John William Warde

John William Warde was a 26-year-old American bank clerk from Southampton, New York, who committed suicide on July 26, 1938. He leaped from a window ledge of the 17th floor of the Gotham Hotel at 5th Avenue and 55th Street in Manhattan. The son of a Long Island express agent, his 12-hour dilemma before jumping held 300 New York City Police Department officers at bay. They were afraid of making a bold move that might cause Warde to jump. 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. 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.