John William Warde

John William Warde worked as a bank clerk in Southampton until he survived a suicide attempt with a knife in July 1937 and spent three months in the Central Islip Psychiatric Center. A note on the discharge papers of the asylum in November 1937 declared: After Warde's discharge, he returned to the home at 25 Willow Street, Southampton, where he lived with his parents. Eight days before his suicide, Warde was observed on a bridge outside Hampton Bays, New York, staring over the edge into the water. A bridge tender chased him away and contacted the authorities, giving them Warde's license plate number. The police checked on him at his home and spoke with him. On Tuesday morning, July 26, 1938, after spending a long weekend in Chicago, Warde, his sister Katherine and two friends of the family surnamed Valentine checked in to room 1714 on the 17th floor of the Gotham Hotel in midtown Manhattan. During a conversation, his sister suggested making an appointment for him with a psychiatrist he already had seen. Her comment apparently upset him. from late in the morning until 10:38 pm. Neither of Warde's parents had joined the group for the trip to Chicago, and neither was in the Gotham Hotel when Warde's sister made the comment that upset him. Their father, John A. Warde, was vacationing in Vermont, contacted by telephone there and told, many hours before his son jumped, about the suicidal gesture. == Chronology of death ==

400 police officers and NYPD personnel responded to the emergency together with members of the Fire Department and volunteer helpers. Psychiatrist J. C. Presner was called by hotel management to make a plea to Warde, who was believed to be clinically depressed. Presner dropped a half-milligram of Benzedrine in glass after glass of water that Warde drank when NYPD Patrolman Charles V. Glasco handed each to him. Because Warde insisted upon watching Glasco drink from every glass of water before he himself drank the rest of it, that meant Glasco, too, ingested the half-milligram of Benzedrine that each glass of water contained. == Burial ==

Warde was buried in Cemetery of the Evergreens, Brooklyn, following a private funeral service at the New York and Brooklyn Funeral Home, located at 187 South Oxford Street in Brooklyn. His parents and two friends were present at the service. The service was pushed ahead four hours from a previously arranged time so as to avoid crowds. == Film adaptation ==

Writer Joel Sayre wrote about the Warde suicide in The New Yorker in an article entitled "That Was New York: The Man on the Ledge", published on April 16, 1949. The story was purchased by Twentieth Century Fox. The Sayre article was adapted by Fox into the 1951 film Fourteen Hours, with Richard Basehart as the man on the ledge and Paul Douglas as the police officer who tries to talk him out of jumping. As originally shot, the film ended as in reality, with the man jumping to his death. After a preview, this was changed to end with his falling accidentally and grabbing the net to save his life. The studio changed the title from The Man on the Ledge to Fourteen Hours at the request of Warde's mother, so that the picture would not be as closely identified with her son. Studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck considered changing the setting of the movie to another city for the same reason, but it was ultimately filmed in New York. Various details about Officer Glasco's life were also fictionalized in the film. == References ==