23 Paces to Baker Street

23 Paces to Baker Street is a 1956 American DeLuxe Color mystery thriller film released by 20th Century Fox. It stars Van Johnson and Vera Miles. Filmed in Cinemascope on location in London, the film focuses on Philip Hannon (Van Johnson), a blind playwright who overhears a partial conversation he believes is related to the planning of a kidnapping. When the authorities fail to take action because they believe his story is the product of a writer's fertile imagination, Hannon searches for the child with the help of his butler and fiancée, using his acute sense of hearing to gather evidence and serve as guidance. The plot of the film bears some resemblance to Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window of 1954, which also features a disabled protagonist witnessing a crime, which the police refuse to take seriously, therefore placing him in danger and culminating in a final standoff with the killer in the protagonist's darkened apartment. Nigel Balchin's screenplay, based on the novel Warrant for X, original UK title The Nursemaid Who Disappeared by Philip MacDonald, was directed by Henry Hathaway.