that the police were anything other than incompetent, although from what we now know, malicious deception would not have been beyond them.

This feature was written for the Biography Channel, and can be found here.

~ by hanntu on November 20, 2008.