The Alfred Hitchcock Encyclopedia

THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK ENCYCLOPEDIA

Stephen Whitty

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Whitty, Stephen, 1959– author. Title: The Alfred Hitchcock encyclopedia / Stephen Whitty. Description: Lanham, Maryland ; London : Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015051217 (print) | LCCN 2016004225 (ebook) | ISBN 9781442251595 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781442251601 (electronic) Subjects: LCSH: Hitchcock, Alfred, 1899–1980–Encyclopedias. Classification: LCC PN1998.3.H58 W55 2016 (print) | LCC PN1998.3.H58 (ebook) | DDC 791.4302/33092–dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015051217

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Printed in the United States of America To my wife, Jacqueline— my partner in life and art and first, last, and best reader.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction xi

A Note on the Text xv

Entries A–Z 1

Bibliography 519

Index 521

About the Author 531

n vii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ven a one-man encyclopedia is not cism, Hitchcock’s Films; and, of course, the a one-man job. I owe a great deal go-to reference book for the director’s own to Leslie Halliwell, whose ground- memories, Hitchcock/Truffaut. A particu- Ebreaking Filmgoer’s Companion showed me larly helpful website is www.the.hitchcock more than 40 years ago that it was indeed .zone.com, which has myriad links to period possible for a single person to undertake a reviews, news articles, interviews, and docu- mad task like this, and to David Thomp- mentary transcripts. (Other sources can be son, whose later A Biographical Dictionary found in the reference lists to individual of Film proved that a fact-crammed refer- entries and in the bibliography.) ence book could still be idiosyncratic and I would also very much like to thank opinionated. I never would have begun all the people I interviewed over the last this project without their early, formidable 20 years, sometimes multiple times, about examples. Alfred Hitchcock, the man and the film- I need to also acknowledge the books maker—particularly (although not only) and sites that formed the backbone of my Jay Presson Allen, Karen Black, Peter Bog- own research. Donald Spoto’s several works, danovich, Brian De Palma, Bruce Dern, of course (but particularly his passionate Farley Granger, Norman Lloyd, Shirley The Dark Side of Genius); Patrick McGil- MacLaine, Kim Novak, Patricia Hitchcock ligan’s more measured but also important O’Connell, and Eva Marie Saint. They were Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and all generous to a fault, and any faults in this Light; Robin Wood’s seminal work of criti- book are my own.

n ix

INTRODUCTION

hy should we take Hitch- of entertaining thrillers or even a slick cock seriously?” More than craftsman but as someone whose works half a century ago, that was spoke to guilt, doubt, alienation, and all the “Whow Robin Wood began his slim book, anxieties of the modern world, an artist to Hitchcock’s Films. At the time, it was not an be given the same consideration we give absurd question to ask. any great author. Yet at the time, Wood’s Today, of course, Alfred Hitchcock strong, simple answer to his own rhetori- is probably the most famous director in cal question—we should take him seriously history—and, perhaps, the most analyzed because he’s a serious artist—was still met artist since William Shakespeare. His life with raised eyebrows. and work continue to be discussed in aca- Shortly after Wood’s book, however, demia and revisited in popular culture. the exhaustive Hitchcock/Truffaut came Two autobiographical movies (Hitchcock, out. There was another wave of apprecia- The Girl) have been recently released; a tions following Hitchcock’s Irving G. Thal- famous book-length interview with him berg Memorial Award from the Academy (Hitchcock/Truffaut) is the subject of its of Motion Picture Arts and Science in 1968, own new documentary. His films—includ- a more harshly critical summing-up after ing some once thought lost—are currently the bleak disaster of Topaz the next year— available in a multitude of formats and and then a further, more positive reappre- continue to inspire new works (a televi- ciation after the surprise success of Frenzy sion prequel to Psycho, a comedy stage in 1972. version of The 39 Steps, in-development And Hitchcock, never publicity shy, remakes of The Birds and Strangers on a took full advantage of the new interest, Train). making time for interviews and public But in 1965, when Wood asked that appearances, including sitting for a PBS question, Alfred Hitchcock was, at best, documentary, agreeing to a New York only damned with faint praise as the “Mas- Times Magazine piece, and retelling his ter of Suspense.” Although Peter Bogda- favorite anecdotes on a multi-episode run novich had interviewed the director for a of TV’s The Dick Cavett Show. His films good, concise monograph in 1963, Wood’s were re-released to theaters and revived for pioneering work was the first lengthy Eng- television. Meanwhile burgeoning cinema lish-language work to strip away the usual studies departments turned out new schol- condescension and, indeed, take Hitch- ars yearly and new pieces regularly. His cock seriously—not just as an assembler reputation increased. Since the filmmaker’s

n xi xii n INTRODUCTION death in 1980, that interest has only grown. Alma Reville? Whose films often centered And grown more controversial. on the oppression of women and dramati- In 1983, Donald Spoto’s groundbreak- cally detailed how a patriarchal culture and ing critical biography The Dark Side of male-dominated power structure kept them Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock took in bondage, forced them into prostitution, a lengthy look at the man’s art and his life, denied them any real independence? portraying him as an increasingly obsessed Which Hitchcock should we study? loner whose fetishes finally led him to both Is it the popular entertainer—who ulti- dark masterpieces and gross acts of sexual mately judged the failure or success of any harassment. Twenty years later, Patrick production based on how warmly it had McGilligan’s gentler Alfred Hitchcock: A Life been received by audiences, who stuck to in Darkness and Light offered, right from its the most commercial genre available to title, a more evenhanded approach, prais- him, who liked to work with only the big- ing the films while dismissing some of the gest Hollywood stars? Who coldly crafted worst accusations in Spoto’s book (although, images, storyboarding every moment in ironically, also offering a few new ones). the film, insisting his actors do nothing that And in between those two biographies—and interfered with the movements and angles of continuing to this day—has been an ever- his camera, creating movies in which emo- increasing pile of purely aesthetic analyses, tion, plot, plausibility are all sacrificed to the taking so many different approaches that as perfection of every shot? Whose films are a whole they raise a new and perhaps even among the world’s best known and whose more controversial question. profits made him enormously wealthy? Which Hitchcock should we take seri- Or is it the experimental artist—who ously? Is it the misogynist director—who immediately embraced German expres- liked to quote the writing advice of the sionism and Soviet montage, who delighted French dramatist Victorien Sardou (“Tor- in taking on new technical challenges or ture the women!”); took exquisite care film- disrupting narrative rules, who cast stars ing scenes of his heroines being strangled, against type and character actors in star- stabbed, raped, and shot; and was himself ring roles? The anguished creature of emo- accused of verbally abusing and sexually tion who consciously worked out his own harassing some of the actresses on his sets? worries about sin and temptation, his own Whose films are built around the objecti- conflicts between freedom and duty, in fying and diminishing effects of the male every film he made? Who shone those mas- gaze, which reduces women to mere legs sive studio lights into the darkest, shabbi- and lips and hair and ultimately turns vio- est corners of his own mind—and thereby lence against them into popular entertain- illuminated something secret and painful ment? Should we look to him? and powerful in all of us? Whose films are Or is it to the feminist filmmaker— continually analyzed by serious scholars who identified so strongly with his hero- and working filmmakers alike? ines that he often told his stories from their Which Hitchcock should we take points of view; who took such enormous seriously? All of them. Because in the end care with his leading ladies that many they are all equal and essential Hitchcocks returned happily to work with him again and integral to the creation of those films. and again; who collaborated closely and And if those works do not, on first glance, confidently with female colleagues like Joan seem to always accurately reflect our world, Harrison, Edith Head, and his own wife, then they brilliantly, dreamily create their INTRODUCTION n xiii own—a complicated, indeed constantly alphabetically; words appear in all capital contradictory, one in which women are letters on first reference point to separate, simultaneously villain and victim, heroes related entries. Story synopses are supplied, are always guilty and somewhat innocent, sources are given, and when a biographical figures of respect and authority rarely fact is seriously in dispute, both versions deserve the first and routinely abuse the lat- are discussed. ter, and we as an audience are both encour- Yet it’s also my hope, though, that as aged to watch and made to feel ashamed for well as being consulted by scholars, this not looking away. book will simply be read by admirers— And my hope is that this book, while either in several sessions, front to back, or adding one more volume to the already piecemeal, with the Hitchcock buff dip- heavy shelves of works on the director, ping in and out at any point. For what do will go some way toward putting all those we remember first of a Hitchcock film but Hitchcocks together, between two covers— those Hitchcock moments? A key clutched the sentimentalist who dreamed of making in a hand. The sudden rattle of a shower Mary Rose and the nihilist who lingered curtain being pulled aside. A crop-dusting over The Birds, the showman who turned plane suddenly turning and heading for himself into a household name and the us. This book is filled with nothing but genius who used that power to make deeply moments like those—quick, crisp frag- personal, stubbornly noncommercial films ments of emotion, sudden close-ups of like Vertigo and The Wrong Man. love and horror. They’re all here, separate So, here you will find discussions of images, waiting to be assembled. his films from their preproduction strug- Make your own montage. gles through their postproduction reception, biographies of his most frequent col- REFERENCES laborators, essays on his most commonly Peter Bogdanovich, The Cinema of Alfred recurring methods and motifs, fresh new Hitchcock (New York: Museum of Mod- critiques of the work itself. You will also ern Art Film Library/Doubleday, 1963), find stories, in the words of people who 1–2; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: witnessed it, of his often cruel humor and A Life in Darkness and Light (New York: high-handed treatment of colleagues—and HarperCollins, 2003), 62–64, 163–64; Don- you will find other stories, sometimes from ald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life the same colleagues, of his professionalism, of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo his generosity, and his care. Press, 1999), 458, 474–76; Robin Wood, As this is first and foremost a reference Hitchcock’s Films (New York: Paperback book for students, entries are arranged Library, 1969), 7.

A NOTE ON THE TEXT

onsistency is the hobgoblin of little members who may have done the bulk of the minds but the heart and soul of a actual work; be aware, too, that some artists reference book. So for entries on used slightly different credits on different Cindividual films or television shows, the films (e.g., cinematographer Jack Cox was titles are their original ones (Hitchcock’s occasionally billed as Jack E. Cox). early English films were often retitled for For biographical entries, I’ve used the America); the running times are the lon- most commonly reported birthdates, not- gest ones officially recorded (as silents were ing any controversy; for birthplaces, I’ve projected at various speeds and some films given the town (unless, in the case of for- lost footage along the way). Dates refer to eign countries, the village is so obscure that the year the film was first released. The a state or county is more readily recogniz- studio listed in credits is the distributor able). Honorary titles are included only if (which, during Hitchcock’s time in Great the performer regularly used them profes- Britain, was usually separate from the sionally (so “Sir Cedric Hardwicke” but producing studio; if different, then this is plain “Julie Andrews”). All films reviewed noted in the text). were recently rescreened, usually on film I’ve tried to limit producer credits to or on DVD; for the very few that were those active principals listed onscreen, mak- unavailable in those formats, VHS tapes or ing an exception for people known to regu- online versions had to suffice. larly work anonymously (such as Hitchcock) Although I obviously hope the facts as and have confined official screenwriting presented are correct (typos and errors do credits to those actually acknowledged in the creep in and will be corrected in any later film’s titles (although writers known to have edition), all the opinions here as to the contributed ideas or uncredited rewrites to talents and motives of the individuals dis- a particular film are mentioned in the text). cussed and the intentions and effects of the I’ve included Alma Reville’s early “conti- films analyzed are my own. You may find nuity” credits as part of the writers’ cred- some of those judgments of value; you may its, as that’s how that position was grouped find many of them arguable; you may find onscreen at the time, although it no longer a few of them grossly mistaken. But if they has such prominence. Also, note that in end up doing nothing more than encour- some cases, particularly on television epi- aging you to go out and see a Hitchcock sodes, the person credited onscreen for edit- film tonight—either to rediscover an old ing or music may have been the head of the favorite or to discover one you somehow department rather than the uncredited staff missed—I will be very happy indeed.

n xv

ACADEMY AWARDS ADAPTATIONS Although Hitchcock is often mentioned Although Hitchcock was constantly on as one of the greatest talents never hon- the lookout for movie ideas and picked up ored by the Academy of Motion Picture options on many novels before they were Arts and Sciences, it wasn’t as if he were published (usually bidding anonymously to ignored—he was nominated five times for keep down the price), generally he viewed best director for REBECCA, LIFEBOAT, books and plays as raw material meant to SPELLBOUND, REAR WINDOW, and be shaped according to his needs. PSYCHO, and many of his films garnered They formed an important base for nominations (and even wins) for other what was to come; without the spine of people. Indeed, his first year in Holly- a well-turned plot, his original stories wood, two of his films, Rebecca and FOR- (SABOTEUR, say, or NORTH BY NORTH- EIGN CORRESPONDENT, were nomi- WEST) tended to turn into a collection of nated for best picture, with Rebecca taking colorful incidents set against a variety of home the prize. (The next year, Joan Fon- interesting backdrops. But the novels and taine won the best actress award for his plays he bought were rarely more than SUSPICION.) blueprints, and the lesser known the works It was an impressive start. But Hitch- were, the more content he seemed. cock himself never took home the Oscar in That’s not to say the director didn’t competition, which is why many thought appreciate good writing; early in his career the honorary Irving G. Thalberg Award he adapted plays by Noel Coward, John he received in 1968 for his body of work Galsworthy, and Sean O’Casey. Many of was not so much overdue as a bit of a half- the scenarists he worked with (THORN- hearted consolation prize. Feeling miffed, TON WILDER; JOHN STEINBECK; too, perhaps was Hitchcock; walking to DOROTHY PARKER; and, less success- the podium to accept the bust from Rob- fully, RAYMOND CHANDLER) were ert Wise, he merely said, “Thank you very well-known authors in their own right, much indeed,” and walked off again. and a few internationally famous novelists (Vladimir Nabokov, GRAHAM GREENE) Reference were briefly pursued for collaborations as Mason Wiley and Damien Bona, Inside well. For Hitchcock, however, films were Oscar, 10th Anniversary Edition (New about motion and emotion, not reason and York: Ballantine Books, 1996), 103–4, prose; the demands of the screen had to be 120, 412. met, and he didn’t shrink from rewriting

n 1 2 n ADAPTATIONS

Alfred Hitchcock poses for a typically droll publicity photo on the set of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, circa mid-1950s. Photofest famous writers, whether they were Joseph Still, there are some missed opportuni- Conrad (turning The Secret Agent into ties there, particularly among authors who SABOTAGE) or W. Somerset Maugham shared his obsessions with guilt and sin. (transforming Ashenden into SECRET One has to wonder, after STRANGERS ON AGENT), or contriving entirely new end- A TRAIN, what other movies he could have ings or characters if that would help. made from PATRICIA HIGHSMITH’s AHERNE, BRIAN n 3 work or what a Hitchcock version of one of He remains an influence on critics Greene’s “entertainments,” such as Stam- today, both in his effortless style and his boul Train, might have looked like. There refusal to give in to snobbery or consensus. is, in the end, only room for one auteur in a He died of a massive heart attack in a Man- film, but a second author might have given hattan taxi at age 45 on his way to a doc- some of Hitchcock’s work an even extra bit tor’s appointment. of depth—or at least a stimulating second point of view. References James Agee, Agee on Film, vol. 1 (New York: Reference Grossett Universal Library, 1969) 179–80, Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: 213–14; “James Agee (1909–1955): Chro- The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: nology of His Life and Work,” Agee Films, Da Capo Press, 1999), 114–15, 508. http://www.ageefilms.org/ageebio.html; “James Agee,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, AGEE, JAMES (1909–1955) http://www.britannica.com/biography/ A powerful, poetic, and self-destructive James-Agee. writer born in Knoxville, TN. When he was six, his father died in an automobile acci- AHERNE, BRIAN (1902–1986) dent, which would roughly scar his life (and Worcestershire-born performer, the son of lead to one of his most famous works, pub- an architect who made his stage debut in lished posthumously, the Pulitzer Prize– 1911. Some 20 years later, he would finally winning A Death in the Family, which won make his way to Hollywood, where, after a a second Pulitzer when Tad Mosel adapted supporting-actor nomination for Juarez, he it into the play All the Way Home). settled into a profitable career as a second- Agee would be celebrated for his string leading man. work on the rural poor Let Us Now Praise Marrying JOAN FONTAINE just Famous Men in 1941 and end his brief before she began REBECCA (“Couldn’t life working on a variety of screenplays, you do better than that?” costar LAU- including The African Queen and Night of RENCE OLIVIER waspishly asked her), he the Hunter (although some of his work was would later take the CARY GRANT role rewritten and the second screenplay was and play opposite her on a radio version of drastically cut). SUSPICION; in 1953, Hitchcock cast him In between, he worked as a film critic in a small part as the crown prosecutor in for Time and The Nation and championed I CONFESS. films from Henry V to Monsieur Verdoux. Aherne would go on to play King But he enjoyed slapstick and thrillers, too, Arthur twice, including 1954’s Prince Val- and while he brushed off SPELLBOUND iant, then switch largely to television work; (“Just so much of the id as could be safely he retired from the screen at 65. He died in displayed in a Bergdorf Goodman win- Venice, FL, at 83. dow”), he singled out Hitchcock’s NOTO- RIOUS for special praise, noting the direc- References tor’s use of the SUBJECTIVE CAMERA, “Brian Aherne,” IMDb, http://www.imdb his skill with actresses, and his ability to .com/name/nm0000731/bio?ref_=nm_ov manufacture “expressive little air pockets _bio_sm; “Brian Aherne, An Actor for 75 of dead silence.” Years,” Sun-Sentinel, February 11, 1986; 4 n ALBERTSON, FRANK

Donald Spoto, Laurence Olivier: A Biogra- rejected by the studio—was to follow a phy (New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1993), worker in a bottling plant to Paris, where 170–71. she would see just how unromantic the product could be.) Liquor leads to a loss ALBERTSON, FRANK (1909–1964) of control and explosions of emotion, and Born in Fergus Falls, MN, he entered the in Hitchcock’s precisely ordered and care- movie business as a prop boy in 1922, fully repressed world, that’s to be shunned. eventually stepping in front of the camera (In private life, one of Hitchcock’s cruelest for character parts. He’s best remembered practical JOKES would be to deliberately today for the role of wealthy Sam Wain- trick people into getting wildly, humiliat- wright in It’s a Wonderful Life, but he ingly drunk.) worked regularly for Hitchcock; he had a A central plot point in NOTORIOUS— bit in the 1956 THE MAN WHO KNEW the movie, after all, depends on those TOO MUCH, appeared on several episodes vintage bottles of wine down in the cel- of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, and lar—alcohol also leads to one of its bitter- was Tom Cassidy, the source of Marion est scenes as CARY GRANT mistakes the Crane’s stolen money, in PSYCHO. He died effects of poisoning for drunkenness and in Santa Monica at 55 in 1964. disgustedly assumes INGRID BERGMAN has gone back to drinking. He may be a spy References who lives by deceit, yet he can’t stop tak- “Frank Albertson,” IMDb, http://www.imdb ing measure of her supposed personal fail- .com/name/nm0007214/bio?ref_=nm_ov ings and judging her harshly for them, and _bio_sm; Alfred E. Twomey and Arthur F. drinking is just one more of her sins. McClure, The Versatiles: Supporting Charac- ter Players in the Cinema, 1930–1955 (New References York: Castle Books, 1969) 28. Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- ALCOHOL erCollins, 2003), 261; François Truffaut, A gourmet as well as a gourmand, Hitch- Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: cock enjoyed fine wines and spirits— Touchstone, 1985), 57–58, 246. sometimes a little too much. (The famous disorienting effect in VERTIGO of the ALFRED HITCHCOCK: A LIFE IN background both dropping away and rush- DARKNESS AND LIGHT ing forward was his attempt to replicate If JOHN RUSSELL TAYLOR’s Hitch, pub- a feeling he’d once had while drunk.) As lished in 1978, stands as very much the early as FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, he authorized biography of the director and was in the habit of having several glasses DONALD SPOTO’s THE DARK SIDE OF of champagne with his lunch; STAR JOEL GENIUS: THE LIFE OF ALFRED HITCH- MCCREA remembers him frequently COCK, first published in 1983, remains the seeming to doze off during takes. primary portrait of the filmmaker as a sad When drinking appears in Hitchcock’s SEXUAL harasser, then this 2003 book, films, though—in STRANGERS ON A written by PATRICK MCGILLIGAN, TRAIN; FRENZY; and, forcibly, NORTH navigates a more forgiving, sympathetic BY NORTHWEST—it’s generally treated middle ground. Unlike Taylor, McGilligan as a character flaw and a source of friction. covers some ugly events in Hitchcock’s life, (His original idea for CHAMPAGNE— including a suddenly clumsy pass at actress ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS n 5

BRIGITTE AUBER; unlike Spoto, McGil- comedies and hour-long dramas; half-hour ligan is far more likely to take Hitchcock’s dramas became rare, and anthologies were side in any he-said/she-said complaints or quickly disappearing, giving way to the at least present alternate explanations. predictability of STARS and storylines that Sometimes this makes A Life in Dark- returned week after week. ness and Light particularly valuable. (McGil- The Twilight Zone, another popu- ligan, for example, convincingly rebuts a lar half-hour portmanteau show, would story about a cruel bit of schoolboy sadism struggle on until 1964, but the 30-minute Spoto presents as fact.) Sometimes, it seems ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS tried the author protests too much—McGilligan to get ahead of the curve by going to an not only entertains the idea that INGRID hour’s length in 1962, first on CBS and then BERGMAN did try to seduce the director, on NBC. Hitchcock directed one of them, as Hitchcock privately maintained, but also “I SAW THE WHOLE THING,” which seems unwilling to accept the possibility that starred JOHN FORSYTHE as a man defend- the filmmaker harassed TIPPI HEDREN; he ing himself on a hit-and-run charge, but the also suggests that ALMA REVILLE may not director was less involved than he had been have exactly been sitting chastely at home on the original series; the new format eked either, an assertion later picked up by the out another few seasons for the show, but by film HITCHCOCK. then an embattled Hitchcock—recovering A thorough researcher, McGilligan from several health problems and his recent adds quite a bit to our understanding of blowup with discovery TIPPI HEDREN— Hitchcock’s early life and his wartime pro- decided to let it lapse. paganda work; the author of books on screenwriting and the blacklist, he casts an References important new light on those subjects, too. Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Com- But he doesn’t write as searchingly about the plete Directory to Prime Time Network art of Hitchcock’s films as Spoto does, is less TV Shows, 8th ed. (New York: Ballantine likely—rightly or wrongly—to tie it to the Books, 2003), 29; Jack Edmond Nolan, director’s life, and (given continuing, cor- “Hitchcock’s TV Films,” Film Fan Monthly roborating statements from other cowork- (June 1968), 3–6; Donald Spoto, The Dark ers) seems obtusely wrong about Hedren. Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock An invaluable biography and a strong case (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 370. for the defense, however one best read not instead of Spoto’s book but alongside. ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS After the success of REAR WINDOW, References Hitchcock’s agent, LEW WASSERMAN— “Discover Author Patrick McGilligan,” already one of Hollywood’s biggest power HarperCollins Publishers, http://www.harp brokers and eventually a studio head— ercollins.com/authors/6508; Patrick McGil- urged the director to expand into televi- ligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Dark- sion. Hitchcock would be happy he agreed ness and Light (New York: HarperCollins, when he saw the deal Wasserman was able 2003), 20, 381, 550–51, 647. to strike, generous even by today’s standards—a fee of $125,000 an episode for a THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR brief filmed introduction and epilogue and As the 1960s went on, television series all rights to revert to Hitchcock after the seemed to divide themselves into half-hour first broadcast. 6 n ALLEN, JAY PRESSON

Hitchcock’s involvement in the short AND THE COLONEL’S COAT,” “THE mystery series was supposed to be mini- HORSE PLAYER,” and “BANG! YOU’RE mal; he brought in trusted old collaborators DEAD.” JOAN HARRISON (who had begun her Originally, the show was seen as an career in England as his secretary) as the outgrowth of some of Hitchcock’s lighter executive producer and eventually NOR- films and macabre sense of humor; his MAN LLOYD (who had memorably hung tongue-in-cheek introductions, in particu- from the Statue of Liberty in SABOTEUR) lar, were modeled after the sardonic mood as her associate. Directors, screenwriters, of THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY. Yet a and cast would change from episode to epi- show that was supposed to be influenced by sode, as was typical of the anthology pro- the director’s features influenced them, as grams then in vogue. well; the stark BLACK-AND-WHITE pho- Hitchcock’s chief assignment was tography, real-life locations, and shabby to set the tone with his blackly comic realism of THE WRONG MAN and even introductions—and then at the end much of PSYCHO owe something to the ensure viewers that, no matter what TV show (which, in the case of Psycho, also seemed to have happened on that week’s contributed some crew members, including episode, the guilty parties had been even- cinematographer JOHN L. RUSSELL, used tually brought to justice. Audiences, no to working quickly and economically). doubt, took that with a grain of salt, as The show ran in half-hour episodes, they did Hitchcock’s lampooning of the alternating between the CBS and NBC net- show’s commercial breaks (insults that works from 1955 through 1961; in 1962 it maddened the sponsors until they real- moved to a 60-minute format under the ized that the “bad” publicity actually title THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR increased sales). and, after going off the air in 1965, even- The director, though, took too much tually went into syndication. Other tie-ins pride in his own name—he was already included a digest magazine (still publish- one of the first “brand” directors—to leave ing), a comic book, and a line of hardcover everything else up to others. If it was a and paperback collections; the show was season premiere, the material particularly revived as a new, syndicated series in 1985, interested him (episodes about GUILT and which included remakes of some of its most doubt), or he was fond of the actors (VERA famous original episodes. MILES, whom he had just signed to a five- year contract), then he would often take a References hand. Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Complete He ended up directing 17 of the Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, series’ half-hour episodes. They are, in 8th ed. (New York: Ballantine Books, 2003), order of production, “BREAKDOWN,” 29; Jack Edmond Nolan, “Hitchcock’s TV “REVENGE,” “THE CASE OF MR. Films,” Film Fan Monthly (June 1968), 3–6; PELHAM,” “BACK FOR CHRIST- Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: MAS,” “WET SATURDAY,” “MR. The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da BLANCHARD’S SECRET,” “ONE MORE Capo Press, 1999), 360, 369–75. MILE TO GO,” “THE PERFECT CRIME,” “LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER,” “A DIP ALLEN, JAY PRESSON IN THE POOL,” “POISON,” “BAN- (1922–2006) QUO’S CHAIR,” “ARTHUR,” “THE San Angelo–born Texan debutante and CRYSTAL TRENCH,” “MRS. BIXBY would-be actress who turned to writing— ALLGOOD, SARA n 7 strictly for the money, she insisted. “My these sort of things roll in,” she said once first novel (Spring Riot, 1948) I wrote to of the accolades that were piling up. “I sup- finance my divorce,” she said. “It was pure pose it means I should get myself to an ignorance. I thought you just wrote books estate planner.” and publishers bought them. And in fact She died at home in Manhattan at 84. that’s exactly what did happen.” When live television began, she jumped References in, later moving on to movies. “I had no Jay Presson Allen, interview with the author, ambitions to be a screenwriter,” she said. “I June 1999; “Jay Presson Allen,” IMDb, would never have taken a screenwriting job http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0696319/ if it hadn’t been Hitchcock.” But he had run bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Patrick McGilli- into problems with MARNIE when his first gan, ed., Backstory: Interviews with Screen- choice of screenwriter EVAN HUNTER writers of the 60s (Berkeley: University of argued with him over a scene of marital rape California Press, 1997), 15–41; The Trouble that Hitchcock was set on including. So he with Marnie, directed by Laurent Bouzereau asked Allen to take over, and she eagerly (2000), documentary, http://the.hitch signed on. For the rest of her life, she insisted cock.zone/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Mar that the scene was not about an actual rape nie_%282000%29_-_transcript. and that Hitchcock was the perfect collaborator. “He was wonderful to me, a great friend ALLGOOD, SARA (1879–1950) and an extraordinary teacher,” she said. Formidable Irish actress who rose from “I didn’t have a clue at first—I didn’t even tragedy. She was put in an orphanage after know how to cut between scenes.” the death of her father and lost both her Although it has its fierce partisans husband and child to the flu epidemic of today, the film was a critical and commer- 1917. A leading figure of the Irish stage, she cial failure at the time. Some blamed STAR made her movie debut in 1919; she appears TIPPI HEDREN’s stiff performance; others in Hitchcock’s BLACKMAIL and stars the brutal scene between SEAN CONNERY in his 1930 version of JUNO AND THE and Hedren’s heroine on her wedding PAYCOCK, a faithful if uncharacteristi- night. (Years later, Hedren would say that cally stage-bound adaptation of the Sean Hitchcock himself had harassed and abused O’Casey play (and the role she had immor- her throughout filming.) Allen’s take on talized at the Abbey Theatre). the film’s problems off and on the set? At By the time of the Second World War, times over the years, she would go into Allgood was in Hollywood, where she detail, blaming some of them on Hitch- would appear in How Green Was My Val- cock’s infatuation with Hedren, which she ley, Jane Eyre, and the Hitchcockian The somewhat sympathetically described as “an Spiral Staircase, among others; although old man’s cri de coeur.” At other times, she she never worked with Hitchcock again, would shut the topic down with a simple “I she did appear in the 1944 version of The don’t want to discuss it.” Lodger, a new adaptation of the thriller that After Marnie, Allen went back to the had made his career in 1927. She died in theater, wrote the screenplays for Cabaret California of a heart attack at 70. and Prince of the City, and did anonymous rewrite jobs. By her 70s, she was a frequent References interview subject and honoree at film festi- “Sara Allgood,” IMDb, http://www.imdb vals and just as tartly plainspoken as she’d .com/name/nm0021329/bio?ref_=nm ever been. “You get to a certain age and _ov_bio_sm; Alfred E. Twomey and Arthur 8 n ALWAYS TELL YOUR WIFE

F. McClure, The Versatiles: Supporting Reference Character Players in the Cinema, 1930– Henry K. Miller, “Always Tell Your Wife,” 1955 (New York: Castle Books, 1969), 28. BFI Screenonline, http://www.screenonline .org.uk/film/id/1422787/index.html. ALWAYS TELL YOUR WIFE (GB 1923) ANDERSON, DAME JUDITH (1897–1992)

Director: Hugh Croise. Adelaide-born performer and a great and Screenplay: Hugh Croise, from the play by groundbreaking actress, she made her stage Seymour Hicks. debut in Australia in 1915—but it would be Producer: Seymour Hicks. two decades before she established herself Cinematography: Uncredited. as a respected and formidable STAR on Editor: Uncredited. Broadway and in London, playing Ger- Cast: Seymour Hicks (James Chesson), trude to JOHN GIELGUD’s HAMLET in Stanley Logan (Jerry Hawkes), Ella- 1936, and Lady Macbeth to LAURENCE line Terriss (Mrs. Chesson), Gertrude OLIVIER’s Scottish thane in 1937. McCoy (Mrs. Hawkes). Hitchcock’s REBECCA in 1940 was Running Time: 20 minutes. Black and white. Released Through: Seymour Hicks Produc- her first sizable film role; she played Mrs. tions. Danvers, the housekeeper of Max de Win- ter’s glorious estate, Manderley, and the elegantly evil tormentor of his second wife, oh so carefully sowing seeds of self- Happily married Jim receives a telegram doubt, self-loathing, and eventually sui- from an ex-lover, who demands he meet cide. Hitchcock emphasized the charac- her for dinner and give her some money if ter’s almost supernatural quality by rarely he doesn’t want her to reveal their roman- showing her in motion; poor JOAN FON- tic past to his wife; his wife finds the tele- TAINE suddenly turns around, and there gram and is even more furious when Jim she is, waiting. lies about it. She gets her revenge when Jim Anderson was nominated for an feigns illness and she concocts a series of Oscar for the role; although she did not noxious home remedies to “cure” him. win, the attention led to several more juicy Hollywood parts, including the icy A two-reel comedy based on a play already Ann Treadwell of Laura in 1944, the older filmed once before in 1914. At some point, woman who lovingly subsidizes the decid- original director Hugh Croise either took edly disloyal Vincent Price. She also played ill or was fired by producer, writer, and Emily Brent in the first and best version STAR SEYMOUR HICKS; Hicks took of the Agatha Christie mystery And Then over some of the direction, enlisting Hitch- There Were None in 1945. “I may play cock—whose studio jobs then had ranged demons,” she proudly said late in life, “but from title designer to art director—as well. I never played a wimp!” (Hitchcock’s own recent directorial debut, For the rest of her eclectic career, NUMBER 13, had been abandoned once Anderson moved happily among Broad- funding ran out.) Neither man nor several way, television, and Hollywood; she once other crew members took credit; Hitch- played Hamlet, was in several productions cock’s specific contributions are difficult to of Medea (the title role in 1947, the nurse in judge, as only about the first half of the film 1982), did three years on the TV soap Santa survives. Barbara, and even appeared as the Vulcan ANDREWS, JULIE n 9 high priestess T’Lar in Star Trek III: The References Search for Spock. “About Lindsay,” Lindsay Anderson Memo- Anderson died in Santa Barbara, CA, rial Foundation, http://www.lindsayander in 1992. son.com/about; Lindsay Anderson, “Alfred Hitchcock,” in Focus on Hitchcock, edited References by Albert LaValley (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: “Judith Anderson,” IBDb, http://ibdb.com/ Prentice Hall, 1972), 48–59. person.php?id=29864; “Judith Ander- son,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ ANDREWS, JULIE (1935– ) nm0000752/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Eric With her bell-clear four-octave range and Pace, “Dame Judith Anderson Dies, An wholesome English looks, the Surrey-born Actress of Powerful Portrayals,” New York performer was a STAR almost from the Times, January 4, 1992, http://www.nytimes time she was a child—and certainly became .com/1992/01/04/arts/dame-judith-ander one as a young adult, when at 19 she made son-dies-at-93-an-actress-of-powerful- her Broadway debut in The Boyfriend. Two portrayals.html. years later, she followed that onstage with My Fair Lady—and by the mid-’60s, she ANDERSON, LINDSAY had conquered Hollywood as well, with the (1923–1994) back-to-back hits of Mary Poppins and The British writer and filmmaker best known Sound of Music. for This Sporting Life and If . . . . he founded After the audience’s less-than-thrilled the early and influential British film maga- response to Hitchcock’s exciting new discov- zine Sequence in 1947 with Gavin Lambert ery TIPPI HEDREN, a big bankable female and Karel Reisz. Writing about Hitchcock star was exactly what the studio thought his in the late ’40s, Anderson criticized the next movie needed. So although the director filmmaker as having gone into serious preferred EVA MARIE SAINT for TORN decline since he went to Hollywood (an CURTAIN, UNIVERSAL persuaded him to interesting position compared to ROBIN star Andrews (with another box-office behe- WOOD’s, who initially only found Hitch- moth, PAUL NEWMAN, as an added bit of cock’s American work worthy of lengthy insurance). Hitchcock, who resented what attention). he saw as their exorbitant salaries—$750,000 Anderson dismissed most of Hitch- apiece—remained unconvinced; almost pas- cock’s films as dreadfully contrived sive-aggressively, he seemed to spend more (NOTORIOUS is a “succession of vulgar, time and effort on the picture’s character superficial effects”) and woefully apoliti- actors than the two stars. cal (“His films are interesting neither for “She was not right for Torn Curtain,” their ideas nor their characters. None of he said years later. “She was a musical-com- the early films can be said to carry any sort edy star, and it was not fair to her to call of ‘message’”). But this point of view, par- her a scientist. But she was what they call ticularly at this dull stage of Hitchcock’s ‘hot,’ and the commercial aspect seemed career—with THE PARADINE CASE and more important than anything else at the ROPE behind him and only UNDER CAP- time. In those days, we thought we needed RICORN and I CONFESS just ahead— stars, but today we know better.” was a common one. It would take the Although his lack of interest in his lead 1950s, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, and actors surprised Andrews at the time, she the French critics to rescue the director’s simply, typically, pushed ahead. “I accepted reputation. for the chance to work with Hitchcock, and 10 n ANECDOTES he taught me more about film and lenses cist after the release of THE LODGER, not than anyone,” Andrews said later. “It was a a common ploy among ’20s British film- wonderful education but he was obviously makers—Hitchcock was not just a care- more interested in manipulating people, ful guardian of his own image but also and in getting a reaction from the audience, the canny creator of it. By the time of his than he was in directing us.” arrival in Hollywood, he had begun to con- Neither Andrews nor Newman make struct a specific, nearly trademarked idea of much impression in the movie, and— what a “Hitchcock film” meant and who its significantly—whenever a list is drawn up prime force was. of the “Hitchcock BLONDES,” Andrews Part of that strategy was to cultivate is never remembered, although her costar, reporters. It’s doubtful that any great direc- who had his own problems with the film, tor ever gave quite as much time to the praised her unreservedly. (“The last of the press as Hitchcock did, particularly when really great dames,” Newman said.) a new project was about to be released; the Although Andrews’s career faltered in filmmaker would sit for literally hours of the early ’70s, she went on to make a num- tape-recorded questioning, even on the set ber of fine movies with her husband Blake during the shoot, or give long television Edwards, including the underrated spy INTERVIEWS—provided that the inter- thriller The Tamarind Seed in 1974 as well viewer was properly awed by his precious as the comedies 10, Victor Victoria, and time with the “Master of Suspense.” S.O.B. She still acts and is a prolific author Typically, though, for a man who of children’s books. preplanned his films in excruciating detail, those interactions were as free References from accident—or, frankly, spontaneity— Guy Flatley, “I Tried to Be Discreet with as he could manage. Many celebri- That Nude Corpse,” New York Times, June ties tend to retell and slightly revise the 18, 1972, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ same stories over time, but Hitchcock’s New_York_Times_%2818/Jun/1972%29 were done by rote until a constant reader _-_I_Tried_to_Be_Discreet_With_That could almost recite them with him. (“His _Nude_Corpse; “Julie Andrews,” IMDb, answers tend more to mask than reveal,” http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000267/ wrote interviewer ANDRE BAZIN, who bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; “Julie-Pedia,” even in the early ’50s noted the director’s Julie Andrews Online, http://www.juliean change-the-subject tendency to respond drewsonline.com/2015/juliepedia.html; to even the most probing questions with Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life “straight-faced jesting.”) in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- And there were a number of prepared Collins, 2003) 664; David Shipman, ed., responses HITCH was always ready to trot Movie Talk: Who Said What about Whom out on command. There is, for example, in the Movies (New York: St. Martin’s the story of how, when he was a child, Press, 1988), 4; Donald Spoto, The Dark his father conspired with police to lock Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock him in a cell to reprimand him after some (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 490–91. transgression; the director’s “mistakes” of angering the audience by actually having ANECDOTES the bomb go off in SABOTAGE or letting Always keenly aware of the value of good the flashbacks turn out to be lies in STAGE press—he worked with a personal publi- FRIGHT; his detailed descriptions of vari- ARCHIBALD, WILLIAM n 11 ous VISUAL EFFECTS; his statement that ley (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, “actors should be treated like cattle” (all 1972), 60–69; François Truffaut, Hitchcock/ of which make up a large part of HITCH- Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, COCK/TRUFFAUT). 1985), 110, 189–90. Hitchcock was a droll raconteur with a supply of slightly dirty stories and true- ANGEL, HEATHER (1900–1986) crime trivia that could enliven any inter- Her romantic name seemed made for view (particularly if it was the first one marquees, but the bulk of Heather Angel’s with him you had ever conducted or read). film work was in supporting parts and But—as most JOKES and factoids do—they done over barely a dozen years, with her often served only as a deliberate distraction steadiest jobs coming in the B-movie from more probing questions and perhaps Bulldog Drummond series. The British more uncomfortable truths. farmer’s daughter from Oxford started What was his relationship with his out well, with roles in the 1932 The Hound father (and his MOTHER, considering of the Baskervilles and, after going to Hol- how strongly domineering women figure lywood, the 1935 The Informer, but her in his films)? Why did he never mention career cooled; she is the maid in SUSPI- his siblings? What part did his CATHO- CION and, in LIFEBOAT, the mourning LIC upbringing play in his films’ treat- mother. Angel married director Robert ment of temptation and GUILT? Is any Sinclair that year and soon retired from narrative choice that dismays or disap- acting, except for the very occasional part points an audience by nature a mistake? or voiceover; in a gruesome real-life mys- When does an artist know to go for an tery, Sinclair died protecting her from an intricate shot or elaborate MONTAGE unknown assailant, presumably a burglar, over a simple angle or long take? How in their home in 1970. The killer was never can an actor’s improvisations enliven or caught. She died in Los Angeles from can- enrich a scripted work? cer in 1986. Rarely did any interviewer ask these or indeed any follow-up question; almost References consistently did Hitchcock merely barrel “Heather Angel,” IMDb, http://www.imdb on to the next anecdote—the origination .com/name/nm0029456/bio?ref_=nm_ov of MACGUFFIN, the definition of SUS- _bio_sm; “Heather Angel, 77, Is Dead; Acted PENSE, his favorite practical jokes, the in More Than 60 Films,” New York Times, peculiar details of how the police finally December 16, 1986, http://www.nytimes caught Dr. H. H. CRIPPEN. They are .com/1986/12/16/obituaries/heather-angel interesting anecdotes the first three or four -77-is-dead-acted-in-more-than-60-films times, but eventually they pall. And the .html. more of them he piled up, the harder they became to get past. ARCHIBALD, WILLIAM Alfred Hitchcock loved mysteries, but (1917–1970) his deepest secrets were the feelings he hid Anglo–West Indian choreographer, dancer, in plain sight behind a camouflage of wit. and writer who first gained prominence in the 1940s through his stage collaborations References with Katherine Dunham. Later, he helped Andre Bazin, “Hitchcock vs. Hitchcock,” in adapt the early Paul Anthelme play Nos Focus on Hitchcock, edited by Albert LaVal- Deux Consciences into I CONFESS, turned 12 n ARMSTRONG, CHARLOTTE

Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw into Cinematography: John L. Russell. his own stage play (and then the screenplay Editor: Edward W. Williams. for) The Innocents, and directed several Original Music: Frederick Herbert. early plays by Lanford Wilson. He died in Cast: Laurence Harvey (Arthur Williams), New York at 53 of infectious hepatitis. Hazel Court (Helen Brathwaite). Running Time: 30 minutes with commer- References cials. Black and white. “Odds and Ends—3: William Archibald,” Originally Broadcast By: CBS. Caffe Cino Pictures, https://caffecino.word press.com/2008/01/01/odds-and-ends-3/ oaearchibald-2; “William Archibald,” One of the more gruesome episodes of IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, with nm0033780/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. poultry farmer Laurence Harvey fatally dispatching nagging girlfriend Hazel Court, then disposing of her body by grinding it ARMSTRONG, CHARLOTTE up into chicken feed and distributing it (1905–1969) to his livestock. While the material seems American mystery writer and author of more suited for an old EC Comic than the the novels A Dram of Poison and The sophisticated director, it actually contin- Unsuspected, among many others. Three ues the exploration of long-held phobias of her stories appear in the Alfred Hitch- (BIRDS and eggs) and a favorite theme cock fiction anthologies, and she wrote (domineering women); the bad-taste JOKE three teleplays for ALFRED HITCHCOCK of the twist only prefigures the darkness PRESENTS, including the very good “The that was to come with PSYCHO. Five-Forty-Eight,” based on a John Cheever tale. The early Marilyn Monroe film Don’t References Bother to Knock comes from her book Mis- chief; director CLAUDE CHABROL, an Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Complete early Hitchcock devotee, later adapted two Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, more of her novels, The Balloon Man (as 8th ed. (New York: Ballantine Books, 2003), La Rupture) and The Chocolate Cobweb (as 29; Jack Edmond Nolan, “Hitchcock’s TV Merci Pour le Chocolat). She died in Cali- Films,” Film Fan Monthly (June 1968), 3–6. fornia at 64. ASHCROFT, PEGGY (1907–1991) References Formidable Croydon-born performer “Charlotte Armstrong,” IMDb, http://www who played Desdemona to Paul Robeson’s .imdb.com/name/nm0035655; “Charlotte Othello in 1931 onstage (and real-life lover Armstrong,” Internet Speculative Fiction to him off) and quickly added to that a slew Database, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ of legendary Shakespearean performances, ea.cgi?13507. including Juliet in a production of Romeo and Juliet, in which JOHN GIELGUD and “ARTHUR” (US; ORIGINALLY LAURENCE OLIVIER regularly traded the AIRED SEPTEMBER 27, 1959) roles of Romeo and Mercutio. In the Hitchcock canon, she has the Director: Alfred Hitchcock. brief, bittersweet part of the “crofter’s wife” Screenplay: James P. Cavanaugh, based on in THE 39 STEPS who takes pity on the Arthur Williams’s story. fugitive ROBERT DONAT and sees that her Producers: Joan Harrison, Norman Lloyd. uncaring husband provides the man with AUTEUR THEORY n 13 shelter. A good woman trapped in a loveless suddenly leaned over and kissed her “full union, she’s just one of the first in a long on the mouth.” She quickly fended him off, line of Hitchcock’s unhappily marrieds. diplomatically explaining that she had a She died in London at 83. boyfriend, but she told PATRICK MCGIL- LIGAN that Hitchcock’s behavior was an References “enormous disappointment.” Despite the Brian McFarlane, “Dame Peggy Ashcroft,” director’s apologies, their friendship faded. BFI Screenonline, http://www.screenon She continued to act until recently, mostly line.org.uk/people/id/457078; “Peggy Ash- in French and on television. croft,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ nm0001919/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. References “Brigitte Auber,” IMDb, http://www.imdb ATTERBURY, MALCOLM .com/name/nm0041270/bio?ref_=nm (1907–1992) _ov_bio_sm; “Brigitte Auber,” Wikipe- A child of wealth and privilege—his father dia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigitte was the president of the Pennsylvania _Auber; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitch- Railroad—the Philadelphia-born Atter- cock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New bury went into acting early, beginning his York: HarperCollins, 2003), 550; Thilo career in vaudeville and spending much of Wydra, Grace: A Biography (New York: the rest of his life as a supporting actor in Skyhorse, 2014), 172–74, 176–79. films and TV, often playing plainspoken country folk. He is a blackmailer in the AUTEUR THEORY ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS episode The critical concept that the director is the “Help Wanted” and a rural lawman in THE sole “author” of any film and that every cre- BIRDS; his most famous (albeit uncredited) ative choice made holds his or her signature. role may be as the man waiting for a bus The auteur theory is almost as old in NORTH BY NORTHWEST who makes as the movies and existed long before the the observation to CARY GRANT, “That French gave it a name; even in the ’10s and plane’s dusting crops where there ain’t no ’20s, no one would ever have doubted that crops.” He died at age 85 in Beverly Hills. D. W. Griffith, Cecil B. DeMille, or Erich von Stroheim were the primary forces References behind their motion pictures. “Malcolm Atterbury,” IMDb, http://www Directors had a slightly lower status in .imdb.com/name/nm0041021/bio?ref_=nm silent comedies, however, where STARS— _ov_bio_sm; “Malcolm Atterbury: Over- Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel—truly view,” TCM, http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/ “directed” their films, whether they were person/6746|104140/Malcolm-Atterbury. credited or not. And when sound films (and their dialogue) appeared, talk of the direc- AUBER, BRIGITTE (1928– ) tor’s preeminence could draw an eye roll or Parisian-born performer whose earliest worse from screenwriters; weary of Frank films were for Marcel Carne and Julien Capra’s constant credit-grabbing, longtime Divivier. Hitchcock cast her as the gamine collaborator Robert Riskin once reportedly Danielle in TO CATCH A THIEF. He was turned in a blank script and snapped, “Here, patient with her on the set, and she looked just give it that Capra touch.” to him as a mentor; she was then deeply The popular cult of the director, with shocked several years later, when, parked his iconic riding boots and megaphone, also in her car after a casual dinner in Paris, he tended to ignore the powerful influence that 14 n AUTEUR THEORY studio moguls had, particularly during the himself with self-imposed restrictions ’30s and ’40s, when giants like Irving Thal- (the no-cuts edict for ROPE), his films berg and DAVID O. SELZNICK supervised have a similar look, usually incorporat- every aspect of a production, from first-draft ing a smoothly moving camera, occa- script to final cut. You may not immediately sional subjective shots, extreme close- remember the names of the different direc- ups for emphasis, and a strong reliance tors of Cat People and The Body Snatcher; on MONTAGE. Standard Hollywood you recognize each, though, by the consis- “coverage”—a long master shot of two tent mark of its meticulous producer, Val people in conversation, say, with contrast- Lewton. ing over-the-shoulder close-ups of each, But all the exceptions aside, auteurs all to be cut together later in editing—was were busy in movies from the start, and something he avoided. Instead, each shot even at the height of the studio-made, fac- in every scene had a specific function and tory-assembled era, there were directors, was planned out long in advance in elabo- from Douglas Sirk to Vincente Minnelli, rate storyboards. (By the time he got to who gave their movies a particular look the set, Hitchcock often said, his real work and, even more important, a personal sen- was done: All he had to do was shoot the sibility and a way of looking at the world film and then splice it together.) because an auteur doesn’t merely stage, Yet for a director whose first job in photograph, and edit things in a similar, films had been designing the title cards for signature fashion. At best that’s mere style; silent movies, Hitchcock kept a youthful at worst, a stunning lack of imagination. and even experimental approach well into No, in addition to a consistent aesthetic his 60s. Whether it was making a ceiling approach, a true auteur usually addresses out of plate glass (so he could film from specific, consistent themes or concerns. below, THE LODGER anxiously pacing) For John Huston, it might be an individu- to that nearly subliminal flash of dead Mrs. al’s determination to hold on to a personal Bates at the end of PSYCHO more than 30 code despite the odds; for Howard Hawks, years later, he continually delighted in find- the quiet grace under pressure of men trying new things the medium could do. ing to do a difficult job. But what these Beyond the signature style, though, directors said was as important as how they there were his themes—or, perhaps, obses- said it, and they often said the same thing sions. Most will get their own deserved in a dozen different ways. entries later on in this book, but some must Some auteurs—Huston, Billy Wilder, be at least mentioned here because they Preston Sturges—were screenwriters them- are the strongest intellectual proof of his selves, and this helped them articulate their auteur status. The constraints of unwilling philosophies onscreen. Others—Ford, James BONDAGE (THE 39 STEPS, SABOTEUR), Whale, Capra—tended to work within the the pains of domineering MOTHERS or same genre and often with the same small maternal figures (REBECCA, THE BIRDS), group of writers, which allowed them to seek the sweaty pleasures of secret FETISHES out and fully explore particular themes. (VERTIGO, MARNIE), the pull of VOY- The case for Hitchcock as auteur may EURISM (REAR WINDOW, Psycho), the be the easiest of all to make. Although he TRANSFERENCE of GUILT (STRANG- could change the style to suit the content ERS ON A TRAIN, THE WRONG MAN)— (long, “stage-y” takes for his adaptation of these are the things that any true Hitchcock JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK) or amuse film is made of. AVENTURE MALGACHE n 15

Of course, Hitchcock worked in influence was enormous. And while that genre films, which made underestimat- influence has sometimes been pernicious— ing him easy; worse, unlike Ford and Do we really need to discuss the signature Hawks, who tended toward westerns craft of that auteur Michael Bay?—it has and war films, Hitchcock’s films often also been valuable. For if nothing else, it included strong leading roles for women gave us a portrait of the “Master of Sus- and romantic conflicts, which made pense” as he really was—artist, author, and them even more tempting for male crit- prime mover of some of the richest Ameri- ics to dismiss. They were not serious, as can movies ever made. He is an auteur, and LINDSAY ANDERSON would assert in a we are the better for it. typical critique of Hitchcock’s Hollywood films in 1949; they did not contain pro- References gressive political messages. Michael Powell, “A Survivor of Film It took the French to take another look Criticism’s Golden Age,” New York at Hitchcock as, after the war, American Times, July 9, 2009, http://www.nytimes films began to be better distributed again .com/2009/07/12/movies/12powe.html and noir began to take hold. A new genera- ?_r=2&pagewanted=all; Andrew Sar- tion of critics—many of whom, like ERIC ris, The American Cinema: Directors and ROHMER, CLAUDE CHABROL, and Directions, 1929–1968 (New York: Dutton, FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT, would go on to 1968), 19–37, 56–61; Andrew Sarris, “Notes their own great filmmaking careers—began on the Auteur Theory in 1962,” Film Cul- to write respectful reappreciations, conduct ture 27 (Winter 1962–1963), 1–8. awed INTERVIEWS, and publish admiring books. Cinemas revived his films; cinephile AVENTURE MALGACHE (GB 1944) journals, such as CAHIERS DU CINEMA, lionized him. (Truffaut would eventually Director: Alfred Hitchcock. produce an essential, later updated, book- Screenplay: Jules Francois Clermont. length interview.) Producers: Uncredited. Meanwhile, in America, ANDREW Cinematography: Gunther Krampf. SARRIS—who had met Truffaut in Paris— Editor: Uncredited. began writing for The Village Voice in the Original Music: Benjamin Frankel. Cast: The Moliere Players. late ’50s. Although he (much to his later Running Time: 32 minutes. Black and white. embarrassment) failed to praise Vertigo in Released Through: Unreleased. 1958, he wrote a rave for Psycho in 1960; two years later, his “Notes on the Auteur Theory” popularized the concept of the director as author. In 1968, his The Ameri- A short propaganda film made in England can Cinema: Directors and Directions for Britain’s Ministry of Information fea- separated filmmakers into tiers; he placed turing a number of French actors who had Hitchcock, along with 13 colleagues, in the escaped the Occupation and (for safety’s unassailable “Pantheon.” sake) appeared here without taking indi- Although Sarris’s ranking of directors vidual onscreen credit. Hitchcock, who had was (and remains) controversial—and that been fiercely criticized for not returning to other great critic of the times, PAULINE England during the war (and also for LIFE- KAEL, seemed locked in eternal argument BOAT, which some critics found—unfairly— with him about nearly everything—his insufficiently anti-Nazi), bravely flew back to 16 n AVENTURE MALGACHE direct this film and the similar BON VOY- producers worried, potentially libelous; as a AGE, although once he arrived, his own cir- result, it was shelved for decades, although it cumstances were relatively posh. (He took is available today on DVD. a suite at Clairidge’s, where he polished the script with old friend ANGUS MACPHAIL.) Reference The final result, though, which detailed dis- Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life agreements among factions of the Free in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- French forces, was controversial and, its Collins, 2003), 346–48. B

“BACK FOR CHRISTMAS” BAGDASARIAN, ROSS (US; ORIGINALLY AIRED (1919–1972) MARCH 4, 1956) Fresno-born entertainer who made his Broadway debut in cousin William Saroy- Director: Alfred Hitchcock. an’s The Time of Your Life in 1940; the two Screenplay: Francis Cockrell, based on the later cowrote the novelty song “Come On-a story by John Collier. My House,” a big hit in 1951 for singer Producer: Joan Harrison. Rosemary Clooney. In 1954, he appeared Cinematography: John L. Russell. in REAR WINDOW as the composer living Editor: Edward W. Williams. Original Music: Stanley Wilson. across the courtyard from JAMES STEW- Cast: John Williams (Herbert Carpenter), ART; he appears in Hitchcock’s cameo in Isabel Elsom (Hermione Carpenter). that film and eventually ends the film on a Running Time: 30 minutes with commer- date with “Miss Lonelyhearts.” (Two years cials. Black and white. later, he also recorded a song called “The Originally Broadcast By: CBS. Trouble with Harry,” although it has nothing to do with the Hitchcock film of the same name.) Bagdasarian’s biggest and most JOHN WILLIAMS’s character murders his improbable success came in the late wife and buries her in the cellar; he doesn’t ’50s, when he began experimenting with realize she had some home-improvement different tape speeds during recording plans of her own. Another example of sessions of comedy pop songs; “Witch Hitchcock’s late-period interest in unhappy Doctor” was the first hit in 1958, fol- marriages, given a nicely cold The Gift of lowed later that year by the Chipmunk the Magi twist. Song (“Christmas Don’t Be Late”). Other records and a TV cartoon series followed, References with Bagdasarian continuing to do all the Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Com- voices (including that of the Chipmunk’s plete Directory to Prime Time Network long-suffering human guardian, “David TV Shows, 8th ed. (New York: Ballantine Seville”). Books, 2003), 29; Jack Edmond Nolan, Bagdasarian died of a heart attack in “Hitchcock’s TV Films,” Film Fan Monthly California at age 52. His son, Ross Jr., now (June 1968), 3–6. vocalizes for the singing rodents.

n 17 18 n BAKER, DIANE

Ingrid Bergman truly established herself as one of the essential “Hitchcock blondes” in Notorious. RKO Radio Pictures/Photofest © RKO Radio Pictures

References BAKER, DIANE (1938– ) John Bush, “Ross Bagdasarian: Biogra- Coolly patrician performer who was born phy,” Billboard, http://www.billboard into a sometime-show-business family in .com/artist/1532935/ross-bagdasar Los Angeles (her mother had appeared in ian/biography; Tom Simon, “David several early Marx Brothers comedies) and Seville and the Chipmunks,” Tom Simon, later studied drama and dance in Man- http://www.tsimon.com/chipmunk hattan. She made her movie debut in The .htm. Diary of Anne Frank in 1959. BALCON, SIR MICHAEL n 19

Hitchcock chose her to play Lili Main- References waring, SEAN CONNERY’s suspicious Diane Baker, interview with the author, sister-in-law in 1964’s MARNIE, where September 2015; “Biography,” Diane Baker, she witnessed some of the director’s on-set http://www.ebakerstreet.com; Donald behavior toward TIPPI HEDREN, as he Spoto, Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitch- worked to keep other cast members away cock and His Leading Ladies (New York: from her or dictated her daily routine. Harmony Books, 2008), 263–69. It disturbed Baker, who avoided talking about it for years but has come forward BALCON, SIR MICHAEL recently to corroborate some of Hedren’s (1896–1977) account: “What happened with Tippi, A middle-class boy from Birmingham who that was unique and certainly inappropri- had to give up his education to help support ate and I feel for her—she lost a couple of his family, Balcon had worked in the jew- years out of her career because of it. It’s elry trade and as an executive assistant at a her story, and a lot of it she’s only spoken rubber plant before, in 1921, starting a film about recently, but during the shoot I was distribution company. Within a few years fully aware there was some sort of huge dis- he and his partner, Victor Saville, had taken pute going on between them; I mean, they over the Famous Players–Lasky Studios and weren’t speaking, at all.” began producing their own product under Baker also said Hitchcock (who had the name GAINSBOROUGH PICTURES. previously sounded out the brunette actress The studios they had bought came about signing her to a contract) had been with trained staff, including a young Alfred “inappropriate a couple of times” with her Hitchcock, who had not yet directed; as well, including a clumsy pass when he Gainsborough would give him his chance came into her dressing room and suddenly and serve as his home for his earliest films. kissed her; shocked, she wordlessly showed Balcon later encouraged the young him the door. She said she later spoke about director to shoot several coproductions in it to a casting agent at the studio. “Every- Germany, where the company had business thing got back to him, and when he learned interests; the travel not only broadened that I was unhappy and complaining, his the far-from-worldly filmmaker but also attitude toward me changed completely,” exposed him to essential EXPRESSION- Baker said. “I was glad not to be under con- IST influences. And when it seemed Hitch- tract to him, the way Tippi was—I could cock’s THE LODGER was going to be left finish the job and get away.” When Baker on the shelf, Balcon championed the film, finally saw the edited film, she realized some lined up important allies, and was instru- of her scenes had been trimmed. mental in securing its release—and saving Baker appeared the same year in the filmmaker’s career. Strait-Jacket from Hitchcock imitator Wil- Balcon left Gainsborough shortly after liam Castle, the next year in the HITCH- its release of Hitchcock’s 1935 masterpiece COCKIAN Mirage, and had a long career THE 39 STEPS; five years later, the mogul on television. She remains active today; the would also break bitterly with his former youngest generation may remember her protégé when Hitchcock seemed happy to best as the distraught senator in The Silence stay in his new American home even as of the Lambs who, while pleading for her Britain went to war. An appalled Balcon— daughter’s rescue, garners an unwelcome who was the child of Jewish immigrants compliment from Dr. Hannibal Lecter and had helped artists flee Nazi Germany— (“Love your suit”). publicly called out these expatriates in 1940 20 n BALSAM, MARTIN as “deserters”; adding insult to injury, average guy has always identified with me,” he identified Hitchcock only as a former he said once. “plump junior technician.” Balsam would do another Alfred By then, the producer had already Hitchcock Presents in 1961, later help moved on to Ealing, soon to become a Hitchcock discovery TIPPI HEDREN byword for such beautifully crafted, obdu- through her expensive screen tests, and rately British films as Dead of Night, The continue to play stolid, salt-of-the-earth Lavender Hill Mob, Kind Hearts and Coro- characters, particularly in genre films like nets, and The Man in the White Suit. “We Cape Fear and The Anderson Tapes; he made films at Ealing that were good, bad won a supporting actor Oscar in 1965 for and indifferent, but they were indisput- A Thousand Clowns. ably British,” Balcon said later. “They were Balsam died in 1996 while on vacation rooted in the soil of the country.” Although in Rome. Ealing’s fortunes faded, Balcon lived long enough to see the resurgence of British cin- References ema in the 1960s; the last film he worked “Martin Balsam,” IMDb, http://www.imdb on was 1963’s Tom Jones. Long enough, .com/name/nm0000842/bio?ref_=nm_ov too, to finally roughly mend fences with _bio_sm; Lawrence Van Gelder, “Martin Hitchcock, although it wasn’t until the Balsam Is Dead at 76: Ubiquitous Character mid-’60s, when they met again at an indus- Actor,” New York Times, February 14, 1996, try dinner. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/14/nyre Balcon died in East Sussex at age 81; gion/martin-balsam-is-dead-at-76-ubiqui one of his grandchildren is Daniel Day- tous-character-actor.html. Lewis. “BANG! YOU’RE DEAD” References (US; ORIGINALLY AIRED Brian McFarlane, “Sir Michael Balcon,” BFI OCTOBER 17, 1961) Screenonline, http://www.screenonline.org .uk/people/id/447085/index.html; “Michael Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Balcon,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ Screenplay: Harold Swanton, based on the story by Margaret Vosper. name/nm0049608/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio Producers: Joan Harrison, Norman Lloyd. _sm; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Cinematography: John L. Russell. Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New Editor: Edward W. Williams. York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 235–36. Original Music: Joseph E. Romero. Cast: Billy Mumy (Jackie Chester). BALSAM, MARTIN (1919–1996) Running Time: 30 minutes with commer- Bronx-born, Actors Studio–trained per- cials. Black and white. former who was busy in postwar theater Originally Broadcast By: NBC. and live TV. He had a good part in the film version of 12 Angry Men in 1957 and a role in an ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRES- ENTS episode the year later; that and his Young Jackie’s busy running around with no-nonsense professionalism made him an a toy gun, annoying everyone he meets easy choice to play private detective Milton with his plans to shoot. What none of Arbogast in PSYCHO in 1960. “I think the them knows is that the gun is real. One of BANKS, LESLIE n 21 the rare but effective “message” stories on years; according to Hitchcock, she was just ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS. as wild on set as she’d ever been, scandal- izing everyone by climbing in and out of References the prop lifeboat without benefit of under- Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Com- wear. (The director later jokingly claimed plete Directory to Prime Time Network he was unable to do anything about it, as he TV Shows, 8th ed. (New York: Ballantine couldn’t decide whether it was the “make- Books, 2003), 29; Jack Edmond Nolan, up man’s department or the hairdresser’s.”) “Hitchcock’s TV Films,” Film Fan Monthly The role won Bankhead the best (June 1968), 3–6. actress prize from the NEW YORK FILM CRITICS CIRCLE (“Dahlings, I was won- BANKHEAD, TALLULAH derful,” she informed the crowd as she (1902–1968) accepted) but failed to revive her film Born into an old and politically prominent career; she soon returned to the stage Alabama family, she seemed cheerfully and mostly stayed there, apart from some determined to disgrace, Tallulah Bankhead attempts at television. Her last screen won a movie magazine contest in 1915 and appearance was in the horror-hag film somehow persuaded her father to let her Fanatic in 1965; she died in Manhattan in move alone to New York; there she showed 1968. Her last request was for a bourbon. even fewer inhibitions, having a number of affairs, developing a taste for drugs References (“Cocaine isn’t habit forming and I know, David Shipman, ed., Movie Talk: Who because I’ve been taking it for years”), and Said What about Whom in the Movies by 1918 starting to appear regularly onstage. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), 10; Her movie career took off in the 1930s, Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: but Bankhead’s greatest successes contin- The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: ued to be on Broadway; when her stage Da Capo Press, 1999), 268–69; “Tallulah hits Dark Victory and The Little Foxes Bankhead,” IBDb, http://ibdb.com/per were adapted for the movies, however, son.php?id=66814; “Tallulah Bankhead,” Bette Davis grabbed both parts. Bankhead, IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ though, got one of her rare Hollywood nm0000845/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. leads in Hitchcock’s LIFEBOAT, in which she played the glamorous Constance Por- BANKS, LESLIE (1890–1952) ter, now marooned at sea after a U-boat Born in Liverpool, Banks was a bright attack. Elegant and shamelessly shallow young Oxford student headed for a career at first, bit by bit Connie’s pretensions are in the church when he heard the call of stripped away, along with her possessions; the theater instead; he had begun a serious in the end, even her diamond bracelet is career on the stage before the First World sacrificed, turned into bait in hopes of War took him to the battlefield. Banks catching a fish. She slowly radicalizes too, returned with half his face disfigured; finding herself strongly attracted to a mus- instead of retiring, he boasted, he would cular Marxist played by JOHN HODIAK. use his scarred profile for serious roles, his Apart from a cameo in Stage Door unblemished side for comedic ones. The Canteen, the 1944 film had been Bank- former definitely served to his advantage head’s first movie appearance in a dozen in his Hollywood debut, playing the mad, 22 n “BANQUO’S CHAIR” man-hunting Count Zaroff in 1932’s The practical JOKES). A retired police inspec- Most Dangerous Game. tor gives a dinner party and hires an actress Returning to England, Banks had lead- to play the ghost of a murdered woman in ing roles in two essential Hitchcock pic- hopes of revealing the killer. Unbeknownst tures—the original 1934 THE MAN WHO to him, however, a real ghost has already KNEW TOO MUCH, in which he’s the accepted the role. father of the kidnapped child, and one of the cutthroat smugglers in JAMAICA INN References in 1939, Hitchcock’s last film before the Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Com- director departed to America and Holly- plete Directory to Prime Time Network wood. Banks went on to appear in Went the TV Shows, 8th ed. (New York: Ballantine Day Well?, LAURENCE OLIVIER’s Henry Books, 2003), 29; Jack Edmond Nolan, V, and the thriller The Door with Seven “Hitchcock’s TV Films,” Film Fan Monthly Locks; he died of a stroke at age 61. (June 1968), 3–6.

References BARING, NORAH (1905–1985) “Leslie Banks,” IMDb, http://www.imdb Petite London-born performer, chiefly on .com/name/nm0052203/bio?ref_=nm_ov stage. Her brief film career began in the _bio_sm; Brian McFarlane, “Leslie Banks,” early ’20s; she is best remembered today BFI Screenonline, http://www.screenon for her lead in MURDER! as the young line.org.uk/people/id/454219/index.html; actress—coincidentally if confusingly David Thomson, The New Biographi- named “Diana Baring”—on trial for her cal Dictionary of Film (New York: Knopf, life. Baring retired from the screen after 2002), 51. becoming a mother in 1934, although she published an INTERVIEW with Hitchcock “BANQUO’S CHAIR” the next year in Film Pictorial; she died in (US; ORIGINALLY AIRED Surrey at age 79 of pneumonia. MAY 3, 1959) References Director: Alfred Hitchcock. “Norah Baring,” The Hitchcock Zone, Screenplay: Frances Cockrell, based on the http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Norah story by Rupert Croft-Crooke. _Baring; “Norah Baring,” IMDb, http:// Producers: Joan Harrison, Norman Lloyd. www.imdb.com/name/nm0054689/ Cinematography: John L. Russell. bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. Editor: Edward W. Williams. Original Music: Frederick Herbert. BARNES, GEORGE (1892–1953) Cast: John Williams (Inspector Brent), Kenneth Haigh (John Bedford). With a cinematography career that went Running Time: 30 minutes with commer- back to the days of Thomas H. Ince, Barnes cials. Black and white. was known for his evocative lighting and Originally Broadcast By: CBS. pioneering the use of deep-focus compositions. (Gregg Toland was a protégé.) His first credit was for Vive la France! in 1918, one of his last for the special-effects-heavy One of the better supernatural stories on The War of the Worlds in 1953, and in ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS (and between he turned his hand at such dis- perhaps a nod to Hitchcock’s history of similar yet distinctive classics as Jesse James, BARRYMORE, ETHEL n 23

Meet John Doe, Jane Eyre, and Force of Evil, References adapting his style to Gothic dark shadows or “Joan Barry,” IMDb, http://www.imdb gritty film noir. .com/name/nm0054689/bio?ref_=nm_ov At DAVID O. SELZNICK’s insistence, _bio_sm; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of he would be Hitchcock’s first American Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New cinematographer, on REBECCA, giving York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 119. Manderley’s fluttering curtains a ghostly look and Hitchcock’s ever-moving EYE a BARRYMORE, ETHEL smoothly mobile camera that glided along (1879–1959) with it without complaint; it won him an Member of one of America’s oldest (and Oscar. He returned to work with Hitch- still ongoing) acting dynasties, she made cock on SPELLBOUND, where—avoiding her Broadway debut in 1895 and her first the usual hazy clichés—he shot GREGORY film in 1914; she had an early success in A PECK’s dreams and flashbacks with a crisp, Doll’s House, won a wedding proposal from high-contrast focus that was sharp as a a young Winston Churchill (she turned him straight razor. His last credit was the Bing down), and became a strong and coura- Crosby drama Little Boy Lost. geous voice for Actors’ Equity. She never, though, quite embraced the movies, an References industry she likened to a “Sixth Avenue “George Barnes,” IMDb, http://www.imdb peepshow.” (“Half the people in Hollywood .com/name/nm0055604/bio?ref_=nm are dying to be discovered and the other _ov_bio_sm; Thomas Staedeli, “Portrait half are afraid they will be,” she quipped.) of the Cinematographer George Barnes,” Although she won an Oscar for her part as Cyranos, http://www.cyranos.ch/spbarg-e CARY GRANT’s Cockney mother in None htm. but the Lonely Heart, her roles in Hollywood tended toward the dowager type; she was, in BARRY, JOAN (1903–1989) fact, nominated again for playing the much- London-born performer onstage since her abused Lady Sophie Horfield in Hitchcock’s early teens. (She is not to be confused with THE PARADINE CASE (although ironically the American actress of the same name the scenes that probably won her the nomi- who brought a controversial paternity suit nation were cut before the film’s official against Charlie Chaplin.) Barry’s most release by producer DAVID O. SELZNICK). unusual screen credit was actually uncred- In any case, Barrymore lost to Celeste Holm ited; when ANNY ONDRA’s Czech accent for Gentleman’s Agreement. She died in Los was judged too impenetrable for Hitch- Angeles at age 79. cock’s BLACKMAIL, Barry was called upon to dub her lines. (The process was References just as crude as Singin’ in the Rain would “Ethel Barrymore,” IMDb, http:// later satirize; during filming, Barry simply www.imdb.com/name/nm0000856/ stood off camera and recited the dialogue bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; “Ethel Bar- while Ondra moved her lips.) Barry got her rymore Is Dead at 79,” New York Times, own Hitchcock film in 1931 with RICH June 19, 1959, http://www.nytimes.com/ AND STRANGE, but her career turned learning/general/onthisday/bday/0815 out to be brief; after marrying in 1934, .html; “Ethel Barrymore Biography,” she retired. She died at age 85 in Marbella, TCM, http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/ Spain. person/10733|49240/Ethel-Barrymore. 24 n BASS, SAUL

BASS, SAUL (1920–1996) Bass again and in INTERVIEWS credited Bronx-born artist who began his career him only with his storyboards for the Arbo- in postwar Hollywood working on movie gast scene—which, he emphasized, he’d posters; his signature style revolved around had to discard as unsuitable. bold uses of type, stark cut-out silhouettes, Bass continued to design innovative and slashing geometric forms. After see- title sequences (It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, ing his work on the advertising for Car- Mad World), posters (The Shining), and men Jones, its director, Otto Preminger, countless corporate logos; the one film encouraged Bass to branch out into title he directed, the sci-fi Phase 4, has slowly sequences; his credits for Preminger’s The achieved a cult status for its striking visuals. Man with the Golden Arm and Anatomy His last credit was for the titles in Martin of a Murder are among his best and most Scorsese’s Casino. Bass died in Los Angeles copied. in 1996. Bass’s opening titles typically translated the film’s themes and mood into References design elements, setting the stage for the Pat Kirkham, “Reassessing the Saul Bass drama to come. His first work for Hitch- and Alfred Hitchcock Collaboration,” West cock was the credit sequence for VERTIGO, 86th, Spring 2011, http://www.west86th with its swirling, hypnotic spirals. He fol- .bgc.bard.edu/articles/kirkham-bass-hitch lowed that with the propulsive opening cock.html; Janet Leigh with Christopher credits for NORTH BY NORTHWEST in Nickens, Psycho: The Classic Thriller (New 1959, then the deliberately jarring titles for York: Harmony Books, 1995), 65–76; Ste- PSYCHO, their antic energy and broken phen Rebello, Alfred Hitchcock and the lines hinting at the violent madness just Making of Psycho (New York: HarperPe- ahead. rennial, 1991), 100–118, 122–23; “Saul As part of his work on Psycho, though, Bass,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ Bass—as he had recently on Spartacus— nm0000866/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; served as a visual or, as he was billed, François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. “pictorial” consultant, a job that included ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 273. drawing up the storyboards for complicated sequences—basically blueprints BASSERMANN, ALBERT for the filming. The ones Bass did for the (1867–1952) Arbogast murder were thrown out—Hitch- A prominent classical actor in Germany, cock thought they made the detective look the Mannheim-born performer worked like the killer—but the ones for the shower with both the legendary Max Reinhardt scene were followed quite closely. onstage and newcomer Ernst Lubitsch on This led to a dispute years later, when film; when Hitler came to power, though, Bass claimed that not only had he designed Bassermann began planning his escape. the famous sequence but also he had helped (Reportedly the dictator so admired the direct it, an assertion STAR JANET LEIGH actor that he ensured him he could con- and others heatedly denied. (The issue tinue working safely in the Reich—if he was at least arguable; while Bass had never merely divorced his Jewish wife.) The cou- instructed the performers or worked with ple fled to Switzerland, eventually settling the cameraman, he had suggested many of in the United States, where Bassermann the shots and reportedly shot test footage.) painstakingly set about learning English; For his part, Hitchcock never worked with one of his first parts, as the diplomat in BAXTER, ANNE n 25

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, had to be Gracie Allen Show and I Love Lucy. Bates memorized phonetically. (Impressively, was only 65 when she died in Burbank of a he won an ACADEMY AWARD nomina- heart attack. tion anyway.) Bassermann continued to act regularly, both onstage and in films, where References Hollywood tended to cast him as wise old “Florence Bates,” IMDb, http://www.imdb doctors. He returned to Europe after Hit- .com/name/nm0060904/bio?ref_=nm ler’s defeat; his last movie role was in the _ov_bio_sm; Christy Putnam, “Florence British classic The Red Shoes. He died of a Bates: It’s a Grand Feeling!” https://sue heart attack at age 84 on a plane to Zurich. sueapplegate.wordpress.com/2013/11/10/ florence-bates-its-a-grand-feeling; Alfred References E. Twomey and Arthur F. McClure, The “Albert Bassermann,” Encyclopaedia Bri- Versatiles: Supporting Character Players in tannica, http://www.britannica.com/bio the Cinema, 1930–1955 (New York: Castle graphy/Albert-Bassermann; “Albert Basser- Books, 1969), 39. mann,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ nm0060168/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. BAXTER, ANNE (1922–1985) A granddaughter of Frank Lloyd Wright BATES, FLORENCE (1888–1954) and the child of a Seagram’s executive who Far more interesting than most of the roles was raised in Manhattan and privately she played, the formidable San Antonio schooled, Baxter should have had her life matron was, successively, a piano prodigy, mapped out for her at birth—a map that, a math whiz (and graduate of the Uni- likely, would not have included detours to versity of Texas), one of the first female Broadway; Hollywood; and, for a while, lawyers in the state of Texas, an antiques a remote cattle ranch in Australia. But a dealer, a Spanish-English radio pundit, and thirst for acting and adventure hit her hard the owner of a Los Angeles bakery. It was in childhood, and by 16, she was in Cali- only as she neared 50, however, that she fornia, screen-testing for the lead role in took up acting after almost accidentally REBECCA. landing a part at the Pasadena Playhouse; She didn’t get the part (she was, too enjoying her experience onstage, she began clearly, still a teenager), but she got a con- her last, and most famous, career as a char- tract at Fox out of it (where she would win acter actress. a supporting actress Oscar for her role as Bates had had only one bit part in the the doomed Sophie in The Razor’s Edge in movies when she screen-tested for Hitch- 1946—“my only great performance,” she cock in 1939; impressed nonetheless, he called it). She starred in Orson Welles’s cast her as JOAN FONTAINE’s imperious butchered The Magnificent Ambersons, but employer Mrs. Van Hopper in REBECCA, her role as the duplicitous title character in just the first of the domineering women All about Eve is probably her most remem- who will try to rule that shy heroine’s bered; she eventually worked for Hitchcock life. Bates never rose to stardom but soon in I CONFESS after the studio abruptly became a familiar and comforting face in vetoed his first choice, Anita Bjork, once films, appearing first in movies like The they discovered she was an unwed and Mask of Dimitrios, I Remember Mama, unashamed mother. and Portrait of Jennie and later on such “He was very particular about ward- early TV sitcoms as The George Burns and robe and hair,” Baxter remembered of 26 n BAZIN, ANDRE her first meetings with Hitchcock. “I felt ers by many of his contributors, particu- I wasn’t as pretty as he wanted a woman larly those “partisans” whom he thought to be in his films, and as he wanted me to overpraised Hitchcock wildly; Bazin, who be. There was a lot of Pygmalion in him, preferred the “invisible” style of a William and he was proud of how he transformed Wyler or Howard Hawks, found Hitch- actresses.” She remained slightly uncom- cock’s fondness for MONTAGE distracting fortable on the set, particularly as costar at best and, when INTERVIEWING him MONTGOMERY CLIFT was drinking on the set of TO CATCH A THIEF, defi- heavily and often seemed to go blank dur- nitely began the interview with a certain ing scenes. bias. (His opening question: “Traditional Baxter would later appear in an epi- criticism often reproaches you for brilliant sode of THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK but gratuitous formalism . . .”) HOUR (and as a rather campy Nefretiri Despite the stiffness of their give and in Cecil B. De Mille’s The Ten Command- take, worsened by the need for a translator, ments), but her career slowed after she it is an interesting piece primarily because married a rancher in 1960 and moved away the men’s tastes are so different. (Bazin from Los Angeles; she wrote about her admires ROPE, which the director finds Australian experiences and others in her dull; Hitchcock wants to talk about REAR memoir Intermission. She died of a brain WINDOW, but the critic is uninterested.) aneurysm in New York at 62. But the article also has some unexpected revelations—Hitchcock, for example, dis- References missing the now-revered NOTORIOUS as “Anne Baxter,” IMDb, http://www.imdb simply a well-made but shallow entertain- .com/name/nm0000879/bio?ref_=nm_ov ment. And it gets at an unexpected truth— _bio_sm; Anne Baxter, Intermission: A sometimes the greatest judge of an artist’s True Story (New York: G. P. Putnam’s work is neither the artist nor the critic but Sons, 1976), 63; Donald Spoto, The Dark the audience. And time. Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock Bazin died in Nogent-sur-Marne, (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 338–40. France, at 40 of leukemia.

BAZIN, ANDRE (1918–1958) References Seminal critic and theorist born in Angers, Andre Bazin, “Hitchcock vs. Hitchcock,” France, who cofounded CAHIERS DU in Focus on Hitchcock, edited by Albert CINEMA in 1951; his aesthetic convictions LaValley (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice (including a firm preference for LONG Hall, 1972), 60–69; Katherine Blakeney, TAKES and deep focus) are still debated “An Analysis of Film Critic Andre Bazin’s today. Yet despite his antipathy toward Views on Expressionism and Realism on directors whose style called too much Film,” Student Pulse 1, no. 12, http://www attention to themselves, he was an advo- .studentpulse.com/articles/86/an-analysis cate of the filmmaker as visionary, and his -of-film-critic-andre-bazins-views-on writing—and his magazine—became the -expressionism-and-realism-in-film; Dave rock upon which the AUTEUR THEORY Kehr, “Cahiers Back in the Day,” Film was built. Comment (September/October 2001), This did not mean that Bazin agreed http://www.filmcomment.com/article/ with the devotion shown some filmmak- cahiers-back-in-the-day. BELLOC LOWNDES, MARIE ADELAIDE n 27

BEL GEDDES, BARBARA mother was the feminist Bessie Parkes, a (1922–2005) forceful proponent for women’s property Born in New York, Barbara Bel Geddes rights—published under her married name showed a wide range early on, winning an and was and is almost invariably referred to Oscar nomination for the warmly nostalgic simply as “Mrs. Belloc Lowndes.” Born into I Remember Mama in 1948, then originat- a particularly literate family (her brother ing the role of the hungry, sexy Maggie in was Hillaire Belloc), her first book, a study the first Broadway production of Cat on a of the Prince of Wales, appeared anony- Hot Tin Roof in 1955. Yet her liberal politi- mously at age 30; her greatest success, in cal leanings caused some trouble for a while 1914, would be The Lodger, a novel about in Hollywood during the McCarthy era; Jack the Ripper. when she did manage to get cast later, it was Hitchcock would adapt it as THE mostly in quietly empathetic, maternal roles. LODGER: A STORY OF THE LONDON She played to both sides for Hitchcock, FOG (and, for years, nurse the idea of though, first as the motherly, long-patient his own remake); another of her novels, Midge in VERTIGO, then the mutton- What Really Happened, would become an wielding murderess in his TV production episode of THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK of “LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER.” She HOUR. Although The Lodger remained actually appeared on Hitchcock’s TV show her most famous work (and would be four times, although it’s not sure whether adapted at least four other times for the that was the doing of Hitchcock, who screen), she wrote dozens of other books, remained sympathetic to colleagues who both fiction and nonfiction; her novel had been blacklisted, or associate producer Letty Lynton was made into a Joan Craw- NORMAN LLOYD (who had once run ford movie in 1932. “Rather, sort of, (a) afoul of Hollywood’s political witch hunt- cottage loaf,” said Hitchcock, likening her ers himself). to a round, double-tiered bread. “A very After a successful, late-in-life run on devout Catholic, rather a bit of a social TV’s Dallas as the matriarch Miss Ellie, Bel snob, but she wrote the most horrifying Geddes retired to Maine, where she busied murder stories.” herself with painting—just like Midge. She She died at age 79 in Hampshire, Eng- died there in 2005. land.

References References “Actress Barbara Bel Geddes Has Died,” Alfred Hitchcock, interview by Keith Today, August 10, 2005, http://www.today Berwick, Speculation, Channel 28, 1969, .com/popculture/actress-barbara-bel-ged http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Speculat des-has-died-2D80556262; Barbara Bel ion_%28Channel_28,_1969%29; “Marie Geddes, http://www.barbarabelgeddes.com; Adelaide Lowndes,” Encyclopaedia Bri- “Barbara Bel Geddes,” IMDb, http://www tannica, http://www.britannica.com/ .imdb.com/name/nm0000895. biography/Marie-Adelaide-Lowndes; Elyssa Warkentin, “Marie Belloc Lowndes BELLOC LOWNDES, Rewrites the Ripper,” Nineteenth Century MARIE ADELAIDE (1868–1947) Gender Studies (Spring 2011), http:// Extraordinarily prolific Franco-English www.ncgsjournal.com/issue71/warkentin writer who, despite her upbringing—her .htm. 28 n BENCHLEY, ROBERT

BENCHLEY, ROBERT ally delirious German American sailor on (1889–1945) Hitchcock’s LIFEBOAT; the operation he’s A deliciously droll, Worcester, MA–born forced to undergo there, with only liquor humorist—as a student at Harvard, he for an anesthetic and a rudely sterilized wrote an assigned paper on a US-Canadian pocketknife for a scalpel, is one of the film’s fishing treaty from the cod’s perspective— most horrifying scenes. Benchley had already been a popular critic Bendix died from complications of and essayist when he followed the great pneumonia at age 58 in Los Angeles; ironi- migration of Manhattan talents out to Hol- cally, he had just settled out of court with lywood. An early Jazz Age trip didn’t take, a TV network for wrongful dismissal when but he returned again in the ’30s, where he they had canceled a contract because they soon became busy working on scripts, writ- insisted he was too ill to work. ing and starring in his own comic shorts (How to Sleep won an Oscar in 1935), References and taking on supporting roles, usually as “Obituary: Mr. William Bendix,” Times, an incompetent lecturer or sodden busi- December 16, 1964, http://the.hitchcock nessman wandering through scenes like .zone/wiki/The_Times_%2816/Dec/ a vaguely worried walrus. In FOREIGN 1964%29_-_Obituary:_Mr_William CORRESPONDENT, he is the hack reporter _Bendix; “William Bendix,” IMDb, http:// Stebbins; he also rewrote some of the film’s www.imdb.com/name/nm0000904/ dialogue. He died, reportedly from cirrho- bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. sis, in New York at age 56. BENNETT, CHARLES References (1899–1995) “Robert Benchley,” IMDb, http://www A West Sussex–born actor-turned-play- .imdb.com/name/nm0070361/bio?ref_=nm wright, Bennett gave a notable stage suc- _ov_bio_sm; “Robert Benchley: His Writings cess to TALLULAH BANKHEAD with and Sayings and His Life and Times,” Robert BLACKMAIL, which Hitchcock later Benchley Society, http://www.robertbenchley decided to turn into a film. The two men’s .org/sob. meeting was apparently congenial; Bennett would go on to adapt or write most of the BENDIX, WILLIAM (1906–1964) director’s best British films, including THE A former batboy for the New York Yan- MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, THE 39 kees (he was reportedly fired for obediently STEPS, SECRET AGENT, SABOTAGE, and bringing Babe Ruth a mammoth order YOUNG AND INNOCENT. of hot dogs, which left the Babe too gas- The string of successes led to offers eous to play his best), Bendix was a failed for both men; Bennett ended up preceding New Jersey grocer until he started finding Hitchcock to Hollywood in 1938, when he stage work in the ’30s as part of a federal got a contract from UNIVERSAL. The two work program. Moving to Hollywood in men would work again at that studio on the early ’40s, he played a steady succes- FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT and SABO- sion of working-class characters (includ- TEUR; Bennett’s later projects would range ing the title role in The Babe Ruth Story) from an early, live TV adaptation of Casino and ended his career on television in the Royale to the classic horror tale Curse of the blue-collar sitcom The Life of Riley. He Demon, although little of it would approach is Gus Smith, the wounded and eventu- the quality of his work with Hitchcock. BERGMAN, INGRID n 29

Although it’s a perverse if familiar and although her artistic father disagreed failing of the AUTEUR THEORY to com- slightly—he saw her as an opera singer— pletely overlook the writer—the actual, when in 1932 she won the same dramatic technical “auteur”—Bennett’s contribu- scholarship that Greta Garbo had, the tion to Hitchcock’s films can’t be overesti- future seemed clear. mated. He is the scenarist on nearly every In 1939, DAVID O. SELZNICK put notable Hitchcock talkie, save THE LADY her under contract and brought her to VANISHES; his screenplays are uniformly America; her first Hollywood film, Inter- sophisticated, particularly about relation- mezzo: A Love Story, was a remake of one of ships, and often feature a teasing SEXUAL her Swedish hits. From the start her natural tension. Yes, their frequent man-on-the- appearance and unaffected demeanor—she run plots are one of the elements most refused to relentlessly pluck her eyebrows often identified as HITCHCOCKIAN. But or wear much makeup and spoke in a softly isn’t that element perhaps “Bennett-esque” natural if slightly accented voice—made as well? her stand apart. Hitchcock worked so closely with his Her greatest role was, of course, in scenarists (often aided, sometimes anony- Casablanca—just the way she looked at mously, by ALMA REVILLE) that it’s diffi- Humphrey Bogart was enough to immedi- cult to parse who did what, but it’s certainly ately clinch his status as a leading man— true that the director’s work with Bennett but it was the Selznick connection that is some of the most consistent of his career; soon brought her into contact with another perhaps because, unlike some other col- of his contracted talents, Alfred Hitchcock. laborators, Bennett never pushed to claim Following in MADELEINE CARROLL’s credit; even as Hitchcock sometimes seized dainty footsteps, she became one of the more than his share, the two men remained first “Hitchcock BLONDES”—elegantly fond friends (although later, after the direc- reserved in public, bubbling with passion tor’s death, Bennett would grumble a bit in private. about the way his contributions had been Like those who came later in the direc- overlooked). tor’s work—GRACE KELLY in the 1950s, Bennett died in Los Angeles at age TIPPI HEDREN in the 1960s—Bergman 95; at the time, he was busy writing a new defined her decade. She also set the tone screenplay of Blackmail in hopes of mount- for Hitchcock’s conflation of onscreen and ing a remake. offscreen obsession, the first of the blonde icons who would become increasingly, dis- References turbingly central to the director’s fantasies. “Charles Bennett,” IMDb, http://www.imdb Shortly after they began their first .com/name/nm0071657/bio?ref_=nm_ov picture together, Hitchcock began telling _bio_sm; David Shipman, “Obituary: friends that Bergman had cornered him in Charles Bennett,” Independent, June 22, his bedroom at a dinner party and refused 1995, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/The_ to leave until he made love to her. PAT- Independent_%2822/Jun/1995%29_-_Obitu RICK MCGILLIGAN defends the story as ary:_Charles_Bennett. possible; DONALD SPOTO decries it as the director’s own wishful fantasy. That BERGMAN, INGRID (1915–1982) seemed to be how the forgiving Bergman Born in Stockholm, Bergman realized she portrayed it. “People will believe what they wanted to be an actress from the start, want to believe,” she said years later of their 30 n BERGMAN, INGRID relationship. “I loved him, but not his way. performance (which also includes one of Well, I wanted to keep his friendship, and the great kisses in screen history, with the I did.” easy-to-kiss CARY GRANT) is indelibly Interestingly, although Bergman was heart-wrenching. technically the closest to the Hitchcock Shortly after Under Capricorn, how- ideal—the Nordic blonde—unlike the icily ever, Bergman began a new collaboration perfect Kelly, onscreen she projected vul- with the Italian director Roberto Rossellini; nerability and a messy, conflicted personal she ended up having his child out of wed- life. Her characters are often struggling lock and leaving her husband and daugh- with uncontrollable feelings, emotional ter in America. She was denounced on the weaknesses, even mounting self-loathing; floor of the Senate and remained persona their challenge is, with the help of a man, to non grata in Hollywood for half a decade. find a kind of equilibrium again. But she and Hitchcock—who, whenever She made only three movies for Hitch- she was agonizing over a scene, would gen- cock. In the first, the contrived but enter- tly remind her “Ingrid, it’s only a movie”— taining SPELLBOUND, she is the sensible remained friends forever. if repressed therapist who ministers to They didn’t work together again, GREGORY PECK’s complicated com- however. “You see, she only wanted to plexes while trying to keep her own surpris- appear in masterpieces,” the director later ing love at bay; in the last, the fiercely felt complained to FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT. but rather muddled UNDER CAPRICORN “When she was pleased with a picture she’d (a period story—one of the director’s least just finished, she would think, ‘What can I favorite genres), she is a troubled alcoholic, do after this one?’ Except for Joan of Arc, possibly being gaslit (a familiar thing for she could never conceive of anything that Bergman) by someone in her husband’s was grand enough; that’s very foolish!” house. It is a flawed film, although it gives Nonetheless, an Academy Award for her at least one great scene, shot in a single, best actress in Anastasia in 1956 signaled punishingly long take. that hypocritical Hollywood had finally “for- But the second film for Hitchcock, given” Ingrid Bergman; her career contin- NOTORIOUS, is unimpeachable—an adult ued, eventually including the lively Indiscreet thriller of complicated emotions in which and Murder on the Orient Express, for which Bergman plays the daughter of a con- she won a best supporting actress Oscar. In victed Nazi. Loyal to America, loving her 1978, she collaborated with another famous father, her feelings are tumultuous from Swede, Ingmar Bergman, on Autumn the start—and become even more so when Sonata. It would be her last performance in a man she grows to care for, an American a theatrical picture. In 1980, knowing he was agent, asks her if, for patriotism’s sake, she gravely ill, she made a special point of seeing would agree to take another man, a sus- Hitchcock a final time. He wept. pected Nazi sympathizer, to bed. Should She died in 1982 in London. Isabella she do what the American asks her to do, Rossellini, the actress and filmmaker, is one even as it earns his moral disapproval? Or of her children. should she refuse to do what he wants and garner his professional disappointment? References It’s an impossibly frustrating situation, Ingrid Bergman and Alan Burgess, My made even worse by the man’s refusal to Story (New York: Delacorte Press, 1980), give her any real guidance, and Bergman’s 55, 149–52, 177–78; “Ingrid Bergman,” BIRDS n 31

IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ baron became a real one, Lord Bernstein; nm0000006/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; a decade later, he retired. He died in Lon- Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life don at 94; his last wish was that the Holo- in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- caust documentary he and Hitchcock had erCollins, 2003), 381; The Official Ingrid worked on be restored and finally shown Bergman Web Site, http://www.ingridberg on television, a project his daughter Jane man.com/about/bio.htm; Donald Spoto, Wells, a documentarian in her own right, Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and successfully took on. His Leading Ladies (New York: Harmony Books, 2008), 138–39; François Truffaut, References Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Anthony Howard, “Obituary: Lord Bern- Touchstone, 1985), 189. stein,” Independent, February 6, 1993, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/peo BERNSTEIN, SIDNEY ple/obituary-lord-bernstein-1471201.html; (1899–1993) Tise Vahimagi, “Sidney Bernstein,” BFI Essex-born son of a real estate investor Screenonline, http://www.screenonline.org who slowly amassed a diverse portfolio of uk/people/id/531117. holdings. It was the chain of cinemas that interested him most, though, and by the BEST, EDNA (1900–1974) mid-’20s, he had cofounded the London A champion swimmer from Sussex, the fair- Film Society, become friendly with Hitch- haired, pale-eyed athlete was well cast as Jill cock and IVOR MONTAGU, and begun Lawrence, the skier and sharpshooter who importing foreign films, particularly the has to call on her marksmanship skills to stirring Soviet works of Sergei Eisenstein. save her child in the 1934 version of THE A staunch antifascist, it was Bernstein MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, her best- who, in the ’40s, encouraged Hitchcock to known movie role. Although Best had great make the propaganda films AVENTURE success on the English stage in plays from MALGACHE and BON VOYAGE to aid the Charley’s Aunt and Peter Pan to The Con- war effort and asked him to take over the stant Nymph, the movies remained a more supervision of what would become MEM- difficult arena, even after her Hitchcock hit; ORY OF THE CAMPS; later they would a relocation to Hollywood in the late ’30s join in forming TRANSATLANTIC PIC- brought mostly supporting parts, although TURES. The duo managed to make ROPE they included the films Intermezzo: A Love and UNDER CAPRICORN, but both films Story, The Late George Apley, and The Ghost underperformed with audiences; Transat- and Mrs. Muir (she played Martha, the lantic’s third production, STAGE FRIGHT, maid). She died in Switzerland at age 74. was eventually taken over by WARNER BROS. as the Bernstein-Hitchcock partner- References ship dissolved. Edna Best, http://www.ednabest.co.uk; It ended, however, without rancor and “Edna Best,” IMDb, http://www.imdb with profitable futures for both; serving as .com/name/nm0078923/bio?ref_=nm_ov his own uncredited producer, Hitchcock _bio_sm. went on to the most productive decade of his career, while Bernstein pioneered Brit- BIRDS ish independent television in 1956 with Birds (and their eggs) appear in many of his company Granada. In 1969, the media Hitchcock’s films, even apart from the 32 n BIRDS most famous, titular one. In SABOTAGE, for his mother—sightless, soundless, life- the code for the bombing is “The birds will less. These silent winged creatures aren’t sing at 1:45.” (Later, after watching the car- just passive but death itself, and while this toon WHO KILLED COCK ROBIN? Mrs. visiting Crane may hail from Phoenix, she Verloc stabs her murderous husband.) The will not be reborn, and in the end, her dead predatory Jack Favell gnaws on a filched gaze will be as flatly unblinking as theirs. drumstick in REBECCA, the lovers’ chicken The metaphor becomes the movie dinner grows cold and goes untouched in entire in THE BIRDS, of course, in which NOTORIOUS, and an angry ex-comrade the creatures—without warning, although throws a raw egg at Robie in TO CATCH not perhaps without motive—turn on the A THIEF. human race, which has spent countless In SUSPICION, the coroner carves years selling them as pets, treating them into his game hen as if it were a corpse; in as pests, or frying them up as blue-plate TOPAZ, gulls fatally give away a surveil- specials. Whether this is true vengeance lance job, and a spy camera is concealed or merely rabid madness remains unan- inside a chicken. In FRENZY, the over- swered—there is no thought to be read worked inspector returns home to a revolt- behind their black gaze—but a single shot, ing meal of tiny quail; in the Hitchcock- from high up in the clouds, suggests some- directed episode “ARTHUR” on ALFRED thing huge and implacable at work. Far HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, the murderer below, a gas station burns, tiny humans run turns a corpse into poultry feed. in terror—but who is it that is watching so These examples might seem like impassively? Is this a bird’s-eye view? Or coincidences—and not unusual ones, God’s? given the international popularity of It is tempting to draw a simple and chicken dinners—but the avian meta- Freudian line from these images of birds phor becomes far more explicit in PSY- and eggs directly to Hitchcock’s childhood; CHO. Our heroine, Marion Crane, comes his father was, among other things, a poul- from Phoenix; she takes refuge in a motel try dealer, and the stink of chicken coops whose proprietor, Norman Bates, deco- (and the probable permanence of cheap rates the walls of the cabins—or at least eggs on the family table) was undoubtedly a one special cabin—with pictures of song- large part of young Alfred’s memories. But birds and spends his spare time at taxi- how much more poetic not to look for a dermy, stuffing his feathered friends with single rational explanation for it, rooted in cotton-wool and stitching on glass eyes. long-ago memories or childhood aversions. He prefers working on birds rather than How much more moving to see birds, as other animals, he says, because they’re Hitchcock’s films do, as something inhu- such “passive creatures.” man and unknowable and strangely swiftly At first, the symbolism seems a refer- violent. ence to how Norman sees himself—quiet, Which makes them, in the end, per- helpless, a caged bird DOMINATED by his haps not so inhuman after all. MOTHER. (“We’re all in our own private traps,” he insists. “We scratch and claw but Reference only at the air, only at each other.”) Later, Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: it becomes clearer though, that the stuffed The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: animals aren’t a metaphor for Norman but Da Capo Press, 1999), 14–16. THE BIRDS n 33

THE BIRDS (US 1963) tarily pacified animals simply roost and watch. There is no explanation, however, Director: Alfred Hitchcock. for what caused these vicious attacks. And Screenplay: Evan Hunter, based on the there is no guarantee that they will not short story by Daphne du Maurier. begin again. Producer: Uncredited (Alfred Hitchcock). Cinematography: Robert Burks. The Birds is the bleakest of all Alfred Hitch- Editor: George Thomasini. Sound Consultant: Bernard Herrmann. cock films. There are arguments to be made, Cast: Tippi Hedren (Melanie Daniels), certainly, for VERTIGO, PSYCHO, and Rod Taylor (Mitch Brenner), Suzanne FRENZY. But Psycho is tinged with humor, Pleshette (Annie Hayworth), Jessica however black; Frenzy ends with the mur- Tandy (Lydia Brenner), Veronica Cart- derer caught and society put back in order. wright (Cathy Brenner). Even Vertigo admits the power of love. The Running Time: 119 minutes. Color. Birds is pitch-dark, almost nihilist. Released Through: Universal. Why did that seagull attack? Why are songbirds pecking out people’s EYES, chasing children, swarming down chimney Melanie Daniels, a spoiled and troubled flues? There is no answer. There is simply heiress, has caught the eye of San Francisco the fact that something you thought you lawyer Mitch Brenner and vice versa—but understood, something you may have taken their relationship veers between ambiguous for granted or might even have enjoyed, now and antagonistic. Looking for a resolution, wants nothing but your bloody destruction. perhaps, Melanie travels to his weekend And all you can do is run or die. home in the small town of Bodega Bay, Nature is not the only thing that seems bringing a gift of lovebirds for his baby sis- to be breaking down. There is not one ter. Shortly after her arrival, though, she’s intact family or healthy relationship in the attacked by a seagull—and soon surprised entire film; Mitch’s father is dead, Mela- to find out that Mitch has his own flock of nie’s mother deserted her, and Annie lives women around him, including an overpro- alone, drinking brandy and thinking about tective mother and Annie, a rueful ex-lover. Mitch (a record album of the doomed- They don’t complicate things as much love epic Tristan und Isolde, a Hitchcock as the local birds do, however, who soon favorite, within reach). Mitch’s mother is begin to launch, en masse, unprovoked described as unloving, and Melanie feels attacks against the villagers. An elderly herself unloved; significantly, only after man is found dead in his farmhouse, his the horrors of the birds’ assaults trauma- eyes pecked out, and flocks of vicious birds tize them both—and the mother is able to attack schoolchildren. Annie dies trying embrace this substitute child and the child to protect them, and the small downtown able to accept that embrace—is the film becomes a fiery disaster area, with no one finally allowed to end. sure of the animals’ motive. That may be the birds’ real dramatic Finally, Melanie and Mitch’s family purpose, in terms of the characters’ devel- take refuge inside their home; after a long opment, but what do the animals them- and violent night and the birds’ massive selves want? At times, almost everyone in onslaught on Melanie, the extended family the film tries to come up with some sort of sneaks out in the morning as the momen- explanation. (“It’s the end of the world,” 34 n THE BIRDS proclaims an Irish drunk in the local diner, true that he seemed particularly posses- and he may be the closest to the truth.) sive of her and, during the final onscreen Looking carefully, you might notice that avian assault on the actress, insisted on the attacks often seem to occur right after having live birds physically thrown at her; arguments or moments of conflict—our he demanded take after take, and after five feathered friends making the emotional days of increasingly intense shooting, a disputes between people real and red in doctor finally demanded a week’s rest for tooth and claw. But really, there is no the anguished, sobbing actress. explanation here. Only horror. That cruelty and coldness marks the The film had its beginnings in the early movie. Significantly, it is the only Hitchcock ’60s in newspaper stories Hitchcock had been sound film that contains no music. (BER- noticing about unprovoked bird attacks; the NARD HERRMANN, who designed the detail appealed to both the frightened boy in aural mix of mechanized bird cries, drew a him (who disliked birds to begin with) and credit as “sound consultant.”) Nor, beyond the canny businessman (who realized he the shell-shocked Melanie’s finally accep- still held the movie option on a DAPHNE tance of a maternal embrace, does it have DU MAURIER short story about an avian any sense of closure or even a proper ending; attack). As Hitchcock disliked breaking in the attacks pause, however briefly, and the new writers, he first called JOSEPH STE- movie stops. There is no “End” title. FANO, who had just provided him with Psy- Whatever control he exerted over his cho, but Stefano had no interest; eventually leading lady, Hitchcock is—apart from Hitchcock turned to mystery novelist EVAN some unconvincing process shots and some HUNTER, and the two worked together overly romantic close-ups of Hedren— amicably. (Although later, much to Hunter’s inarguably in complete charge of the film- disgust, Hitchcock inserted several scenes of making and in top form throughout. There his own at the last minute, including the one is a skillful use of deep focus when Melanie on the hilltop when Mitch and Melanie talk is on the phone with Mitch and Annie lis- of a “mother’s care.”) tens in the foreground; an attack on Mela- The movie would also mark the debut nie, trapped within a glass phone booth, of TIPPI HEDREN, a Hitchcock discovery recalls a scene from D. W. Griffith’s Broken (she had been a model and done some TV Blossoms, in which Lillian Gish hides from commercials) who was to be the new Hitch- her abusive father in a cramped closet. cock BLONDE. He had previously signed It also continues a visual motif begun VERA MILES to a personal contract, but right at the start of the film in the pet store, she was more interested in being a mother in which humans are confined—in small than a movie STAR, and he eventually, places or by their damaged pasts—while the disgustedly, let her contract lapse, a relief, animals roam wild and free. “The human Miles later said, as she had already seen how beings are in cages and the birds are on the controlling he could be, trying to not only outside,” Hitchcock later observed, adding, determine every step in her career but also perhaps sadly, “When I shoot something the very clothes she wore off the set. like that, I hardly think the public is likely He also, Hedren later claimed, tried to to notice it.” do far more than that with her, and when But the starkest and most significant she rebuffed his advances, he turned first shot in the film comes during the attack on cold, then cruel. While some of the off- the gas station, where the camera—high, the-set specifics remain unverifiable, it is high up in the clouds—looks down dispas- BLACK, KAREN n 35 sionately at a landscape where something underground filmmaking; her first substan- is burning, some people are running, and tial credits were in Francis Ford Coppola’s nothing is of any consequence. It is some- You’re a Big Boy Now, Dennis Hopper’s times described, naturally enough, as being Easy Rider, Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces, from a bird’s-eye view. But it is really a and Jack Nicholson’s Drive He Said. view from the heavens. Her cross-eyed looks and unconven- And it is from the vantage point of a tional line readings made her a hard sell for God who—in the utterly despairing view- some productions, though; a juicy role as a point of this film and its AUTEUR—can no femme fatale in Hitchcock’s FAMILY PLOT longer bring Himself to care. seemed like it might bring more mainstream work. It had been UNIVERSAL’s idea; Black References was a “name” at the time, and reportedly Kyle B. Counts and Steve Rubin, “The Mak- the studio demanded Hitchcock cast her ing of ‘The Birds,’” Cinemafantastique 10, although he was intent on casting the lesser- no. 2 (Fall 1980), http://the.hitchcock.zone/ known BARBARA HARRIS as the female wiki/Cinemafantastique_%281980%29 lead. (Annoyed by their growing salaries and _-_The_Making_of_Alfred_ demands, Hitchcock had not worked with Hitchcock%27s_The_Birds; Richard marquee names since TORN CURTAIN.) He Freedman, “‘Psycho’ Actress Defends agreed to the tradeoff (although, Harris later Hitchcock,” Spokesman Review, said, he was less than thrilled with Black). June 25, 1983, http://the.hitchcock Black said she enjoyed working on the .zone/wiki/The%20Spokesman-Review%20 film, however, even after Hitchcock gave %2825%2FJun%2F1983%29%20-%20 her an unexpected kiss and put his tongue %27Psycho%27%20actress%20defends%20 in her mouth. (“He was an exuberant Hitchcock; Greg Garett, “Hitchcock’s spirit,” was her explanation.) “We’d do lim- Women on Hitchcock,” Literature Film ericks together,” she said of her time on set Quarterly 27, no. 2 (1999), http://the with Hitchcock. “One day he pulled up his .hitchcock.zone/wiki/Literature_Film_Quar shirt to show me his belly-button—which terly_%281999%29_-_Hitchcock’s_women he didn’t have. He’d had an operation and _on_Hitchcock; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred when they sewed him up they took it away. Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New His belly-button was gone!” York: HarperCollins, 2003), 611–29; Donald But Family Plot came and went, too, Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of and despite some occasionally interest- Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, ing projects (a few loyal supporters, such 1999), 448–66; Donald Spoto, Spellbound by as Robert Altman, continued to give her Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading good parts), Black was soon reduced to Ladies (New York: Harmony Books, 2008), titles like Killer Fish and It’s Alive III. She 243–57; François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truf- never stopped working, although the films faut, rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), got more obscure and the roles less promi- 285–97. nent; she remained both a cult favorite and den mother to new talent. She died at 74 of BLACK, KAREN (1939–2013) pancreatic cancer in Los Angeles. Born in Park Ridge, IL, this precociously intelligent performer studied theater at References Northwestern University and eventu- Greg Garrett, “Hitchcock’s Women ally gravitated to the burgeoning world of on Hitchcock,” The Hitchcock Zone, 36 n BLACK-AND-WHITE CINEMATOGRAPHY http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Litera it over. How can I show the drabness of a ture_Film_Quarterly_%281999%29 slum street compared with the glory of a _-_Hitchcock%27s_women_on_Hitchcock; lovely landscape when I must photograph “Karen Black,” IMDb, http://www.imdb them both in tones of grey?” .com/name/nm0000947/bio?ref_=nm_ov _bio_sm; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitch- Reference cock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New “Some Thoughts on Colour by Alfred York: HarperCollins, 2003), 726; Robrt L. Hitchcock,” Adelaide Advertiser, Sep- Pela, “Barbara Harris Knew Bill Clinton tember 4, 1937, http://the.hitchcock Was White Trash,” Phoenix New Times, .zone/wiki/Adelaide_Advertiser_%2804/ October 24, 2002, http://www.phoenixnew Sep/1937%29_-_Some_Thoughts_on times.com/arts/barbara-harris-knew-bill _Color_by_Alfred_Hitchcock. -clinton-was-white-trash-6410220. THE BLACKGUARD (GB 1925) BLACK-AND-WHITE CINEMATOGRAPHY Director: Graham Cutts. Although Hitchcock could use COLOR Screenplay: Alfred Hitchcock, based on the novel by Raymond Patton. brilliantly—think of the autumnal explo- Producers: Sir Michael Balcon, Erich Pom- sions that dominate ROBERT BURKS’s mer. images in THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY, Cinematography: Theodor Sparkuhl. the violent Communist reds of TORN Editor: Uncredited. CURTAIN, or the otherworldly green light Cast: Jane Novak (Princess Irene), Walter that bathes KIM NOVAK in VERTIGO— Rilla (Michael Caviol), Bernard Goetzke it’s often used merely, judiciously, as an (Levinsky). accent. When we think of his films, we tend Running Time: 70 minutes. Black and white. to think in monochrome. Some of that, of Released Through: Wardour Films. course, was merely due to the era he shot most of them in, when color was an extrav- agance at best; some of it was due to other Michael Caviol, an ambitious violinist, has considerations. (To shoot PSYCHO in color pledged since childhood to love nothing would not only have driven up the budget but his art—a promise that becomes diffi- but also made the shower scene almost cult to keep once he meets a beautiful prin- unwatchable.) cess. Come the Russian Revolution, Caviol But it suits the content, too. Hitch- decides he must do everything he can to cock’s moral world is one of black and protect her—even if it means opposing his white and all the grays in between—of evil former mentor Levinsky, now a Commu- and good and varying degrees of guilt and nist leader. innocence—and the palette is made for it. The light of the moon, the darkness of the The first in a planned series of Anglo- shadow, the silvery gleam of a knife raised German coproductions, with GRAHAM high—these are the real hues of Hitchcock. CUTTS directing and Hitchcock, as had “Color will give me the chance to por- become customary, doing nearly every- tray what I want to portray most—lack of thing else—not only writing the screen- color,” he predicted in the late ’30s, when play but also serving as assistant director he was still stuck with monochrome. “I and art director. Typical of producer SIR know that it sounds paradoxical, but think MICHAEL BALCON, the cast included an BLACKMAIL n 37

American import, Jane Novak, in hopes of falls to his death, Frank is congratulated on juicing the box office; typical of Hitchcock’s closing the case, and Alice goes free, with scripts at this time, the plot involved a only two living souls aware of her guilt. melodramatic love story and some unconvincing elements of fantasy. “The first full-length all-talkie movie made in Great Britain!” the posters breathlessly Reference announced, although that wasn’t strictly Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life true. (The sound-on-disc mystery The Clue in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- of the New Pin with JOHN GIELGUD had Collins, 2003), 62. come out earlier that year.) Actually, it wasn’t supposed to be an BLACKMAIL (GB 1929) all-talkie anyway; at first, the skittish production company, BRITISH INTERNA- Director: Alfred Hitchcock. TIONAL PICTURES, was only willing to Screenplay: Alfred Hitchcock, Benn W. pay for one or two scenes with sync record- Levy, from the play by Charles Bennett. ing. Hitchcock blithely ignored them, how- Producers: Uncredited (John Maxwell). ever, shooting most of the film with sound; Cinematography: Jack Cox. the only problem was Czech actress ANNY Editor: Emile de Ruelle. Original Music: Jimmy Campbell, Reginald ONDRA, whose accent was nearly impene- Connolly. trable. Hitchcock’s solution was to have her Cast: Anny Ondra (Alice White), John merely mouth her dialogue, while actress Longden (Detective Frank Webber), JOAN BARRY stood off camera and spoke Sara Allgood (Mrs. White), Cyril Ritchard the lines into a microphone. (The Artist). Despite the early technical limitations, Running Time: 84 minutes. Black and white. a confident Hitchcock takes full advantage Released Through: Wardour Films. of the new medium of sound; particularly impressive is an almost EXPRESSIONIS- TIC sequence in which, after the stabbing, After an argument with Frank, her police- an innocent family meal is haunted by the detective boyfriend, Alice goes off with a repetition of the word knife. And his visual rakish artist who invites her up to his stu- sense is as ensured as always, particularly dio. Not surprisingly, perhaps, he intends in his use of special effects. (A tricky matte to show her more than his etchings; when technique done with mirrors, the Schüfftan he assaults her, she finally grabs a knife and process, was used to seemingly place actors stabs him, then flees. But she’s left behind in the British Museum.) The film even ends her glove, and Frank, after being assigned with a grand chase set against the backdrop the case, soon begins to realize she’s the of a famous landmark—a script sugges- prime suspect. tion from the very young Michael Powell, a So, however, does an artist’s model, protégé of Hitchcock back then and a hint who saw Alice go up to the studio; he of what was to come in SABOTEUR and begins, quietly at first, to blackmail the NORTH BY NORTHWEST. couple into paying for his silence, until But more striking is the film’s contin- Frank decides it would be easier to simply ued refining of Hitchcock’s great themes— frame the blackmailer for the crime. The of GUILT; of duty; of ever-changing, flex- blackmailer flees, Frank gives chase, and it ible morality. (Like the later SABOTAGE, ends at the British museum, where the man it’s a movie where the killer actually goes 38 n THE BLIND MAN unpunished, her crime concealed by her Although Bloch, like many, began by lawman lover.) It was not only a sizable copying Lovecraft’s stories of the monster- hit for the filmmaker; it was also a turning haunted Cthulhu Mythos, his own instincts point where Hitchcock the director began were for psychological horror, bad puns, to become HITCH the brand. and twist endings; some of his fiction was told in the first person by unreliable nar- References rators who turned out to be the villains. “Blackmail,” BFI, http://explore.bfi.org Despite the gruesome violence and sick .uk/4ce2b6a55273b; “On Set with Alfred humor, Bloch protested it was all in good Hitchcock,” BFI, http://www.bfi.org.uk/ fun. “I have the heart of a small boy,” news/set-alfred-hitchcock; Tom Ryall, he liked to say. “I keep it in a jar on my Alfred Hitchcock and the British Cinema desk.” In 1959, he published Psycho, a slim (London: Continuum International, 1996), novel—based loosely on the real-life crimes 96; François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, of ED GEIN—about an amateur taxider- rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), mist who lived with the preserved corpse 63–69. of his mother while sometimes “becoming” his parent and slaughtering women. The THE BLIND MAN movie rights were bought by an unknown A slightly fantastic thriller based on the source for $9,000. idea that the retinas of a murder victim The source turned out to be Alfred might retain the image of his killer; when Hitchcock, who—with screenwriter the recipient of an EYE transplant finds JOSEPH STEFANO—immediately set this out to be true, a dangerous chase is about revising and revamping Bloch’s on. Begun after PSYCHO, this project pro- story. The first major change they made ceeded far enough that ERNEST LEHMAN was staying with the heroine—Mary in had worked up a script and JAMES STEW- the novel, Marion in the screenplay—for ART agreed to star, but Disneyland refused much more of the beginning to trick you to allow Hitchcock to shoot some pivotal into thinking she was going to be around scenes at the park, and the project eventu- for a while. The second was to make Nor- ally fell apart—as would several more over man—a pudgy, balding drunk in Bloch’s the next few years, until he finally began story—into a likable, handsome young production on THE BIRDS. man. They kept the smart gimmick of the novel (a split-personality twist that, frankly, Reference Bloch had already used before). But they Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life deepened and broadened everything else, in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- adding an almost existential sense of hope- Collins, 2003), 608–9. lessness and filling the film with verbal and visual clues to its themes of divided selves BLOCH, ROBERT (1917–1994) and secret compulsions. Born in Chicago and raised in Milwaukee, Bloch never saw more than that first WI, Bloch began writing as a teenager; a fan small check from the movie sale, but the letter to horror icon H. P. Lovecraft gained film’s enormous success established him as him not only a mentor but also an entrée to a brand-name author; he went on to write “the pulps,” particularly Weird Tales, where many episodes of ALFRED HITCHCOCK he quickly became a regular contributor. PRESENTS and THE ALFRED HITCH- COCK HOUR as well as short stories, BLONDES n 39 screenplays, and novels. Although he wrote ous. He didn’t use blondes as a symbol of and published several more Psycho sequels, purity or innocence. (When we first see Hollywood was uninterested; the eventual JANET LEIGH in PSYCHO, she’s in her film follow-ups came from other hands. underwear, locked in an illicit embrace; Bloch died in Los Angeles in 1994. give her a few more scenes, and she’ll be a thief on the run.) Nor was he a fan of the References pneumatic blondes of the ’50s, full of as Robert Bloch, Psycho (New York: Award many superfluous curves as a Studebaker; Books, 1975); Patrick McGilligan, Alfred mystery is what Hitchcock preferred in his Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light stars as well as his plots. No, his blondes are (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 608–9; knowing yet still unknowable, promising “Obituary: Robert Bloch,” Independent, but just out of reach. For Hitchcock, the September 26, 1994, http://the.hitchcock real eroticism came from Kelly, prim as a .zone/wiki/The_Independent_%2826/ convent schoolgirl, leaning toward CARY Sep/1994%29_-_Obituary:_Robert_Bloch; GRANT in TO CATCH A THIEF with Stephen Rebello, Alfred Hitchcock and the a basket of chicken and asking mischie- Making of Psycho (New York: HarperPe- vously “Leg? Or breast?” Someone like KIM rennial, 1991), 7–14, 31–50. NOVAK in VERTIGO, with her voluptuous figure (and obvious dislike for support gar- BLONDES ments), he found vaguely distasteful. Pul- Perhaps it was the usual fetish. (“The per- chritude, in his fantasy, always came on a fect woman of mystery,” he said once, “is pedestal. one who is blonde, subtle and Nordic.”) And yet, he couldn’t resist dirtying Or, perhaps, it was just, as he sometimes these golden statues, trying to knock off JOKED, that their paleness showed off the some of their shine. Carroll’s wrists were blood better, “like the virgin snow.” But rubbed raw and bloody by the handcuffs right from the very first truly “Hitchcock he had her wear for THE 39 STEPS, and film,” THE LODGER, women with golden Fontaine turned into a mass of nerves in hair would be the director’s favorite victims REBECCA after he made sure she knew or heroines or both—EDNA BEST in the how much the rest of the cast disliked her. first THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH The literal tortures he put Hedren through (and DORIS DAY in the second), EVA on the set of THE BIRDS are well docu- MARIE SAINT in NORTH BY NORTH- mented. They may have all seemed like WEST (her character a perfect emblem of some subtle, Nordic symbol of sex, but the type, from her icy duplicity to her for- to the deeply, complicatedly CATHO- ward sensuality). And those were just the LIC Hitchcock, their carnal beauty was women who dropped in for a film; beyond both something to be guiltily admired and them you had the real “Hitchcock blondes,” deserving of punishment onscreen (and great STARS like MADELEINE CARROLL, sometimes, reportedly, shamefully, off). INGRID BERGMAN, and GRACE KELLY who became favorite and frequent collabo- References rators, young and insecure actresses whose “Alfred Hitchcock Quotes,” Wikiquote, careers were molded for better (JOAN https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alfred FONTAINE) or worse (TIPPI HEDREN). _Hitchcock; Sidney Gottlieb, ed., Alfred Being Hitchcock, even as he embraced Hitchcock: Interviews (Jackson: University the common fetish, he abhorred the obvi- Press of Mississippi, 2003), 195; Donald 40 n BOGDANOVICH, PETER

Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life References of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Peter Bogdanovich, Who the Hell’s in It Press, 1999), 431; Donald Spoto, Spell- (New York: Knopf, 2004), 3–37; “Peter bound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and Bogdanovich,” IMDb, http://www.imdb His Leading Ladies (New York: Harmony .com/name/nm0000953; Peter Tonguette, Books, 2008), 51–57, 92–96, 246–57. “Peter Bogdanovich,” Senses of Cinema, http://sensesofcinema.com/2004/great BOGDANOVICH, PETER (1939– ) -directors/bogdanovich. A New Yorker who was both a youthful devotee of Orson Welles and later, in BOILEAU, PIERRE (1906–1989) some ways, a B-movie version of him; French crime novelist who, with partner despite heady early success with a string of THOMAS NARCEJAC, wrote dozens fine films, his last few decades have been of thrillers, young-adult mysteries, and marked by one failed, or at least flawed, authorized sequels to Maurice Leblanc’s project after another, while he continues to novels about the jewel thief Arsene Lupin. regale younger fans with stories of the way Hitchcock, who was scouting constantly things used to be. for new stories to adapt, had originally Bogdanovich began his movie career tried to buy the rights to their Celle Qui as a film programmer and interviewer; N’Etait Plus; they went instead to HENRI- when a retrospective of Hitchcock’s work GEORGES CLOUZOT who made it into was mounted at New York’s Museum of LES DIABOLIQUES in 1955. (Prefigur- Modern Art in 1963, Bogdanovich INTER- ing PSYCHO, the film had a nasty scene VIEWED the filmmaker and wrote the inside a bathroom—and an ad campaign accompanying 48-page booklet, the first that warned audiences not to give away the extended work in English to approach twist.) Hitchcock then bought one of their Hitchcock as more than a mere entertainer. subsequent books, D’Entres les Morts, and He later went on to do a number of pro- began transforming it into VERTIGO. files, mostly for Esquire (including a terrific He and his screenwriters made a sig- one with JAMES STEWART), collected in nificant change, however; whereas in the the book Pieces of Time. Those jobs led to novel, you only learn about Judy’s mas- a meeting with Roger Corman; a fast turn- querade at the end, Hitchcock had a scene around on an excellent original thriller, put in toward the last third, when she sits Targets; and then a string of critical and down and writes a letter confessing every- popular hits: The Last Picture Show; What’s thing. It was a bold move, and Hitchcock Up, Doc; Paper Moon. Then the winning even doubted the wisdom of it himself; streak left him, and the brutal murder of until the film’s final release, he tried cuts his lover, Dorothy Stratten, pretty much both with and without the scene. But ulti- sidelined him for years. mately he left it in, as the clearest proof of Bogdanovich continues to work and his strongest storytelling belief: Surprise is has mostly turned to acting, although he a simple shock; suspense is the anticipation released an ensemble comedy, She’s Funny of one. That Way, in 2015; his books, Who the Boileau continued to work with Narce- Devil Made It and Who the Hell’s in It?, are jac, most notably on the screenplay to Les good collections of his many interviews, Yeux san Visage (Eyes without a Face) in including ones with Hitchcock and many 1959 and to publish for decades. Boileau of his STARS. died in 1989, Narcejac in 1998. BON VOYAGE n 41

References (Charlie in SHADOW OF A DOUBT), ideol- “Boileau-Narcejac,” Wikipedia, https:// ogy (SABOTAGE), or religious duty (I CON- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boileau-Narcejac; FESS). Frequently it is as simple and crass as Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life money—those golden handcuffs that keep in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- Johnnie close in Suspicion and Bruno plot- Collins, 2003), 563–64. ting in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. But in Hitchcock’s world, many of us BONDAGE are bound—in bad and unequal relation- “Being tied to something,” Hitchcock said ships with lovers, parents, society. And the disingenuously to FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT fastest way to cut those bonds is usually the as their INTERVIEW turned to the hand- most violent. cuffed hero in THE LODGER. “It’s somewhere in the area of FETISHISM, isn’t it?” Reference Hitchcock, of course, knew that it was, François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. but given the constraints of CENSORSHIP, ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 47. he was only able to hint at SEXUALITY and its sideshows onscreen for much of his BON VOYAGE (GB 1944) movie career. An arguably helpful thing, too; the arrival of new cinematic freedoms Director: Alfred Hitchcock. happened to coincide with his own dark- Screenplay: Angus MacPhail, J. O. C. ening moods, and rape became a more Orton, Arthur Calder-Marshall. explicit part of his later films, particularly Producers: Uncredited. in the gruesome FRENZY. Cinematography: Gunther Krampf. Editor: Uncredited. For much of his work, though, meta- Original Music: Benjamin Frankel. phor has to do the job, and there are hints Cast: John Blythe (Sgt. John Dougall). of bondage throughout. In two of his sup- Running Time: 26 minutes. Black and white. posedly light entertainments, THE 39 STEPS Released Through: British Ministry of and SABOTEUR, the hero and heroine are Information. literally handcuffed together; the very title of ROPE refers to the murder weapon (but also the ties that bind together the two, presumably gay, murderers). In “FOUR One of two propaganda films made by O’CLOCK,” a Hitchcock-directed episode of Hitchcock for Britain’s Ministry of Infor- the TV show SUSPICION, a would-be mur- mation on behalf of the war effort (and derer is tied up by burglars and left next to perhaps to blunt some of the criticism he’d his own ticking bomb; in THE LADY VAN- received from SIR MICHAEL BALCON ISHES, the missing Miss Froy is wrapped up and others for staying safely in America in bandages like a mummy. while Britain was being bombed). A small But more than a cheeky reference to experiment in conflicting narratives, it sex or a simple plot device (or both, as in has an RAF pilot recounting his voyage THE LODGER), Hitchcock films often use through enemy territory; one of his debrief- bondage as an emotional idea, as a vision ers then offers a different, more sinister of people unwillingly and unhappily tied to interpretation of what the man did (or did others. It can be the ties of marriage (Alicia not) see along the way. Hitchcock would in NOTORIOUS) or divorce (Sam in PSY- later explore the idea of untrustworthy CHO); it may be the bonds of familial loyalty flashbacks in STAGE FRIGHT. The film 42 n BOYLE, ROBERT F. received a brief release in France and is mafantastique_%281980%29_-_The available on DVD. _Making_of_Alfred_Hitchcock%27s_The _Birds; “Robert Boyle,” Economist, August Reference 19, 2010, http://www.economist.com/ François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. node/16843186; “Robert Boyle,” IMDb, ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 159–61. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0102327.

BOYLE, ROBERT F. (1909–2010) THE BRAMBLE BUSH Los Angeles–born architect who lost his Proposed Hitchcock movie about a former job during the Depression; the only work Communist who sneaks back into America he could find was at the city’s movie studios under a false identity—unluckily for him, as a draftsman. He eventually worked his that of a murder suspect. Hitchcock commis- way up to art director and showed a par- sioned several scripts during the early ’50s, ticular skill for large-scale fakery; it was he but none seemed to offer anything beyond who constructed the replica of the Statue of standard thrills, and the location shooting Liberty used at the end of SABOTEUR and, he’d hoped for threatened to be expensive. more than 15 years later, the Mount Rush- Eventually he abandoned the project and more heads used for the climax of NORTH turned to the already-written, easily staged BY NORTHWEST. DIAL M FOR MURDER. The proposed He had some skill with smaller things, Hitchcock film has no relation to the later though, too, working on SHADOW OF Richard Burton film of the same title. A DOUBT and MARNIE and wrangling dozens of live animals on the set of THE Reference BIRDS. “We needed to find out which birds Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life we could use best, and finally settled on two in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- types,” he explained later. “Sea gulls, which Collins, 2003), 466–68. were very greedy beasts that would always fly toward the camera if there was a piece of “BREAKDOWN” meat, and crows, which had a strange sort (US; ORIGINALLY AIRED of intelligence.” NOVEMBER 13, 1955) A loyal Hitchcock collaborator (“It was a meeting of equals”), Boyle was hav- Director: Alfred Hitchcock. ing preproduction meetings with him for Screenplay: Francis Cockrell, Louis Pollock. THE SHORT NIGHT when the project Producer: Joan Harrison. Cinematography: John L. Russell. was finally dropped due to the director’s ill Editor: Edward W. Williams. health. Boyle retired shortly thereafter; he Original Music: Stanley Wilson. is the subject of a documentary, The Man Cast: Joseph Cotten (William Callew). on Lincoln’s Nose, coproduced by the direc- Running Time: 30 minutes with commer- tor’s daughter, PATRICIA HITCHCOCK. cials. Black and white. He died in Los Angeles of natural Originally Broadcast By: CBS. causes at age 100.

References Kyle B. Counts and Steve Rubin, “The Grim story of a man paralyzed in an auto Making of ‘The Birds,’” The Hitchcock accident and thought to be dead; we listen Zone, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Cine to his increasingly anguished thoughts as BROOK, CLIVE n 43 his body is retrieved and brought to the a variety of names and permutations, buy- mortuary. An interesting example of inter- ing British Pathe in the ’30s, renaming itself nal monologue—a rare narrative choice the Associated British Picture Corporation, for Hitchcock—and the first episode shot and eventually entering into partnership for ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, with WARNER BROS., before turning to although “REVENGE” would eventually be television production. It was at BIP, how- chosen for the debut. ever, that Hitchcock found a home, making 10 films over five years—THE RING, THE References FARMER’S WIFE, CHAMPAGNE, THE Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Com- MANXMAN, BLACKMAIL, JUNO AND plete Directory to Prime Time Network THE PAYCOCK, MURDER!, THE SKIN TV Shows, 8th ed. (New York: Ballantine GAME, RICH AND STRANGE, and NUM- Books, 2003), 29; Jack Edmond Nolan, BER 17. It was the most work he would do “Hitchcock’s TV Films,” Film Fan Monthly for any single studio and the most diverse; (June 1968), 3–6. only 3 of the 10 films were thrillers. Yet by the early ’30s, his streak seemed to be cool- BRISSON, CARL (1893–1958) ing; after briefly trying to turn him into a Danish-born boxer-turned-performer, producer with LORD CAMBER’S LADIES, whose pugilistic skills made him a natural the studio let his contract lapse. lead for THE RING in 1927, both his first film and Hitchcock’s first movie from an References original story. He returned, less success- Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life fully, for the director’s THE MANXMAN in in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- 1929 (and actually introduced the standard erCollins, 2003), 148–49; Donald Spoto, “Cocktails for Two” in Murder at the Vani- The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred ties in 1934) but retired from the screen Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, soon thereafter when his accent made roles 1999), 100–103, 117–23. in English-language films difficult to get. He died at age 64 in Copenhagen of jaun- BROOK, CLIVE (1887–1974) dice; his son, Frederick, produced several Perfectly mannered, well-groomed leading hit musical films and married Rosalind man whose patent-leather hair and dash- Russell. ing way with evening clothes was emblem- atic of the Noel Coward era and enlivened References many British films. He made his stage “Carl Brisson,” IMDb, http://www.imdb debut shortly after the First World War and .com/name/nm0109895/bio?ref_=nm would go on to play Sherlock Holmes three _ov_bio_sm; Hans J. Wollstein, Strangers times and costar with MARLENE DIET- in Paradise: The History of Scandinavian RICH in the outré Shanghai Express, where, Actors in American Films from 1910 to writes David Thomson, “his restraint was World War II (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow oddly sexy, his disdain alluring.” Brook fin- Press, 1994), 47–52. ished his career in the John Huston thriller The List of Adrian Messenger in 1963. Forty BRITISH INTERNATIONAL years before, he appeared in three films PICTURES on which Hitchcock had contributed the Film studio founded by Scottish lawyer screenplays: THE PASSIONATE ADVEN- John Maxwell in 1927. It later went through TURE, WOMAN TO WOMAN, and THE 44 n BROWNE, ROSCOE LEE

WHITE SHADOW; although the last film References was long thought to be completely lost, it Robert Fikes, “Roscoe Lee Browne,” was recently revealed that half of it had BlackPast, http://www.blackpast.org/aah/ been discovered in New Zealand. Brook browne-roscoe-lee-1925-2007; “Roscoe Lee died at age 87 in London. Browne,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ name/nm0001975. References “Clive Brook,” IMDb, http://www.imdb BRUCE, NIGEL (1895–1953) .com/name/nm0111612; “Rare Alfred “Eh, what? Jolly good. Well, cheerio, then.” Hitchcock Film Footage Discovered,” BBC To even read the name Nigel Bruce is to News, August 3, 2011, http://www.bbc immediately hear his voice in your ear and .com/news/entertainment-arts-14384626; remember scores of his performances— David Thompson, The New Biographi- chiefly the devoted if dim Dr. Watson he cal Dictionary of Film (New York: Knopf, played to Basil Rathbone’s brilliant and 2002), 109–10. acerbic Sherlock Holmes. It wasn’t quite true to the character—in the Doyle canon, BROWNE, ROSCOE LEE Watson is more of a help than a hin- (1925–2007) drance—but it gave the series good humor, The son of a Baptist minister from New humanized the otherwise insufferable Jersey, Browne served with distinction in Holmes, and immortalized Bruce. World War II and returned to attend col- Born into the aristocracy—he was a lege, excel in various track-and-field events, descendent of the legendary king of Scots, and go on to teach French and literature. Robert the Bruce—Bruce lost his father The lecture hall, however, was merely a at 17, his mother a few years later. His poor substitute for the stage; by his early older brother inherited the title of bar- 30s, Browne abandoned the campus for onet; Bruce went into the army, where he cattle-call auditions and was soon landing was badly wounded in France, and ended parts in Joe Papp’s early Shakespearean the First World War in a wheelchair. After productions in New York. Blessed with a his recovery, though, he went on the stage, deeply cultured voice and an elegantly cyn- appearing first in comedies and then tran- ical attitude, Browne was a singular pres- sitioning to film. In 1934, after several suc- ence onstage and in film during the Black cessful Broadway appearances, he went to Power era; today he is perhaps best remem- Hollywood. bered from an episode of All in the Family, But if he left England, he also took where he witheringly puts Archie Bunker some of it with him; Bruce kept his Brit- in his place, and the movie The Cowboys, ish citizenship, captained the Hollywood in which he helps John Wayne lead a cattle Cricket Club, and became a leading mem- drive made up of gangly boys. (Although ber of Hollywood’s fabled expat ENGLISH politically Browne and Wayne were polar COLONY, which would furnish Hitch- opposites, during the film they report- cock with much of the cast of REBECCA, edly bonded over their love of poetry.) He including Bruce as Major Lacy (who’s plays the French agent Phillipe Dubois in memorably cut off by his wife with a sim- TOPAZ; his last film job was serving as nar- ple “You’re very much in the way here, go rator for the farce Epic Movie in 2007. The someplace else”). He would work again firmly private “lifelong bachelor” died at with Hitchcock on SUSPICION as Beaky, age 81 of stomach cancer. Johnnie’s preposterously silly school chum; BUMSTEAD, HENRY n 45 the film was based on a novel published 1915 while in bed recovering from an ulcer. years before, yet the part seemed to have The book was a best seller and led to many been written specifically for Bruce, and other thrillers, some featuring the same calm he caught every nuance of the character’s protagonist Richard Hannay; adapting the sweet cluelessness. novel in 1935 into THE 39 STEPS, Hitch- Bruce’s screen work was diverse, rang- cock and the scenarist played up the comic ing from The Charge of the Light Brigade elements; made its first mysterious victim a to Chaplin’s Limelight, but it was as Wat- woman; and added a heroine, a romance, son in 14 Sherlock Holmes films that he and a pursuit in handcuffs. (Hitchcock often gained his greatest fame. Apart from the thought of filming another Hannay adven- first two, shot at Fox and true to the period, ture, GREENMANTLE, but could never the movies were B-features at best; produc- quite figure out how to adapt it.) ers at UNIVERSAL tended to pitch them Other directors have adapted The somewhere between war-time propaganda Thirty-Nine Steps, though none as well, and and horror thrillers, with low comedy relief it was even turned into a knockabout farce an ever-present annoyance. Yet Bruce is, in for the stage; a few of the author’s other every one, as comfortable and comforting novels, particularly THE THREE HOS- as a ratty old cardigan and, for many, inex- TAGES, have been adapted for television or tricably linked to fond memories of child- the screen, too, while Hannay got his own hood matinees and “The game’s afoot!” “I British TV series in the late ’80s. Buchan’s am in no way a distinguished man,” he said books are somewhat pulpy (and prone to after the Holmes films ended, “but if I died ethnic stereotyping) but still fast-paced and tomorrow, I can honestly claim to have inventive; GRAHAM GREENE and Ian been what few men can call themselves—a Fleming were both schoolboy fans, and the really happy one.” Hannay books were clearly an influence on He died in Santa Monica of a heart their own spy fiction. attack at age 58. Buchan died of a stroke in Montreal while in office at age 64. References Nigel Bruce, “Games, Gossip and Grease- References paint,” Picasa Web Albums, https://picasa “John Buchan: Biography,” Cleave Books, web.google.com/118245811686959745462/ http://www.cleavebooks.co.uk/grol/ NigelBruceMemoirsGamesGossipAnd buchan/zbuchan.htm; Donald Spoto, The GreasepaintInformationExtracts; “Nigel Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Bruce,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, name/nm0115558/bio?ref_=nm_ov 1999), 144–45, 256. _bio_sm; Alfred E. Twomey and Arthur F. McClure, The Versatiles: Supporting Char- BUMSTEAD, HENRY (1915–2006) acter Players in the Cinema, 1930–1955 Art director and production designer in (New York: Castle Books, 1969), 54. films since 1948. He first worked with Hitchcock on the 1956 THE MAN WHO BUCHAN, JOHN (1875–1940) KNEW TOO MUCH and would eventually A lawyer, journalist, novelist, and politi- help devise the look of VERTIGO, TOPAZ, cian—with long stints serving in Africa and and FAMILY PLOT. (The various interiors five years as the governor general of Can- on Vertigo—particularly Scottie’s apart- ada—Buchan wrote The Thirty-Nine Steps in ment and Judy’s hotel room—show his 46 n BURKS, ROBERT signature approach, an attention to detail location) marks so much of the director’s rooted both in the realism of the setting work. The lush, change-of-seasons colors and the emotional background of the char- of THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY and acter.) Starting with High Plains Drifter, the gorgeous Monegasque sunshine of TO Bumstead formed a particularly strong CATCH A THIEF; the newsreel bleakness partnership with Clint Eastwood; he would of THE WRONG MAN and moody mono- work on 14 of the director’s films, conclud- chrome of I CONFESS—Burks could cap- ing with Flags of Our Fathers and Letters ture whatever needed to be caught. And he from Iwo Jima; he died before either film could bring things to the screen that other, was released. He was 91. equally flexible cinematographers might miss—the crazy carnival world of Strangers References on a Train (including the heart-in-your- “Henry Bumstead,” IMDb, http:// throat shots of the madly spinning carou- www.imdb.com/name/nm0120317/ sel), the frame-within-a-frame VOYEUR- bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Dennis McLel- ISM of REAR WINDOW, the nauseating lan, “Henry Bumstead, 91: Veteran Pro- focal-length dislocations of VERTIGO. duction Designer,” Los Angeles Times, May Although Burks had won an Oscar 27, 2006, http://articles.latimes.com/2006/ for To Catch a Thief (and nominations for may/27/local/me-bumstead27. Rear Window and Strangers on a Train), the partnership with Hitchcock ended BURKS, ROBERT (1909–1968) after Marnie; while the movie was no more Born in Chino, CA, Burks began his career marred by its zooms and oddly obvious as a special-effects technician at WARNER back-projection than by TIPPI HEDREN’s BROS. in the ’30s, eventually branching out forced performance, Hitchcock was already into cinematography; he got his first direc- wracked by self-doubt and would go on to tor of photography credit in 1949 on The summarily curtail associations with many Fountainhead and in 1951 drew the assign- talents he had previously collaborated with ment of shooting Hitchcock’s STRANGERS and depended on, including Burks and ON A TRAIN. composer BERNARD HERRMANN. Their partnership would continue Burks died in a fire in his California through MARNIE, with Burks shooting house in 1968. every Hitchcock picture except PSYCHO (on which, trying for a faster, cheaper, and References perhaps grittier look, Hitchcock turned James Morrison, “Robert Burks,” Inter- to JOHN L. RUSSELL of his ALFRED net Encyclopedia of Cinematographers, HITCHCOCK PRESENTS TV crew). A http://www.cinematographers.nl/Great gifted and adaptable technician, Burks DoPh/burks.htm; “Robert Burks,” IMDb, could work in BLACK AND WHITE, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0122079/ COLOR, even 3-D. (In addition to Hitch- bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. cock’s DIAL M FOR MURDER, one of the last examples of the ’50s fad, he also did BURR, RAYMOND (1917–1993) perhaps its most famous example, House of Born in British Columbia, Raymond Burr Wax.) Rarely did his work draw attention grew up in California and by 20 was already to itself. appearing at the Pasadena Playhouse. But And yet Burks’s ever-adaptable style his greatest performance may have been (he was equally comfortable on set or on the public one he gave of a made-up “pri- BURR, RAYMOND n 47 vate life”—over the years he successively think about what he must have been think- claimed to have been in the navy, have been ing about to prepare for this role. wounded at Okinawa, attended various col- After Rear Window, Burr changed leges, and (most offensively) had a beloved directions to play TV’s calmly successful son who tragically died of leukemia. lawyer Perry Mason, the paralyzed chief of None of it seemed to have any basis in police on Ironside—and then return again fact. Most, perhaps, were meant as distrac- for a string of successful Perry Mason TV tions from the truth—that Burr, despite a movies. He worked constantly, with breaks studio-publicized “romance” with young only for regular charity work and trips to Natalie Wood and a brief arranged mar- Hawaii, where he raised orchids. riage, was gay. And this was not an era He died in California in 1993. He left when any actor—even one generally called his entire estate to his lover of 33 years. upon to play the villain—could be anything but a red-blooded heterosexual. References So when Burr appeared in REAR Andrew Mersmann, “Robert Benevides of WINDOW as the pathetic murderer Lars the Raymond Burr Winery,” Passport, http:// Thorwald—a shy, desperately unhappy www.passportmagazine.com/robert-bene man who only wants to be left alone—listen vides-raymond-burr-winery; “Raymond again as he begs JAMES STEWART “What Burr,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ do you want from me?” Watch again as you nm0000994; Michael Seth Starr, Hiding in see him, blinking in the cruel light of the Plain Sight: The Secret Life of Raymond Burr flashbulbs, trying to keep his secret. And (Milwaukee: Applause, 2008), 59–64. CA

CADY, FRANK (1915–2012) www.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/arts/televi Born in small-town Susanville, CA, weedy sion/frank-cady-actor-on-green-acres-dies Frank Cady was a journalist, Stanford -at-96.html?_r=0. graduate, and educator who fell in love with acting during a 1930s stint in England CAHIERS DU CINEMA (where he apprenticed at a London theater A venerable French film journal, it rose and even made an appearance on the then- in 1951 from the interests (and member- very-rudimentary TV service of the BBC). ship groups) of two serious Parisian film The Second World War put an abrupt end societies and boasts a long line of critics to that career, but afterward Cady returned who went on to become acclaimed direc- to the stage and managed to rack up a long tors in their own right—from such early string of small parts in very good noirs—He contributors as ERIC ROHMER, FRAN- Walked by Night, D.O.A., The Asphalt Jun- ÇOIS TRUFFAUT, CLAUDE CHABROL, gle, Ace in the Hole—where his thin voice Jacques Rivette, and Jean-Luc Goddard to and meek appearance made him a natural such later lights as Leos Carax and Olivier for frightened witnesses, seedy suspects, Assayas. and expendable bystanders. He was often Although it is still extant, the maga- uncredited; typically, his character in REAR zine’s most influential era was in the mid- WINDOW—the man with the apartment ’50s, as the young Truffaut launched both a above the Thorwalds’—wasn’t even given sneering attack on the safe, literary, good- a name. His most famous character was, taste films of earlier French cinema (“the however, as the grocer Sam Drucker, the tradition of quality”) and a ringing defense lone voice of sanity on CBS’s trio of corn- of Hollywood films often seen as mere pone comedies of the ’60s, simultaneously entertainments, such as the westerns of appearing on Green Acres, Petticoat Junc- Howard Hawks and melodramas of Nich- tion, and The Beverly Hillbillies. He died at olas Ray. Hitchcock came in for special, his home in Wilsonville, OR, at 96. approving attention—even in 1954 receiving his own issue—with the young Cahiers References critics responding enthusiastically both to “Frank Cady,” IMDb, http://www.iMdb his PURE CINEMA explosions of thrilling com/name/nm0128326/bio?ref_=nm_ov MONTAGE and his consistent CATHO- _bio_sm; Daniel E. Slotnik, “Frank Cady, LIC concerns with sin and GUILT. Kept Store on ‘Green Acres,’ Dies at 96,” Of course, not everyone agreed. In his New York Times, June 11, 2012, http:// own piece, “Hitchcock vs. Hitchcock,” the

48 n CAHIERS DU CINEMA n 49

Norman Lloyd, left, holds on, barely, to Robert Cummings at the climax of Saboteur. Universal Pic- tures/Photofest © Universal Pictures magazine’s cofounder ANDRE BAZIN— vinced me of Alfred Hitchcock’s flawless whose preference was for neorealism genius.” Still, the young cultists made many and “invisible” style—would declare of converts. Truffaut, Chabrol, and Rohmer his young colleagues, “I cannot say that would all eventually INTERVIEW and the combined efforts of Scherer, Astruc, write book-length studies of the director, Rivette, and Truffaut have entirely con- and Truffaut’s writings on the AUTEUR 50 n CALHERN, LOUIS

THEORY would form the basis for not large head and hawklike profile made him a only the coming reappreciation of Hitch- leading man in early silents and then, as he cock and other often underestimated film- moved into middle age, a supporting actor makers but also for much of modern film often cast in positions of authority, whether criticism. as the diplomat in the anarchic Duck Soup The aesthetics and politics of the maga- or as CARY GRANT’s highly pragmatic zine have, naturally enough, changed with boss in NOTORIOUS. the decades and with the editors. As Truf- With his worldly mien and beauti- faut and others left to make their own films ful speaking voice, Calhern won an Oscar (and lead the FRENCH NEW WAVE), the nomination for playing Oliver Wendell magazine went through love affairs with Holmes in 1950’s The Magnificent Yankee modernism, postmodernism, and Marx- (a part he’d already played onstage). He is ism. At one point, the entire enterprise was best known today, though, for two other put together by a Maoist collective (which, roles he played that year: a singing Buffalo bizarrely, banned the use of photographs in Bill in Annie Get Your Gun and the duplici- the magazine); during another era, reviews tous lawyer in The Asphalt Jungle who of reality TV shows began to appear. Never funds the heist. has Cahiers regained the stature—the abso- Married four times (including to lutely essential quality—it had in the 1950s, actresses Ilka Chase and Natalie Schaefer), when whether you agreed with it or not, Calhern was a fine interpreter of Shake- any serious cinephile had to read it. But speare, too, playing the title role in Joseph whatever its fortunes (and in a literal sense, L. Mankiewicz’s 1953 film of Julius Caesar they’re scant—the publication has almost and the lead in a 1950 Broadway produc- always lost money), the magazine remains tion of King Lear. He died of a heart attack an essential part of film history, one that at age 61 while on location in Japan to not only rescued the art’s past from the rub- shoot The Teahouse of the August Moon. bish heap but also encouraged its future for Paul Ford replaced him in the film, decades to come. This book, and many hun- and any typically wry Calhern character dreds more, would not be here without it. would have chuckled mirthlessly at the irony; Calhern had only gotten his own References part in Annie Get Your Gun when the origi- Andre Bazin, “Hitchcock vs. Hitchcock,” in nal star, Frank Morgan, suffered a sudden Focus on Hitchcock, edited by Albert LaVal- fatal heart attack at age 59. ley (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1972), 60–69; Philip French, “A Short His- References tory of Cahiers du Cinema,” The Observer, “Louis Calhern,” IMDb, http://www.iMdb March 13, 2010, http://www.theguardian .com/name/nm0129894/bio?ref_=nm_ov .com/books/2010/mar/14/cahiers-du-cine _bio_sm; Alfred E. Twomey and Arthur F. ma-emilie-bickerton; Dave Kehr, “Cahiers McClure, The Versatiles: Supporting Char- Back in the Day,” Film Comment (Septem- acter Players in the Cinema, 1930–1955 ber/October 2001), http://www.filmcom (New York: Castle Books, 1969), 56. ment.com/article/cahiers-back-in-the-day. CALTHROP, DONALD CALHERN, LOUIS (1895–1956) (1888–1940) Brooklyn born, Missouri-raised high school Skilled British performer onstage since athlete-turned-vaudeville-performer. His 1906 and in films since 1916. Calthrop CAMEOS n 51 appeared in five Hitchcock movies: and a personal image. The cameo became BLACKMAIL (as the blackmailer), MUR- part of that and particularly part of his DER!, NUMBER 17, JUNO AND THE iconography as the “Master of Suspense.” PAYCOCK, and the revue ELSTREE CALL- Never during his days in Britain would he ING, although this busy schedule seems to contribute a cameo to a comedy or straight be due more to his own industry and the drama. But he almost invariably shows up insular world of British filmmaking than in his thrillers, a portly Englishman in a any particularly strong connection with the dark suit with an even darker sense of sly filmmaker. Among Calthrop’s other cred- humor, often struggling with mass transit, a its are the English version of F.P.I. Doesn’t package, or some other quietly exasperating Answer (based on an early sci-fi novel by fact of daily life. Curt Siodmak and simultaneously shot in The branding took work. At the time, German and French), the 1935 Scrooge (he the few directors who moviegoers recog- played Bob Cratchit), and Fire over Eng- nized tended to be either famous industry land, the movie on which LAURENCE figures (such as D. W. Griffith, one of the OLIVIER and Vivien Leigh fell in love. The four founders of United Artists) or actors actor—who tragically lost two sons at the themselves (such as Erich von Stroheim). Battle of Dunkirk in 1940—died that same Hitchcock was neither. But by appearing year in Eton of a heart attack at 52. He had in his own films and eventually making nearly finished filming Major Barbara; his a bit of a game of it (can you spot him?), part was completed with a stand-in and he became both a familiar figure and a some dubbing. celebrity. Later on, his appearances on his TV series and in his own trailers, the mer- References chandising of his name and silhouette on “Donald Calthrop,” IMDb, http:// everything from magazines to comic books, www.iMdb.com/name/nm0130740/ and his tireless appearances on talk shows bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Anthony Slide, would make him the most recognizable “Donald Calthrop,” BFI Screenonline, director in the world. http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/ The only downside—apart from id/454022. encouraging some critics to view him as more of a showman than an artist—was CAMEOS that it could keep audiences focusing on When FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT asked playing “Where’s Hitch?” rather than actu- Hitchcock about his tradition for onscreen ally following the plot. “By now it’s a rather cameos starting with THE LODGER, the troublesome gag,” he told Truffaut in 1962, director was typically dismissive. “It was “and I’m very careful to show up in the first strictly utilitarian,” Hitchcock insisted. “We five minutes or so, as to let the people look had to fill the screen. Later on it became a at the rest of the movie with no further dis- superstition and eventually a gag.” traction.” In truth, it was something more than Here is a list of Hitchcock’s popularly that. Hitchcock may have appeared in The confirmed cameos in his own films, as Lodger when they needed an extra player; compiled by the excellent online resource, after the film was finished, however, he The Hitchcock Zone (http://the.hitchcock. began working with a publicist (a rare zone/welcome). Although there has been thing for a director in 1920s England) and effort by some scholars to read meaning started constructing both a product brand and metaphor into these appearances, it’s 52 n CAMEOS a bit of a reach; most symbolize nothing MCCREA in the street while read- beyond the director’s efforts to promote ing the paper. his image while perhaps having a chuckle MR. AND MRS. SMITH (1941). About or two doing it. (Note that some of these 40 minutes in, walking past the cameos are difficult to see in today’s full- hotel. screen—that is, panned-and-scanned— SUSPICION (1941). About 45 minutes home-video versions. Times given are in, mailing a letter. approximate.) SABOTEUR (1942). About an hour in, standing with a woman outside the THE LODGER (1927). About five min- drugstore. (A more elaborate cameo utes into the film, sitting in a news- with Hitchcock and screenwriter room with his back to the camera, DOROTHY PARKER was vetoed talking on the phone. (Although and played with other actors; a sec- identified by Truffaut as a second ond one, with Hitchcock making a cameo, the extra in a later scene pass at a woman in sign language, watching IVOR NOVELLO’s arrest didn’t make it past the CENSORS.) seems to be another actor.) SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943). BLACKMAIL (1929). About 10 min- About 15 minutes in, his back to utes into the film on the London the camera, on the TRAIN play- Underground, trying to read while ing cards. His hand contains 13 a small boy pesters him. spades—a good hand for bridge but MURDER! (1930). About an hour into perhaps a hint of the film’s deadly the film, strolling past the crime theme. scene. LIFEBOAT (1944). His most inge- THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH nious appearance. About 25 min- (1934). About 30 minutes in on the utes in, WILLIAM BENDIX picks sidewalk as a bus passes by. up a newspaper; Hitchcock’s pic- THE 39 STEPS (1935). About five min- ture appears in an advertisement utes in, tossing away some trash, as for “Reduco: The Sensational New ROBERT DONAT brings “Miss Obesity Slayer.” Smith” back to his apartment. SPELLBOUND (1945). About 45 min- YOUNG AND INNOCENT (1937). utes in, getting out of a hotel eleva- About 15 minutes in, waiting out- tor. side the courthouse, wearing a cap, NOTORIOUS (1946). About an and carrying a tiny camera. hour in, getting a glass of cham- THE LADY VANISHES (1938). Near pagne at the party (and doing his the very end of the film in Victoria own unknowing part to engineer Station, smoking. CLAUDE RAINS’s crucial trip to REBECCA (1940). About two hours the wine cellar). into the film, walking past GEORGE THE PARADINE CASE (1947). About SANDERS in the street. (A slightly 35 minutes in, carrying a cello. longer cameo, with him waiting out- ROPE (1948). Another brilliant gag. side a phone booth while Sanders About 50 minutes in, his famous makes a call, was cut.) self-drawn caricature turned into a FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT (1940). red neon sign is glimpsed through About 10 minutes in, passing JOEL one of the apartment’s windows. CAMEOS n 53

Another Reduco ad, the director THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH explained. (Some sources insist he’s (1956). About 25 minutes in, his visible during the credits sequence back to the camera, watching the as well, walking past the apartment acrobats in Morocco along with building with a woman, but this DORIS DAY and JAMES STEW- seems to be an extra player.) ART. UNDER CAPRICORN (1949). About THE WRONG MAN (1956). Both his 15 minutes in, his only appearance earliest-in-the-story and deliberately in period costume, standing on the most serious appearance, Hitchcock steps of Government House. (Some shows up within the first minute in sources say he can also be glimpsed silhouette to introduce the movie. about 10 minutes earlier in the VERTIGO (1958). About 10 minutes crowd watching a parade.) in, walking in front of the shipyard. STAGE FRIGHT (1950). About NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959). 35 minutes in, passing by JANE About two minutes in, during the WYMAN while giving her a ques- opening credits, he misses the bus. tioning look (perhaps because (About 45 minutes later, on the train, she’s in disguise; perhaps because there is also an overweight woman she seems made up to resemble in a blue dress who some watchers his daughter PATRICIA HITCH- have speculated is Hitchcock in drag, COCK). although this seems highly unlikely.) STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951). PSYCHO (1960). About five min- About 10 minutes in, carrying a utes in, he can be seen through the double bass and trying to board the window of JANET LEIGH’s office, train. standing outside with his back to the I CONFESS (1953). Little more than camera and wearing a Stetson. two minutes in, glimpsed at the top THE BIRDS (1963). About two min- of a flight of steps. utes in, leaving a pet shop with two DIAL M FOR MURDER (1954). About terriers (his own). 10 minutes in, seen in the class MARNIE (1964). About five minutes photo displayed by RAY MILLAND. in, walking out of a hotel room— (As in Rope and Lifeboat, the film’s and seeming to catch us looking at constrained setting and limited him. number of characters required some TORN CURTAIN (1966). About five imagination to fit in an appearance.) minutes in, at the International REAR WINDOW (1954). About 25 Congress of Physicists. His back minutes in, across the courtyard, to the camera, he sits in the hotel winding a clock in ROSS BAGDA- lobby, awkwardly holding a toddler SARIAN’s apartment. on his knee. TO CATCH A THIEF (1955). About TOPAZ (1969). About a half-hour in 10 minutes in, sitting obliviously at the airport, briefly sitting in—and next to CARY GRANT on the bus. then getting up from—a wheelchair. THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY FRENZY (1972). About three min- (1955). About 20 minutes in, wear- utes in, he stands in a crowd, wearing a raincoat and walking past ing a bowler hat and listening to a JOHN FORSYTHE’s paintings. 54 n CARDIFF, JACK

politician talk about cleaning up the Cardiff and the actors; unfortunately the Thames. He is not impressed. film was not a hit with audiences and was FAMILY PLOT (1976). About 40 min- the final nail in the coffin of TRANSAT- utes in, his shadow casting the famil- LANTIC PICTURES, Hitchcock’s short- iar jowly silhouette on the frosted- lived production company. “I think a film glass door of the city registrar’s office. of Capricorn being made would have been far more successful than Capricorn itself,” References Cardiff wryly observed. “The Hitchcock Cameos,” The Hitchcock After The African Queen, Cardiff was Zone, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/The frequently called upon for epics, action _Hitchcock_Cameos; François Truffaut, films, or difficult shoots; his credits quickly Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: grew to include War and Peace, The Touchstone, 1985), 49. Vikings, and even Rambo: First Blood Part II. (Despite an early success with Sons and CARDIFF, JACK (1914–2009) Lovers in 1962, his career as a director was Born in Norfolk, the son of two music hall not as smooth.) More than 75 years after performers, Cardiff acted as a child both his first job on a movie set, Cardiff was still onstage and in the silents; at 15, he moved shooting; he died at age 94 in Ely, England. on to working behind the scenes at Britain’s small studios. He was still a lowly gofer and References “clapper boy” on Hitchcock’s THE SKIN Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack GAME in 1931 but eventually began getting Cardiff, http://www.jackcardiff.com; “Jack jobs as a cinematographer and in 1937 was Cardiff,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ the first to shoot on three-strip Technicolor name/nm0002153/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio in Britain for the Henry Fonda film Wings _sm; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: of the Morning. A Life in Darkness and Light (New York: After the war and a stint shooting HarperCollins, 2003), 422–24. British propaganda films in India, Cardiff returned to the English movie industry, CAREY, MACDONALD where he became known as a specialist in (1913–1994) capturing deeply saturated, nearly unreal Bland midwesterner who began on Chicago COLORS. He would shoot several films, radio programs during the Depression and including the almost painfully vibrant Black later transitioned to Broadway and then a Narcissus and The Red Shoes for Michael Hollywood studio contract. A dependable Powell and Emeric Pressburger; when for but unremarkable actor, he was typical of The African Queen John Huston needed the leading men (ROBERT CUMMINGS, someone comfortable with unforgiving cli- JOHN HODIAK) Hitchcock felt him- mates and rich hues, he called Cardiff. self saddled with in the early ’40s, when In between working for Powell and DAVID O. SELZNICK would loan him out Pressburger and Huston, Cardiff would to other studios whose list of contract play- shoot UNDER CAPRICORN for Hitchcock, ers was somewhat lacking. only the director’s second film in Tech- Carey was a prime example. In nicolor and his first film back in Britain in SHADOW OF A DOUBT, for example, 10 years. Echoing ROPE, his previous film, he plays Jack Graham, JOSEPH COT- Under Capricorn used a moving camera TEN’s pursuer and, eventually, TERESA and very long takes, a challenge for both WRIGHT’s love interest. He is a sober, CARROLL, MADELEINE n 55 dedicated professional hunting down a after Pope Leo XIII), Carroll made his stage dangerous serial killer, but does he inter- debut in 1912; by the early ’30s he was in est any viewer? Or leave them doubting for America, first in summer stock and then on a moment that Wright’s life with him will Broadway and in Hollywood. He made his be one of stultifying safety? Still, Hitchcock first film, Sadie McKee, in 1934 with Joan would use the actor later for his TV shows Crawford; played Marley’s Ghost in the on episodes of ALFRED HITCHCOCK 1938 A Christmas Carol; and was Joseph in PRESENTS and THE ALFRED HITCH- the 1939 Wuthering Heights. COCK HOUR. Like Carey, both install- As the doctor in Rebecca, he was ments were competent and unmemorable. merely one of the many members of the The actor finally found a more congenial ENGLISH COLONY to lend some British home on daytime TV, where for nearly 30 verisimilitude to Hitchcock’s California- years he played Tom Horton on Days of shot thriller; in Suspicion, he is Captain Our Lives. Melbeck, one of the feckless Johnnie’s easy He died of lung cancer at age 81 in marks. Both parts—trustworthy, sympa- Beverly Hills; one of his daughters, Lynn thetic—made him an excellent choice for Carey, was a Penthouse centerfold, rock Spellbound, in which he finally got to play singer, and star of Russ Meyer films, the villain (and had to handle the compli- including Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. cated acting job of going from confident murderer to despairing suicide within a References brief, single scene). He was excellent, too, “Macdonald Carey,” IMDb, http://www in North by Northwest, as the professor, a .imdb.com/name/nm0136994; Richard spymaster who plays the game of espio- Severo, “Macdonald Carey, 81, Film Actor nage like a particularly diverting match of with a Soap Opera Career, Dies,” New chess. It was that role that led to his last, York Times, March 22, 1994, http://www and perhaps most signature, success, as Mr. .nytimes.com/1994/03/22/obituaries/mac Waverly, the sometimes slightly distracted donald-carey-81-film-actor-with-a-soap secret agent handler on TV’s The Man from -opera-career-dies.html. U.N.C.L.E. (and its brief spinoff, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.) from 1964 through 1968. CARROLL, LEO G. (1886–1972) He died in Hollywood of pneumonia Tweedy, avuncular actor whose quiet at age 85. professionalism made him one of Hitch- cock’s favorites; the director used him six References times over nearly 20 years, starting with “Leo G. Carroll,” IMDb, http://www.imdb REBECCA and continuing with SUSPI- .com/name/nm0001991/bio?ref_=nm_ov CION, SPELLBOUND, THE PARADINE _bio_sm; Alfred E. Twomey and Arthur F. CASE, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, and McClure, The Versatiles: Supporting Char- NORTH BY NORTHWEST. (Only CLARE acter Players in the Cinema, 1930–1955 GREET, whose credits include the unfin- (New York: Castle Books, 1969), 60. ished silent NUMBER 13, appeared in more, with seven—eight if you count CARROLL, MADELEINE LORD CAMBER’S LADIES, which Hitch- (1906–1987) cock merely produced.) Elegant, erudite British performer from Staf- Born in Buckinghamshire, England, to fordshire and the child of an Irish professor a devoutly Catholic family (he was named and his French-born wife. Carroll later grad- 56 n CARROLL, MADELEINE uated from the University of Birmingham SEXUALITY was often hidden or teasingly with a B.A. in French. But her pale blonde withheld (PSYCHO, TO CATCH A THIEF). hair and porcelain looks were obvious even And for all this, they would eventually be in the classroom, and after appearing in punished onscreen—dragged around in a play her senior year, she knew she was handcuffs, strangled, even stabbed. meant to become an actress. “I understood As the sexy, suspicious, and ultimately then how people get ‘a call,’” she said later. supportive heroine to ROBERT DONAT’s Her father, who had planned for her to man on the run, Carroll set the standard continue her studies at the Sorbonne as he in The 39 Steps, and although privately she had and then take up an academic career, would complain of Hitchcock’s occasional was opposed; in fact, she was turned out of treatment of her—putting her through the house and had to take a job teaching in a chase scenes that left her wet and uncom- girl’s school to support herself. But by 1927, fortable or snapping on handcuffs that left she was appearing on the stage and by the her delicate skin red and raw—the film was following year had made her movie debut. an enormous hit for both of them, with Car- She would rapidly go on to make The Ameri- roll’s removal of her sodden stockings a par- can Prisoner with CARL BRISSON, French ticularly erotic moment for 1935 cinema. Leave with CHARLES LAUGHTON, and She returned to star for Hitchcock Escape with EDNA BEST. again in SECRET AGENT, but the results In 1931, she married an English officer weren’t to be quite as acclaimed—JOHN and soon announced her retirement from GIELGUD was no substitute for a then-ail- acting. That was surprising but not unprec- ing Robert Donat, and the plot was trickier edented—at the time, many actresses and more downbeat. Still, it led to further retired upon marriage—but Carroll offers from Hollywood, resulting in Lloyds returned to the screen in 1933 with a new of London, The General Died at Dawn, studio contract and offers coming in from and in 1937 the charming The Prisoner of Hollywood. In 1935, she made perhaps her Zenda. She was billed on one poster as the best-remembered film, THE 39 STEPS, for “most beautiful woman in the world,” and Hitchcock and became, some say, the “first it’s a sign of her genuine appeal that the Hitchcock BLONDE.” audience greeted this rather bold proclama- The honor is not an inarguable one; tion with nothing but assent. the director had used fair-haired women Then in 1940, her baby sister Mar- before as both heroines and victims. But guerite was killed during the London Carroll was the true archetype in a long blitz, and Carroll was changed utterly. line of cinematic flaxen-haired symbols, Although she continued to take on a all of whom followed the rigid rules first few assignments—including My Favor- set down for those characters here and ite Blonde with Bob Hope—she got out broadened and darkened by Hitchcock of her Hollywood contract. By now over the ensuing decades. In a drama, they divorced from her first husband and mar- would question, challenge, or confront the ried to Sterling Hayden (although that hero right from the start (SPELLBOUND, would only last a few more years), she NOTORIOUS); in a chase film, they would gave up acting. She moved to Europe and arrive later in the narrative as an outright devoted herself to the war effort. She had obstacle or nemesis (SABOTEUR, NORTH already turned her French chateau into an BY NORTHWEST). They could not really orphanage; she then became a nurse for be trusted (VERTIGO, MARNIE). Their the Red Cross under the name Madeline “THE CASE OF MR. PELHAM” n 57

Hamilton and took a job at a busy mili- end, she begs to take her pet lovebirds with tary hospital in Italy. her and her fleeing family. After the war, Carroll remained in Like many child stars, Cartwright grew Europe, where she remarried, this time to faster than her career; her most famous a French producer, and worked on radio roles as an adult remain the 1978 Inva- programs and documentaries meant to fos- sion of the Body Snatchers and the original ter better international relations, provide Alien. (She is not to be confused with her aid to Holocaust survivors, and care for three-years-younger sister, Angela, who the displaced and often disabled children starred in The Sound of Music and TV’s of the conflict. Charity became her focus; Lost in Space and who also appeared on although she would occasionally appear in Alfred Hitchcock Presents.) films, on the stage, and eventually on TV, her work on behalf of children, especially References through UNICEF, became the driving force Veronica Cartwright, http://www.veronica in her life. Eventually she retired to Spain, -cartwright.com; “Veronica Cartwright,” where she lived with her two yapping Yor- IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ kies, Tricky and Dicky. nm0001021/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. She died at 81 in Marbella, Spain. “THE CASE OF MR. PELHAM” References (US; ORIGINALLY AIRED “Biography,” Madeleine Carroll, http://www DECEMBER 4, 1955) .madeleinecarroll.com/biography; “Mad- eleine Carroll,” IMDb, http://www.imdb Director: Alfred Hitchcock. .com/name/nm0140914/bio?ref_=nm_ov Screenplay: Frances Cockrell, based on the novel by Anthony Armstrong. _bio_sm; Richard Pendlebury, “From Hol- Producers: Joan Harrison. lywood Starlet to Wartime Angel,” Daily Cinematography: John L. Russell. Mail, February 22, 2007, http://www.dai- Editor: Edward W. Williams. lymail.co.uk/femail/article-437780/From- Original Music: Stanley Wilson. Hollywood-starlet-wartime-angel.html; Cast: Tom Ewell (Albert Pelham), Ray- Donald Spoto, Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred mond Bailey (Dr. Harley). Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies (New Running Time: 30 minutes with commer- York: Harmony Books, 2008), 52–66. cials. Black and white. Originally Broadcast By: CBS. CARTWRIGHT, VERONICA (1949– ) Bristol-born child STAR in films since 1958. A doppelgänger slowly, effectively, begins Busy on early American TV, she would play to take over a man’s life, finding easy accep- Violet in Leave It to Beaver, appear in the tance among the original’s acquaintances. Ray Bradbury adaptation “I Sing the Body An odd and unresolved episode of ALFRED Electric” on The Twilight Zone, and costar HITCHCOCK PRESENTS that digs a little in two episodes of ALFRED HITCHCOCK deeper into Hitchcock’s favored theme of PRESENTS. In 1963, she played ROD TAY- DOUBLES. LOR’s sister (and the object of many BIRDs’ enmity) in THE BIRDS, bringing the film References some of its sharpest notes of helpless hysteria Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Com- and its only plaintive one of hope as, at the plete Directory to Prime Time Network 58 n CATHOLICISM

TV Shows, 8th ed. (New York: Ballantine which the Jesuits had prepared him for the Books, 2003), 29; Jack Edmond Nolan, real world were limited. On one hand, he “Hitchcock’s TV Films,” Film Fan Monthly had taken classes in religion, drawing, elo- (June 1968), 3–6. cution, choir, and all the usual academic subjects (including Latin, German, and CATHOLICISM French); on the other, teachings on SEXU- “I don’t think I can be labeled a Catholic ALITY were limited to occasional paeans artist,” Alfred Hitchcock mildly protested to chastity, the “angelic virtue.” Not only to FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT. Many critics were the details of reproduction avoided disagree. but also discussion of gender itself; in fact, Certainly the roots were there (and, Hitchcock remained so ignorant of female as even Hitchcock immediately went on to biology that, while shooting THE PLEA- admit, “It may be that one’s early upbring- SURE GARDEN, he was confused when ing influences a man’s life and guides his an assistant told him one of the actresses instinct”). His father’s side of the fam- couldn’t do a swimming scene because she ily had drifted in and out of the faith, but was menstruating. “What’s that?” the film- Hitchcock’s mother, Emma, was Irish and maker asked. He was 25. more devout; as the director later JOKED, And so, born during the last gasp of the day he was born was “one of the only the Victorian era and raised in England by Sundays in my mother’s life when she Irish Catholics (who, perhaps because they missed church.” were surrounded by Protestants, clung Although his own relationship with even more stubbornly to their traditions), the sacraments was less stringent—he Hitchcock was very much an old-school, remained a generous donor, though by old old-fashioned believer. Almost any worldly age he had fallen away from regular ser- pleasure offered an occasion of sin; women vices and, writes DONALD SPOTO, even were either on pedestals or in bordellos, grown suspicious of priests—Hitchcock Mary the Holy Mother of God or Mary was a fairly conventional Catholic through Magdalene, a sinning (if eventually saved) middle age. His wife, ALMA REVILLE, had woman of the streets. But how did this to convert before their marriage; he went to affect his art? mass regularly and was delighted when his Certainly, it is there in his treatment of daughter, PATRICIA HITCHCOCK, mar- GUILT and innocence. He was raised, as he ried into the family of a prominent Ameri- admitted, to believe that good and evil are can archbishop. both within us, that the struggle for one’s As a child, Hitchcock had been edu- soul was constant. Beyond that, though, cated by the Jesuits, a traditionally rigorous, his beliefs took a darker turn. In Catho- intellectual order. The experience schooled lic teaching, the end is not predestined; him in logic and discipline but also left one has free will and the power to resist. him with a sense of fear—in a sneaky form After all, Christ himself was tempted; the of torture, corporal punishment for any only difference between a saint and a sin- offense was scheduled, so that the student ner is that the sinner not only knowingly was forced into dreadful anticipation—and gives into the temptation but also refuses of human duality, “a consciousness of good to repent. and evil, that both are always with me.” Yet Hitchcock was not so forgiving. Hitchcock left his all-boys school In his cinematic world, the momentary around the age of 14, and the ways in desire is almost as bad as the act itself. Guy CENSORSHIP n 59 doesn’t actually kill his wife in STRANG- mother who prays (and begs her son to ERS ON A TRAIN—but he wants her dead, pray) for a miracle—and actually seems to and he profits by her murder, and so he get one, as religious icons look down from must suffer. In ROPE, Professor Cadell the shabby walls. may not believe his lectures on Nietzsche And, across the divide, there is Alicia are truly meant to justify eliminating “the in NOTORIOUS, who begins the film lost inferior”—but shouldn’t he have realized in drink and despair and will soon go to that at least one obviously disturbed stu- bed with a poisonous villain for the good dent might disagree? No one is innocent. of her country and, ironically, the love of And as for the truly guilty—well, the Jesuits a man—potentially sacrificing herself, and might have preached salvation, but in the her soul, for others. And Annie in THE church of Alfred Hitchcock, repentance is BIRDS—a frank, worldly, slightly cynical not enough. woman—who will give her life for her ex- In I CONFESS, any sexual indiscretion lover’s little sister, dying on the steps of her Logan might have engaged in with a mar- own childless home. ried woman happened before he became a These women are out there, Hitchcock priest—and yet it will still lead to blackmail says, and if we are lucky, they will step for- and death. In PSYCHO, Marion Crane has ward to try to help us find our way. But it already decided to return the stolen money may not be enough. Our feet are turned (even begun to figure how much more she toward Hell from our birth, and with every owes, after impulsively buying that car)— stray and uncontrolled thought, we take and still the knife comes for her. Regrets another step. always come too late; “sorry” doesn’t matter. Yet if guilt and desire and sin and References punishment are ever present in almost all Richard Alleva, “The Catholic Hitchcock: A of Hitchcock’s films, what is far rarer is Director’s Sense of Good and Evil,” Com- the essential Christian teaching of meek monweal, July 12, 2010, https://www.com acceptance and dramatic self-sacrifice. monwealmagazine.org/catholic-hitchcock; Even Father Logan, who seems willing to “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” The go to jail in I Confess rather than break the Holy See, http://www.vatican.va/archive/ seal of the confessional, is not so much sac- ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a8 rificing himself for the murderer’s sake as htm; Bess Twiston Davies, “Hitchcock: safeguarding his own salvation; to break his Monster or Moralist?” Times, Septem- vows would be a grievous sin. In the end, ber 5, 2008, http://the.hitchcock.zone/ he’s really only thinking about himself. wiki/The_Times_%2805/Sep/2008%29 No, in Hitchcock’s world of mur- _-_Hitchcock:_monster_or_moralist; Pat- der, only a few true martyrs exist. Not rick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in surprisingly, all of them are women, and Darkness and Light (New York: HarperCol- they divide, with the usual clear lines, into lins, 2003), 17–18, 20–21; Donald Spoto, Madonnas and whores. On the saintly side, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred there is Midge, the wry maternal virgin of Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, VERTIGO, who loves Johnnie and is will- 1999), 15, 19–20, 22–23, 551–52. ing to sacrifice almost anything for him— yet realizes in the end that he has to save CENSORSHIP himself. There is Mama Balestrero in THE In 1972, the British censors demanded WRONG MAN, the dedicated, widowed trims in the brutal rape scene in FRENZY. 60 n CENSORSHIP

This caused some outcry among the direc- Particularly infuriating was that the gov- tor’s fans—far more brutal films, such as ernment authorities applied double stan- Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs and Stan- dards—“The censor bans scenes in British ley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, had films which he permits to pass in American recently passed without changes, while films of a similar type,” he told the Daily no Hitchcock film had been cut in Brit- News of Perth in 1930. English films, Hitch- ain since PSYCHO. Hitchcock, however, cock concluded, were sadly lacking in “sex remained unruffled, saying it was only a appeal.” few frames. “I am not given to goriness, Still, he managed to work around the you know,” he told the London Times, add- bluenoses. Sometimes this was mere clev- ing “These things are always a matter of erness, as in setting necessary expository degree, and it always depends on whether scenes in dressing rooms or shared accom- you do it with taste or not. . . . I do not get modations, where women bustled about seriously censored, because I have enough getting in and out of scanty lingerie (as experience in this business to know what is in the opening moments of THE LADY sensible.” That he had good sense, though, VANISHES), yet the dialogue rendered and usually good taste did not mean that he the sequence essential to the film—always avoided the censors entirely. a strong argument against cutting. Some- Although the director’s SEXUAL expe- times the workaround took a more inge- rience can only have been scant before his nious approach. At one point, directors marriage—when, at the age of 25, he was personally showed their films to the censor; told one of his actresses in THE PLEA- Hitchcock, discovering the man was nearly SURE GARDEN was indisposed because blind in one eye, would pick problematic she was having her period, he needed to moments to ask a question, forcing the have someone explain what it meant—he gentleman to turn his head and miss what had a schoolboy’s love of naughty limer- was about to happen onscreen. icks, crude practical JOKES, and dirty puns, When Hitchcock reached America, many of them revolving around his own last though, he found that a sly wink and a name. As he grew older and more power- clever subterfuge were not enough to get ful, he would try to shock his leading ladies past the industry’s Production Code or to with obscene stories. (“I heard worse things get “objectionable” material passed by the when I was in convent school,” an unblush- independent, all-powerful Hays Office. ing GRACE KELLY told him and won his His first project, REBECCA, turned adoration.) Later, he would try to shock out to be a problem almost immediately. audiences by pushing things even further Producer DAVID O. SELZNICK did with images the screen had rarely seen. not believe in altering one word of a best During his early days in Britain, seller once he bought it for the movies; the Hitchcock’s relation to studio and govern- movie censors, reading ROBERT E. SHER- ment censors was calm but oppositional. WOOD’s first draft, found it in violation of Although some of the disagreements were their standards due to an “illicit” love rela- political—he claimed later that stories of a tionship, a murderer going unpunished, “sociological importance” he had wanted to and “quite inescapable inferences of sex do (a film on the general strike of 1926, for perversion.” example) were vetoed by producers before Further drafts would retool Rebecca they ever got to the script stage—most of to—rather tortuously—absolve Maxim of the arguments were over sexual material. Rebecca’s death. Even more work would CENSORSHIP n 61 be required by BEN HECHT on NOTORI- nearly relives it, choking Mrs. Cunning- OUS, too, which censor Joe Breen found ham); India scissored out the scene in Rear particularly distasteful in not only its details Window when Grace Kelly sat on JAMES of Alicia’s sexual past but also the film’s STEWART’s lap; Ireland banned Notori- original ending, which had her succumbing ous and I CONFESS in their entirety; and to the poisoning and emerging as a sort of France and Italy did the same for ROPE. martyr. It was essential, Breen wrote, that No film brought more trouble from the word tramp be used less frequently; the beginning than Psycho. The movie also, it would be better if Alicia lived and starts with a woman and a divorced man were rescued by Devlin (after which they half-naked in a hotel room; it ends with an could head, presumably, to the nearest all- almost subliminal shot of a stuffed corpse. night chapel). In between there are two bloody murders, These were small-minded complaints one of a nude woman. Almost none of this, and frustrating situations, but as they were the censors said, was remotely acceptable. occurring at the script stage, at least there But their power was waning, stan- was time to find a solution before shoot- dards were shifting, and Hitchcock knew ing began; sometimes the solutions truly this. He scheduled a reshoot of the sexy improved the film (such as the long, con- hotel room tryst, inviting the censors onto stantly interrupted, endlessly erotic kiss the set; when they didn’t show, he left the filmed for Notorious, staged so as to get scene as it was. Similarly, when the censors around the censorious stopwatch usually couldn’t agree just what they could see in applied to such embraces). Far worse were the shower scene (except for a few frames those times when the movies were finished of the corpse’s buttocks, which Hitchcock and then ran afoul of the censors and had immediately cut), he told them he would to be cut. re-edit the film further; instead, he sim- In REAR WINDOW, for example, the ply resubmitted the same version a few board objected that “Miss Torso” appeared days later. Although the censors still found to be topless in one shot; Hitchcock, who problems—the shot of a flushing toilet was had deliberately inserted the scene as a thought to be in particular bad taste—the bargaining chip, happily took it out on film ultimately emerged unscathed. the condition that other material now be Other stories of censorship battles, allowed in. In NORTH BY NORTHWEST, however, are less well documented and they demanded that in the line “I never feel a bit like Hitchcock inventing excuses make love on an empty stomach,” make be after the fact or apologies for compromises changed to discuss; Hitchcock acquiesced, he himself willingly made. For example, smiling to himself that they hadn’t noticed although the director always said the con- the final, impudently phallic shot of the trived happy ending of SUSPICION was TRAIN hurtling into a tunnel. forced on him when RKO refused to let More often problems would happen him have CARY GRANT turn out to be a when the film went into its widest release killer, DONALD SPOTO has pointed to and ran into additional censors in other studio correspondence proving that the parts of America (some states still main- film’s theme—a woman’s paranoia—had tained their own, even stricter, boards for been Hitchcock’s preferred one all along. years) or other countries. Maryland drasti- In fact, as much as Hitchcock railed cally cut the scenes in STRANGERS ON A against the censors and fought their TRAIN when Bruno kills Miriam (and then intrusions—as had Billy Wilder, Ernst 62 n CHABROL, CLAUDE

Lubitsch, Preston Sturges, and every other career and sometimes forced ridiculous sophisticate in Hollywood—in some ways, compromises; it would be utterly idiotic to he benefitted from them. He had always wish that there had been more of it. But it’s trusted his wife, ALMA REVILLE, to give also true that once those constraints were scripts a final read, films one last look, dropped and he was free to go where he before he considered them finished. The wished, he was also free to trade subtle met- industry’s censors served as a second, aphor for explicit imagery, as he explored similar check and balance, and while their ever darker and more dangerous territory. objections were often absurd, that they And his attitude toward that new freedom forced Hitchcock to at least justify some (honest artistry or crass provocation?) and of his choices was not always a bad thing, motivation for dramatizing that new mate- as the years to come would show. For rial (a revulsion against the violence visited the power of the censors began to wane on women or a vicarious participation in just as Hitchcock’s taste for shocking it?) has been debated ever since. And will material began to increase—and, Spoto continue to be. argues, allow him to express, and live out onscreen, some of his darkest personal References obsessions. Rudy Behlmer, ed., Memo from David O. Certainly, after the victories of Psy- Selznick (New York: Viking Press, 1972), cho, the director’s films grew ever more 261, 284–85; “Censor Trims Hitchcock gruesome. The close-up of the dead, dis- Film,” Times, January 3, 1972, http://the figured farmer in THE BIRDS; the mari- .hitchcock.zone/wiki/The_Times_%2803/ tal rape of the nearly comatose MARNIE, Jan/1972%29_-_Censor_trims_Hitch the long drawn-out murder in TORN cock_film; Gerald Gardner, The Censor- CURTAIN—these are not shots or situa- ship Papers: Movie Censorship Letters tions the director would have even con- from the Hays Office, 1934–1968 (New sidered a decade before. But now, there York: Dodd, Mead, 1987), 84–96; Ste- was no one to stop him from dwelling on phen Rebello, Alfred Hitchcock and the them or from putting them onscreen. In Making of Psycho (New York: HarperPe- 1959, Audrey Hepburn’s own good taste rennial, 1991), 76–78, 145–46; “Retort to would derail NO BAIL FOR THE JUDGE, Film Censors,” Daily News (Perth), April a movie that was to feature her being 16, 1930, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ dragged off to Hyde Park and assaulted; The_Daily_News_%28Perth%29_%2816/ by the ’70s, Hitchcock could film a rape in Apr/1930%29_-_Retort_to_Film_Censors; close-up for Frenzy and even end it with Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: the dead victim’s staring face, her tongue The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: hanging uselessly from her mouth. His Da Capo Press, 1999), 213–15, 243–44, final, unrealized project, THE SHORT 537–38; François Truffaut, Hitchcock/ NIGHT, was built around another bru- Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, tal, sexual assault, a scene he discussed 1985), 34. in careful detail during the long and ultimately abandoned development of the CHABROL, CLAUDE (1930–2010) script. A child of the bland, petit bourgeois (both It is absolutely true that censorship his father and grandfather had been drug- constrained Hitchcock for most of his gists), Chabrol was fascinated by detec- CHAMPAGNE n 63 tive stories and movies since childhood; CHAMPAGNE (GB 1928) although he ostensibly matriculated at the Sorbonne to study pharmacology, Director: Alfred Hitchcock. he graduated with a degree in literature. Screenplay: Eliot Stannard, Alfred Hitchcock, Friendships with fellow cinephiles FRAN- based on a story by Walter C. Mycroft. Producer: Uncredited (John Maxwell). ÇOIS TRUFFAUT, Jacques Rivette, ERIC Cinematography: Jack E. Cox. ROHMER, and Jean-Luc Goddard soon Editor: Uncredited. followed; they would form the critics’ core Cast: Betty Balfour (The Girl), Gordon of the magazine CAHIERS DU CINEMA Harker (The Father), Jean Bradin (The and, later, the originators of the FRENCH Boy), Theo Von Alten (The Man). NEW WAVE. Running Time: 93 minutes. Black and white. Chabrol collaborated with Truf- Released Through: Wardour Films. faut on a Hitchcock INTERVIEW for the journal, and then cowrote a book-length study of the director’s work up through THE WRONG MAN; by the time the book Betty, a spoiled and willful heiress, runs was published in France in 1957 (it would away with her boyfriend—of whom her appear much later in America as Hitch- father heartily disapproves, warning her cock: The First Forty-Four Films), Chabrol that the man’s only after her money. But was already directing his first film, Le Beau before their ship to Paris has even docked, Serge, inspired very loosely by SHADOW the couple has fought and separated—a OF A DOUBT. separation made somewhat wider by Betty’s He would continue directing with interest in a mysterious stranger. marked regularity until his death; many of Her father catches up with her in his films—Les Biches, La Femme Infidele, France with a bit of devastating news—the Merci Pour la Chocolat, La Ceremonie— family champagne business has been wiped while functioning as social critiques, would out and, along with it, her entire inheritance. often feature a violent crime and, while When a robber also deprives her of her jew- standing stylistically apart from Hitch- elry, Betty is forced to take a job in a restau- cock’s films in terms of pace and MON- rant. Her boyfriend disapproves—and the TAGE, examine the same thematic con- mysterious stranger reappears to court her. cerns of GUILT and TRANSFERENCE. Eventually her father arrives to tell her If BRIAN DE PALMA came the closest the truth—their fortunes are intact and his to copying the appearance of Hitchcock’s story was merely a ruse to ascertain her films, Chabrol may have been best at boyfriend’s true intentions. More outraged invoking their soul. than relieved, Betty decides to run away He died in Paris at 80. with the stranger but reconsiders—too late, once their ship has sailed for America. References Luckily her boyfriend is already “Claude Chabrol,” IMDb, http://www.imdb onboard—as is her father, who confesses .com/name/nm0001031/bio?ref_=nm that the stranger was someone he’d asked _ov_bio_sm; “Claude Chabrol: Biography,” to keep an eye on her. Parent and child rec- NewWaveFilm.com, http://www.newwave oncile, and Betty and her boyfriend make film.com/french-new-wave-encyclopedia/ up—although, as the film ends, it seems claude-chabrol.shtml. another quarrel is around the corner. 64 n CHANDLER, RAYMOND

This is not the movie Hitchcock had cock later disavowed the entire production, intended to make. calling it the “lowest ebb in my output.” It’s His first idea, he claimed years later, difficult, however, to truly fairly judge the was a sort of rake’s progress, following the movie today; apparently all surviving prints life of a French girl who worked in a factory were struck from the “back-up” negative, bottling the bubbly stuff. She imagines the comprising alternative takes. The original drink leads to all sorts of glamorous sce- release version—starring, as the studio had narios but, after finally making it to the big trumpeted, “Britain’s Queen of Happi- city, sees only drunkenness and violence. ness”—seems lost. She returns to her factory job, now viewing the sparkling wine as poison. This was References not the sort of movie BRITISH INTERNA- “Champagne,” Variety, September 5, 1928, TIONAL PICTURES wanted to produce, 28; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: however, particularly once they had hired A Life in Darkness and Light (New York: the popular comic actress Betty Balfour. HarperCollins, 2003), 103–5; François So, quickly working with another Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New screenwriter—often finishing a scene only York: Touchstone, 1985), 57–61; Kieron minutes before it had to be shot—Hitch- Webb and Bryony Dixon, “London— cock came up with a sort of protoscrew- Restoring Hitchcock,” Journal of Film ball comedy, full of silly millionaires, Preservation (October 2012), http://the. MISTAKEN IDENTITIES, and a constant hitchcock.zone/wiki/Journal_of_Film battle of the sexes. (That his wife, ALMA _Preservation_%282012%29_-_London REVILLE, was then pregnant might have _-_Restoring_Hitchcock. encouraged the film’s rather unromantic view of marriage, but any truly serious CHANDLER, RAYMOND ideas were left unexplored.) (1888–1959) Typical of Hitchcock’s often interna- American-born, English-raised writer whose tional productions during the silent era— first attempts at poetry led to little and whose the boyfriend was played by a French actor, fallback career in the California oil industry the mysterious stranger by a German/Rus- disappeared with the arrival of the Depres- sian one—it was not in any way a happy sion (and the flowering of his lifelong trou- experience. Hitchcock despised beginning bles with alcohol). Teaching himself to write with an unfinished script and, according to pulp fiction the same way he had taught him- famed director Michael Powell (then only self bookkeeping, the middle-aged Chandler a stills photographer on the set), referred began selling stories to the detective maga- to the leading lady foisted upon him as a zines; his first novel, The Big Sleep, arrived in “piece of suburban obscenity.” (The one 1939 and helped rewrite the mystery story, bright spot of the whole affair was a trick popularizing the idea of the private detective shot Hitchcock devised, shooting a close-up as a wounded idealist with a tendency for through the bottom of a champagne glass.) poetic narration, vivid turns of speech, and a Although the studio promoted the film chivalrous ideal of womanhood. as “light, frivolous, frothy” and coming Although most of Chandler’s novels from the “premier British director and one were adapted for the films, he had a hand in of the finest in the world,” its international none of them; Hollywood chiefly hired him reception was mixed (the Variety review to write screenplays based on other people’s called the whole thing “dire”), and Hitch- mysteries, including James M. Cain’s Dou- CHEKHOV, MICHAEL n 65 ble Indemnity for Billy Wilder (where his Houghton Mifflin, 1962), 132–35; Paul style gave the film much of its rich dialogue Jensen, “Raymond Chandler: The World and his drinking helped convince Wilder to You Live In,” Film Comment (November make The Lost Weekend) and PATRICIA 1974), 18–26; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred HIGHSMITH’s STRANGERS ON A TRAIN Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light for Hitchcock. (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 444–50; “If my books had been any worse, I David Shipman, ed., Movie Talk: Who Said should not have been invited to Holly- What about Whom in the Movies (New wood,” Chandler said later. “If they had York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), 31; Donald been any better, I should not have come.” Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life The collaboration with Hitchcock was of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo not a happy one. Chandler (who by the end Press, 1999), 322–24; Tom Williams, A was referring to the director as “that fat Mysterious Something in the Light: The Life bastard”) complained that Hitchcock’s idea of Raymond Chandler (Chicago: University of character was “primitive,” that his plots of Chicago Press, 2013), 270–78. too often “lose their grip on logic,” and that he cared less about the dialogue in a scene CHEKHOV, MICHAEL than “shooting it upside down through a (1891–1955) glass of champagne”; Hitchcock, deem- A nephew of Anton Chekhov, Michael ing Chandler’s efforts unusable, suppos- studied at the Moscow Art Theatre under edly made a great show of holding his nose Konstantin Stanislavski, who hailed him as and throwing his last draft into the trash. a sensitive new talent (too sensitive, per- (Chandler kept screen credit, although the haps; Michael had a nervous breakdown script was largely rewritten by CZENZI after the school’s probing, psychological ORMONDE.) exorcisms). Later, Michael would move “If you wanted something written in away from Stanislavski’s very personal skim milk, why on earth did you bother approach, developing his own theories to come to me in the first place?” Chan- based more on imagination and a kind of dler wrote Hitchcock after the frustrat- internalized physicality. ing collaboration came to an end. “What Chekhov, who had been teaching first a waste of money! What a waste of time! in Eastern Europe, then Germany, then It’s no answer to say that I was well paid. England, finally moved to America in 1939, Nobody can be adequately paid for wasting where he established an acting school; he his time.” also returned to film acting after more than Chandler never mailed the letter. Nei- a decade with a role in Song of Russia. In ther did he ever really work in Hollywood SPELLBOUND, he is Dr. Brulov, where he again (although he later turned one of his plays Constance’s gruff old mentor (“The rejected scripts into the novel Playback). He mind of a woman in love is operating on had one more good book in him, his great- the lowest level of the intellect!”); it was a est, The Long Goodbye, but after his beloved scene-stealing part and won him an Acad- wife died, the alcoholism and depression emy Award nomination. won. He died at age 70 in La Jolla, CA. Chekhov continued to act as well as draw new hopefuls to his classes; in the References 1950s, some of his students included Yul Dorothy Gardiner and Kathrine Sorley, Brynner, Jack Palance, and a very young ed., Raymond Chandler Speaking (Boston: Clint Eastwood. Chekhov died in Beverly 66 n CIANNELLI, EDUARDO

Hills of a heart attack at 64; his books are Cinema, 1930–1955 (New York: Castle still a strong influence on many young per- Books, 1969), 65. formers, and the Michael Chekhov Acting Studio in New York still guides new gen- CLIFT, MONTGOMERY erations. (1920–1966) Gifted, beautiful, damned. References Born in Nebraska, the son of an errati- “About Michael Chekhov,” MICHA: cally successful stockbroker and a mother Michael Chekhov Association, http://www who aspired to high society, Clift was edu- .michaelchekhov.org/michael-chekhov/ cated by private tutors and lived a pam- about-michael-chekhov; “Michael Chek- pered, sheltered life until he showed an hov,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ interest in amateur theatricals at 13; his nm0155011/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; mother encouraged him to turn profes- Michael Chekhov Acting Studio, http:// sional, eventually moving with him to New www.michaelchekhovactingstudio.com/ York. At 17, Clift got his first Broadway workshops.htm. lead; parts in the hits The Skin of Our Teeth and Our Town would follow. CIANNELLI, EDUARDO Despite his misgivings about Hol- (1888–1969) lywood and its businessmen—he walked The gifted and erudite son of a Neapolitan out of an early meeting at MGM—Clift physician, Ciannelli was himself a surgeon eventually signed for the film Red River in until falling in unconditional love with 1946. Although Howard Hawks’s western, music; he would go on to sing baritone released two years later, is ostensibly about in operas at La Scala and later appear on a generational conflict between two cow- Broadway in the ’20s in Rose-Marie. Typi- boys, it also seemed to presage one between cally, once he reached Hollywood, he was kinds of film actors—John Wayne’s iconic, chiefly cast as gangsters or other swarthy personality-driven style forced to face types (he is the maniacal Indian rebel in Clift’s more unpredictable, METHOD Gunga Din), although most of his villains approach. were marked by their quietly intense focus. Clift was not the first of the “new” Despite being stereotyped, Ciannelli New York actors to bring their casual, appeared in a number of excellent mov- sometimes mumbled naturalism to Hol- ies, including Marked Woman, For Whom lywood—in some ways, John Garfield, the Bell Tolls, The Mask of Dimitrios, and trained in the Group Theatre, preceded Gilda; he is the villainous Mr. Krug in FOR- him by a decade—but Clift planted a flag EIGN CORRESPONDENT and, more than that later arrivals, like Marlon Brando and 20 years later, appeared on two episodes of James Dean, would pick up and proudly ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS. wave, and Clift’s good looks made him an He died of cancer in Rome at 81. immediate STAR. Intrigued, Hitchcock first approached Clift for a leading role in References ROPE, but the actor reportedly turned it “Eduardo Ciannelli,” IMDb, http:// down because the gay subtext struck too www.imdb.com/name/nm0161862/ close to home; he would finally sign with bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Alfred E. the director to make I CONFESS. Twomey and Arthur F. McClure, The Ver- Yet their two approaches—with the satiles: Supporting Character Players in the young actor constantly questioning every- CLIFT, MONTGOMERY n 67 thing and the veteran director expecting house. Taylor ran to the accident and saved him to simply perform on cue—couldn’t Clift from choking on his own shattered be more at odds; whether it ever actually teeth; he was rushed to a hospital, where happened or not, the director’s favorite doctors and plastic surgeons worked on tart JOKE about what he once told an actor his badly broken nose, fractured jaw, and who dared to ask about his motivation severely scarred right profile. (“Your paycheck” was the reply) probably It would have been a disaster for any has its roots in this experience. Hitchcock performer; for someone heralded as one of much preferred the older generation of the most beautiful men in the movies (with stars. an already deeply insecure and addictive “He was a Method actor, and neurotic personality), it was the end. It just took a as well,” Hitchcock later said. “‘I want you long time coming. Although there were to look in a certain direction,’ I’d say, and flashes of fragile brilliance in The Misfits, he’d say ‘Well, I don’t know whether I’d it was clear the actor’s concentration was look that way.’ Now immediately you’re gone; when frustrated directors turned on fouled up because you’re shooting a precut him, Clift turned only deeper into him- picture. He’s got to look that way because self. (He’s the “only person I know who is you’re going to cut to something over there. in even worse shape than I am,” Marilyn So I have to say to him, ‘Please, you’ll have Monroe mused.) to look that way, or else.’” Joseph L. Mankiewicz tried to have Of course the fact that Clift arrived Clift fired from Suddenly, Last Summer on set with not only his own approach when it turned out he could only remember (and acting coach) but a serious drinking a line or two at a time; although he was bril- problem alienated the two men even fur- liant in Judgment at Nuremberg, UNIVER- ther. Eventually Hitchcock would barely SAL sued him for putting John Huston’s speak to him at all, relaying instructions lugubrious Freud behind schedule. And yet through an assistant or costar KARL MAL- still Clift’s friends—mostly women—ral- DEN (who also grew annoyed as shooting lied fiercely around him. (At the end of the went on, and Clift seemed to be working to Suddenly, Last Summer shoot, after making upstage him). Clift’s drinking intensified, sure they had truly gotten their last shot and—according to DONALD SPOTO— and concluded their business, Katharine during at least one party, Hitchcock egged Hepburn spat in Mankiewicz’s face.) him on, daring the drunken actor to finish Nearly unemployable after 1962’s a snifter of brandy in a gulp. (Clift did and Freud lawsuit, Clift returned to Manhattan passed out.) and his own self-made fog. (PETER BOG- The film was not a success. Still, while DANOVICH, then a young man working audiences objected to the character of a at a revival house, remembers Clift coming flawed priest and most reviews singled out in one day to see I Confess and standing the frustrations inherent in the plot—Clift unsteadily at the back of the theater, just plays a man whose signature action is that smoking and weeping.) he can’t act—few blamed the star. In fact, He died alone in his New York bed- the next year, Clift would enjoy one of his room of a heart attack at age 45. greatest successes in From Here to Eternity. In 1956, however, while filming Rain- References tree County, he smashed his car into a tree Peter Bogdanovich, Who the Hell’s in It after leaving a party at Elizabeth Taylor’s (New York: Knopf, 2004), 92–96; Philip 68 n CLOUZOT, HENRI-GEORGES

French, “Screen Legends: Montgomery story of a small and small-minded town Clift,” Guardian, January 16, 2010, http:// torn apart by anonymous hate mail. www.theguardian.com/film/2010/jan/17/ The film was unpopular with everyone screen-legend-montgomery-clift; “Mont- but the people; although audiences rushed gomery Clift,” IMDb, http://www.imdb to it, Vichy propagandists criticized it as .com/name/nm0001050/bio?ref_=nm_ov being an insult to the national character, _bio_sm; David Shipman, ed., Movie Talk: and the studio fired the director. Yet the Who Said What about Whom in the Mov- Liberation only brought worse troubles; ies (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), Clouzot was branded a Nazi collaborator 36; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: and given a lifetime ban from the cinema. The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da With many French artists and intellectuals Capo Press, 1999), 338–41; David Thom- protesting his sentence, Clouzot was even- son, The New Biographical Dictionary of tually allowed to return to work, directing Film (New York: Knopf, 2002), 164. a new adaptation of Manon and several more thrillers. Unlike Hitchcock, however, CLOUZOT, HENRI-GEORGES the style was more subdued, and the theme (1907–1977) tended to hew closer to betrayal and decep- One of the filmmakers often called the tion than temptation and GUILT. “French Hitchcock,” although Hitch- The Wages of Fear, released in 1953, cock would perhaps more accurately be was a more straightforward adventure described as a contemporary (and a rival) thriller, with four men given the job of than an influence. Clouzot began working driving a truck full of nitroglycerine, and in the movies in the early ’30s, a decade was both an international hit and a prize- later than Hitchcock, but the two men winner at Cannes. Moving quickly, Clou- were always intrigued by similar themes, zot snapped up the rights to the PIERRE even occasionally pursuing the same proj- BOILEAU and THOMAS NARCEJAC ects; the French director’s most productive novel Celle Qui N’Etait Plus. (By some period—the wartime era through the ’50s— accounts, even as Hitchcock was prepar- corresponds roughly with Hitchcock’s own. ing to put in a bid.) It became his next film, Born in Niort to a bookseller (whose LES DIABOLIQUES, the story of a sickly business later failed), Clouzot was inter- wife and abused mistress who join forces to ested in drama and music from an early murder their tormentor. age; by the 1930s, he was working in Ger- The film has often, too easily, been many’s film industry, primarily translat- cited as a major influence on PSYCHO, ing scripts, but lost his job as the racial with its murder in a bathtub and twist end- discrimination laws began to take effect ing; in fact, the Hitchcock film takes its and his continuing friendship with Jewish shower scene from the ROBERT BLOCH producers made him suspect. After a long novel, and its view of SEXUAL relation- bout with tuberculosis, Clouzot returned ships is far more obsessive and corrupt- to France just in time for the Occupation; ing than the mere sleaziness on view in he resumed his work in the movies, this Clouzot’s film. But its marketing (with time taking a job with the German-super- audiences warned about giving away the vised Continental Films. Clouzot began by surprise) and its popularity definitely first directing mysteries, although Le Corbeau, alerted Hitchcock to how profitable grimy released in 1943, was rather more a bitter BLACK-AND-WHITE horror could be. (A COLLIER, CONSTANCE n 69 few years later, William Castle’s Macabre he was 61 when he finally made his movie would clinch the deal.) debut after a stage career that had begun at Hitchcock, however, had definitely the turn of the century. The Georgia-born learned one lesson: When the rights to performer was frequently cast in comedic the Boileau and Narcejac novel D’entre roles, most memorably as Barbara Stan- les Morts came available, he bought them wyck’s con-man confederate in The Lady immediately and started turning it into Eve and as the matchmaking boarder in VERTIGO. The More the Merrier, which won him an Although Clouzot had another hit with Oscar, but he was a sternly unsympathetic the Brigitte Bardot courtroom drama La impediment to romance in Made for Each Verite, his success grew spotty; one major Other and an outright villain in Kings film, Les Espions, never even got an Ameri- Row. His one role for Hitchcock was in can release, and another, L’Enfer, was left THE PARADINE CASE as Mrs. Paradine’s unfinished. His wife and frequent leading solicitor, adding his usual bluster and shak- lady Vera Clouzot died of a heart attack; his ing jowls to a movie already, thanks to own health problems reoccurred. Nor did CHARLES LAUGHTON, blessed with a the continuing comparisons to Hitchcock surfeit of them. A stalwart right-winger— help. “I admire him very much and am he served on the board of the Motion Pic- flattered when anyone compares a film of ture Alliance for the Preservation of Ameri- mine to his,” Clouzot said graciously, but can Ideals—he died at 84 of a heart attack it was a one-way road; the young French in New York. critics who adored the American “Master of Suspense” found their native-born one References distressingly shallow, and any comparisons “Charles Coburn,” IMDb, http:// they drew usually found Clouzot lacking. www.imdb.com/name/nm0002013/ Increasingly depressed, the director bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Alfred E. filmed some concerts for French TV and Twomey and Arthur F. McClure, The Ver- pursued other projects, completing only satiles: Supporting Character Players in the one more movie, the sadomasochistic Cinema, 1930–1955 (New York: Castle drama La Prisonniere in 1968. Books, 1969), 68. Clouzot died in his Paris apartment at age 69. COLLIER, CONSTANCE (1878–1955) References Born in Berkshire, this statuesque and Ivan Butler, Horror in the Cinema (New extravagantly theatrical creature was York: A. S., 1970), 103–12; “Henri-Georges onstage from the time she was 3 and had Clouzot,” The Criterion Collection, https:// her earliest and greatest successes at the www.criterion.com/explore/7-henri turn of the century in the stage productions -georges-clouzot; “Henri-Georges Clou- of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Later, she zot,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ would branch out into films (she’s in Intol- nm0167241/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. erance) and, eventually, coaching other younger actors. COBURN, CHARLES (1877–1961) She lost her husband to the Spanish Irascible, liver-lipped authority figure who influenza epidemic and later had a long seemed to be born old, perhaps because friendship with the gay composer and 70 n COLLINGE, PATRICIA actor IVOR NOVELLO, who would go cock’s own late mother is perhaps not on to star in THE LODGER; a play Collier coincidental.) She is not one of the “use- and Novello wrote, Down Hill, would also less women” that Charles likes to woo and form the basis for Hitchcock’s similarly strangle; in her own small domain, she is titled film in 1928. But by then, Collier was more than competent—observe how she already in Hollywood, patiently coaching dismisses the detective (posing as a pho- terrified silent screen stars on how to speak tographer) when he tries to interfere with for the talkies. her baking. But she is fragile, and it is her Collier had a good part in Stage Door life that Charlie will sacrifice anything to as an aged actress (a much more pathetic protect. version of her real self) and another one In real life, Collinge was far more level- in ROPE as the aunt of the murdered boy. headed than the women she often played; She was also in the noirs Whirlpool and when, despite the efforts of veteran authors The Dark Corner and coached many young THORNTON WILDER and Sally Benson, performers; even Katharine Hepburn made TERESA WRIGHT and MACDONALD sure to book some classes before daring to CAREY were having trouble playing one return to the stage with As You Like It in scene in Shadow of a Doubt, she quickly 1950. and calmly rewrote it herself. (Collinge, She died at age 77 in Manhattan. who also had plays and short stories to her credit, reportedly helped Hitchcock punch References up the script of his next picture, LIFE- “Constance Collier,” IMDb, http:// BOAT, as well.) www.imdb.com/name/nm0171887/ By the next decade, Collinge was bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Alfred E. working almost exclusively on television; Twomey and Arthur F. McClure, The Ver- a Hitchcock favorite, she appeared on no satiles: Supporting Character Players in the fewer than a half-dozen episodes of his Cinema, 1930–1955 (New York: Castle television series, including “The Landlady” Books, 1969), 69. (adapted by ROBERT BLOCH from a chilly story by ROALD DAHL), “The Cheney COLLINGE, PATRICIA Vase,” and “The Rose Garden” with JOHN (1892–1974) WILLIAMS. Dublin-born performer onstage since the She died at 81 in New York City. early 1900s, she began playing romantic ingénues and aged into playing flighty, References slightly damaged older women—she took Beyond Doubt: The Making of Alfred Hitch- over from Josephine Hull in Arsenic and cock’s Favorite Film, directed by Laurent Old Lace on Broadway and played Birdie in Bouzereau (2000), documentary, http:// both the stage production and movie of The www.imdb.com/name/nm0172048/ Little Foxes. bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; “Patricia In Hitchcock’s SHADOW OF A Collinge,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ DOUBT, she is the tender, tremulous name/nm0172048/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. Emma, the quickly beating heart of the picture who so loves her brother Charles that COLOR her daughter Charlie can’t bear to reveal Alfred Hitchcock was a commercial direc- him as the murderer he is. (That Collinge’s tor in the best sense of the word; to him, character shares a first name with Hitch- motion pictures were a mass medium, COLOR n 71 and if your pictures weren’t reaching the self-financed PSYCHO in black and white masses, then you must have done some- was not only cheaper but also easier on the thing wrong. censor), Hitchcock would also use color in With that in mind, he embraced new very specific ways. technologies and new ways of storytell- In its most famous instance, he would ing as they emerged. When sound came use it for a splash of violence in the other- in, he found way to incorporate it into his wise black-and-white SPELLBOUND, as own style; he agreed to try 3-D and, when the villain turns the revolver on himself— the old CENSORS disappeared, pushed and, as staged, us—and his suicide explodes the boundaries with startlingly frank new the screen in a burst of crimson. (Long images. missing from TV prints, the red has finally Color was not a commonplace option been restored on home-entertainment ver- for filmmakers, even in Hollywood, until sions.) Color also fills a largely narrative the ’40s, and Hitchcock approached it with purpose in MARNIE, whose heroine—like curiosity and respect, imaginatively explor- that of the hero in Spellbound—suffers ing its uses while always avoiding what he from a deeply repressed childhood trauma. saw as a garish, “postcard effect.” “Color In her case, it’s not white that brings on her for reason, not just color to knock people’s fits but deep red, the color of blood. It’s a eyes out,” he explained. “Make color an color that reappears in THE TROUBLE actor, a defined part of the whole. Make it WITH HARRY, too, but in keeping with work as an actor, instead of scenery.” that comedy, it’s only the color of pretty And Hitchcock’s very first films in autumn leaves; there may be a corpse in the color are full of that considered restraint. film, but he’s nearly bloodless and purely The skyline we see through the apartment decorative. windows in ROPE has a subtly shifting Sometimes, though, the associations palette; the sunny Australian streets and are more ambiguous, like the bilious hues brooding bedrooms of UNDER CAPRI- that start off the fake medium’s séance in CORN stand in stark contrast to each other, FAMILY PLOT, the emerald dress that an effect that owed much to cinematogra- Miss Lonelyhearts puts on in REAR WIN- pher JACK CARDIFF (and has lost much, DOW, the pale-mint suit Melanie wears given the current, sorry state of that film’s in THE BIRDS, or the almost underwater prints). green that bathes the transformed Judy in Even when color became more popular VERTIGO. Was there something erotic to in the ’50s, Hitchcock—like Vincente Min- that shade in Hitchcock’s eyes or some- nelli, like John Huston, two other directors thing dangerous? Perhaps both. Decades with artistic backgrounds—drew a distinct later, he would recall his early childhood, line between which films were suitable going to see stage melodramas: “I remem- for its hues and which demanded mono- ber the green light,” he said. “Green for the chrome. A downbeat film like I CONFESS, appearances of ghosts and villains.” a brooding realistic one like THE WRONG MAN—these were made for BLACK- References AND-WHITE. The travelogue scenery of “Some Thoughts on Colour by Alfred the 1956 THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO Hitchcock,” Adelaide Advertiser, Sep- MUCH or TO CATCH A THIEF—these tember 4, 1937, http://the.hitchcock begged for color. Yet despite general mood .zone/wiki/Adelaide_Advertiser_%2804/ or practical considerations (shooting the Sep/1937%29_-_Some_Thoughts_on 72 n COMPSON, BETTY

_Color_by_Alfred_Hitchcock; Donald CONNERY, SEAN (1930– ) Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life Edinburgh-born sailor, bodybuilder, life- of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo guard, artist’s model, and coffin polisher Press, 1999), 22; François Truffaut, Hitch- who, looking for extra cash, tried out for cock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Touch- the chorus in a touring company of South stone, 1985), 245. Pacific; his perfect pecs won him a part as one of the frequently shirtless Seabees. COMPSON, BETTY (1897–1974) When the production went on to England, Beaver, UT–born actress who went into Connery, a featured player by now, went show business as a teenager to help sup- with it and began studying drama out of port her widowed mother. By 1915, she borrowed books. was appearing in silent slapstick comedies, By the late ’50s, Connery was working sometimes appearing in more than three regularly, building a career in everything dozen two-reelers a year. Promoted as from the British TV production of Requiem the “Prettiest Girl in Pictures,” within five for a Heavyweight to the Disney film Darby years she was producing her own movies. O’Gill and the Little People (and building a In 1924, a STAR-starved British film indus- reputation as an authentically dangerous try imported her to play the difficult double man when, approached by gun-wielding role in WOMAN TO WOMAN; Hitchcock, gangster Johnny Stompanato on the set of the young screenwriter and assistant direc- a Lana Turner film, Connery reportedly tor on that film, was particularly taken by knocked him down with one punch). “I her pale blonde looks, and the two became have always moved around and kept my close friends. eyes open and been prepared to raise my Although Compson was an Academy middle finger at the world,” he told Playboy Award nominee for 1928’s The Barker, a in 1965. “I always will.” marriage to the alcoholic (and tax-avoiding) It was that attitude that had won him director James Cruze left her bankrupt at the role of James Bond in 1962. Names the start of the ’30s; a long string of forget- from David Niven to Patrick McGoohan table pictures badly hampered her career. By had been floated, but producers Cubby the 1940s, any Hollywood work was hard Broccoli and Harry Saltzman realized that to come by; the recently arrived Hitchcock it was far easier to fake class than courage; made a point of giving her a small part in any man looked like a gentleman in a tux- MR. AND MRS. SMITH, so she could keep edo, but to look like a hard fellow, you had her Screen Actors Guild benefits. to be one. (Ironically, one of the rejected She died in Glendale at 77 from a heart Bonds, Niven, had actually been a com- attack. mando in World War II; Connery had been invalided out of the navy due to ulcers.) References Connery sailed through the Bond films “Betty Compson,” IMDb, http://www.imdb with a wry quip and an occasional furrowed .com/name/nm0173993/bio?ref_=nm brow, but he knew that he needed to start _ov_bio_sm; “Hollywood Star Walk: Betty laying foundations for a real career beyond Compson,” Los Angeles Times, http://pro that; smartly, he made sure that, in between jects.latimes.com/hollywood/star-walk/ spy pictures, he took on more challenging betty-compson; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred assignments, so he did the oddball comedy Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light A Fine Madness and the stark war drama (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 58–59. The Hill. For Hitchcock, he did MARNIE, COOK, WHITFIELD n 73 a challenge on several levels—not only was Once Connery mostly shed himself of he supposed to convincingly pass as an old- Bond and his toupees, he became a slightly money, East Coast American, but also he more vulnerable and definitely more likable had to make a sympathetic character out of a character onscreen; though no less mascu- man who rapes his obviously disturbed wife line, his exploration of his own flaws and on her wedding night. The first task was dif- acknowledgment of an ever-encroaching ficult enough, but the second proved to be— age made him even more appealing. He is as it should have proven—insurmountable. marvelously romantic in Robin and Marian Of course there had always been some- and sturdily commanding in The Untouch- thing chauvinistic in the Connery persona; ables (which finally won him an Oscar); he even then, in the preliberated ’60s, Bond’s brought some necessary good humor to habit of slapping fannies and slinging Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and, double entendres raised a few hackles (as even in his dotage, was a credible action would Connery’s much-repeated com- hero and leading man in trifles like The ment that some women simply needed a Rock and Entrapment. “smack.”) But in Marnie, Mark Rutland is But, like Grant, when it seemed only crude from the start, and the marital rape is supporting roles lay ahead, he stepped the breaking point. Until then, Rutland just back; better to go out as a star, he thought, seems to have an odd fetish: He wants to go then hang on as a character actor. He lives to bed with a thief. But by forcibly taking quietly and very well, continuing to turn his comatose wife, he lurches into villain- down roles—he was an early choice for ous status; her subsequent suicide attempt Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings saga—and moves the act out of cheap romance novel occasionally raising his voice on behalf of (or Gone with the Wind fantasy) into the Scotland to urge complete independence. abhorrent. After all, it always worked so well for Yet although the first screenwriter him. hired, EVAN HUNTER, argued against the rape, Hitchcock (who’d been dwelling on References this sort of assault since at least the script “Playboy Interview: Sean Connery,” Play- for NO BAIL FOR THE JUDGE a half- boy, November 1965, http://seanconnery dozen years before and may have harbored online.com/art_playboy1165.htm; “Sean vengeful feelings against his current leading Connery,” Biography, http://www.biogra lady, TIPPI HEDREN) insisted. And not phy.com/people/sean-connery-9255144; perhaps to his credit but probably to Hitch- “Sean Connery,” IMDb, http://www.imdb cock’s appreciation, Connery went along. .com/name/nm0000125/bio?ref_=nm_ov Handsome, confident, and unbur- _bio_sm; David Thomson, The New Bio- dened by the METHOD, Connery was graphical Dictionary of Film (New York: exactly the sort of old-fashioned leading Knopf, 2002), 173. man Hitchcock liked and felt he no longer had, as CARY GRANT and JAMES STEW- COOK, WHITFIELD (1909–2003) ART headed into their 60s; enthused, he Montclair, NJ–born son of an engineer who tried to sign Connery to a personal con- was interested in writing from an early age. tract. But Connery, who went his own way He went to the Yale School of Drama and (and could not help but see what a personal published short stories in a variety of the contract had done to Hedren), declined; the mass-market “slicks,” including Cosmopoli- two men never worked together again. tan and Redbook. He later collected several 74 n COOPER, GLADYS of these stories and in 1944 turned them References into a play, Violet; it lasted exactly 23 per- John Anderson, “Alfred Hitchcock’s Secret formances on Broadway. Weapon Becomes a Star,” New York Times, It also, however, fatefully starred November 18, 2012, http://www.nytimes the budding actress PATRICIA HITCH- .com/2012/11/18/movies/hitchcock-and COCK, then 16; as her father was busy in -the-girl-remember-alma-reville.html London at that time working with SID- ?_r=0; Pat Hitchcock O’Connell and Lau- NEY BERNSTEIN, her mother accom- rent Bouzereau, Alma Hitchcock: The panied her to New York for the show’s Woman behind the Man (New York: Berke- (abbreviated) run. ley Trade, 2004), 123–26; Patrick McGil- Cook and ALMA REVILLE became ligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness friends and, later, collaborators of a and Light (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), sort, as he contributed early drafts of 364–65, 428, 432; “Whitfield Cook,” IMDb, STAGE FRIGHT and STRANGERS ON A http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0177336. TRAIN. But did they become more than that? PATRICK MCGILLIGAN thinks COOPER, GLADYS (1888–1971) so; based on INTERVIEWS with Cook Beautiful child actress onstage from the and a reading of his diaries, McGilli- age of seven who grew up and old and into gan’s ALFRED HITCHCOCK: A LIFE Mrs. Windle Vale, one of the most terrify- IN DARKNESS AND LIGHT describes ing mothers in Hollywood movies, in Now, an “intermittent romance” that included Voyager. possible weekends alone at the Hitchcock As a young woman, Cooper was a retreat near Santa Cruz. (This charge later favorite of W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM’s, made its way into the film HITCHCOCK, appearing in the original London stagings although the actress playing Reville, of several of his plays, including The Let- Helen Mirren, said she frankly found ter; by 1940, she was in Hollywood, where the assertion the two had an affair “not she made her American movie debut in remotely proved.”) REBECCA playing Maxim’s elegantly There is no record of Alfred Hitch- arch sister, the largely sympathetic but cock’s reaction to Cook’s relationship with still stinging Beatrice Lacy. (“Oh, don’t his wife, whatever it was; typically hagio- care about me—I can see by the way you graphic, their daughter’s biography, Alma dress you don’t give a hoot how you look.”) Hitchcock: The Woman behind the Man, Her other movie characters were generally remembers Cook only as a family friend. even more disapproving, as Cooper went (Complicating everything is that Cook on to play a series of formidable dowa- was reportedly bisexual—and that both gers, including Henry Higgins’s mother Hitchcocks remained friends with him in My Fair Lady. On TV, she appeared on throughout their lives and happily served ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS and as witnesses at his wedding.) Whatever two episodes of THE ALFRED HITCH- the extent of the bonds, Cook’s collabo- COCK HOUR; on The Twilight Zone, she rations with the Hitchcocks ended in the is the old woman resisting the entreaties of early ’50s; after that, he chiefly wrote for Robert Redford’s handsome Grim Reaper. television (although never either of Hitch- Busy right until the end—her last stage cock’s TV series) and published a number success was in a revival of The Chalk Gar- of novels. den—she died in Henley-on-Thames at age He died at 94 in New London, CT. 82 of pneumonia. COTTEN, JOSEPH n 75

References onstage in summer stock, he soon joined “Gladys Cooper,” IMDb, http://www.imdb the Federal Theater Project and had his .com/name/nm0178066/bio?ref_=nm_ov first big success on Broadway in 1945 with _bio_sm; Alfred E. Twomey and Arthur F. Dream Girl, which led to a contract with McClure, The Versatiles: Supporting Char- Paramount. acter Players in the Cinema, 1930–1955 He’s in the essential noirs Sorry, (New York: Castle Books, 1969), 73. Wrong Number and The File on Thelma Jordan and appears in REAR WINDOW as COPPEL, ALEC (1907–1972) Jeff’s doubting policeman friend; he would Australian playwright and novelist who had later star in the ALFRED HITCHCOCK a hit with his story for The Captain’s Para- PRESENTS episode “POISON” based on dise, the Alec Guinness comedy from 1953 the story by ROALD DAHL. on which he shared screenplay credit; he Corey was reportedly a congenial and did some anonymous work on Hitchcock’s amusing cast member, with a strong inter- TO CATCH A THIEF two years later. est in politics. (He later served in various After several story credits for ALFRED positions with the Screen Actors Guild and HITCHCOCH PRESENTS, the director the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and brought Coppel back for VERTIGO, where Sciences and was elected to the Santa Mon- he was one of at least three writers to take a ica City Council.) But his career slipped crack at the tricky PIERRE BOILEAU and badly in the ’60s, and drinking became THOMAS NARCEJAC novel; whatever a serious problem; he died in Woodland his approach, his script was discarded, and Hills, CA, of cirrhosis of the liver at 54. a new writer, SAMUEL A. TAYLOR, was brought in to start from scratch. References Although Coppel would sell another “Obituary: Wendell Corey,” Times, Novem- script to THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK ber 11, 1968, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ HOUR, his succeeding efforts tended The_Times_%2811/Nov/1968%29_-_Obit toward black comedy (The Gazebo) and uary:_Wendell_Corey; “Wendell Corey, supposedly riotous sex farces (The Bliss of IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ Mrs. Blossom); he died in London of liver nm0179819/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. cancer at age 64. COTTEN, JOSEPH (1905–1994) References Charming, gently drawling Virginian who “Alec Coppel,” IMDb, http://www.imdb worked in advertising and journalism .com/name/nm0178785; Steven Vagg, before turning to the theater; he made his “Alec Coppel: Australian Playwright and Broadway debut in 1930. Four years later, Survivor,” Australasian Drama Stud- he met Orson Welles, then 19 and already ies, https://www.questia.com/library/ a busy radio actor; the two became life- journal/1P3-2055166241/alec-coppel-aus long friends and collaborators, and Cotten tralian-playwright-and-survivor. would be there for Welles’s first New York stage production (Horse Eats Hat, 1936) COREY, WENDELL (1914–1968) and his first short film (Too Much Johnson, Bland, pale-eyed leading man from small- 1938). “I’m afraid you’ll never make it as town Massachusetts who tended to play an actor,” Welles told him early on. “But cops, doctors, and the heroine’s dependable as a STAR, I think you might well hit the but unexciting fallback boyfriend. Starting jackpot.” 76 n COX, JACK E.

The two friends would make their back to play another man with a secret in extraordinary Hollywood debut together UNDER CAPRICORN, but the film was in 1941 in Citizen Kane and go on to col- slow and somewhat uninvolving and as laborate on many other projects, includ- much a disappointment for both men as ing Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons Shadow of a Doubt had been a triumph. and Touch of Evil, as well as Carol Reed’s The two would reteam later on three The Third Man; in 1943, Cotten was signed episodes of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRES- by DAVID O. SELZNICK, who kept him ENTS, including the Hitchcock-directed busy at home and on loan-out; his films for “BREAKDOWN” (in which Cotten is left the mogul include the deliriously romantic paralyzed by a car crash and presumed fantasy Portrait of Jennie, the sturdy home- dead) and “Together,” directed by a young front melodrama Since You Went Away, Robert Altman (in which Cotten finds and the overripe western Duel in the Sun. himself trapped with the corpse of his mur- “I was a so-called star because of dered mistress). A longtime friend, Cot- my limitations,” Cotten once modestly ten was a regular at Hitchcock family par- observed. “I couldn’t do any accents. So I ties—daughter PATRICIA HITCHCOCK had to pretend. Luckily I was tall, had curly had a mild crush on him as a teenager— hair and a good voice. I only had to stamp and served as a witness when the director my foot and I’d play the lead—because I became an American citizen. couldn’t play character parts.” As the actor moved into his 60s, how- It was while under contract to Selznick ever, his career inevitably slowed, and by that Cotten was cast in fellow Selznick the 1970s, the jobs tended toward disaster employee Alfred Hitchcock’s SHADOW movies and Euro-horrors (although he also OF A DOUBT as Uncle Charlie, the sophis- shows up in the stylish The Abominable Dr. ticated city relative of a small-town family Phibes and the memorable Soylent Green). (and secretly a serial strangler of women). He died in Los Angeles at 88 of pneumonia; He is one of Hitchcock’s many charm- cancer had robbed him of his voice four ing villains (as the director was fond of years before. Yet we can hear it still—soft pointing out, disagreeable villains found it and warm and gentle. harder to attract victims), and Cotten, cast against type, is superb in the role—tight, References contained, steely, and full of good-man- “Joseph Cotten,” IMDb, http://www.imdb nered menace. Particularly fine is the scene .com/name/nm0001072/bio?ref_=nm_ov where he’s talking with cavalier vicious- _bio_sm; David Shipman, ed., Movie Talk: ness about the “swine” who fill the world Who Said What about Whom in the Mov- and the “silly wives” who, once widowed, ies (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), squander their husbands’ money; when 42; David Thomson, The New Biographi- his horrified niece Charlotte exclaims, cal Dictionary of Film (New York: Knopf, “But they’re human beings!” Hitchcock 2002), 183. breaks the fourth wall and has Charlie look directly at the camera, and us. “Are they?” COX, JACK E. (1896–1960) he asks coldly. London-born cameraman in films since Shadow of a Doubt was Hitchcock’s 1913. Although later Alfred Hitchcock first great American film, and he would would portray him as a raw novice who often mention it as his favorite; at the benefitted from his own early tutelage, end of the decade, he would bring Cotten when they worked together in the late ’20s, CRIPPEN, H. H. n 77

Cox (who sometimes dropped the middle had died of a stroke—moved to London in initial in credits) was actually more experi- 1897. Unable to obtain a medical license, enced than the young director and already he sold patent medicines and oversaw the known as a specialist in “trick” or difficult second Mrs. Crippen’s attempts at a music shots. hall career. The marriage, marred by her Nor was the quality of his work depen- adultery almost from the start, was soon a dent on Hitchcock. After their association, shambles; eventually, Crippen began seeing Cox would continue to do good films, par- a young typist from his office. ticularly in the ’30s, shooting Mimi (a well- In 1910, Cora Crippen disappeared; reviewed version of La Boheme), the Boris Crippen told friends that she had left for Karloff chiller The Man Who Changed America (with a lover, he later added), and His Mind, and the original Doctor Syn his mistress, Ethel Neave, subsequently with George Arliss. When the British film moved into the house. When she was seen industry faltered, Cox did, too, but, busy wearing Cora’s jewelry, one of the woman’s and adaptable, continued to shoot right friends became suspicious; Scotland Yard through the ’50s, working on both broad came to question Crippen and searched the comedies (Just My Luck, The Square Peg) home. and inexpensive genre pictures (Alias John They found nothing, but Crippen Preston, Devil Girl from Mars). panicked, and he and Neave fled, eventu- His longest association, however, ally boarding a ship for Canada with Neave was with Hitchcock, for whom he photo- disguised as a boy. Alerted to the couple’s graphed 11 films (including MARY, the disappearance, Scotland Yard sent teams German-language version of MURDER!), to search the house again; only on their and he was instrumental in capturing some fourth try did they dig up a newly laid base- of the young director’s earliest, most ambi- ment floor and find a torso. Authorities tious visual ideas—the shot through the were notified and boarded the ship before wine glass in CHAMPAGNE, the tricky spe- it docked; “Thank God it’s over,” Crippen cial effects sequence in the British Museum said. in BLACKMAIL. Cox’s silent work is par- A true-crime aficionado since child- ticularly evocative—with its happy freaks hood, Hitchcock was particularly fasci- and grimacing patrons, the carnival he nated by the Crippen case and would often captured in THE RING would not be out bring it up in INTERVIEWS, recounting of place in the films of F. W. MURNAU or the details with relish; a fact he particu- even Federico Fellini. larly enjoyed was that Crippen had chat- He died at age 64 in Surrey. ted amiably with the ship’s wireless officer only moments after the radioman had sent References word to Scotland Yard that the suspect “Jack E. Cox,” IMDb, http://www.imdb was onboard. In fact, Crippen was the first .com/name/nm0185055; Patrick McGil- criminal to be apprehended thanks to a ligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Dark- telegram. ness and Light (New York: HarperCollins, But the story also reoccurs in many 2003), 95–96. Hitchcock works. The general shape of the narrative—the mousy and put-upon CRIPPEN, H. H. (1862–1910) husband who finally snaps and murders Michigan-born homeopath and self-styled his domineering wife, only to be caught doctor who, with his second wife—his first through a small mistake—was one the 78 n CRONYN, HUME director would often return to, particularly Cronyn married actress JESSICA TANDY during the years of his television shows. in 1942 and the next year made his movie And the other details—the clue of the left- debut in Hitchcock’s SHADOW OF A behind jewelry (VERTIGO, SHADOW OF DOUBT; he would reteam with Hitchcock A DOUBT, REAR WINDOW) and the dis- the next year for LIFEBOAT, work on the posal of an inconvenient body (FRENZY, screenplays of ROPE and UNDER CAP- THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY, PSY- RICORN, and go on to appear on several CHO, Rear Window again) would show episodes of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRES- up in many of his films. (The idea of cross- ENTS. dressing—with its undercurrent of shame- A small and wiry man—he had been ful FETISH and secret gratification—runs a formidable featherweight boxer back in from MURDER! through Psycho.) Canada—Cronyn had a coldly methodical In real life, the couple was eventually mien, which often led to him being cast as returned to England for trial, with Cora’s unsympathetic, even villainous, charac- body identified by a scar on the torso ters. (He is Cora’s maneuvering lawyer in (although Crippen’s defense pointed out The Postman Always Ring Twice, the sadis- correctly that, as that skin sample from tic captain in Brute Force.) Late in life, he the body had hair, it couldn’t be scar tis- was to transfer to crusty curmudgeons in sue). Neave was acquitted and moved Cocoon and, a Broadway hit with Tandy, to America; Crippen was convicted and The Gin Game. hung. Hitchcock, though, cast him as quiet, They never did find Cora’s head. detail-oriented men—Herbie, the mild bachelor and crime fan in Shadow of a References Doubt; Sparks, the radio operator in Life- “Hawley Harven Crippen: Killing, Mur- boat. And although the director later der, 11th October 1910,” Proceedings of expressed some dissatisfaction with his the Old Bailey, http://www.oldbaileyonline friend’s literary skills, Cronyn would go .org/browse.jsp?id=t19101011-74-offence on to be instrumental in bringing Tennes- -1&div=t19101011-74; “A London Murder see Williams’s early work to New York and Mystery: Dr. H. H. Crippen and Ethel Le have an unexpected hit play of his own with Neve,” Tower Project Blog, https://tower Foxfire. project.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=3571; Donald He died of prostate cancer in Fairfield, Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life CT, at 91. of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 32–34; François Truffaut, References Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: “Hume Cronyn,” IMDb, http://www.imdb Touchstone, 1985), 222–23. .com/name/nm0002025/bio?ref_=nm _ov_bio_sm; Kenneth Jones, “Actor Hume CRONYN, HUME (1911–2003) Cronyn Dead at 91; Starred with Wife Jes- Born into one of Canada’s leading families sica Tandy in Plays and Films,” Playbill, (his father was a member of Parliament, his June 16, 2003, http://www.playbill.com/ mother one of the beer-brewing Labatts), news/article/actor-hume-cronyn-dead Cronyn studied drama at McGill Univer- -at-91-starred-with-wife-jessica-tandy- sity, later continuing his work at the Amer- in-plays-and-f-113803; François Truffaut, ican Academy of Dramatic Arts in New Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: York; he made his Broadway debut in 1934. Touchstone, 1985), 186. CUMMINGS, ROBERT n 79

“THE CRYSTAL TRENCH” emy of Dramatic Arts paying male students (US; ORIGINALLY AIRED a stipend, he signed up. OCTOBER 4, 1959) Cummings began acting in real life, too. To capitalize on the current demand Director: Alfred Hitchcock. for English performers, he presented Screenplay: Stirling Silliphant, from the himself as “Blade Conway” at New York story by A. E. W. Mason. auditions; in Hollywood, where westerns Producers: Joan Harrison, Norman Lloyd. were in vogue, he introduced himself as Cinematography: John F. Warren. starstruck cowboy “Bruce Hitchens.” He Editor: Edward W. Williams. Original Music: Frederick Herbert. gathered credits under both aliases (and, Cast: Patricia Owens (Stella Ballister), somewhere along the way, shaved two years James Donald (Mark Cavendish). off his age). Once he began getting steady Running Time: 30 minutes with commer- work, though, it was under his real name, cials. Black and white. often cast as a decent, hardworking Ameri- Originally Broadcast By: CBS. can; this was the character he played in 1942 in one of his biggest hits, King’s Row, and his first picture for Hitchcock, SABO- TEUR, where he was a young munitions A not particularly dramatic story of a worker caught up in a Nazi plot. woman waiting for a thaw to free her long- Later, Hitchcock—who’d really wanted dead husband’s corpse from a glacier; like Gary Cooper for the lead—blamed Cum- much of Hitchcock’s movie work from the mings for the film’s relative lack of heft, 1950s on, this episode of ALFRED HITCH- complaining that an “actor of stature” COCK PRESENTS has a rather jaundiced would have gained more of the audience’s view of relationships. empathy. “He’s a competent performer but he belongs to the light-comedy class of References actors,” the director said. “Aside from that Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Com- he has an amusing face, so that even when plete Directory to Prime Time Network he’s in desperate straits, his features don’t TV Shows, 8th ed. (New York: Ballantine convey any anguish.” Books, 2003), 29; Jack Edmond Nolan, Yet whatever Hitchcock’s disappoint- “Hitchcock’s TV Films,” Film Fan Monthly ment with Cummings’s lack of STAR (June 1968), 3–6. power (the director was displeased with having to use PRISCILLA LANE, too, who CUMMINGS, ROBERT “simply wasn’t the right type for a Hitch- (1910–1990) cock picture”), any criticism of him being Missouri-born performer in love from an miscast is unfounded; it’s precisely Cum- early age with aviation. His cousin and mings’s every-day, working-class quality godfather, Orville Wright, gave him les- that gives Saboteur much of its power. We sons early, and Cummings became the may expect ROBERT DONAT to win over first licensed flight instructor in the coun- MADELEINE CARROLL in THE 39 STEPS try while he was still a teenager. Family or CARY GRANT to talk his way out of an finances forced him to drop out of Carn- auction house in NORTH BY NORTH- egie Tech; eventually he ended up in New WEST because Donat is smoothly charm- York, where, hearing that an overabun- ing and Grant is always intelligently alert; dance of females had the American Acad- when Cummings woos Lane or manages 80 n CURTIS, BILLY his escape from a charity ball, the scenes tually leave his shoe store job and go into have that much more drama because it show business as “Little Billy” and as a seems like that much more of a victory for member of the Singer Midgets. It was as such an ordinary man. part of that troupe that he appeared in The It’s possible, of course, that Hitchcock Terror of Tiny Town, an “all-midget” west- was only disappointed in Cummings’s ern; he was also one of the Munchkins in performance in retrospect; in any case, The Wizard of Oz (and, according to Judy he used the actor again in DIAL M FOR Garland, the most persistent in trying to MURDER as GRACE KELLY’s old love seduce her). (and most loyal advocate). Shortly after- In Hitchcock’s SABOTEUR, Curtis ward, Cummings found a congenial home is with the circus where Barry seeks asy- on TV, where he starred in several series, lum; the least sympathetic member of the often playing a popular bachelor (includ- troupe, he’s “the general,” the one who ing My Living Doll, in which Julie Newmar wants to turn him over to the authorities costarred as a sexy robot). (and as such is derided as a fascist by the In private life, however, Cummings, “human skeleton” Bones). Curtis went was far more complicated than any of his on to appear in many genre pictures (The characters. He went through five marriages Incredible Shrinking Man, The Angry Red and, despite his very vocal touting of health Planet, the robot in Gog); his best, late- food and “clean living”—he wrote How career credit was as Mordecai in High to Stay Young and Vital and briefly ran a Plains Drifter. questionable nutritional supplement com- He died of a heart attack at age 79 and pany—was an amphetamine addict who to the end of his days never understood received regular treatments from “Dr. Feel- why people snickered at The Terror of Tiny good,” a prescriber to stars and presidents. Town. “I played the good guy who put the He died at 80 of renal failure and bad guy behind bars at the end—just like pneumonia at the Motion Picture and John Wayne,” he said later. “And I kissed Television Country House and Hospital in the pretty girl—just like he did. So what the Woodland Hills, CA. hell’s so funny?”

References References Peter B. Flint, “Robert Cummings Is Dead “Billy Curtis,” IMDb, http://www.imdb at 82; Debonair Actor in TV and Films,” .com/name/nm0193260/bio?ref_=nm_ov New York Times, December 4, 1990, http:// _bio_sm; “Billy Curtis,” Wikipedia, https:// www.nytimes.com/1990/12/04/obituaries/ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Curtis; Burt robert-cummings-is-dead-at-82-debonair- A. Folkart, “Actor, Double: Billy Curtis; actor-in-tv-and-films.html; “Robert Cum- Midget Had Film Career,” November 12, mings,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ 1988, Los Angeles Times, http://articles name/nm0191950/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio .latimes.com/1988-11-12/news/mn-388_1 _sm; François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, _billy-curtis. rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 145–46. CUTTS, GRAHAM (1884–1958) Brighton-born cinema pioneer who left CURTIS, BILLY (1909–1988) an engineering career to get into film dis- Born Luigi Curto, the Massachusetts native tribution in 1909; by the early ’20s, he was had dwarfism, a condition he used to even- directing, specializing in melodramas and CUTTS, GRAHAM n 81 controversial issues, such as Cocaine (drug middle-aged by the time the talkies arrived, addiction) and Flames of Passion (illegiti- he had trouble adapting to the new for- mate children). mat; although he made one of the earliest Joining SIR MICHAEL BALCON at Sherlock Holmes sound films, The Sign of GAINSBOROUGH PICTURES, he used Four, in 1932, he was eventually reduced to Hitchcock on five of his silent films as an making “quota quickies”—disposable mov- assistant director (a position that often ies made purely to fulfill the requirement ended up including work on the scripts as that British theaters show a certain percent- well as art direction, editing, and sometimes age of British films. (Hitchcock gave him a uncredited directing). Cutts was suspicious small job, shooting some insert shots for of the young man’s eagerness, however, a THE 39 STEPS, in 1935.) Cutts directed his feeling that grew darker as Hitchcock began last feature in 1940 and died, 18 long years to get his own directing assignments; even later, at age 74; his daughter has a cameo in before THE LODGER was finished, Cutts NORTH BY NORTHWEST as the hospital told mogul C. M. WOOLF the film was an patient who wishes CARY GRANT would absolute disaster. (As a result, the film came stay just a little longer. very close to not being released; only Bal- con’s intervention, and some clever re-edit- References ing by IVOR MONTAGU, saved the movie Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: and probably Hitchcock’s career.) The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da In truth, it was Cutts who was soon to Capo Press, 1999), 67; François Truffaut, be in trouble. His personal life had always Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: been complicated, and already obdurately Touchstone, 1985), 49–51. DA

DAHL, ROALD (1916–1990) DALI, SALVADOR (1904–1989) Acerbic, darkly humorous British author Brilliant, maddening, eccentric, calculat- who was able to write both youthful ing artist who collaborated on projects adventures for adults (the screenplay for with filmmakers from Luis Bunuel to Walt You Only Live Twice) and adult entertain- Disney, while both confusing and attract- ments for children (Matilda, Charlie and ing millions of admirers. Dali was born in the Chocolate Factory), many of them Figueres, Spain, and would remain deeply gilded with the shining, well-polished linked to Catalonia throughout his life. resentments of class and privilege. He par- At 18, however, he moved to Madrid to ticularly excelled at short stories of exqui- study art; expelled four years later, he went site malice and coldly served revenge, six to Paris, where he met Picasso, cultivated of which were adapted (one by Dahl him- an outrageous moustache, and eventu- self) for ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRES- ally began collaborating on films with art ENTS; all are memorable, particularly school friend Luis Bunuel, beginning with “LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER,” directed 1929’s Un Chien Andalou. by Hitchcock, and “Man from the South,” The nature of the collaboration is helmed by NORMAN LLOYD. Popular hazy—Dali, who later quarreled with and feted, controversial and combative to Bunuel, would claim he did some of the the end, Dahl died of cancer at age 74 in filming, while others suggest he had only Oxford. worked on the script—but the short movie, beginning with its deliberately repulsive References image of a woman’s EYE (actually a dead Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Com- cow’s) being slit by a razor, was a sensa- plete Directory to Prime Time Network tion. That it was not an outrage as well TV Shows, 8th ed. (New York: Ballantine disappointed Dali, who had hoped for Books, 2003), 29; Martin Gram Jr. and controversy, even riots in the theater; that Patrik Wikstrom, The Alfred Hitchcock came with their next film, L’Age d’Or, con- Presents Companion (Whiteford, MD: demned by the right-wing as being a tool OTR, 2001); Jack Edmond Nolan, “Hitch- of “Judaism, Masonry, and rabid, revolu- cock’s TV Films,” Film Fan Monthly (June tionary sectarianism,” but by then the Dali- 1968), 3–6; Roald Dahl, https://www.roald Bunuel partnership was ending. dahl.com/home/grown-ups; “Roald Dahl,” During the ’30s, Dali’s fame increased IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ exponentially, with gallery shows through- nm0001094/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. out Europe and in New York; bitterly criti-

82 n DALI, SALVADOR n 83

Doris Day provides a typically strong emotional moment in the 1956 The Man Who Knew Too Much. Paramount Pictures/Photofest © Paramount Pictures cized by the artistic elite for his self-pro- Franco earned him more enmity (George motion but embraced by (or at least now Orwell called him a “good draughtsman familiar to) much of the mainstream, Dali and a disgusting human being”), Dali— relocated to America in 1940. Although his who cited Harpo Marx, Walt Disney, and refusal to condemn Fascism and his ulti- Cecil B. DeMille as three of his favorite sur- mate praise of Spanish dictator Francisco realists—soon found a congenial home and 84 n DALL, JOHN commissions in Hollywood. He wrote a version of Dune (which was years in pre- script for Disney, Destino (finally filmed in production but never made). He died of 2003); he worked on the dream sequences heart failure at 84 at home in the town for the movies Moontide; SPELLBOUND; where he was born. and even, uncredited, Father of the Bride. Hitchcock had initially approached References Dali for Spellbound because he loathed Rudy Behlmer, ed., Memo from David O. the blurry, foggy effect often given movie Selznick (New York: Viking Press, 1972) dreams; what he appreciated in the Span- 355; James Bigwood, “Solving a Spellbound ish surrealist’s work, he later said, were the Puzzle,” American Cinematographer 72, no. same sort of noon-day sharpness and clean 6 (June 1991), 34; Leonard Leff, “Selznick angles he saw in Chirico—“the long shad- International’s Spellbound,” The Criterion ows, the infinity of distance, and the con- Collection, https://www.criterion.com/ verging lines of perspective.” But the studio current/posts/223-selznick-international was opposed to Hitchcock’s chief inspira- s-spellbound; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred tion (to shoot the dream sequence outside, Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light in natural light, for even more clarity) and (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 360–64; many of Dali’s suggestions were unwork- George Orwell, “Benefit of Clergy: Some able. He “had some strange ideas,” the Notes on Salvador Dali,” The Orwell Prize, director told Truffaut decades later. “He http://theorwellprize.co.uk/george-orwell/ wanted a statue to crack like a shell falling by-orwell/essays-and-other-works/benefit apart, with ants crawling all over it, and -of-clergy-some-notes-on-salvador-dali; underneath, there would be Ingrid Berg- “Salvador Dali,” Biography, http://www man, covered by the ants! It just wasn’t .biography.com/people/salvador-dal possible.” -40389; “Salvador Dali,” IMDb, http://www Neither was having the sequence last .imdb.com/name/nm0198557/?ref_=fn_ 20 minutes, which Bergman said had been al_nm_1; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of the original plan. (Other sources put the Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New original length of the sequence at closer York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 277–78; Bob to five minutes.) DAVID O. SELZNICK Thomas, Selznick (New York: Pocket ordered WILLIAM CAMERON MEN- Books, 1972), 225; François Truffaut, ZIES to reshoot some of it and a chunk Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: of it to be cut. Still, what the sequence did Touchstone, 1985), 163–65. contain—eyes sliced with scissors, faceless men, a distorted wheel—did feel like DALL, JOHN (1920–1970) Dali and made the nightmare one of Hol- New York–born stage actor who made his lywood’s most distinctive. But Dali would first Broadway appearance in 1944 in Dear always be too outré for studio productions, Ruth; his movie debut followed the next too distinctive for collaborative efforts, and year in The Corn Is Green. Tall and well- shortly after the war, the artist returned to spoken, he projected a mocking and slightly his Spain, his paintings, his public specta- effete personality that served him well in cles, and his provocations. Hitchcock’s ROPE, where he played one of His only other cinematic efforts are the two presumably gay murderers; it was a documentary on a search for halluci- less helpful in finding other parts. He is the nogenic mushrooms (he narrated) and a obsessed shooter in Gun Crazy; an ancient planned role in Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Roman in Spartacus; and, in his last movie THE DARK SIDE OF GENIUS: THE LIFE OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK n 85 role, a mythical usurper in 1961’s Atlantis, HITCHCOCK HOUR. His last role was in the Lost Continent. Most of his other work the Stephen King horror film The Dark was limited to guest roles on TV series, and Half. later he began to drink heavily. Deeply clos- He died in Los Angeles of a heart eted, he was briefly married in the 1940s; attack following a car crash at age 71. he died in Los Angeles at age 50 of a heart attack, leaving his body to medical science. References “Royal Dano,” IMDb, http://www.imdb References .com/name/nm0200455/bio?ref_=nm “John Dall,” Gay for Today, http://gayforto _ov_bio_sm; Richard Harland Smith, day.blogspot.com/2007/05/john-dall.html; “The Enigma of Royal Dano,” TCM “John Dall,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ Movie Morlocks, http://moviemorlocks name/nm0197982/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. .com/2014/02/21/the-enigma-of-royal -dano. DANO, ROYAL (1922–1994) Born in New York into a working-class THE DARK SIDE OF GENIUS: Irish family, Dano left home at 12 in the THE LIFE OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK midst of the Depression to travel the coun- Exhaustive look at the director by DON- try; he eventually returned home to attend ALD SPOTO, combining extensive bio- classes at NYU and then served in the graphical research with a close analysis of army, where he helped put on shows dur- the work; it is especially valuable for its ing World War II. He appeared on Broad- details on Hitchcock’s childhood, the films’ way in Finian’s Rainbow and gave what productions, and the insight—as both a was reportedly a striking performance as gay man and a CATHOLIC—that Spoto “The Tattered Man” in an early version of brings to the movies’ symbols and subtexts. John Huston’s The Red Badge of Courage, (Originally an academic by training, Spoto but Huston said the scene was so grim that, has a doctorate in theology from Fordham.) during a preview screening, “damn near Coming after the approving, authorized a third of the audience got up and walked JOHN RUSSELL TAYLOR 1978 bio, Hitch: out”; it was quickly cut, as was much of the The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock, rest of the picture. Spoto’s posthumous study struck some at Whether that sidelined Dano’s chance the time as gossipy, even scandalous; par- for stardom or not, he never lacked for ticularly criticized were Spoto’s reports that work, his deep voice and mournful looks the director had emotionally abused TIPPI winning him many years of supporting HEDREN, harassed other actresses, and in parts, mostly in period pieces. He played later years slipped into heavy drinking and Abraham Lincoln in a five-part run on an obsession with violent fantasies. TV’s Omnibus (and later supplied the Loyally denied at the time by par- presidential voice for Disneyland’s robotic tisans, including Taylor, HUME CRO- rail splitter); he is Elijah in Huston’s Moby NYN, and NORMAN LLOYD—and by Dick, Peter in King of Kings, and on almost PATRICIA HITCHCOCK, the auteur’s too many TV westerns to count. For Hitch- daughter—over the years, many of Spoto’s cock, he appeared as the humorless deputy biographical claims have become more sheriff in THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY firmly established as facts. Even PATRICK and on three episodes of ALFRED HITCH- MCGILLIGAN’s ALFRED HITCHCOCK: COCK PRESENTS and THE ALFRED A LIFE IN DARKNESS AND LIGHT, while 86 n DAWSON, ANTHONY providing alternate interpretations and the early ’50s, he was working in America, refuting a few of Spoto’s assertions, pro- where he was busy in New York with TV duced more charges (such as the direc- roles and in the original Broadway produc- tor’s heretofore unremarked-upon pass tion of DIAL M FOR MURDER, in which at BRIGITTE AUBER). Although Spoto’s he played the blackmailer; it was around book can’t be taken as the final word on that time that Alfred Hitchcock, already the man’s life, it still stands as an essential planning the movie adaptation, invited him introduction. to a dinner party with GRACE KELLY. “It is not a heroic portrait of Alfred Later at home, the phone rang; Daw- Hitchcock that Donald Spoto has presented son picked it up to hear “that wonderful here,” Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote fat man’s Cockney voice” offering him the at the time in the New York Times’s admir- chance to reprise his role in the movie. “I ing review. “It is instead the picture of a mumbled my thanks and put the phone severely repressed, even twisted, Victorian down, feeling rather dazed, electrified, gentleman. Some readers may therefore stunned; all of these,” Dawson wrote later wish to challenge Mr. Spoto’s conclusion in Rambling Recollections, his unpublished that Hitchcock was a great artist. . . . But memoirs. “The full impact of this call from this much is certain. Mr. Spoto makes us Hitch was very soon to come home to see that Hitchcock was much more than a me.” Hollywood entertainer.” Shabby and uncertain, Dawson’s blackmailer stands as the seedy opposite to References RAY MILLAND’s elegant husband yet also Christopher Lehman-Haupt, “The helps to emphasize Milland’s cold-blooded Dark Side of Genius,” New York Times, criminality; desperate and dishonest as his March 15, 1983, http://www.nytimes criminal is, Dawson’s greedy villainy pales .com/1983/03/15/books/books-of-the next to Milland’s icy evil. Dawson makes -times-032380.html; John Russell Tay- a strong impression, and his ultimate lor, “Hitch Hatchet Job,” Times, March death at Kelly’s hands remains a standout 19, 1983, http://the.hitchcock.zone/ moment in this talky film (and even more wiki/The_Times_%2819/May/1983%29 so in 3-D, although the film is usually _-_Hitch_hatchet_job; “Interview with: exhibited in its “flat” format). Donald Spoto—Biographer/Historian,” Dawson remained busy after that, Writers Store, https://www.writersstore. even if it was mostly playing cads and com/interview-with-donald-spoto-biogra cowards; he worked for Hitchcock again pher-historian. in a three-part ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS “I Killed the Count” and DAWSON, ANTHONY was the traitorous Professor Dent in Dr. (1916–1992) No and the evil Marques in Curse of the Born in Edinburgh, Dawson’s long, lean, Werewolf. (He would also provide the lined face added a touch of menace even uncredited hands and lap of the cat-lov- to unthreatening characters; he had sev- ing Blofeld in From Russia with Love and eral small parts in British films in the early Thunderball; another actor dubbed the ’40s and then returned to acting full time voice.) Although the roles grew smaller, after the war. A small but good role came Dawson continued to lurk about omi- in 1948’s prestigious The Queen of Spades, nously in films until the end; he died in with Edith Evans and Anton Walbrook. By Sussex of cancer at age 75. DAY, DORIS n 87

References career triumph as Etting’s domineering “Antony Dawson,” IMDb, http://www husband, Martin “the Gimp” Snyder. Cag- .imdb.com/name/nm0206060/bio?ref ney, who’d worked with her on The West _=nm_ov_bio_sm; Anthony Eric Gillon Point Story, pushed the studio to give Day Dawson, “A Tribute to Anthony Dawson,” the role; she repaid his confidence by giv- Anthony E. G. Dawson, http://anthonydaw ing a surprisingly strong performance as son.thelasis.com/pop1.html. a woman in thrall to her untrustworthy spouse (a relationship, sadly, reportedly DAY, DORIS (1922– ) paralleled by Day’s own union with third Multitalented performer born Doris Mary husband Terry Melcher). Ann Kappelhoff in Cincinnati. Her father, The next year, Day teamed with Frederick, was a local music teacher and— JAMES STEWART for Hitchcock’s new although the family split when she was version of THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO young—may have been her earliest musical MUCH. This was a change of pace for the encouragement. She performed locally as director on several levels; although he had half of a dance act in her very early teens; referenced his own earlier films before, when a car accident stopped that burgeon- he had never outright remade one. Nor ing career, she began to sing. was there a love story here, outside of the By 17 (or possibly even 15; some mother’s devotion to her kidnapped little sources list her birthdate as 1924), Kap- boy; the couple is married but perhaps not pelhoff had changed her name to Day and completely happily, and their relationship begun touring, eventually signing with the is about to come under severe strain. Les Brown band; her honeyed voice and Day was nervous about her perfor- cautiously hopeful material—“Till the End mance, a concern that grew into a real of Time,” “My Dreams Are Getting Better worry when she felt Hitchcock was ignor- All The Time,” and especially “Sentimen- ing her on the set. Expecting to be fired, she tal Journey”—formed a beloved homefront finally pulled him aside and told him if he soundtrack. didn’t like what she was doing, she’d quit. By 1948, Day was in movies, frequently “If you weren’t doing what I liked,” he told put in pinafores and cast in gaslit roman- her, “you’d know.” And so, back to work. tic comedies, with pictures like On Moon- Indeed, Day conveyed a real feel- light Bay and By the Light of the Silvery ing of anguish and loss as the parent of a Moon evoking a postwar nostalgia for the kidnapped child; a true feeling of betrayal, supposedly simpler, safer times of turn-of- too, at an emotionally distant husband who the-century America. (“She was the home has stopped her career and at one point fire,” David Thomson writes, “that refused even doses her with sedatives without her to admit the cold war.”) But when her con- knowledge. tract with WARNER BROS. expired, Day Although Day hardly projected Hitch- decided not to renew it and to look for cock’s favored sophisticated appeal (and meatier, more serious parts. never seems to be included in periodic A very early standout brought a stories on the “Hitchcock BLONDES”), return to the studio for 1955’s Love Me or the director was in fact very pleased with Leave Me, with Day playing the Depres- his leading lady (whom he’d chosen after sion-era torch singer Ruth Etting; it was seeing her in the noirish Storm Warning); another period piece, true, but the mood that one of the songs she sang in the film, was dark, with James Cagney in a late- “Que Sera Sera,” became a number-2 hit 88 n DEATH

(and an Oscar winner) was a lovely bonus Own Story (New York: William Morrow, that helped push the film’s popularity even 1975), 164–66; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred further. Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light Hitchcock and Day did not work (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 517–21; together again, though, and despite some Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: flirtations with the thriller genre (Julie, Mid- The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da night Lace), Day soon settled into a series of Capo Press, 1999), 363–65; David Thom- musicals and very popular romantic come- son, The New Biographical Dictionary of dies. Many costarred Rock Hudson and fea- Film (New York: Knopf, 2002), 211. tured Day in constant, outraged flight from his advances; that a 40-ish actress who’d DEATH spent her teenage years on the road with It was TRUFFAUT who said that Hitch- an all-male band could play quite so prim cock filmed his murders like love scenes seemed absurd (“I knew Doris Day before and his love scenes like murders. Look she was a virgin,” Oscar Levant cracked), again when Roger and Eve first kiss in but the films were popular. NORTH BY NORTHWEST and his large Until they weren’t. As the ’60s sexual hands encircle her—it’s not clear at first revolution took hold, Day began to seem whether Roger means to embrace the out of touch with the times, an alienation woman or strangle her. There’s a similar she was actually happy to embrace; although streak of antagonism, if not outright threat, she had a charming, huskily intimate speak- in SABOTEUR, THE 39 STEPS, SUSPI- ing voice and a lovely figure, Hollywood CION, LIFEBOAT, and many others. had never really asked her to explore her But conversely there is little tender- sensuality, and she was quite happy with ness in Hitchcock’s movie murders, which that. She turned down the Mrs. Robinson are always up close and brutal. And while part in The Graduate (“vulgar and offen- love is not a part of them, sex often is—at sive”), gave up on the movies, and opted least the quick, violent, unwanted sex of a instead for TV sitcoms and talk shows. SEXUAL assault, with the director often She has been essentially retired since cutting between close-ups of the women’s the mid-’90s, devoting most of her time to legs, wildly writhing, and the very intent animal rights. Although she remains, by glint in the man’s narrowed EYES. some measures, Hollywood’s biggest female STABBING, usually with a phallic STAR (10 years in the top 10 at the box knife, is one of the most common meth- office, an unmatched 4 times at number 1), ods in Hitchcock’s films—The 39 Steps, her accomplishments seem (unfairly) half- THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, forgotten today; her only Oscar nomination North By Northwest, PSYCHO—the blade was for Pillow Talk in 1959, and a recent usually thrust into some unsuspecting push to present her with an honorary award victim from behind, the brutally sudden came to naught. To which you can only penetration meant to leave them gasping imagine her saying—Que sera, sera. and helpless in some dark and terrified metaphor for forcible sodomy. STRAN- References GULATION, perhaps the most intimate Doris Day, http://www.dorisday.com; form of murder, appears regularly, too “Doris Day,” IMDb, http://www.iMdb (STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, DIAL M .com/name/nm0000013/bio?ref_=nm_ov FOR MURDER, ROPE, FRENZY), while _bio_sm; A. E. Hotchner, Doris Day: Her the old blunt instrument is an occasional DENNY, REGINALD n 89 standby, although often wielded by a DE BANZIE, BRENDA woman against a man (MARNIE, “LAMB (1909–1981) TO THE SLAUGHTER”). And, of course, Manchester-born performer who made there are the usual dull, impersonal deaths her British stage debut at 16 in the chorus by revolver and rifle and some fatal falls. of DuBarry Was a Lady. She had a strong Murder is rarely quick in Hitchcock career in the theater throughout the ’50s films, too, which may suggest a certain (including the hit thriller Murder Mis- sadism on the director’s part; actually, there taken) and eventually branched into films. is a moral component to it, as well. A life is Generally cast as lonely and dissat- not, should not, be easy to take; to suggest isfied women, she made her first screen that it’s a simple thing is not only amoral but appearance in the mystery The Long Dark also, at the very least, unrealistic. In TORN Hall in 1951 and was a standout in both CURTAIN, for example, the centerpiece of Hobson’s Choice and The Entertainer; the film is the killing of Gromek, and the in 1956 in THE MAN WHO KNEW most startling thing is how difficult it is. He is TOO MUCH, she was Lucy Drayton, the stabbed, he is beaten, and finally he is pushed unhappy wife and conflicted accessory of into a gas oven and asphyxiated. Bond may the kidnapper. She later costarred in an ill- kill someone with a high-powered rifle and a considered Hitchcock remake, The Thirty- quip; in Hitchcock’s spy films, you look into Nine Steps, and appeared in The Pink Pan- the man’s EYES and use your bare hands. ther; other parts were less prominent. She “My first thought again was to avoid died at age 71 of complications following the cliché,” Hitchcock said later. “In every brain surgery. picture somebody gets killed and it goes very quickly. They are stabbed or shot and References the killer never even stops to look and see “Brenda De Banzie,” IMDb, http:// whether the person is dead or not. And I www.imdb.com/name/nm0207219/ thought it was time to show that it was very bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; “Underrated difficult, very painful and it takes a very Performer of the Week: Brenda De Ban- long time to kill a man.” zie,” Classic Film and TV Café, http://www Women, though, can be easier to dis- .classicfilmtvcafe.com/2010/03/underrated patch in his movies, particularly if they’re -performer-of-week-brenda-de.html. willing to meet you halfway. The way the second Mrs. De Winter stands at those DENNY, REGINALD (1891–1967) high windows while Mrs. Danvers whis- Richmond-born son of a British family pers to her; the way Lina sticks so patiently long involved with opera and the theater; by Johnnie in Suspicion even though she’s he made his stage debut at 7 and nearly convinced herself he’s a murderer; even the 70 years later was still going, playing way Miriam turns so expectantly, happily, King Boris on TV’s Batman. In between, to the silently stalking Bruno in Strangers Denny tended to play light comedies or on a Train—in Hitchcock’s films, yes, some supporting roles in dramas; in REBECCA, men are born killers. But some women are he is Frank Crawley, the quietly efficient born victims, too. estate manager for Manderley (and one of Rebecca’s many besotted admirers). He Reference later appeared in The Locket, My Favorite François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. Brunette, and Abbott and Costello Meet ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 311. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 90 n DE PALMA, BRIAN

More personally satisfying, perhaps, theater at Sarah Lawrence before embark- was his career in aviation; a gunner in the ing on a movie career. Royal Flying Corps during World War I, “I still remember sitting in the bal- Denny occasionally worked as a stunt pilot cony at Radio City Music Hall in 1958 and in 1934 opened the first in a chain of and watching VERTIGO,” he said of his model-airplane hobby shops. By World freshman year in college, “and when KIM War II, he was a pioneer in drone technol- NOVAK went over the side the second ogy, turning out radio-controlled aircraft time I thought, I don’t believe this. But for the US Army. He sold the company to that touched me, all of it, particularly the Northrop in 1952. JAMES STEWART character. . . . I think if Denny died at 75 after suffering a you look at them, there’s a great sense of stroke in England. helplessness in my movies, a lot of impo- tent characters.” References At first, based in New York, De Palma “Reginald Denny,” IMDb, http:// moved between experimental films and www.imdb.com/name/nm0219666/ documentary work (combining the two in bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; “Reginald Dionysus in ’69, chronicling a production Denny: The Dennyplane,” Hargrave: The of Euripides’s The Bacchae by the Perfor- Pioneers, http://www.ctie.monash.edu mance Group). Much of De Palma’s work .au/hargrave/dennyplane.html; Alfred was political and deliberately provocative, E. Twomey and Arthur F. McClure, The breaking the fourth wall, experimenting Versatiles: Supporting Character Players in with different film stocks, or using split- the Cinema, 1930–1955 (New York: Castle screen effects to project multiple images. Books, 1969), 82. Several—Greetings; Hi, Mom!—featured the young actor Robert De Niro. DE PALMA, BRIAN (1940– ) After having his first Hollywood film, Is he one of our greatest filmmakers, a the farcical Get to Know Your Rabbit, master artist who uses Brechtian distanc- taken away from him, De Palma turned ing and metafictional devices to comment to independent filmmaking and genre on the very art he’s making, as critics like subjects with Sisters. Starring Margot Kid- PAULINE KAEL have claimed? Or just one der and Jennifer Salt (and William Finley, of our most self-satisfied popcorn salesmen a friend from his avant-garde days), the who simply, shamelessly, copies twists and movie told a grotesque story of Siamese tricks from Alfred Hitchcock? (“Once a twins, fractured personalities, and brutal year, Brian De Palma picks the bones of a murders. Sold to audiences as the “most dead director,” a satirical Saturday Night genuinely frightening film since Hitch- Live trailer once claimed, “and gives his cock’s PSYCHO!”—and with a leading wife a job.”) The consensus on Brian De character dispatched early on by knife, Palma has gone back and forth. elements of VOYEURISM, and a score by Born to a Newark, NJ, surgeon, De BERNARD HERRMANN—it was easy to Palma was an early computer enthusi- see the parallels. Yet the film’s BLACK- ast and science fair standout who went to AND-WHITE cinema verité flashbacks Columbia University to major in physics; are pure De Palma; its split-screen tech- attending screenings of films by Orson niques are contrary to everything Hitch- Welles and Hitchcock changed that idea, cock preached about MONTAGE. It had and he ended up getting his master’s in its own style. DERN, BRUCE n 91

Later films would have more obvi- through a mall. Both scenes end very dif- ous connections to the older director, ferently, but they share an assured use of a although whether those took the form of constantly moving camera, a clever sense of homage, debt, or outright theft depended pacing, and a serious take on the thin line on the critic. Kael was an early, and ardent between a romantic attraction and a dan- supporter; screenwriter I. A. L. Diamond gerous obsession and how easily it can be accused the young director of simply mak- crossed. ing a “career out of ripping off Hitchcock.” Since the commercial failure of Rais- Others took a more balanced view. “Sis- ing Cain, De Palma has shown less interest ters, Raising Cain, Body Double, Obsession, in the themes and tricks of Hitchcock. Car- which is a virtual remake of Vertigo—it’s lito’s Way, released in 1993, was a superior incredible all the variations he spun on gangster drama; the spy adventure Mission Hitchcock,” observed Kent Jones, a festival Impossible, released in 1996, a competent programmer and the director of the 2015 job for hire. Unfortunately, few of his recent documentary HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT. films have connected with audiences or any “But saying that De Palma’s movies were but the most rabid admirers—although superior—I don’t know, when was the last 2007’s Redacted intriguingly revisited his old time any of these people took a look at Ver- interests in politics and voyeurism, Passion, tigo? Or MARNIE, or REAR WINDOW?” from 2012, was barely released. Certainly the Hitchcock influences So is Brian De Palma an original are there, although they go beyond story- thinker who uses the medium to comment telling tricks, like transgender disguises on the medium? Or a clever imitator who or carefully orchestrated murder plots, borrows some of his greatest effects from too; themes like the compulsive FETISH- an even greater filmmaker? The answer, ISM of Rear Window and the DOUBLES inarguably, is—both. of THE WRONG MAN and Vertigo show up as well (most obviously in Body Dou- References ble, which makes SEXUALLY explicit Brian De Palma, interview with the author, what Rear Window only hinted at). Yet February 2007; “Brian De Palma,” Biogra- to see De Palma only as a mere imitator phy, http://www.biography.com/people/ is unfair. Although his films are smartly if brian-de-palma-9272033; “Brian De self-consciously edited (like The Untouch- Palma,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ ables, which cheekily copies the Odessa name/nm0000361/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio steps sequence from Battleship Potemkin), _sm; Kent Jones, interview with the author, he is even fonder of long tracking shots February 2007; Noel Murray and Scott than Hitchcock was, sometimes incorpo- Tobias, “Primer: Brian De Palma,” AV rating dizzyingly over-the-top 360-degree Club, http://www.avclub.com/article/brian pans; his humor is more bitter, too, and his -de-palma-52964; David Thomson, The films often end on notes of utter despair or New Biographical Dictionary of Film (New absurdist resignation. York: Knopf, 2002), 227–28. And many of his sequences stand on their own as bravura bits of filmmaking. DERN, BRUCE (1936– ) In Dressed to Kill, Angie Dickinson and a Chicago-born son of a renowned and mysterious stranger play a game of hide well-connected family (the poet Archibald and seek in a museum; in Body Double, MacLeish was his granduncle, Adlai Ste- Craig Wasson follows a mysterious woman venson his godfather) whose decision 92 n DEVANE, WILLIAM to pursue an acting career was an “act of rare sympathetic lead and even won him an rebellion” and caused a small scandal Oscar nomination. He did not win. within the family. “My family was very disappointed in me,” he said of the day he References announced his choice. “They were all great Bruce Dern, interview with the author, men, and they made it very clear they did November 2013; “Bruce Dern,” IMDb, not think I was going to be a great man.” http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001136/ It took Dern a while to find his foot- bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. ing. He is a murder victim in 1964’s Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte and starred DEVANE, WILLIAM (1937– ) the same year in an equally fatal flash- Albany, NY–born performer whose back in MARNIE as a drunken and very square jaw and thick hair made him a unlucky sailor. He also appeared on two favorite of casting directors looking for episodes of THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK someone to play a politician; he was Rob- HOUR, playing a suspicious drifter and ert F. Kennedy off-Broadway, John F. a suspected pervert. Despite his roots in Kennedy in the TV movie The Missiles the midwestern aristocracy, Dern’s reedy of October, and a variety of straight and voice and hard stare helped typecast him crooked politicians in television shows as sneering villains or ignorant trash in from The West Wing to Stargate. Interest- the movies; onscreen, he rode with out- ingly, his father had once been a chauffeur law bikers, sewed heads onto bodies, and to Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he in The Cowboys gained movie infamy by was New York’s governor. “I was around shooting John Wayne in the back. (When politicians my whole life,” Devane said. Wayne warned him that audiences were “My Uncle Frannie was a captain on the going to “hate his guts” for that scene, police force. My Uncle Bill was the water Dern answered, “Yeah, but they’ll sure commissioner. When I said I wanted to be love me in Berkeley!”) an actor it was received as kind of good There were some attempts to broaden news. It was a step better than wanting to his image. Dern had a good part in Silent be a cop.” Running; in FAMILY PLOT, Hitchcock cast His ability to smile widely when saying him as George, the good-natured but not even the most menacing things made him particularly bright boyfriend of Blanche, perfect for not just elected officials but also a fake psychic. Dern (who with his well- more streetwise villains; in FAMILY PLOT, bred, midwestern manners still refers to he was Edward Shoebridge, a self-created the late director as “Mr. Hitchcock”) later orphan who changed his name and worked claimed to have helped him direct some as a kidnapper and San Francisco jeweler. of the scenes, when the filmmaker’s health As it turned out, Devane was both Hitch- problems interfered; for his part, Hitchcock cock’s first and third choice for the role. assured Dern that this was the movie that When the actor’s schedule didn’t allow him would finally make him a STAR. to join the production, Hitchcock began Whether the first assertion was true shooting his scenes with Roy Thinnes, or not, the second was definitely not. The instead; when Devane became available, film was not a huge success, and Dern went Hitchcock abruptly fired Thinnes and back to being an underrated (if definitely brought Devane on for reshoots (although busy) character actor, mostly in smaller- Thinnes can supposedly be glimpsed in budgeted films. Nebraska in 2013 offered a some longshots). LES DIABOLIQUES n 93

Devane continues to work and play her in a plan to drown the headmaster in characters with slightly slippery morals and a bathtub and dump his body in the pool. great toothy smiles. The women carry out the murder and get rid of the corpse—but later, when References the pool is drained, there’s no body to be Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life found. Wife and girlfriend grow more in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- and more concerned until the body reap- Collins, 2003), 725–26; Bernard Weinraub, pears—rising from a bathtub in the school. “They Told Devane He’d Be Typecast as a The wife has a heart attack and dies. As she Kennedy,” New York Times, October 15, was supposed to—all was a plan between 1995, http://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/15/ husband and mistress to kill her and get tv/cover-story-they-told-devane-he-d-be her money. Except the two are quickly -typecast-as-a-kennedy-but-which-one arrested—and now a new ghost walks the .html; “William Devane,” IMDb, http:// halls of the old school. www.imdb.com/name/nm0001137/ bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. Often cited as influenced by Hitchcock, Les Diaboliques was an influence on LES DIABOLIQUES (FRANCE 1955) him as well, both in subject matter (stymied in purchasing the rights to the same Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot. novel, he soon bought another one by the Screenplay: Henri-Georges Clouzot, authors, PIERRE BOILEAU and THOMAS Jerome Geronimi, Rene Masson, Fred- NARCEJAC, turning it into VERTIGO) eric Grendel, based on the novel Celle Qui N’Etait Plus by Pierre Boileau and and marketing (the warnings against late Thomas Narcejac. admissions and giving away the twist, which Producers: Henri-Georges Clouzot would be reused for PSYCHO). Yet Clouzot, (Georges Lourau, uncredited). who definitely shared much with the Eng- Cinematography: Armand Thirard. lish director (including a rather jaundiced Editor: Madeleine Gug. view of actors and a delight in construct- Original Music: Georges Van Parys. ing thrillers like “a game”) brought his own Cast: Simone Signoret (Nicole Horner), tastes and talent to the tale. Vera Clouzot (Christina Delassalle), Paul Simone Signoret’s mistress, for exam- Meurisse (Michel Delassalle). In French. ple, has an aggressive, almost masculine Running Time: 116 minutes. Black and white. SEXUALITY you wouldn’t see in Hitch- Released By: Cinedis. cock’s films, while instead of that director’s stark contrasts and straight lines, Clouzot creates a gray, murky underwater feel- At a cheap French boarding school, the ing and an almost palpable sense of damp food is always on the edge of spoiling, decay. If SHADOW OF A DOUBT and the swimming pool is full of muck—and Psycho show murder blooming in the sun- the headmaster is both running through shine, Diaboliques is slowly sprouting like a his wife’s money and knocking about his mushroom from a rotten log. girlfriend, one of the teachers. The two The film was an enormous hit and has women, though, find they have more in been remade, with credit and without, sev- common than not, and the tough teacher eral times since. Cinephiles would be wise to talks the frail wife—who actually owns the avoid the many poor-quality versions avail- school but has a weak heart—into joining able and opt for the Criterion edition; music 94 n DIAL M FOR MURDER fans are advised to look carefully and see if to death. Only on the morning of her they can spy a junior version of French rock- hanging is Mark, working with the police, and-roller Johnny Hallyday as one of the stu- able to prove that Tony was behind all of dents. it, finding the key he left for Swann to let himself into the apartment. Tony goes off References to prison like a good sport, and Margot is Ivan Butler, Horror in the Cinema (New freed. York: A. S. Barnes, 1970), 103–12; “Diabolique,” The Criterion Collection, Dial M for Murder was a bit of treading https://www.criterion.com/films/575-dia water for Hitchcock—I CONFESS had been bolique. a disappointment, and several other projects he’d planned, including THE BRAM- DIAL M FOR MURDER (US 1954) BLE BUSH, had fallen apart. Filming a hit play (which had already been done once for Director: Alfred Hitchcock. British television) seemed like a safe choice. Screenplay: Frederick Knott, based on his A bit too safe, perhaps. Playwright play. FREDERICK KNOTT was good at setting Producer: Uncredited (Alfred Hitchcock). up tricky situations and shifting alliances Cinematography: Robert Burks. among thieves (the early scenes between Editor: Rudi Fehr. Tony and Captain Lesgate, a.k.a. “Swann,” Original Music: Dimitri Tiomkin. are similar to the ones between Roat and Cast: Grace Kelly (Margot Wendice), Ray Milland (Tony Wendice), Robert Cum- Sam in his later play Wait until Dark), but mings (Mark Halliday), Anthony Daw- the plotting is a trifle clever for its own son (Captain Lesgate/Swann), John Wil- good, and the crucial importance of the liams (Chief Inspector Hubbard). hidden key is both overdone and under- Running Time: 105 minutes. Color. 3-D. whelming. “I could have phoned that one Released Through: Warner Bros. in,” Hitchcock said later—as usual, unable to resist either a pun or self-criticism. He had been encumbered from the A retired tennis player, Tony likes living start, however, by the studio’s decision to well but is getting tired of doing it with his shoot in 3-D. Although the director was wife Margot’s money—so he blackmails as open to new technology as he’d been Swann, a disgraced old schoolmate, into when the talkies first arrived, like those agreeing to slip into the apartment that early sound cameras, the 3-D ones were night and murdering Margot so it looks enormous, limited in function, and dif- like a burglary gone wrong. ficult to maneuver; it was hard to get the But while Tony is away with Margot’s extreme close-ups he sometimes wanted or old lover, Mark, establishing his alibi, it’s to move the camera as much as he liked. the murder that goes wrong—Swann is All of this made what already seemed like a killed, stabbed by Margot with a pair of rather stagey film even more static and stiff. scissors. Quickly, Tony shifts plans—plant- (Actually, the movie that might have ben- ing one of Margot’s love letters to Mark in efitted from 3-D, with its deep perspectives, Swann’s pocket to make it look as if Margot was REAR WINDOW—but by the time it merely killed her blackmailer. was in production, the fad had faded.) Mark is suspicious, but Margot is Still, some of the old Hitchcock occa- quickly arrested, convicted, and sentenced sionally shines through in Dial M for Mur- DIETRICH, MARLENE n 95 der. Like so many of his ’50s films, it’s The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred about an unhappy marriage—certainly the Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, unhappiest among his works, as the wife is 1999), 341–45; François Truffaut, Hitch- an adulteress and the husband a would-be cock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Touch- murderer. It shows both his modern mas- stone, 1985), 209–11. tery of COLOR (with Margot’s clothes going from gay to gray as her situation DIETRICH, MARLENE worsens) and his old skill with EXPRES- (1901–1992) SIONISTIC suggestion (Margot’s trial Schöneberg-born performer who conveyed with a close-up or two staged dreamed of becoming a classical violin- against nearly blank backgrounds). And his ist but eventually found work as a cho- ever-sharp eye for detail, like the glint he rus girl in the touring Girl-Kabarett and was so careful to catch on the fatal scissors then moved on to movies. She became a (“A murder without gleaming scissors is STAR in 1929 playing Lola-Lola in Josef like asparagus without hollandaise sauce,” von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel, the sexy he observed. “Tasteless”). And, in a film- young singer who becomes an old profes- ography full of erotic death, the attack on sor’s self-destructive obsession. Quickly Margot is one of the most graphic, with her moving onto Hollywood, she and von dressed only in a filmy white nightgown, Sternberg created a series of extraordi- her legs moving beneath the silky fabric nary melodramas, as known for their while her assailant grabs her from behind, silvery rays of light and rich textures as the scissoring of her legs mimicking the for Dietrich’s slashing cheekbones and tool she’s about to grab and shockingly gender-bending attitudes; burning hot thrust into his back. but quickly, she was a top star by the early Despite a terrific performance from ’30s, “box-office poison” just a few years GRACE KELLY and a droll one from RAY later. MILLAND (Hitchcock had wanted CARY It was then that the Nazis approached GRANT, but once again, the STAR refused her, hoping to woo her back to Ger- to play a villain), the movie was only a many; Dietrich’s response was to take out modest success; although ANTHONY American citizenship and, when the war DAWSON and JOHN WILLIAMS both began, do everything she could to aid the ably repeated their stage performances, Allied war effort. After the war, Dietrich’s ROBERT CUMMINGS was bland as ever career—which had been revived in ’39 with as Mark, and by the time the film was the self-mocking Destry Rides Again— released, the 3-D fad was finished (most picked up again, as she played a variety of theaters got standard 2-D prints). Hitch- knowing, unknowable older women. cock would have better luck with his next She played that part for Hitchcock in film, Rear Window. STAGE FRIGHT, in which she was Char- lotte Inwood, a stage diva, the lover of References a younger man—and, just possibly, the B. Kite, “Staged Fright,” Village Voice, brutal killer of her own husband. It was December 30, 2003, http://www.village a good part for Dietrich but not a good voice.com/film/staged-fright-6397459; Pat- film, and although she had a big star’s rick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life perquisites—a wardrobe by Dior, a song in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- to sing by Cole Porter, and reportedly a erCollins, 2003), 469–72; Donald Spoto, loud dressing-room affair with the leading 96 n “A DIP IN THE POOL” man, MICHAEL WILDING—she appar- “A DIP IN THE POOL” ently disliked the film and her costar JANE (US; ORIGINALLY AIRED WYMAN. JUNE 1, 1958) Dietrich had a few movie successes after that—she is very good in the Billy Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Wilder courtroom thriller Witness for Screenplay: Robert C. Dennis, based on the Prosecution and iconic under that the story by Roald Dahl. Producers: Joan Harrison, Norman Lloyd. improbable black wig in Orson Welles’s Cinematography: John F. Warren. Touch of Evil—and then spent much of Editor: Edward W. Williams. the next decade as a concert performer. Original Music: Uncredited. Well into her 60s by then, she would pre- Cast: Keenan Wynn (William Botibol), Fay pare by painfully taping her skin taut and Wray (Mrs. Renshaw). squirming into corseted, painfully slim- Running Time: 30 minutes. Black and white. ming gowns, almost literally willing her- Originally Broadcast By: CBS. self back into the shape of the irresistible Lola-Lola. Declining health and several bad falls A vulgar, braying American makes a bet on forced her retirement; Dietrich ended up a how far the cruise ship he’s on will travel; recluse, retreating to her Paris apartment when he tries to ensure the outcome, he and talking to her many friends and admir- ends up only fatally cheating himself. A ers over the phone but letting only a few typically cold story about dishonesty from ever see her face. It was important that her ROALD DAHL, a favorite of ALFRED image—and our memories of her own, self- HITCHCOCK PRESENTS; Dahl’s “Man made SEXUAL iconography—remained from the South,” however, directed by perfect and untouched by time. NORMAN LLOYD, made for a far better She died at age 90 in Paris. According episode. to her will, only after the reunification of Germany was her body returned home and References buried in her beloved Berlin. Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Com- plete Directory to Prime Time Network References TV Shows, 8th ed. (New York: Ballantine “Biography,” Marlene Dietrich, http://www Books, 2003), 29; Jack Edmond Nolan, .marlene.com/bio.html; “Marlene Diet- “Hitchcock’s TV Films,” Film Fan Monthly rich,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ (June 1968), 3–6. nm0000017/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Pat- rick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life DOLLY SHOTS in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- In cinematography, a shot in which the erCollins, 2003), 431–37; Donald Spoto, camera is on a wheeled platform pushed The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred along to either move in or out on a person Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, or object or to follow them as they move 1999), 316; Donald Spoto, Spellbound by in or out of frame. Dating back a hundred Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading years, dolly shots often serve very utilitar- Ladies (New York: Harmony Books, 2008), ian functions and provide a sometimes- 190–92; David Thomson, The New Bio- useful alternative to cutting to a close-up. graphical Dictionary of Film (New York: One can dolly in on a clue a murderer Knopf, 2002), 236–38. leaves behind as he exits a room to empha- DOMINATION n 97 size its importance and dolly out from the key clutched in Alicia’s hand or in YOUNG end of a dialogue scene to underline its AND INNOCENT to reveal the murderer. firm finality. Or he could jump to quick cuts for the Like many directors who began their attacks in THE BIRDS or TORN CURTAIN. careers in the silents, where image is all, Or provide sit-back-and-watch close-ups Hitchcock understood dolly shots in all as JOSEPH COTTEN calmly outlines his their complexity and used them in compli- own madness in SHADOW OF A DOUBT cated ways. In the incredibly difficult-to- or Henry Jones so coldly sums up the shoot ROPE and UNDER CAPRICORN— inquest’s findings in Vertigo, both breaking which required breakaway sets and special the fourth wall to stare directly at us. props—they are part of the essential gram- But whatever the scene, Hitchcock’s mar, almost never-ending, following peo- movies never stood still. And rarely did his ple from room to room and adding to the camera. tension. In VERTIGO, they are coupled with a zoom to strand us in the middle of Reference Scottie’s awful disabling disorientation, as “Dolly Shot,” Media College, http://www things seem to move forward and fall away .mediacollege.com/video/shots/dolly.html. at the same time (a shot now known as the “Hitchcock zoom” or the “Vertigo effect”). DOMINATION In PSYCHO, they are part of the rhythm as The Hitchcock filmography is full of much as the music, slowly moving ahead images of BONDAGE and submission— of Arbogast as he climbs up those fateful starting with THE LODGER, the first truly STAIRS or bringing us into Lila’s mind as “Hitchcock film,” which begins with a she approaches the house; in FRENZY, they mocking equation of handcuffs and a wed- take the pitiless approach of a disinterested ding ring and climaxes with a trussed-up God, following the murderer and his victim suspect hauled up before a mob like a cru- up the stairs to his room—and then silently cified Christ. retreating to leave them to their fates. But the ropes don’t work without Dolly shots are definitely part of Hitch- someone to tie them, and there’s no sub- cock’s style, although only one part—his mission without someone to kneel before. signature “look,” while much celebrated, is Hitchcock’s own relationship to these not easily defined. As much as Hitchcock power struggles is complex—like many believed in moving the camera in long who were intimidated in childhood (his unbroken takes, he also believed in MON- father, determined to punish him for some TAGE; some of his shots could last six min- long-forgotten infraction, brought him utes or more, and others flash by almost down to the police station and had the con- subliminally. He did whatever worked for stables lock him up), he could be intimidat- that particular emotional moment in that ing in adult life (establishing his own on-set particular scene. Everything was put in ser- dominance by playing practical JOKES on vice of PURE CINEMA. crew members or deliberately discomfiting So he could do an extraordinary crane his STARS). And those complications are shot, like the one that pulls back in Psy- explored in the films in which—even when cho as Norman carries his mother out of they seem to be victims—women almost her room (and cleverly also obscures just inevitably prevail. what “Mother” is) or the one that swoops Yes, the fiancé who taunts his girl down in NOTORIOUS to show the tiny with handcuffs in The Lodger literally 98 n DONAT, ROBERT holds the key—but he will be put in his because he’s devoted to his kid sister and place before the film ends. Richard Han- their hypercritical mother—and Melanie, nay may tease Pamela as they spend their who has her own ugly memories of being days bound together in THE 39 STEPS— denied a “mother’s care,” can’t find a way but he is unable to take any advantage of to break into that closed circle until she’s her, and she’s the one who eventually slips reduced to nearly infantile helplessness. the bond and steals away. And while Scot- The murderous Bob Rusk in FRENZY, like tie is absurdly controlling of Judy in VER- Norman Bates, has clearly been formed by TIGO, in the end, she’s the one who holds his smothering mother. And then there is the cards, and when the hand turns out poor MARNIE (one of the truest, saddest to go against them both, there’s nothing female victims in Hitchcock), who as a Scottie can do but stand there, impotently. confused and sleepy child thought she was Norman can peep and pant all he wants in rescuing her mother—and has paid for that PSYCHO—but when he really needs to do act of mistaken bravery with decades of something physical, he has to pull on a wig guilt and remorseless disapproval of every- and put on a dress. thing that wasn’t “respectable.” That’s because, although men seem to No, it’s almost always a female who is be the sole protagonists in Hitchcock films, in charge (and, in a situation with several it’s almost always the women who—in women, always the oldest). And even when handcuffs or not, dead or not, imperson- men, driven mad by their powerlessness, ated or not—still hold the actual power. seek revenge against all females, it’s always Maxim de Winter is rich, haughty, and a woman who’s their undoing. Charles in (when he wants to be) irresistibly charm- SHADOW OF A DOUBT, Thorwald in ing—but there is no doubt that REBECCA Rear Window, even Norman in Psycho— ruled and ruined his life (and that Mrs. they’re not caught by the gruff male detec- Danvers presumes to take her place, at least tives on their trails. They’re undone by the as a controlling feminine force). Devlin is a fearless persistence of the young women master American spy and Alexander Sebas- softly smiling in their faces, slowly untan- tian a silky Nazi in NOTORIOUS—but they gling their lies, steadily pushing their ways are both in thrall to Alicia Huberman and into these Bluebeards’ secret rooms. Sebastian especially to his mother. Hitchcock’s movies may see women as Domineering wives are a constant in Madonnas. They may see them as whores. Hitchcock, of course. Guy Haines is figura- They may see them, most frequently, as tively chained to his shrewish spouse, Mir- exciting performers who pretend to be the iam, in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (a chain first and are secretly the other. But the one that only the flirtatious, feminine Bruno thing his movies—for all their perceived can break). In REAR WINDOW, Jeff is misogyny—rarely see them as is powerless. wary of marriage, seeing unhappiness every time he spies on his neighbors—including Reference Mr. Thorvald, who eventually murders his Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: complaining wife. (The number of Hitch- The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da cock TV shows centering on nagging wives Capo Press, 1999), 16, 109–12, 219. done in by put-upon husbands is dizzying.) The smothering ministrations of DONAT, ROBERT (1905–1958) devoted mothers leave their painful mark, Manchester-born, ineffably charming Brit- too. Mitch is still a bachelor in THE BIRDS ish performer who first took elocution les- DOR, KARIN n 99 sons to help with a childhood stammer. He he was ill; indeed, he had quietly suffered a found precocious success with Shakespeare breakdown in 1937 and, thanks to increas- onstage but took a while to find his place ingly debilitating asthma attacks, would in films. In fact, fearful of the camera and work only sporadically, sometimes having terribly awkward, he failed one screen test to withdraw from productions. According after another; only after the final disaster, to some, his illness was mostly psychoso- when he burst into laughter at himself, did matic, springing from his own internalized he win over mogul Alexander Korda, who fears and self-doubt; he was, they said, sim- signed him to a contract. ply too gentle for this life. Donat made an impression in The Pri- He died in London at 53 of a brain vate Life of Henry VIII and then went to tumor. Hollywood in 1934 for The Count of Monte Cristo but turned down Captain Blood References (thereby handing Errol Flynn a career) and “Mr. Donat Captures Hollywood,” Mil- returned to England for THE 39 STEPS; a waukee Journal, July 9, 1939, https://news contemporary English critic hailed Donat’s .google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&dat= “easy confident humour” and exulted, “for 19390709&id=JYdSAAAAIBAJ&sjid=GC the first time on our screen we have the IEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5946,5134780&hl=en; British equivalent of a Clark Gable.” “Robert Donat,” IMDb, http://www.imdb Donat’s gentle, almost careless per- .com/name/nm0232196/bio?ref_=nm formance as the film’s hero took some _ov_bio_sm; “Robert Donat Tells His Life work on everyone’s part; on the first day Story,” Courier-Mail, June 23, 1938, http:// of shooting, Hitchcock deliberately “lost” trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/40995382; the key to the handcuffs to force some Donald Spoto, Spellbound by Beauty: bonding between his leading man and the Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies slightly frosty MADELEINE CARROLL. (New York: Harmony Books, 2008), 54–55; It must have been successful. In the end, David Thomson, The New Biographi- Donat’s easy, offhanded grace not only sets cal Dictionary of Film (New York: Knopf, the film’s tone but also creates the tem- 2002), 241. plate for later, seemingly effortless (albeit truly difficult) Hitchcock performances DOR, KARIN (1938– ) from MICHAEL REDGRAVE and CARY Wiesbaden-born performer who made GRANT. her German-movie debut as a teenager Hitchcock wanted the actor for his and soon became a regular in Edgar Wal- next film, SECRET AGENT (and, indeed, lace thrillers and international productions for several of his films to come), but Donat like The Face of Fu Manchu. Her appear- was always unavailable, often due to ill ance as the duplicitous Helga in the Bond health; later, Donat went on to star in The blockbuster You Only Live Twice brought Citadel, for which he got an Oscar nomina- a brief flurry of guest shots on American tion as best actor, and Goodbye, Mr. Chips, TV shows and a role in TOPAZ, where she for which he won (beating out, among oth- played the passionate Juanita de Cordoba. ers, Clark Gable for Gone with the Wind “Of all the directors I have worked and JAMES STEWART for Mr. Smith Goes with, Hitchcock was my favorite,” she said to Washington). in 2012. “I adored and loved him as a direc- There was at the time some gossip that tor. At the end of every filming day on Donat’s had been a sympathy vote because Topaz he would come to my trailer with his 100 n DOUBLES secretary and they would bring me German he is, in fact, a vigilante in pursuit of the recipes because he knew I liked to cook. Avenger, hoping to make him pay for mur- We had a marvelous, immediate, simpatico dering his sister. But doesn’t that make him relationship.” an avenger as well? A remorseless killer It ended after the film, however, who has put himself above the law? and her career after Topaz was intermit- Or in SHADOW OF A DOUBT, where tent, once again swinging back and forth young Charlotte so eagerly wishes for her between international thrillers and German Uncle Charlie to come visit to shake up television, where she continues to be busy her staid family the way only he can. She today. adores him, feels a kinship with him—and he encourages that and the slightly superior References sense they share that—compared to the “Karin Dor,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ sleepwalkers around them—they alone are name/nm0233312/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio alive and alert. _sm; “Karin Dor,” Listal, http://www.listal And in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, .com/karin-dor. where Bruno and Guy—over an ordered “pair of doubles” in the bar car—talk about DOUBLES their similar situations. Guy is trapped in Hitchcock’s CATHOLIC education gave a marriage to a shrewish woman; Bruno him a “consciousness of good and evil, that feels under the thumb of his insensitive both are always with me,” he once said. But father. They have so much in common. If if the director felt they were always inside only they could—“criss-cross!”—solve each him, then in his movies they are often other’s problems. The difference, of course, externalized, as characters are split in two is that Charlotte and Guy are perfectly nor- or doubled by their reversed reflections. (In mal, charming people who sometimes see one of the episodes he directed for ALFRED others as annoying or troublesome; Char- HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, “THE CASE lie and Bruno are sociopaths who often see OF MR. PELHAM,” the twinning actually others as inhuman and expendable. becomes real.) These doppelgänger stories But in Hitchcock’s unforgiving world are not quite the same as his MISTAKEN there is only a small difference between IDENTITY plots, which usually set a light- the intention and the act; once someone hearted chase in motion (until the grimly has had an evil thought, the evil is already sober THE WRONG MAN, which tries to half-committed. There is really less differ- atone for them). Those stories are about the ence between Charlotte and Charlie, Guy fluidity of IDENTITY; his “double” movies and Bruno, than we might like to think. are about its complexity and the way that And so the connection between those two one person can contain two characters—or characters is constantly underlined, both two characters can each contain half of one through clear camera grammar (Shadow of person. a Doubt introducing Charlie and Charlotte You can see this in THE LODGER, in separate but parallel series of shots, as when the young mysterious gentleman they gloomily get up from bed; Strangers on steps out of the fog to rent a room. At first, a Train intercutting between the two men’s we—and eventually his landlady—come striding legs) and more subtle visual cues to suspect he is the Avenger, the serial (Charlie and Charlotte going to the “Til killer prowling London and murdering Two” bar, Miriam’s dropped glasses show- BLONDES. Eventually it’s revealed that ing two images of Guy looming above her). DOUBLES n 101

In other Hitchcock films, though, the because he thinks of his mother as puritani- doubling occurs less as a copy than as a cal and jealous. Yet, we find out later, his reflection—the same yet subtly reversed mother had a lover—and it was Norman (a metaphor the director often makes con- who found them together in bed and mur- crete by making sure the scenes include dered them both. So who really is the vio- mirrors, a visual motif continued in VER- lent puritan? Isn’t Norman’s disguise as his TIGO and PSYCHO). murderous mother just a way of disguising Doubling is, in fact, the entire theme of his own ugly, homicidal urges? Vertigo, in which Scottie tries to combine The movie continues the theme of two women who are, or seem to be, polar doubling as Marion’s lover, Sam, returns to opposites. Madeleine is sleek, chic, and the story and sister Lila makes an appear- contained, her hair as perfectly done and ance. That Lila looks like Marion is easily endlessly circling as one of San Francisco’s explained, but Sam’s resemblance to Nor- streets; Judy is brassy, uneducated, and man Bates—brought home as they face alive, her body moving restlessly under her each other over the motel check-in desk, a clothes as if trying to break free. The two mirror on the wall—is more striking. Both are completely unalike—until, we realize tall, good-looking, dark-haired men, yes— ahead of Scottie, that they are the same per- but also both men with debts and small son. The Madeleine he thought he knew, family businesses, Sam struggling to pay off in fact, doesn’t exist; she’s a construct, his father’s bills and his own alimony, Nor- and he’s merely telling the performer who man trying to keep going a motel where played her that he prefers the fictional few people check in and even fewer check character she created to the real person out. Couldn’t Sam have been Norman with she is (a painful preference that many real- more kinks in his childhood? Couldn’t life actresses know well and KIM NOVAK Norman have been Sam if his own father makes particularly, personally heartbreak- had never died? (That Hitchcock cast the ing here). dull square JOHN GAVIN as Sam and the The division of identity begins right boyishly charming ANTHONY PERKINS at the start of Psycho, as Marion, the quiet as Norman only makes the contrast, and responsible secretary, stands before a mir- our conflicting feelings, more dramatic.) ror with an envelope of money in her hands Of course, Hitchcock was not only a and deliberately reinvents herself as a run- Catholic schoolboy but also a child who away embezzler. (She even soon changes memorized TRAIN timetables for fun and a from nice-girl white lingerie to bad-girl teenager who excelled at draftsmanship; he black.) But her personality crisis is noth- loved patterns and order, and much of the ing compared to the man she’ll soon meet, doubling in his films speaks to that. There Norman Bates, who literally dresses up are husband-and-wife heroes and villains and takes on the personality of his mother in THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH “whenever danger or desire” suddenly and two very different couples circling each appears. other in FAMILY PLOT. Those doublings Yet complex as he is, Norman may spring chiefly from his insistence on bal- be even more complicated than he or we ance, in storyline as well as composition. know. (He’s certainly beyond the grasp of These, though—the competing aveng- the psychiatrist who tries to sum him up ers of The Lodger, the murderer/victims in a diagnosis.) Norman murders Mar- of Shadow of a Doubt and Strangers on a ion because he thinks his mother would, Train, the many, sometimes fractured mir- 102 n DOUBLE TAKE ror images of Psycho—remind us that there excuse to begin interspersing clips of US is good and evil in all of us. As the Jesuits’ presidents and Soviet premiers. That turns teachings, Hitchcock insisted, reminded what began as an intriguing essay into a him every day of his life. muddled polemic and leaves a film about identity without one. References Richard Alleva, “The Catholic Hitchcock: A Reference Director’s Sense of Good and Evil,” Com- Stephen Whitty, “‘Double Take’ Movie monweal, July 12, 2010, https://www.com Review: Alfred Hitchcock Times Two,” monwealmagazine.org/catholic-hitchcock; NJ.com, http://www.nj.com/entertainment/ Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: movies/index.ssf/2010/06/double_take The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da _movie_review_alfred_hitchcock_times Capo Press, 1999), 20. _two.html.

DOUBLE TAKE (BELGIUM 2009) DOWNHILL (GB 1928)

Director: Johan Grimonprez. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay: Johan Grimonprez, from a Screenplay: Eliot Standard, based on the story by Tom McCarthy. play Down Hill by Constance Collier and Producers: Emmy Oost, Nichole Ger- Ivor Novello. hards, Hanneke Van der Tas. Producers: Uncredited (Sir Michael Balcon, Cinematography: Martin Testar. C. M. Woolf). Editors: Dieter Diependaele, Tyler Hubby. Cinematography: Claude L. McDonnell. Original Music: Christian Halten. Editor: Lionel Rich (Ivor Montagu, uncred- Cast: Alfred Hitchcock, Janet Leigh, Farley ited). Granger (file footage). Cast: Ivor Novello (Roddy Berwick), Running Time: 80 minutes. Color and black Robin Irvine (Tim Wakely). and white. Running Time: 80 minutes. Black and white. Released By: Kino International. Released Through: Wardour Films.

An experimental “documentary” that con- Roddy and Tim are best friends at a posh flates a Jorge Luis Borges essay on IDEN- English boarding school, despite the fact TITY with a fictional ANECDOTE about that Roddy is born to wealth and Tim is the day that, called away from the set of there on a scholarship, and they share THE BIRDS, Alfred Hitchcock met a future everything—including a flirtation with a version of himself gone back in time. waitress in the town. But then Tim gets her The idea is certainly a unique one, as pregnant, and she nastily blames Roddy— is its execution; most of the film is made and Roddy accepts the blame, feeling he up of cleverly repurposed, re-edited, and can weather the trouble easier. otherwise revised footage, drawn from The trouble, though, is worse than he Hitchcock home movies, various news- expects—he is not only expelled from school reels, and clips from many of his films but also shunned by his father. Leaving (including his own cameos). It might home, handsome but unsuited for any real have made a brilliant short, particularly occupation, he becomes an actor—eventu- if it stuck to Hitchcock’s own theme of ally losing even that position and sinking to DOUBLES and opposites—alas, the early the status of second-rate gigolo, separating ’60s period isn’t happenstance but an older women from small sums of money. DU MAURIER, DAPHNE n 103

Eventually penniless and dreadfully ary 10, 2004, http://the.hitchcock.zone/ ill, he’s shipped home by some sailors who wiki/The_Guardian_%2810/Jan/2004%29 take pity on him—and the prodigal son is _-_Homme_fatal:_Ivor_Novello; François welcomed back by his father, who’s since Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New learned about the terrible lie and his son’s York: Touchstone, 1985), 51. sacrifice. DU MAURIER, DAPHNE Thematically, this is another of the early (1907–1989) British Hitchcocks that don’t seem to fit London-born daughter of actor Sir Gerald easily into his career. The story is crudely du Maurier and granddaughter of author melodramatic, and there are few of the George du Maurier. A skilled and popu- concerns that we see in his later films. lar novelist whose stories often combined Still, if the story—with its noblesse oblige, Gothic menace and doomed romance, she old school ties, and family scandal—feels was a loyal favorite of filmmakers. Victorian, then so was Hitchcock. And Hitchcock adapted her works three if its concept—right down to a stripped- times, for JAMAICA INN, REBECCA, and to-the-waist shot of matinee idol IVOR THE BIRDS, although each experience was NOVELLO—seems calculatedly commer- quite different. His version of Jamaica Inn cial, then so, too, could be Hitchcock. changed the story (and neither she nor It is interesting, though, to see flashes of the director was pleased with the finished his favorite theme, GUILT, coupled with the film); his version of Rebecca was as faithful rarer one of self-sacrifice. (It happens very as the Hollywood CENSORS would allow rarely in Hitchcock films, and it’s almost (and was an enormous hit). The Birds, always a woman’s choice.) It’s a film full of meanwhile, was a more distant connection; dangerous and domineering women, as well. although she had written a short story of And visually, it shows both his skill with pure the same name about unexplained avian imagery (like THE RING, there are very few attacks, neither the setting of the movie’s title cards; like VERTIGO, the COLOR green story nor its characters are hers. signals danger; like SPELLBOUND, there is Her many other novels include French- an interesting hallucinatory sequence) and man’s Creek, My Cousin Rachel, and The his urge for concrete metaphor. (As Novel- Scapegoat, all made into films; in addition, lo’s status is slipping, we cut a little obviously she adapted Rebecca into a stage play, and to a subway escalator—headed down, of her short story “Don’t Look Now” served as course.) a springboard for the Nicolas Roeg movie. While not quite the follow-up to THE Hitchcock knew the du Mauriers, LODGER that both Novello and Hitchcock mostly through his admiration of Sir Ger- might have hoped—and GAINSBOR- ald, who appeared in LORD CAMBER’S OUGH PICTURES was counting on—it LADIES and served as the butt of several still pointed to greater triumphs to come, of the director’s typically rude practical at least for the filmmaker. Novello’s star, JOKES. (He once invited the man to a cos- sadly, was already slipping. tume party; when the actor arrived, decked out in face paint and kilt like some ancient References Scot, he found that the dress code was Mark Duguid, “Downhill,” BFI Scree- black tie.) Hitchcock’s relationship with nonline, http://www.screenonline.org. Daphne was more professional and less sat- uk/film/id/437747/index.html; Geoffrey isfying; producer DAVID O. SELZNICK’s Macnab, “Homme Fatal,” Guardian, Janu- insistence that not a word of Rebecca be 104 n DURGNAT, RAYMOND changed (a demand pushed hard by the 1941, http://www.unz.org/Pub/Saturday author, who had loathed Jamaica Inn) was Rev-1941nov29-00003. a particular thorn, and it’s hard not to think that her reappearance in the credits of The DURGNAT, RAYMOND Birds was simply a canny move by Hitch- (1932–2002) cock to associate a very unusual property Film writer and educator who moved with a best-selling name. between universities and film journals, Interestingly, du Maurier may not England and America. His many books have restricted her mysteries to her fic- on filmmakers and films include ones on tion; after the film Rebecca was released, a Greta Garbo, Samuel Fuller, and W. R.: Brazilian author came forward to say that Mysteries of the Organism. In 1974, he pub- du Maurier had lifted material from her lished The Strange Case of Alfred Hitchcock, own novel about a drab second wife, The at the time a rare and therefore important Successor; after du Maurier’s death, a his- bit of naysaying; the more laudatory A Long tory of her family also claimed that she was Hard Look at ‘Psycho’ came out almost 30 bisexual, a fact she had guiltily hid from years later. her homophobic father. Of course it is true Unafraid to be a lone voice in a profes- that, on the face of it, both The Successor sion often prey to consensus, Durgnat was and Rebecca owe their own large debt to a politically engaged man who still referred Jane Eyre and that, conveniently, the dead to Marxist theory as a “trap,” a devotee of are unable to bring lawsuits. It seems fitting great directors who nonetheless called the that, decades after her death at 81, Daphne AUTEUR THEORY “moth-eaten dogma.” du Maurier would still have a bit of mystery His writing could be full of insight and swirling around her, like the fog of Man- color (he was also a poet) but also meander derley. and sometimes seem willfully obscure. His first Hitchcock book made the References common critics’ mistake of reviewing other Rudy Behlmer, ed., Memo from David O. reviewers, attacking many of the films for Selznick (New York: Viking Press, 1972), not being what their most fervent support- 266–72; Peter J. Conradi, “The Fantasti- ers claimed them to be; his book on Psycho cal World of the du Mauriers,” Finan- was more on point and quite exhaustive but cial Times, March 1, 2013, http://www sadly arrived posthumously. Durgnat died .ft.com/cms/s/2/4d0dc798-7f6e-11e at age 69 in London. 2-97f6-00144feabdc0.html; “Jamaica Inn,” Irish Film Institute, http://issuu Reference .com/irishfilminstitute/docs/irish_film Kevin Gough-Yates, “Raymond Durg- _institute_march_2013; Harrison Smith, nat,” Guardian, May 20, 2002, http://www “Was ‘Rebecca’ Plagiarized?” Satur- .theguardian.com/news/2002/may/24/ day Review of Literature, November 29, guardianobituaries. E

EASY VIRTUE (GB 1928) back in horror from this woman of “easy virtue”; Larita agrees to a divorce so that Director: Alfred Hitchcock. John can marry a far more suitable young Screenplay: Eliot Stannard, based on the woman. play by Noel Coward. Producer: Sir Michael Balcon. To make a silent movie out of a Noel Cinematography: Claude L. McDonnell. Coward play seems a stubborn exercise Editor: Uncredited (Ivor Montagu). Cast: Isabel Jeans (Larita Filton), Frank- in futility—like making a statue out of a lin Dyall (Aubrey Filton), Robin Irvine symphony—but the 1924 comedy-drama (John Whittaker), Eric Bransby Williams had been a stage hit in both America (Claude), Violet Farebrother (John’s and London, and Hitchcock’s bosses at mother). GAINSBOROUGH were eager to adapt it Running Time: 94 minutes. Black and white. for the screen. Still, the screenplay heavily Released Through: Woolf and Freedman rewrites its source, beginning with a court- Film Service. room scene, proceeding to a flashback, and then cutting to the Riviera; only when the couple arrives back home in England Blamed for an artist’s suicide, unjustly does Coward’s original play begin in ear- accused of adultery, and divorced by her nest. And even then, only a brief exchange wealthy but disreputable husband, beautiful or two of dialogue makes its way into the but misunderstood Larita leaves England title cards, most of which were written by for the French Riviera to hopefully begin a Hitchcock. new life far away from the headlines. There, “It contained the worst title I’ve ever she swiftly meets, falls in love with, and written,” Hitchcock told FRANÇOIS marries John, a wealthy young man. But TRUFFAUT years later, referring to the he seems far less worldly than she, and so trial scene. “The photographers gather out- Larita keeps her past a secret. side. Eventually she appears at the court- The couple returns to England, where house STAIRS, her arms out, and says John introduces her to his family. His ‘Shoot, there’s nothing left to kill!’” immediately disapproving mother finds Although there are some more inven- Larita’s face vaguely familiar, though, tive moments in the film—such as a scene and she grows even more suspicious. in which we follow the dramatic progress Eventually, at a formal party, the truth is of a conversation solely by watching the revealed, and the hypocritical gentry draw face of the switchboard operator listening

n 105 106 n EASY VIRTUE

Rhonda Fleming, surrounded by eyes—a constant Hitchcockian symbol—on the dream-sequence set of Spellbound. United Artists/Photofest © United Artists in—and touches of those favorite themes References of GUILT and domineering MOTHERS, David Robinson, “When Hitchcock it felt, as DOWNHILL did, very much like Adapted Noel Coward,” Times, April 28, a work for hire. A financial failure, it was 1977, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/The the director’s last film for Gainsborough; he _Times_%2828/Apr/1977%29_-_When would now move on to BRITISH INTER- _Hitchcock_adapted_Noel_Coward; Don- NATIONAL PICTURES. The play was ald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life filmed again in 2008 as a rather more obvi- of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo ous comedy with Jessica Biel. Press, 1999), 98–101; François Truffaut, ELSTREE CALLING n 107

Hitchcock/Truffaut: Revised Edition (New ELSTREE CALLING (GB 1930) York: Touchstone, 1985), 51–52. Directors: Andre Charlot, Alfred Hitch- EDOUART, FARCIOT cock, Jack Hulbert, Paul Murray. (1894–1980) Screenplay: Adrien Brunel, Walter C. Mycroft, Val Valentine. California-born cinematographer whose Producer: John Maxwell. colorful Gallic name enlivened decades of Cinematography: Claude Friese-Greene. movie credits. The son of a portrait pho- Editor: Emile de Ruelle, A. C. Hammond. tographer, he began working as a studio Original Music: Sydney Baynes, Teddy cameraman while still in his teens. Brown, John Reynders, Idris Lewis. After serving in World War I (where Cast: Donald Calthrop, Gordon Harker, he briefly was attached to the camouflage Tommy Handley, Anna May Wong, as division), he returned to Hollywood, where themselves. he appropriately specialized in disguising Running Time: 86 minutes. Black and white. fantasy as reality. Edouart’s specialty was in Released Through: Wardour Films. rear projection, a process he helped pioneer and refine, in which live action and a projected background are combined. Although Britain’s first movie musical was actually a the results can seem crude today, particu- revue meant to compete with current Hol- larly if done on the cheap, Edouart had a lywood portmanteaus, such as Paramount light touch and a constant desire to push on Parade, stitching together an assortment things further; his refinements won him of comic sketches and songs within a loose 10 technical and scientific awards from the framework (in this case, a family frustrat- Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sci- ingly trying to tune into the broadcast on ences over his long career. their still-experimental television set). Occasionally called upon for science The directors were all currently under fiction films (the bold-for-their-time Dr. contract to BRITISH INTERNATIONAL Cyclops and When Worlds Collide), Edouart PICTURES; the performers are mostly was even more prized for his ability to lend music hall STARS of the period (apart a verisimilitude to epics like Lives of a Ben- from Anna May Wong, a refugee from gal Lancer and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Hollywood racism trying to capitalize on World. Still, perhaps his best work com- her recent British success in Piccadilly); bined reality and fantasy, daily life and the sketches, as suggested by the presence dreams—as in his work on Billy Wilder’s of CHAMPAGNE screenwriter Walter C. The Lost Weekend and Hitchcock’s VER- Mycroft, were mediocre at best. TIGO. He retired in 1974 after 52 years as Hitchcock’s own contribution is head of Paramount’s special effects depart- unclear. One source confidently cred- ment and died at 85 in Kenwood, CA. its him with directing the GORDON HARKER scenes (likely, as the two had References already worked on three other pictures “Farciot Edouart,” Film Reference, http:// together, including THE RING), others www.filmreference.com/Writers-and suggest he did the murder sketch as well -Production-Artists-De-Edo/Edouart and reshot some other scenes with DON- -Farciot.html; “Farciot Edouart,” IMDb, ALD CALTHROP, who’d just appeared in http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0249643/ BLACKMAIL. Yet another source suggests bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. he spent no more than a day on the set. 108 n EMERY, JOHN

Hitchcock’s take on the entire effort? References “Of no interest whatever,” he told FRAN- “John Emery,” IMDb, http://www.imdb ÇOIS TRUFFAUT. .com/name/nm0256305/bio?ref_=nm_ov _bio_sm; Alfred E. Twomey and Arthur F. References McClure, The Versatiles: Supporting Char- “First British Talkie Revue,” Yorkshire acter Players in the Cinema, 1930–1955 Post, February 11, 1930, http://the.hitch (New York: Castle Books, 1969), 90. cock.zone/wiki/Yorkshire_Post_%2811/ Feb/1930%29_-_First_British_Talkie ENGLISH COLONY _Review; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitch- Although British actors had been part cock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New of the Hollywood community since its York: HarperCollins, 2003), 132–33; Don- inception, with music hall comics from ald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life Charlie Chaplin to Stan Laurel finding a of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo happy home in silent comedies, the talkies Press, 1999), 122–23; François Truffaut, brought an insatiable need for people who Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: could handle dialogue—which meant, for Touchstone, 1985), 69. gangster pictures and snappy comedies, an influx of New Yorkers and, for period EMERY, JOHN (1905–1964) pictures and romances, a veritable British The son of two theater actors, Emery invasion of Los Angeles. excelled at playing charming, romantic, but “Of recent years the English set in almost inevitably undependable gentlemen. Hollywood has become an established A skilled Shakespearean on the Broadway thing,” an Australian newspaper reported stage, in Hollywood he became a sort of back to its readers in 1937. “They have second-string John Barrymore (who had formed their own cricket club, polo teams, befriended him early in his career) and tennis club and golf club. They hunt made his film debut in James Whale’s The together, play together, swim together—all Road Back in 1937. united by the common bond—loyalty to For Alfred Hitchcock, Emery would the Union Jack.” be the suspicious Dr. Fleurot in SPELL- It was a clubby group and could be an BOUND and, years later, a worm who exceedingly insular and judgmental one, turned in “Servant Problem,” an episode and when the Hitchcocks arrived in Amer- of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS; ica in 1939, they did not feel compelled in between his other jobs included vari- to join. (DONALD SPOTO goes further, ous parts on TV’s I Love Lucy, playing suggesting they felt snubbed by the expats; Vincent Price’s theatrical nemesis in PATRICK MCGILLIGAN, however, dis- The Mad Magician, and spearheading agrees and insists they mixed easily when the scientific mission of Rocketship X-M. they cared to.) Hitchcock did draw on His most dramatic role, however, was its members, though, for REBECCA—C. undoubtedly surviving four years as TAL- AUBREY SMITH, Col. Julyan in that film, LULAH BANKHEAD’s husband. “It was was pretty much the colony’s grand old like the rise, decline and fall of the Roman man—and many of the supporting actors Empire,” he observed later with typical in that film and in Hitchcock films to come cool humor. He died in New York at 59 (LEO G. CARROLL, NIGEL BRUCE) came of cancer. from its ranks as well. EVELYN, JUDITH n 109

After the war, the colony began to dis- Reference sipate, dispersed by a new wave of inter- “Historical Overview,” Beethoven’s Eroica, national productions and ignored by a http://www.beethovenseroica.com/Pg2 new generation of angry young men and _hist/history.html. women. It is lampooned (along with the American funeral industry) quite brilliantly ESMOND, JILL (1908–1990) by Evelyn Waugh in his novel The Loved London-born child of two actors who would One; he was obviously taking notes during end up following them onstage after some his 1947 trip to Hollywood to discuss the training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic adaptation of Brideshead Revisited. (Wisely, Arts. By the late ’20s, she was an established Waugh accepted MGM’s lavish hospitality actress, with successes both on the West End but denied them the book rights.) and on Broadway, and a cultured and elegant persona. In 1930, she married LAURENCE References OLIVIER, who was then still trying to find “The English Colony in Hollywood,” Syd- fame as an actor but was a very persistent ney Morning Herald, March 2, 1937, http:// suitor; the next year she made her film debut trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/17348532; in Hitchcock’s THE SKIN GAME, another of Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life the director’s early-career stage adaptations, in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- playing the member of a respectable upper- erCollins, 2003), 243–44; Donald Spoto, class family (which is, nonetheless, willing to The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred consider blackmail when necessary). Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, Esmond dialed back her own career as 1999), 210, 216. Olivier’s grew, a decision she would regret when he began an affair with Vivien Leigh; EROICA although Esmond named Leigh in the 1940 Beethoven’s Symphony no. 3, at first dedi- divorce, she rarely spoke about the split cated to Napoleon, whom the composer saw afterward and resumed working, although as heroically spreading the ideals of liberty; her moment had passed. Her last film was he was, when the French leader declared A Man Called Peter in 1955; she died at 82 himself emperor, to violently change his in London, having survived Olivier by one opinion. An old 78 record of the work fig- year. She never remarried. ures in PSYCHO, discovered by Lila Crane in Norman Bates’s cluttered bedroom, References where it both suggests the disordered state Burt A. Folkart, “Jill Esmond: Actress and of Norman’s mind (classical records jock- Former Wife of Olivier,” Los Angeles Times, eying for space with stuffed animals) and August 1, 1990, http://articles.latimes suggests—like the mysterious privately .com/1990-08-01/news/mn-1554_1_jill bound hardcover she finds—“erotica” as -esmond; “Jill Esmond,” IMDb, http://www well. It is one of the few classical compo- .imdb.com/name/nm0260728; Donald sitions to be directly referenced in Hitch- Spoto, Laurence Olivier: A Biography (New cock’s films; the other, Richard Wagner’s York: Harper Paperbacks, 1993), 83–84, 173. Tristan und Isolde, shows up as a record album in Annie’s home in THE BIRDS and EVELYN, JUDITH (1909–1967) is clearly a musical inspiration for BER- Born in Seneca, SD, she made her Broad- NARD HERRMANN’s score for VERTIGO. way debut two days before Pearl Harbor in 110 n EXPRESSIONISM the thriller Angel Street. She would go on to Expressionism soon found fertile work regularly on the stage and quite busily ground in the new art of cinema; The Cabi- in television, although her parts in movies net of Dr. Caligari, made in 1920, is gener- were generally small. ally considered the best early example, with Interestingly, her two most famous its cockeyed sets, painted shadows, and movie roles were silent. In REAR WIN- mentally unstable narrator. DOW, she was Miss Lonelyhearts, the The movement was a strong, early depressed single woman across the court- influence on Hitchcock, who by the mid- yard from JAMES STEWART; in The ’20s had been sent by SIR MICHAEL Tingler, she was Mrs. Higgins, the deaf- BALCON to helm several joint produc- mute wife of the theater owner who is tions in Germany. Always an alert and given a memorable (and, to fans of LES eager student, Hitchcock would observe DIABOLIQUES, familiar) bathroom scare. firsthand what filmmakers like F. W. Evelyn appeared in two episodes of MURNAU were doing—he even watched ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, as him on the set of The Last Laugh—and well as many other TV anthologies, but her incorporate it into his own work. Like oddest brush with history came in 1939, them, he would develop a determination when she and her father were sailing from to dramatize how people’s lives could be Europe to Canada aboard the Athena; it caught up in large and faceless forces and was torpedoed in the Irish Sea by a Ger- an urge to express those emotional states man U-boat. It was the first submarine in purely visual yet not necessarily realis- attack of the war, and all but six passengers tic ways. drowned, her father among them. “THE LODGER is the first picture Evelyn died in New York of cancer possibly influenced by my period in Ger- at 58. many,” he reflected later, perhaps referring to its shots through transparent floors or References recurring close-ups of flashing neon signs. “Biography: Judith Evelyn,” TCM, But it was only the first picture. The shad- http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/person/ ows of German expressionism—the empty 58803|90572/Judith-Evelyn/biography cavernous sets of REBECCA, the distorted .html; “Judith Evelyn,” IMDb, http:// image of the murder in STRANGERS ON A www.imdb.com/name/nm0263393/ TRAIN, the dark romantic fatalism of VER- bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. TIGO—would fall over Hitchcock’s work for decades to come. EXPRESSIONISM Twentieth-century artistic movement that References rejected many of the realist tendencies in Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: art, literature, and dance, often using exag- A Psychological History of the German Film geration, symbolism, and deliberately fan- (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, tastic effects to evoke a mood of mental 2004), 68–75; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred anguish and emotional despair. Although Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light international in nature, it was especially (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 63–64; strong in Germany between the wars, where Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: anxious artists were particularly attuned to The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da a coming age of dehumanization. Capo Press, 1999), 67–71. EYE n 111

EYE WINDOW, it’s cartoonishly emphasized, People watching people watching other absurdly exaggerated into the giant lens of people—this is the hall of mirrors that a a camera—like some monstrous phallus bal- Hitchcock film can become, as cinema audi- anced carefully on Jeff’s knee as he stares out ences (who are, by definition, paying VOY- of his own window and into other rooms, EURS) are lured into stories about spies, other lives. peeping toms, and stalking serial killers. And in PSYCHO, another film about The plot device of sweaty-palmed voy- looking, the eyes are everywhere—in the eurism and the artist’s choice of the piti- sudden suspicious glance Marion gets lessly appraising MALE GAZE occur again as she drives out of town with the stolen and again in these films, but both find their money, in the large-lashed gaze Norman symbol in the human eye. turns on her as she undresses, and in Mari- In STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, it’s sym- on’s own final unblinking stare, as sightless bolized in the glasses that Miriam whips off, as those of the stuffed birds on Norman’s flirtatiously, before her murder—not only walls or the hollows in Mrs. Bates’s skull. showing her own blindness to the coming Yes, in Hitchcock’s world, the eye is danger but also then giving us a distorted the window to the soul—but that soul is view of Bruno’s own twisted world. In REAR often a very dark and sunless place, indeed. AF

FAMILY PLOT (US 1976) glamorous lover Fran, is collecting a small fortune in ransoms, which he demands be Director: Alfred Hitchcock. paid in jewels. Screenplay: Ernest Lehman, based on The Realizing he’s being investigated and Rainbird Pattern by Victor Canning. assuming the worst, Adamson has a con- Producer: Uncredited (Alfred Hitchcock). federate try to kill Blanche and George by Cinematography: Leonard J. South. sabotaging their car’s brakes. It doesn’t Editor: J. Terry Williams. Original Music: John Williams. work, though, and eventually Blanche Cast: Karen Black (Fran), Bruce Dern goes to Arthur’s home to tell him about (George Lumley), William Devane the inheritance—except she spies his lat- (Arthur Adamson), Barbara Harris est kidnapping victim. Arthur decides (Blanche Tyler), Cathleen Nesbitt (Julia to kill Blanche, but George arrives and Rainbird). helps lock the criminals up and calls the Running Time: 121 minutes. Color. police—while Blanche finds the glittering Released Through: Universal. ransom.

Family Plot ends with Blanche winking Blanche makes a modest living running at the audience—which, in a way, is very séances and giving psychic readings for much how Hitchcock ended his career. gullible clients, her insights helped along Although he hoped otherwise at the time, occasionally by information from cab- this was the director’s last film—and, like driver boyfriend (and would-be actor) the final works of many great artists, from George, who sometimes plays private Shakespeare on, it is one of light fantasy detective. One day, instead of her usual and forgiveness. Although there is murder “sardines,” however, Blanche hooks a in its backstory, it is one of the least vio- whale—Mrs. Rainbird, an elderly mil- lent of Hitchcock’s films (and a stark con- lionaire who wants to find a long-missing, trast to his previous one, FRENZY); it ends given-up-for-adoption heir. with its desperate criminals locked in their George and Blanche go on the case, own cozy cell, the police on the way, and a but what they don’t realize is that the heir nice fat reward due to be paid. No wonder doesn’t want to be found—he long ago Blanche is so happy. murdered his adoptive parents, changed The story—adapted by ERNEST his name to Arthur Adamson, and is now LEHMAN, who knew Hitchcock’s tastes a high-stakes kidnapper who, with his well, having written NORTH BY NORTH-

112 n FAMILY PLOT n 113

Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine in Suspicion. The actress’s second film with the director, it won her the Oscar. RKO Radio Pictures/Photofest © RKO Radio Pictures

WEST and worked with him on NO BAIL a nicely arbitrary bit of narrative misdi- FOR THE JUDGE—touches lightly on rection—as when, having lulled us into favorite Hitchcock themes and devices. thinking this is a story about a daffy Blithe There are, for example, the mismatched/ Spirit medium, Hitchcock has George mirrored couples—the clumsy investiga- and Blanche drive past Fran, a mysterious tors George and Blanche versus the cool femme fatale in dark glasses, and abruptly criminals Arthur and Fran. There is also has the camera leave them and follow her 114 n FAMILY PLOT story instead. (It’s like the bait-and-switch for Arthur, Roy Scheider; instead Hitch- plotting of PSYCHO—although done, as cock got BRUCE DERN and WILLIAM so much of this film is, in good fun.) And DEVANE. (KAREN BLACK was a differ- there’s a lovely example of MONTAGE, in ent sort of compromise; only by casting which—cutting almost exclusively between a “name” as Fran would the studio allow a two-shot of George and Blanche in their Hitchcock to cast the lesser-known BAR- car and point-of-view shots of what they BARA HARRIS, whom he really wanted, as see through the windshield—Hitchcock Blanche.) constructs a both minimally designed yet Yet the casting works. The mischie- deliberately comical over-the-top scene of vous, elfin Harris steals the movie as the their car speeding out of control on a steep delightful Blanche, and Devane (who mountain road. replaced the unsatisfactory Roy Thinnes Yet for a director so obsessed with after filming had already begun) is very GUILT—and a story about murder, kid- good as the slickly villainous Arthur. Black napping, and fraud—Family Plot is, ulti- is an interesting figure in her wig and mately, a film about forgiveness. Mrs. glasses, and Dern is certainly more believ- Rainbird wants to forgive herself and bring ably helpless than Nicholson would have her heir back into the family; Blanche and been. In a way, the absence of stars actually George need to accept each other for the helps the film—it feels more casual, more flawed people they are. Only by forget- improvisational, more friendly. ting their past can they move on with their More, well, forgiving. futures. Hitchcock always intended the References film to be a bit of a romp and pushed Karen Black, interview with the author, for that from preproduction (when he July 1995; Bruce Dern, interview with the urged Lehman to play things for com- author, November 2014; Greg Garrett, edy) through post- (when he encouraged “Hitchcock’s Women on Hitchcock,” composer JOHN WILLIAMS, with whom Literature Film Quarterly (Spring 1999), he had not worked before, to have fun http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Litera with the score). That mood is sometimes ture_Film_Quarterly_%281999%29_-_ overstressed. The image of George as a Hitchcock%27s_women_on_Hitchcock; pseudo–Sherlock Holmes (complete with Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A pipe) is awfully obvious; the harpsichord Life in Darkness and Light (New York: in Williams’s music says “whimsical” a HarperCollins, 2003), 725–29; Robrt L. little too loudly. Sadly, the film—much of Pela, “Barbara Harris Knew Bill Clin- it shot on the UNIVERSAL backlot—also ton Was White Trash,” Phoenix New has a cheap, sort of second-string look, Times, October 24, 2002, http://www with some poor process shots (using a new .phoenixnewtimes.com/arts/barbara optical process the studio pushed Hitch- -harris-knew-bill-clinton-was-white cock to use). -trash-6410220; Donald Spoto, The Dark And, admittedly, the casting has a bit Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitch- of a budget look to it, too, especially mea- cock (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), sured against the director’s usual STAR- 527–38; François Truffaut, Hitchcock/ conscious demands. Initial thoughts, for Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, George, had included Jack Nicholson and, 1985), 339–42. FETISHES n 115

THE FARMER’S WIFE (GB 1928) familiar and congenial colleagues largely from BRITISH INTERNATIONAL PIC- Director: Alfred Hitchcock. TURES. (Stannard is credited with eight Screenplay: Eliot Stannard, based on the Hitchcock screenplays; LILLIAN HALL- play by Eden Phillpotts. DAVIS and GORDON HARKER had Producer: John Maxwell. been in THE RING and would soon appear Cinematography: Jack E. Cox. Editor: Uncredited (Alfred Booth). in CHAMPAGNE, and both Harker and Cast: Jameson Thomas (Samuel Sweetland), JAMESON THOMAS would return for Lillian Hall-Davis (Araminta Dench), the revue ELSTREE CALLING.) Afterward, Gordon Harker (Churdles Ash). Hitchcock celebrated the end of the shoot Running Time: 129 minutes. Black and white. by hosting a lavish dinner for the cast (at Released Through: Wardour Films. which, in one of his practical JOKES, the waiters had been instructed to be as rude and clumsy as possible). Recently widowed and with his grown The film opened to good reviews, daughter now married and moved away, although only a few years later, Hitchcock prosperous farmer Samuel Sweetland would look back on it a little sadly, not- decides to remarry and, with the help of ing that Thomas had to leave his career his servants Ash and Minta, comes up with to take care of his dying wife and that a list of local “eligibles.” Unfortunately, costar Hall-Davis, who had an “acute his courting skills are rusty, and he meets inferiority complex,” had recently passed with one disaster after another—with under “tragic circumstances.” (She had, one woman too neurotic, another unin- in fact, cut her throat and stuck her head terested, and a third rejecting him as too in the gas oven.) For one of his most old. Returning home, though, Sweetland lighthearted films touched with physical suddenly sees Minta not just as his faith- comedy, it would always carry some grim ful housekeeper but also as a warm and memories. sympathetic soul. He proposes, and she accepts—much to the anger of one of References the women who rejected him who’s now Charles Barr, English Hitchcock (Petaluma, decided perhaps he’s not too old after all. CA: Cameron Books, 2002), 52–53; Alfred Hitchcock, “My Screen Memories,” Film Hitchcock did several play adaptations dur- Weekly (March 1936), http://the.hitchcock ing the early part of his career and several .zone/wiki/Film_Weekly_%281936%29 comedies, but The Farmer’s Wife is perhaps _-_My_Screen_Memories. the most successful. Although some of its interior scenes are staged a little flatly and FETISHES ELIOT STANNARD’s adaptation depends “Being tied to something,” Hitchcock said too heavily on titles, the film moves to FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT, as their epic quickly, and there is some lovely location INTERVIEW turned to the handcuffed shooting in the English countryside. hero in THE LODGER. “It’s somewhere in And while the shoot itself wasn’t the area of fetishism, isn’t it?” particularly smooth—at one point the “I don’t know, but I have noticed that cameraman took ill and Hitchcock had handcuffs have a way of recurring in your to take over—at least it was all done with movies,” Truffaut replied a little cluelessly. 116 n FETISHES

They got off the subject then, talking linger on bare, vulnerable legs—the vaca- about photographs of arrested suspects, tioners dawdling in their hotel room in but Hitchcock tried to bring it back later. THE LADY VANISHES, the terrified hon- “There’s also a SEXUAL connotation, I eymooner in Marnie, Margot’s writhing think,” he says. “When I visited the Vice limbs in DIAL M FOR MURDER. Taken Museum in Paris I noticed there was con- together, it indicates perhaps an obsession siderable evidence of sexual aberrations not so much with women’s bodies or even through restraint. You should go there women themselves as with innocence— sometime.” rare, precious, and easily lost. But instead of exploring this, Moving beyond the fetishization of Truffaut—often more prize student than objects to actual practices, Hitchcock films probing interviewer—brings up the title of examine several distinct sexual perversions. an obscure F. W. MURNAU project before The first, of course, is VOYEURISM, which dropping the topic completely. Too bad. deserves its own entry, and occurs in many Of course, as Truffaut also rightly— Hitchcock films, most famously REAR obviously—observed earlier, handcuffs are WINDOW. But then voyeurism is part and the “most concrete—the most immedi- parcel of the art itself, the essential act from ate—symbol of the loss of freedom.” And which cinema springs: A filmmaker takes in many Hitchcock films, that symbol is pictures of people in intimate situations; sometimes visual (the various heroes and then we sit in a theater and watch them. heroines linked together by a pair of police Born in the “peepshows” where the earliest, bracelets) and sometimes invisible (the crudest movies lived, the passive fetish of heroes and heroines chained to domineer- watching actively binds audience and direc- ing females, debts, duty, or dead parents). tor together—yet another reason it is, per- But yes, there’s another connotation too, haps, the most common fetish of all. to handcuffs—to willing BONDAGE—and Alternatively, one of the least common Hitchcock was clearly aware of it. fetishes in real life (but, given Hitchcock’s The “area of fetishism” is one that preferred genre, one of the most frequent many Hitchcock films travel in, beginning in his films) is hybristophilia, in which the with his own, not uncommon, fetish for fetishist is sexually attracted to criminals. BLONDES. Fair-haired women appear in In many of his films, this is treated lightly— many of his movies, sometimes as victims, for example, in the chase films (THE 39 sometimes as femmes fatales, and often STEPS, SABOTEUR), in which the woman as some shifting combination of the two, has a love-hate attraction for the suspicious although it seems the women who deceive man on the run, or the caper films (Family with hair dye or wigs (VERTIGO, MARNIE, Plot, TO CATCH A THIEF), in which the FAMILY PLOT) are always the least wor- bad-boy criminal exerts a certain sexual thy of the hero’s trust and the most likely to fascination. find unhappiness. In the pitch-dark Marnie, though, the The typical male’s fetish for breasts core of the film is, as Hitchcock frankly and buttocks is not one Hitchcock movies told Truffaut in ’62, the “fetish idea. A man indulge in, however; in fact, his heroines wants to go to bed with a thief because she tend to have pleasant but relatively unre- is a thief, just like other men have a yen for markable figures, with voluptuousness a Chinese or a colored woman. Unfortu- (Vertigo, PSYCHO) somehow equated with nately this concept doesn’t come across on sin and deceit. His camera, though, will screen. . . . To put it bluntly, we’d have to FILM NOIR n 117 have SEAN CONNERY catching the girl erotic obsessions he put onscreen, the one robbing the safe and show that he felt like that grows only more disturbing over time. jumping at her and raping her on the spot.” That specific scene was discarded but References only because Hitchcock feared the audi- Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life ence wouldn’t believe it. But it was only the in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- criticism of THE PLAUSIBLES he feared, erCollins, 2003), 636–37; Donald Spoto, not the risk of depicting (even justifying) a The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred sexual assault; he was quite insistent that Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, Marnie include Mark raping his bride on 1999), 411–12; François Truffaut, Hitch- their honeymoon in an attempt to “cure” her cock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Touch- of her frigidity. He was so insistent on this stone, 1985), 47, 301. fact—carefully going over the scene, close-up by close-up in preproduction—that, when THE FIGHTING GENERATION screenwriter EVAN HUNTER objected to it, (US 1944) Hitchcock had him replaced with JAY PRES- SON ALLEN, a novice screenwriter and per- Director: Uncredited. haps one more easily led. Screenplay: Stephen Longstreet. Rape is, of course, not just a vicious Producer: David O. Selznick. Cinematography: Uncredited. crime but a fetish as well, and it is one that Editor: Uncredited. Hitchcock began trying to include explic- Original Music: Uncredited. itly in his films in the ’50s. His NO BAIL Cast: Jennifer Jones (Nurse). FOR THE JUDGE, slated for 1958, was to Running Time: 2 minutes. Black and white. contain a rape scene, but Audrey Hep- Released Through: RKO. burn turned it down, and the picture was shelved; the shower murder in Psycho and the final avian attack in THE BIRDS are at the very least symbolic sexual assaults. And Very brief short, set in a hospital, made to even the real marital rape in Marnie did not encourage the purchase of war bonds. It exorcise this obsession; it occurs several was shot in one day at RKO. No director is times, once with grisly detail in FRENZY, credited, but some sources suggest Hitch- while another sexual assault figures in his cock supervised the filming; the fact that it last, long-developed, and finally abandoned stars Jennifer Jones, still married to ROB- project THE SHORT NIGHT. ERT WALKER but already the pampered Whether the newly literal emphasis obsession of Hitchcock’s boss, DAVID O. on sexual violence was a function of just SELZNICK, bolsters the case. a lessening of cinematic CENSORSHIP or a deeply personal response from the Reference filmmaker—and it is noteworthy that the “The Fighting Generation,” IMDb, scenes began roughly after the ending of his http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375299/ working relationship with GRACE KELLY companycredits?ref_=ttfc_ql_5. and gained feverish heat during his tempestuous partnership with TIPPI HEDREN— FILM NOIR is something for the psychiatrists and biog- An attitude more than a genre or even a style, raphers to argue over. But it is the darkest film noir refers to a group of movies—chiefly part of Hitchcock’s work and, of all the American but also British and French and 118 n FINCH, JON filling the years between 1940 and 1960—in and unhappy climaxes. Still, his themes of which the plot generally revolves around a an ordinary man accidentally caught up in crime and the overwhelming mood is one of strange conspiracies—FOREIGN CORRE- weary fatalism. SPONDENT, SABOTEUR—are definitely Yet even given its rather broad bound- ones that fit into noir. So is the character aries, noir has certain visual totems, arche- of the smiling and socially respected villain types, and traditional settings. The dramas who may be a Nazi or—in SHADOW OF A usually unfold in a big city (whether the DOUBT or STRANGERS ON A TRAIN—a film is shot on an expressionistically altered murderous psychopath. backlot or realistically caught location). But if Hitchcock is not immediately There is a woman who can’t be trusted to tagged—as FRITZ LANG is—as a noir do the right thing and a man who generally, director, then it may be because he only albeit reluctantly, will. There are trench began to truly embrace its despairing atti- coats and cigarettes and rain that never tude in the late ’50s; as other filmmakers washes anything away. were moving on, his movies were grow- Mostly, though, there’s a feeling of ing darker. The idea of getting a sudden, tough truths—of a hero who’s suddenly unwelcome look at “the works”—isn’t that jolted awake. “He felt like somebody had at the heart of THE WRONG MAN, in taken the lid off life and let him see the which, through nothing more than hap- works,” Dashiell Hammett wrote of a trau- penstance and coincidence, an innocent is matized character in The Maltese Falcon in plunged into the hell of the justice system? 1930, and it’s that thought that all of movie And what is more noir than the inside-out noir would spring from a decade later— reversals of VERTIGO, in which the private that there’s an unseen and ugly world detective is revealed to have been a dupe, around us, controlling us, and all it takes is his dream woman turns out to be just one happenstance act, one missed TRAIN, that—and all he can do at the end is stand one turn down the wrong alley, to bring it impotently, literally at the edge of nothing? out. For—settings, style, and stereotypes There is classic western noir (Raoul aside—if noir is a feeling that the bottom Walsh’s Pursued, Robert Wise’s Blood on can drop out beneath your feet at any the Moon) and modern sci-fi noir (Ridley moment, then that is a road that most of Scott’s Blade Runner, the Wachowskis’ Hitchcock’s heroes walk. The Matrix), but the crime dramas of the ’40s and early ’50s account for most of the References best of the genre while mirroring a real and Dashiell Hammett, The Novels of Dashiell continually growing feeling in America that Hammett: The Maltese Falcon (New York: life had become unstable and unpredictable Knopf, 1965), 335; Alain Silver, Elizabeth (but only perhaps because unseen powers M. Ward, James Ursini, Robert Porfirio, were at work). eds., The Film Noir Encyclopedia (New It is not a style that Hitchcock is auto- York: Overlook Press, 2010), 1–6. matically associated with, perhaps because it lived most fully among the studios’ FINCH, JON (1942–2012) B-movie productions; Hitchcock long had The son of an investment banker, Finch a naturally commercial preference for big was born into privilege in Surrey and won STARS, plush sets, and neatly resolved a place at the London School of Econom- endings over gritty actors, bleak cityscapes, ics but had already discovered amateur FLEMING, RHONDA n 119 theatricals and folk singing and decided to of his life, causing him to drop out of Rid- try performing instead. After military ser- ley Scott’s Alien as the unlucky astronaut vice—including some time in the reserves who becomes the creature’s first host; John of Britain’s hardened special forces—he Hurt replaced him in the role. Much of turned to acting full time, with TV spots on Finch’s subsequent work was in cheap for- the popular shows Crossroads and Z-Cars. eign thrillers, although decades after Alien By 1970, the handsome leading man had Scott would give him a small part in 2005’s made his movie debut thanks to Hammer, Kingdom of Heaven. It would be Finch’s last with parts in two of their period horrors, screen appearance. The Vampire Lovers and the somewhat His body was found in his flat in Hast- campy The Horror of Frankenstein; the next ings after friends and family had not heard year brought Sunday Bloody Sunday and from him in some time. He was 70. Roman Polanski’s controversial Macbeth, with Finch in the title role. References After briefly considering David Hem- Ronald Bergan, “Jon Finch Obituary,” mings, Hitchcock cast Finch in FRENZY Guardian, January 13, 2013, http://www in 1972 as Richard Blaney, an ex-military .theguardian.com/film/2013/jan/13/ man with a taste for brandy and violent jon-finch; “Jon Finch,” IMDb, http:// confrontation; he is suspected of murder- www.imdb.com/name/nm0277424/ ing his wife (and soon a string of London bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; The Story women), and the curious and complicated of Frenzy, directed by Laurent Bou- thing about the film is that, even though he zereau (2001), documentary, http:// plays the hero, you feel under certain cir- the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/The_Story_of cumstances he might have done it; like In _Frenzy_%282001%29_-_transcript. a Lonely Place, it’s a film where, even exonerated, the protagonist remains far from FLAMINGO FEATHER innocent. A proposed adaptation of a Cold War Finch’s performance is intense but adventure novel by controversial South thanks to the script a little one-note; he African writer Laurens van der Post, this begins the film in an angry, argumentative got far along enough in preproduction in mood, and things only get quickly worse the mid-’50s for Hitchcock to approach (particularly on the set, where Hitchcock JAMES STEWART about playing the lead took an immediate dislike to him once he and even to travel to Africa to scout loca- dared question some dialogue). In any case, tions. But the logistics—and politics—were it was not the sort of movie made to earn discouraging, and the project was dropped. Finch many accolades; his decision to turn down Live and Let Die and become the next Reference Bond closed off another avenue. Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life Not that Finch seemed to care. “I never in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- wanted to be a big STAR,” he insisted once. Collins, 2003), 539–40. “I usually do one film a year, so I always have enough money to enjoy myself and FLEMING, RHONDA (1923– ) keep myself out of the public eye. It’s a very Flame-haired, porcelain-skinned performer pleasant life, not one of great ambition.” and that rare creature, a Hollywood native. In his 30s, Finch was diagnosed with She was discovered by an agent while still diabetes; his health was spotty for the rest in Beverly Hills High School and was doing 120 n FONDA, HENRY small parts in films (the sort billed as “Girl ures, he was, according to children Peter at Dance,” “Girl on Train”) almost imme- and Jane, a painfully distant father whose diately. emotional remoteness was broken only by SPELLBOUND finally gave her a char- bursts of anger. acter with a name, the violent and SEXU- At first interested in journalism, ALLY aggressive Mary Carmichael—who, Fonda turned to acting at the encourage- in raking her fingernails across an orderly’s ment of Marlon Brando’s mother, Dodie, a hand, will give the film its first instance of drama coach. Dropping out of college, he the parallel lines that so terrify John Bal- did summer stock in New England, where lantyne. (She shows up later in the film in he met lifelong friend JAMES STEWART; Ballantyne’s dream as the “kissing bug.”) the two men made their first forays on the The small but indelible part led to others, Broadway stage together and then Holly- particularly in the HITCHCOCKIAN The wood (where for a while they were room- Spiral Staircase and the classic FILM NOIR mates). Tall, lean, and handsome, Fonda Out of the Past. found success early on film. He is haunted The growing popularity of Technicolor (and hunted) as the fugitive in You Only brought new opportunities for the vibrant Live Once, memorable as a slowly falling- redhead; she was a particularly popular out-of-love suitor in Jezebel, but it was choice for westerns, period pieces, and 3-D as Tom Joad—the rootless Okie-turned- extravaganzas. By the 1960s, she was doing Christ-figure at the heart of The Grapes of mostly TV work; her last “major” film was Wrath—that he became an indelible and The Nude Bomb in 1980. Over the years, richly silent American icon, a wealth of bit- Fleming also pursued a singing career, back righteous anger in every “hmm” and charity work, and—despite being married “well.” six times at last count—“Project Prayer,” a “I am not a very interesting person,” morality crusade to return God to public he insisted later in life. “I haven’t ever schools. done anything except be other people. I ain’t really Henry Fonda! Nobody could References be. Nobody could have that much integ- “Biography,” Rhonda Fleming, http:// rity.” Still, it was a persona that fit Fonda www.rhondafleming.com; Drew Pear- well—the mostly stoic, intensely stubborn, son, Washington Merry-Go-Round, May highly decent man who did the difficult 14, 1964, http://dspace.wrlc.org/doc/bit thing without much fuss or furor; even his stream/2041/50658/b18f14-0514zdisplay small-minded martinet in Fort Apache is .pdf; “Rhonda Fleming,” IMDb, http:// an upright man convinced of the correct- www.imdb.com/name/nm0281766/ ness of his cause. Yet although Fonda could bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. occasionally use that stiffness well in comedy (as in The Lady Eve), he did not project FONDA, HENRY (1905–1982) much sex appeal; there was something too Nebraska-born performer who, like many unbending in him, too uncompromising. actors, contained interesting contradic- He could play the perfect, naïve butt of a tions. While exuding the unsophisticated worldly heroine’s JOKES (Barbara Stan- American Midwest, he was from a Geno- wyck and Lucille Ball would delightedly vese clan that, by way of the Netherlands, dance rings around him), but he was ill- had been in America since colonial days. suited for the give and take of glossy movie Often playing sympathetic paternal fig- romances. FONTAINE, JOAN n 121

This made him a poor choice for References the usual Hitchcock hero but the perfect “Henry Fonda,” Biography, http:// embodiment of Manny Balestero in THE www.biography.com/people/henry WRONG MAN, Manhattan’s dullest jazz -fonda-9297981; “Henry Fonda,” IMDb, musician, a man with the face of a starved http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000020/ saint and an early martyr’s capacity for suf- bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; David Thomson, fering. It was a character made for Fonda. The New Biographical Dictionary of Film Manny doesn’t need to display passion (New York: Knopf, 2002), 298–99. or even anger; what Manny has to do is endure, from the frustrating, increasingly FONTAINE, JOAN (1917–2013) Kafkaesque turns of the justice system British performer born in Tokyo and to, eventually, the madness and violence mostly raised in northern California, whose rained down on him by his own wife. It mother had been on the stage and whose is a bleak but perfectly calibrated perfor- elder sister, Olivia de Havilland, became an mance, marked more by quiet sadness immediate movie STAR at 19 with Captain than shocked surprise—even when his Blood. Fontaine was already on the stage at wife strikes him with a hairbrush—and the that point but discouraged by her mother, movie serves as a grim preparation for the who thought she would only distract peo- masculine despair his old friend Stewart ple from her sister’s success. (In fact, she would provide in VERTIGO. was told not to act under the de Havilland Fonda, who had enlisted in World name.) War II and taken a long break from Hol- Dropped from her RKO contract lywood after, had a second surge on film in after several undistinguished years, Fon- the ’50s and ’60s. He repeated his Broadway taine later found herself in (or, some say, success in Mr. Roberts and was the voice of engineered) a dinner-party seat next to sanity in 12 Angry Men; he embodied an DAVID O. SELZNICK, then trying to cast idealist’s view of American politicians in REBECCA (and engender some of the same Advise and Consent, The Best Man, and Fail publicity his talent search for Gone with the Safe, adding to his image of staunch moral- Wind had brought). Fontaine pushed for ity and quiet self-sacrifice. Much against his the part and underwent a half-year’s worth instincts, he agreed to put all that aside to of auditions and screen tests before finally play Frank in Sergio Leone’s Once upon a securing it. Time in the West; as a child murderer with Hitchcock had not been an early ally— eyes as cold as a wintry lake, Fonda creates he thought the then-22-year-old too girlish not only one of the great western villains and much preferred Margaret Sullavan— but also one of the movie’s most memo- but eventually agreed with Selznick that her rable monsters. real-life uncertainty as an overshadowed It was perhaps his last great perfor- younger sister might be perfectly suited for mance, but typically, he won his only Oscar the film’s heroine, a shy bride who feels she for playing his most human and sentimental can’t live up to everyone’s memories of her one in On Golden Pond, in which he had sev- husband’s first wife. eral achingly personal scenes with his daugh- Yet it was Hitchcock’s genius—or per- ter, Jane, acting out the rapprochement on haps his cruelty—that, once he realized this screen they had never managed in life. connection, he played upon it. “He was a He died in Los Angeles at 77 of heart Svengali,” Fontaine remembered later. “He disease. wanted control over me and he seemed 122 n FOOD to relish the cast not liking one another. modern one in Rebecca—and lovely in . . . It kept him in command and it was 1948’s classic Letter from an Unknown part of the upheaval he wanted. He kept Woman, a project that she put together me off balance, much to his own delight. through her own company. On- and He would constantly tell me that nobody offscreen, she projected an air of intelli- thought I was any good except himself and gence, breeding, and quietly strong femi- that nobody really liked me.” nism. It was sadistic, but it was also useful; as Her film career was less vibrant in the Fontaine would also admit, “Of course this 1950s, although she appeared in a number helped my performance, as I was supposed of costume epics, including Ivanhoe (and, to be terrified of everyone, and it gave a lot as a winking favor to Welles, as a page in of tension to my scenes.” Fearing perhaps his Othello); she did considerable television that the young actress did not know how to (including an episode of ALFRED HITCH- play the character, Hitchcock deliberately COCK PRESENTS) and was working as late turned her into the character—uncertain, as the mid-’90s. awkward, full of self-doubt. It won her an She died at 96 in Carmel Highlands, Oscar nomination. CA—beating her sister to that life event, She was nominated again for her lead too, as she predicted. in her next picture for Hitchcock, SUSPI- CION. It was a curious honor—on the set, References Fontaine (who had been so bullied by the Rudy Behlmer, ed., Memo from David O. director on their last film) now complained Selznick (New York: Viking Press, 1972), that he paid no attention to her at all; her 281–84; Joan Fontaine, No Bed of Roses costar CARY GRANT, perhaps realizing (New York: William Morrow, 1978), 90, Fontaine had the dominant part, muttered 106–8; “Joan Fontaine,” Biography, http:// that she was upstaging him. (That the script www.biography.com/people/joan-fon was being constantly rewritten—and, after taine-20987191; “Joan Fontaine,” IMDb, a bad sneak preview, an entirely new end- http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000021/ ing shot—did not help matters.) And still, bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Donald Spoto, Fontaine won the Oscar for it—the only Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and one any performer ever took home for a His Leading Ladies (New York: Harmony Hitchcock film. Books, 2008), 90–99, 114. The victory established her as a Holly- wood star—and, because she’d defeated her FOOD sister, nominated that same year for Hold Eating certainly occupied a large part Back the Dawn, added insult to a sibling in Alfred Hitchcock’s life—as it would relationship that had never been warm and almost have to in anyone whose weight would grow only colder as they competed would occasionally push past 300 pounds. for parts. “I married first, won the Oscar Yet although his wife, ALMA REVILLE, before (she) did and if I die first, she’ll taught herself fine French cooking undoubtedly be livid because I beat her to (PATRICIA HITCHCOCK’s biography of it!” Fontaine cracked later. her mother includes recipes), he was often Fontaine is very good opposite Orson more gourmand than gourmet; those who Welles in the 1943 Jane Eyre—that Gothic dined with him often remarked about the heroine practically the archetype for the broiled steak at lunch, the Dover sole at FORD, WALLACE n 123 dinner, the meals that were as simple and behind the Man (New York: Berkeley unchanging as the rows of dark suits in his Trade, 2004), 226–54; Donald Spoto, The closet. Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred In “normal” life, food offers a respite Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, from our cares. In Hitchcock films, they 1999), 170, 267, 320. only remind us of them, where family meals become battlegrounds. In BLACK- FORD, WALLACE (1898–1966) MAIL, a conversation around the kitchen Bolton-born performer who was some- table turns into a symphony of GUILT and how separated from his parents as a child paranoia; in SHADOW OF A DOUBT, it and sent to an orphanage; he would pass leads Uncle Charlie to talk of the “swine” through 17 foster homes before being he moves among (and both exterminates adopted by a Canadian farmer, whom he and profits from, like any farmer). later claimed treated him as nothing more The more elegant the food, the more than free labor. Running away from that drastic the disappointment. In FRENZY, Winnipeg home at 11, he toured with a Chief Inspector Oxford tries to escape the kiddie vaudeville troupe, worked odd jobs, gruesomeness of the murder case by going and hitched rides on freight trains. (Born home to a family dinner; he longs for sau- Samuel Grundy, he later renamed himself sage and mash, but instead, his ambitious after a friend who was killed in a railway wife serves pretentious French swill full accident.) By his middle 20s, Ford was a of animal gristle and gelatinous sauces. In successful stage actor; when the talkies fact, as FRENZY suggests, the more loving a arrived in Hollywood, so did he. meal is meant to be in Hitchcock, the more His earliest screen appearances are in easily it can all go bad. The chicken dinners Freaks (where he’s one of the few sympa- that grow cold in NOTORIOUS as the lov- thetic “normal” characters) and in John ers quarrel, Lisa’s catered meal in REAR Ford’s The Informer. He would make a WINDOW that only strikes Jeff as too posh dozen more for Ford, as well as working and perfect, like her—these are meant to be steadily in everything from westerns to old- intimate, romantic suppers, and yet they dark-house horrors; for Hitchcock he plays only symbolize (or even spur on) the cou- MACDONALD CAREY’s camera-toting ple’s disharmony. partner in SHADOW OF A DOUBT and, Gluttony is indeed one of the seven in SPELLBOUND, the hotel-lobby lothario deadly sins—but in Hitchcock’s films, no who tries to pick up Dr. Peterson. When sensual pleasure goes unpunished, and his movie career began to slow down, like even the small delight one would take in many supporting actors, he made a profit- looking forward to a simple meal is bound able transition to TV. to end in punishment. After all, the gentle- He died at 68 of a heart attack in man in “LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER” Woodland Hills, CA. was probably looking forward to his dinner, too—until his wife clubbed him over References the head with it. “Wallace Ford,” Hollywood.com, http:// www.hollywood.com/celebrities/wallace References -ford-57304596; “Wallace Ford,” IMDb, Pat Hitchcock O’Connell and Laurent http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0285922/ Bouzereau, Alma Hitchcock: The Woman bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. 124 n FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT there. He privately tells Stephen Fisher, (US 1940) who tells him he will handle it. In fact, Fisher is working with the assassins—and Director: Alfred Hitchcock. they decide to hire a “bodyguard” for Jones Screenplay: Charles Bennett and Joan Har- who will, instead, eliminate him. Jones, rison, with additional dialogue by Rob- however, escapes the attempt (acciden- ert Benchley and James Hilton, based tally killing the assassin) and now realizes on the memoir Personal History by Vin- cent Sheean. that Fisher is a traitor. Working quickly, Producer: Walter Wanger. he finds Van Meer and confronts Fisher— Cinematography: Rudolph Mate. who was working without his daughter’s Editor: Dorothy Spencer. knowledge. All three are on a plane back to Original Music: Alfred Newman. America when it is shot down by the Ger- Cast: Joel McCrea (Johnny Jones), Laraine mans; Fisher gives up his life to save them. Day (Carol Fisher), Herbert Marshall Rescued by an American ship, Jones (Stephen Fisher), George Sanders (ffol- telephones his scoop to his editor and then, liott), Albert Bassermann (Van Meer), back in London, gives a radio broadcast Edmund Gwenn (Rowley), Eduardo warning Americans about the coming war. Ciannelli (Krug). Running Time: 120 minutes. Black and white. Hitchcock’s second movie in Hollywood, Released Through: United Artists. Foreign Correspondent, feels more like one of his mid-’30s British ones. Loaned out by DAVID O. SELZNICK Frustrated with the recycled government (who pocketed a hefty differential each press releases he’s getting from his foreign time he sent the director out to work for correspondents, the New York Globe’s edi- someone else), Hitchcock was given the tor decides to send a young police reporter assignment of making a film out of journal- overseas instead to bring a fresh eye to for- ist Vincent Sheean’s memoirs, which pro- eign coverage and, perhaps, uncover the ducer Walter Wanger had purchased five “crime” of world war that now seems to be years before. But it soon became clear that threatening Europe. there was not enough in the foreign corre- Unsophisticated and unprepared, spondent’s book to make a movie. Johnny Jones—who’s told to file under the Screenwriter CHARLES BENNETT more impressive name of Huntley Haver- (who had written six of Hitchcock’s Eng- stock—works quickly, soon meeting Ste- lish films, and was already in Hollywood) phen Fisher and his daughter Carol, who and Hitchcock’s longtime assistant JOAN head a major peace group, and the veteran HARRISON (who had already cowritten Dutch diplomat Van Meer. REBECCA and JAMAICA INN) then set When Van Meer is seemingly assassi- about to concoct a completely new adven- nated in front of his eyes, Jones chases after ture, albeit one that drew on favorite Hitch- the killer—only to discover that the murder cock touches. was that of a double and that Van Meer is So, as in THE 39 STEPS, there is an being held (and tortured) by foreign agents eminently respectable gentleman who turns who are trying to get him to give up essen- out to be a traitor; as in THE LADY VAN- tial government secrets. ISHES, there is a senior citizen entrusted Going to see the Fishers, Jones is with a potentially dangerous bit of infor- shocked to find one of the enemy agents mation about the secret clause in a peace FOREVER AND A DAY n 125 treaty. And as in THE MAN WHO KNEW NORTH BY NORTHWEST when the man TOO MUCH, there is some travelogue—in notices the crop duster is dusting crops this case, the studio-created Holland of pic- where there “ain’t no crops”). turesque windmills (one of which is signal- A few other scenes resonate, too. The ing to enemy aircraft by turning against the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used wind). For Hitchcock—and fans of his ear- against Van Meer—drugs, bright lights, con- lier work—it all must have felt a little cozy. stant music, sleep deprivation—were grim There was even a bit of added familiarity in then and seem particularly relevant today. the supporting cast, which included HER- The character of the avuncular working-class BERT MARSHALL (MURDER!) and, cast assassin, particularly as played by Gwenn, is against type as the nefarious “bodyguard,” also striking, adding a particularly GRA- EDMUND GWENN (THE SKIN GAME). HAM GREENE-ish touch to the narrative. The film is very much a light entertain- And then there is Hitchcock’s favor- ment but—as was often the case for Hitch- ite moment in the film, when—in a single cock when on loan-out to cheaper studios— shot from inside the cockpit—we see Jones’s not quite the STAR-driven A-production plane go crashing into the Atlantic and a tor- he had envisioned. (The director wanted rent of water come flooding in. It was done Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck for his with back projection, a rice-paper screen, leads; he had to settle for JOEL MCCREA and two tanks of water, and it was the sort and Laraine Day.) The script, meanwhile, of purely technical puzzle (and solution) that manages to be both overcomplicated (the often delighted the director—and occasion- ending is protracted, and the reporter ally helped distract him from a story that had character played by GEORGE SANDERS little to offer in either character or theme. largely superfluous) and simplistic, and the tacked-on scene—by an uncredited BEN References HECHT—of Jones’s final radio broadcast Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The feels like the hastily added propaganda it is Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo (although Joseph Goebbels, knowing good Press, 1999), 225–37; Jeff Stafford and John agitprop when he saw it, praised the antifas- M. Miller, “Foreign Correspondent,” TCM, cist film as a “masterpiece”). http://www.tcm.com/tcMdb/title/75400/ Yet beyond the film’s flaws and com- Foreign-Correspondent/articles.html. promises—many of them caused by it being reworked and rewritten during production FOREVER AND A DAY (US 1943) to try to keep up with current events—it’s full of strong HITCHCOCKIAN touches. Directors: Edmund Goulding, Sir Cedric There is, for example, the nice visual Hardwicke, Frank Lloyd, Victor Saville, moment when, fleeing across the roof Robert Stevenson, Herbert Wilcox, of the Hotel Europe, Jones accidentally Rene Clair. Screenplay: Charles Bennett, Alan Camp- breaks the building’s neon sign (turn- bell, Norman Corwin, C. S. Forester, ing its announcement into “Hot Europe,” Peter Godfrey, Jack Hartfield, Law- suggesting the flames to come). There’s rence Hazard, Sig Herzig, James Hilton, also the fake assassination, with the killer Michael Hogan, Christopher Isherwood, escaping into a sea of bobbing umbrellas, Emmet Lavery, W. P. Lipscomb, Gene and the moment when Jones notices the Lockhart, Frederick Lonsdale, Alice wrong-way windmill (a moment of dawn- Duer Miller, R. C. Sherriff, Donald ing comprehension echoed decades later in 126 n FORSYTHE, JOHN

Reference Ogden Stewart, John Van Druten, Clau- “Forever and a Day,” AFI Catalog of Fea- dine West, Keith Winter. ture Films, http://www.afi.com/members/ Producers: Edmund Goulding, Sir Cedric catalog/DetailView.aspx?s=&Movie=436. Hardwicke, Frank Lloyd, Victor Saville, Robert Stevenson, Herbert Wilcox, Rene Clair. FORSYTHE, JOHN (1918–2010) Cinematography: Uncredited. New Jersey–born, Brooklyn-raised per- Editor: Uncredited. former who exuded calm urbanity. The Original Music: Uncredited. son of a stockbroker, he handled the pub- Cast: Kent Smith (Gates Trimble Pomfret), Ruth Warrick (Lesley Trimble), Her- lic announcements at Ebbets Field for bert Marshall (Curate), C. Aubrey Smith the Brooklyn Dodgers, was a bit player at (Adm. Eustance Trimble), Edmund WARNER BROS., and then after the war Gwenn (Stubbs), Ray Milland (Lt. Bill returned to New York and the theater. The Trimble), Dame May Whitty (Lucy Trim- preppy Forsythe took classes at the Actors ble), Claude Rains (Ambrose Pomfret), Studio (where, he said later, “They called Charles Laughton (Bellamy), Brian me the Brooks Brothers bohemian”) and Aherne (Jim Trimble), Nigel Bruce (Maj. appeared on Broadway in All My Sons and Garrow), Gladys Cooper (Mrs. Barrin- Mister Roberts. Stage work and live TV kept ger), Robert Cummings (Ned Trimble), him based in New York, where he’d begun Sir Cedric Hardwicke (Mr. Dabb). to raise a family. Running Time: 104 minutes. Black and white. He joined the cast of Hitchcock’s THE Released Through: RKO. TROUBLE WITH HARRY in Vermont, where he played the free-spirited artist who wants to paint SHIRLEY MACLAINE in During World War II, American reporter the nude; he was pleasant but no more con- Gates Trimble Pomfret, assigned to war- vincing as an iconoclast onscreen than he’d torn London, decides to sell off the old been in the Actors Studio rehearsal spaces. family house; Lesley Trimble, a distant But Forsythe’s lovely speaking voice British relative, urges him not to and shares and distinguished looks kept him going some of the stories of the home and their on television, where he found a comfort- ancestors. able home, appearing on ALFRED HITCH- A film made for the Allied war effort COCK PRESENTS and THE ALFRED and for British morale with an almost HITCHCOCK HOUR. He would also absurd number of directors, writers, and return to work for the director on TOPAZ, STARS volunteering, the film unfolds playing the supporting part of an American as a long series of short flashbacks, and intelligence agent. most of the behind-the-camera talents (all His most profitable place remained the working separately on various segments) small screen, however, where he eventually went uncredited. Alfred Hitchcock was appeared in a string of series spanning a reportedly one of many contributors to half-century—Bachelor Father, The John the screenplay; although he was originally Forsythe Show, To Rome with Love, Char- supposed to be one of the directors as lie’s Angels, Dynasty, The Colbys, and The well, he withdrew due to a schedule con- Powers That Be. flict with SHADOW OF A DOUBT and He died of pneumonia at 92 in Santa was replaced by Rene Clair. Ynez, CA. “FOUR O’CLOCK” n 127

References TV and movie productions, including Smi- “John Forsythe,” IMDb, http://www.imdb ley’s People, A Woman Called Golda, and .com/name/nm0001234/bio?ref_=nm Maurice; and starred in several revivals of _ov_bio_sm; Claudia Luther, “John For- the Van der Valk series. sythe Dies at 92,” Los Angeles Times, April He died in Guildford at 74 of a heart 3, 2010, http://www.latimes.com/news/ attack. la-me-john-forsythe3-2010apr03-story .html#page=1. References “Barry Foster,” IMDb, http://www.imdb FOSTER, BARRY (1927–2002) .com/name/nm0287687/bio?ref_=nm_ov_ bio_sm; “Barry Foster,” Telegraph, Febru- Nottinghamshire-born performer who, ary 12, 2002, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ after a failed attempt at an advertising news/obituaries/1384538/Barry-Foster career, won a drama scholarship to the .html; The Story of Frenzy, directed by Central School of Speech and Drama Laurent Bouzereau (2001), documentary, (where he became friends with a young http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/The_Story Harold Pinter, then acting under the name _of_Frenzy_%282001%29_-_transcript. David Baron; Foster would later act in several of Pinter’s plays, while Pinter’s wife, VIVIEN MERCHANT, would appear with “FOUR O’CLOCK” Foster but share no scenes in FRENZY). (US; ORIGINALLY AIRED After graduation, Foster joined a traveling SEPTEMBER 30, 1957) repertory company, chiefly doing classics; he made his London stage debut in 1955. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Later, he would appear in the films The Screenplay: Frances Cockrell, from the Family Way, Robbery, and Twisted Nerve story by Cornell Woolrich. and have a TV hit in the British series Van Producers: Alfred Hitchcock, Joan Harrison. Cinematography: John L. Russell. der Valk. Editor: Edward W. Williams. “I’m neither very tall nor very short,” Original Music: Stanley Wilson. he said once, explaining his busy career. Cast: E. G. Marshall (Paul Steppe), Nancy “You can’t look at my face and say ‘he’s the Kelly (Fran Steppe), Richard Long (Dave). killer’ or ‘the guy next door,’ or ‘the mad Running Time: 60 minutes, with commer- scientist.’ All I’ve got is my curly hair— cials. Black and white. which everyone thinks is a wig anyway.” Originally Broadcast By: NBC. Hitchcock cast Foster in Frenzy after seeing him in Twisted Nerve, a sick psycho thriller (with, nonetheless, a standout score by BERNARD HERRMANN). It undoubt- A suspicious husband decides to plant a edly helped that the fair-haired actor time bomb to explode during one of the resembled Michael Caine, who had already afternoon trysts he assumes his wife is hav- turned down the Hitchcock film—but Fos- ing with her lover; surprised in the house ter gave his own fine performance, keeping by burglars, he’s left tied up, now forced to the character seesawing between icy villainy sit and watch the clock tick away. Perhaps and warm Cockney charm. the purest illustration of Hitchcock’s old After, Foster returned to the stage; definition of SUSPENSE VS. SURPRISE, notched good parts in a number of strong this was made as the debut episode of a 128 n FRENCH NEW WAVE new TV anthology program, SUSPICION, But if many of them had initially been on which longtime colleague JOAN HAR- inspired by Hitchcock, did they eventually RISON served as de facto producer. inspire him, as well? The distressingly flat, featureless world of Marion Crane’s Phoe- References nix wouldn’t be out of place in a Godard Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Com- film, while her abrupt departure from the plete Directory to Prime Time Network narrative is its own kind of deliberately TV Shows, 6th ed. (New York: Ballantine jarring jump cut. PSYCHO is not, in style Books, 1995), 1002; Jack Edmond Nolan, or subject, a new wave film. Yet it’s inter- “Hitchcock’s TV Films,” Film Fan Monthly esting to wonder if Hitchcock would have (June 1968), 3–6. attempted it had he not seen what the French critics who’d once knelt before him FRENCH NEW WAVE were now doing behind their own cameras. A self-proclaimed tsunami of artistic innovation, the rebellious nouvelle vague References generation drew its most famous early Dave Kehr, “Cahiers Back in the Day,” directors—Jean-Luc Godard, FRAN- Film Comment (September/October 2001), ÇOIS TRUFFAUT, ERIC ROHMER, and http://www.filmcomment.com/article/ CLAUDE CHABROL—from the ranks of cahiers-back-in-the-day; NewWaveFilm CAHIERS DU CINEMA’s most frequent .com, http://www.newwavefilm.com/new contributors. Truffaut, Rohmer, and Chab- -wave-cinema-guide/nouvelle-vague-where rol had all INTERVIEWED—and champi- -to-start.shtml. oned the work of—Alfred Hitchcock. Some would later explore his themes (e.g., the FRENZY (US 1972) DOUBLE, with Julie Christie playing two different mysterious BLONDES in Truf- Director: Alfred Hitchcock. faut’s Fahrenheit 451, Jean-Claude Brialy Screenplay: Anthony Shaffer, based on the novel Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leices- and Gerard Blain playing contrasting charter Square by Arthur LaBern. acters in Chabrol’s Les Cousins) and genre Producer: Alfred Hitchcock. (Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black and Mis- Cinematography: Gilbert Taylor. sissippi Mermaid; Chabrol’s many crime Editor: John Jympson. stories, including Landru, Les Biches, and Original Music: Ron Goodwin. La Femme Infidele). Cast: Jon Finch (Richard Blaney), Barry Stylistically, though, the new wave Foster (Robert Rusk), Barbara Leigh- directors forged their own path, at first Hunt (Brenda Blaney), Anna Massey drawing from the work of the Italian (“Babs” Milligan), Alec McCowen (Chief neorealists and early American indepen- Inspector Oxford), Vivien Merchant dent filmmakers, such as Morris Engel (Mrs. Oxford). (The Little Fugitive). Driven by a desire to Running Time: 116 minutes. Color. Released Through: Universal. both explore and expose the artificiality of cinema—and work within their limited means—many of their early films featured handheld camera work, on-location shoot- Recently fired from his job as a bartender ing, and abrupt edits. Deep down, though, and bitter at the bad luck and failed busi- they shared little but a determination not to nesses that have left him nearly penniless, tell stories that had been told before and do Richard Blaney shows up at his ex-wife things as they had always been done. Brenda’s matchmaking service, hoping FRENZY n 129 for a handout and perhaps a bit of sym- return to London (where, ALMA REVILLE pathy. Instead, the short-tempered Blaney pointed out, there was a vast number of ter- quarrels with his ex loudly—and publicly rific, stage-trained actors whom he can sign (although she still slips some money into very cheaply). Hitchcock sent the novel out his pocket when he isn’t looking). to ANTHONY SHAFFER—who had just The next day, Blaney’s friend Robert scored a big stage success with Sleuth—and Rusk turns up at the lonely-hearts office, made early trips to scout locations (largely too, hoping to be set up with another date; in the neighborhood where his father’s when Brenda tells him she refuses to deal food shop had been) and to put together a with him any longer due to clients’ reports cast. of his sexual sadism, he rapes and stran- Although several crew members gles her—the latest in a series of unsolved remarked on the director’s health—arthritis “necktie murders” that have left London in was making it increasingly difficult for him a panic. to get about, and he was wracked with con- With reports coming in of Blaney’s cern over his wife, who had a small stroke drunken rages and circumstantial evi- during the production—Hitchcock seemed dence tying him to Brenda’s murder, Chief energized by the return home and delighted Inspector Oxford sees him as the likeliest in the veteran actors who knew their parts suspect. He becomes the only suspect after backward and forward yet could impro- Rusk murders Blaney’s latest girlfriend, vise a bit of business when necessary. Only Babs, too—and, while pretending to help JON FINCH, his moody star, caused him Blaney hide from the police, frames him for any annoyance; as he had on I CONFESS that death as well. with MONTGOMERY CLIFT, Hitchcock Knowing now that Rusk is the killer took his small revenge by shooting around but unable to convince the police, Blaney him and limiting his close-ups whenever eventually escapes from prison, determined possible. (The only other trouble came to murder him. Instead he and Oxford get after shooting, when Hitchcock decided he to Rusk’s apartment only to discover the loathed Henry Mancini’s score; a new one corpse of his latest victim, a necktie knotted was promptly commissioned from another around her neck. The tieless Rusk, arriving composer.) with a steamer trunk to haul away the body, Hitchcock’s first movie in England is arrested. since the less-than-satisfactory UNDER CAPRICORN and STAGE FRIGHT—and The last great Hitchcock film, Frenzy marks his most recent effort after the dull TORN a late but lively return to form and a star- CURTAIN and disastrous TOPAZ—Frenzy tling new frankness. is surprisingly confident, even self-con- Pressured by UNIVERSAL to stay gratulatory from the start. The film begins away from large, STAR-driven budgets— with a slow approach up the Thames, with and perhaps realizing that his last two mov- stirring music and the seal of the city of ies, both espionage thrillers, had flopped— London in the upper-right corner of the Hitchcock began looking in the early ’70s frame—the entire sequence looks like the for both something different and familiar. triumphal march of a conquering hero The choice eventually narrowed to Goodbye come back to claim his crown. Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square, a novel And then the naked body of a woman about a serial killer; its theme contained floats by. The stark nudity is a first for a not only a nod to his original hit, THE Hitchcock film, but even more shocking is LODGER, but also its setting suggested a the disregard, even contempt, the film seems 130 n FRENZY to show for women’s bodies and lives. This, Babs’s strangulation is seen in brief, almost the first corpse in the movie, arrives only subliminal flashbacks, while the other two seconds after a politician has remarked on victims appear only after the fact. the “waste” clogging the river; later, noting Of course, it’s Brenda’s murder that the fact that the strangler’s victims have all marks—and for many mars—this film. She been raped first, a smiling stranger JOKES, is pushed against a wall, knocked down, “Every cloud has a silver lining.” and grabbed; her clothes are literally ripped Indeed, once they’ve provided sex— from her body. (In the scene’s saddest usually against their will—women’s bodies moment, she’s glimpsed, midassault, trying have little purpose in Frenzy. The murderer with pathetic modesty to tuck her breast throws them in the Thames like rubbish, back into her brassiere.) When we last see packs them in a trunk like old clothes, or her, she looks almost like a comic-book simply leaves them lying about; Babs, the parody of a murder victim, her EYES blank, film’s most sympathetic character, is lit- her tongue lolling. erally stuffed into a sack of potatoes (and Played in a desperate, sweaty silence then provides a gruesome bit of slapstick punctuated only by the rapist’s groaning, humor as, when cut out of the bag, she exultant “Lovely! Lovely! Lovely!” the rape keeps stubbornly sticking her cold dead and murder is a grotesque scene—and, foot in the killer’s face). most likely, the one that led Michael Caine, This sort of scene risks going beyond first choice for the part of the villain, to turn black comedy into cold heartlessness, and down the entire project as “disgusting,” coupled with Hitchcock’s increasing fascina- later saying he had a sort of “moral thing” tion with violence against women as a plot against playing sadists who murdered device—bookended by the aborted proj- women (a qualm he apparently conquered ects NO BAIL FOR THE JUDGE and THE before signing on for BRIAN DE PALMA’s SHORT NIGHT and marked by PSYCHO, Hitchcock homage Dressed to Kill). THE BIRDS, and especially MARNIE—it’s Yet even as it dwells on the pain and difficult to watch Frenzy for the first time humiliation visited on Brenda, the movie without a feeling of distaste. Is it merely also observes and mourns her helpless- ironic that the villain—handsome, well- ness—in some ways, all our helplessness. dressed, and quick with a joke—is far more Polite, even prim, Brenda wears a tiny gold sympathetic than our moody, hard-drinking cross around her throat; as the rapist looms hero? Can the graphic rape scene be anything over her, grunting, she half-dazedly recites but misogynistic? the Twenty-third Psalm. And when he And yet. stops and curses her and begins to take off And yet Hitchcock, rather than hiring his tie—when she finally realizes who and flagrantly erotic actresses for the victims— what he is and that she has only seconds to as Sam Peckinpah did in Straw Dogs with call for aid—she screams, “Jesus, help me, Susan George—casts the rather maternal help me!” It goes unheard. BARBARA LEIGH-HUNT as Brenda and And later, when the murderer takes an the quietly plain ANNA MASSEY as Babs, unsuspecting Babs upstairs to his apartment, resisting any urge to vicariously SEXU- the camera—the audience—follows quickly, ALIZE the violence. And although, yes, nosily, expectantly. Until he takes her inside Brenda’s murder is dwelled on at grue- and the door shuts, and we know precisely some length, that also allows Hitchcock what horror is about to follow. At which to merely suggest the film’s other deaths; point the camera retreats—backing down the FREUD, SIGMUND n 131

STAIRS, unwilling to look, unable to help, .theguardian.com/film/2013/jan/13/jon- dedicated to nothing except simply moving finch; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitch cravenly away. We are on our own in this cock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New world, and nobody—no heavenly deity, no York: HarperCollins, 2003), 704; Donald godlike director—is going to save us. Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life Frenzy marked many things for Hitch- of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo cock. On the brightest side, it showed Press, 1999), 505–17; The Story of Frenzy, a 73-year-old director who (despite his directed by Laurent Bouzereau (2001), own health problems and worry about his documentary, http://the.hitchcock.zone/ wife’s) was still full of vigor and imagina- wiki/The_Story_of_Frenzy_%282001%29 tion. It showcased London’s bustling Cov- _-_transcript; Peter Waymark, “Murder ent Garden—Hitchcock’s own childhood with Comedy at Covent Garden Mar- neighborhood, where his father had been ket,” Times, August 3, 1971, http://the. a merchant—and preserved it on film, hitchcock.zone/wiki/The_Times_%2803/ just as developers were readying to tear it Aug/1971%29_-_Murder_with_comedy_ down. And it spotlighted a strong array of at_Covent_Garden_Market. fine British actors, from leads Finch and BARRY FOSTER to, in smaller parts, the FREUD, SIGMUND (1856–1939) marvelous Billie Whitelaw and Jean Marsh. Austrian-born doctor hailed as the On its darkest side? It seemed to relish the father of modern psychiatry. His influ- abuse of women, turning rape into vicious ence remains immense, and his theories entertainment. form a quiet but constant background to Except a second or third viewing Hitchcock’s stories, which often feature of Frenzy turns that reading on its head. FETISHES, perversions, and neurotics Yes, the businessmen joke about the “sil- with MOTHER fixations. Although Hitch- ver lining” of being raped before you’re cock showed no interest in a “serious” murdered—but even the crudest misogy- movie treatment of mental illness, such as nist would find nothing amusing about The Snake Pit, he clearly knew the material the assault visited on the sweet, nurturing and took the subject itself seriously; the Brenda. Because, ultimately, Frenzy isn’t most sensible character in SPELLBOUND about the titillating aspects of rape; it doesn’t is the rather Freudian analyst Dr. Brulov, present sadism and sexual DOMINATION and the only explanation we get of Nor- as spicy fantasies. It simply shows us a pleas- man Bates’s behavior in PSYCHO comes ant, middle-aged lady—and the word lady courtesy of the state psychiatrist, Dr. Fred is very deliberate—being abused and mur- Richman. dered, even as she cries out to God for help. The director, though, seems to have And it dares us to look away, asking, In what drawn the line at being analyzed himself, kind of world can such things be? saving the detailing of his fears and obses- And the answer is, only in the kind of sions for the movies; whether he profited world that Hitchcock saw in VERTIGO, in from that or not, generations of audiences Psycho, in Marnie and The Birds—a world continue to. without sense, without help, without hope. Reference References Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life Ronald Bergan, “Jon Finch Obituary,” in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- Guardian, January 13, 2013, http://www Collins, 2003), 173, 355. 132 n FULTON, JOHN P.

FULTON, JOHN P. (1902–1966) He first worked for Hitchcock on SAB- Nebraska-born son of an artist and the- OTEUR, uncredited, on the Statue of Liberty atrical designer who, in accordance with sequence; their other collaborations would his father’s wishes, trained as an engineer include SHADOW OF A DOUBT, REAR and surveyor. Still, by the early ’20s, he’d WINDOW, TO CATCH A THIEF, THE abandoned that to work in Hollywood as TROUBLE WITH HARRY, and VERTIGO. a camera assistant. He was soon particu- He caught an infection while shooting larly known for his special-effects work a film in Spain and died in a London hos- with multiple exposures and traveling pital at 63. mattes; his successes ranged from the still- wondrous The Invisible Man in 1933 to the References 1956 The Ten Commandments. Bruce Eder, “John P. Fulton,” New York Although he never realized his dream Times, http://www.nytimes.com/movies/ of being a director, Fulton explored and person/90755/John-P-Fulton/biography; expanded the world of optical effects “John P. Fulton,” IMDb, http://www.imdb far beyond what other cameramen had .com/name/nm0298483/bio?ref_=nm_ov tried; even on such low-budget films as I _bio_sm; “The Wild and Wonderful World Married a Monster from Outer Space, his of John P. Fulton,” Matte Shot, http:// shots were rooted in reality yet strangely nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/2010/08/ dreamlike. wild-and-wonderful-world-of-john.html. G

GABEL, MARTIN (1912–1986) References Philadelphia-born performer, particularly Glenn Fowler, “Martin Gabel, Actor, Direc- busy in the New York theater as an actor tor and Producer, Is Dead at 72,” New and on television as a narrator and person- York Times, May 23, 1986, http://www ality. A charter member of Orson Welles’s nytimes.com/1986/05/23/obituaries/mar Mercury Theatre players, he seemed to tin-gabel-actor-director-and-producer-is specialize in playing not heroes but their -dead-at-73.html; “Martin Gabel,” IMDb, dogged antagonists—he was Javert in http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0300010/ Welles’s radio version of Les Miserables, bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. Cassius in the company’s production of Julius Caesar—NORMAN LLOYD played GAINSBOROUGH PICTURES Cinna—and went on to re-create Professor Founded in 1924, when SIR MICHAEL Moriarty and Stephen A. Douglas onstage. BALCON bought its Islington studios Hollywood was less open to his talents, from PARAMOUNT, the London-based almost invariably casting him in gangsters, Gainsborough released Hitchcock’s first in pictures both worth watching (Deadline five pictures as director—THE PLEA- U.S.A.) and not (Lady in Cement). His one SURE GARDEN, THE MOUNTAIN film as a director, The Lost Moment—an EAGLE, THE LODGER, DOWNHILL, and atmospheric adaptation of Henry James’s EASY VIRTUE—and, through its close The Aspern Papers, with Mercury Theatre relationships and coproductions with alum Agnes Moorehead—was a prestigious Germany’s UFA studios, introduced its flop. In Hitchcock’s MARNIE, he was the young director to the EXPRESSIONIST businessman Sidney Strutt, from whom style and dark themes then prominent in Marnie steals at the beginning of the film— German cinema. and then runs into again at a party at her Hitchcock would move on to BRIT- husband’s home. ISH INTERNATIONAL PICTURES, which Offstage, Gabel was a good business- offered him more money, but he returned man, too, quietly investing in a number of in the mid-’30s to make several movies hit plays, including the long-running Life for Balcon at Gainsborough’s sister studio with Father. His marriage to actress Arlene GAUMONT-BRITISH. The entire com- Francis lasted 40 years, and the two often pany was eventually taken over by the Rank appeared on the popular TV quiz show Organization, and during the war, Gains- What’s My Line? borough began to specialize in florid cos- He died of a heart attack at 73 at their tume dramas. Rank closed the actual stu- home in Manhattan. dio space in 1949 and eliminated the fading

n 133 134 n GARMES, LEE

Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant, and Ingrid Bergman in between shots of Notorious, a career high point for all three. RKO Radio Pictures/Photofest © RKO Radio Pictures brand in 1951. Its one-time home is now a GARMES, LEE (1898–1978) block of apartments. Peoria-born filmmaker who began in 1916 as a painter’s assistant at Thomas H. Ince’s References studios but soon graduated to cameraman. “Gainsborough Pictures,” BFI Screenon- His work in silents ranged from Dorothy line, http://www.screenonline.org.uk/ Gish comedies to Rin Tin Tin adventures. film/id/448996; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Early on, Garmes—who pioneered the use Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light of incandescent lights in filming—showed (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 93, 190. a remarkable grasp of texture and shadow; GAVIN, JOHN n 135 his career took off in the early ’30s at the Organization, and during the war, Gains- always-stylish PARAMOUNT, where his borough began to specialize in florid cos- work with Josef von Sternberg created a tume dramas. Rank closed the actual stu- chiaroscuro world full of exotic fantasy and dio space in 1949 and eliminated the fading MARLENE DIETRICH melodrama. brand in 1951. Its one-time home is now a Although his work on Gone with the block of apartments. Wind was too obviously artistic for DAVID O. SELZNICK, who famously fired him References from the production, he would work on Gaumont British Picture Corporation Lim- other Selznick productions, including the ited, http://www.gaumontbritish.com; Pat- warm Since You Went Away and the over- rick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life heated Duel in the Sun; for Hitchcock’s in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper THE PARADINE CASE, he gave Alida Valli Collins, 2003), 190. an almost glowing beauty (although NOR- MAN LLOYD always thought that naming GAVIN, JOHN (1931– ) his own mad character “Garmes” in the Tall, dull, and handsome leading man who Selznick-supervised SPELLBOUND a few grew up in California, went through prep years before had been Hitchcock’s, or Sel- school and Stanford (majoring in economics znick’s, inside dig at the cinematographer). and Latin-American affairs), and was a naval Yet despite his painstaking approach intelligence officer during the Korean War. and widespread renown for “Rembrandt- A career in business or politics seemed likely, esque” lighting, Garmes was adaptable, but while serving as a technical adviser on a able to capture the misty fantasy of Portrait movie about the navy, he was encouraged to of Jennie, the deep noir of Nightmare Alley, take a screen test; much to his shock, UNI- or the ugly violence of the grimy Lady in VERSAL drew up a contract on the spot and a Cage; an innovator until the end, he was at “so much money I couldn’t resist.” one of the earliest (if oldest) voices promot- It was a smart fallback decision for ing the use of videotape. the studio; they already had Rock Hudson He died at 80 in Los Angeles. on the roster and thought it good business to have another ready-made, six-foot- References plus STAR to put in his place (or at least “Lee Garmes,” IMDb, http://www.imdb threaten him with). But Gavin had no act- .com/name/nm0005716/bio?ref_=nm_ov ing experience and little natural ability; _bio_sm; “Lee Garmes,” Mec Films, http:// pushed into Ross Hunter’s string of remade www.mecfilms.com/leebio.htm; Norman melodramas (Back Street, Imitation of Life), Lloyd, interview with the author, July 2015. he was rarely more than a pair of broad shoulders, a deep voice, and a good haircut. GAUMONT-BRITISH If he was handsome, dependable, and Sister studio to GAINSBOROUGH PIC- utterly unexciting, though, that made him TURES. Hitchcock did some of his best a good choice for Sam Loomis in PSYCHO; mid-’30s work there for SIR MICHAEL Gavin looks like the sort of quietly decent BALCON and IVOR MONTAGU, where sort who’d be paying off his father’s debts his pictures included SABOTAGE (where and alimony and completely unable to figure he had quarrels with Montagu over the out what to do with a lively lover like JANET budget), YOUNG AND INNOCENT, and LEIGH’s teasing Marion Crane. His casting THE LADY VANISHES. The entire com- also helped the film’s sneaky theme of dou- pany was eventually taken over by the Rank bles; there are times when, watching him face 136 n GEIN, ED down ANTHONY PERKINS in tight two- there’s the actor in every human being— shots, you think the two could be brothers. and to let it out, let it happen is a very Years later, Gavin would claim that he wonderful, very giving thing. But I would found Psycho to be an uncongenial experi- have been so much happier in the past if I ence and the sex and violence terribly dis- realized that sooner. You see, I would have turbing; indeed, Hitchcock was icy to him relaxed.” on the set, finding him insufficiently ardent in the opening bedroom scene with Leigh, References and a little flat throughout. If anything, Doris Klein Bacon, “John Gavin Is Our though, the resulting insecurity only helps Man in Mexico,” People, August 29, 1983, Gavin’s performance, which is built around http://www.people.com/people/archive/ obvious discomfort and painful confusion. article/0,,20085787,00.html; Marian (He can barely get out the words “Why was Christy, “Handsome John Gavin, Under- he . . . dressed like that?” as he sits in the dressed, Puts Down Label of Clotheshorse,” police station after Norman Bates’s arrest.) Reading Eagle, August 29, 1973, https:// Still, the dissatisfied Hitchcock— news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1955& who sometimes referred to Gavin as “The dat=19730829&id=jQsrAAAAIBAJ&sjid=c Stiff”—would use him in two episodes of ZoFAAAAIBAJ&pg=6276,4744274&hl=en; THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR, and “John Gavin,” IMDb, http://www.imdb the actor would later have a very good, .com/name/nm0001260/bio?ref_=nm_ lightly self-parodying role as the straight- ov_bio_sm; Stephen Rebello, Alfred Hitch- arrow boyfriend in George Roy Hill’s Thor- cock and the Making of Psycho (New York: oughly Modern Millie. He would also come HarperPerennial, 1991), 65, 86–88. frustratingly close to playing James Bond. (He was actually signed for Diamonds Are GEIN, ED (1906–1984) Forever but was paid off and dismissed once Wisconsin-born farmer and handyman SEAN CONNERY finally agreed to star.) raised in isolation by an alcoholic father Alternately embarrassed by his own and abusive, fundamentalist MOTHER. work (“When I started out in front of the His father died of a heart attack in 1940, cameras I was green—raw, scared and and Ed Gein’s older brother Henry died just plain awful”) and defensive (“Some under mysterious circumstances while of those early roles were unactable—even fighting a fire on their farm in 1944; one LAURENCE OLIVIER couldn’t have done year later, after several strokes, his mother anything with them”), Gavin increasingly died, too, leaving Ed alone. began pursuing other interests, including Gein boarded up most of the house business and politics. In 1981, Ronald Rea- and spent his days reading pulp-magazine gan appointed him ambassador to Mexico, stories of head-hunters, cannibals, and a post he held for five years. Since, he has Nazi death-camp atrocities; he spent his mostly pursued business opportunities; his nights robbing graves and bringing the last acting credit was on an episode of TV’s bodies home, where he tanned them like Fantasy Island in 1981. leather and used them to decorate furni- “For a long time I wondered if I ture, stitched into clothes, and fashioned shouldn’t have gone into something into masks. He may have eaten some worthwhile, such as being a doctor,” Gavin parts as well. He did not rob his mother’s mused in the ’70s, after the film parts had grave, but he robbed those around hers, in stopped coming. “I’ve only recently realized a rough circle, and used the masks, corset, GELIN, DANIEL n 137 and leggings he made out of their skin to an early obsession of Errol Morris, then then dress up as a woman and “become” beginning his career as a documentarian, her. who actually interviewed him in the mental In 1957, Bernice Wordern disappeared hospital; the movie was never made. from her nearby hardware store; left behind Gein died in 1984 and is buried in the was a receipt that police connected to Gein. same cemetery he once plundered. His own Going out to his farm, they discovered grave is unmarked. Wordern’s body, headless, strung up in a shed “dressed out like a deer”; entering the References house, they found rooms full of body parts, “Obsessive Love for His Mother Drove including a “mask” they later identified as Gein to Slay, Rob Graves,” Milwaukee being the preserved face of Mary Hogan, a Journal, November 21, 1957, https://news bar owner who had disappeared three years .google.com/newspapers?nid=jvrRlaHg2 before. sAC&dat=19571121&printsec=frontpag Gein pled not guilty by reason of e&hl=en; Harold Schechter, Deviant: The INSANITY, was found unfit to stand trial, Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original and confined to a maximum-security asy- Psycho (New York: Gallery Books, 1998), lum. In 1968, he was finally deemed sane xi, xii, 14; Troy Taylor, “Dead Men Do enough for court; he was tried and con- Tell Tales: Ed Gein,” American Hauntings, victed of Wordern’s murder and then sent http://www.prairieghosts.com/ed_gein back to a mental hospital. In the meantime, .html. his house was burned down, presumably by outraged townspeople; the Ford he had GELIN, DANIEL (1921–2002) used to haul the bodies home was sold to Angers-born performer who left home at a carnival owner, who for a few profitable 16 to become an actor and made his film months charged people a quarter to look debut in 1940, soon finding a home in dra- inside “the Ed Gein ghoul car.” mas as a sensitive leading man. Over the Gein’s case was, of course, Robert first half of a long career, he would work Bloch’s inspiration for PSYCHO, although with HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT, Max the novelist made several changes (the Ophuls, Sacha Guitry, Jean Cocteau, and real Gein didn’t run a motel, disinter his Louis Malle; Hitchcock cast him as Louis mother, or kill a woman in a shower), Bernard, the titular (and early) victim in the and JOSEPH STEFANO’s script made 1956 version of THE MAN WHO KNEW even more revisions, changing him from a TOO MUCH. Later, substance abuse and grizzled, drunken middle-aged loner into a melodramatic romantic life took their a pleasant young man with a neat sports toll, and the assignments grew less impres- jacket and ready smile. sive. He was married three times and had Since then, the more gruesome details four children—although he always refused of Gein’s case, particularly the cannibalism to acknowledge actress Maria Schneider, and human taxidermy—Gein had learned whom he’d had by a French model. how to preserve hides from his father— He died in Paris at 81. have inspired several other famous horror films, including The Silence of the Lambs References and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He has “Daniel Gelin,” IMDb, http://www.imdb also been the subject of several more lightly .com/name/nm0004625/bio?ref_=nm_ov fictionalized movies (Deranged) and was _bio_sm; “Daniel Gelin, 81: Versatile French 138 n GERAGHTY, CARMELITA

Actor Had 60-Year Career,” Los Angeles cock, “My Screen Memories,” Film Weekly Times, November 30, 2002, http://articles (May 1936), http://the.hitchcock.zone/ .latimes.com/2002/nov/30/local/me-pass wiki/Film_Weekly_%281936%29_-_My ings30.6. _Screen_Memories; François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: GERAGHTY, CARMELITA Touchstone, 1985), 31–39. (1901–1966) Insouciant, Indiana-born performer who GIELGUD, JOHN (1904–2000) was mostly raised in New York, then Hol- London-born performer whose father’s lywood, where her father was a favored family were long-exiled Eastern European scriptwriter of Douglas Fairbanks. Because aristocrats (they had lost their castle in a her parents disapproved of her going into premature revolt against Czar Nicholas I). show business, she used a pseudonym at His mother’s family included many famed first; eventually she got parts in Mack Sen- British actors, including the great Shake- nett two-reelers and in 1924 was named a spearean interpreter Dame Ellen Terry. In WAMPAS Baby Star. Gielgud’s case, breeding did tell; over an The next year she went on to costar extraordinarily long career, he rarely gave with VIRGINIA VALLI in Hitchcock’s a performance that did not draw on both THE PLEASURE GARDEN (SIR MICHAEL family inheritances, combining his hawk- BALCON was then pioneering the idea of like profile and chilly hauteur with a speak- importing Hollywood names to enliven ing voice that sounded like silver bells. His British productions); the women’s extrava- parents, though, were not in favor of his gances while on location bled the budget dreams of an acting career, and the teen- of an already-troubled project. Returning age Gielgud had to promise that, if he were to Hollywood in 1926, Geraghty played not successful by 25, he would get a job in Jordan Baker in the first version of The an office. Great Gatsby, an adaptation that F. Scott Still, he began his career in the fam- Fitzgerald loathed. (“It’s rotten and awful ily business—literally—by working for his and terrible and we left,” Zelda wrote after cousin Phyllis Nelson-Terry as an under- a screening.) No prints of the film survive. study; later he would enroll at the Royal Geraghty’s career was equally short- Academy of Dramatic Art under the tutor- lived; a creature of the carefree Jazz Age, by ing of the equally mellifluous CLAUDE the crash, her name was at the bottom of RAINS. By the late ’20s, Gielgud was a cast lists, and by the early ’30s, most of the regular fixture on the West End, at the Old work she found was in cheap westerns. She Vic, and on Broadway, where he had par- married an MGM producer in 1934 and ticular success in the works of Chekhov, retired two years later; she took up painting Shakespeare, and Noel Coward. There was and later in life began to exhibit with some no need for an office job; he had made his success. family’s deadline. She died of a heart attack at 65 in Man- Gielgud made his movie debut in 1924 hattan. and appeared in the very early talkie The Clue of the New Pin in 1929 but disliked References the modern craft of movie acting at first; “Carmelita Geraghty,” IMDb, http:// his experience on Hitchcock’s SECRET www.imdb.com/name/nm0313867/ AGENT in 1936 was an unpleasant one for bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Alfred Hitch- both, as Hitchcock had decided, too late, GILLIAT, SIDNEY n 139 the character was passive and unsympa- Gielgud died at home a year after the thetic, and Gielgud craved the sort of dra- death of his long-time companion, Martin matic guidance the filmmaker was uninter- Hensler. He was 96. ested in providing. Of course it did not help that Hitch- References cock had really hoped to get ROBERT John Gielgud, Early Stages: An Autobi- DONAT for the lead so he could reteam the ography (San Francisco: Mercury House, STARS of his smash THE 39 STEPS or that 1989), 159–60, 164; “John Gielgud,” IMDb, while filming the exhausted Gielgud was http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000024/ also appearing on the West End in Romeo bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Patrick McGil- and Juliet with Peggy Ashcroft. “I had to ligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Dark- get up very early in the morning and was ness and Light (New York: HarperCollins, always fidgeting to get away by five or six 2003), 183–84; “Sir John Gielgud,” Encyclo- for the evening performance, so I grew to paedia Britannica, http://www.britannica dislike working for the cinema,” Gielgud .com/biography/John-Gielgud; Donald wrote later of the shoot. “Of course I was Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life paid more money than in the theatre, but of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo I had a feeling that no one thought I was Press, 1999), 152–54; François Truffaut, sufficiently good-looking.” Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Gielgud would appear on film only Touchstone, 1985), 105. once more until Julius Caesar in 1953. (He worked chiefly on the stage, where he did GILLIAT, SIDNEY (1908–1994) rapturously received productions of Crime Born in Cheshire, the son of a newspa- and Punishment, Hamlet, and Richard II.) per editor, Gilliat started in films doing a But he found James Mason’s work onscreen bit of everything, including small parts; in Julius Caesar intriguing, as well as the he reportedly wrote some of the titles for Hollywood fees being earned by younger Hitchcock’s CHAMPAGNE in 1928 and the protégées like LAURENCE OLIVIER; Giel- next year did some preproduction research gud would do more and more film work for the Isle of Man set of THE MANXMAN. over the decades to come, while always Neither job won him a screen credit, returning regularly to the stage. but he soon partnered with FRANK Although his brilliantly conceived, LAUNDER to turn out screenplays; their musically delivered performances were fifth effort, THE LADY VANISHES, soon out of step with the working-class became (after briefly gaining the interest of dramas beginning to take over the the- another director and then being rewritten) ater, Gielgud—who had already survived Alfred Hitchcock’s 1938 hit and the first to the scandal of a 1953 arrest in a men’s feature the director’s name on theater mar- room for soliciting sex—would remain an quees. accomplished star. He would give many Gilliat would do some work on Hitch- great live performances, including his own cock’s JAMAICA INN (and he and Laun- one-man show The Ages of Man, a collec- der would do a sort of spin-off of The Lady tion of Shakespeare’s speeches and sonnets, Vanishes, Night Train to Munich, for Carol and Home, in which he appeared with life- Reed), but as Hitchcock observed, the long friend Sir Ralph Richardson; his many screenwriters were not happy seeing direc- movies ranged from Becket and Gandhi to tors get most of the credit on films; Gilliat Arthur and Caligula. He never retired. and Launder soon turned to producing and 140 n THE GIRL directing their own scripts, including Cap- signing her to a contract and ending with tain Boycott, Green for Danger, and the St. their professional and personal split after Trinian’s comedies. MARNIE. Sienna Miller does a fair job of He died in Wiltshire at age 86. playing Hedren without ever quite capturing her glacial beauty; as Hitchcock, Toby References Jones is less successful, looking like a man Gilbert Adair, “Obituary: Sidney Gilliat,” trapped in bad makeup and a padded suit. Independent, June 2, 1994, http://the.hitch The film hews pretty closely to Spoto’s cock.zone/wiki/The_Independent_%2802/ book, statements made by the late EVAN Jun/1994%29_-_Obituary:_Sidney_Gilliat; HUNTER, and interviews given by Hedren, David Cairns, “Individual Features: The and the actress—who was consulted by the Cinema of Launder and Gilliat,” BritMovie, producers and by Miller—gave the film http://www.britmovie.co.uk/2008/08/26/ approving marks. Still, she said it was a individual-pictures-the-cinema-of little relentless, portraying none of the -launder-and-gilliat; Patrick McGilligan, playfulness that Hitchcock showed, too, at Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and least before his obsessiveness grew intol- Light (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), erable. “It wasn’t a constant barrage of 206–8, 222–23; “Sidney Gilliat,” IMDb, harassment,” she admitted in interviews to http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0319148/ promote the broadcast. “If it had been con- bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Donald Spoto, stantly the way we have had to do it in this The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred film, I would have been long gone.” Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, Of course, the film was also strongly 1999), 172–74. criticized, albeit sometimes by people who hadn’t been present for the events it cov- THE GIRL (GB 2012) ered. Director Sacha Gervasi and actor Anthony Hopkins—who had their own Director: Julian Jarnold. picture about the making of PSYCHO Screenplay: Gwyneth Hughes, based on coming up, HITCHCOCK—found it lack- the book Spellbound by Beauty, by Don- ing, with Gervasi calling it “one-note” and ald Spoto. Hopkins politely wondering if it were really Producers: Amanda Jenks, Marvin Saven, Genevieve Hofmeyr. “necessary to put all that into a movie.” Cinematography: John Pardue. Longtime Hitchcock defenders Tony Lee Editor: Andrew Hulme. Moral (author of several books on Hitch- Original Music: Phillip Miller. cock’s films) and JOHN RUSSELL TAY- Cast: Sienna Miller (Tippi Hedren), Toby LOR (the director’s authorized biographer) Jones (Alfred Hitchcock), Imelda were among those who also questioned Staunton (Alma Hitchcock). the movie’s facts or called its conclusions Running Time: 91 minutes. Color. “absurd.” An entire site, Save Hitchcock Originally Broadcast By: BBC/Showtime. (www.savehitchcock.com), sought to rebut the allegations. For her part, Hedren said she thought A docudrama based chiefly on the chapters the film was largely accurate and hoped in DONALD SPOTO’s book Spellbound by it would be helpful. “I hope that young Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading women who do see this film know that they Ladies, detailing the director’s relationship do not have to acquiesce to anything that with TIPPI HEDREN, beginning with him they do not feel is morally right. . . . There GRANGER, FARLEY n 141 was absolutely nothing I could do legally, British films—Take My Life, Night with- whatsoever. There were no laws about this out Stars, Fortune Is a Woman. The noir- kind of a situation. If this had happened ish MARNIE, however, published in 1961, today, I would be a very rich woman. But I was quietly bought by Alfred Hitchcock, can look at myself in the mirror, and I can who initially saw it as a way to lure GRACE be proud. I feel strong. I lived through it KELLY away from Monaco and back to the beautifully.” screen. It did not work, nor did Graham’s story reach the screen quite unchanged— References Hitchcock immediately changed the setting Nick Clark, “Who Was the Real Sir Alfred?” to America, softened the ending (which Independent, August 15, 2015, http://www was even bleaker in the book), and tried to .independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/ make Marnie’s predatory SEXUAL black- films/news/who-was-the-real-sir-alfred mailer somewhat more sympathetic (start- -hitchcock-director-sacha-gervasi-backs ing with casting SEAN CONNERY). -auteur-against-sadistic-monster-por If any of it annoyed Graham, then he, trayed-in-the-girl-8462209.html; “Hop- quite typically, kept his mouth shut, depos- kins’ Hitch with Hedren,” Evening Stan- ited his check, and went back to writing a dard, January 8, 2013, http://www.standard new book. .co.uk/news/londoners-diary/hopkinss He died at 95 in London. -hitch-with-hedren-8442836.html; Mayer Nissim, “‘Hitchcock’ Anthony Hopkins: References ‘The Girl’ Wasn’t Necessary,” Digital Spy, Dennis Barker, “Obituary: Winston Gra- January 9, 2013, http://www.digitalspy ham,” Guardian, July 14, 2003, http:// .com/movies/news/a449727/hitchcock www.theguardian.com/news/2003/jul/14/ -anthony-hopkins-the-girl-wasnt-necessary guardianobituaries.booksobituaries; Win- .html#~p598JM9MbifAbW; Rob Salem, ston Graham and Poldark, http://www.win “Hitchcock and Hedren Now a TV Movie,” stongraham.org. Star, October 19, 2012, http://www.thestar .com/entertainment/television/2012/10/19/ GRANGER, FARLEY (1925–2011) hitchcock_and_hedren_now_an_hbo San Jose, CA–born performer from a rich _movie.html; Save Hitchcock, http://save family fallen on hard times. It was while hitchcock.com. they were living in straitened circumstances in Los Angeles that their teenage son took GRAHAM, WINSTON up amateur theatricals and was discovered (1908–2003) by a studio scout. He managed to film small Prolific Manchester-born author who pub- parts in two movies—and then shipped out lished his first novel in 1934 and his last in to Hawaii with the navy, where, he later 2002. His most successful were installments boasted, he lost his virginity twice in one in the Poldark series, set on the Cornish night (first to a young woman in a bor- coast during the late-18th and early-19th dello and then to one of the sailors waiting centuries and creating a broad historical downstairs in the parlor). saga set among the great families of the Returning to Hollywood after the war, area. They were adapted several times for Granger resumed his career, starting with British television. the gritty classic They Live by Night in 1948; Graham also wrote thrillers, a num- Hitchcock signed him that same year for ber of which became modestly budgeted ROPE, playing the more GUILT-ridden of 142 n GRANGER, FARLEY the two murderers. Despite the technical Other people, however, were less broad- difficulties of the shoot, Granger enjoyed minded, particularly mogul Samuel Gold- working with the director. “Hitchcock was wyn, who had Granger under contract and very open about everything,” Granger says. had been disturbed early on to hear of the “He often invited me to the house for din- young actor’s friendships with certain “the- ner. He had a great wine cellar and we’d atrical” talents. all get drunk together. That was sort of the “I got called into Goldwyn’s office, family pastime, I think.” and told I was not to be seen with Aaron After a few more movies, including the Copland anymore. That he was a ‘known noir dramas Side Street and Edge of Doom, homosexual.’ And first I laughed and then Granger would return to appear in Hitch- I got very mad and said, ‘Look, I’ll be seen cock’s STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. “We with whoever I want.’ And I stormed out,” just had a jolly old time on that one,” he Granger said. “I mean, who were these said later. “The crew loved (Hitchcock), little pissants? . . . You had (gossip colum- because he knew what he was doing. . . . nists) Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons Every day you went to work you knew you hanging over the whole town like a couple were working on something wonderful.” of storm clouds. But I just didn’t pay any But if Granger was good in it, then he attention to it. I just lived my own life.” was a little too soft, a little too petulant, Tired of the studio typecasting and Hol- for most Hollywood movies. His charac- lywood homophobia, eventually Granger ters tended to be passive, even submissive bought himself out of his contract and went young men—in both Rope and Strangers on off to Europe in search of better parts. A fine a Train his protagonists are clearly DOMI- one almost immediately arrived in Luchino NATED by the movie’s aggressive, boast- Visconti’s Senso with ALIDA VALLI. But ful murderers. Other pretty, introverted other roles of that caliber proved hard to young actors could occasionally twist their come by. Granger came back to America to mouths in a snarl; in his performances, find that other STARS were now at the top Granger mostly pouted. That was not an (and suspected that Goldwyn had black- advantage in getting leading-man parts. balled him with other producers). He did Nor was the actor’s sexuality; unlike some television work and then returned to others at that time, he was relatively open Europe, but the days of lavish international about his fondness for both men and productions were ending; what he was women and didn’t shy away from charac- mostly offered now (and almost invariably ters who seemed to share that orientation. accepted) were cheap crime pictures with (For a long time he was in a relationship sadistic plots and titles like Kill Me, My Love! with ARTHUR LAURENTS, who wrote the and The Red-Headed Corpse. Rope screenplay.) Eventually Granger came back to This hardly bothered Hitchcock, who America, this time for good, where he had been friendly with gay actors since shared a modest Manhattan apartment IVOR NOVELLO back in the silents. (Of with his longtime partner, Robert Calhoun; course, it was also true that Hitchcock did some stage work and a soap opera; and found gay men and lesbians exotic, even finally retired to write his memoirs—dish- a little scary—many of his villains, from ing the dirt with the same cool attitude he’d the “half-caste” in MURDER! to Leonard once fired across a wide wooden desk at in NORTH BY NORTHWEST, either hint Sam Goldwyn. at or declare their HOMOSEXUALITY.) He died at 85 in New York. GRANT, CARY n 143

References and a name change—and Mae West, look- “Farley Granger,” IMDb, http://www.imdb ing for a leading man for She Done Him .com/name/nm0335048/bio?ref_=nm_ov Wrong, spotted him on the lot and told her _bio_sm; Neil Genzlinger, “Farley Granger, director, “If he can talk, I’ll take him.” Still, Screen Star of the 1950s, Dies at 85,” New his early pictures with West and MAR- York Times, March 29, 2011, http://www LENE DIETRICH only presented him as .nytimes.com/2011/03/30/arts/actor-farley simple eye candy, a fantasy figure for the -granger-dies-at-85.html; Farley Granger, studio’s leading ladies to make eyes at. interview with the author, April 2007; Far- He showed some of what he could ley Granger with Robert Calhoun, Include do as a rascally Cockney in Sylvia Scarlett Me Out: My Life from Goldwyn to Broad- opposite Katharine Hepburn, but the film way (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007), flopped; the real turning point came with 67–71, 107–110. The Awful Truth in 1937, one of the truly perfect screwball comedies, and a success GRANT, CARY (1904–1986) that led to Holiday, Bringing Up Baby, His “Everyone wants to be Cary Grant,” he Girl Friday, and The Philadelphia Story (as liked to tell reporters. And then pause—his well as the change-of-pace dramas Only timing was always perfect—before adding Angels Have Wings, In Name Only, and the “Even I want to be Cary Grant.” It was hard roaring boys’ adventure Gunga Din). work, but he made it look easy. At which point, Hitchcock showed up. He was born Archibald Leach in Bris- Grant would make four films for the direc- tol, the son of a coldly pragmatic father tor—SUSPICION and NOTORIOUS, and and an emotionally unstable mother who then (after being lured out of a premature, had never gotten over the death of an older mid-’50s retirement) TO CATCH A THIEF child. When Archie was nine, his father and NORTH BY NORTHWEST. The mov- secretly had her committed; when Archie ies were spread out over two decades and asked where she was, he simply told her she skipped from genre to genre—thriller, spy had gone “on holiday” without saying good- film, romantic caper, and then a spy film bye. The next year, Elias Leach divorced his again. But in some ways, they were the wife and remarried, now telling Archie that same film because in many ways Grant his mother had died. (Her son wouldn’t find played the same character, the perfect out the truth for another two decades, years character: The man whose love cannot be after he had become a STAR.) trusted. Little Archie was soon unwelcome in Like everyone in Hollywood, Hitch- the new household and failing grammar cock knew that “Cary Grant” was a con- school; his solution was to run off and join struct, a creature of invention, a dream; the circus or at least a troupe of acrobats. unlike most studio-made stars, Grant lived By 16, he had followed the group to Amer- the lie with a grin, treated IDENTITY like ica, where they played everywhere from a game. He joked about “Archie Leach,” Coney Island to ornate vaudeville houses; named a pet terrier after him, even sneaked Archie’s specialty was stilt-walking. When a reference to the fellow into His Girl Fri- after two years the rest of the company day. He made no secret of his real origins. packed up for England, Leach stayed on. In fact, he invited you to help, drew you There was nothing to go back to, anyway. into his deception (and would do so even Eventually he landed in Hollywood, in the movies in which—every so often— where PARAMOUNT gave him a contract he would shoot a quick helpless look at the 144 n GRANT, CARY camera, breaking the fourth wall, making for his character in Suspicion to be a mur- you share in the game). derer.) But it didn’t have to. In Hitchcock’s And something in Grant’s public dou- movies, Grant is every lover’s worst night- ble life—beyond whatever private secret life mare, the beloved who has his own agenda, he may have had—appealed to Hitchcock. his own past, his own plans, and keeps all It had always been part of his genius to see of them from you—until you catch him in something more than celebrity in his stars a lie, at which point he only tells a bigger and cast them accordingly; if Hitchcock one, smiling. And you believe him because hated directing actors, then it was only you want to. because he felt he shouldn’t have to. (And if It is a very specific character, and he had to, then it was because he had failed kudos to the director (and to the star) for earlier on; if you matched the right actor to seeing that in him, but it would not work the right role, then there was little else you for every film. Grant could have played the had to do.) secretive Max in REBECCA or the coldly And so the parts Hitchcock cast Grant deceptive Tony in DIAL M FOR MURDER; in were very specific. In Suspicion, he is he probably couldn’t have played the dam- a man his wife suspects of thievery (and aged John Ballantyne in SPELLBOUND worse); in Notorious, he is a spy who tricks or rueful Rupert in ROPE. It was not that and pushes a woman he loves into sleep- Cary Grant could not have played a vil- ing with the enemy; in To Catch a Thief, lain. It’s that Cary Grant could never have he is a suitor who is using a beauty and her played anyone who doubted himself. No, diamonds for his own purposes; in North for Hitchcock, Grant was always the cocky by Northwest, he is a shamelessly shallow confidence man, the grinning liar, the poi- bachelor who believes in nothing but self- soned bonbon—and even as the films end preservation. happily, it’s difficult to imagine an easy He is the man that every woman falls marriage ahead for any of the women he in love with and then spends the rest of the takes into his arms just before the final relationship worrying about, checking up credits. on, trying to decode, attempting to make Of course, no one was more attuned excuses for. He is the man whom you can to his image than the actor himself, and a depend on to be undependable. He is the large part of that image was being able to man whom you know will always do the credibly play a leading man; still, in typi- right thing—for him—and whom you can cal Hollywood fashion, as he got older, his only pray will also do the right thing for costars got younger, the portrayal of pas- you when it finally counts. sion more and more subdued. These are Hollywood movies, of Grant (smartly) insisted that the script course, and so of course Grant does do of the very HITCHCOCKIAN Charade the right thing at last. But there is a certain (in which he’s once again a charming liar) kind of slippery selfishness even in Grant’s be rewritten so Audrey Hepburn was the heroes that you would never see in JAMES romantic aggressor; to have a 59-year- STEWART’s work for Hitchcock, let alone old silver fox chasing after a 33-year-old GREGORY PECK’s. It never crosses into gamine might be distasteful. The next year outright villainy, perhaps. (Despite what Father Goose required similar careful treat- Hitchcock and Grant later occasionally said ment with Leslie Caron, but by 1966 and in INTERVIEWS, DONALD SPOTO sug- Walk, Don’t Run, a remake of The More gests that the two never seriously planned the Merrier, it was no longer necessary; GREENE, GRAHAM n 145 the once-ageless Grant was now cast in the He was part of the TV crew that Hitch- avuncular, supporting role. cock took with him to make PSYCHO, He promptly retired afterward, and knowing that they were all used to working although there was still much in life to quickly and efficiently; Green went on to enjoy—serving on corporate boards, doing direct one episode of Alfred Hitchcock Pres- occasional public appearances, doting on ents, assistant-direct another show on THE his only child, the daughter of his fourth, ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR, and then penultimate marriage to Dyan Cannon—he returned as assistant director for MARNIE never appeared in another movie. And in and (years later, uncredited) as a produc- some ways it was his last and gentlest lie, tion manager on FAMILY PLOT. leaving us with the Cary Grant we grew up The association stood him in good with, the lover who never aged, the man stead when, after Hitchcock’s death, UNI- Archie Leach invented. “I pretended to VERSAL decided to produce a Psycho be somebody I wanted to be and I finally sequel. After a director and screenwriter became that person,” he said once. “Or he were hired (and an initially reluctant became me. Or we met at some point.” ANTHONY PERKINS signed on, too), He died at 82 of a cerebral hemorrhage Green was brought on as a producer, pri- in Davenport, IA. marily to reinforce the message that the project was being made with respect. After References calling PATRICIA HITCHCOCK and get- Peter Bogdanovich, Who the Hell’s in It ting her blessing, Green agreed. (New York: Knopf, 2004), 97–124; “Cary The success of the film would allow Grant,” Biography, http://www.biography Green to go on to produce other films, .com/people/cary-grant-9318103; “Cary including Sixteen Candles, although Hitch- Grant,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ cock remained a particularly profitable spe- name/nm0000026/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio cialty; Green also produced Psycho III and _sm; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: Psycho IV, appeared in a half-dozen docu- A Life in Darkness and Light (New York: mentaries on Hitchcock and his films, and HarperCollins, 2003), 493–94; Donald consulted on Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life Psycho remake in 1998. of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo He died at 84 in Pasadena. Press, 1999), 243–44; David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (New References York: Knopf, 2002), 351–52. “Film Legend and 1960’s Psycho Hilton Green Dies in Pasadena Home, 84,” Pasa- GREEN, HILTON A. (1929–2013) dena Now, October 4, 2013, http://www Movie brat born to B-movie director Alfred .pasadenanow.com/main/film-legend-and E. Green and former silent STAR Vivian -1960-psychos-hilton-green-dies-in-pasa Reed. After college, he entered the movie dena-home-84/#.VeiLtZdUV5s; “Hilton A. business as an assistant director, serving in Green,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ that capacity mostly on TV shows, includ- nm0337906/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. ing an episode of SUSPICION (the tense, ticking-bomb story “FOUR O’CLOCK,” GREENE, GRAHAM (1904–1981) directed by Alfred Hitchcock) and more A product of the Victorian age, a CATHO- than 40 installments of ALFRED HITCH- LIC, a perceptive critic and screenwriter, and COCK PRESENTS. a prolific author of thrillers whose characters 146 n GREENE, GRAHAM were often wracked by GUILT and caught up other objections were clearly colored by in far-flung conspiracies—you would think Greene’s having admired both Buchan and that Graham Greene would have been a con- Maugham’s thrillers since childhood (and stant and natural collaborator with Hitch- already writing his own spy stories, with cock. You would be wrong. their own very different sensibilities). Already a young, published novelist, Later, Greene who had first sold a novel Greene reviewed films from 1935 to 1940 to the movies in 1934, would get regular (with a break when a particularly harsh checks from Hollywood, sometimes for orig- remark about Shirley Temple’s appeal inal screenplays; three of his thrillers were brought a libel suit and a well-timed trip turned into films by American studios dur- out of the country); he was there for the ing the ’40s, when Hitchcock was regularly best of Hitchcock’s English period. And, assigned similar properties, and the direc- it seems, he didn’t like any of it. A fan of tor’s friendly old nemesis, DAVID O. SEL- espionage stories, he said that Hitchcock’s ZNICK, eventually lent a producer’s hand to THE 39 STEPS had “inexcusably” spoiled Greene’s The Third Man, made in 1949 by JOHN BUCHAN’s original novel, and Carol Reed. At one point, the novelist was what Hitchcock did to W. SOMERSET even approached to do the script for I CON- MAUGHAM’s Ashenden stories in THE FESS, an intriguing notion. Still, Greene and SECRET AGENT was “deplorable.” Hitchcock never worked together. No fan of the director, he would Yet perhaps their work is not so far broaden the criticism many years later to apart. The specter of temptation that waits include CAHIERS DU CINEMA, too, and behind our every step, the idea that guilt give his final word on the subject, main- might haunt a man guilty of nothing but taining that, “whatever Monsieur Truffaut a briefly sinful wish—those ideas concern may say,” Hitchcock’s films merely “con- both those men. As do the small touches sist of a series of small, ‘amusing,’ melodra- of the everyday that give life to even matic situations. . . . [T]hey mean nothing: their most fantastic entertainments—the they lead to nothing.” slightly shabby, insistently chatty assassin Not surprisingly, Greene made a single of Hitchcock’s FOREIGN CORRESPON- contemporary exception for Hitchcock’s DENT is as much a character out of a bleakest, grubbiest thriller of the ’30s, Greene novel as the completely fictitious, SABOTAGE, admitting that while “I have utterly endangered spy in Greene’s Our sometimes doubted Mr. Hitchcock’s tal- Man in Havana seems like one out of a ent,” many of the sequences—Greene sin- Hitchcock film. gles out the bomb on the bus, the screen- So no, the two men never collaborated. ing of WHO KILLED COCK ROBIN?, the Yet in some ways, they never needed to. knifing at the kitchen table—were first rate. “As a director, he has always known exactly References his right place to put the camera,” the critic Graham Greene, The Pleasure Dome: The smartly observed, “and there is only one Collected Film Criticism of Graham Greene right place in any scene.” (London: Oxford University Press, 1980), Some of Greene’s criticisms have 1–2, 74–75, 122–23; “Graham Greene,” weight, of course—most of Hitchcock’s Encyclopaedia Britannica, http://www.bri films, particularly in that early period, were tannica.com/biography/Graham-Greene; more plot-driven than character-oriented, Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life and plausibility was never something the in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- filmmaker valued very highly. Some of his Collins, 2003), 441. GRIFFITH, MELANIE n 147

GREENMANTLE IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ Another JOHN BUCHAN thriller, the nm0339504. author’s own sequel to his The Thirty-Nine Steps, and one that Hitchcock always wanted GRIFFITH, MELANIE (1957– ) to do; in this one, set during World War I, Manhattan-born performer and daughter hero Richard Hannay has to foil Germany’s of TIPPI HEDREN and advertising execu- plans to ignite a worldwide Islamic revolt. tive Peter Griffith. The couple divorced But although Hitchcock pursued this for sev- when she was four. Then a 30-ish model eral years after arriving in America—CARY and now a single mother, Hedren quickly GRANT, he thought, would have been a suit- accepted Alfred Hitchcock’s offer of a able lead—the rights were too expensive. movie contract. Hitchcock’s possessiveness of his new Reference STAR led him to not only isolate her from Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life her fellow actors but also her child; later, in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- Griffith would remember that suddenly “I Collins, 2003), 247–48, 264–65, 306–7. wasn’t allowed even to visit my mom at the studio.” After production finally wrapped, GREET, CLARE (1871–1939) Hitchcock presented Griffith with a doll Leicestershire-born stage veteran who fashioned after her mother and dressed in made her movie debut at age 50 in The a replica costume from the film; it would Rotters and would go on to play mostly have been a thoughtful gift if the wooden small parts as older women, almost invari- box it came in hadn’t resembled a coffin. ably servants; a list of her credits includes A little more than 20 years later, a number of characters described only as Griffith would rekindle the Hitchcock “Landlady,” “Cook,” and “Registry Office connection by starring in BRIAN DE Cleaner” (although at least she got to play PALMA’s fevered VERTIGO/REAR Mrs. Hudson, the landlady, in the early WINDOW mash-up Body Double, play- Sherlock Holmes film, The Sign of Four). ing the pornographic actress Holly Body; She was the most frequent (if occasion- she would also appear on the revived ally uncredited) cast member in Hitchcock ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS show films, appearing in seven, starting with the in a remake of the original episode “Man unfinished NUMBER 13 in 1922 (which she from the South.” After a career high point helped finance when money ran low) and in Working Girl, however, Griffith’s career concluding with JAMAICA INN, her last began to slip, interrupted by personal picture, in 1939. She also appeared in LORD problems and substance-abuse issues; CAMBER’S LADIES, which Hitchcock only although she continues to act, it’s mostly produced—her steady work perhaps a sign as a guest star on television shows. of his gratitude for her early help. She died at 67 in London. References Jay Carr, “Melanie Griffith: Poised for References Stardom,” Boston Globe, December 22, “Alfred Hitchcock’s Most Wanted 1988, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Bos Actresses,” Alfred Hitchcock Geek, http:// ton_Globe_%2822/Dec/1988%29_-_Mela www.alfredhitchcockgeek.com/2010/08/ nie_Griffith_poised_for_stardom; “Mela- alfred-hitchcocks-most-wanted-actresses nie Griffith,” IMDb, http://www.imdb .html; “Clare Greet,” Cyranos, http://www .com/name/nm0000429/bio?ref_=nm_ov .cyranos.ch/spgree-e.html; “Clare Greet,” _bio_sm. 148 n GUILT

GUILT accident, too (and one she carefully helped In a standard Hollywood mystery or mass- incite); the murder of the drunken sailor in market thriller, the question of guilt is both MARNIE, the act of a terrified toddler. These central—Who committed the crime?—and are not crimes any jury would convict you simple. The criminal may be known to us of, probably not even sins in the eyes of any at the start (or never discovered at all); he loving God. In some cases, they are acts com- may be kept offscreen until the end or turn pletely beyond our control, stemming solely out to be the (anti)hero. But guilt is present from illness or happenstance. Should Scot- chiefly as a legal concept: Who did this? The tie really feel guilty for having VERTIGO? concept of guilt is far murkier in Hitchcock. Should Manny really blame himself for being Legally speaking, many of Hitchcock’s mistakenly arrested in THE WRONG MAN? villains—Uncle Charlie in SHADOW OF Yet all these characters carry that guilt with A DOUBT, Bruno in STRANGERS ON A them, sometimes for decades, letting it twist TRAIN, Norman in PSYCHO, Bob Rusk in their lives, sour their love affairs. FRENZY—could probably plead not guilty In fact, in Hitchcock’s world—built by reason of INSANITY; arguably, they so solidly on the rigid Catechism of his can’t tell right from wrong. They are not youth—it does not matter whether you actu- innocent in any broad sense, yet they can’t ally commit an illegal act. In his unforgiv- really be fully blamed for their acts. They ing eyes, just temptation is bad enough; it’s are walking aberrations, accidents, misfir- not necessary that you go through with the ing circuits in the human machine. crime, merely that you considered it, like It’s Hitchcock’s other, supposedly saner Guy in Strangers on a Train, or even acci- murderers who are his real concern. Because dentally profited by it, like Father Logan in they aren’t so much innocent as guiltless— I CONFESS. Even somehow just witnessing they do know right from wrong and simply it—like Jeff peeping into a killer’s apartment do not care. They are killers who act out of in REAR WINDOW—is enough to con- not psychosis but greed and calm expedi- demn you as a kind of accomplice. Taken to ency. Vandamm dispatches assassins to kill its logical extreme in some of the films, this the troublesome Roger Thornhill in NORTH becomes Hitchcock’s trickiest, nastiest bit BY NORTHWEST, Tony hires a man to of audience manipulation, in which he first strangle his wife in DIAL M FOR MURDER, encourages us to identify with the criminal Fry burns a coworker alive in SABOTEUR— and then upbraids us for it. these men don’t lose sleep over their deeds. It’s no accident that the actors playing They don’t even miss meals. And it’s that his villains—ROBERT WALKER in Strang- they can sin without guilt is what, in Hitch- ers on a Train, ANTHONY PERKINS in cock’s world, truly makes them villains, while Psycho, JOSEPH COTTEN in Shadow of a feeling not only regretful but morally respon- Doubt—are almost always far more charm- sible—even though you may not have even ing and attractive than the people trying personally done anything wrong—is what to stop them. It’s not merely a bit of style marks you as a Hitchcock hero. In Hitch- that, during their crimes, the photography cock, only the good feel guilty. will often switch to a subjective camera, Legal culpability rarely enters into it. encouraging our identification with them The childhood death of John Ballantyne’s even further—those are our hands reach- brother in SPELLBOUND was an accident; ing for Miriam in Strangers on a Train, our Guy assumed that Bruno’s murderous prom- hands mopping up the blood in Psycho. ise in Strangers on a Train was a drunken In Hitchcock’s world, there is always JOKE. The death of REBECCA was an more than enough guilt to go around. And GWENN, EDMUND n 149 simply by sitting passively in the audience, cock brought Gwenn on to play Rowley, the unblinkingly watching the violence, even cheerful “bodyguard” in FOREIGN COR- vicariously enjoying it, we’re sinners, too— RESPONDENT who has a nasty habit of as guilty as the killers and the man who cre- throwing his charges from great heights; ated them. chattily keeping up a stream of conversation while coldly judging trajectories and References keeping an eye out for witnesses, he’s one of Richard Alleva, “The Catholic Hitchcock: Hitchcock’s most memorable early villains. A Director’s Sense of Good and Evil,” Com- Although Gwenn had the range for a monweal, July 12, 2010, https://www.com variety of parts—he costarred with DAME monwealmagazine.org/catholic-hitchcock; JUDITH ANDERSON, Katharine Cor- “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” The nell, and Ruth Gordon in a legendary 1942 Holy See, http://www.vatican.va/archive/ Broadway production of Three Sisters— ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a8.htm. once he settled in Hollywood, he tended to be cast as chatty parsons, wise profes- GWENN, EDMUND (1877–1959) sors, and otherwise harmless codgers. In London-born performer whose announce- Mister 880, he is a little old counterfeiter; ment that he intended not to go into the in Miracle on 34th Street, he is Kris Kringle civil service after university but onto the himself. When Hitchcock revisited his first stage instead earned his father’s red-faced hit, THE LODGER, as a radio play in 1940, wrath and a demand he leave the family he cast Gwenn as the landlord; his brother, home permanently. It was, the actor recalled Arthur Chesney, had played the same part later, a “scene without parallel in Victorian in the original film. melodrama.” Eventually, Gwenn would Hitchcock brought Gwenn back in become part of a family of actors. (He was 1955 for THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY as distantly related, through a very brief mar- Captain Albert Wiles, the first to discover riage, to JOHN GIELGUD; his cousin, Cecil Harry’s inconvenient corpse in the woods; Kellaway, was the ill-fated restaurateur in it’s a marvelously deadpan performance the 1946 The Postman Always Rings Twice.) and one of the few—along with MILDRED However, the first few years were lean. NATWICK’s—that seemed to catch the As his career went on, Gwenn proved very dry, very British humor that Hitch- himself skilled at both popular farce (What cock was trying to translate to the screen. the Butler Saw) and drama (THE SKIN Gwenn also appeared in Them! (as one of GAME); he became a particular favorite of the experts fighting the giant ants) and the George Bernard Shaw, who invited him to infamous Bonzo Goes to College; his last join his company, where he had a fine run role was for Hitchcock again, on ALFRED in Man and Superman. Gwenn added cin- HITCHCOCK PRESENTS. ema to his repertoire in 1916 and re-created He died in Woodland Hills, CA, at 81 his success in The Skin Game for a 1921 of pneumonia. silent; 10 years later, he would reprise it a final time for Hitchcock’s version. Hitch- References cock would also cast him as Johann Strauss “Edmund Gwenn,” IMDb, http://www.imdb the Elder in his disastrous WALTZES .com/name/nm0350324/bio?ref_=nm_ov FROM VIENNA, one of the lowest ebbs in _bio_sm; Alfred E. Twomey and Arthur F. the director’s British career. McClure, The Versatiles: Supporting Charac- The two men had a more happy ter Players in the Cinema, 1930–1955 (New reunion in America in 1940, where Hitch- York: Castle Books, 1969), 106. HA

HALL-DAVIS, LILLIAN _Hall-Davis; Alfred Hitchcock, “My (1898–1933) Screen Memories,” Film Weekly (May London-born performer who hid her 1936), http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Film working-class origins (and insecurity) by _Weekly_%281936%29_-_My_Screen pretending to come from a better neighbor- _Memories; “Lillian Hall-Davis,” IMDb, hood, eventually adding a posh hyphen to http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0356233/ her name. She had an early success with The bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. Admirable Crichton in 1918 and the controversial silent Maisie’s Marriage in 1923 and HAMILTON, PATRICK was the busy STAR of many European epics, (1904–1962) including the 1924 Italian spectacle Quo Sussex-born writer whose novels may be Vadis. For Hitchcock, who once called her more respected by writers than read by the his “favorite actress,” she seemed to serve as public. His famous admirers ranged from a symbol of fragile feminine virtue; in THE GRAHAM GREENE to Doris Lessing, and RING, she was the simple country girl led only recently Nick Hornby called Hamil- astray by her boyfriend’s new riches, while ton’s Twenty Thousand Streets under the in THE FARMER’S WIFE, she was the true Sky the “stretch of motorway” that con- love the hero nearly overlooks. nected Charles Dickens and Martin Amis. The transition to sound movies However literary his novels were, how- proved to be difficult, however; her career ever, Hamilton’s plays were true popular slowed, then stopped, and she fell into a successes—ROPE, first performed in 1929, deep depression. In 1933, her 14-year-old and Gas Light—two words in Hamilton’s son returned home from school to find a original—first performed in 1938. Both suicide note in the hall and the apartment played in London and New York and were door locked; when neighbors broke in, she eventually bought for the movies. (Also was found dead, her throat cut with a razor purchased was Hamilton’s novel Hangover and her head in the oven. She was 35. Square, although Hollywood, hoping to continue Laird Cregar’s recent success in THE References LODGER remake, made it into a Victorian “Film Actress’ Death: Inquest on Miss melodrama.) Often set in England’s shabbier Lilian Hall-Davis,” Times, October 28, resorts and grimier backstreets and fueled by 1933, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ cynicism, Marxism, and cheap drink, Ham- The_Times_%2828/Oct/1933%29_-_Film ilton’s books are sometimes surreal, often _actress’s_death:_inquest_on_Miss_Lilian pitch dark, literally as well as metaphorically;

150 n HAMILTON, PATRICK n 151

Hitchcock and composer Bernard Herrmann pose playfully during recording sessions for the 1956 The Man Who Knew Too Much. Paramount Pictures/Photofest © Paramount Pictures his characters live by night, and George Unknown Assailant, in 1955 and returned Bone, the protagonist of Hangover Square, is full time to drinking; he died of cirrhosis of given to murderous blackouts. the liver in Norfolk at age 58. A melancholic, even somewhat mis- anthropic man who divided his adult References life between the bottle and the type- “Season’s Readings,” Guardian, Decem- writer, Hamilton published his last novel, ber 3, 2004; A. Stevens, “Welcome Back, 152 n HAMLET

Patrick Hamilton,” Guardian, April 16, References 2007, http://www.theguardian.com/books/ “Filming Hamlet,” Aberdeen Journal, booksblog/2007/apr/16/welcomebackpat September 5, 1945, http://the.hitchcock. rickhamilton. zone/wiki/Aberdeen_Journal_%2805/ Sep/1945%29_-_Filming_Hamlet; Caroline HAMLET Moorehead, Sidney Bernstein: A Biography One of the more intriguing unproduced (London: Jonathan Cape, 1984), 173–74. Hitchcock projects, this idea originated with the director himself in the summer of HARDWICKE, SIR CEDRIC 1945—a modern-dress, modern-language (1893–1964) version of the story, with the hero caught Worcestershire-born performer whose life in a sort of murder-mystery and the “To and career followed the path of many Brit- be or not to be” soliloquy done as a mono- ish actors of his generation—early work in logue from a psychoanalyst’s couch. CARY stock companies, service in World War I, GRANT was approached and enthusiastic, then prominent success in the West End and at one point, it was planned as the first followed by the inevitable, remunerative release from TRANSATLANTIC PIC- (but hardly challenging) trip to Hollywood TURES, with Grant possibly joining Hitch- to be cast as mad scientists, clergymen, or cock and SIDNEY BERNSTEIN as a third ancient Romans. partner in the venture. Born into a medical family, Hard- Then two things intervened. First, wicke was expected to follow in his Hitchcock and Bernstein decided that father’s footsteps but didn’t have the UNDER CAPRICORN, with the in- grades for medical school; the Royal demand INGRID BERGMAN, would be Academy of Dramatic Art was less inter- a more auspicious debut. Then in 1947, a ested in his scholarly skills, however, and writer named Irving Fiske sued Hitchcock admitted him as a student. He was on the and Grant, claiming that he had written London stage by 1912 and later toured something called Hamlet in Modern Eng- South Africa and Rhodesia. After fighting lish and that their work infringed on his in France during the war, he returned to copyright. He asked for $1.25 million in great success, particularly in some of the damages—the legal challenge pushing best works of George Bernard Shaw; he Hamlet further back on the company’s list also appeared in the original London proof productions. duction of Showboat, was nominated for a Eventually, Transatlantic, find- Tony on Broadway, and at the early age of ing Bergman to be temporarily unavail- 41 won a knighthood. able, went ahead with a still different By the late ’30s, however, he moved to film, ROPE; the Hamlet case dragged on Hollywood to continue the film work he’d through a series of delays (with the penny- begun in 1926; although he was in several conscious Grant, undoubtedly to his relief, prestige productions early on, he was too finally being dropped from the lawsuit). often mired in second-string horror pic- The whole thing finally reached the courts tures, such as The Invisible Man Returns in 1954; after hearing slightly over two and The Ghost of Frankenstein, where his weeks of testimony, the judge stopped the reserved underplaying often allowed flash- trial, threw out the lawsuit, and told Fiske ier STARS to steal the show. to pay Hitchcock $5,000 in legal costs. The “I believe that God felt sorry for actors, rest was silence. so he created Hollywood to give them a HARMONY HEAVEN n 153 place in the sun and a swimming pool,” ily and onstage since the early 1900s, he Hardwicke said once. “The price they had made his movie debut in 1921 and made to pay was to surrender their talent.” three films for Hitchcock (THE RING, His natural reserve suited him well, THE FARMER’S WIFE, and CHAM- though, as General McLaidlaw, Lina’s dis- PAGNE), four if you count his appear- approving father, in SUSPICION; years ances in the multidirector revue ELSTREE later, Hitchcock would bring him back CALLING. for ROPE as Mr. Kentley, the father of the Unlike some silent-film actors, murdered boy. Hardwicke’s gentle shyness Harker benefitted from the arrival of and growing concern about his son’s unex- sound, which allowed him to give full pected absence gives the film its true heart; reign to his East End attitude; he was par- every time we’re tempted to laugh at one ticularly popular with directors of myster- of Brandon’s morbid JOKES, Kentley’s face ies, who found he could convincingly play stops it in our throats. either a cop or a crook as circumstances Hardwicke would go on to do several required. Along the way, he would also other fine films, including The Winslow appear in The Phantom Light in 1935, an Boy and LAURENCE OLIVIER’s Richard early fantasy from Michael Powell, and III; making full use of his beautifully pre- have his own brief movie series appearing cise speaking voice, he provided the narra- as Inspector Hornleigh, a London detec- tion for several movies, too, including The tive. He also—fine casting—played Alfred War of the Worlds. He would have a late- Doolittle in an early TV broadcast of Pyg- in-life success playing the old pharaoh Sethi malion in 1948. in Cecil B. De Mille’s The Ten Command- Harker died at age 81 in London. ments, and TV drama anthologies kept him busy; ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRES- References ENTS used him twice. His last film was The “Gordon Harker,” IMDb, http:// Pumpkin Eater in 1964. www.imdb.com/name/nm0363104/ He died in New York after a long bout bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Brian McFar- with cancer at age 71. His estate had been lane, “Gordon Harker,” BFI Screenonline, so drained by medical bills that a collection http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/ had to be taken up to pay for his funeral. id/463253.

References HARMONY HEAVEN (GB 1930) “Cedric Hardwicke,” IMDb, http:// www.imdb.com/name/nm0362567/ Director: Thomas Bentley. bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Daniel Blum, Screenplay: Randall Faye, Frank Launder, Daniel Blum’s Screen World (Cheshire, CT: Arthur Wimperis. Biblo-Moser, 1966), 220; Brian McFarlane, Producer: Uncredited. “Sir Cedric Hardwicke,” BFI Screenonline, Cinematography: Theodor Sparkuhl. Editor: Sam Simmonds. http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/ Original Music: John Reynders. id/483436. Cast: Polly Ward (Billie Breeze), Stuart Hall (Bob Farrell), Trilby Clark (Lady HARKER, GORDON (1885–1967) Mistley), Jack Raine (Stuart). London-born actor most reliably cast as Running Time: 61 minutes. Black and white. cocky (and morally flexible) working- Released Through: Wardour Films. class blokes. Born into a theatrical fam- 154 n HARRIS, BARBARA

Early backstage musical from BRITISH On film, Harris’s delicately winsome INTERNATIONAL PICTURES about a features and quick reactions won her a struggling composer and his plucky girl- limited but select number of strong comic friend, it was shot in primitive COLOR roles, from A Thousand Clowns to the orig- and cowritten by FRANK LAUNDER, who inal Freaky Friday. (She also had a memo- would go on to cowrite THE LADY VAN- rable part in Nashville.) Hitchcock particu- ISHES. Some sources, including FRAN- larly wanted her for FAMILY PLOT, but ÇOIS TRUFFAUT, credit Hitchcock as the studio wanted a bigger STAR (Goldie codirector (PATRICK MCGILLIGAN sup- Hawn was one suggestion); when Hitch- posed he spent, at most, a “few days” on the cock persisted, UNIVERSAL pushed him set), which has allowed at least one site to to at least cast KAREN BLACK—then more sell overpriced DVDs of this “rare Hitch- of a name—in the other female role. Hitch- cock film.” Other sources, however, dis- cock agreed, but—as Harris said later—the agree, asserting that, although Hitchcock’s director, who “always wanted emotionless involvement was once announced, he never people in his movies,” was unimpressed by worked on the project. For his own part, the bigger star’s need to indicate every feel- Hitchcock never mentioned the picture. ing in every close-up. “There was a scene in our film, where References Karen Black was acting, acting, acting—all “Harmony Heaven,” Hitchcock Zone, that Lee Strasberg human-struggle stuff,” http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Harmony Harris remembered. “And it took her _Heaven_%281929%29; Patrick McGil- so long to get those tears going, and Mr. ligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Dark- Hitchcock turned to the cameraman and ness and Light (New York: HarperCollins, said, ‘We will just photograph the actors’ 2003), 127; François Truffaut, Hitchcock/ feet in this scene.’ He wanted a beautiful Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, woman who wasn’t showing her life’s his- 1985), 353. tory.” Hitchcock was apparently quite happy HARRIS, BARBARA (1939– ) with Harris, however, who gave Blanche Evanston, IL–born performer, daughter a slightly daffy, Blithe Spirit feel mixed in of a pianist and a businessman, who was with physical comedy and turn-on-a-dime already doing serious Chicago theater in emotions; in a rare bit of generous approval her teens and went on to become a found- for a director so keen on absolute control, ing member of the Compass Players, the he not only accepted the improvised wink first improv group in America, and serve as to the camera in her final close-up but also a central part of its more famous successor, kept it in the film. Second City. Harris later said she adored Harris continued to act but less and improv, but “I was a small-town, middle- less and largely by her own choice; she had class girl who wore a cashmere sweater very come to realize, she said, that she liked the nicely and ended up on Broadway because process more than the performance, the that’s the way the wind was blowing.” She rehearsal more than the show. She had a would go on to star in the original produc- small part in Peggy Sue Got Married and tions of The Apple Tree and On a Clear Day another in Grosse Point Blank. Since 2002, You Can See Forever (both of which were she has lived in Arizona where, she says, written for her) as well as Mother Courage. she blissfully goes unrecognized. HARRISON, JOAN n 155

References The over-qualified Harrison was, by “Barbara Harris,” IMDb, http://www.imdb her own admission, terrible as a regular .com/name/nm0364455/bio?ref_=nm_ov secretary but very good as a selfless assis- _bio_sm; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitch- tant and creative associate who could cock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New tackle any number of jobs, including, in York: HarperCollins, 2003), 722–23; Robrt The Man Who Knew Too Much, playing L. Pela, “Barbara Harris Knew Bill Clinton a small part (as a secretary—one of the Was White Trash,” Phoenix New Times, director’s beloved in-JOKES). Soon she October 24, 2002, http://www.phoenixnew was sitting in and contributing to script times.com/arts/barbara-harris-knew-bill- conferences, as well. Her jobs soon grew to clinton-was-white-trash-6410220; Donald include spotting—and then improving— Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life potential screen properties. She received of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo her first screen credit for helping to adapt Press, 1999), 531. JAMAICA INN and—after following Hitch- cock to America as part of his deal with HARRISON, JOAN (1907–1994) DAVID O. SELZNICK—shared writing Surrey-born writer and producer who credits on his next four films: REBECCA, began her life in films in 1933 as Alfred FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, SUSPI- Hitchcock’s secretary. She would remain CION, and SABOTEUR. a trusted collaborator and loyal confidante Harrison became not only an impor- throughout his career, even after establish- tant professional aide but also a close friend ing her own in the 1940s as a respected who occasionally vacationed with the fam- screenwriter and one of Hollywood’s few ily; although it may indeed have been the female producers. yellow hair that initially attracted him, The daughter of a newspaper pub- Hitchcock respectfully listened to her opin- lisher, Harrison showed an early interest ions, encouraged her further efforts, and in writing at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, made sure she was credited for all of them. where she reviewed films for the student The lecherous boss grabbing his pretty paper in between studying philosophy, assistant? As much as he may have been economics, and politics; she considered attracted to her, that was one cliché Hitch- a career in serious journalism and after cock went to particular lengths to avoid. graduation would continue her studies But eventually Harrison—with the at the Sorbonne. She was in her mid-20s director’s reluctant approval—struck out when she saw a newspaper ad—“Young on her own. She would continue to do lady, highest educational qualifications, uncredited rewrite work on other people’s must be able to speak, read and write screenplays but in 1944 would begin her French and German fluently.” The job own career as a producer with the noir turned out to be working for Hitchcock, thriller Phantom Lady, based on a COR- who was then preparing the first THE NELL WOOLRICH story. Other offbeat MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH and thrillers—Uncle Harry, They Won’t Believe needed a secretary. He hired her after an Me, and Ride the Pink Horse—would fol- interview, although she later wondered if low, and most of them were HITCHCOCK- what clinched it for her was when he asked IAN in the best ways, featuring strong her to remove her hat and saw that she heroines; untrustworthy heroes; tricky was blonde. plots; and stylish, shadowy compositions. 156 n HARTLEY, MARIETTE

Although—given the script work, some- movie debut in Sam Peckinpah’s lovely times uncredited, she had done for him over Ride the High Country; two years later, she a decade—perhaps it could be said they were played Susan in MARNIE. in the “Harrison tradition,” as well. “Hitchcock had seen me in Gunsmoke Harrison moved to television work in and hired me,” she said later in an autho- the 1950s and soon resumed her associa- rized documentary about the film. “He and tion with Hitchcock, serving as an associ- I had a wonderful time, with great repartee, ate, executive, or full producer of more he was very funny and giving, showing me than 300 episodes of his two shows. (She the storyboarding which were exquisitely also produced 40 episodes of the similar TV beautiful, I was so thrilled. Hitch had his anthology SUSPICION, including the one own look; I feel so blessed that I was able to Hitchcock directed, “FOUR O’CLOCK.”) work with him.” A later, more horror-oriented series she did And yet, she said another time, he on her own, Journey to the Unknown, was could be mercurial, mysterious, emotionless successful, lasting only 15 episodes. She ally withholding. Toward the end of pro- retired after producing the TV movie Love duction, when relations between them had Hate Love in 1971 (written by her husband reached the point where he would no lon- since 1958, novelist Eric Ambler). ger speak to Hartley directly—according to She died in London at 87. fellow cast members TIPPI HEDREN and DIANE BAKER, he was already quarrel- References ing with them, too, and had made passes “Joan Harrison,” IMDb, http://www.imdb at both—“I went up to him and asked if .com/name/nm0365661/bio?ref_=nm in some way I had offended him,” Hartley _ov_bio_sm; “Joan Helps Hitchcock Find later said. “His reply was, ‘Miss Hartley, I Those TV Chillers,” Chicago Tribune, May think you have problems with men.’” 5, 1963, http://archives.chicagotribune Although there were a few more .com/1963/05/05/page/274/article/joan movies—Marooned, The Return of Count -helps-hitchcock-find-those-tv-chillers; Yorga—Hartley, who had always had a Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life busy TV career, has mostly been seen on in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- the small screen since the mid-’70s. Her erCollins, 2003) 514–15, 522–24; Donald most famous role may have been in a wry Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life series of Polaroid commercials with James of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Garner, which left many viewers convinced Press, 1999), 147–49, 188–89, 220–21. they were married. (Eventually, she had T-shirts printed up, reading “I am not HARTLEY, MARIETTE (1940– ) James Garner’s wife!”) She continues to act, Weston, CT, performer born into an mostly on television, and remains a strong upper-class, politically connected family advocate for mental health initiatives. that—she later wrote—was so alcoholic and dysfunctional it was like the “back end of References an O’Neill drama.” (Her maternal grandfa- Alvin Klein, “A Bittersweet Homecoming ther was John B. Watson, the controversial for Mariette Hartley,” New York Times, psychologist and founder of “behavior- February 6, 1994, http://www.nytimes ism.”) During Hartley’s teens, however, she .com/1994/02/06/nyregion/theater-a-bit found an outlet in acting and soon began tersweet-homecoming-for-mariette-hart winning TV roles. In 1962, she made her ley.html?pagewanted=2&src=pm; “Mari- HAYES, JOHN MICHAEL n 157 ette Hartley,” IMDb, http://www.imdb Over his career, Hayes would have .com/name/nm0366866/bio?ref_=nm some success with soapy melodramas _ov_bio_sm; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred (he did the movie adaptations of BUt- Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light terfield 8 and Peyton Place and the sup- (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 646; The posed Hollywood exposé Harlow), but Trouble with Marnie, directed by Laurent his most prominent association was with Bouzereau (2000), documentary, http://the Alfred Hitchcock, for whom he wrote four hitchcock.zone/wiki/The_Trouble_with pictures—REAR WINDOW, TO CATCH _Marnie_%282000%29_-_transcript. A THIEF, THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY, and THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO HAY, IAN (1876–1952) MUCH—before the relationship acrimoni- Educator and soldier born in Manchester ously dissolved. as John Hay Beith, who emerged as a popu- The first, Rear Window, is still the lar playwright and memoirist after the First strongest. The original CORNELL WOOL- World War. His account of his battalion RICH story had the VOYEURISTIC gim- during the early days of battle, The First mick but no real romance; reportedly, an Hundred Thousand, was a best seller in 1915, early treatment by Josh Logan had added and in 1919, his play Getting Together was a heroine, and now Hitchcock gave Hayes turned into the movie The Common Cause. the job of fleshing her out. Also very spe- Known for his light and conversational cific instructions. “We have to have a girl,” style, he is credited with dialogue on three Hayes recalled the director telling him, of Hitchcock’s ’30s films—THE 39 STEPS, “and I want to use GRACE KELLY.” Hayes SECRET AGENT, and SABOTAGE—and his spent a couple of weeks with the actress plays The Middle Watch and Tilly of Blooms- to get to know her better and decided to bury have been adapted many times. make her character (like his wife) a fashion He served in the public relations model. He also worked hard at giving the department of the British War Office until script humor, providing THELMA RIT- retirement, just before turning 65; he died TER with a number of tart wisecracks as at age 76 in Hampshire. JAMES STEWART’s cynical visiting nurse. “I brought dialogue, character and References humor to Hitch,” Hayes said later (as if “Ian Hay,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ those elements had been absent in the name/nm0067308/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio director’s previous three decades of work). _sm#trivia; “Ian Hay,” Only Two Rs, https:// “He had the suspense, and we melded very only2rs.wordpress.com/2006/05/04/14. well. He liked my sometimes flippant dialogue, and so did the audience.” HAYES, JOHN MICHAEL What the director didn’t care for was (1919–2008) Hayes’s obvious confidence and happi- Worcester, MA–born author who moved ness to take credit even when credit was early on from journalism to radio scripts. due; when the screenwriter won an Oscar Settling in California after the war, he nomination for the screenplay and even an wrote for a number of hit series, including Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of the mystery programs The Adventures of America, the director was visibly annoyed. Sam Spade and Inner Sanctum, and even- “He resented my receiving an award when tually transitioned to a job at UNIVERSAL he didn’t,” Hayes said. Still, the collabora- (then Universal-International) in 1952. tion continued on the slight but elegant 158 n HEAD, EDITH

To Catch a Thief, also with Kelly, and the “I enjoyed working with Hitchcock disappointing The Trouble with Harry professionally,” Hayes said later. “But he (both of which, nonetheless, showed off was egotistical to the point of madness.” Hayes’s gift for humor and slightly more- Hayes continued to write—the adven- risqué-than-usual lines). A better, deeper ture story Iron Will from 1994 is his—and effort was the remake of The Man Who to teach writing at Dartmouth. He died at Knew Too Much. Hitchcock explained the 89 in Hanover, NH. basic story but told Hayes not to watch the original film before he wrote the script; References Hayes’s new screenplay gave the main “John Michael Hayes,” IMDb, http://www characters a complicated, somewhat trou- .imdb.com/name/nm0371088/bio?ref_=nm bled marriage and grounded the thriller in _ov_bio_sm; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred a human reality the first movie had lacked. Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New During preproduction, however, Hitch- York: HarperCollins, 2003), 500, 529–32; cock called in ANGUS MACPHAIL, whom Patrick McGilligan, ed., Backstory: Inter- he had known since the British silents and views with Screenwriters of the 60s (Berke- had last worked with on SPELLBOUND, ley: University of California Press, 1997), telling Hayes that the old writer was now his 174–92; “Obituary: John Michael Hayes,” new collaborator. According to Hitchcock, Guardian, December 5, 2008, http://the MacPhail contributed technical advice and a .hitchcock.zone/wiki/The_Guardian_%2805/ good deal of the spy plot and would receive Dec/2008%29_-_Obituary:_John_Michael a cowriting credit; according to Hayes, _Hayes; “Obituary: John Michael Hayes,” MacPhail was a “dying alcoholic” who con- Los Angeles Times, November 27, 2008, tributed nothing. When Hitchcock insisted http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Los_Ange on the shared credit, Hayes submitted the les_Times_%2827/Nov/2008%29_-_Obitu screenplay to the Writers Guild for arbitra- ary:_John_Michael_Hayes; Donald Spoto, tion; ultimately, the guild decided that only The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hayes should be named. Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), MacPhail, who seemed to be further 345–46, 360–61, 366–67; François Truffaut, from death than Hayes remembered—he Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: lived another six years—went on to work Touchstone, 1985), 222, 227. on the screenplay for THE WRONG MAN and did some early work on VERTIGO, HEAD, EDITH (1897–1981) before begging off. Hayes, however, never San Bernardino fashion maven, whose first worked for Hitchcock again. They had career was in academia—after graduating already been quarreling over low fees, a with honors from the University of Cali- never-paid bonus, and Hayes’s attempts to fornia, Berkeley, she earned a master’s from enlist the actors of To Catch a Thief in his Stanford in romance languages. By the early rewrite battles; this final, public squabble ’20s, she was teaching French at the Hol- put a period to it. When Hayes’s name lywood School for Girls. Interested in the came up in the FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT extra money a second specialty would bring, INTERVIEWS, Hitchcock vaguely and Head took night classes in drawing so she ungenerously dismissed the author of four could teach art to her pupils, as well; in fact, of his strongest ’50s pictures as a “radio rather than bringing her more students, it writer” who did the dialogue and a gim- earned her an interview at PARAMOUNT, mick or two. where—after blithely displaying a portfolio HEAD, EDITH n 159 plumped up with other people’s work—she to pay more and more meticulous atten- won a job as a “sketch artist” in 1924. tion to his actresses’ clothes and hair. It She first worked with Alfred Hitch- was a symbol of control, of course, but also cock on NOTORIOUS, where she designed of characterization—the cheap, revealing INGRID BERGMAN’s elegant party gown; dresses worn by KIM NOVAK’s Judy in she and the director would work together Vertigo, the stiff but sexy gown sported by 10 more times, on REAR WINDOW, TO GRACE KELLY in To Catch a Thief. And it CATCH A THIEF, THE TROUBLE WITH was something that Head appreciated. HARRY, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO “Alfred Hitchcock is the only person MUCH, VERTIGO, THE BIRDS, MAR- who works on a script with such detail that NIE, TORN CURTAIN, TOPAZ, and FAM- a designer could go ahead and make the ILY PLOT. (She was in preproduction on clothes without discussing them with him,” his THE SHORT NIGHT until that film she said in a long 1979 interview with Ameri- was finally abandoned.) Throughout her can Film. “Unless there is a story reason for a career, with him and other directors, she was COLOR, we keep the colors muted, because known for working closely with actresses and Hitchcock believes they can detract from became a favorite designer of many, includ- an important action scene. He uses color, ing Barbara Stanwyck, Dorothy Lamour, actually, almost like an artist, preferring soft SHIRLEY MACLAINE, and Natalie Wood. greens and cool colors for certain moods.” As she had in her first studio Although the power—and resources— interview—and as had her male bosses of the costume designer had shrunken before her—Head sometimes grandly signed vastly since the end of the studio system, her name to other people’s work; it was Head continued to work regularly, some- well known that at least two of her Oscars, times on TV and often for period pictures for Roman Holiday and Sabrina, were for such as The Sting (for which she won her clothes emanating from other designers, eighth and final Oscar). Her last credit was including Hubert de Givenchy. Still, there on Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid in 1982, is a link connecting much of her work, with nearly 60 years after she had begun her her designs deliciously feminine, even flirty. career. She died at 83 in Los Angeles of (“A dress,” Head opined, “should be tight bone marrow disease. enough to show you’re a woman, and loose enough to show you’re a lady.”) References Probably because she worked so Allison P. Davis, “The Cut: 30 Fantas- closely with the STARS themselves, they tic Movie Costumes by the Legend- are also, invariably, flattering and unfussy, ary Edith Head,” New York Magazine, with clean lines. And they immediately tell October 28, 2013, http://nymag.com/ you something about the character—the thecut/2013/10/30-fantastic-movie-cos clothes that INGRID BERGMAN wears at tumes-by-edith-head.html#; “Dialogue on the beginning of Notorious when she’s care- Film: Edith Head,” American Film (May less and drunken and single are quite dif- 1978), http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ ferent from the ones she wears when she is American_Film_%281978%29_-_Dialogue meeting CARY GRANT and different still _on_Film:_Edith_Head; “Edith Head,” Biog- from the ones she wears when at home with raphy, http://www.biography.com/people/ CLAUDE RAINS. Fashion follows form. edith-head-9332755; “Edith Head,” IMDb, This was a decision, of course, firmly http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0372128/ embraced by Hitchcock, who would come bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. 160 n HECHT, BEN

HECHT, BEN (1894–1964) unnoticed on the screen. For his two best A hugely talented and prolific writer born scripts for Hitchcock, however, SPELL- in New York, raised in Wisconsin, who fled BOUND and NOTORIOUS—not acci- to Chicago at 16 to become a newspaper- dentally, also two of Hitchcock’s best ’40s man. Both location and occupation formed films—he took full credit. him as, he remembered decades later, he Both are notable enough just on the “ran everywhere in the city like a fly buzz- surface; Spellbound was one of the first ing in the works of a clock, tasted more Hollywood films to treat psychiatry with than any fit belly could hold, learned not any seriousness, while Notorious helped to sleep and buried myself in a tick-tock of pioneer the modern spy-thriller genre. But whirling hours that still echo in me.” Hecht more than that, Hecht’s scripts for Hitch- covered crime for the Chicago Daily News, cock were remarkable for the depth of their went to Europe as a war correspondent, characters’ relationships and the complex- and then returned to shine as a colum- ity of the heroines. Notorious was particu- nist; it was an era of scoops, scandals, and larly striking, as Alicia goes from betrayed knock-down battles between rival report- daughter to self-loathing drunkard to vul- ers. Hecht loved all of it (and recaptured nerable and hopeful lover—a lover who is it later in his hit play with Charles MacAr- then, essentially, patriotically pimped out thur, The Front Page, and his memoirs, A to crack a Nazi conspiracy. Child of the Century). Alicia is a complicated character, a In 1926, he got a telegram from sinning saint (and nearly a martyr) who Herman Mankiewicz, a fellow reporter has few parallels in Hitchcock’s work. But who had left for work in Hollywood as strong women are a constant in Hecht’s a screenwriter; it was going even better screenplays, whether it’s the comical than “Mank” had dared hope. “Millions fraud of Nothing Sacred or the fiery hero- are to be grabbed out here and your only ine of Wuthering Heights (or, probably, competition is idiots,” he wired his friend. the heroines in all the other screenplays “Don’t let this get around.” Hecht may or he reportedly worked on but was never may not have kept the secret, but he soon credited for, such as Gilda and Duel in the took the train, establishing himself early on Sun); as a strong man, Hecht celebrated with Underworld in 1927, which won best confident women and prized adult rela- screenplay at the first Academy Awards tionships. ceremony. Hecht quickly became known He liked Hitchcock but found few as the fastest—and most expensive—writer adults in Hollywood or in other movies. in the industry; at one point, DAVID O. The people he worked with, he wrote, SELZNICK was paying him $3,500 a day. were generally “nitwits on a par with the Hecht’s high price was due largely to lowest run of politicians I had known”; his skill as a script doctor, coming in at the the art the industry produced, he feared, start of—or even the end of—production was an “eruption of trash that has lamed to fix a sick screenplay; his first work with the American mind and retarded Ameri- Hitchcock was hastily concocting the final cans from becoming a cultured people.” speech-to-America scene for FOREIGN The only reason he stayed, he insisted, CORRESPONDENT. Like most of his work was that screenwriting provided “tre- for the director—rewrites and touch-ups mendous sums of money for work that on LIFEBOAT, THE PARADINE CASE, required no more effort than a game of and ROPE—it would go uncredited but not pinochle.” HEDREN, TIPPI n 161

So he also wrote plays. He wrote nov- By the early ’60s, though, she was els. And during the Second World War, entering her 30s, living in Los Angeles, he worked hard to spread the truth about divorced, and the mother of a four-year- the Holocaust at a time when it was still old child, Melanie; the offer of a seven- minimized or even denied; after the war, he year personal contract with Alfred Hitch- became a loud and loyal supporter of a new cock (who had spotted her in that soda Jewish state to the point of paying for a ship advertisement) seemed like an enormous to transport settlers and even unhesitantly breakthrough, although Hedren’s movie supporting terrorist attacks on British experience had been limited to a bit part occupiers by the Irgun gang. (As a result, more than 10 years before in the ROBERT for a while his films were banned in Brit- CUMMINGS musical The Petty Girl. “It ain; even in their obituary, a still-outraged was never my ambition to be an actress, Times referred to his views as “virulent.”) much less a movie STAR,” she said later. The publication of A Child of the Cen- “I had never thought of myself that way. I tury brought Hecht new respect in 1954— was a model, and I had come to Los Ange- although he always considered his novels to les not only to try for better work than was be his most serious work—but Hecht con- available in New York, but also because I tinued to churn out new pages and rewrit- wanted my daughter to grow up in a home ten ones for films from Monkey Business to with a yard and trees and a neighborhood (uncredited) 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. He died at to roam and play in.” 70 in New York of thrombosis. Hitchcock had his own ambitions. After years of dealing with stars who were References under contract to studios (or to other pro- “Ben Hecht,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, ducers, such as DAVID O. SELZNICK) he http://www.britannica.com/biography/Ben wanted an actress he could literally call his -Hecht; “Ben Hecht,” IMDb, http://www own, available at any time for any project; a .imdb.com/name/nm0372942/bio?ref_=nm previous contract with VERA MILES (who, _ov_bio_sm; Florice Whyte Kovan, Ben inconveniently, kept getting married and Hecht Biography and Works, http://benhecht having children) had yielded little. Now he books.net; “Obituary: Mr. Ben Hecht,” would try again. Times, April 20, 1964, http://the.hitch Although he had no one but himself to cock.zone/wiki/The_Times_%2820/ convince of Hedren’s suitability, Hitchcock Apr/1964%29_-_Obituary:_Mr_Ben_Hecht. put as much care and cash into the actress’s screen test as he would into an actual film. HEDREN, TIPPI (1930– ) EDITH HEAD was told to design not Last and most controversial of the “Hitch- only clothes for the auditions but a per- cock BLONDES.” sonal wardrobe for Hedren as well; MAR- The small-town, Minnesota-born TIN BALSAM, fresh from PSYCHO, was daughter of a storekeeper, Tippi—a fam- brought on to do the test shoots with her. ily nickname, her real name is Nathalie— The scenes were taken from Hitchcock’s began modeling as a teenager, mostly for previous hits with JOAN FONTAINE, local department stores. After high school, GRACE KELLY, and INGRID BERGMAN. she moved to New York to pursue her But with all the molding, the care- career; she appeared twice on the cover of ful control, it really seemed like only one Life magazine and landed a soft-drink com- movie was being reprised. “It was really very mercial. clear, wasn’t it?” screenwriter SAMUEL A. 162 n HEDREN, TIPPI

TAYLOR asked later. “He was doing VER- Then, Hedren said, things grew worse. TIGO.” Taylor had, of course, one of the Riding in a car to the location one day, the screenwriting credits on Vertigo, so perhaps director grabbed her in an embrace. She it was clear to him; other observers were less pushed him away but gave him the “ben- sure of what Hitchcock’s real attitude was efit of the doubt”—that he was just trying or convinced that it was any different than to keep her off balance before an emo- it had ever been. The director had always tional scene, the way he would whisper had very specific views of how his lead- dirty words in her ear before a take, trying ladies should appear on the screen; he ing to shake her up (the same way he had would give very specific instructions to the purposefully undermined Fontaine’s confi- costume designer (usually Head) or choose dence on the set of REBECCA). the clothes off the rack himself. Hairstyles, But later, as she began to worry this shoes—all were taken into consideration. was more than just a director’s trick, But before, Hitchcock had mostly Hedren felt trapped. “I couldn’t just resign worked with women who were under con- or quit my contract—there would have tract to others, who were already stars and been a major lawsuit and I was a single often were already married. Hedren was mom with a little girl to support,” Hedren single, uncertain, and signed exclusively said later, pointing out this was years to him. And that led him to fashion a very before anyone thought of suing over sexual tight leash for his new discovery. Although, harassment. “I would have been blacklisted as filming began, some observers still saw all over town—would have been unable to nothing beyond his usual meticulous control find work anywhere. So I tried to cope.” of image—albeit, in this case, a living per- But then the final bit of shooting came son’s image—others thought his relationship on The Birds, built around the climactic to Hedren was turning somewhat darker. scene in which the heroine goes upstairs ROD TAYLOR, her costar in THE alone to be attacked by a flock of pecking BIRDS, remembers Hitchcock—who on animals. In the script, it is the final assault the set referred to Hedren simply as “the on the character of Melanie Daniels, the girl”—keeping her segregated from the attack that breaks down her last bit of rest of the cast and crew, even forbidding cocky independence to make her into the them from sharing rides. “He was very firm docile child that Mitch and his mother about that—oh, I must not ride with her, seem to want. But on the set it seemed to be as if that would taint his goddess,” Taylor an assault on the actress Tippi Hedren, an said. “He was putting a wall around her, attack to demolish her final bit of resolve. trying to isolate her from everyone so that She had been told it would be an easy all her time would be spent only with him.” scene, that they would use mechanical “He started telling me what I should birds. Instead it took nearly a week and wear on my own time, what I should be eat- employed live animals—some of which ing and what friends I should be seeing,” were literally thrown at her, others of which Hedren remembered later. “He suggested were tied to her clothes so they couldn’t get that such and such a person was not good away. On the fifth day of shooting, Hedren enough for my company, or that someone finally collapsed on the set in hysterics. She I might have a social engagement was not went home and, on medical advice, stayed right. And he became angry and hurt if I away from the production for a week. didn’t ask his permission to visit friends in Eventually the filming was completed, and the evening or on a weekend.” the movie moved into postproduction. HEDREN, TIPPI n 163

Hedren’s performance in The Birds ery in a voice pitched deliberately loud so isn’t confident or particularly natural— Hedren couldn’t help but overhear. unsurprising, given that this was her first Eventually, according to Hedren, real job as an actress and that Hitch- his behavior progressed to include more cock seemed to be working hard to bully obvious, blatantly personal demands. The and control her. She has one or two real entire set had been fraught with sexual moments onscreen with JESSICA TANDY tension for some time; Baker said Hitch- and SUZANNE PLESHETTE, but her cock was “inappropriate a couple of times scenes with Taylor feel forced. And, with [with me] and I made it very clear I was not his love of MONTAGE and PURE CIN- interested,” while MARIETTE HARTLEY EMA, at times Hitchcock directs her as if remembers him first turning icy to her and she were a marionette, particularly in the then announcing “Miss Hartley, I think you sequence of the birds’ assault on down- have problems with men.” Finally, Hedren town, in which Hedren’s artificially posed said, the director flatly told her that she was close-ups are intercut with different scenes going to become his mistress—or he would of destruction. ruin her career. Hitchcock may have begun to real- These are stories of something that ize that his much vaunted discovery was happened 50 years ago; not surprisingly, not going to be the new Grace Kelly he there are many who dispute them. For had imagined and whom he still desper- years, Hedren said little about it (and ately missed; in fact, he had already tried even smilingly attended some salutes to to lure the old Kelly back for his next the director); although she went on the picture, MARNIE. But she had turned record to a degree for DONALD SPOTO’s him down—it’s hard to imagine how he THE DARK SIDE OF GENIUS, her story thought a reigning royal could ever have has seemed contradictory at times; as late played a SEXUALLY repressed kleptoma- as 2005, she was denying the director had niac—and so now he pushed ahead with ever made an actual pass. But her tale is Hedren. told at more length and with ugly detail This was an even more difficult role in Spoto’s 2008 Spellbound by Beauty (and than The Birds, calling for a wide range was the impetus behind the movie THE of complicated emotions, many of which GIRL). Marnie screenwriter JAY PRES- even the character herself wasn’t supposed SON ALLEN, Baker, and various costars to understand; there wouldn’t be any hor- and coworkers have also come forward to rific shocks or special effects to act as a dis- corroborate Hedren’s story, too, at least in traction, either (nor would critics give her part. the benefit of the doubt of only being in Also supplying evidence, no mat- her first movie). The stresses were going to ter how legally inadmissible, are the films be high. And, according to Hedren, Hitch- themselves. In The Birds, Hedren plays cock soon added to them. He continued a chilly, ironic beauty who is methodi- his old methods (referring to her as “the cally attacked and broken down until she’s girl,” isolating her from other crew mem- reduced to helplessness; in Marnie, Hedren bers, sternly ordering her leading man not is a cold and amoral thief and liar who is to touch her). He invented new ones, too; raped by her husband and then trauma- DIANE BAKER, a costar, recalled him tized by being forced to relive an assault standing outside Hedren’s dressing room from her childhood. Both movies are about and talking disparagingly of his discov- icy princesses being brutalized—ultimately 164 n HEDREN, TIPPI for their own good, the stories insist—and after a disagreement over a TV western; by reduced through cruel victimization to the mid-’70s, her movie career was pretty their properly submissive status. much over. “He was always trying to put his Hedren continued to work though, if own personal feelings up on the screen at other things. She became very active in and I think that was one of the things he charities, particularly in regard to animal was doing with Marnie,” observed Hitch- welfare (a drive, interestingly, she shared cock colleague and longtime production with former Hitchcock blondes Novak designer ROBERT F. BOYLE, who worked and DORIS DAY); she did work with Viet- on both Hedren films. “He was doing it namese refugees, helping involve them in through Tippi, and through his filmmak- the new nail salon industry. She raised her ing, and exploring some of his own feelings daughter, MELANIE GRIFFITH. She occa- and his compulsive behavior.” sionally took a part on oddly familiar proj- Still, others continue to deny it. When ects—she was in a poor TV sequel to The the stories first received mainstream atten- Birds, The Birds II: Land’s End; appeared tion with the publication of The Dark Side in a television remake of SHADOW OF of Genius, many reacted to them with shock A DOUBT; and contributed a cameo to or disbelief, with a few noting that these Griffith’s appearance on the rebooted The charges weren’t made until the man wasn’t New Alfred Hitchcock Presents. alive to defend himself. PATRICK MCGIL- And eventually she began talking LIGAN’s 2003 ALFRED HITCHCOCK: A about what her years with Hitchcock were LIFE IN DARKNESS AND LIGHT offered really like—detailing both his brilliance and the strongest defense of the director, and his darkness—without fear, without rancor, there is an entire website, Save Hitchcock but also without hesitation. “He ruined my (www.savehitchcock.com), that rallies career,” she has said. “But he didn’t ruin support for the dead filmmaker. It’s been my life.” forthcoming, too. “I feel bad about all the stuff people are saying about him now, that References he was a weird character,” KIM NOVAK Peter Ackroyd, “Alfred Hitchcock Was has said. “I did not find him to be weird at an Overgrown Schoolboy,” Daily Mail, all. I never saw him make a pass at anybody March 21, 2015, http://www.dailymail or act strange to anybody.” .co.uk/home/event/article-3002550/Alfred But this much isn’t in dispute: Tippi -Hitchcock-overgrown-schoolboy-school Hedren never became Alfred Hitchcock’s boy-s-obsession-sex.html; Diane Baker, mistress. And Alfred Hitchcock did help interview with the author, September 2015; ruin her career. He kept her under con- Andrew Billen, “The Birds Attacked Me tract for two years yet, she says, stubbornly but Hitch Was Scarier,” Times, April 4, refused to loan her out for other directors’ 2005, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/ projects. Finally, he sold her contract to film/article2426913.ece; Kyle B. Counts UNIVERSAL (where, as its third largest and Steve Rubin, “The Making of ‘The stockholder, he essentially still remained Birds,’” Cinemafantastique 10, no. 2 (Fall her boss). Hedren had a small part in 1980), http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Cine Charles Chaplin’s disastrous A Countess mafantastique_%281980%29_-_The_Mak from Hong Kong in 1967; she did some tele- ing_of_Alfred_Hitchcock%27s_The_Birds; vision work and made the film The Harrad Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life Experiment. She was dropped by the studio in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- HERO n 165 erCollins, 2003), 626–28, 645–49; Rosie ENTS and gave him at last a real film role Millard, “Hitchcock’s Girl,” FT Maga- in VERTIGO as Gavin Elster, the husband zine, July 27, 2012, http://www.ft.com/ who hired Scottie to keep an eye on his intl/cms/s/2/14e3358c-d5f1-11e1-a5f3 wife. By the ’60s, Helmore’s career was -00144feabdc0.html#axzz2HbGxCPMO; winding down; he was one of ROD TAY- Rob Salem, “Hitchcock and Hedren Now a LOR’s friends in The Time Machine and TV Movie,” Star, October 19, 2012, http:// had a small role in Advise and Consent; his www.thestar.com/entertainment/televi last appearance was in a 1972 episode of sion/2012/10/19/hitchcock_and_hedren Night Gallery. _now_an_hbo_movie.html; Donald Spoto, He died at 91 in Longboat Key, FL. The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, References 1999), 449–52, 457–60, 467–68, 475–76; “Tom Helmore,” IMDb, http://www.imdb Donald Spoto, Spellbound by Beauty: .com/name/nm0375738/bio?ref_=nm_ov Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies _bio_sm; “Tom Helmore, 91, Actor Best (New York: Harmony Books, 2008), 245– Known for Comedy,” New York Times, 77; David Thomson, The New Biographi- September 15, 1995, http://www.nytimes cal Dictionary of Film (New York: Knopf, .com/1995/09/15/obituaries/tom-helmore 2002), 386–87; “Tippi Hedren,” IMDb, -91-actor-known-best-for-comedy.html. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001335/ bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; The Trouble with HERO Marnie, directed by Laurent Bouzereau In myth and classical literature, a protago- (2000), documentary, http://the.hitch nist—usually of royal if sometimes con- cock.zone/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Mar cealed origins—who embarks on a quest nie_%282000%29_-_transcript; François or journey, suffers many trials, and either Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New triumphs through his own noble virtues or York: Touchstone, 1985), 327. is undone by his own tragic flaws. The figure—perhaps more simply and accurately HELMORE, TOM (1904–1995) called the protagonist—has a different role London-born performer of well-tailored in Hitchcock’s films. elegance who dutifully followed his father Hitchcock’s heroes are frequently the into the family’s accounting firm while least heroic characters in his films, riddled looking for movie parts in his spare time; by self-doubt and self-loathing. While he made his screen debut in 1927 with his their opponents are confident, Hitchcock’s first feature appearance—extra work— heroes hesitate; while his villains invari- in Hitchcock’s THE RING. It would be ably exude charm and trustworthiness, another year or two before he was a famil- his heroes often alienate others and attract iar face; by the ’30s, he was a busy support- suspicion. Most of them carry GUILT—yet ing player in British films, often in myster- for things they didn’t do or couldn’t avoid. ies and light comedies. (Hitchcock gave The heroes of THE 39 STEPS, NORTH him another small part in SECRET AGENT BY NORTHWEST, and THE MAN WHO in 1936.) KNEW TOO MUCH all have stabbing vic- By the 1950s, Helmore was in Amer- tims literally fall at their feet and expire; ica and a regular on a variety of television the hero of SABOTEUR accidentally kills a shows; Hitchcock used him on two epi- man by using a fire extinguisher that’s been sodes of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRES- secretly filled with gasoline. 166 n HERRMANN, BERNARD

Often this guilt festers into genu- Reference ine psychological trauma. In VERTIGO, “Hero,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, http:// haunted by letting one man fall to his www.britannica.com/art/hero-literary-and death, Scottie is then driven into a clini- -cultural-figure. cal depression when his illness stops him from preventing another death; in SPELL- HERRMANN, BERNARD BOUND, the amnesiac Ballantyne has a (1911–1975) guilt complex over a childhood accident; New York musician who took violin les- the icy kleptomaniac MARNIE has effec- sons at the urging of his opera-loving father tively but disastrously repressed memories and later studied composition at New York of childhood violence. University and Juilliard. An obvious if Hitchcock’s heroes are flawed in ways somewhat prickly prodigy, he had his own his villains never are; in fact, often in an small chamber orchestra by 20 and by 23 act of TRANSFERENCE, the villains push was a staff conductor at CBS radio. There, their guilt and their weaknesses onto the Herrmann’s duties grew to include not only men opposed to them. In ROPE, Rupert programming and conducting live broad- fears it was his influence that drove Bran- casts of modern and classical works but don to plan a “thrill killing”; in STRANG- also scoring dramas; it was through those ERS ON A TRAIN, it’s Guy who worries that he met Orson Welles and began col- it’s his own blithe conversation that drove laborating with him on his own work for Bruno to kill. And who is the likelier the network. When Welles went to Holly- murderer in FRENZY—Bob Rusk, the wood and RKO with the Mercury Theatre, charming Cockney merchant, or Rich- Herrmann went with him. ard Blaney, the hard-drinking, habitually Herrmann’s score for Citizen Kane is, in angry ex-serviceman? (Typically, even its own way, as careful a collection of styles their identical-but-reversed initials— as the movie itself—commercial fanfare for BR versus RB—suggest the mirrored the documentary; period pop; opera; and images and DOUBLES that reoccur then the slow, dark dirge that surrounds so throughout Hitchcock’s films, in which much at Xanadu. The Magnificent Amber- heroes and villains sometimes seem inter- sons seemed slated to be another fine score, changeable.) too, but when the studio cut it along with the Brandon and Bruno, though, have no movie, Herrmann angrily insisted his credit guilt—nor do presumably the real trai- be removed from the titles. tors in The 39 Steps and Saboteur, the Between the two collaborations with plotting husband in Vertigo, or the psy- the director, Herrmann had already scored chopath in Frenzy. That is something that (and won his only Oscar for) The Devil and only a Hitchcock hero has—along with a Daniel Webster in 1941; he would go on to dislike of emotional commitment and an compose a moving score for Jane Eyre (in occasional desire to see some indepen- which Welles acted), a thunderously melo- dent women taken down a peg, which dramatic one with bits of classical music; may come awfully, uncomfortably close for Hangover Square; an achingly roman- to abuse. tic score for The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, one None of which makes them classically of Herrmann’s favorites; and the modern heroic, and all of which can make them fas- THEREMIN-based electronic music for cinating. The Day the Earth Stood Still. HERRMANN, BERNARD n 167

Typically, Herrmann’s scores were the composer’s case that ALMA REVILLE marked by short repetitive phrases, an reportedly agreed). avoidance of leitmotif, and a creative The two men were enough of a team approach to orchestration; his work life was that the director brought him onboard for similarly marked by an insistence on abso- TV’s THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR; lute control over his own art and a rarely when Hitchcock decided that there would disguised contempt for musically illiterate be no music at all in his next film, THE directors or studio heads who only wanted BIRDS, he still used the composer as a something “commercial” they could use to “sound consultant.” But when their next sell the movie. picture together, MARNIE, was a box-office Although DAVID O. SELZNICK had disappointment, Hitchcock found himself tried to bring the two talents together ear- under new pressures from UNIVERSAL lier, the composer had other obligations; to find a younger composer—and, they Herrmann’s first collaboration with Hitch- hoped, a more commercial sound—for his cock came with THE TROUBLE WITH next project. HARRY, where his score, full of whimsical “He said he was entitled to a great pop woodwinds and stop-and-start rhythms, tune,” Herrmann said of the music Hitch- hints at the good humor that the film, a cock wanted for TORN CURTAIN. “I said, rare Hitchcock comedy, hoped to engen- ‘Look, Hitch, you can’t out-jump your own der. He returned to score the far more seri- shadow. And you don’t make pop pictures. ous THE WRONG MAN and THE MAN What do you want with me? I don’t write WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, where he left pop music. It’s a mistake.’” Herrmann the pop song “Que Sera, Sera” to others but wrote a score but the way he wanted to; instead contributed a dramatic score (and the director angrily rejected it and eventu- a cameo as the conductor in the concert ally hired someone else. Herrmann never scene at Albert Hall). worked with Hitchcock again, although he It was followed by his three most blamed the studio, too. famous movie scores for three of Hitch- “They made him very rich, and they cock’s finest films—VERTIGO (in which recalled it to him,” Herrmann said later. the music hints at the circular patterns and “I said to Hitchcock, ‘What do you find in downward spirals to come); NORTH BY common with these hoodlums?’ ‘What are NORTHWEST (with the pounding pace of you talking about?’ ‘Do they add to your its overture preparing us for the film-long artistic life?’ ‘No.’ ‘They drink your wine?’ chase to come); and PSYCHO, in which ‘Yes.’ ‘That’s about all. What did they ever he famously created a “black-and-white” do? Made you rich? Well, I’m ashamed of sound by only using strings. It is perhaps you.’” Herrmann’s masterwork and certainly his “There was great pressure on Hitch- most imitated work, a genuine musical cock not to hire Benny Herrmann,” con- metaphor with slashing violins accom- fidante NORMAN LLOYD said later, panying the slashing blade. Interestingly, blaming it on the studio’s “so-called music Hitchcock had originally envisioned the department.” “The reason given was that scene playing without music; Herrmann Benny Herrmann couldn’t write a hit song. forcefully disagreed, and it was a measure Torn Curtain was made at about the time of the respect in which the director held that this vogue of having a hit song was him that he listened (although it helped becoming fashionable.” 168 n HICKS, SEYMOUR

The never-uncertain Herrmann—who herrmann/articles/smith/lloyd; Donald once estimated his contribution to a Hitch- Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life cock film as “40 percent”—left Hitchcock of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo without looking back. He did not lack for Press, 1999), 420, 460, 491; David Thom- work. He had already had a long associa- son, The New Biographical Dictionary of tion with Ray Harryhausen, writing gor- Film (New York: Knopf, 2002), 394–95. geously soaring scores for fantasy epics like The 7th Voyage of Sinbad; he was in HICKS, SEYMOUR (1871–1949) demand for thrillers, too. (His music for British-born performer from the isle of Jer- the original Cape Fear, full of low, building sey, who began his theatrical career at 16. menace, was repurposed for the remake as He was an early hit in revues, music halls, well.) musical comedies, pantomimes, and liter- But the association with Hitchcock ary adaptations, with A Christmas Carol was indelible and would haunt many of his being a particular public favorite and later assignments, as he worked on films for Scrooge becoming an iconic role. He wrote Hitchcock admirers (Fahrenheit 451 and his own material and eventually owned two The Bride Wore Black, both for FRANÇOIS theaters. TRUFFAUT), imitators (Sisters and Obses- By the ’20s, Hicks had branched into sion, both for BRIAN DE PALMA), and films as well and was starring in his own even former Hitchcock colleagues (Endless production, the comedy short ALWAYS Night for SIDNEY GILLIAT, cowriter of TELL YOUR WIFE, based on his play. THE LADY VANISHES). His last score was When the original director, Hugh Croise, for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, and— was unable to finish filming—it is unclear quite fittingly—the final chords it strikes whether he was sick or Hicks was sim- are ones from Psycho. ply sick of him—assistant director Alfred He died of a heart attack in Hollywood Hitchcock was told to take over. (It is, at 64. arguably, Hitchcock’s debut as a director; his own first film, NUMBER 13, was aban- References doned.) The extent of Hitchcock’s input “Bernard Herrmann,” Biography, http:// and influence here is difficult to say; only www.biography.com/people/bernard- about half of the 40-minute film is known herrmann-9336913; “Bernard Herrmann,” to survive, and it’s impossible to be sure IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ who shot what. nm0002136/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Hicks continued to act onstage and Royal S. Brown, “An Interview with Ber -screen, reprising his role as Scrooge in the nard Herrmann,” http://www.bernardher first talkie version of the story in 1935’s A rmann.org/articles/an-interview-with-ber Christmas Carol and appearing with ROB- nard-herrmann; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred ERT MONTGOMERY in the Lord Peter Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light Wimsey mystery Haunted Honeymoon in (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 506–7; 1937. He died in Hampshire at 78. Stephen Rebello, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho (New York: Harper References Perennial, 1991), 138–39; Steven C. Smith, Sydney Higgins, “The Golden Age of Brit- “For the Heart at Fire’s Center: Norman ish Theatre, 1880–1920: Seymour Hicks,” Lloyd,” Bernard Herrmann Society, http:// The Camerino Players, http://www.the folk.uib.no/smkgg/midi/soundtrackweb/ -camerino-players.com/britishtheatre/ HIGHSMITH, PATRICIA n 169

SirSeymourHicks.html; “Seymour Hicks,” Hitchcock sent Brooks a case of wine as a IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ thank-you gift. nm0382957/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. As it’s parodying a career and an approach rather than a specific film or HIGH ANXIETY (US 1977) genre, High Anxiety is a little more dif- fuse than the earlier Brooks films. There is, Director: Mel Brooks. for example, a Frank Sinatra–style ballad Screenplay: Mel Brooks, Ron Clark, Rudy stuck in the middle, simply inserted to give De Luca, Barry Levinson. Brooks a chance to burlesque a lounge act. Producer: Mel Brooks. And the supporting cast, padded out with Cinematography: Paul Lohmann. some of Brooks’s old pals and cowriters, Editor: John C. Howard. isn’t as sharp as it could be (although Mad- Original Music: John Morris. Cast: Mel Brooks (Richard H. Thorndyke), eline Kahn makes a fine, funny “Hitchcock Madeline Kahn (Victoria Brisbane), Clo- BLONDE”). But it’s all done with affection ris Leachman (Nurse Diesel), Harvey and, impressively, a real insider’s knowl- Korman (Dr. Charles Montague). edge. Any fan, for example, can spoof the Running Time: 94 minutes. Color. Psycho shower scene. But casting Hitch- Released Through: 20th Century Fox. cock’s longtime matte painter ALBERT WHITLOCK as the film’s own living MACGUFFIN, a kidnapped industrialist? Having already lampooned Broadway That’s an act of genuine, hardcore movie musicals (The Producers), westerns (Blazing love—not surprising for a film that carried Saddles), classic horror films (Young Fran- a dedication to the “Master of Suspense.” kenstein), and the silents (Silent Movie), Mel Brooks now narrowed his focus to References satirize, not an entire genre, but a single “Mel Brooks: ‘I’m an EGOT, I Don’t director, and so this farce—while combin- Need Any More,’” National Public Radio, ing large parts of SPELLBOUND and VER- December 27, 2013, http://www.npr TIGO—also includes references to THE .org/2013/12/27/256597762/mel-brooks BIRDS, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, PSY- -im-an-egot-i-dont-need-any-more; James CHO, and other classics. Robert Parish, “It’s Good to Be the King”: “I wrote a letter saying, basically, ‘Dear The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks Mr. Hitchcock, I do genre parodies and in (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, my estimation you are a genre,’” Brooks 2008), 221. later told National Public Radio about his preproduction work on the film. “‘I don’t HIGHSMITH, PATRICIA mean that you’re overweight. I mean that (1921–1995) you’ve done every style and type of movie, Texas-born novelist, short-story writer, and and that you’re just amazing, and I would the child of two artists and survivor of an like to do a movie dedicated to you, based unhappy childhood. After graduating from on your style and your work.’” According Barnard College, she took a job writing for to Brooks, Hitchcock—who’d liked Blaz- comic books, contributing stories to such ing Saddles—not only approved but also early series as Spy Smasher and Captain contributed ideas to the script, including Midnight, as well as writing western strips, the one of the birds attacking the hero by romances, and illustrated biographies of defecating on him. After the film came out, famous men. 170 n HITCH

She published her first novel, 2009, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/ STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, in 1950; it archives/2009/jul/02/this-woman-is was successful, although it was the movie -dangerous; Kim Morgan, “The Gnarly adaptation the following year (which made Allure of Patricia Highsmith,” Daily Beast, Guy far more sympathetic while providing December 5, 2015, http://www.thedaily a simpler, more dramatic finale) that made beast.com/articles/2015/12/05/the-gnarly her famous. Her next novel, The Price of -allure-of-patricia-highsmith.html; Gerald Salt, was about a lesbian love affair; most Peary, “An Interview with Patricia High- controversially, it dared to have a happy smith,” Sight and Sound (Spring 1988), ending rather than assigning its characters 104–5, http://www.geraldpeary.com/inter to the “well of loneliness” other gay novels views/ghi/highsmith.html. had previously invoked. It was published under a pseudonym and is the basis of the HITCH 2015 film Carol. The director’s favored nickname but also a Most of the rest of Highsmith’s works persona—rotund, precise, slyly witty—and were crime thrillers but only in the sense a practically trademarked brand, marked that The Stranger or Crime and Punishment by his own minimalist self-drawn carica- are, too; chiefly they are stories about people ture and eventually growing to encompass who become criminals out of clumsiness or television shows, children’s books, anthol- expedience. GUILT is usually absent in her ogies, comics, magazines, record albums, callow characters, as is regret; the amoral and almost anything else you (or his agent) thief and murderer Tom Ripley remains her could think of. most famous creation (albeit one usually Hitchcock began the creation and misunderstood by filmmakers). Not surpris- feeding of this character early, hiring a ingly, Highsmith much preferred animals to publicist after THE LODGER debuted people; the titles of two of her short-story and contributing articles to publications collections, Little Tales of Misogyny and The from Film Weekly (“My Screen Memo- Animal Lovers Book of Beastly Murder, were ries,” 1936) to Good Housekeeping (“The well-chosen. She enjoyed her own company, Enjoyment of Fear,” 1949). The result was tobacco, and strong drink. that—bolstered by his witty cameos—he Highsmith spent the last 32 years of became recognizable in a way few working her life in Europe, first in England and then directors had been since the era of D. W. in Switzerland, where her love of privacy Griffith. Unless they acted, too, like Erich was respected and her eccentricities more von Stroheim, filmmakers were rarely accepted although still commented on. (She celebrities to American audiences. Hitch- could make appallingly racist remarks and cock always was. When the television show once attended a cocktail party with a hand- ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS began bag full of snails, which she kept as pets.) in the ’50s, it not only fleshed out that teas- She died at 74 in Locarno of cancer. She ing, avuncular persona but also provided a left her entire estate to the artists’ colony personal theme song in “Funeral March for at Yaddo, where she had finished the final a Marionette.” He had become as famous as draft of Strangers on a Train. many of the actors he cast in his films. There was, in some circles perhaps, References a downside to this; self-promotion has its Michael Dirda, “This Woman Is Danger- limits, even in Hollywood, and in the ’60s, ous,” New York Review of Books, July 2, as Hitchcock became more of a trademark, HITCHCOCK n 171 undoubtedly some thought of him as less of and filming PSYCHO, despite the difficul- an artist. Yet ultimately his branding drew ties with PARAMOUNT and Hollywood many people to see the “new Hitchcock” in CENSORSHIP. a way they never would have consciously It is a good story and one told both in looked forward to see the “new Huston” or Rebello’s book and in JANET LEIGH’s own the “new Hawks,” to name two of his con- memoirs of the production, Psycho: The temporaries; it may have narrowed people’s Classic Thriller. Yet for some reason, the image of him, but it also focused it. filmmakers seem unconcerned about getting And in some ways, the playful public simple facts right. Some of these are minor persona of “Hitch” himself—darkly humor- (the movie was not filmed on the Paramount ous but never morbid, teasing but never lot, as the film suggests, but at UNIVER- terrorizing, risqué but never vulgar—may SAL); some are rather more serious. (The have been his most clever creation. early death of the story’s heroine wasn’t an invention of ALMA REVILLE’s but in the Reference original novel by ROBERT BLOCH.) Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: Worse, the movie seems intent on cre- The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da ating conflict where in fact there was none. Capo Press, 1999), 73, 102–4, 418. Hitchcock is portrayed as being danger- ously delusional. (He has long, disturbing, HITCHCOCK (US 2012) hallucinatory conversations with the real- life inspiration for Norman Bates, the serial Director: Sacha Gervasi. killer ED GEIN.) And apparently thinking Screenplay: John J. McLaughlin, based on Alma wasn’t interesting enough in her own the book Alfred Hitchcock and the Mak- right (and she was), the script has her actu- ing of ‘Psycho’ by Stephen Rebello. ally directing part of Psycho (which is sim- Producers: Alan Barnette, Joe Medjuck, ply untrue) while in the midst of a compli- Tom Pollock, Ivan Reitman, Tom Thayer. cated emotional affair with the screenwriter Cinematography: Jeff Cronenweth. Editor: Pamela Martin. WHITFIELD COOK (which is, to say the Original Music: Danny Elfman. least, arguable). Cast: Anthony Hopkins (Alfred Hitchcock), The Hitchcock estate seemed deter- Helen Mirren (Alma Hitchcock), Scarlett mined to primly ignore the film, and—per- Johansson (Janet Leigh), James D’Arcy haps because Leigh, Cook, ANTHONY (Anthony Perkins), Danny Huston (Whit- PERKINS, and most of the other onscreen field Cook), Michael Wincott (Ed Gein). characters were already dead—the movie Running Time: 98 minutes. Color. did not attract the criticism that THE GIRL Released Through: Fox Searchlight. had, although Time criticized it for having a “happy ending that no one can believe” and proclaimed it “fine for anyone who prefers A docudrama based chiefly on the Stephen their Hitchcock history tidied up, absent the Rebello book Alfred Hitchcock and the megalomania, the condescending cruelty Making of ‘Psycho,’ with some details inter- and tendency to sexual harassment.” polated from PATRICK MCGILLIGAN’s ALFRED HITCHCOCK: A LIFE IN DARK- References NESS AND LIGHT; taking a late-in-life cre- Mary Pols, “‘Hitchcock’—To Psycho, with ative peak in the filmmaker’s life, it focuses Love,” Time, November 20, 2012 http:// on the time put in on finding, developing, entertainment.time.com/2012/11/20/hitch 172 n HITCHCOCK, ALFRED cock-to-psycho-with-love; Stephen Whitty, Finds freelance art work with local “‘Hitchcock’ Review: ‘Psycho,’ Analyzed,” film productions. NJ.com, http://www.nj.com/entertainment/ 1921. Begins full-time employment at index.ssf/2012/11/hitchcock_review_psy Famous Players-Lasky, designing cho_analyz.html. intertitles. Progresses to working on sets and scripts. HITCHCOCK, ALFRED 1923. First directing jobs, on NUMBER (1899–1980) 13 (unfinished) and codirecting the The following is a timeline of major events short ALWAYS TELL YOUR WIFE in Hitchcock’s life. For further details on (partially lost). specific films or colleagues, see individual 1923–1925. Codirects and/or cowrites entries. Some dates are approximate; unless five films, including THE WHITE specified, films are dated by their initial SHADOW for GAINSBOROUGH release. PICTURES, which has taken over from Famous Players-Lasky. Begins August 13, 1899. Alfred Joseph Hitch- courting film editor and assistant cock born in London, the young- director Alma Reville. est of three children. (His sister is 1925. Directs his first solo feature for Ellen Kathleen; his brother is Wil- SIR MICHAEL BALCON at Gains- liam John.) His father, William, is a borough Pictures, THE PLEASURE greengrocer. GARDEN, shot in Germany. Directs August 14, 1899. ALMA REVILLE THE MOUNTAIN EAGLE. (Both born in London. films will have their releases delayed c. 1904. William Hitchcock delivers his until 1927 by disappointed distribu- son to the local police to be locked tor C. M. WOOLF.) up as a “naughty boy.” Although the 1926. Directs THE LODGER: A child is only left alone in a cell for a STORY OF THE LONDON FOG. short while, the memory stays with Film’s release again held up by him forever. Woolf; recut, it is previewed to an 1910–1913. Alfred Hitchcock enrolled enthusiastic press. Hitchcock mar- at the Jesuit school St. Ignatius Col- ries Reville in December. lege. Later, Hitchcock continues at a 1927. The Lodger finally released local council school to take courses in to popular acclaim. THE RING, draftsmanship and commercial art. another hit, and DOWNHILL for 1914. Hitchcock takes junior job at BRITISH INTERNATIONAL PIC- W. T. Henley’s Telegraph Works TURES. EASY VIRTUE. Company. William Hitchcock dies. 1928. THE FARMER’S WIFE. CHAM- 1914–1919. Works on technical draw- PAGNE. Daughter PATRICIA ings, diagrams at Henley’s, eventu- HITCHCOCK born. ally rising to a position in the adver- 1929. THE MANXMAN. BLACK- tising department. Exempted from MAIL, his first talkie and his second draft due to “obesity.” Contributes thriller. short stories often featuring unre- 1930. JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK, liable narrators, love triangles, or episodes of revue ELSTREE CALL- twist endings to Henley’s employee ING and MURDER!, another hit magazine. Takes art classes at night. thriller. HITCHCOCK, ALFRED n 173

1931. THE SKIN GAME. Release of Cruz mountains. FOREIGN COR- MARY, a German-language version RESPONDENT. of Murder! shot simultaneously with 1941. SUSPICION, first film with original film. CARY GRANT. Film wins best 1932. NUMBER 17. RICH AND actress Oscar for JOAN FON- STRANGE. TAINE. MR. AND MRS. SMITH. 1933. Directs WALTZES FROM 1942. SABOTEUR. Buys home in Los VIENNA, a picture he will consider Angeles. Hitchcock’s MOTHER a particular low point. It will be dies. released the following year. 1943. SHADOW OF A DOUBT. Hitch- 1934. Hitchcock leaves British Inter- cock’s brother dies of complications national Pictures, resumes collabo- from alcoholism. ration with Balcon at GAUMONT- 1944. LIFEBOAT. Nominated for best BRITISH. THE MAN WHO KNEW director, loses to Leo McCarey for TOO MUCH revives career, firmly Going My Way. Shoots two propa- establishes Hitchcock’s reputation ganda shorts in Great Britain for as the “Master of Suspense.” the British Ministry of Information, 1935. THE 39 STEPS. Reemphasizes BON VOYAGE and AVENTURE themes and details first seen in The MALGACHE. Lodger—a wrong man on the run, 1945. SPELLBOUND, first film with questions of GUILT and innocence, INGRID BERGMAN. Nominated BONDAGE, theaters, BLONDES—to for best director, loses to Billy be explored for the rest of his career. Wilder for The Lost Weekend. Helps 1936. SECRET AGENT. SABOTAGE. supervise editing of Holocaust doc- 1937. YOUNG AND INNOCENT. umentary footage, eventually shown 1938. THE LADY VANISHES. Wins as MEMORY OF THE CAMPS. best director award from NEW 1946. NOTORIOUS. Forms indepen- YORK FILM CRITICS CIRCLE. dent production company with Biggest success since The 39 Steps, producer SIDNEY BERNSTEIN, it increases Hitchcock’s and Hol- TRANSATLANTIC PICTURES. lywood’s mutual interest. Hitch- 1947. THE PARADINE CASE. Last cock takes meetings with both film under the Selznick contract. Samuel Goldwyn and DAVID O. 1948. ROPE. First film with JAMES SELZNICK. Hitchcock’s agent— STEWART. First of the Transatlan- Myron Selznick, David’s brother— tic productions. advises him to turn down Goldwyn. 1949. Returns to England to shoot 1939. JAMAICA INN, last Hitchcock UNDER CAPRICORN, his first film feature to be shot in Great Britain in COLOR and last with Bergman. for a decade. Leaves with his family Its financial failure hastens end of and assistant JOAN HARRISON for Transatlantic Pictures. America and a contract with Selznick. 1950. Signs contract with WARNER 1940. REBECCA. Film wins best pic- BROS. STAGE FRIGHT. ture at the ACADEMY AWARDS, 1951. STRANGERS ON A TRAIN is Hitchcock loses best director prize released, his first hit since Notori- to John Ford for The Grapes of ous. First film with cinematographer Wrath. Buys country home in Santa ROBERT BURKS. 174 n HITCHCOCK, ALFRED

1953. I CONFESS. 1966. TORN CURTAIN. 1954. DIAL M FOR MURDER, his 1968. Receives Irving Thalberg Memo- only film in 3-D—it ends up being rial Lifetime Achievement award. released to most theaters “flat”—and 1969. TOPAZ. his first film with GRACE KELLY. 1971. Alma Reville suffers a stroke. REAR WINDOW, another hit, also She largely recovers, although other with Kelly and his first film with strokes and health issues will follow screenwriter JOHN MICHAEL in later years. HAYES. Is nominated for best 1972. FRENZY. director, loses to Elia Kazan for On 1974. Hitchcock suffers a heart attack the Waterfront. and is implanted with a pacemaker. 1955. TO CATCH A THIEF. THE 1976. FAMILY PLOT. TROUBLE WITH HARRY, first 1977. THE SHORT NIGHT i s film with composer BERNARD announced as Hitchcock’s next film. HERRMANN. ALFRED HITCH- Early work begins on the script. COCK PRESENTS begins on televi- 1978. The Short Night continues in sion. Becomes a US citizen (retaining development with new writers. dual citizenship with Great Britain). 1979. Hitchcock’s sister Ellen Kathleen 1956. THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO dies. The Short Night project is qui- MUCH. THE WRONG MAN. Signs etly abandoned. In ill health, Hitch- VERA MILES to a personal con- cock finally closes his office at UNI- tract. VERSAL in May. His knighthood is 1957. First book on Hitchcock’s art, announced as part of the Queen’s HITCHCOCK by ERIC ROHMER New Year Honours list. and CLAUDE CHABROL, pub- 1980. Dies at home of renal failure on lished in France. April 29. His body is cremated and 1958. VERTIGO. Last film with Stew- his ashes scattered at sea. (Alma art. Reville will die two years later. Her 1959. NORTH BY NORTHWEST. Last body will be cremated and her ashes film with Grant. scattered at sea.) 1960. PSYCHO. Nominated for fifth and last time as best director. Loses References to Billy Wilder for The Apartment. “Hitchcock Chronology,” Hitchcock Zone, 1961. Signs TIPPI HEDREN to a http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Hitchcock seven-year contract. _Chronology; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred 1962. Offered and declines the Com- Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light panion of the British Empire award. (New York: HarperCollins, 2003); Donald Begins extensive INTERVIEWS for Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT. Alfred of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Hitchcock Presents replaced by THE Press, 1999). ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR. It will run until 1965. HITCHCOCK, PATRICIA (1928– ) 1963. THE BIRDS. The only child of Alfred Hitchcock and 1964. MARNIE. Last film with ALMA REVILLE, “Pat” was born in Lon- Herrmann. Last film with Hedren. don in 1928 and moved to America with Last film with Burks. her family in 1939. At 12, she got her first HITCHCOCKIAN n 175 professional acting part—in the short-lived “SHADOW OF A DOUBT.” Her child- Broadway play Solitaire—and, after gradu- hood? “We were a very close family.” The ation from a CATHOLIC girls’ school in various books detailing stories of his poor 1947, enrolled in the Royal Academy of treatment of actresses or his cruel practical Dramatic Art in London, where she lived jokes? “Hurtful” and “untrue.” His dark, with relatives. obsessive films? “He was a brilliant film- Hitchcock used her in several of his maker and he knew how to tell a story, films, but if there was some nepotism that’s all.” Over the years, the interviews involved, there was no favoritism; the parts became more reluctant, even combative— were always small, generally comic, and there was the feeling of a dutiful daughter not particularly flattering. She is “Chubby” being forced to perform for company when Bannister in STAGE FRIGHT and morbid she didn’t wish to simply because it was an Barbara Morton in STRANGERS ON A occasion. (A 2005 interview with the Times TRAIN; in PSYCHO, she is Caroline, Mar- of London—with the headline “Even Scar- ion Crane’s gabby, slightly nasal coworker. ier than Psycho”—seems to have been the Pat Hitchcock married in 1952—to the last long one for print.) Her children have grandnephew of the Boston archbishop, now taken over as the keepers of the family much to her father’s pride—and gradu- flame. ally stepped away from her career. She “People will think what they want to appeared, mostly briefly, in ten episodes think, that’s what my father always said,” of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS—“I Pat Hitchcock observed once. “They pay played more English maids than you will their money, they are entitled to. Anyway, I ever know!”—and had a few bit parts in don’t care what they think.” If that’s really other films. Skateboard, a 1978 comedy, true, then she is happier than most. was her last credit. Since then, she has enjoyed her home References in California, her family, and horses, and Helena de Bertodano, “Even Scarier than if she herself hasn’t carried forward the Psycho,” Times, April 5, 2005, http://www Hitchcock name in films, then she has .thetimes.co.uk/tto/life/article1718836. protected it as best she can, donating his ece; Pat Hitchcock O’Connell and Laurent papers to the Margaret Herrick Library, Bouzereau, Alma Hitchcock: The Woman appearing in many authorized documenta- behind the Man (New York: Berkeley ries, and coproducing her own movie about Trade, 2004), 3, 153, 233–55; Suzie Mack- his longtime production designer ROBERT enzie, “The Woman Who Knew Too F. BOYLE (The Man on Lincoln’s Nose). Much,” Guardian, August 27, 1999, http:// She also cowrote a book about her mother, the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/The_Guard Alma Hitchcock: The Woman behind the ian_%2828/Aug/1999%29_-_Pat_Hitch Man, which denied that her father played cock:_The_woman_who_knew_too_much; cruel practical JOKES, reprinted her moth- “Pat Hitchcock,” IMDb, http://www.imdb er’s recipes and luncheon menus, and .com/name/nm0386877/bio?ref_=nm_ov described her parents’ marriage and col- _bio_sm. laboration in glowing terms. Pat Hitchcock has also over the years HITCHCOCKIAN given interviews, although her answers Decades before the idea of “personal brand- were always brief. Her favorite film of ing” became commonplace, Alfred Hitch- his? “NOTORIOUS.” His own favorite? cock very cannily promoted himself in the 176 n HITCHCOCKIAN

’20s and ’30s—hiring a personal publicist, The murders in these films are often par- doing rounds of INTERVIEWS, writing ticularly gory, and the “twist” ending gen- bylined articles for popular magazines, and erally involves a split personality or another even endorsing products. His reputation showy bit of madness. It’s as if the only of the “Master of Suspense” began while Hitchcock film they saw were Psycho, and he was still in England, and within a few all they took away from it was the scene years of his arrival in America, he himself with the psychiatrist. became not only a celebrity but also a kind Some of these films are successful on of genre all his own—one would go see the their own terms; the deliberately over-the- “new Hitchcock” the way you would buy top Homicidal from William Castle features tickets to “that new horror picture.” a shock beheading and some genuinely But eventually the more famous he Hitchcockian gender bending. But most became, the more diluted his name grew. of Castle’s other similar killer-thrillers— He went beyond being an honored trade- Strait-Jacket, I Saw What You Did—copy mark to being a loosely defined adjective— not Hitchcock’s style but only his flair for “Hitchcockian”—that could be applied to publicity and personal iconography. (Like (and was soon eagerly sought by) other Hitchcock, Castle appeared in his own filmmakers. Although Hitchcock’s films trailers.) actually cover a wide variety of genres There were many other serial-killer (though they were frequently unsuccessful, films in the wake of Psycho, most of them he did do straight dramas, comedies, even quickly identified by their titles—Para- a musical), his imitators concentrate on noiac, Fanatic, The Psychopath—some of only two: the serial-killer shocker and the them even based on stories by Psycho scribe romantic international thriller. They tend ROBERT BLOCH and some of them, like to miss the point of each. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, based on Hitchcock did a number of films about old ED GEIN himself. (There were many lethal lunatics; the most obvious ones are more films, too, such as Taste of Fear, THE LODGER, SHADOW OF A DOUBT, which the uninformed called Hitchcockian ROPE, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, PSY- but were actually imitating his French rival, CHO, and FRENZY. In almost all of them HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT and his (we never actually meet the killer in The LES DIABOLIQUES.) But although some Lodger), the killer is suave, even charming; had a few genuine thrills, their interests in most of them, the victims are STRAN- were not Hitchcock’s, and his obsessions GLED; in all of them, the simple message were beyond them. And then Halloween is that the villain may look just like you— came out and then Friday the 13th and then might even be you, given just a few dark cruder slasher films, which did away with twists or turns. any remaining subtleties. Unfortunately, these aren’t the things The other kind of Hitchcock film that most of his admirers choose to imitate. sometimes imitated is the couple-on-the- Instead, the so-called Hitchcockian mur- run film, a sort of thriller he pretty much der mystery puts the emphasis on surprise invented in THE 39 STEPS and returned rather than suspense. The IDENTITY of to with SABOTEUR and, finally setting out the killer is often kept a secret until the end to top himself, NORTH BY NORTHWEST. (something Hitchcock really doesn’t do; And after that film, there was another it’s not his fault if we choose to believe our miniflurry of Hitchcock imitators, center- eyes and Norman Bates’s protestations). ing on mismatched male-female couples HITCHCOCK’S FILMS n 177 in jeopardy and often bearing a one-word References title: Charade, Mirage, Arabesque, Gambit. Landon Palmer, “Culture Warrior: What None of them fully explored the themes— Is Hitchcockian Suspense,” Film School corrupting ruling-class conspiracies, flawed Rejects, http://filmschoolrejects.com/fea heroes, GUILT—that made his own films tures/culture-warrior-what-is-hitchcock so resonant. ian-suspense-lpalm.php; Donald Spoto, True, most featured Hitchcock veter- The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred ans (CARY GRANT in the first, GREG- Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, ORY PECK in the next two, SHIRLEY 1999), 73. MACLAINE in the last), as well as complicated puzzles, beautiful costars, unusual HITCHCOCK’S FILMS chase scenes, and interesting backgrounds; Seminal English-language study by ROBIN best is the charming Charade, which had WOOD, first published in 1965. The work, Grant and Audrey Hepburn looking for which had begun with a close reading of looted fortune while evading the clutches PSYCHO for the magazine CAHIERS DU of some odd character actors and running CINEMA, followed in that journal’s tra- through Paris to a percussive Henry Man- dition of AUTEUR THEORY and care- cini score. (Like many Hitchcock thrill- ful analysis and was an early and essential ers, it ends in a theater, too.) But even it is look at the director’s movies, with a strong slightly off—its humor a bit too broad, its emphasis on his American work. thrills a bit too comic. The initial essay on Psycho had first been In any case, eventually the James rejected by the English film magazine Sight Bond movies made the Hitchcock interna- and Sound because editor Penelope Hous- tional thrillers obsolete; playing baldly for ton felt Wood was taking seriously a film a broader audience, they made the quips that had been only meant as a JOKE. Indeed, more obvious, the sex more voluptuous, Wood’s book-length critical history came the climaxes more cataclysmic. The days out at a time when his first sentence—“Why of quaint MACGUFFINS—spies chasing should we take Hitchcock seriously?”—was after a statue with a belly full of micro- still a popular query. It was one Wood’s book film—were gone. Now nothing less than then clearly, cogently answered, with sepa- a megalomaniac out to destroy the planet rate chapters carefully analyzing STRANG- would do. ERS ON A TRAIN, REAR WINDOW, Yet the ultimate irony was that—even VERTIGO, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, before the knockoff Hitchcockian thrill- PSYCHO, THE BIRDS, MARNIE, and TORN ers themselves gave way to big-budget spy CURTAIN. He found much to praise in each. movies or the ersatz Hitchcockian serial- In 1989, Wood—who had not only killer films were superseded by slice-and- since come out as a gay man and declared dice gore pictures—none of Hitchcock’s himself a Marxist but also had time to imitators had ever really, truly understood reconsider his feelings about auteurism and what they were imitating. They thought criticism in general—published a new ver- “Hitchcockian” meant surprise endings, sion of his book, Hitchcock’s Films Revis- Cary Grant, mad killers, European capitals. ited, with the original material not only They didn’t realize it meant guilt and inno- annotated and corrected but also accompa- cence, BONDAGE and duty, responsibility nied by much new material. If it is less clear and regret. Which is what had made him cut and concise than the first, then it is no the “Master of Suspense” all along. less valuable. 178 n HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT

References sometimes uncritical devotee; he occa- William Grimes, “Robin Wood, Film sionally fails to follow up on Hitchcock’s Critic Who Wrote on Hitchcock, Dies at own allusions, functioning chiefly as a 78,” New York Times, December 22, 2009, highly intelligent stenographer, carefully http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/ taking down every humorous anecdote arts/22wood.html?_r=0; Armen Svad- and how-I-got-that-shot story. But that jian, “A Life in Criticism: Robin Wood at stenography is important, too; Hitchcock 75,” Your Flesh, January 1, 2006, http:// was relaxed and expansive with his young yourfleshmag.com/books/a-life-in-film admirer, and if some of the stories here -criticism-robin-wood-at-75/am; Robin are familiar, then they are also filled with Wood, Hitchcock’s Films (New York: unequaled detail. The book remains a vital Paperback Library, 1969), 7–15. work of scholarship and a primary source for many volumes that followed, including HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT this one. Along with HITCHCOCK’S FILMS by ROBIN WOOD, perhaps the one essential References book on the director’s work. “Alfred Hitchcock and François Truf- Before he became a great director in faut (Aug/1962),” Hitchcock Zone, his own right, FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Alfred had been a critic and one of Hitchcock’s _Hitchcock_and_Fran%C3%A7ois most fervent admirers, hailing him as one _Truffaut_%28Aug/1962%29; “The Hitch- of cinema’s greatest AUTEURS. Although cock and Truffaut Tapes,” Film Detail, by 1962 Truffaut was now making personal http://www.filmdetail.com/2011/02/14/ films of his own, he still thought critics the-hitchcock-and-truffaut-tapes; François did not take Hitchcock seriously (partly Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New because of the director’s own jocular atti- York: Touchstone, 1985), 11–12. tude toward INTERVIEWS), and he “felt the imperative need to convince.” HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT So a series of long interviews began. It (US 2015) would stretch, Truffaut said, to 50 hours of recorded tapes; after 4 years of transcrip- Director: Kent Jones. tion, editing, fact-checking, and illustration Screenplay: Kent Jones, Serge Toubiana. research, the book was published in France Producers: Charles S. Cohen, Oliver Mille. Cinematography: Nick Bentjen, Daniel in 1966 and in America the following year. Cowen, Eric Gautier, Mihai Malaimare (Portions of the original tapes can be heard Jr., Lisa Rinzler, Genta Tamaki. online at various sites, including http:// Editor: Rachel Reichman. www.filmdetail.com/2011/02/14/the-hitch Original Music: Jeremiah Bornfield. cock-and-truffaut-tapes.) A revised edi- Cast: Alfred Hitchcock, François Truffaut, tion—with some additional thoughts from Paul Schrader, Martin Scorsese, David Hitchcock on FRENZY and Truffaut’s own Fincher, Wes Anderson. thoughts on FAMILY PLOT, the TIPPI Running Time: 80 minutes. Color. HEDREN controversy, and Hitchcock’s Released Through: Cohen Media Group. final decline—was published after Hitch- cock’s death and just before Truffaut’s. The original volume is easy to criti- Film historian and festival programmer cize now. Truffaut was an unabashed and Kent Jones INTERVIEWS filmmakers who HOMOSEXUALITY n 179 talk about how the famous book-length One-hundred-years-of-John-Hodiak/ interview influenced their life and work. A stories/201404160030; “John Hodiak,” film that salutes not only the original book IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ (while hinting, tantalizingly, at some of the nm0388303/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. anecdotes Hitchcock insisted be off the record) but also the filmmakers themselves, HOMOLKA, OSCAR (1898–1978) with many current directors talking about Viennese performer who, after classical their creative debts and analyzing various training, began a serious career on the Ger- classic films. man stage, working for Max Reinhardt, playing in Shakespeare, appearing in the Reference first German productions of O’Neill, and “Hitchcock/Truffaut,” IMDb, http://www starring in everything from Edgar Wallace .imdb.com/title/tt3748512. thrillers to plays by Brecht and Shaw. Given his association with Brecht, and HODIAK, JOHN (1914–1955) the fact that his first wife, actress Grete Pittsburgh-born performer who grew up in Mosheim, was Jewish, Homolka wisely left Michigan and began acting in plays at his for England shortly after Hitler came to local Ukrainian Catholic Church. Proudly power, where he resumed his film career. working class, with an awkward and pro- In 1936, he starred as the vaguely foreign nounced accent, he caddied and toiled in bomber in SABOTAGE. By 1940, he was an auto plant while dreaming of acting and in Hollywood, where he began playing laboring on his elocution; by 1939, he was supporting parts, sometimes as eccentric in Chicago, playing the title role in the Li’l old-world relatives (I Remember Mama, Abner radio show. for which he won an Oscar nomination) The daily serial lasted little more than but more often as villainous Communists a year, but by 1942, he had an MGM con- or suspicious servants (Mr. Sardonicus). tract. They loaned him out for Fox’s LIFE- He was busy on TV and appeared on three BOAT, where he played the hunky sailor episodes of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRES- on whose bare chest TALLULAH BANK- ENTS. HEAD’s Connie adds her own, lipsticked He died at 79 in Sussex. icon. After a few more good films—A Bell for Adano, Command Decision—Hodiak’s References career faltered, but he made a strong stage “Oscar Homolka,” IMDb, http:// comeback on Broadway in the role of Lt. www.imdb.com/name/nm0393028/ Maryk in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial. bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Alfred E. After its two-year run, Hodiak—recently Twomey and Arthur F. McClure, The Ver- divorced from wife ANNE BAXTER— satiles: Supporting Character Players in the returned to Hollywood and movie work. Cinema, 1930–1955 (New York: Castle He died in the home he had bought his Books, 1969), 116. parents of a sudden heart attack at 41. HOMOSEXUALITY References In many Hitchcock films, the character of Paul Guggenheimer, “One Hundred the gay man and woman follows the same Years of John Hodiak,” Pittsburgh Post- stereotypical, homophobic impulses as Gazette, April 16, 2014, http://www most of noir. The lesbian is obsessed and .post-gazette.com/ae/movies/2014/04/16/ predatory (REBECCA). The gay man is 180 n HOMOSEXUALITY effeminate, neurotic, slightly pretentious, Hitchcock’s films can’t be said to be and fatally fixated on straight men (ROPE, gay friendly in the way that other films of STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, NORTH BY the time by gay directors, such as James NORTHWEST). And both are perhaps at Whale or George Cukor, are; the regu- least better off than the cross-dresser, who lar rough equation of homosexuality with is simply, unpredictably violent (MUR- emotional disturbance seems to be, on the DER!, PSYCHO). Yet these clichés stand surface, a clear and hurtful one. Yet the line somewhat apart from how Hitchcock Hitchcock draws most often isn’t between viewed homosexuality in real life. homosexuality and homicide but between Even during his extremely naïve 20s, he MOTHER obsession and murder—Bruno was comfortable around gays, even slightly in Strangers on a Train may be gay, but intrigued by them; he deeply admired Norman Bates really isn’t meant to be, F. W. MURNAU, collaborated happily with and neither is Bob Rusk in FRENZY. The IVOR NOVELLO, and explored the after- homosexuality is beside the point; it’s their hours world of Berlin. Occasionally, close twisted relationship to mother, not to men, associates speculated—very quietly—about that made them what they are. his own orientation. (Rodney Ackland, So perhaps that’s not homophobia. who was gay and worked with Hitchcock Perhaps it’s misogyny (or, more accu- on NUMBER 17, said that the director once rately, gynophobia—not so much hatred of confessed, “I think I would have been a women as terror of them). Or perhaps it’s poof if I hadn’t met Alma at the right time”; just that this complicated artist contained SAMSON RAPHAELSON, who liked the several competing impulses at once, both couple, still described them as “this odd, an awe of women and a fear of them, both weird, little faggish man and this sweet little an impulse to put them high up on a ped- boyish woman.”) estal and an urge to pull them down into Later on, many of Hitchcock’s male the mud, both a desire to see them tortured STARS—MICHAEL REDGRAVE, JOHN and a need to decry that torment. GIELGUD, CHARLES LAUGHTON, “I think the best of Hitchcock films MONTGOMERY CLIFT, RAYMOND continue to fascinate me because he’s obvi- BURR, FARLEY GRANGER, JOHN DALL, ously right inside them, he understands so and ANTHONY PERKINS, among oth- well the male drive to DOMINATE, harass, ers—were either gay or bisexual; the direc- control and at the same time he identifies tor’s willingness to insert beefcake shots of strongly with the woman’s position,” gay Novello, CARY GRANT, JOHN GAVIN, critic ROBIN WOOD said in 2000. They’re and other male stars suggests a certain a “kind of battleground between these two awareness of homoerotic imagery. Despite positions.” his rigid CATHOLIC upbringing, Hitch- And in the midst of that fighting— cock welcomed gay and bisexual actors sometimes as collateral damage—are socially (Granger remembered many fam- Hitchcock’s gay characters. ily dinners with his lover ARTHUR LAU- RENTS at the Hitchcock home); in spite of References the times, Hitchcock cast these actors in a Peter Ackroyd, “Alfred Hitchcock Was an variety of roles and encouraged freedom Overgrown Schoolboy,” Daily Mail, March in their performances (the way Perkins 21, 2015, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ sashays up the STAIRCASE in the old dark home/event/article-3002550/Alfred-Hitch Psycho house). cock-overgrown-schoolboy-schoolboy-s HUNTER, EVAN n 181

-obsession-sex.html; Farley Granger, inter- “Hitchcock’s TV Films,” Film Fan Monthly view with the author, April 2007; William (June 1968), 3–6. Grimes, “Robin Wood, Film Critic Who Wrote on Hitchcock, Dies at 78,” New York HULL, HENRY (1890–1977) Times, December 22, 2009, http://www Cultured, Louisville-born performer from .nytimes.com/2009/12/22/arts/22wood a theatrical family (his father was a drama .html?_r=0; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side critic) who moved between stage and of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock film. He first appeared on Broadway in (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 86; 1911, made his movie debut in the D. W. John Russell Taylor, “The Lady Appears,” Griffith melodrama One Exciting Night in Times, September 6, 2008, http://the 1922, and may be best known for playing .hitchcock.zone/wiki/The_Times_%2806/ Hollywood’s first lycanthrope in Werewolf Sep/2008%29_-_The_lady_appears; Fran- of London in 1935. He was in LIFEBOAT çois Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. as Charles J. Rittenhouse Jr., a millionaire (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 39. and the film’s symbol of capitalism; generally, however, Hollywood cast him as vari- “THE HORSE PLAYER” ous hardscrabble pioneers and struggling (US; ORIGINALLY AIRED ranchers. (He had actually, after his Broad- MARCH 14, 1961) way debut, taken some time off to go pros- pecting for gold; it didn’t pan out.) Director: Alfred Hitchcock. He died at 86 in Cornwall after a Screenplay: Henry Slesar, from his story. stroke. Producers: Joan Harrison, Norman Lloyd. Cinematography: John L. Russell. References Editor: Edward W. Williams. “Henry Hull,” IMDb, http://www.imdb Original Music: Joseph E. Romero. Cast: Claude Rains (Father Amion). .com/name/nm0401434/bio?ref_=nm_ov Running Time: 30 minutes with commer- _bio_sm; Alfred E. Twomey and Arthur F. cials. Black and white. McClure, The Versatiles: Supporting Char- Originally Broadcast By: NBC. acter Players in the Cinema, 1930–1955 (New York: Castle Books, 1969), 119.

HUNTER, EVAN (1926–2005) An elderly priest discovers the source of the New York author, born Salvatore Lombino, sudden influx of cash into the collection who began writing pulp fiction and had his plate—an inveterate gambler. Is it wrong to first literary success with Blackboard Jungle pray for his continued luck? A slight story in 1954, a novel about juvenile delinquency that mostly gave the director the chance to and public schools, based on his own brief reunite with one of the STARS of NOTORI- experience teaching in the Bronx, and later OUS, while playfully wrestling with a few turned into a popular movie. Although he CATHOLIC themes. would write in a variety of genres, including science fiction, his greatest and long- References lasting success came with police procedur- Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Com- als, most published under the name Ed plete Directory to Prime Time Network McBain, starting with Cop Hater in 1956. TV Shows, 8th ed. (New York: Ballantine He contributed two stories to ALFRED Books, 2003), 29; Jack Edmond Nolan, HITCHCOCK PRESENTS and wrote one 182 n HUNTER, IAN episode and in 1963 was asked to write _Birds; Ed McBain: The Official Site, http:// the screenplay for THE BIRDS. Hunter www.edmcbain.com/default.html; “Evan enjoyed the story conferences but was later Hunter,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ dismayed to see that his script had not only name/nm0402805/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; been cut but also rewritten; an entirely new Bill Peschel, “Me and Hitch: Evan Hunter scene between ROD TAYLOR and TIPPI Remembers Alfred Hitchcock,” Planet HEDREN had been added, in which she Peschel, http://planetpeschel.com/2010/04/ talks about her childhood; to Hunter, it me-and-hitch-evan-hunter-remembers- sounded like bad ad-libbing. (In actuality, alfred-hitchcock; Marilyn Stasio, “Evan Hitchcock had hastily written it himself.) Hunter, Writer Who Created Police Proce- Later, Hunter would be harshly critical dural, Dies at 78,” New York Times, July 7, of the film and its STARS. “Since Hedren 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/07/ and Taylor could not handle the comedy books/evan-hunter-writer-who-created at the top of the film, the audience became -police-procedural-dies-at-78.html?_r=0; bored,” he claimed. “They had come to The Trouble with Marnie, directed by Lau- see birds attacking people, so what was all rent Bouzereau (2000), documentary, http:// this nonsense with these two people, one the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/The_Trouble_with who can’t act and the other who’s so full of _Marnie_%282000%29_-_transcript. machismo you expect him to have a steer thrown over his shoulder?” HUNTER, IAN (1900–1975) Still, the collaboration continued, with South African performer who made Hunter working on the screenplay for the his stage debut in England in 1919 and director’s next film, MARNIE. When Hunter remained busy in British and Ameri- persistently argued against the marital rape can films and on London and Manhattan scene Hitchcock insisted on, however, he stages. He made his first movie appearance was fired and replaced by novice JAY PRES- in 1924 in Not for Sale and has good parts SON ALLEN. (Hunter described his experi- in Hitchcock’s THE RING and DOWN- ences working with the director in the short, HILL and a smaller one in EASY VIRTUE; candid 1997 memoir Me and Hitch.) by the mid-’30s, he was in Hollywood, Hunter continued to occasionally write where he was Richard the Lionheart in The for television and the movies but found Adventures of Robin Hood. Twenty years more success and less stress in novels, later, he was still playing in Robin Hood, sometimes publishing three or four a year although this time in the British TV series. under a variety of pen names; in 2000, two (A few of the scripts were, coincidentally, of his pseudonyms even collaborated on a written by Ian McLellan Hunter, no rela- book, which sounds like its own pitch for a tion but an American screenwriter who had potential Hitchcock picture. been blacklisted during the McCarthy era.) A heavy smoker, he died at age 78 of The actor retired in the early ’60s and died laryngeal cancer. at 75 in London.

References References Kyle B. Counts and Steve Rubin, “The Mak- “Ian Hunter,” IMDb, http://www.imdb ing of ‘The Birds,’” Cinemafantastique 10, no. .com/name/nm0402842/bio?ref_=nm_ov 2 (Fall 1980), http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ _bio_sm; Thomas Staedeli, “Portrait of the Cinemafantastique_%281980%29_-_The Actor Ian Hunter,” Cyranos, http://www _Making_of_Alfred_Hitchcock%27s_The .cyranos.ch/sphunt-e.htm. I

I CONFESS (US 1953) ous” murder. As the investigation begins, a haunted Logan watches from the street, Director: Alfred Hitchcock. where he catches the attention of one of the Screenplay: George Tabori, William investigators. Archibald, from the play Nos Deux Con- The police then hear reports of a priest sciences by Paul Anthelme. leaving Villette’s house the night of the Producers: Uncredited (Alfred Hitchcock, Sidney Bernstein). murder—and Logan arouses their suspi- Cinematography: Robert Burks. cions further when he refuses to give an Editor: Rudi Fehr. alibi for the night in question. The reason is Original Music: Dmitri Tiomkin. that he had agreed to meet Ruth that night, Cast: Montgomery Clift (Father Michael a woman he loved before he was ordained; Logan), Anne Baxter (Ruth Grandfort), Villette had been trying to blackmail her Brian Aherne (Willy Robertson), Karl with old and scurrilous rumors. Malden (Inspector Larue), O. E. Hasse The police arrest Logan and, in (Otto Keller), Dolly Haas (Alma Keller). a search of his room, find the blood- Running Time: 92 minutes. Black and white. smeared cassock that Keller has placed Released Through: Warner Bros. there; Logan is charged with murder and put on trial, where he refuses to break the seal of the confessional and Ruth’s testi- Father Michael Logan is in his church late mony is twisted to make it look as if she one night in Quebec City when an agitated and the priest are still having an affair. Otto Keller, his own caretaker, comes in for Although Logan is acquitted for lack of confession. He tried to rob a lawyer named evidence, no one believes he is innocent; Villette, the man reveals; he ended up kill- as he leaves the courtroom, an angry mob ing him instead. Keller, who had been Vil- forms. lette’s gardener, left the crime scene dis- Distraught by this injustice, Keller’s guised by wearing a priest’s cassock. wife tries to turn her husband in to the Keller leaves the church and later tells police; panicked, Keller shoots her and his wife all that’s happened—but declares runs away. With the police and Logan in he feels safe, as all priests are forbidden pursuit, Keller hides in the Chateau Fron- from revealing the secrets of the confes- tenac; when he sees Logan, he accuses sional. The next day, Keller goes back to him of betraying his vows and revealing Villette’s house, returns the stolen money, his crime—thereby handing his own con- and notifies the police of this “mysteri- fession to the police. When he tries to kill

n 183 184 n I CONFESS

I Confess was problematic for Alfred Hitchcock, chiefly due to his strained relationship with star Montgomery Clift. Warner Bros./Photofest © Warner Bros.

Logan, he himself is shot; he just has time ERIC ROHMER and CLAUDE CHAB- to make his final confession before he dies. ROL, praised I Confess as one of the director’s most Christian works and, in some One of those Hitchcock’s films beloved ways, an “allegory of the Fall,” Hitchcock chiefly by the French and those intrigued remained far less enamored of it, as its by its CATHOLICISM. Although some production had been fraught with troubles of the early AUTEURISTS, particularly with the studio and his STAR, and in the I CONFESS n 185 end, it had failed to attract an audience, everything about I Confess is deeply grim, always in his eyes the one truly unforgiv- from the rainy, real-life Canadian locations able sin. to the thickly shadowed BLACK-AND- The troubles began early. There were WHITE CINEMATOGRAPHY to Clift’s a long series of unsuccessful scripts (at performance, both anguished and alone, one point, without avail, he had tried to as he stalks the streets with his handsomely get GRAHAM GREENE to try his hand), furrowed brow. Deeply personal perhaps, including some complete revisions (a too, from its Catholic emphasis to the fact favored but finally abandoned version had that the one other person who knows the the priest fathering an illegitimate child and killer’s dirty secret—his wife, Alma—has being wrongly executed). There were cast- the same name as Hitchcock’s spouse. ing difficulties (the studio vetoed his origi- Some sequences stand out. The early, nal leading lady, Anita Bjork, when it was opening shots of Quebec City and Keller’s discovered she was an unmarried mother). confession in church; the frustratingly There were problems on the set (MONT- unfair courtroom scene; Logan’s halting GOMERY CLIFT arrived with an on-set harrowing exit from the court, surrounded acting coach and a heavy drinking prob- by angry accusing faces, making his way lem). And after all that effort, when it was through the crowd like Jesus carrying his all done, from the general American public cross through the streets. The very first came only—indifference. shots of traffic signs, seeming to point Hitchcock suspected one of the prob- the way to the murder scene, underlie the lems was that he had been, quite literally, relentless, one-way march of guilt and pen- preaching to the choir. “We Catholics know ance that lie ahead; the Gothic architecture that a priest cannot disclose the secret of the looms menacingly over the characters like confessional,” he said later, “but the Protes- accusers. (Only the flashbacks—full of airy tants, the atheists, and the agnostics all say, balconies and STAIRCASES and shot in ‘Ridiculous! No man would remain silent a focus so soft it almost glows—offer any and sacrifice his life for such a thing.’” The sense of hope and freedom.) majority of moviegoers never accepted the For someone often hailed as a Catho- central premise, he maintained, and the film lic artist, there are not many scenes of self- itself was too dour and humorless; it should sacrifice in Hitchcock’s work; still, this have been, he second-guessed, a “serious one surely registers as his greatest. And story told with tongue-in-cheek.” while many of his films play with notions It’s hard to say exactly where Hitch- of guilt and innocence, this is one in which cock would have inserted the humor in a the TRANSFERENCE of sin is quite real; tale of murder and blackmail that depended Father Logan not only takes on the knowl- so heavily on issues of GUILT, sin, pen- edge of his parishioner’s evil deeds but also ance, and a priest’s unbreakable vows or seems fated to take on their responsibility that a slightly ironic approach would have as well, even to the point of assuming the helped the film find any more viewers, who civil punishment. It is expiation by proxy. seemed split on whether the whole thing Yet, as Hitchcock himself knew, there was distasteful or simply dull; as it was, the could be no real grandeur in the priest’s act movie was banned in Ireland, where it was because it’s really one of spiritual self-pres- judged an insult to the clergy. ervation; Logan is not so much protecting And actually, if anything, the brood- Keller from punishment as he is safeguarding seriousness helps this story. In fact, ing his own immortal soul. To break the 186 n IDENTITY seal of the confessional—to go back on his often be a third-act climax in another vows—would make any of his own, youth- person’s film—the lord of the manor is ful indiscretions pale by comparison. It actually a foreign spy!—is, in a Hitchcock would be a grievous, deliberate sin—and so movie like THE 39 STEPS, only the begin- Logan’s story is really a drama of inaction, ning. Besides, in Hitchcock films, identity of a character who refuses to speak up or is a far more serious topic and a far more move forward, who becomes mired in mar- fluid thing. tyrdom not because of noble self-sacrifice Occasionally, someone will assume an but only because the other choice is his identity for a prank, like the practical JOKES own damnation. the director himself used to play—Melanie Like SECRET AGENT years before, it’s Daniels pretending to be a pet shop clerk in a melodrama of endurance, of passivity, of THE BIRDS. At other times, it’s merely for a impotence. And even a master of storytell- quick advantage and a step up socially—like ing like Alfred Hitchcock could find no way brash crime reporter Johnny Jones trans- to make that fully entertaining. forming himself into Huntley Haverstock, an American newspaper’s esteemed FOR- References EIGN CORRESPONDENT. Paula Marantz Cohen, Alfred Hitchcock: And the curious thing about identity is The Legacy of Victorianism (Lexington: Hitchcock’s films is that sometimes, when University of Kentucky Press, 1995), 97; we dress ourselves in borrowed robes, they “I Confess,” Irish Film Institute, http:// change to fit us—or we somehow grow www.ifi.ie/film/i-confess; Eric Rohmer and into them. Because, outfitted with a serious Claude Chabrol, Hitchcock: The First Forty- name and a sober hat, the former Johnny Four Films, translated by Stanley Hochman Jones actually does becomes a successful (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1979), 112– Foreign Correspondent; once he gives in 18; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: and accepts his new life as George Kaplan, The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da successful American spy, Roger O. Thorn- Capo Press, 1999), 335–41. hill actually becomes a successful Ameri- can spy. Mistaken for a political speaker, IDENTITY Richard Hannay gives a rousing political In the standard, cozy British mystery, the speech in The 39 Steps; once a man intro- only real question is, Who done it? The duces himself as Dr. Edwardes, even the perpetrator is unknown, but everyone else psychiatrists of SPELLBOUND will assume is clearly delineated—dowager, debutante, he is Dr. Edwardes and listen to him with inspector from “the Yard”—and the sole respect. identity left to be fixed is that of the mur- Sometimes, to become a thing, all that derer’s. is necessary is to give ourselves the name Those sort of guessing games inter- of that thing. Maxim de Winter’s new wife ested Hitchcock hardly at all. Although in REBECCA is a frightened little mouse, the identity of the villain is kept a secret in unsure of her place, her role, her name. some Hitchcock films, in many more, it’s (We never hear her Christian one spoken.) given away right at the start. There’s never But once she tells Mrs. Danvers, firmly, “I any doubt who the agents are in SABO- am Mrs. de Winter now,” she finally begins TEUR or SABOTAGE, what Uncle Charlie to become her. is really up to in SHADOW OF A DOUBT. The danger arises, of course, when we It goes directly to his beliefs about not only tell a lie to others but also begin SUSPENSE VS. SURPRISE. What would to believe it ourselves, when we lose grasp INSANITY n 187 on our own identity. Who really is KIM “INCIDENT AT A CORNER” NOVAK at any single moment in VER- (US; ORIGINALLY AIRED TIGO? Is she really Judy only pretending APRIL 5, 1960) to be the tough, no-illusions Madeleine? Is she Madeleine pretending to be the fragile, Director: Alfred Hitchcock. romantic Judy? Is she both, always, at once? Screenplay: Charlotte Armstrong, from her story. Is she ever really sure? Producers: Joan Harrison, Norman Lloyd. Or in Hitchcock’s most complex med- Cinematography: John L. Russell. itation on identity, PSYCHO, in which a Editors: Edward W. Williams. quiet clerk in an office becomes an embez- Original Music: Frederick Herbert. zler, a hardware store owner plays private Cast: Jack Albertson (Harry), Vera Miles detective, and Norman Bates is his own (Jean Medwick), George Peppard MOTHER. Or, more accurately, his idea (Pat Lawrence), Philip Ober (Malcolm of his own mother. Because Norman not Tawley). only hides his own GUILT at murdering Running Time: 60 minutes with commer- her by resurrecting her (the murder never cials. Black and white. happened!) but also by TRANSFERRING Originally Broadcast By: NBC. his guilt to her—she’s the one who cuts hotel guests to ribbons, who slashes private detectives across the face. He’s no killer. A school crossing guard is dismissed after He never gave anyone strychnine, no, not anonymous accusations of molestation he. He’s the faithful son, the janitor with begin; a variety of conflicting motives bucket and mop, the one who always cleans and testimonies arise. An episode of Ford up the mess. Startime, this is one of only two TV shows “He was never all Norman,” the psy- directed by Hitchcock for a series not chiatrist smugly observes at the end. “But under his own imprimatur (the other being he was often only Mother.” Except he “FOUR O’CLOCK” for the series SUSPI- wasn’t. He was never one person. He was CION); he had his regular cameraman, always both, together, at the same time— though, and JOAN HARRISON produc- his mother’s mannerisms but his moods, ing, as well as VERA MILES in a support- her voice but his own pathological jeal- ing role. The parallels not just to Rashomon ousy and deeply secret incestuous lust. And but HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT’s Le because no one can really be two people at Corbeau are interesting. the same time, Norman, when forced to realize the duality, retreats into one. And References Judy/Madeleine, unable to be either one or Ivan Butler, Horror in the Cinema (New the other, has to kill both. York: A. S. Barnes, 1970), 104–8; Jack Hitchcock did not direct many clas- Edmond Nolan, “Hitchcock’s TV Films,” sic, by-the-book mysteries. But that’s Film Fan Monthly (June 1968), 3–6. because the mystery in most of his films isn’t who the villain will turn out to be INSANITY but who the protagonist has really been “We all go a little mad sometimes.” all along. —Norman Bates

Reference That’s a loyal son’s defense of his mother in François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. PSYCHO, but do any directors’ characters ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 73. go mad quite as often as Hitchcock’s? From 188 n INSANITY the compulsive, twitchy vigilante of THE FRENZY—these are not men who murder LODGER (who is, do not forget, the mov- for profit. Rusk absentmindedly rifles one ie’s hero) to the homicidal thief of FAM- victim’s purse; in Psycho, Norman Bates ILY PLOT (which is, remember, one of the unknowingly sinks Marion’s $40,000 with director’s lighter films), Hitchcock’s work her in the swamp. It’s not about money, is studded with sociopaths, schizophrenics, nor is it really—even in Frenzy—about sex. and outright psychotics. It’s about these men’s hatred of women and The director was, of course, forgiv- linked to their twisted relationships to the ing of quirks; he had enough of his own. woman who looms largest in their lives, He had a fixation on precision and order. Mom. But Hitchcock doesn’t try to thor- (He memorized TRAIN timetables as a boy oughly diagnose their disorders, much less and was unforgiving of tardiness all his offer any answers. life.) He found eggs of any sort revolting, There’s a suggestion that Uncle Char- was deeply afraid of BIRDS and policemen, lie may have suffered a head injury as a and of course fascinated by BLONDES. child, but no doctor shows up with X-rays After using the bathroom, he would care- to talk about head traumas or lesions on fully wipe it down with clean towels so not the temporal lobe; when the state psychia- a drop of water was left behind. His tastes trist shows up to “explain” Norman at the in clothes and in meals could seem almost end of Psycho, he really explains nothing. petrified. Although he never went into analysis him- But in Hollywood, such behavior isn’t self, Hitchcock took FREUD seriously— considered neurotic; in fact, it barely rises SPELLBOUND was one of the first Hol- to the level of colorful. Directors—particu- lywood movies to take him seriously—but larly good ones—have long been known what Freud chiefly provides Hitchcock is a to be short on social skills, long on detail. helpful vocabulary for talking about a sub- Once, at most, they’d be called “tem- ject that otherwise remains a mystery. peramental”; today, they’re usually said, Perhaps that’s because, in some deeply sometimes with affection and always with old and Christian way, Hitchcock’s smil- understanding, to have a “little bit of OCD” ing villains aren’t so much suffering from or even be “on the spectrum.” a mental illness as a sickness of the spirit; And just as Hitchcock was quite aware they have no humanity, no conscience, no of—even JOKED drolly about—his own soul. (The hero in a Hitchcock film proves phobias, he was fascinated with the way in his goodness by feeling guilty; the villain, which quirks could take root and grow and by feeling no regret at all.) twist the minds and actions of others. He In our modern world, we talk about was a frequent visitor to museums of vice psychoses and dose them with chemi- and criminality, an avid reader of true- cals; in another time, we would talk about crime stories, particularly of serial killers. demons and bless them with holy water. The more outré the case, the more it drew In Hitchcock’s world there are devils; they him. are dangerous, and they are everywhere, as It is reflected in his films, where— the films’ own cinematography constantly unlike his television shows—murder was underlines—just look across your rear rarely for gain or even done out of passion. courtyard at the right apartment window, It was an act of pure madness. The stalk- and you’ll see a murder. And they are in ing killer in The Lodger, Uncle Charlie in us, too, waiting, the way Hitchcock’s Jesuit SHADOW OF A DOUBT, Bob Rusk in teachers told him that Satan always is, bid- INTERVIEWS n 189 ing his time, weighing our weaknesses, events but avoided all but the briefest press knowing his chance will come. After all, conferences. His preferred field of engage- “We all go a little mad sometimes,” as Nor- ment was his own office, into which the man observed. reporter—invariably younger and usually Before adding, with a nervous laugh, intimidated—would be politely ushered. “Haven’t you?” And then Hitchcock would begin to speak, as if a “Play” button had been pressed, References repeating the ANECDOTES he had told a Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life thousand times before. in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- If the question was about an early film, erCollins, 2003), 448, 465; Donald Spoto, then he’d talk a little nostalgically of tech- The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred nical troubles they’d had during those days Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, and how he’d found a way to overcome 1999), 16, 38, 115. them. If the writer suggested a subtext or theme to his work, then he might accept it INTERVIEWS or shrug or JOKE, but he would rarely want “Actors come and actors go,” Alfred Hitch- to explore it further, as that might lead to cock pronounced in 1925, “but the name of exploring him. the director should stay clearly in the mind Old, occasionally risqué jokes were of the audiences.” And that was before he trotted out, drawled in that Cockney even truly had a career. By the time THE accent made for music hall fun; some LODGER was officially released in 1927, he gossip would be indulged in (and if the was already working with a publicist; by the STAR were someone he never wanted or time of his first sound film, BLACKMAIL expected to work with again—like TALLU- in 1929, he was sitting for long profiles; by LAH BANKHEAD, like KIM NOVAK— the ’30s, he was writing his own essays and grow quite pointed). And then at the end think pieces for film magazines and news- of an hour or two—he was generous with papers. his time and so bored on the set that he He was never not conscious of image. would sometimes give interviews dur- Interviews became an important part of ing shooting—it would be over, and the that effort, and he was not alone in this. young reporter would go away with his John Huston, for example, had worked on tape recorder, convinced he had a wonder- newspapers; he wrote and liked writers and ful interview. Until he transcribed it and was friendly with several, including JAMES realized he merely had the same wonder- AGEE and Lillian Ross, whose profiles ful portrait of HITCH that a dozen other did much to fill out our image of the man. journalists had drawn. Huston, however—particularly with Ross, Occasionally people pushed back. whose work became the excellent book Pic- In the 1950s, ANDRE BAZIN—who had ture—gave the writers access and left them already charged the director with trying to to it. That sort of surrender—here, watch hide behind anecdotes—took a more argu- whatever you want, say whatever you want, mentative approach (“Traditional criticism I’m a big boy—was absolutely impossible often reproaches you for brilliant but gratu- for the controlling Hitchcock. itous formalism” is how he began his own So his interviews—while frequent and one-on-one); for his book-length interroga- often lengthy—were done very much under tion, FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT took a more his own rules. He would host lavish press sympathetic, gently persistent one. 190 n IRVINE, ROBIN

In fact, Truffaut—quite rightly—saw his wife, actress Ursula Jeans, he caught that the lack of respect given Hitchcock in an unseasonable chill; it only worsened some quarters was partly due to the lack of quickly. He died of pleurisy at the age of 32. respect he gave any inquiries into his art. “It was obvious,” Truffaut declared, that the References director had “been victimized in American “Obituary: Robin Irvine,” Times, May 2, intellectual circles because of his facetious 1933, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/The response to interviewers and his deliberate _Times_%2802/May/1933%29_-_Obitu practice of deriding their questions.” Truf- ary:_Robin_Irvine; “Robin Irvine,” IMDb, faut decided that his book, HITCHCOCK/ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0410216/ TRUFFAUT, would move beyond that. bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. Except as entertaining and invaluable as that book is—as much as you can hear “I SAW THE WHOLE THING” the director’s rich voice in every definitive (US; ORIGINALLY AIRED answer—it is often essentially the same OCTOBER 11, 1962) Hitchcock interview, full of talk about MACGUFFINS and process shots. It is a Director: Alfred Hitchcock. thorough and thoroughly readable book. Screenplay: Henry Slesar, from a story by But it is still an interview in which Hitch- Henry Cecil. Producers: Joan Harrison, Gordon Hessler. cock is thoroughly in charge. And he con- Cinematography: Benjamin H. Kline. trols what we hear—and learn—as rigidly Editor: Edward W. Williams. as he policed every frame of every one of Original Music: Lyn Murray. his films. Cast: John Forsythe (Michael Barnes), John Fiedler (Malcolm Stuart), Philip Ober References (Col. Hoey). Andre Bazin, “Hitchcock vs. Hitchcock,” in Running Time: 60 minutes with commer- Focus on Hitchcock, edited by Albert LaVal- cials. Black and white. ley (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Originally Broadcast By: NBC. 1972), 60–69; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 73, 95, 418; François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, Accused of causing a fatal accident, rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), mystery writer JOHN FORSTYHE defends 11–12. himself in court and proves the eyewit- nesses unreliable—but also enables a con- IRVINE, ROBIN (1901–1933) viction he will regret. Hitchcock’s last work London-born performer and vague relative for television returns to his old themes of of Robert Louis Stevenson, who made his innocence and GUILT. stage debut in 1918 and by the early ’20s was a leading man in London theater. He References made his first film appearance in 1925 and Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Com- had several strong parts in early Hitch- plete Directory to Prime Time Network cocks, including playing the young cad who TV Shows, 8th ed. (New York: Ballantine gets his friend expelled in DOWNHILL and Books, 2003), 29; Jack Edmond Nolan, the rich young eligible in EASY VIRTUE. “Hitchcock’s TV Films,” Film Fan Monthly On a springtime vacation in Bermuda with (June 1968), 3–6. J

JACK THE RIPPER Coming at a time of both early crimi- Also known as “Saucy Jack,” “Leather nology and popular journalism, the “Jack Apron,” “Spring-heeled Jack”—and the the Ripper” case, as it came to be known, first modern serial killer. There are, of established many archetypes. First, there course, stories of repeat thrill-killers going were the crazed killer’s boastful letters to back to ancient China, and Gilles de Rais the papers—copied by modern madmen prowled 15th-century France—but those from the Zodiac Killer to Son of Sam. In were before the days of cheap newspapers this early instance, the killer supposedly and a (just barely) literate working class. signed them “Saucy Jacky” or addressed The arrival of both played an enormous them “From Hell.” One letter came accom- part in building the iconography of the panied by a human kidney; the writer Whitechapel butcher. The area—full of claimed to have fried and eaten its mate. gin, poverty, and prostitutes—was already And there were the early, psychological riddled with crime and stained with vio- profiles—inspiring not only a science but lence. But five crimes in the late summer also fictional characters from Clarice Star- and early fall of 1888 seemed to be linked, ling in Silence of the Lambs to Fox Mulder both in their methodology and their bru- in The X-Files. At the time, London police tality, and journalists sensationalized (and surgeon Robert Bond hypothesized that the in some cases fictionalized) the events to killer did not have medical training but was attract a rabid reading public. a loner, “revengeful or brooding,” possibly Not that the murders needed much a religious zealot, and liable to fits of “hom- embellishing. In each case, the woman’s icidal or erotic mania.” throat was cut—in one, hastily (suggesting The case, however, proved difficult the murderer had been interrupted), and in from the beginning. The immediate prob- the last one, down to the spine, but gener- lem was that journalists were not above ally with two slashes, from left to right. In fabricating letters to drive their papers’ most cases the uterus and other organs had circulation, nor were copycat killers been removed, and there were other savage unknown. Newspapers claimed to receive mutilations to the body. There was never many boastful confessions, but of the three a sign of sexual assault. There were other most famous—the “Dear Boss,” “From brutal crimes in the area in the era—there Hell,” and “Saucy Jacky” missives—the were many—but these five immediately timelines can be wrong, the details vague, seized the public’s imagination. No one was and the penmanship inconsistent. (Of the ever caught. three, the “From Hell” letter—the one

n 191 192 n JACK THE RIPPER

Louis Jourdan, a David O. Selznick discovery, was cast despite Hitchcock’s reservations in The Paradine Case. Selznick Releasing Organization/Photofest © Selznick Releasing Organization accompanied by a kidney—is most widely the century, and the preservation of crime assumed to be genuine.) scenes was not yet observed. (In at least one The biggest problem was that criminal instance, what seemed to be an anti-Semitic investigations were themselves crude. Fin- graffito left near one murder was erased by gerprint identification did not gain accep- order of the police commissioner to fend tance in Scotland Yard until the turn of off any anti-Jewish violence.) JAMAICA INN n 193

And the final hurdle to solving the again in SHADOW OF A DOUBT, in which Ripper cases was simply that the Ripper a charming amiable houseguest turns out stopped. Although violence in the East End to be a misogynist murderer. slums would continue—it would always Of course the character turns up in continue—these murders, with their signa- other films as well; in addition to various ture throat slashings and mutilations, came remakes of The Lodger (including the 1944 to an abrupt end, as mysteriously as they one with Laird Cregar, made after Hitch- had begun. Had the killer simply stopped? cock couldn’t get his own remake project Unlikely. Had he—or she—immigrated to off the ground, and 1953’s Man in the Attic another country? Killed themselves? Died with Jack Palance), the real Jack the Ripper in an accident or as a result of someone has made villainous guest appearances in else’s act of violence? Or simply, finally, many films, including 1924’s Waxworks, been diagnosed and locked away by their 1929’s classic Pandora’s Box, 1979’s Time family in an institution? after Time, and 2001’s From Hell; he is also No one knew. No one will probably the subject of ROBERT BLOCH’s most ever know. Which has not stopped—in famous work, after Psycho, the frequently fact, which has clearly fueled—more than anthologized short story “Yours Truly, Jack a century of hypotheses (The Ripper was a the Ripper.” mad doctor! A butcher! The Duke of Clar- And despite some 100 published book- ence! A syphilitic aristocrat! An occultist!) length hypotheses and a miniseries or two, and popular fiction. he has never been completely, convincingly The most famous was THE LODGER, identified. written 25 years after the fact by novelist MARIE BELLOC LOWNDES, in which References the Ripper—under the absurd name “Mr. “Jack the Ripper,” FBI, https://vault.fbi.gov/ Sleuth”—takes a room in a cheap lodging Jack%20the%20Ripper; “Jack the Ripper,” house run by a former butler and maid. Metropolitan Police, http://content.met The author (who had originally begun the .police.uk/Site/jacktheripper; “Jack the Rip- novel as a short story) was no elegant styl- per Timeline,” Whitechapel Murders History ist, but she creates a strong female charac- Resource, http://www.jack-the-ripper.org/ ter in the landlady and a sense of suspense, timeline.htm; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side and the ending in Madame Tussaud’s pre- of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New figures Hitchcock’s fondness for climaxes York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 33–34, 232; against famous backdrops. Elyssa Warkentin, “Marie Belloc Lowndes Hitchcock, already a true-crime devo- Rewrites the Ripper,” Nineteenth Century tee as a teenager, obviously knew well the Gender Studies (Spring 2011), http://www story of the killer who had prowled famil- .ncgsjournal.com/issue71/warkentin.htm. iar London streets, as well as the recently published best seller; Belloc Lowndes’s JAMAICA INN (GB 1939) story became one of his first features and stands as the first typically “Hitchcock” Director: Alfred Hitchcock. film. His adaptation added more ambigu- Screenplay: Sidney Gilliat, Joan Harrison, J. B. Priestley, Alma Reville, from the ity to the story, however, as well as layers novel by Daphne du Maurier. of GUILT; while future movies (PSYCHO, Producers: Erich Pommer, Charles Laugh- FRENZY) would evoke the smiler with the ton. knife, the mythology most clearly surfaces 194 n JAMAICA INN

them up and goes to wreck another ship. Cinematography: Bernard Knowles, Harry Once they depart, Sir Humphrey reveals his Stradling. true nature to Patience and leaves to pack Editor: Robert Hamer. his things and flee the country; after he Original Music: Eric Fenby. Cast: Charles Laughton (Sir Humphrey goes, Jem persuades her to let him go, too. Pengallan), Maureen O’Hara (Mary Yel- At the coast, Mary relights a warning len), Robert Newton (Jem Trehearne), beacon, and the ship sails safely away; when Leslie Banks (Joss Merlyn), Emlyn Wil- the gang turns on her, Joss helps her escape liams (Harry the Peddler), Wylie Wat- and is fatally shot. He manages to get them son (Salvation Watkins). back to Jamaica Inn, where Sir Humphrey, Running Time: 108 minutes. Black and white. having returned, shoots Patience as well Released Through: Associated British Pic- and kidnaps Mary, intending to take her ture Corporation. with him to France. But Jem and British troops board his ship in the harbor, and Sir Having recently lost her MOTHER, young Humphrey, his mind unhinged, leaps to his single Irishwoman Mary Yellen is headed death from the top of the mast. to 1819 Cornwall to stay with her Aunt Patience, who runs the lodging house Based on a 1936 DAPHNE DU MAURIER Jamaica Inn with her husband, Joss. The novel (itself based on a real inn in Corn- carriage driver, however, refuses to take her wall said to be haunted and known to have there and leaves her in the road; she finds once been a smugglers’ base), Jamaica Inn shelter at the manor house of the eccentric was Hitchcock’s last film in Great Britain squire Sir Humphrey Pengallan, who sees before leaving for Hollywood, DAVID O. that she gets to the inn the next day. SELZNICK, and REBECCA. It all went What Mary soon learns, however, is famously wrong. that her Uncle Joss is part of a gang of mur- Hitchcock, who didn’t much like derers, who deliberately wreck merchant period pictures to begin with, felt uncom- ships on the rocky coast and then kill the fortable with the material and helpless sailors and plunder the cargo. What she will with CHARLES LAUGHTON, who, as not learn until later is that Sir Humphrey is STAR and coproducer, dictated the casting secretly behind the entire operation. (including his discovery, the novice MAU- That night, the gang turns on one of REEN O’HARA), demanded that his role their own, Jem, whom they suspect of steal- be built up (he had originally been set to ing from them; Mary helps him escape, and play Joss), and then delayed production so the two flee. They take refuge at Sir Hum- he could work on his approach to the part. phrey’s mansion, where Jem reveals his real Meanwhile, du Maurier was so IDENTITY as an undercover officer of the enraged by the liberties taken with her law, there to investigate the ship wreckers. book (her villain was a parson—something Sir Humphrey, still concealing his own the filmmakers had changed out of fear identity as the gang’s mastermind, pretends of offending American CENSORS) that to join his fight; Mary, worried about her she threatened to withdraw the rights to aunt being arrested, rushes back to Jamaica Rebecca, leading Selznick to take a particu- Inn to warn her. larly hard line with Hitchcock on any of the Sir Humphrey and Jem arrive at the changes he and the screenwriters proposed inn in pursuit, with Sir Humphrey still pre- for that picture. Although Jamaica Inn tending to be on Jem’s side; the gang ties turned out to be a hit at home, Hitchcock JEANS, ISABEL n 195 himself later dismissed the film as one of Yet it remains important for sum- his worst. To a true follower, though—and ming up an insular British movie world a careful viewer—like its lightning-lit land- Hitchcock was now consciously leaving scapes, its blood-and-thunder melodrama behind. And for suggesting, with its con- occasionally shows flashes of interest. tinued interest in some familiar themes— The script, for example, assembles a particularly slightly effeminate villains and fine cast of characters for the criminals— the hypocrisy of powerful men whose fine one a religious zealot, another a dandy, clothes conceal traitorous hearts—that and the third a vaguely fey sociopath. He’s there might be some ideas he was taking played by EMLYN WILLIAMS, just one with him. of the many fine character actors on hand, including ROBERT NEWTON (playing References Jem and still in possession of his later- Mark Duguid, “Jamaica Inn,” BFI Scree- ruined-by-drink looks), and, as Joss, LES- nonline, http://www.screenonline.org.uk/ LIE BANKS, a far more forbidding pres- film/id/441604/index.html; “Jamaica Inn, ence than he’d been in the 1934 THE MAN Cornwall,” Cornwall Calling, http://www WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. .cornwall-calling.co.uk/culture/jamaica O’Hara, still a teenager and only in _inn.htm; Jim McDevitt and Eric San Juan, her third film, is a little uncertain as Mary, A Year of Hitchcock: 52 Weeks with the although she has lovely eyes, and the film Master of Suspense (Lanham, MD: Scare- shows off her figure by conspiring to get her crow Press, 2009), 113; Patrick McGilligan, soaking wet as often as possible. The two Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and wrecking scenes that bracket the film are well Light (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), done and particularly brutal, with the crimi- 222–25; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of nals clubbing the stranded sailors to death as Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New the victims mercifully sink out of frame. York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 180–86; Fran- And then, of course, there is Laugh- çois Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. ton, sashaying through the film to his own (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 121–23. unheard music (literally—he told Hitch- cock he was basing his walk on a particular JEANS, ISABEL (1891–1985) German waltz) and lasciviously coveting Elegant London-born performer who every beautiful object he sees, be it horse began her theatrical career in 1908 as a pro- or orphan—until he finally, albeit a bit tégée of Herbert Beerbohm Tree and soon abruptly, descends into pure madness. was busy on the stage in everything from Hitchcock loathed working with this Shakespeare to Sheridan. Once married to “extremely difficult” man (although he CLAUDE RAINS—he divorced her when, would bring him back in less than a decade scandalously, she became pregnant by for a part in THE PARADINE CASE) and another man—she made her movie debut derided the “completely absurd” film for in 1917 in The Profligate and appeared the rest of his life. (As a symbol, perhaps, in a popular film series starring IVOR of his contempt for it at the time, he didn’t NOVELLO as the underworld character even bother to include a CAMEO for him- “The Rat.” self.) That it was cut to 98 minutes for its Her very public divorce from Rains in American release and had until recently 1915—the pregnancy itself had ended in a been seen only in shoddy, public-domain miscarriage—may have typed her a bit in prints hasn’t helped its reputation. films; she would also appear with Novello 196 n JOKES in Hitchcock’s DOWNHILL in 1927, play- the top of a Ferris wheel—have been denied ing an unfaithful actress, and, the next year, by the alleged victims). play the lead in his adaptation of EASY Hitchcock’s jokes could be practical VIRTUE as the wife suspected of adultery. ones, either charmingly surreal (the horse Jeans was always busiest on the stage, he had delivered to Gerald du Maurier’s appearing frequently on both Broadway and dressing room one night) or strangely cruel the West End, where she was particularly (secretly dosing a crew member’s drink acclaimed for her work in plays by Oscar with laxative and then daring him to sit in Wilde and Chekhov. Later, the sophisti- the studio all night chained to the camera— cated older woman became her specialty, where, predictably, he dirtied his own trou- a part she essayed for Hitchcock in SUSPI- sers). They could be silly ones done for the CION, playing one of Johnnie’s friends, Mrs. camera, like many of his CAMEOS (par- Newsham; her most famous movie role was ticularly the weight-reduction one in LIFE- probably as Aunt Alicia in Gigi. Continuing BOAT), his introductions to his own TV to work into her 70s, Jeans also played the show, or the gag photos he would occasion- mother of Lord Peter Wimsey on British ally pose for, wearing a chamber pot as a television and appeared—along with half of helmet or got up in full drag as Queen Vic- London it seemed—in the all-star hallucina- toria. They could be verbal ones, ANEC- tion The Magic Christian. DOTES polished over literally decades of Offstage, Jeans married the man Rains retelling, that he’d trot out in INTERVIEW divorced her over and enjoyed a more- after interview—the definition of MAC- than-40-year union with him; a lively GUFFIN or his reply to the reader whose social presence, she was particularly fond of wife would no longer take baths after LES poker games and horse races. She died at 93 DIABOLIQUES and now, after PSYCHO, in London; she is not to be confused with refused to take showers (“Send her to the her sister, Ursula Jeans (who, to muddy dry cleaners.”) things even further, was the wife of one of But much of his humor is in the mov- the STARS of Downhill, ROBIN IRVINE). ies themselves. Often they’re actual jokes, witty retorts or double entendres, arriving References fully developed in the screenplay or devised “Isabel Jeans,” IMDb, http://www.imdb in conferences with the scriptwriters— .com/name/nm0419978/bio?ref_=nm MICHAEL REDGRAVE explaining “I went _ov_bio_sm; “Isabel Jeans,” Stars of British to Cambridge” after he suddenly knocks Films, http://www.britishpictures.com/god out an Oxford man in THE LADY VAN- frey/card30.htm. ISHES (which always got a huge response in British theaters), the sharp and sexy dia- JOKES logue JOHN MICHAEL HAYES delivered The product of two cultures—Cockney and so expertly for REAR WINDOW and TO Irish CATHOLIC—that admire flavorful CATCH A THIEF, the constant puns and language, colorful word play, and humor, joking plot clues sneaked into ROPE and Hitchcock grew up with an enormous sense Psycho. of humor and a fondness for practical jokes And then there is a kind of jocularity (although it should be pointed out that two that’s actually part of the film’s DNA and of the crueler gags attributed to Hitchcock an integral part of Hitchcock’s filmmaking. by DONALD SPOTO—tying a string of Sometimes it’s a playfulness—the way he fireworks to a schoolmate’s bottom and allows us to only hear parts of a conversa- leaving his daughter stranded for hours at tion or trial by having doors open or closed JOURDAN, LOUIS n 197

(or drowns out the conversation entirely, of Wax; she was also Theodora in the first as in NORTH BY NORTHWEST, because Invasion of the Body Snatchers. he knows it’s something only the character Always busy on TV, she was in an epi- really needs to hear). Sometimes it’s a mere sode of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS quick, sick joke—like the inspector’s wife (“The Cheney Vase”) in 1955 and the next breaking a breadstick in FRENZY, just as he’s year appeared in THE MAN WHO KNEW described the snapping of the dead victim’s TOO MUCH remake in a small part as rigor-mortis fingers. Or sometimes it can Cindy; she was nominated for a supporting be a sort of philosophical shrug at the pure Oscar for The Bachelor Party and had her arbitrary nature of life, an acknowledgment greatest, if perhaps limiting, success as the of the jokes that the universe plays on us all coolly erotic Morticia on TV’s The Addams the time—like Norman unknowingly throw- Family from 1964 through 1966. ing away the $40,000 in Psycho that had once The movie work disappeared after meant everything to Marion. Or the way the that, and her television appearances were two separate stories of FAMILY PLOT con- mostly limited to guest spots, although she nect, just like the meandering but ultimately had a role in the miniseries Roots and a intersecting paths in the local cemetery. one-season nighttime soap Capitol. It was Hitchcock did not often make outright while she was appearing on that show that comedies—MR. AND MRS. SMITH and she was diagnosed with colon cancer; she THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY, both dis- died from it in West Hollywood at age 53. appointments, were the only two he made in America. But he rarely made a film with- References out humor. And when he did—in VER- “Carolyn Jones,” Cult Sirens, http://cult TIGO, in I CONFESS, in THE WRONG sirens.com/jones/jones.htm; “Carolyn MAN—it was always a sign that the themes Jones,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ he was exploring were far too serious for name/nm0427700/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio him to even begin to joke about. _sm.

References JOURDAN, LOUIS (1921–2015) Pat Hitchcock O’Connell and Laurent Bou- Impeccably elegant son of a Marseille zereau, Alma Hitchcock: The Woman behind hotelier, whose early career in films was the Man (New York: Berkeley Trade, 2004), cut short by the war. When the German 153; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: occupiers tried to put him to work making A Life in Darkness and Light (New York: Nazi propaganda, he fled and joined the HarperCollins, 2003), 20, 148–49; Donald Resistance (although he would later typi- Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of cally, modestly, say only, “I was given work Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, to do and I did it.”) After the war, DAVID 1999), 32, 109–12, 325–26. O. SELZNICK signed him to a contract; his first film for Selznick was, oddly, Hitch- JONES, CAROLYN (1930–1983) cock’s last, THE PARADINE CASE, as the Texan-born performer with wideset eyes servant ALIDA VALLI falls in love with. and a nicely offbeat, slightly bohemian per- (Hitchcock thought him badly miscast; he sona; an acting prodigy, she joined the Pas- told FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT the story adena Playhouse at 15 and by 22 was under would have had much more power if this contract at PARAMOUNT. One of her great lady had fallen for some rough piece most memorable early roles was Vincent of trade like ROBERT NEWTON, “with Price’s “model” for Joan of Arc in House horny hands, like the devil!”) 198 n JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK

The sleek, suave, cosmopolitan lover In the slums of Dublin, Juno Boyle slaves was pretty much all that Jourdan was away to feed her family, while her preening offered for the next few decades. Privately, husband, Captain Boyle—“the paycock”— he much preferred croquet and his child- lives in a world of laziness and pints at the hood sweetheart, to whom he was mar- pub. Their daughter Mary is unmarried ried for 68 years; publicly, he accepted the and on strike; their son Johnny, who lost typecasting. “Any actor who comes here an arm in the Irish war for independence, with an accent is automatically put in roles has turned informer. as a lover,” he explained. Still, Jourdan was Mary finds a suitor in Charlie Ben- much better in his next American film, Let- tham, though, a lawyer who proclaims that ter from an Unknown Woman, and in 1954 the family is due a large inheritance; bor- made his Broadway debut in The Immoralist rowing against it, the captain purchases (a play that his erratic young costar James new furniture and a record player and Dean quit after opening night). Jourdan had invites all and sundry to a great party. a classic role in the 1958 film Gigi, however; But Bentham, it seems, is mistaken; in later years, he played Count Dracula for there will be no windfall. He disappears, the BBC and was a suave villain in silly films leaving behind a pregnant Mary; their new from Octopussy to Swamp Thing. furniture is all repossessed, and Johnny is He died in Beverly Hills at 93. seized by the IRA, taken away, and shot. “There is no God,” Mary declares. Juno References begins to pray. “Louis Jourdan,” IMDb, http://www.imdb .com/name/nm0431139/bio?ref_=nm_ov One of Hitchcock’s early play adaptations _bio_sm; David Thomson, The New Bio- for BRITISH INTERNATIONAL PIC- graphical Dictionary of Film (New York: TURES and material that spoke to him, Knopf, 2002), 448; François Truffaut, with its Irish working-class characters Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: and theme of a family split by war; “It’s an Touchstone, 1985), 173, 177. excellent play,” he later said to FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT. “I liked the story, the mood, JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK the characters and the blend of humor and (GB 1930) tragedy very much. As a matter of fact, I had O’Casey in mind when I showed a bum Director: Alfred Hitchcock. in a café announcing the end of the world Screenplay: Alfred Hitchcock and Alma in THE BIRDS.” Reville, based on the play by Sean The problem, Hitchcock later decided, O’Casey. was that there was not much he could— Producer: Uncredited (John Maxwell). or even should—do with this material to Cinematography: Jack E. Cox. put his stamp on it. He and his wife kept Editor: Emile de Ruelle. Original Music: Uncredited. as closely to O’Casey’s play as they could. Cast: Sara Allgood (Juno Boyle), Edward They used most of the original Abbey The- Chapman (Captain Boyle), John Laurie atre cast (although Barry Fitzgerald took on (Johnny Boyle), Kathleen O’Regan (Mary a different part), and Hitchcock inventively Boyle), Barry Fitzgerald (the Orator). got around the primitive sound technol- Running Time: 85 minutes. Black and white. ogy by “mixing” the soundtrack on the set, Released Through: Wardour Films. staging background noises or gunshots in different relations to the one microphone. JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK n 199

But in the end, what had he truly done the feeling I was dishonest, that I had stolen as a director except turn the camera on and something.” make sure of the blocking? What visual He had made a film, and it had even invention had he brought to O’Casey’s been a hit. But it had not been truly a words? Despite his efforts, it remained a “Hitchcock film.” filmed play, the camera keeping a respectful distance. “The film got very good notices, but I was actually ashamed, because it had Reference nothing to do with cinema,” he said later. François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. “The critics praised the picture and I had ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 69. AK

KAEL, PAULINE (1919–2001) was very insistent—bullying, some even Petaluma-born daughter of chicken farm- said—about how you were supposed to ers, a writer (and briefly movie executive) react to a movie.) who influenced generations of not only These tendencies didn’t necessar- journalists but also filmmakers. Possibly ily endear her to scholars, but they did it’s because she studied neither journalism gain her readers and many acolytes; even nor film at the University of Berkeley but when she was writing about radical docu- literature and philosophy. mentaries or French classics, her style After leaving school, she lived a defi- was insistent, informal, slangy. Read her antly bohemian lifestyle on both coasts, reviews aloud, and they sound like a scene complete with artist friends, menial jobs, at a Manhattan bar as someone puts down and an out-of-wedlock daughter she their second drink and launches into a dia- had with the gay poet and experimental tribe about Kubrick’s misanthropy. They’re filmmaker James Broughton; later, she monologues, but they’re incredibly enter- would start selling pieces on movies to taining monologues. small magazines and even program films By the time Kael was being widely for a Berkeley revival house. Eventually read, however, Hitchcock was winding she landed at the New Yorker, where she down; he only had a few films left in him raised banners (Paul Schrader, BRIAN by the time she officially joined the New DE PALMA) and burned bridges (David Yorker’s staff in 1968. (And the best of Lean, Michael Moore) for more than two them, FRENZY, she dismissed in an aside decades. as “rancid, mechanical” and “obviously Unlike ANDREW SARRIS, her fre- engineered.”) But she also wrote hundreds quent literary duelist, Kael did not push the of capsule reviews for films in repertory, AUTEUR THEORY or even write from a though, and those notices show a more particular critical point of view; she was as appreciative eye. She said the original THE likely to give actors the credit for a film’s MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH had the success as she was a director, and her The “director’s ingenuity and flair and sneaky Citizen Kane Book insists that screenwriter wit,” wrote about the “breathtaking” mur- Herman Mankiewicz had at least as much der sequence in SABOTAGE, and called to do with that classic as Orson Welles. Her THE 39 STEPS “one of the three or four write-ups spent far less time on a movie’s best things Hitchcock ever did.” And if she visual appeal than on its characters and seemed to show a partiality for the British emotions and how it made you feel. (Kael thrillers—well, many did at the time, par-

200 n KAEL, PAULINE n 201

Grace Kelly costarred with James Stewart in Rear Window, the darkest of her three films for the director. Paramount Pictures/Photofest © Paramount Pictures ticularly as REAR WINDOW and VER- ment from regular reviewing. Did she think TIGO had been kept out of circulation for she had made a difference in the movies, years after their release. someone asked her? Her nonanswer? “If I Kael struggled with ill health in the say yes, I’m an egotist, and if I say no, I’ve 1980s after being diagnosed with Parkin- wasted my life.” son’s; in 1991, she announced her retire- She died in Great Barrington, MA, at 82. 202 n KAFKA, FRANZ

References write. Final complications of the disease Susan Goodman, “She Lost It at the Mov- left him unable to eat; he died essentially of ies,” Modern Maturity (March/April 1998), starvation at 40. https://sites.google.com/site/raysawhill/ It was FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT, per- home/interviews/pauline-kael; Pauline haps, who first linked the two artists, call- Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies: A Guide ing Hitchcock an “artist of anxiety, like from A to Z (New York: Holt, Rinehart, Kafka, Dostoevsky and Poe.” But the con- and Winston, 1982), 361, 508, 594–95; nections are perhaps not so much in the Pauline Kael, Reeling (New York: Warner nature of intersecting influences as in par- Books, 1976), 78; A. O. Scott and Manohla allel developments. Like Kafka, Hitchcock Dargis, “Mad about Her: Pauline Kael, grew up with a strict father and a painful Loved and Loathed,” New York Times, disappointment in his own appearance; October 14, 2011, http://www.nytimes like Kafka, too, his works frequently feature .com/2011/10/16/movies/pauline-kael-and severe (yet ultimately unknowable) author- -her-legacy.html. ity figures suddenly, mysteriously tormenting mild and unremarkable protagonists. KAFKA, FRANZ (1883–1924) For the writer, the underpinnings of A voice of the modern age and one of his theme were psychological and at times its crucial influences, Kafka was born in political; for the director, they were much Prague in what was then Bohemia and more personal. At the age of four or five, raised in an upper-middle-class, largely Hitchcock had been brought down to the secular German-Jewish family. His father police station by his father, who told them was a successful merchant, and although to lock his son up as a “naughty boy”; his their eldest son showed an early interest particular sin was never specified and his in art and literature, he received a degree release, a short time later, just as unex- in law and went to work for a large insur- plained. Perhaps his father had meant ance company. It was assumed he would it only as a JOKE (and if so, one can see later take over the family business in “fancy where the son’s sometimes cruel sense of goods.” humor began). But it left Hitchcock with Away from the office and his mundane his own fear of authority and his own sus- duties of processing compensation claims picion that there are powerful institutions and compiling annual reports, Kafka— that operate according to their own ever- who had developed interests in philosophy, changing rules and may arbitrarily perse- Judaism, cinema, and other pursuits—dedi- cute the innocent and GUILTY alike. cated himself to fiction, writing short sto- Often these mistakes by shadowy fig- ries, novels, and a play, although there were ures form the start of one of Hitchcock’s often long gaps between their composition lighthearted entertainments—Roger and publication. His story The Metamor- Thornhill calls over a lobby boy at the phosis was published in 1915, his novel The wrong time and is mistaken for a spy in Trial in 1925. NORTH BY NORTHWEST—but in THE In 1917, Kafka was diagnosed with WRONG MAN they are dealt with at pain- tuberculosis; the progression of the disease ful length, as Manny finds himself arrested, was rapid, and in 1918, he left the insur- jailed, and finally put on trial for a crime ance company with a disability pension. He he didn’t commit. Manny fights back, but spent much of the rest of his life in and out every motion he makes just seems to draw of health care facilities while continuing to him deeper into trouble, like the man in KELLY, GRACE n 203 quicksand whose struggles only pull him (both of whom had worked separately further in; as in the tribulations of Josef K. on VERTIGO), ALMA REVILLE, and in The Trial, what had begun first as some even BENN W. LEVY, who had worked sort of bureaucratic mistake, some annoy- on BLACKMAIL and LORD CAMBER’S ing inconvenience, only escalates into LADIES—brought in to develop the script. disaster the more strenuously the hero tries The essential idea, as sketched out by to extricate himself. Hitchcock, would be to focus on a serial Unlike Kafka, who populates his story killer whom the police try to catch by send- with surreal incidents, Hitchcock’s story ing a female officer undercover; typical of is hyperrealistic; also unlike Kafka, Hitch- the director’s approach to story develop- cock provides a (relatively) happy ending, ment, he had already decided on three visu- in the literal form of a deus ex machina; in als, and so the screenwriters would have to answer to Manny’s prayers, the real culprit incorporate scenes by a waterfall, aboard an is arrested, and Manny is exonerated. Yet abandoned ship, and at an oil refinery. of all of Hitchcock’s films, this is the most The project promised to employ Kafkaesque. But there is something lurking an undefined “experimental” approach just underneath the surface of all of Hitch- (Hitchcock had just seen Blow-Up and cock—that steady expectation of sudden been much impressed) and proceeded far and utterly unfair “justice”—that spoke to enough for some test footage. (A few stills Kafka, too. and less than a minute of film survives, And, in the Englishman’s case, may including fragments of a nude bedroom have had its beginnings in that small boy, scene.) Like much of his material at this brought to the police station by his father, point, it was overtly SEXUAL and violent; to be locked up for some mysterious, never UNIVERSAL refused to fund it, even after specified indiscretion. Hitchcock suggested using lesser-known actors and a modest budget. References Eventually it was abandoned, although “Franz Kafka,” Biography, http://www.bio one of its alternate titles—FRENZY—would graphy.com/people/franz-kafka-9359401; be used when Hitchcock returned to the “Franz Kafka Biography,” Franz Kafka serial-killer theme in 1972. Online, http://www.kafka-online.info/ franz-kafka-biography.htm; Patrick McGil- References ligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Dark- “Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Kaleidoscope’—Foot- ness and Light (New York: HarperCollins, age (No Audio),” Flickr, https://www.flickr 2003), 7–8; François Truffaut, Hitchcock/ .com/photos/49597617@N02/4629223639; Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life 1985), 20. in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- Collins, 2003), 676–83, 686–88; Donald KALEIDOSCOPE Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life One of the projects toyed with during of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Hitchcock’s fallow period in the mid- Press, 1999), 496. ’60s, this idea got further than most, with an assortment of new and veteran Hitch- KELLY, GRACE (1929–1982) cock collaborators—including the novelist Fashion icon, fairy tale princess, muse. Howard Fast, thriller writer Hugh Wheeler, Grace Kelly was in some ways the SAMUEL A. TAYLOR, ALEC COPPEL American dream made not just real but 204 n KELLY, GRACE also extraordinary—from steerage to roy- She was the real-life image of that alty in three generations. Her paternal fantasy woman Hitchcock called a “snow- grandfather arrived from County Mayo in covered volcano”—and she soon became 1869; her father, Jack, born 20 years later, the next, and perhaps the most famous, was a Philadelphia bricklayer. “Hitchcock BLONDE.” A champion sculler though, too, and Mogambo had yet to be released when, an Olympic gold medalist who eventually in June 1953, the actress and director turned his masonry business into a million- met in a meeting set up by Kelly’s agent. dollar company and married a model, his Kelly—who was still only 23—was petri- daughter would be raised in proper, Main fied. “I could not think of anything to say to Line luxury (and go to private convent him,” she recalled later. “In a horrible way schools). But Grace was no scholar, and it seemed funny to have my brain turned with the help of her black-sheep uncle, to stone.” But the silence spoke volumes to George Kelly—ostracized by the family a director who once remarked, “I’ve never for being gay but renowned for winning wanted to have the obvious blonde, the one the Pulitzer for his play Craig’s Wife—she who has sex hanging around her neck like would get a spot at the American Academy jewelry.” He offered her a one-picture deal. for Dramatic Arts (AADA) in Manhattan. The picture was DIAL M FOR MUR- AADA was not impressed with her DER, which immediately introduced Kelly at first, and perhaps to overcompensate, to the director’s meticulous preproduction Kelly may have studied too hard—in losing planning—her wardrobe drew his usual her natural, slightly nasal accent, she took fastidious attention, based on a COLOR on the chilly, slightly too-proper tones of palette that would gradually change from former academy graduates Gene Tierney bright romantic colors at the beginning and Jennifer Jones. She made her movie of the film to drab neutrals as her troubles debut in 1951 in Fourteen Hours and, the deepen and her hopelessness grows. next year, got a more prominent part in Kelly, innocently enough, dared to High Noon. Star Gary Cooper praised her disagree with him on one of his ideas. work ethic, and when he saw how the cam- For the film’s central scene, the late-night era loved her, director Fred Zinnemann assault, he wanted her to wear a plush vel- gave her extra close-ups. Kelly was not so vet dressing gown; Kelly insisted that, as impressed with herself. “When I saw the the character was rushing from bed, she first cut of that picture,” she confessed later, wouldn’t have stopped to put it on and “I raced back to New York from Hollywood should still be in her nightgown. Her sug- and begged (drama coach) Sandy Meisner gestion was correct—and it gave the grue- for acting lessons.” some attack an even more obvious SEX- John Ford liked her in the movie, UAL undercurrent—but, when accepted, though, and when Gene Tierney was was also surprising: Hitchcock was not in unable to do Mogambo, he cast Kelly in the habit of taking suggestions from per- the part. It built on a screen persona she’d formers. hinted at in High Noon—the calm, cultured After the film—which had included lady with heated emotions held barely in an affair with costar RAY MILLAND that check—and also drew on Kelly’s own pri- nearly ended his marriage—Kelly returned vate life (who, despite her youth and cool to New York and new offers, including demeanor, already had a history of affairs the part of Edie in On the Waterfront. But with her older leading men). Hitchcock wanted her, too, for his next KELLY, GRACE n 205 film, REAR WINDOW, and while it didn’t proper lady at the gala and then something offer the obvious challenge the other film’s quite else in the back of the taxi on the character did—transforming herself into a ride home. It was the old Madonna/whore drab, working-class Jersey girl—that was dichotomy but instilled in one person, not chiefly because it had been so obviously just the realization of that common “Nor- tailored to her. dic blonde” fetish he acknowledged but the Kelly took the Rear Window assign- product of long-ago years of CATHOLIC ment and once again found a director teaching on female saints and filthy seduc- very intent on how she looked and would tresses. be photographed onscreen, with particu- In To Catch a Thief, it’s best captured lar attention to the cut and color of her in a single, lightly done scene as Kelly very clothes; green would be a significant color, properly allows Grant to escort her back as would the filmy negligee—almost as to her hotel room and then leans forward sheer as REBECCA’s—that she pulls from with unexpected sensuality to kiss him her tiny overnight case. goodnight; it also runs throughout JOHN As an actress, the film gave her more MICHAEL HAYES’s winking yet seem- to do than Dial M for Murder had; her ingly proper dialogue, as the couple go for a relationship to her leading man, JAMES polite picnic (“Leg or breast”) or kiss in her STEWART, is more complex and ambigu- room, as the camera cuts away from their ous than her failed marriage in the other embrace to seaside fireworks. film, and the dialogue has more humor and The film is charming, although not meaning. She gives a bit of bounce to every much more than that—none of Kelly’s line, and her slow-motion lean in to kiss three movies for Hitchcock would give Stewart has all the power of a dream. But her quite the range she was allowed in Rear Window is also significant in the way The Country Girl (for which she won an it seems to so cruelly crystallize Kelly and Oscar). But no other filmmaker so effort- Hitchcock’s relationship in the scene where lessly caught her porcelain beauty, her Lisa prowls around the murderer’s apart- sterling determination, or her own innate ment while Jeff watches her from across elegance. That Hitchcock adored her— the courtyard: A beauty, framed in a per- completely, chastely, achingly—is apparent fect rectangle, vulnerable but untouchable, in both every scene he shot and the abso- watched by a man, seated and physically lute absence of any scandalous gossip from powerless, through an enormous lens. the three sets. Her third film with Hitchcock would It was while she was shooting To Catch be a romp; unlike Dial M for Murder, with a Thief, however, that Kelly fell in love with its marriage turned sour, or Rear Window, Monte Carlo; later that year, returning to with its undercurrents of GUILT and inno- Europe to represent the United States at the cence and VOYEURISM and loneliness, Cannes Film Festival, she fell in love with TO CATCH A THIEF would be bright and its bachelor ruler, as well. She wore Prince lively, a cat-burglar-and-mouse tale, with Rainier’s engagement ring while film- CARY GRANT as the former jewel thief ing High Society and, after finishing The and Kelly (and perhaps her diamonds) as Swan—and her family finished negotiating the treasure he’s tempted to steal. But it a $2 million dowry to the monarchy—she would also be the strongest portrayal yet retired from films. She was 26. of that “snow-covered volcano” Hitchcock After her marriage, there were occa- always idolized, the woman who was a sional rumors of Kelly’s return to motion 206 n KENDALL, HENRY pictures; early in its development, Hitch- feel as if I achieved enough in my career to cock offered her the lead in MARNIE, and stand out more than many other people. it seemed—in his mind, at least—that she I was very lucky in my career and I loved would return to the screen and him. But it but I don’t think I was accomplished there was opposition—from the prince, enough as an actress to be remembered.” from her subjects, reportedly even from Of everything that Grace Kelly said or the Vatican, where this Catholic royal was did, it was the only time that she was spec- also a “Princess of the Church.” Kelly had tacularly, clumsily wrong. to decline. According to one biographer, afterward she cried for a week. References Hitchcock eventually went back “Grace Kelly,” IMDb, http://www.imdb to Marnie, which he made with TIPPI .com/name/nm0000038/bio?ref_=nm HEDREN, while Kelly returned to her _ov_bio_sm; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred royal duties. She supported beautification Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light efforts, promoted Monte Carlo tourism, (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 609–10, encouraged the performing arts, and raised 614; Pierre Salinger, “Interview with Grace the royal heirs. Although there would be Kelly,” 20/20, September 1982, http://www other offers—the script for The Turning .beyondgracekelly.com/princess-grace-last Point was briefly considered—she never -interview; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of acted again. And then in 1982, she went for Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New a drive . . . York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 343–44, 398, The specious gossip began almost 414; Donald Spoto, Spellbound by Beauty: immediately. The crash had come, tragi- Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies cally, on the same spot where she’d shot (New York: Harmony Books, 2008), 203–6, a famous romantic scene from To Catch 210; David Thomson, The New Biographi- a Thief. Her teenage daughter, Princess cal Dictionary of Film (New York: Knopf, Stephanie, had actually been driving, and 2002), 464; Thilo Wydra, Grace: A Biogra- it had all been hushed up. In fact, it wasn’t phy (New York: Skyhorse, 2014), 103–36, even the same road as that movie scene, and 165–84, 241–56. Kelly had been behind the wheel. She’d suffered a stroke while making a sharp turn, it KENDALL, HENRY (1897–1962) seemed, and lost control of the car. She died London-born performer who made his the next day in the hospital. She was 52. stage debut at 17 and then—after heroic Less than two months before, she’d service in the Royal Air Force during the granted a rare sit-down to Pierre Salinger, First World War—returned to the stage, John F. Kennedy’s old press secretary. It’s usually in light comic roles. He was par- an awkward interview—Salinger was a ticularly known for his versatile work in dreadful interviewer—but it’s her last one, revues and often directed as well. His film and seen today, it has a certain bittersweet work was less notable, chiefly consisting of power, particularly when Salinger asks her cheap comedies and mysteries—low-bud- how she’d like to be remembered. “I sup- get “quota quickies” made during the ’30s pose mostly in terms of my children and strictly to satisfy a government edict that their children,” she says, nervously twisting every English movie theater show a certain the rings on her fingers. “I would like to be percentage of British productions. remembered as trying to do my job well, Hitchcock’s RICH AND STRANGE, being understanding and kind. . . . I don’t made in 1931, was more ambitious; Kend- KILLERS n 207 all starred as the husband who gets taken in the corpse without a second’s worth of by a lovely swindler, and the drama showed GUILT. off some of Hitchcock’s skill with large sets Some kill for a cause (pretty much all and clever shots. But the movie was not a the spy pictures, including NORTH BY success, either in England or in America NORTHWEST, THE LADY VANISHES, (under the more exotic title East of Shang- and THE 39 STEPS). Some kill out of psy- hai); Hitchcock went back on the hunt for chosis (Psycho, of course, but FRENZY ideas, and Kendall returned to the stage. and SHADOW OF A DOUBT, too). But all He died in London of a heart attack of them are pleasant, polite, and socially at 65. acceptable people. None would draw a second look, unless perhaps it was one of References admiration. They don’t twitch or stare. “Henry Kendall,” IMDb, http://www.imdb They have nice smiles and good manners. .com/name/nm0447597/bio?ref_=nm_ov They seem like the right sort. _bio_sm; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitch- Some of Hitchcock’s heroes are kill- cock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New ers, too, though. And they’re not nearly as York: HarperCollins, 2003), 121. successful at it. That’s because, unlike his sociopaths, they have a conscience; they’re KILLERS full of doubt and self-criticism, hesitation “The more successful the villain,” Hitch- and clumsiness. In DIAL M FOR MURDER, cock told FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT during death comes at the end of a pair of the hero- their epic INTERVIEW, “the better the ine’s desperately grabbed and awkwardly picture.” wielded household scissors; in Shadow of a This was a credo Hitchcock stood by. Doubt, it’s from the twisting to and fro on While his hero could be—in fact, should a speeding TRAIN. In TORN CURTAIN, be—an everyman (albeit, preferably, one the murder of the Communist spy requires played by the biggest available STAR), the an accomplice, a knife, a blunt object, and villain had to be physically and socially finally a gas oven; in LIFEBOAT, the death of impressive. the German comes at the hands of a mob, in Although there had to be a few excep- Hitchcock’s words, a “pack of dogs.” These tions (the portly traveling salesman of are not the almost elegant acts of professional REAR WINDOW, the shy motel owner of murderers, and that’s one of the ways we PSYCHO), Hitchcock’s villains are often know these people can still be saved. handsome, usually rich, and truly formi- Far more often, they can’t even bring dable. They may be smarter than the hero; themselves to do the killing. They set the they’re certainly more devious. It gives trap, unwittingly or not, and someone else his films that extra layer of drama, of sus- steps in—the Nazis who turn on Sebas- pense—the hero is so clearly overmatched tian at the end of NOTORIOUS, the police that, even though we know he’ll triumph in sharpshooter who takes out the murderer the end, we can’t quite see how. in I CONFESS, the nun who frightens Judy Raising the stakes even higher, with to her death in VERTIGO. The heroes are only a few exceptions (the “real” thief in blameless—at least legally—although the THE WRONG MAN, Mrs. Danvers in endings of Vertigo and I Confess hardly REBECCA), most of Hitchcock’s villains leave them without guilt. are killers, too. And they kill without a But those who can kill without guilt— moment’s hesitation and walk away from who can do it with a smile and then go back 208 n KNIGHT, ESMOND to their college reunion dinner or business the film wasn’t working; his reaction was meeting or afternoon by the pool—those to harangue the cast, calling their acting are the truly successful killers. And they are “deplorable,” lamenting the high salary the hard, black, beating heart at the center being paid to STAR JESSIE MATTHEWS, of every Hitchcock film. and referring to Knight as the “Quota Queen” due to his work in those low-bud- Reference get British pictures. Practical JOKES—of François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. Hitchcock’s preferred, embarrassing sort— ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 107, were also common. “I was continually on 156, 191. the qui vive for some elaborate legpull at my expense,” Knight wrote, “which auto- KNIGHT, ESMOND (1906–1987) matically produced a feeling of nervous- Surrey-born performer who made his stage ness, and I soon developed a hopeless infe- debut in 1925 and his film debut in 1928. riority complex under his direction.” He was in JOHN GIELGUD’s legendary The film opened to poor reviews and 1930 production of Hamlet and appeared worse box office, and both men were happy in all 3 Shakespearean films directed by to try to forget it and their association with LAURENCE OLIVIER and, a kind of good it and each other. Knight continued to act luck charm, in 11 of the films made by and paint; he died in London at age 80. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. “A sulky, handsome young man with a mane References of black hair and magnetic eyes,” Powell “Esmond Knight,” IMDb, http:// called him, “almost too romantically hand- www.imdb.com/name/nm0460874/ some to be true.” bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; “1933–1935: An Although Knight had, perhaps Encounter with Hitch,” Esmond Knight, unwisely, taken a job in Nazi Germany http://www.esmondknight.org.uk/his in the mid-’30s starring in the anti-Com- life04.htm; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of munist film Schwarze Rosen, he served Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New heroically in the English Navy in World York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 135–36. War II; when the German warship The Bismarck attacked his vessel, he was badly KNOTT, FREDERICK (1916–2002) wounded in the face by shrapnel. He lost China-born son of English missionaries one eye and remained blind for two years. who received his law degree from Cam- He acted though, even when sightless, and bridge and served seven years in the British eventually resumed his career fully after Army before turning his hand to writing. the war, appearing in Black Narcissus, The His first credit was the screenplay for the Red Shoes, Robin and Marian (minus his Hammer noir Man Bait in 1952, but the glass eye), and even—ironically—Sink the same year, the BBC used his teleplay for Bismarck! in which he played the captain DIAL M FOR MURDER; it later became of his own, real-life ship. His last film was a hit play in both London and New York, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace in 1987. and Knott adapted it for the screen for the Knight’s only film for Hitchcock was Hitchcock film in 1954. the disastrous WALTZES FROM VIENNA, His other credits include the plays in which he played Johann Strauss, the Write Me a Murder and a variation on Vol- Younger. Knight later said that Hitch- pone called Mr. Fox of Venice (which he cock realized early in the production that later adapted into the film The Honey Pot); KONSTANTIN, LEOPOLDINE n 209 his other great success was the play Wait budget-strapped British TV. His final credit until Dark, which—like Dial M for Mur- was his most interesting failure: the Beatles’ der—also featured an attack on a vulner- bizarre Magical Mystery Tour in 1967. able woman in her own apartment and was He died in Buckinghamshire shortly adapted into a successful film. before his 75th birthday. Knott died in New York at 86. “He wrote only for money,” his wife said frankly References after his death. “He hated writing.” “Bernard Knowles,” Britmovie, http:// www.britmovie.co.uk/directors/Bernard References -Knowles; “Bernard Knowles,” IMDb, “Frederick Knott,” IMDb, http://www http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0461497/ .imdb.com/name/nm0461425; Doug- bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. las Martin, “Frederick Knott, Play- wright, Dies at 86,” New York Times, KONSTAM, PHYLLIS (1907–1976) December 20, 2002, http://www.nytimes London-born stage performer, she made .com/2002/12/20/arts/frederick-knott-play her movie debut in Hitchcock’s CHAM- wright-dies-at-86.html. PAGNE in a bit part and had another small role the next year in his BLACKMAIL. KNOWLES, BERNARD Larger roles were to follow in MURDER! (1900–1975) as the inquisitive Doucie and THE SKIN Manchester-born photographer who emi- GAME as the scandalous Chloe. In 1931, grated to America while barely out of his while sailing to New York to appear on teens and worked for the Detroit News. Broadway, she met tennis star Henry Returning to Britain in the early ’20s, he “Bunny” Austin; they married within the took a job as an assistant cameraman at year, and she effectively retired from films, GAINSBOROUGH PICTURES, quickly only making four more features over the working his way up to director of cinema- next 40 years, while joining her husband in tography on the 1927 drama Mumsie. devoting much of her time to the Moral Re- By 1935, he had begun his associa- Armament movement. She died in Somer- tion with Hitchcock; together they would set of a heart attack at 69. make THE 39 STEPS, SECRET AGENT, SABOTAGE, YOUNG AND INNOCENT, References and JAMAICA INN. Knowles was a smart “Phyllis Konstam,” IMDb, http:// craftsman with a wide range; he could www.imdb.com/name/nm0042496/ capture soft, shifting shadows (Jamaica bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; “Phyllis Kon- Inn); pull off a difficult camera movement stam (1907–1976),” UK Initiatives of (Young and Innocent); or pack detail into a Change, http://uk.iofc.org/phyllis-kons close-up (The 39 Steps, Sabotage). His flex- tam-1907-1976. ible, effortless style was a vital component of Hitchcock’s mid-’30s successes. KONSTANTIN, LEOPOLDINE Like many cinematographers, though, (1886–1965) Knowles yearned to direct; despite an Moravia-born performer who made her impressive debut with the moody mystery Berlin stage debut in 1907, launching a A Place of One’s Own, however, his work career marked by performances in works as a filmmaker was less successful, and he by Shakespeare and Schiller and under the spent most of his latter career working in direction of Max Reinhardt. She appeared 210 n KOSLECK, MARTIN in a production of Franz Wedekind’s scan- to Austria, where she continued to work dalous Spring Awakening and made a brief occasionally onstage and on the radio. She American tour in 1911. She added films to died in Vienna at 79. her repertoire in 1912 and had the title role in the 1918 version of Lola Montez. References Her career slowed after motherhood “Leopoldine Konstantin,” IMDb, http:// and marriage, and a divorced Konstan- www.imdb.com/name/nm0465369/ tin left for England in 1938 with her son; bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Donald Spoto, tragically, he died in a bombing during the The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred early days of the London blitz. Leaving for Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, America but unable to speak English, the 1999), 287; Thomas Staedeli, “Leopoldine middle-aged performer took a factory job. Konstantin,” Cyranos, http://www.cyranos It was German director and actor Reinhold .ch/smkons-e.htm. Schuenzel, already cast in NOTORIOUS as Dr. Anderson, who suggested her to Hitch- KOSLECK, MARTIN (1904–1994) cock for the part of the coldhearted matron; Pomeranian-born performer who studied ETHEL BARRYMORE had already turned with Max Reinhardt, made his film debut down the role, and the studio’s suggestion, in 1923, and had a busy stage and club MILDRED NATWICK, then 41, was far career in Berlin. His first sound film was too young to be playing the MOTHER of the early German sci-fi classic Alraune. CLAUDE RAINS, then 57. Already a committed antifascist, he pru- As it was, Konstantin was only three dently left Germany as the Nazi movement years older than Rains and had only surged; his name was later said to be on the recently, laboriously, mastered English; Gestapo’s enemies list. she was perfect, however, as the mother Eventually arriving in America, who sets out to calmly murder her disloyal Kosleck—whose English was excellent— daughter-in-law. (“My very first part and migrated between Broadway and Holly- they made in me this monster!” the actress wood before playing Joseph Goebbels in exclaimed later.) the film Confessions of a Nazi Spy in 1940, Notorious was one of Hitchcock’s first the same year he appeared as one of the truly adult love stories, but it was also his villains in Hitchcock’s FOREIGN CORRE- first in-depth exploration of smother love, SPONDENT. Like Conrad Veidt and other and Konstantin was its archetypal embodi- refugees, the actor would specialize in Axis ment—Madame, the mother who sees her spies and Nazis for years; he portrayed son as both a child and a partner and every Goebbels onscreen five times. younger woman as a rival and a threat. It’s Kosleck, a slight man with an intense particularly effective here because the per- stare, soon became a regular presence in formance is so deliberately underplayed; low-budget horror films as well, particu- few scenes in Hitchcock are as chilling as larly after the war ended, appearing in Konstantin sitting up in bed, calmly light- House of Horrors and The Flesh Eaters, ing a cigarette as she discusses how to mur- among others. In between roles, he amused der Alicia. himself—and eventually supported himself Sadly, it would be Konstantin’s only as well—by painting. During the Cold War, American movie. She made three appear- he found a new source of employment; ances on American TV dramas—always now, on television, he played mostly Com- playing European nobility—then returned munist villains. KRUGER, ALMA n 211

He died following abdominal surgery later, Hitchcock would dismiss the film in Santa Monica at 89. as something he did only as a favor to the actress, whom he’d become friendly with). References The film was a solid hit, if an artistic disap- “Martin Kosleck,” IMDb, http://www.imdb pointment. .com/name/nm0467170/bio?ref_=nm_ov Krasna won the best screenplay Oscar _bio_sm; “Martin Kosleck: Actor, 89,” New two years later for Princess O’Rourke and York Times, January, 30 1994, http://www continued to write and occasionally direct; .nytimes.com/1994/01/30/obituaries/mar his last movie credit was for the 1964 San- tin-kosleck-actor-89.html. dra Dee movie I’d Rather Be Rich. Krasna died in 1984 in Los Angeles. KRASNA, NORMAN (1909–1984) Queens-born writer who went to law References school but dreamed of journalism. He Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life dropped out of St. John’s University to join in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- the New York World as a copy boy in 1928, Collins, 2003), 267–68, 276–77; “Norman rising rapidly to become, however briefly, Krasna,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ a drama critic at the New York Evening name/nm0469915/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio Graphic. In the early ’30s, he left papers and _sm; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of New York to go to Hollywood as a studio Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New publicist. Krasna reportedly taught himself York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 236–38; Fran- playwriting by retyping BEN HECHT and çois Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. Charles MacArthur’s The Front Page 20 (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 139–40. times; his first, a derivative effort, Louder, Please! was a Broadway flop but garnered KRUGER, ALMA (1871–1960) him a new job at Columbia as a screen- Pittsburgh-born performer (some sources writer. cite an 1868 birthdate) who made her He would go to work on the scripts for Broadway debut in 1907 and was kept busy Jean Harlow’s Bombshell and Reckless; con- over the next quarter-century appearing in tribute the story for FRITZ LANG’s Fury; many Shakespearean productions as well as and do the screenplays for Hands across Hedda Gabler and Camille. She made her the Table, Wife vs. Secretary, and Bachelor movie debut in 1936 in These Three. Mother. His plays Dear Ruth, John Loves Kruger regularly played matriarchs, Mary, and Kind Sir later all became films as including head nurse Molly Byrd in the Dr. well, the last under the title Indiscreet. He Kildare and Dr. Gillespie movie series. In specialized in wisecracking marital com- SABOTEUR, she plays the wealthy woman edies and farces turning on MISTAKEN or (and Nazi collaborator) whose charity auc- assumed IDENTITIES. tion goes awry; she was no relation to fel- The script for 1941’s MR. AND MRS. low cast member OTTO KRUGER. Alma SMITH was his, although it went through Kruger’s last screen appearance was in For- many title changes—from the horrendous ever Amber in 1947; she died at age 88 in Who Was That Lady I Seen You With to Seattle. the more elegant Slightly Married—and was at the time said to be a favorite of both References CAROLE LOMBARD and, DONALD “Alma Kruger,” IMDb, http://www.imdb SPOTO says, Alfred Hitchcock (although com/name/nm0472557/bio?ref_=nm_ov 212 n KRUGER, OTTO

_bio_sm; Hal Erickson, “Alma Kruger Vsevolod Pudovkin. Kuleshov was a par- Biography,” Fandango, http://www.fan ticular proponent of MONTAGE, the join- dango.com/almakruger/biography/p39465. ing together of separate shots to tell a story or especially create an emotional effect; in KRUGER, OTTO (1885–1974) his most famous example of this, he took a Musically gifted Toledo-born performer single expressionless close-up of pre-Rev- who made his Broadway (and movie) olutionary matinee idol Ivan Mosjoukine debuts in 1915 and whose early stage cred- and intercut it with various close-ups: a its included a steady diet of romances and dead infant, a bowl of soup, a woman sit- comedies, including the original produc- ting on the couch. tion of George S. Kaufman and Edna Fer- The close-up of Mosjoukine remained ber’s The Royal Family. By the early ’30s, he the same, yet when shown to audiences, was chiefly working in Hollywood, where viewers always ascribed to it an emotion he played the hero in Dracula’s Daughter based on the subject the actor was sup- and also appeared in Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic posedly looking at; after “seeing” the life- Bullet and Another Thin Man. less child, the food, or the beauty, the star’s Kruger was often cast as wealthy vil- expression was successively interpreted lains or unscrupulous businessmen; in as grief, hunger, or lust—even though the SABOTEUR he is Tobin, the Nazi agent actual reaction shot was always identical. who enjoys a rich and respectable Ameri- Some audiences even praised the breadth can life. (He was no relation to fellow cast and subtlety of his acting. member ALMA KRUGER.) Otto Kruger The sequence—referred to as the “Kule- continued to play less-than-heroic charac- shov experiment” or “Kuleshov effect”— ters, including the duplicitous Jules Amthor was cited by Pudovkin as an example of in Murder, My Sweet and the judge who the power of editing; by combining two tries to send away Will Kane in High Noon; completely separate shots, a filmmaker can he worked until the early ’60s, when a num- create an entirely new feeling based on the ber of strokes left him unable to memorize images and the way they are joined and jux- lines. He died of another stroke on his 89th taposed. Through this editing, the director— birthday in Woodland Hills, CA. not the actor, not the writer—creates the film’s ultimate message (and can constantly References change it by recombining the same images “Otto Kruger,” IMDb, http://www.imdb in an almost limitless number of ways). .com/name/nm0472603/bio?ref_=nm_ov This is the power of montage, and it is _bio_sm; Alfred E. Twomey and Arthur F. significantly specific to film itself; it is the McClure, The Versatiles: Supporting Char- bedrock of what Hitchcock used to enthu- acter Players in the Cinema, 1930–1955 siastically call PURE CINEMA. It is an (New York: Castle Books, 1969), 137. important part of many of his movies and, as he described it to FRANÇOIS TRUF- KULESHOV EFFECT FAUT, underpins most of REAR WIN- A filmmaker since his teens, the Russian- DOW. “In the same way, let’s take a closeup born Lev Kuleshov (1899–1979) was a of Stewart looking out of the window at a leading cinema theorist and a driving force little dog that’s being lowered in a basket,” behind the world’s first cinema academy, Hitchcock said, after recounting the initial the Moscow Film School. His disciples Kuleshov sequence. “Back to Stewart, who included directors Sergei Eisenstein and has a kindly smile. But if in the place of the KULESHOV EFFECT n 213 little dog you show a half-naked girl exer- ries for his entire career, but the aesthetic cising in front of her open window, and breakthrough was less helpful to its discov- you go back to a smiling Stewart again, this erer; during the Stalinist era, when heroic time he’s seen as a dirty old man!” realism became the style, the tricks of Of course, the power of the Kuleshov montage were viewed as somehow suspect. effect not only empowered the director Kuleshov’s own directing work slowed dur- (and his editor) but also greatly decreased ing the ’30s and ended during World War the control of the performer; as Rear Win- II, although he continued to teach. He died dow proved, it was what Hitchcock cut to in Moscow at age 71. that made the point, not any expression But his influence—whether in the on JAMES STEWART’s face. In fact, this Odessa Steps sequence of Battleship Potem- philosophy led to Hitchcock often insisting kin or the shower scene of PSYCHO—con- that his actors—DIANE BAKER, TIPPI tinues. And will always continue, as long as HEDREN, KAREN BLACK, GREGORY any filmmaker anywhere takes two separate PECK—provide him with a blank can- pieces of film and, putting them together, vas, giving as bland and noncommittal an makes 1 + 1 = 3. expression as possible in close-ups; Hitch- cock would provide the emotion himself References later in the editing. For actors like MONT- Lev Kuleshov, Kuleshov on Film, translated, GOMERY CLIFT, for whom motivation edited, and with an introduction by Ronald was everything, this was endlessly frustrat- Levaco (Berkeley: University of California ing, turning them into mere mannequins; Press, 1974), 183–95; David Shipman, ed., for others, like CARY GRANT, it provided Movie Talk: Who Said What about Whom their underplayed performances with layers in the Movies (New York: St. Martin’s of teasing ambiguity. Press, 1988), 36; François Truffaut, Hitch- Hitchcock was a firm believer in and cock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Touch- skilled practitioner of Kuleshov’s theo- stone, 1985), 214–15. AL

THE LADY VANISHES (GB 1938) more mysteries develop: Miss Froy vanishes. And when Iris reports her disap- Director: Alfred Hitchcock. pearance, everyone onboard tells her she’s Screenplay: Sidney Gilliat and Frank Laun- imagining the entire thing. der, based on the novel The Wheel Spins But Iris isn’t hallucinating, even by Ethel Lina White. though that’s the explanation of a traveling Producer: Uncredited (Edward Black). doctor; Miss Froy was there, and her fellow Cinematography: Jack Cox. Editor: R. E. Dearing. passengers simply have their own selfish Original Music: Louis Levy, Charles Wil- reasons for not wanting to get involved. liams. Gilbert, the music student, believes her, Cast: Margaret Lockwood (Iris Hender- though—and together the two set out to son), Michael Redgrave (Gilbert), Dame find the truth. May Whitty (Miss Froy), Paul Lukas It turns out to be fantastic—Miss Froy (Dr. Hartz), Basil Radford (Charters), is actually an undercover English agent, and Naunton Wayne (Caldicott), Cecil the doctor, the leader of a group of spies Parker (Mr. Todhunter). who’ve kidnapped her and plan to sneak her Running Time: 96 minutes. Black and white. off the train at the next stop with the aid of Released Through: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer the secret police. But with pluck, ingenuity— Ltd. and the help of those two surprisingly heroic cricket fans—Iris and Gilbert take control of the train and escape to safety and England. In tiny Bandrika, an avalanche has stopped Where Iris discovers she no longer regular train service and stranded an wants to get married—at least, not to any- assorted crew of English tourists—a young one but Gilbert. engaged woman, a whimsical music student, an adulterous couple, a pair of cricket For those who know Hitchcock well, this is fans, and a slightly dotty English governess. often the film they love the most purely. Also, it seems, a killer—a street singer is At one point, FRANÇOIS TRUF- murdered one night, and the next morning FAUT claimed to watch it at least twice a a flowerpot pushed off a windowsill almost week in hopes of uncovering its filmmaking kills the governess, Miss Froy. It glancingly secrets—and yet found himself so blissfully strikes the young woman, Iris, instead, caught up in its plot and characters every though—and the motley crew boards the time that he could do nothing but enjoy it. next train out of Bandrika. But then two And pioneering Hitchcock scholar ROBIN

214 n THE LADY VANISHES n 215

Janet Leigh gave Psycho its humanity and its most shocking moment. Paramount Pictures/Photofest © Paramount Pictures

WOOD admitted, “If there is no chapter on notwithstanding the STRANGULATION The Lady Vanishes in my book on Hitch- of that poor anonymous singer early on, cock, this is purely because it is too perfect, remains speedy and lighthearted. Even at so transparent that there is little to say.” the end, as hero and heroine escape, all the It is, of all his entertainments, perhaps villain can manage is a rueful smile as he the most beautifully balanced. NORTH BY wishes them, “Jolly good luck!” NORTHWEST is a little long, SABOTEUR That Hitchcock is so perfectly in con- a little serious—but The Lady Vanishes, trol of the mood and effects throughout is 216 n THE LADY VANISHES doubly impressive, as it hadn’t originally the film is crammed with—in The Lady been his project at GAINSBOROUGH Vanishes, a Cambridge scholar will turn PICTURES; Roy William Neill (who gets out to be a decent pugilist; a boring tour- an assistant director credit here) was sup- ist, a crack shot; a kindly doctor, a ruth- posed to make the film earlier and had even less spy; and a mild-mannered pensioner, gone to Yugoslavia to do some shooting. a plucky British agent. It is a movie where Then the authorities saw what the film was that horribly scarred accident victim hasn’t about and kicked the crew out. been in an accident at all, where that mute Hitchcock, looking for a movie, took European nun is actually a sharp-tongued on the aborted project a year later but had English lady in high heels. the script rewritten to give it a sharper, Working again with cinematographer funnier beginning and a more exciting JACK E. COX, Hitchcock gets accomplished end. MARGARET LOCKWOOD, a raven- visuals throughout, from the process work haired change from the usual Hitchcock of speeding trains to the sly shifts in focus BLONDE, was cast as Iris, and MICHAEL and careful compositions meant to draw REDGRAVE (at JOHN GIELGUD’s urg- our attention to a drugged glass of wine or ing, despite the troubles Gielgud had a character’s furtive worry. The sound has on SECRET AGENT) made his movie been carefully thought out, too, with most debut as Gilbert. BASIL RADFORD and of the movie played in silence except for NAUNTON WAYNE played the cricket the music the characters bring to it—bits of fans (and so beautifully that they soon folkloric dancing, Gilbert’s “Colonel Bogey reprised the characters in the screenwriters’ March,” Miss Froy’s incessant humming Night Train to Munich and became a bit of (which turns out to be the MACGUFFIN on a comedy team in British films). which the entire movie’s plot depends). Hitchcock sets the mood early, as his And yet, for all its lightness, there camera moves over a charmingly childish is still a serious, political side to the film miniature set of the mountain village—it with the characters—as they would later in feels almost deliberately unreal—to settle Casablanca and in Hitchcock’s own LIFE- in at the inn. And at this point in his career, BOAT—stand for the nations of the world, with Hitchcock already planning a move to delaying or dithering in the face of the Nazi America, the scenes mix both of his worlds: threat. The Eastern Europeans we meet in The characters may still be charmingly, Bandrika are gentle victims, the ones who eccentrically English (daffy spinsters, here- comprise the doctor and his gang are crafty here cricket fans), but the situations (sexy villains (and the Italians—at least in the starlets in negligees, some mildly HOMO- personage of the magician—their willing SEXUAL innuendo, a meet-cute trick out if not particularly competent accomplices). of Top Hat) already look to Hollywood. But who are the English? Some of The Wheel Spins was the name of them, like the nun, are willing traitors; the original (loosely adapted) novel, and some, like the cricket fans, wish only to circles and revolutions recur in the film— remain determinedly uninvolved. Some, the moving faces of Iris’s friends after like Iris, are sounding the alarm about the she’s struck on the head, the wheels of the present danger, while others, like Gilbert, TRAIN, the spinning mechanism inside a insist on the need for more information. magician’s “disappearing” cabinet. It is not And then there is the appeaser, the cheat- just a visual device but also a metaphoric ing lawyer Mr. Todhunter, who only wants one, pointing us to the character reversals a quick and convenient truce—and is shot LANDAU, MARTIN n 217 dead, even as he waves the white handker- BARBARA BEL GEDDES is a careful and chief of surrender. economical homemaker—so much so Hitchcock would soon be leaving that, after she kills her cheating husband for America—and soon be attacked by with a frozen leg of lamb, she cooks it and old mentor SIR MICHAEL BALCON for then serves it to the police as they fruit- deserting England in its hour of need. But lessly search for the murder weapon. One whatever his reasons for going to Hol- of the most famous of the series’ episodes, lywood (and they were chiefly to enlarge marked by a typically restrained perfor- and enhance his career), you cannot doubt mance by Bel Geddes (until the very end), that Hitchcock suspected what dangers lay and the reappearance of Hitchcock’s typical ahead for everyone. Or that—even in the conflation of FOOD and emotions. lighthearted The Lady Vanishes—he was saying that it was time for everyone to act. References Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Com- References plete Directory to Prime Time Network Frank Miller, “The Lady Vanishes,” TCM, TV Shows, 8th ed. (New York: Ballantine http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/80706/ Books, 2003), 29; Jack Edmond Nolan, The-Lady-Vanishes; Donald Spoto, The “Hitchcock’s TV Films,” Film Fan Monthly Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred (June 1968), 3–6. Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 172–76; François Truffaut, Hitch- LANDAU, MARTIN (1928– ) cock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Touch- Brooklyn-born performer who studied stone, 1985), 116–18; Michael Wilmington, art at the Pratt Institute and landed a job “The Lady Vanishes,” Criterion, https:// early on as a cartoonist’s assistant for the www.criterion.com/current/posts/26 New York Daily News. In 1950, though, -the-lady-vanishes; Robin Wood, “The he quit to pursue an acting career, study- Lady Vanishes Revisited,” Criterion, ing with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Stu- https://www.criterion.com/current/ dio and eventually making his Broadway posts/997-the-lady-vanishes-revisited. debut in 1957. Alfred Hitchcock saw the play and later cast him as Leonard, JAMES “LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER” MASON’s murderous assistant and close (US; ORIGINALLY AIRED confidante, in NORTH BY NORTHWEST. APRIL 13, 1958) “I chose to play Leonard as a gay character,” Landau said later. “It was quite a big Director: Alfred Hitchcock. risk in cinema at the time. My logic was sim- Screenplay: Roald Dahl, from his story. ply that he wanted to get rid of EVA MARIE Producers: Joan Harrison, Norman Lloyd. SAINT with such a vengeance, so it made Cinematography: John L. Russell. sense for him to be in love with his boss, Editor: Richard G. Wray. Vandamm, played by James Mason. Every Original Music: Uncredited. Cast: Barbara Bel Geddes (Mary Maloney), one of my friends thought I was crazy, but Harold Stone (Lieutenant Jack Noonan), Hitchcock liked it. A good director makes a Allan Lane (Patrick Maloney). playground and allows you to play.” Running Time: 30 minutes with commer- Landau mostly played on smaller play- cials. Black and white. grounds after that—he did a great deal of Originally Broadcast By: CBS. TV, including an episode of THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR, and runs on both 218 n LANDIS, JESSIE ROYCE

Mission: Impossible and Space: 1999—and final appearance was on a Columbo epi- his career cooled during the 1980s. Good sode. She died at 75 in Danbury, CT. parts in Tucker: The Man and His Dream and Crimes and Misdemeanors helped res- References urrect it, though, and in 1994, he won the “Jessie Royce Landis,” IBDb, http://ibdb best supporting actor Oscar for playing .com/person.php?id=15358; “Jessie Royce Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood. He Landis,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ is still acting, still teaching, still active. name/nm0484829/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio _sm; “Jessie Royce Landis: What a Char- References acter,” Once Upon a Screen, http://auro- Tim Burrows, “Martin Landau: I Chose to rasginjoint.com/2013/11/09/jessie-royce Play Leonard as Gay,” Telegraph, October -landis-what-a-character. 12, 2012, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cul ture/film/starsandstories/9601547/Martin LANE, PRISCILLA (1915–1995) -Landau-I-chose-to-play-Leonard-as-gay One of five daughters of a small-town .html; “Martin Landau,” Biography, http:// Indiana dentist and a stage-struck mother. www.biography.com/people/martin Baby Priscilla and older sister Rosemary -landau-212185; “Martin Landau,” IMDb, took dance lessons from an early age; http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001445/ two of their sisters, Leota and Lola, were bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. busy onstage in New York and in movies from 1929, respectively. (The fifth daugh- LANDIS, JESSIE ROYCE ter seems to have passed through life as (1896–1972) a happy, nearly anonymous nonprofes- Chicago-born performer whose first and sional.) busiest career was on the New York stage. In 1932, Rosemary and Priscilla She made her Broadway debut in 1926; signed as vocalists with bandleader Fred played Jo in Little Women, Althea in Mer- Waring (“The Sweetest Music This Side rily We Roll Along, and Queen Elizabeth of Heaven”); when his band went to Hol- in Jose Ferrer’s Richard III; and replaced lywood to make Varsity Show in 1937, the DAME JUDITH ANDERSON as Delia in two sisters went along and soon won movie The Old Maid. contracts. Big sister Lola joined them for She had some small and intermittent Four Daughters in 1938, the big debut of parts in the movies but made an impres- John Garfield, and Priscilla was groomed sion as GRACE KELLY’s worldly, weary for stardom, with important parts in MOTHER (and CARY GRANT’s potential Brother Rat and The Roaring Twenties. mother-in-law) in TO CATCH A THIEF in Although she was sometimes com- 1955; three years later, she played Grant’s pared to Barbara Stanwyck and could meet less-than-impressed mother in NORTH costars with the same direct gaze, Priscilla’s BY NORTHWEST. (Although JOKES were natural warmth and baby face softened that made about Landis being a year younger image. Still, her screen persona suggested than Grant, she was actually seven years she knew more of the world than Indiana; older; earlier in her career, she had shaved she was amiable, but she was nobody’s fool, eight years off her age.) an alert and suspicious attitude she brings Landis continued to work on stage, to SABOTEUR. screen, and television, including an episode It was Stanwyck, however, whom of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS; her Hitchcock really wanted for that picture LANG, FRITZ n 219

(he had previously hoped to cast Stanwyck Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: in FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT); another Touchstone, 1985), 145–46. choice was Margaret Sullavan (who had been one of his early ideas for REBECCA). LANG, FRITZ (1890–1976) Instead, the studio prevailed upon him to Vienna-born filmmaker, the son of a use Lane in Saboteur (and, as the male lead, respected architect who himself was inter- ROBERT CUMMINGS in place of JOEL ested in art and design from an early age. MCCREA or Gary Cooper). His enormous visual sense was obvious Already peeved at making the film on early, particularly in his science-fiction loan-out to the budget-conscious UNI- classic Metropolis and in The Testament of VERSAL, Hitchcock resented not having Dr. Mabuse, and can be glimpsed in later the A-list STARS he now considered essen- films with their stark urban lines, sharp tial to his Hollywood work; later he would angles, and deep shadows. say Lane “simply wasn’t the right type for After service during the First World a Hitchcock picture,” with FRANÇOIS War—in which he was wounded three TRUFFAUT agreeing that she was “hardly times—Lang turned full time to filmmak- a sophisticated woman” and “too famil- ing. (He had already sold several screen- iar.” This is, inarguably, unfair; whatever plays while convalescing in military hos- strength Saboteur has is wrapped up in the pitals.) He had a popular hit with The very real, young, and middle-class appeal of Spiders in 1919 and followed that with its stars. Substitute bigger names, and you Die Nibelungen, Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, dilute its charm. and Metropolis—and although the ancient Impulsive in love, Lane had already spectacle of Siegfried awed, it was the lat- one annulment behind her when she broke ter films, with their dark conspiracies and her engagement to one man to marry megalomaniac villains, that would course another, an Army Air Corps lieutenant, in through much of Lang’s work. 1942; after her marriage, she only made a “He stole from Fritz Lang,” historian few more pictures (including Arsenic and David Thomson once said of Hitchcock, Old Lace) before retiring for good in 1948 and certainly Hitchcock studied Lang to raise a family in her husband’s native when he was working in Germany in the New England. She had four children—none ’20s (and looked to F. W. MURNAU, too); of whom followed her into show business. it was one of the reasons SIR MICHAEL Lane died of a heart attack at 79 in BALCON had sent him, to see if could pick Andover, MA. up any Teutonic tricks. The Englishman incorporated some (EXPRESSIONISM) References and discarded others (multipart epics). Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A And he added a photographic effect to Life in Darkness and Light (New York: his toolbox—the Schüfftan process, used HarperCollins, 2003), 300–301; “Pris- to double-expose scenes and thereby fake cilla Lane,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ massive sets, one Lang had used brilliantly name/nm0485509/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio in Metropolis. _sm; David Shipman, “Obituary: Pris- More to the point, though, there were cilla Lane,” Independent, April 10, 1995, things that Hitchcock saw in some Ger- http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/The_Inde man films that validated feelings he already pendent_%2810/Apr/1995%29_-_Obitu had. After all, like Hitchcock, Lang was a ary:_Priscilla_Lane; François Truffaut, CATHOLIC artist (although his mother 220 n LATHAM, LOUISE was Jewish—enough to stain him in the Lang,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ books of the Nazi record-keepers); like name/nm0000485/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio Hitchcock, his work, too, is wracked with _sm; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: GUILT and often twists our emotions, ask- A Life in Darkness and Light (New York: ing us to forgive the unforgivable. HarperCollins, 2003), 63–64; David Thom- Who, after all, are we to sympathize son, The New Biographical Dictionary of with in M? The desperate child mur- Film (New York: Knopf, 2002), 490–92; derer, who wrestles guiltily with his sin? François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. Or the impassive cops and criminals, who ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 26. so coldly join forces in order to eliminate him? And the wrenching scene of pudgy, LATHAM, LOUISE (1922– ) perspiring PETER LORRE, trapped, plead- Texan-born performer on Broadway since ing “I can’t help myself”—how far is this 1956. She had gone to school with screen- from the image of stolid, sweating RAY- writer JAY PRESSON ALLEN, who recom- MOND BURR, asking JAMES STEWART, mended her to Hitchcock for MARNIE. “What do you want?” in REAR WINDOW? Although she was only eight years older The line between guilt and innocence, than TIPPI HEDREN at the time, Latham the despised and the pitied, is ever shift- convincingly played her MOTHER; their ing. If there were a difference, then it was lifelong disconnect of GUILT, sublimated that genre mattered less to Lang. What anger, and repressed memory makes for was important was the cold, damp air of one of the saddest parental relationships in despair that wafted through them all, the all of Hitchcock’s films. feeling that even an innocent man had Marnie was Latham’s screen debut; forces arrayed against him that he couldn’t her work following that was mostly on TV comprehend, and that the fix was already (including an episode of ALFRED HITCH- in. Lang’s characters fight, they flail—but COCK PRESENTS), although she was also their fate is already set. in Steven Spielberg’s first feature, The Sug- This defeatism is part of Lang, and it arland Express, and Thomas McGuane’s was a large part of noir—it’s why he was own 92 in the Shade. She retired in 2000 always more identified with the genre than and lives in California. Hitchcock was (and never the popular entertainer the “Master of Suspense” strove References to be). Yet they meet at points. You can “Louise Latham,” IMDb, http://www.imdb imagine Hitchcock directing The Ministry .com/name/nm0490103/bio?ref_=nm_ov of Fear; you can imagine Lang directing _bio_sm; The Trouble with Marnie, THE WRONG MAN. (And what a fascinat- directed by Laurent Bouzereau (2000), doc- ing double feature their twin, separate stud- umentary, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ ies of SEXUAL obsession—Scarlet Street The_Trouble_with_Marnie_%282000%29 and VERTIGO—would make.) _-_transcript. What you can’t quite do is imagine the world of American thrillers without LAUGHTON, CHARLES them. (1899–1962) Yorkshire-born performer whose appe- References tites—for food and pleasure but chiefly for Peter Bogdanovich, Who the Hell’s in It daring, delicious play—made him one of (New York: Knopf, 2004), 170–234; “Fritz the greatest of actors of the ’30s and a reli- LAUGHTON, CHARLES n 221 able (if reliably hammy) character STAR to be a certain music in his step, he con- for the rest of his life. fided, like a German waltz. The Catholic son of innkeepers, “You can’t direct a Laughton picture,” Laughton was expected to go into the fam- Hitchcock said later. “The best you can ily business but was always interested in hope for is to referee.” But as Laughton drama. After serving in the trenches of was also a producer, Hitchcock had little World War I (during which he was gassed) choice but to soldier on—perhaps why so and briefly helping out at the family estab- much of the film, apart from its shipwreck lishment, he enrolled at the Royal Academy scenes, has a bit of a rushed feel. Afterward, of Dramatic Art in 1925; within a year, he the two men parted company and went on was on the London stage. By the late ’20s, to separate, immediate, and much greater he was being acclaimed (and married to successes—Laughton with The Hunch- costar Elsa Lanchester); by the early ’30s, back of Notre Dame and Hitchcock with he had made his first foray into film act- REBECCA. ing, playing characters—Nero in The Sign Laughton’s career slowed in the ’40s of the Cross, Dr. Moreau in Island of Lost as Hitchcock’s picked up speed, but they Souls, the serial husband of The Private Life both (possibly) worked on FOREVER AND of Henry VIII—with all the amoral glee of A DAY in 1943, and reteamed for THE decadent babies, guiltlessly giggling in their PARADINE CASE in 1947, with Laugh- own mess. The last role won him an Oscar, ton playing the lascivious judge. It was the and his blustering Bligh in the 1935 Mutiny beginning of a rich period for Laughton, on the Bounty carried him into movie who would turn ambitiously to direct- immortality. ing (the uniquely poetic The Night of the Returning to England, he formed May- Hunter, a collaboration with JAMES AGEE, flower Pictures with exiled German pro- was his only film) and play a number of ducer Erich Pommer, who knew Alfred delightful old rascals, including senators Hitchcock from the silents; one of their proof both the ancient empire (Spartacus) and ductions became JAMAICA INN, based on the modern (Advise and Consent). a DAPHNE DU MAURIER best seller, with Although he always had a tendency Laughton discovery MAUREEN O’HARA to pad out a thin script with thick slices in the lead and Hitchcock directing. of ham, at his best Laughton was a deeply It was a miserable experience for star committed, emotionally honest movie and director, but chiefly for Hitchcock. actor full of marvelous looks and superb He had never been fond of period pic- invention; watch again in Island of the Lost tures, a dislike intensified by the failure Souls, as he hops coquettishly on top of an of WALTZES FROM VIENNA; he only operating table and casts an eye over the wanted to be done with this one so he latest castaway sailor. could leave for America and his new con- Laughton had no illusions about his tract with DAVID O. SELZNICK. And own attractiveness; he had a face, he once then there was Laughton, who turned out proclaimed, that “could stop a sundial.” to be precisely the sort of actor who would (Alternately, he compared it to the “back soon drive the director to distraction, full of end of an elephant” and claimed he had sudden ideas and whimsies and questions. quit David Copperfield because every close- At one point he told Hitchcock that filming up made it look as if he wanted to molest would have to be delayed until he figured Freddie Bartholomew; W. C. Fields took out how his character walked; there needed over the part.) 222 n LAUNDER, FRANK

But he was not only one of the talk- cock had already observed, the screen- ies’ first great actors; he also remains one writers were not happy seeing directors of its most modern. And while Hitchcock get most of the credit; the duo eventually might have grumbled about things being turned to producing and directing their delayed because of some inaudible tune, it’s own scripts, including Captain Boycott, that sort of music that runs through every Green for Danger, and the St. Trinian’s Laughton performance—and that the actor comedies, many of them marked by their alone could hear and so brilliantly dance to. sly humor and strong female characters. He died of kidney cancer at 63 in Hol- Launder died at 91 in Monte Carlo. lywood. References References Alan Burton, “Frank Launder,” BFI Scree- “Biography,” Official Charles Laughton nonline, http://www.screenonline.org.uk/ Website, http://charleslaughton.freeservers people/id/460455; David Cairns, “Individ- .com/bio.htm; “Charles Laughton,” IMDb, ual Pictures: The Cinema of Launder and http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001452/ Gilliat,” BritMovie, http://www.britmovie bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Patrick McGil- .co.uk/2008/08/26/individual-pictures-the ligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Dark- -cinema-of-launder-and-gilliat; “Frank ness and Light (New York: HarperCollins, Launder,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ 2003), 222–25; Donald Spoto, The Dark name/nm0490950/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitch- cock (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), LAURENTS, ARTHUR 184; David Thomson, The New Biographi- (1917–2011) cal Dictionary of Film (New York: Knopf, Brooklyn-born lawyer’s son and Cornell 2002), 498–99; François Truffaut, Hitch- grad who fatefully took a night class at New cock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Touch- York University in radio writing. When the stone, 1985), 121–23. teacher declared no script should ever begin with a character answering the phone, Lau- LAUNDER, FRANK (1906–1997) rents promptly wrote one—and sold it to Hertfordshire-born author who left an CBS. He was 22. He got a job at the network office job for work with a repertory com- writing for various shows and stayed with pany in Brighton. When a play he wrote them until World War II, when the army won him more praise than any acting job assigned him a job in Queens working on he’d undertaken, he decided to switch training films. His first play for the theater, careers, landing a staff job with BRITISH Home of the Brave, was staged in New York INTERNATIONAL PICTURES in 1928. in 1945; it was bought for the movies (he By 1936, he had teamed with SIDNEY GIL- would do the adaptation in 1949), and he LIAT; their fifth effort, THE LADY VAN- went out to Hollywood as a screenwriter. ISHES, became (after briefly gaining the Although Laurents was denied credit for his interest of another director and then being first film effort, The Snake Pit, his work won rewritten) Alfred Hitchcock’s 1938 hit and him an assignment adapting the play ROPE the first to feature the director’s name on for Alfred Hitchcock. theater marquees. Hitchcock’s choice of Laurents may Launder and Gilliat would do a sort of have been motivated partly by wanting spin-off of The Lady Vanishes, Night Train a playwright on the project, as his plans to Munich, for Carol Reed, but as Hitch- for the film consisted of long, deliberately LAWRENCE, GERTRUDE n 223

“uncinematic” takes; it might also have of Gypsy and a new bilingual production of been wanting a gay writer with an under- West Side Story. standing of its characters and of HOMO- He died at 93 in New York. SEXUALITY (which nervous executives referred to only as “it”). Laurents (who was References actually dating STAR FARLEY GRANGER “Arthur Laurents,” IBDb, http://ibdb.com/ at the time) had the difficult job of both person.php?id=4307; “Arthur Laurents,” weaving in that subtext and keeping it from IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ attracting the CENSORS’ wrath—a trick he nm0491306/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; pulled off deftly. (So deftly, Laurents wrote Christopher Hawtree, “Arthur Laurents: later, that JAMES STEWART never seemed Obituary,” Guardian, May 6, 2011, http:// to notice that his character was supposed to www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/may/06/ be gay, too.) arthur-laurents-obituary; Arthur Laurents, “We never discussed the homosexual The Rest of the Story (Milwaukee, WI: element of the script, but Hitchcock knew Applause, 2012), 35, 39–41; Patrick McGil- what he wanted to be able to get away with,” ligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Dark- Laurents wrote later in his memoirs. “He ness and Light (New York: HarperCollins, was as intrigued by varieties of SEXUAL 2003), 403–8; Donald Spoto, The Dark life and conduct as he was by the varieties of Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock moviemaking—in fact, he was like a child (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 304–5. who’s just discovered sex and thinks it’s all very naughty. . . . He thought everyone was LAWRENCE, GERTRUDE doing something physical and nasty behind (1898–1952) every closed door—except himself: he with- London-born performer and legendary drew, he wouldn’t be part of it.” interpreter of the works of Noel Coward. Laurents would go on to write the Max The daughter of a determined mother and Ophuls noir Caught and Otto Preminger’s an often drunken opera singer, she made Bonjour Tristesse, as well as The Way We her stage debut in an amateur contest at Were and The Turning Point; he never age 6 and by 10 was appearing profession- worked for Hitchcock again, although the ally in Christmas pantomimes. The bulk director sounded him out about UNDER of her career and her brilliance was on the CAPRICORN and reportedly turned to stage; she was in the Gershwins’ Oh, Kay! him again in the early stages of both TORN on Broadway; appeared with Coward in CURTAIN and TOPAZ. (Laurents smartly Tonight at 8:30; won raves in Lady in the turned down all three after reading the Dark; and concluded her career with the source material.) original The King and I, for which she won The McCarthy era meant trouble for a Tony. Laurents in ’50s Hollywood—but also his Lawrence’s career in cinema was far greatest triumphs, as he returned to New more sporadic and far less acclaimed; her York and Broadway; he wrote the books work in the film of The Glass Menagerie for West Side Story and Gypsy and directed was roundly panned by Tennessee Wil- I Can Get It for You Wholesale, which made liams. She had a lead role in LORD CAM- a star of Barbra Streisand. Later, he would BER’S LADIES, the sole film Hitchcock direct the original La Cage Aux Folles, too, produced but did not direct. In the film, and successfully revisit some of his own she appeared opposite Gerald du Maurier, material, staging several essential revivals one of her lovers; it was rumored she later 224 n LEE, CANADA had an affair with his daughter, DAPHNE Lee joined the national tour of Mac- DU MAURIER, as well. beth and then scored another success in Lawrence died in New York at age 54 Native Son, winning a rave from the New of liver cancer during the run of The King York Times as the “greatest Negro actor of and I; her last wish from her deathbed was his era and one of the finest actors in the that costar Yul Brynner’s name be finally country.” Lee would return regularly to added to the marquee. Broadway throughout his career, landing parts in Anna Lucasta, The Tempest, and References The Duchess of Malfi. Hollywood was less “Gertrude Lawrence,” IMDb, http:// open to black talent, and Lee found few www.imdb.com/name/nm0492775/ roles, however, although he is a boxer in bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Michael Thorn- Body and Soul and played a minister in the ton, “The Rumbustious Life of Gertrude British-made, South African–shot Cry the Lawrence,” Daily Mail, April 30, 2009, Beloved Country. (In order to sneak into http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/arti the apartheid state, Lee had to pretend to cle-1175140/The-rumbustious-life-Ger be director Zoltan Korda’s servant.) trude-Lawrence—Hollywoods-maneater. His best-remembered part was as Joe, html. one of the shipwrecked sailors in LIFE- BOAT—and the only survivor who holds LEE, CANADA (1907–1952) back as the mob turns on the German to New York performer—and welterweight beat him to death. It’s a quiet, sensitive per- boxer, jockey, classical violinist, radio DJ, formance and one Lee himself constructed; and civil rights champion—whose life was when he saw the “Negro dialect” the part cut criminally short and who remains cru- had been written in, he simply changed it. elly underappreciated today. (Hitchcock, in a sign of respect he rarely Running away from home in his early afforded actors, let him—although some teens, Lee began a horseracing career, slights remain, and the white passengers switching to boxing after a growth spurt. still sometimes cheerfully refer to Joe as He fought professionally until his mid- “Charcoal.”) 20s, when a detached retina forced his Lee had never been afraid to speak his retirement; although he later ran a Harlem mind, though, decrying segregation in the nightclub, by 1934, he was broke. Look- armed forces even as he worked to sell war ing for handyman work and stumbling on bonds. An early barrier-breaker (he was an open audition at the YMCA for a new the first African American to have his own play, Lee won a part, his first; two years network radio show), he remained a con- later, in 1936, he was playing Banquo in sistent voice for equal rights; in 1949, the Orson Welles’s historic Haitian-themed New York Times quoted Lee’s attack on production of Macbeth. “I never would American broadcasting for keeping blacks have amounted to anything in the theatre in a “concentration camp” of stereotypes, if it hadn’t been for Orson Welles,” Lee consistently portraying them as “cannibals, told the Los Angeles Tribune in 1943. “Sud- dehumanized monsters, clowns, menials, denly, the theatre became important to me. thieves and liars.” I had a respect for it, for what it could say. I By this time, however, Lee was already had the ambition—I caught it from Orson being denied work because of his leftist pol- Welles—to work like mad and be a con- itics; his right to travel outside the country vincing actor.” was restricted, costing him the lead in an LEHMAN, ERNEST n 225

Italian-made film of Othello and a South his success and his well-deserved reputa- American production of Native Son. The tion as a versatile screenwriter: Lehman FBI told him the trouble would go away if was the man you went to if you needed a Lee would simply name Paul Robeson as a cinematic adaptation of a popular play, a Communist; Lee refused. The House Un- well-constructed drama, or a cleverly engi- American Activities Committee announced neered comedy. His dialogue was memo- it would subpoena him. rable, and his plotting came free of holes. Before he had to face them, Lee He was originally approached by dropped dead in New York of a heart attack. Alfred Hitchcock to do the script for THE He was 45. WRECK OF THE MARY DEARE, but after weeks of meetings—and talking about References wine, gossip, FOOD, and everything but “Canada Lee,” IBDb, http://ibdb.com/ the script—Lehman realized that neither of person.php?id=21398; “Canada Lee,” them had an idea of how to adapt the novel. IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ (It was eventually written for the screen by nm0496938/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; “A JOAN HARRISON’s new husband, author Distinguished Actor, Canada Lee,” African Eric Ambler, and directed by Michael American Registry, http://www.aaregistry Anderson.) Realizing he and Lehman were .org/historic_events/view/distinquished still under contract to MGM for a movie, -actor-canada-lee; Kenneth Kilfara, “Can- Hitchcock calmly suggested they try some- ada Lee: Man Out Front,” http://www.cana thing else. daleedoc.com; “Portrait of Canada Lee,” “I want to do a Hitchcock picture CanadaLee.org, http://www.canadalee.org/ to end all Hitchcock pictures,” Lehman portrait.htm. blurted out. The challenge appealed to the director—he was always in competition LEHMAN, ERNEST (1915–2005) with himself anyway—and the two men New York–born author who was consider- kicked around ideas, situations, locales. ing a career in chemical engineering until (“I’ve always wanted to do a chase sequence he took a writing class at the City Univer- across the faces of Mount Rushmore,” sity of New York. Although he soon began Hitchcock confessed.) Then Hitchcock left sending out short stories, he supported Lehman to write it and went off to shoot himself by working for a press agent feed- VERTIGO. Lehman’s script, originally ing juicy “items” to gossip columnists, an titled Breathless and constructed as a break- experience he later drew on for The Sweet neck chase across the United States, even- Smell of Success. tually became NORTH BY NORTHWEST. That story had begun as a novella, It had taken a year to reach its final “Tell Me about It Tomorrow,” in Cosmo- draft and a great deal of work—Lehman politan magazine; it was the success of scouted locations himself, even clambering short fiction like that which first caught up Mount Rushmore; wrestled with writ- Hollywood’s interest and brought Lehman er’s block; and often thought about simply a contract at PARAMOUNT. He began quitting. Yet it was Lehman’s great talent strong with screenplays for Executive Suite that the hard work never shows; North by and (with SAMUEL A. TAYLOR) Sabrina Northwest is light, lively, playful, perfect. It in 1954; in 1956, he wrote Somebody Up is exactly what the screenwriter had said he There Likes Me and adapted The King and wanted to do: the Hitchcock picture to end I. Those early credits formed the basis of all Hitchcock pictures. 226 n LEHMAN, ERNEST

But the work was also exhausting— but the film’s mood—sometimes comic, Lehman later said he was writing new pages sometimes dark—seemed to confuse audi- in Bakersfield, even as CARY GRANT was ences, and there were no STARS in the cast fleeing the crop duster—and when Hitch- to attract them. Still, Hitchcock was already cock told Lehman he wanted him to write optimistically planning his next film and his next film as well, NO BAIL FOR THE asked Lehman to write it for him, too. It JUDGE, Lehman tendered his regrets. was to be called THE SHORT NIGHT. It opened a deep rift between the two Hitchcock’s inspiration for the story men—Hitchcock did not like being refused, came from a real-life British prison escape, particularly by writers—but it was a wise but Lehman said, “he was in love—in fact call. Although the film had already tenta- obsessed—with the idea that the lead- tively been cast, Audrey Hepburn ended ing man would rape and kill a woman at up hating Samuel Taylor’s No Bail for the the outset of the picture.” Lehman was as Judge script when it was finally presented to opposed to this idea as EVAN HUNTER her (it included a rather grim rape scene), had been to the marital rape in MARNIE, and the project was ultimately abandoned but “I always stayed on because I didn’t after $200,000 had been spent on prepro- want Family Plot to be his last picture,” duction costs. Lehman wrote later. “I didn’t think it was Lehman’s successes continued with- good enough to be his last picture.” out Hitchcock for a while; with a typical But it was his last picture. After demonstration of his versatility, he wrote Lehman turned in his final contracted draft the screenplay adaptation for The Sound of to Hitchcock, the director—unsatisfied or Music and then turned around and did the perhaps stalling—approached other screen- same for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, writers, commissioned other drafts. But his which he also produced. (He also rather health was failing rapidly. Eventually The disastrously wrote and directed Portnoy’s Short Night came to an end. Complaint.) “He never stopped wanting to delight In 1973, Hitchcock approached us, to manipulate us and excite us and tan- Lehman again, this time to adapt a novel talize us and move us and fascinate us and by Victor Canning called The Rainbird Pat- enthrall us and fill us with dread and laugh- tern. The writer was surprised, not so much ter and curiosity,” Lehman wrote later, in by the rapprochement as by the decline in a Hitchcock elegy for American Film. “He the filmmaker’s health and energy; over was a mischievous child clothed in the five months of conferences and rewrites, black serge garb of a world-weary sophis- Hitchcock often spoke about abandoning ticate, and he took marvelous enjoyment in the project entirely; he grew increasingly playing his games and letting us watch.” testy with Lehman’s suggestions and, by Lehman continued his own games the end of the process, would only commu- for only a short while longer; after Family nicate with him by mail. But by the end of Plot, he did the screenplay for the terror- it, they had a screenplay—once Deception, ist thriller Black Sunday and wrote a novel, then FAMILY PLOT—ready to go. before retiring. He died of a heart attack at The screenplay showed off Lehman’s 89 in Los Angeles. old strengths (witty dialogue, a carefully engineered plot) and Hitchcock’s signature References interests (questions of IDENTITY, paral- “Ernest Lehman,” IMDb, http://www.imdb lel characters, narrative sleight of hand), .com/name/nm0499626/bio?ref_=nm_ov LEIGH, JANET n 227

_bio_sm; Ernest Lehman, “Lehman at sic Thriller, and in it, she remembers a Large: Hitch,” American Film (July 1980), calm, pleasant set where Hitchcock let the 18; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: actors interpret the parts as they chose, as A Life in Darkness and Light (New York: long as they hit their marks. “He couldn’t HarperCollins, 2003), 717–20, 732–33; have been more considerate, or thoughtful, Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: or respectful, or agreeable or companion- The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da able,” she wrote. Leigh admitted, though, Capo Press, 1999), 388–89, 391–93. that “there have been legions of words written about Mr. Hitchcock’s treatment of his LEIGH, JANET (1927–2004) leading ladies” and agreed that—as she was Merced, CA–born performer famously married, established in her career, and not discovered when a vacationing Norma under personal contract to him—her expe- Shearer saw her photo at a ski resort where riences might have been different. her parents worked. Offered an immediate Still, she said, shooting Psycho was contract at MGM, the cheerful psychology “one of the most delicious adventures of major dropped out of college and moved to my forty-eight years in Hollywood.” (She Los Angeles. She was 19. still referred to him as “Mr. Hitchcock,” Leigh had never acted in her life, but and when an early galley of the as-told-to she had an exuberance (and even more book contained a slighting reference to his exuberant figure), which brought her a ego, she had it struck out by hand from number of ingénue roles, particularly in every copy sent to reviewers.) She also period pictures; marriage to Tony Curtis wanted to clear up something else: It was (with whom she appeared in a half-dozen Hitchcock, not SAUL BASS, who shot that movies) increased her visibility. Orson shower sequence. Welles’s Touch of Evil—with Leigh play- Psycho brought an ACADEMY ing Charlton Heston’s wife and the target AWARD nomination for Leigh (which of some nastiness in a motel—should have she didn’t win—it went to Shirley Jones been a breakthrough for her as a seri- for Elmer Gantry) and a Golden Globes ous actress, but the picture was recut and one (which she did); she followed up the dumped by the studio. movie with a strong, enigmatic part in The PSYCHO—with Leigh again facing an Manchurian Candidate and a joyous one in odd innkeeper and an unpleasant overnight Bye Bye Birdie. But by this time her mar- stay—was a true step forward, though, and riage to Curtis had ended, and she had two the sign of a change in Leigh. There was children; Leigh scaled back her movie work something sharp, even a little hard, in her (although years later she was always avail- look now; with the arch of her eyebrow, a able for a cameo in daughter Jamie Lee very careful catch in her voice, she made Curtis’s movies). Marion Crane worldly, wary, smart. Mar- And, if she could help it, she stayed ion may be in her early 30s, unmarried, out of showers. “If there is no other way to and stuck in a dull job in Phoenix, but she bathe, then I make sure all of the doors and does not give in to self-pity, and when she windows in the house are locked, and I leave sees an opportunity, she grabs it. She is the bathroom door open and the shower nobody’s victim—until, of course, she is. curtain or stall door open so I have a perfect Years later, Leigh would cowrite a clear view,” she wrote years later. “I face the book about her experiences shooting the door no matter where the showerhead is. film, Psycho: Behind the Scenes of the Clas- The room, I might add, gets very wet.” 228 n LEIGH-HUNT, BARBARA

Leigh died at home in Los Angeles of a own innate grace and spots of unexpected heart attack at 77. pathos (the moment in which, in the midst of this violent assault, the victim tries to References modestly cover her bare breast is particu- “Janet Leigh,” Biography, http://www.biogra larly heartbreaking). phy.com/people/janet-leigh-9542160; Leigh-Hunt’s other movie assign- “Janet Leigh,” IMDb, http://www.imdb ments were not quite as provocative or .com/name/nm0001463; Janet Leigh with prominent, although she is in Henry VIII Christopher Nickens, Psycho: The Clas- and His Six Wives with Keith Michell and sic Thriller (New York: Harmony Books, Billy Elliot; her last screen credit to date is 1995), 48, 131; Stephen Rebello, Alfred in 2004’s Vanity Fair. Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho (New York: HarperPerennial, 1991), 107–12. References “Barbara Leigh-Hunt,” IMDb, http:// LEIGH-HUNT, BARBARA www.imdb.com/name/nm0500317/ (1935– ) bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Donald Spoto, Somerset-born performer whose work The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred has centered on the stage, including stints Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, with the Royal Shakespeare Company and 1999), 513–14. the Old Vic. She is also a regular on Brit- ish television, where her many series and LEIGHTON, MARGARET miniseries have included The Brontës of (1922–1976) Haworth, Wagner, Ruth Rendell Mysteries, Worcestershire-born performer with and the Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice. graceful elegance and haunting features. Although she had started appearing She made her stage debut in Birmingham on TV in 1965, FRENZY was her first film; at 16 and her London debut at 22 and was Hitchcock, she remembered later, told her soon earning plaudits at the Old Vic. She that he wanted to use stage actors, as he was Roxane to Ralph Richardson’s lauded knew they would arrive well prepared and Cyrano de Bergerac in 1946 and won two would allow him to “play with his camera” Tonys for her Broadway performances in without having to spend time directing Separate Tables and Night of the Iguana. them. Her busy stage career had left her little “I adored Hitch and making Frenzy time for movies; apart from some very early was a wonderful time,” she said years later. TV work, UNDER CAPRICORN was her “He went out of his way and was kindness third picture. It would be a difficult one. personified, he knew I was exceedingly ner- Only Hitchcock’s second film in COLOR, vous. If I had a question he would always it was also his second experimenting with courteously explain something to me.” long, single takes; breakaway sets were Part of Leigh-Hunt’s nervousness came not required, filmmaking was slow, and STAR only from the medium but also the scene— INGRID BERGMAN complained bitterly early in the film she is brutally raped and to the director about the difficulties and murdered, with every degradation detailed delays. and the final shot that of her corpse’s star- Leighton played a variation on the ing EYES and open mouth. It is the ugli- Mrs. Danvers part—the housekeeper who est scene in all of Hitchcock—and a great wants her mistress out of the way so she deal of its power comes from Leigh-Hunt’s can have the master for herself—and is LEOPOLD, NATHAN AND LOEB, RICHARD n 229 striking in the role, although Hitchcock outside all moral laws—they conceived later claimed the “British critics thought their one awful idea: to prove their own it was terrible to take a lovely actress like perfection by committing the perfect crime. Margaret Leighton and make her into an After a series of petty thefts and van- unsympathetic character.” The film was a dalisms, the two moved on to the idea of financial disaster and helped end his inde- murder; they planned it over more than a pendent venture, TRANSATLANTIC PIC- half-year, deciding to seize and kill a child TURES. and then use a ransom note to try to dis- Leighton continued to make mov- guise it as a kidnapping. Loeb volunteered ies (and made two more appearances for his own second cousin, the 14-year-old Hitchcock, on ALFRED HITCHCOCK Bobby Franks, as the victim. They picked PRESENTS and THE ALFRED HITCH- the boy up near his home on May 21, 1924; COCK HOUR), but the stage remained her hit him in the head with a chisel; gagged chief arena. Still, she had a good part in him with an old rag; and then, after they Lady Caroline Lamb and made a fine Miss had dumped the body in rural Indiana, Havisham in the Michael York version of poured acid over it to slow identification. Great Expectations in 1974, turning her Then they sent the ransom note. fragile, somewhat birdlike beauty to haunt- Their perfect plot unraveled almost ing use. immediately. Leopold, it seemed, couldn’t Married to MICHAEL WILDING, a help talking to police and reporters (and costar of Under Capricorn, she was diag- talking bitterly about how much he disliked nosed with multiple sclerosis in the early Franks); even more stupidly, he’d dropped ’70s; she continued acting, even when she his glasses at the murder scene. The police couldn’t walk, until her death in Sussex found the spectacles when they found the from complications of the disease. She was body, and a quick investigation revealed only 53. that only three pairs like them had been sold in all of Chicago, one to Nathan Leo- References pold. The police picked up the duo, whose “Margaret Leighton,” IMDb, http:// alibi quickly fell apart under questioning. www.imdb.com/name/nm0500364/ Each rushed to blame the other for the bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; François Truf- actual killing. faut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New Both men pled guilty and were put on York: Touchstone, 1985), 187. trial for murder; lawyer Clarence Darrow concentrated all his efforts on simply see- LEOPOLD, NATHAN (1904– ing they weren’t executed, an uphill effort 1971), AND LOEB, RICHARD climaxing in a 12-hour summation. In the (1905–1936) end, the defendants were each given 99 Rich Chicagoans, they grew up brilliant and years for kidnapping and life for murder. spoiled. Although they knew each other Loeb died in prison, slashed to death by slightly, when they were reunited at the a fellow inmate; Leopold was eventually University of Chicago, they realized they released in 1958, after which he moved to also shared a fascination with true-crime Puerto Rico, married, worked for various stories. After Leopold introduced a new charities, and wrote a book about birds. He element to the mix, Friedrich Nietzsche died of a heart attack at 66. The man whose and his theory of the Übermensch—the lost eyeglasses had sent him to prison superman who was so superior he existed donated his corneas. 230 n LEVY, BENN W.

At times called the “Crime of the Cen- MAIL and wrote the adaptation for James tury,” the Leopold and Loeb case inspired Whale’s film of Waterloo Bridge. He also copious coverage and eventually the play directed his own script for LORD CAM- ROPE, first performed in 1928. It was done BER’S LADIES, which Hitchcock unhap- a decade later for the BBC and a decade pily produced, slightly put out that Levy later as the Alfred Hitchcock film, which wouldn’t take his suggestions. (Still, when explicitly eroticized the men’s relationship in the early ’60s Hitchcock was desperately (or as explicitly as the CENSORS of the time struggling with the treatment for KALEI- would allow) while also suggesting that the DOSCOPE, Levy was one of the former col- characters’ influential teacher shared in laborators he called for help.) their GUILT. (The case also inspired other After World War II, Levy entered poli- films, including Compulsion and Swoon.) tics; as a member of Parliament, he was a The themes of shared guilt and strong supporter of the Zionist movement HOMOSEXUALITY as a seeming signi- and of ending government CENSORSHIP. fier of instability occur in other Hitch- Married to actress Constance Cummings cock films, particularly STRANGERS ON for more than 40 years, he died at age 73 A TRAIN; that movie also features a pair in Oxford. of bantering and somewhat superior men, the idea of certain human beings as being References inconvenient or expendable, and eyeglasses “Benn W. Levy,” IMDb, http://www.imdb dropped at a remote murder scene. But .com/name/nm0506349; “Benn W. Levy,” PATRICIA HIGHSMITH and Hitchcock Playwright’s Database, http://www.doollee managed to give that story some stylish .com/PlaywrightsL/levy-benn-w.html. ambiguity and moral weight; the real case was far more sordid. And—perhaps the LIFEBOAT (US 1944) most frustrating thing to Loeb and Leopold of all—not only senseless but also stupid. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay: Jo Swerling, from a story by References John Steinbeck. Producers: Kenneth McGowan (Alfred Simon Baatz, “Leopold and Loeb’s Crimi- Hitchcock, uncredited). nal Minds,” Smithsonian, http://www Cinematography: Glen MacWilliams. .smithsonianmag.com/history/leopold Editor: Dorothy Spencer. -and-loebs-criminal-minds-996498/?no Original Music: Hugo W. Friedhofer. -ist; Douglas O. Linder, “The Leopold and Cast: Tallulah Bankhead (Constance Por- Loeb Trial: A Brief Account,” http://law2 ter), John Hodiak (John Kovac), Henry .umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/ Hull (Charles S. Rittenhouse), Walter Accountoftrial.html. Slezak (Willy), Hume Cronyn (Stanley “Sparks” Garett), William Bendix (Gus LEVY, BENN W. (1900–1973) Smith), Canada Lee (George “Joe” London-born, Oxford-educated playwright Spencer). who served in both world wars. His stage Running Time: 96 minutes. Black and white. Released Through: Twentieth Century Fox. hits included Accent on Youth, Springtime for Henry, and Topaze (not to be confused with the later Hitchcock film TOPAZ). As a screenwriter, he worked on An American ship and a German U-boat the dialogue for Hitchcock’s BLACK- simultaneously destroy each other in the LIFEBOAT n 231

North Atlantic, and the sole seaworthy ing 1943, he had approached several nov- lifeboat slowly fills with a few, oil-smeared elists, including Ernest Hemingway, for survivors—a wealthy writer, an industrial- original stories before getting this one from ist, an army nurse, some sailors, and the JOHN STEINBECK. The challenges of a German captain. single set appealed to him as well (a chal- As the others quarrel over left- and lenge he would pursue again in ROPE and right-wing politics; mourn their lost posses- REAR WINDOW). sions; or succumb to madness, thirst, exhaus- Steinbeck’s original treatment was tion, and gangrene, the German slowly, rewritten by several screenwriters, includ- methodically takes charge, sipping from a ing uncredited work by Hitchcock’s wife secret stash of water, gulping energy pills, ALMA REVILLE, BEN HECHT, and and using his own compass to try to steer the PATRICIA COLLINGE; a furious Stein- lifeboat back to a German supply ship. beck wrote to the studio, protesting the When one of the American sailors changes, insisting that his original work catches him, the German pushes him over- hadn’t included “slurs against organized board and lets him drown. When the rest labor, nor was there a stock comedy of the survivors finally grasp what’s hap- Negro.” The latter particularly bothered pened—and realize the German has been him; while he had created a “Negro of dig- cleverly outwitting them all along—they nity, purpose and personality,” he insisted, beat him half to death and throw him over- the rewrite had merely substituted the board. “usual colored travesty.” Just as a German supply ship It seems likely that Steinbeck was actu- approaches, it’s sunk by an arriving Allied ally more infuriated by the rewriting of warship, and the lifeboat’s passengers are Kovac, his heroic leftist sailor, now criti- rescued—along with another young Ger- cized by the other characters as a Commu- man sailor who’s just fled the destroyed nist. Although the African American sailor ship and whose life the British and Ameri- is still occasionally called “Charcoal” by the cans hesitantly spare. whites, he is (thanks to CANADA LEE, who rewrote the part) the most human person Although he had been brought to America on the boat and in the finished film, even as a famous director of thrillers, Hitchcock though he’s the worst treated back on land. regularly tried to push past that genre in (“Do I get to vote too?” he asks dryly, when the ’40s; various other projects, such as a the survivors are taking a poll on their next modern-dress HAMLET or the romantic course of action.) Of all of them, Joe knows fantasy MARY ROSE, were occasionally best what ideals they’re really fighting for, proposed, and he took stabs at romantic even if they’re often little more than ideals; comedies (MR. AND MRS. SMITH), court- when the rest of them turn into a mob and room dramas (THE PARADINE CASE), overwhelm the German, Joe is the only one and period melodramas (UNDER CAP- who hangs back from the virtual lynching. RICORN). It was actually only after sev- If Joe holds true to a core of strength eral financial disappointments that, in the and humanity throughout his time at sea, 1950s, he fully committed to thrillers, a the other characters embark on journeys. genre he would stick with to the end. For Sparks, the radio man, and Alice, the The wartime drama Lifeboat was one nurse, it’ll be a slow move toward romance; of those attempts at another type of film for Rittenhouse the millionaire industri- and one Hitchcock was eager to begin; dur- alist, a realization of how little real power 232 n LIFEBOAT he has. And for Connie, the elegant writer, capable than the British and Americans it will be a gradual stripping away of her who’d hauled him onboard. accumulated tokens of success—her type- This was, of course, Hitchcock’s point. writer, her mink, her jewels—until she’s Like THE LADY VANISHES, Lifeboat was a back to being the poor kid from Chicago metaphor for the world; if the first film crit- she always was. icized English prewar appeasement, then Although Lifeboat is a character- this one suggested that the Allies needed driven story—and one obviously lacking in to be resolute, even a little ruthless, if they scenery—Hitchcock made sure it was full were going to prevail against the Third of incident and imagery. (He used toy boats Reich. Besides, the Nazi had to be a sort of to work out all his camera angles in pre- superman; as the director had always said, production, like a little boy staging battles the stronger the villain, the stronger the with tin soldiers.) The process shot of the picture. German supply ship bearing down on the The German was too strong, however, little boat like an enormous plow is stun- for conservative columnists, who quickly ning; the entire sequence of the emergency turned on the movie. The syndicated Dor- amputation, with a close-up of the survi- othy Thompson accused the film of being vors crudely sterilizing a pocket knife over a “Nazi morale-builder” and demanded it a flickering flame, is memorably gruesome. be scrapped or at least seriously changed TALLULAH BANKHEAD gets special before it went into wide release. Reviewer treatment, too, poking her finger through for the New York Times Bosley Crowther Kovac’s newspaper and then teasingly called it “insidious” and “appalling.” Hitch- leaning into him, her face swiping across cock, now accused of being anti-American, the screen in a tight left-to-right close-up; called the charge “so preposterously untrue another close shot, of her bare, high-arched that it is a trifle irksome. If I disliked Amer- foot slowly rubbing against his, is a small icans, I should scarcely betray my dislike in erotic jolt. (The role, her first film lead in such an unsubtle fashion.” 12 years, won her the best actress prize None of this, however, was quite the from the NEW YORK FILM CRITICS sort of patriotic reception the studio had CIRCLE.) been hoping for. Faced with this sort of Production, though, was diffi- passionate opposition—and Hitchcock’s cult, as Hitchcock insisted on shooting typically too-droll denials—a frightened in sequence, and the cast seemed to be Twentieth Century Fox blinked, pulling plagued by accidents and illness; the first back on advertising and bookings. The film director of photography became sick, ended up losing money—not something HUME CRONYN was injured on set, and Hitchcock was accustomed to. Bankhead had a persistent bout of pneumonia. (Perhaps she caught a chill by being References underdressed; the actress famously insisted “Anti-U.S. Charge Denied,” Gloucestershire on going without underwear, much to the Echo, March 16, 1944, http://the.hitchcock dismay of the other cast members and the .zone/wiki/Gloucestershire_Echo_%2816/ delight of the crew.) The delays helped run Mar/1944%29_-_Anti-U.S._Charge the budget up to more than $1.5 million. _Denied; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitch- When it was released, it ran into further cock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New troubles, as it was heavily criticized for por- York: HarperCollins, 2003), 328–42; Don- traying the German as calmer and more ald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life LLOYD, NORMAN n 233 of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo ‘I never said actors were cattle; I said they Press, 1999), 265–70; Emily Temple, “John should be treated like cattle’—he said that Steinbeck Wanted His Name Taken Off because he knew it would get in the papers. Hitchcock’s ‘Lifeboat,’” Flavorwire, http:// He understood the business.”) And for a flavorwire.com/256717/john-steinbeck while, Lloyd continued to work, for Jean -wanted-his-name-taken-off-hitchcocks Renoir in The Southerner, for Lewis Mile- -lifeboat; Dorothy Thompson, “A Film stone in A Walk in the Sun. That Could Aid German Morale,” Amarillo But clouds were gathering in Holly- Globe, January 31, 1944, http://the.hitch wood. Lloyd worked with John Garfield cock.zone/wiki/Amarillo_Globe_%2831/ on He Ran All the Way, with Joseph Losey Jan/1944%29_-_A_Film_that_Could_Aid on M, with Chaplin on Limelight—and saw _German_Morale. all three men blacklisted for their political opinions, either hounded to death or sent LLOYD, NORMAN (1914– ) into exile. Then the blacklisters came for Jersey-City born performer whose mother Lloyd. thought he should take speech classes. That It was a long road back, but he was led to coaching in singing and dancing and helped by friends—first by John House- gigs working the local ladies clubs. His man from the old Mercury Theatre days, father hoped he’d grow up to be a lawyer; who gave him a place to stay, and then by instead Lloyd dropped out of New York Hitchcock, who gave him a job. Lloyd was University to go on auditions. “This was the associate producer for 184 episodes of the Depression; the lawyers I saw were all ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS; when driving cabs,” Lloyd explained later. “So I that ended its run, he moved over to THE thought, well, if I’m going to be badly off ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR as the pro- anyway, I might as well be badly off in the ducer or executive producer. theater, where you get used to it.” “Hitchcock was a total pro,” Lloyd He connected early with Orson Welles said. “And he brooked no nonsense. I don’t and the Mercury Theatre, playing Cinna in mean that he’d shout and carry on; he’d their famous production of Julius Caesar; just walk off the set, he wouldn’t put up when Welles went to Hollywood, Lloyd with it. You toed the line with Hitch. But followed. He missed out on Citizen Kane, if you watched him, as I did starting with although he was soon cast as the title villain Saboteur, you could learn so much. I just in Hitchcock’s SABOTEUR. tried to absorb it all.” “Hitch would never call this a ‘politi- The first and most crucial lesson, he cal’ picture,” Lloyd said decades later. “He says, was planning. “You would sign on for did not believe in ‘political pictures.’ His a Hitch picture and he’d tell you the story whole feeling was, ‘I don’t like social con- first, shot for shot—‘Well, a door opens, tent in movies. I make entertainment.’ To and a foot comes through, and then a hand, use GRAHAM GREENE’S phrase. But and then we cut to . . .’—and he’d go on like . . . if you look at Saboteur again, you’ve got that, telling you the whole picture, shot by a political picture. Not only the fact that shot!” Lloyd marvels. “He had it all planned it’s on the Statue of Liberty that the villain out. ‘If you can tell it, you can shoot it,’ he finally falls.” used to say, ‘and if you can’t tell it, you Hitchcock called him back to play one can’t shoot it.’ They should print that out of the inmates in SPELLBOUND. (“He and put it up in every film school. But actually loved actors. That whole thing— really, you watched him and you learned 234 n LOCATION FILMING everything about telling a story. His whole As someone whose career ranged head was a reel of film.” over a half-century, Hitchcock had a com- Lloyd directed some of the episodes plicated and somewhat changeable atti- and slowly resumed his acting career, as tude toward filming on location. A direc- well, on other TV shows and movies and tor who meticulously planned every shot having a late-in-life success on the series St. in advance, the idea of shooting outside Elsewhere. And he’s still at it, having—at a studio—where the variables included 100—just recently had a new picture in the- everything from unpredictable weather to aters, Trainwreck. He confesses he’d prob- uncontrollable passersby—was nerve-rack- ably do more if he didn’t spend so much ing. Some directors praise the miracles of time playing tennis. happy accidents. Hitchcock was not among them. References Yet at the same time, Hitchcock had an Norman Lloyd, interviews with the author, edifice complex. There was something deep November 2007, July 2015; “Norman within him that loved the drama of famous Lloyd,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ landmarks and still felt the child-like thrill name/nm0516093/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio of seeing something historic loom in front _sm; Alex Ross, “The Magnificent Memory of him. And as he grew as an artist, he also of Norman Lloyd,” New Yorker, December began to use iconic, real-life locations for 4, 2015, http://www.newyorker.com/cul metaphor and irony: an American traitor ture/culture-desk/the-magnificent-mem falls from the top of the nation’s Statue of ory-of-norman-lloyd. Liberty: an American hero, a pawn of his own government, runs for his life as the LOCATION FILMING giant stony faces of dead presidents look In the earliest days of cinema, all filming implacably on. was location filming, with the cameras Sometimes Hitchcock introduced loca- catching fragmentary documents of trains tions via second-unit work that grabbed entering stations and workers leaving facto- long shots, even stills, that could be repur- ries; it took the pioneering Thomas Edison posed later as backgrounds (as in, for and George Melies to popularize the idea example, his careful faking of the British of the studio, in which lighting could be Museum in BLACKMAIL); sometimes it controlled and special effects more easily required an actual trip (as in the beautiful introduced. and elegant COLOR travelogue that makes Yet even then, location filming con- up much of the slight TO CATCH A THIEF tinued, at first giving audiences the extra or the small-town details that give such value of a travelogue (the pleasant paradise richness to SHADOW OF A DOUBT). of Catalina, the bustle of Coney Island). But even when the locations were Though the claustrophobic studio days of somewhat faked (like the interiors of the the ’30s and ’40s often reduced it to sec- United Nations for NORTH BY NORTH- ond-unit work introduced via back-screen WEST), they were as real as Hitchcock projection, after the war, lightweight cam- could make them, based on reporting and eras (and the influence of the Neorealists) careful photographs. And never were they brought the practice back, where urban arbitrary. For Hitchcock, place was a part landscapes gave noirs a gritty realism and of plot; if the film was set in Holland, as in exotic locales allowed the movies to provide FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, then there something television could not. must be windmills; if you were driving LOCKWOOD, MARGARET n 235 cross-country, as in SABOTEUR, then you ing at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art must take a side trip to Hoover Dam. What followed, and by 1934, she was appearing your story was and where it took place were regularly onstage and on film. always intertwined. She beat out Lilli Palmer and NOVA Of course there were other benefits PILBEAM for the lead in THE LADY VAN- to shooting on location (advantageous ISHES in 1938 and brought a great deal tax situations, all-expenses-paid trips for of independence and charm to the part, Hitchcock and his family). And there were as well as some genuine chemistry to her some old studio habits Hitchcock could scenes with MICHAEL REDGRAVE, then never break; he stuck with back-projection making his film debut. (They reteamed two even after technology allowed for other years later for The Stars Look Down.) Lock- approaches, even when the results (as in the wood was an economical choice (she was outboard boat scenes in THE BIRDS or the already under contract to the studio) but a horse riding scenes in MARNIE) were far smart one, too, who firmly placed the role from realistic. Perhaps his eyes had grown right in the sweet spot between Palmer’s accustomed to seeing the effect as just a dif- European worldliness and Pilbeam’s girlish ferent kind of realism. innocence. But whether they were using stock “I suppose what surprised me most footage, faked sets, or shot-on-location about Hitchcock was how little he directed sequences, his films always constructed a us,” she wrote later. “I had done a number perfect, living world. And took us there—and of films for Carol Reed, and he was quite held us—until he was willing to let us go. meticulous by contrast. Hitchcock, however, didn’t seem to direct us at all. He was References a dozing, nodding Buddha with an enig- George Perry, “Hitchcock on Location,” matic smile on his face.” American Heritage (April 2007), http:// The ’40s gave Lockwood’s career the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/American_Heri a boost, as she starred in a number of tage_%282007%29_-_Hitchcock_on period melodramas, often playing—as one _Location; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of them was indeed titled—The Wicked of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock Lady. (Her costumes in that film were so (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 351, risqué—to American eyes—that several 407; Joseph A. Valentine, “Using an Actual scenes had to be reshot for export.) By the Town Instead of Movie Sets,” American end of the war, Lockwood was perhaps Cinematographer (October 1942), http:// the most popular of British actresses, a the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/American_Cine sort of proto–Elizabeth Taylor, known for matographer_%281942%29_-_Using_an her fiery characters and perfectly applied _Actual_Town_Instead_of_Movie_Sets. beauty mark. As the interest in passionate epics LOCKWOOD, MARGARET faded after the war, though, so did Lock- (1916–1990) wood, who returned to popular plays and Karachi-born performer—her British television. Although she had one late- father ran a railroad—who returned to career success with the TV series Justice, England with her mother and brother at the there were long periods without work, and age of four. She began taking serious drama she spent the last decade of her life in seclu- lessons in England not long after that, first sion, seeing only her family and a few close appearing in cabarets at 10; further school- friends. She died in London at 73. 236 n LODER, JOHN

References plained around this time. “They always Michael Brooke, “Margaret Lockwood,” say, ‘You have no name. But when you BFI Screenonline, http://www.screenon have one, come again.’ By that time I’ll be line.org.uk/people/id/446975; “Margaret old and stiff. A kind of poor man’s Aubrey Lockwood,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ Smith.” name/nm0516994/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio Loder was married five times, once to _sm; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Hedy Lamarr; his last marriage was to a Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New wealthy Argentine cattle heiress. After they York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 174–75. divorced, he returned to England and wrote his memoirs, Hollywood Hussar. He died in LODER, JOHN (1898–1988) London at 90. London-born performer, the son of Brit- ish general W. H. M. Lowe, who had References accepted the surrender of the Irish rebels C. Gerald Fraser, “John Loder, 90, Brit- in 1916. Loder went to Eton and the Royal ish Actor, 90,” New York Times, Janu- Military College and was an officer in the ary 19, 1989, http://www.nytimes.com/ First World War, serving in the Gallipoli 1989/01/19/obituaries/john-loder-90-british Campaign and fighting in the Battle of the -actor.html; “John Loder,” IMDb, http:// Somme, where he was taken prisoner by www.imdb.com/name/nm0517058/ the Germans. He stayed in Germany after bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Patrick McGil- the war and eventually opened a pickle ligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness factory. and Light (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), Clearly he was not interested in a mili- 187. tary career, but sour vegetables had no lasting charm for him, either; Loder began to THE LODGER: A STORY OF THE pursue acting, picking up some small parts LONDON FOG (GB 1927) in German pictures and later Hollywood. He did better on his return to England, Director: Alfred Hitchcock. where he played the plodding hero in SAB- Screenplay: Eliot Stannard, based on OTAGE. (Hitchcock had wanted ROBERT the novel The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes. DONAT for the film, as he had for SECRET Producers: Uncredited (Sir Michael Balcon, AGENT, and once again Donat’s ill health Carlyle Blackwell). forced the director to grudgingly accept his Cinematography: Gaetano di Ventimiglia. second choice.) Editor: Ivor Montagu. Another shot at Hollywood in the ’40s Cast: Ivor Novello (the Lodger), June won Loder a role playing one of Roddy Tripp (Daisy Bunting), Malcolm Keen McDowall’s many brothers in How Green (Joe), Marie Ault (Mrs. Bunting), Arthur Was My Valley and Bette Davis’s disap- Chesney (Mr. Bunting). pointed suitor in Now, Voyager; tall, dark, Running Time: 80 minutes. Black and white. and dependably dull, he was generally cast Released Through: W. & F. Film Service. as sober doctors and inspectors from Scot- land Yard, although the B-movie thriller The Brighton Strangler gave him a lead as a mad actor. A BLONDE woman screams for her life, “Why is it that I’m not able to get newspaper reporters scurry into action, the roles they give Clark Gable?” he com- and soon the news is out—the Avenger, THE LODGER: A STORY OF THE LONDON FOG n 237 a serial killer of blondes, has claimed yet Hitchcock gave the film the meticulous another. Although many young Londoners care in preproduction he would give all his react to the news with fear and horror, the later productions. The script was painstak- flaxen-haired Daisy refuses to worry, even ingly worked out. The cast was assembled. as her parents—and her police-officer boy- Shots were designed so they carried not friend—obsess over the details of the case. only factual information but emotional She is not even particularly concerned signifiers as well—the heads of policemen when her parents take in a lodger—a mys- swaying back and forth in the back of a teriously quiet young man who keeps to van’s window like inquisitive eyes, the ceil- himself, seems to have a strong aversion to ing of a parlor turning into plate glass so blondes, and goes out for long walks late at we can see the feet of the lodger as he paces, night. Although her MOTHER begins to nervously, back and forth. suspect this stranger is, in fact, the Avenger, True, Hitchcock also had his first Daisy not only accepts him but also feels an run-in with the STAR system—told that attraction. matinee idol IVOR NOVELLO’s lodger Her possessive boyfriend, however, simply could not be the killer, the director is less accepting—particularly as he sees had to abandon his original, more ambigu- the bond growing between Daisy and his ous ending. And his old boss, GRAHAM new rival. He brings fellow officers and a CUTTS, was already spreading rumors that warrant to the house, and they search the the picture was a disaster. But Hitchcock lodger’s rooms, finding a gun and a map of got on well with Novello, and the produc- the murder scenes. They handcuff him, but tion went smoothly. the lodger escapes, trailed by Daisy, who The filmmaker’s confidence is believes in his innocence. clear from the start. The first shot is of The lodger blurts out his story to a screaming woman, lit brightly from her—his sister was the killer’s first victim, behind to turn her hair into a halo; and he was really searching for the Avenger “Golden Curls To-Night,” a sign flashes. himself—when a mob begins to form, con- From there we go to a newspaper office, vinced they’ve found the killer. They are where the story of the murder is being close to murdering him in the street when a reported, set in type, printed, and dis- paperboy announces the latest headline: the seminated—the methodical, engineering real Avenger has been caught. The lodger is side of Hitchcock always had a fascination set free and embraced by Daisy. with process and often spoke of shooting potential sequences that would fol- The first “real” Hitchcock film—and it was low FOOD, champagne, or an automobile almost never seen at all. along its journey to consumers. SIR MICHAEL BALCON had the Now, in the third sequence, it’s time rights to MARIE BELLOC LOWNDES’s to begin introducing main characters, with novel and gave it to Hitchcock to direct; Daisy—and not surprisingly, the number there was something in its tale of swirl- 3 occurs again and again in this film. It’s ing mystery and mist that he thought was a film of triangles, in fact—the three-cor- well suited to the young director, who had nered symbol that the killer leaves as his already drawn notice (and criticism) at the calling card, the borders of the neighbor- studio for the heavily Germanic, EXPRES- hood in which he prowls, and the awkward SIONISTIC influence he’d shown in THE relationship that soon arises among Daisy; PLEASURE GARDEN. her boyfriend, Joe; and the lodger. 238 n THE LODGER: A STORY OF THE LONDON FOG

“The lodger” is how he enters the the shelf and forget about it.” He said it as if film—on the doorstep, with just his EYES he expected Hitchcock to thank him.) shining between his scarf and hat—and Desperate to save the movie, Balcon it’s the lodger he remains; he has no other appealed to IVOR MONTAGU of the Lon- name, just as “the Avenger” remains simi- don Film Society. Montagu was only 22 larly anonymous. But he also has a parallel but both cultured and connected. (He had in Joe, the policeman, who also has a fetish already written about German cinema for for blondes and an interest in Daisy. the Times and was the son of prominent In a standard film, Joe would be the financier Lord Swaythling.) Could Mon- hero, but Hitchcock is already disinter- tagu take a look at the film and give his ested in the world of sniveling villains and opinion? Montagu did, and his opinion was muscular saints. Right from the start, the that the film was a stunning achievement; lodger is seen as polite, educated, upper he suggested that the title cards have a new class; the rough-edged Joe makes awkward design that underlined the triangular motif, jokes about marriage (drawing a parallel that they be drastically cut down (Montagu between handcuffs and wedding rings) and later claimed there were hundreds), and seems to see the lively Daisy (who has her that a few scenes be slightly reshot to make own career as a model) as his property. them clearer. The attractiveness of evil, the pain- Although Hitchcock resented the sec- ful banality of good. It is a cynical point ond-guessing (and would, for the rest of his Hitchcock makes in other films—who life, minimize Montagu’s contribution—as doesn’t prefer JOSEPH COTTEN to MAC- he later would with his various screenwrit- DONALD CAREY in SHADOW OF A ers), he took the suggestions. (He took DOUBT, ROBERT WALKER to FARLEY them to heart, too, probably—for an art- GRANGER in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, ist as purely visual as Hitchcock was to be ANTHONY PERKINS to JOHN GAVIN in told that his silent film was too wordy must PSYCHO? Hitchcock would have made the have stung.) The titles were cut down and point even more clearly here had he been reshot, and some scenes were clarified and allowed to leave some question as to Novel- tightened. Balcon set up a press screening lo’s innocence. But the star system and the for September 1926, and the raves quickly CENSORS would not allow that. began. Still, the film is remarkably successful, The good publicity finally convinced full of energy and accomplishment and lay- Woolf to release the other Hitchcock pic- ers of meaning. (The crucifix shown in Dai- tures he’d had so little faith in. The Plea- sy’s home, for example, is later mirrored in sure Garden reached theaters in January the shot of the handcuffed lodger with his 1927, followed by The Lodger (as its title arms above him, as if he were crucified.) was almost invariably shortened to) in Feb- It’s a strong, career-making debut. ruary, and THE MOUNTAIN EAGLE in Except it was almost the end of Hitch- May. But before that happened, Hitchcock cock’s career. Cutts’s envious criticisms had had already signed with another studio— caught the ear of mogul C. M. WOOLF; and wed his occasional assistant, ALMA Woolf had found Hitchcock’s previous films REVILLE. His life was launched. artistically pretentious, and after screening his latest, he proclaimed it unreleasable. References (“Your picture is so dreadful,” he told the Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A filmmaker, “that we’re just going to put it on Life in Darkness and Light (New York: LOMBARD, CAROLE n 239

HarperCollins, 2003), 77–89; Ivor Mon- treated, Lombard is capable of giving a per- tagu, “Working with Hitchcock,” Sight and formance equal to that of any of the best Sound 49 (Summer 1980), 189–93; Donald male actors, like Muni and Leslie Howard.” Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life In fact, Lombard was about to try more of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo serious parts, in In Name Only and Made Press, 1999), 84–89; François Truffaut, for Each Other; soon, she’d even be briefly Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: mentioned as a possible lead for Hitch- Touchstone, 1985), 42–51. cock’s upcoming REBECCA (for which she would have been rather seriously miscast). LOEB, RICHARD (1905–1936) When the director and actress finally met, See LEOPOLD, NATHAN (1904–1971), they became fast friends; when she married and LOEB, RICHARD (1905–1936). Clark Gable, the Hitchcock family rented her old home in Bel Air. LOMBARD, CAROLE (1908–1942) The athletic, one-of-the-guys Lom- Indiana-born performer who moved to bard—who could look elegant in satin California with her mother after her par- onscreen and swear like a stevedore off— ents divorced. She was discovered at 13 by definitely fit Hitchcock’s type, and the two director Allan Dwan, who saw her playing looked for a project. Although Hitchcock a ferocious game of baseball and cast her in later dismissed their film, MR. AND MRS. a small part in the drama A Perfect Crime. SMITH, as something he’d done merely as Enjoying the experience, she auditioned for a favor to Lombard (“She asked me to do other movies, including The Gold Rush; she it,” he told PETER BOGDANOVICH. “The didn’t land the parts but by 16 had a small script was already written, and I just came contract with Fox. Dropped after a year— in and did it”), he had been enthused about and unemployed for another—she finally the project at first, which also fit his own signed with Mack Sennett in 1927, where urge to expand beyond the thriller genre. she was billed as one of his “Bathing Beau- Although the actual production bored ties” and kept busy in slapstick comedies. Hitchcock even more than usual, the film She had moved to PARAMOUNT was a hit—ironically because it was Lom- and feature films (and a brief marriage to bard’s first out-and-out comedy in three William Powell) by the beginning of the years after a string of the sort of dramas ’30s; stand-out performances in Twenti- Hitchcock himself had urged her to take eth Century, My Man Godfrey, and Noth- on. It was also, tragically, the last film she ing Sacred established her as not only one would ever see released; while her fol- of the great Hollywood beauties but also low-up project, To Be or Not to Be, was a skilled screwball comedian. It was then in postproduction, a plane she was tak- that she caught the attention of Hitchcock, ing back from a war-bond rally crashed who—while still in England—spoke of how into a Nevada mountain, killing everyone much he’d like to show another side of her onboard. She was 33. by casting her in a more dramatic role. “I should like to cast Lombard not in References the type of superficial comedy which she Peter Bogdanovich, Who the Devil Made so often plays but in a much more meaty It (New York: Knopf, 1997), 509; “Car- comedy-drama, giving her plenty of scope ole Lombard,” Biography, http://www for characterization,” he told Film Weekly .biography.com/people/carole-lombard in 1938. “I believe that, imaginatively -9385324; “Carole Lombard,” IMDb, 240 n LONG TAKES http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001479/ Holocaust (later broadcast as MEMORY bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Donald Spoto, OF THE CAMPS); even with the war still The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of fresh in people’s minds, the director real- Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo ized that many people and not just the con- Press, 1999), 210, 220, 237–38; David quered Germans would still deny the facts. Thomson, The New Biographical Diction- He told the editors to use wide shots and ary of Film (New York: Knopf, 2002), long takes whenever possible; the fewer 529–31; J. Danvers Williams, “What I’d cuts in the film, the less that trickery would Do to the Stars,” Film Weekly, March 4, be suspected. 1939, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Film It’s a philosophy he began to experi- _Weekly_%281939%29_-_What_I’d_Do ment with in THE PARADINE CASE _to_the_Stars. (much to DAVID O. SELZNICK’s annoyance, who merely cut some of the longer LONG TAKES takes) and brought to fruition in his next From his earliest days as a filmmaker, two projects, ROPE and UNDER CAPRI- Hitchcock was primarily influenced by the CORN, both of which used extremely long filmmakers working in Germany, with their takes (in the first film, as long as an entire EXPRESSIONIST shadows and oblique reel of film). camera angles, and the Soviet Union, with Rope, of course, was adapted from a their reliance on quick cuts and powerful play, and sometimes with those adapta- MONTAGE. Composition and editing— tions (DIAL M FOR MURDER, THE SKIN this was the foundation of what he called GAME), Hitchcock could allow a certain PURE CINEMA. Anything else was filmed staginess to creep in. And the period cos- theater. tume drama of Under Capricorn seemed You can see this preference in his early better suited to a slower, less frenetic style. movies. The few times when he did feel he Yet there was a philosophical and had been hired to film theater—such pro- emotional component behind this new ductions as JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK, choice as well. In Rope, the long takes mean where he felt his primary responsibility was the drama unfolds very much in real time, to record performances—he let the camera thereby increasing the suspense, as the run long without interruptions. unknowing dinner guests circulate around But unless a shot required a long and a body in a box; in Under Capricorn, the deliberate camera movement—such as the leisurely shots lend an extra bit of realism crane shot in NOTORIOUS, which slowly to a story set in a distant land and a long- swoops down to reveal the key in Alicia’s ago time, full of hidden motives, melodra- hand—Hitchcock preferred his takes to be matic flourishes, and secrets held tightly for short and his scenes made up of a variety years. (In both cases, they also drove the of often very quick cuts. (It was one of the actors crazy, with both JAMES STEWART things in his style that annoyed ANDRE and INGRID BERGMAN railing against BAZIN, an outlier among the Hitchcock the process.) worshippers at CAHIERS DU CINEMA; he Of course, long takes held another, far much preferred the stately rhythms of Wil- more personal attraction for the director— liam Wyler.) a logistical challenge, however arbitrary, Hitchcock seemed to briefly reconsider and a way to stay interested in two projects his approach, though, in the mid-’40s while that otherwise didn’t seem to hold much supervising a British documentary on the for him. He had always had an engineer’s LORRE, PETER n 241 happy interest in solving technical prob- contract to BRITISH INTERNATIONAL lems, and designing breakaway sets or com- PICTURES, so he took on the role of pro- ing up with a way to “invisibly” cut long ducer. He was a little put out, however, takes together into a seemingly unceasing when it became clear on the set that Levy film amused him for awhile. wasn’t interested in his input; it would be But neither film truly connected with the only film Hitchcock would ever pro- audiences—Under Capricorn was in fact duce for anyone else. a bit of a disaster—and Hitchcock soon returned to his normal manner of shooting, References full of dramatic angles and emotional jolts. Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- References Collins, 2003), 148–49; François Truffaut, Ingrid Bergman and Alan Burgess, My Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Story (New York: Delacorte Press, 1980), Touchstone, 1985), 82. 177–78; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New LORRE, PETER (1904–1964) York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 302–3, 305–6. Hungarian-born performer whose father, a bookkeeper and army reservist, wanted LORD CAMBER’S LADIES him to go into business. Lorre took some (GB 1932) classes and a job as a bank teller in Vienna, but he had been drawn to acting since he Director: Benn Levy. was a teen; he was soon very busy as an Screenplay: Benn Levy, Edwin Greenwood, improv performer at the city’s Theater of Gilbert Wakefield, based on the play Spontaneity and later became a fixture in The Case of Lady Camber by Horace Berlin, where—after acquitting himself in Annesley Vachell. farces, light comedies, musicals, and dra- Producer: Alfred Hitchcock. Cinematography: James Wilson. mas—he became a particular favorite of Editor: Uncredited. Bertolt Brecht, who praised the complex Original Music: Uncredited. duality of his performances. Cast: Gerald du Maurier (Dr. Napier), In fact, Lorre was playing onstage in Gertrude Lawrence (Lady Camber), a comedy when he also shot the grim M Benita Hume (Janet King), Nigel Bruce for FRITZ LANG; it was one of cinema’s (Lord Camber). first serious portrayals of a serial killer, Running Time: 80 minutes. Black and white. and Lorre’s performance as the terrible yet Released Through: Wardour Films. terrified child murderer both made him a STAR and typecast him as a villain. It also made the newly famous Jewish actor an A rather free adaptation of a hit Brit- obvious target for the growing Nazi men- ish play, revised to star Gerald du Mau- ace; two days before the Reichstag Fire in rier in the story of an adulterer planning 1933, Lorre and his wife, Celia Lovsky, left to murder his wife, a former entertainer. for Paris. The themes (a love triangle, an unhappy His name came up a few months later marriage, show business) were favorites in London, where Hitchcock and producer of Hitchcock; he had worked with direc- IVOR MONTAGU were casting THE tor BENN LEVY and was friendly with du MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. “We Maurier and owed another film under his wanted him at once,” Montagu said later. 242 n LORRE, PETER

“There was never any question about his Lorre returned to Hollywood after coming over to be inspected or tested— this—and briefly to the bizarre assignment even his English was not in question, for a of playing the Japanese detective Mr. Moto German accent was no obstacle in the part. in a series of cheap mysteries. Then John He came over, not to be approved, but to Huston, who always had an eye for eccen- be engaged.” tric talent, picked Lorre for the fastidious The truth was, however, that Lorre Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon and gave didn’t speak English with a German accent; him a second career—playing the whee- he didn’t speak much English at all beyond dling, whining, and somewhat sadly regret- “yes” and “no.” But Lorre said, sympathetic ful criminal hovering around the edge of producer SIDNEY BERNSTEIN “put me ’40s noirs. wise to the fact that Hitchy likes to tell sto- Lorre made much of little—he was ries, so I used to watch him like a hawk and indelible in Casablanca, with only a few whenever I thought the end of a story was minutes of screen time, punctuating his coming and that was the point, I used to lines with a shrug, putting several meanings roar with laughter and somehow he got the into a mutter—but he grew tired of play- impression that I spoke English. . . . I got ing villains. And typecasting was the least the part.” of his worries. He still had substance abuse He learned the role phonetically but problems; his friendship with Brecht and also pushed himself to master the lan- outspoken politics risked the serious atten- guage; soon he was able to trade dirty sto- tion of the Hollywood witch hunters. Work ries on the set with Hitchcock. The two began to disappear. His contract at WAR- men bonded over their taste for not only NER BROS. wasn’t renewed, and eventually the risqué but also practical JOKES (when he went bankrupt. Lorre complained the studio cleaners had Slowly, over the decade, Lorre climbed shrunk his costume, Hitchcock had a new back. He returned to Germany to direct, one made up for him in toddler size), and cowrite, and star in the film The Lost One as the leader of the kidnappers, Lorre gave about the country’s Nazi past; he rejoined a charmingly sinister performance, sug- Huston and Humphrey Bogart for the cult- gesting simultaneously—as Brecht had first ishly beloved (but financially disastrous) observed—several opposite emotions at Beat the Devil. He took on a support- once. ing part in Walt Disney’s 20,000 Leagues After The Man Who Knew Too Much under the Sea and became a busy television was a success, Lorre went to Hollywood— guest star, where he appeared in the first where he made both Crime and Punish- small-screen adaptation of Casino Royale ment and the superb Mad Love—before and dominated two episodes of ALFRED returning to Hitchcock and England for HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, including—in SECRET AGENT, once again playing a for- the Peter Lorre part to end all Peter Lorre eign agent. It’s an odd part (accompanied parts—Carlos, the degenerate gambler in by an even odder wig), and Lorre seems “Man from the South.” more intent on amusing himself than By the 1960s, the roles were mostly interacting with the other performers, but in beach-blanket movies and horror films in one of Hitchcock’s lesser thrillers, he (although The Raven and The Comedy provides the most consistent bits of enter- of Terrors let him indulge his old skills tainment, even if his addiction to morphine at improvisation and farce). Bouts of ill was already obvious on the set. health, exacerbated by a thyroid condi- LUKAS, PAUL n 243 tion (and the attendant weight gain), grew merely lures, soft words meant to coax the increasingly common and severe. He died trembling prey not into bed but into their in Los Angeles of a stroke. He was 59. graves. But even when there is—supposedly— References no other agenda at work, no love scene in Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life Hitchcock is ever simply that. Most are in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- shot through with undercurrents of dis- Collins, 2003), 161–62, 181–83; Teresa and appointment and DOMINATION—Sam Tracy Murray, Peter Lorre: Hollywood’s and Marion’s postcoitus conversation in Sinister Star, http://www.eviltwin.velvet PSYCHO is crammed with talk of debts sofa.com/Lorre/peter.html; “Peter Lorre,” and alimony, Joe’s teasing of Daisy in THE IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ LODGER immediately conflates the symbol nm0000048/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; of a wedding ring with handcuffs and the Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: hangman’s noose. The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Pure, idealistic love is something Capo Press, 1999), 142, 152; David Thom- for cheaper, less challenging movies; in son, The New Biographical Dictionary of Hitchcock’s world, Devlin and Alicia may Film (New York: Knopf, 2002), 532–33; embrace tenderly in NOTORIOUS, John Stephen D. Youngkin, The Lost One: A Life and Frances may set off fireworks in TO of Peter Lorre, http://www.peterlorrebook CATCH A THIEF, but both scenes inevita- .com. bly end in recriminations and regret. And then there is MARNIE, a film whose single LOVE SCENES love scene begins as a honeymoon night on At the AFI tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, a romantic ocean liner—and ends in rape FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT saluted the direc- and a suicide attempt. tor for filming his love scenes like murders For all the fantastic situations in and his murders like love scenes. It’s a Hitchcock, about love he remains coldly neat description but a bit pat; Hitchcock’s realistic—if not actually pessimistic. It is approach changed as the CENSORS grew about not complete and utter honesty but more powerless and his own obsessions deception and betrayal, based not on the more violent—there are few love scenes equal sharing of two souls but on a struggle in his later films, and the murders take on for dominance. Like diplomacy, it is just the mood of not sex but SEXUAL assault. war by other means. And afterward, the Yet for most of Hitchcock’s career, Truf- field is littered with the wounded. faut’s observation remained broadly true: The violence in his films would always Reference be strangely intimate, the romance oddly Stuart Jeffries, “Actors Are Cattle: When menacing. Hitchcock Met Truffaut,” Guardian, May Sometimes, of course, romance is 12, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/ merely the prelude to violence, a hyp- film/2015/may/12/when-hitchcock-met notically seductive glance merely the first -truffaut-hitchcock-truffaut-documentary weapon of a poisonous snake. Uncle Char- -cannes. lie’s dapper flirtations in SHADOW OF A DOUBT, Bruno’s exaggerated masculine LUKAS, PAUL (1891–1971) strut in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, Bob’s Hungarian-born performer who made his slippery solicitousness in FRENZY—all are film debut in 1915. Within a decade, he was 244 n LUKAS, PAUL a busy silent-screen STAR, often playing downward trend, but the Broadway run of rakes or romantic heroes in films with titles Watch on the Rhine revived it, and when he like Three Sinners and Two Lovers; he was reprised his heroic antifascist part for the the playboy in the film version of Preston movies, he won an Oscar. Sturges’s hit play Strictly Dishonorable and Lukas continued to act onstage, in the kindly German scholar in the Katharine films, and eventually on television; he died Hepburn version of Little Women. of a heart attack at 80 in Tangier while on He had a change of pace in THE LADY the search for a retirement home. VANISHES as Dr. Hartz, the concerned physician who turns out to be a ruthless References agent; it led to more villainous roles, as a “Paul Lukas,” IMDb, http://www.imdb German provocateur in Confessions of a .com/name/nm0510134/bio?ref_=nm_ov Nazi Spy, a suspicious lawyer in The Ghost _bio_sm; David Thomson, The New Bio- Breakers, and a mob boss in The Monster graphical Dictionary of Film (New York: and the Girl. His career seemed to be on a Knopf, 2002), 540–41. M

MACGUFFIN it as a “McGuffin,” an animal used for The thing that the characters—chiefly the “hunting tigers in New York.” antagonists—care deeply about in a thriller But there are no tigers in New York, and for which the audience does not give the second gentleman responds. a damn. Whether it’s jewels, evidence of a “Ah,” says the first, “but this isn’t a real murder, or the “secret clause” to a peace McGuffin.” treaty is utterly unimportant; it is merely Hitchcock would later give a similar the spark that sets the story in motion. explanation to FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT MacGuffins in Hitchcock films probably and all other INTERVIEWERS, although begin with the glove in BLACKMAIL and in his version, it’s usually described as continue to include the necklace in NUM- a Scottish JOKE (a nod to MacPhail BER 17, the musical code in THE LADY perhaps?), and instead of an animal and VANISHES, the uranium in NOTORIOUS, New York, the “MacGuffin” is an “appa- the house key in DIAL M FOR MURDER, ratus” used in the “Scottish Highlands.” the microfilm in NORTH BY NORTH- The punchline, however, remains the WEST, the diamonds in FAMILY PLOT, same. and many more. As does the explanation: The only one IVOR MONTAGU credits screen- who really needs to know what the Mac- writer ANGUS MACPHAIL with the term, Guffin is, is the scriptwriter. and Hitchcock’s earliest public mention of it seemed to come in 1939, when he References described it in a lecture at Columbia Uni- “Bourgeoisie,” Time, December 18, versity as the “mechanical element that 1944, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ usually crops up in any story. In crook sto- TIME_%2818/Dec/1944%29_-_Bourgeoi ries it is almost always the necklace and in sie; Kenneth Mogg, “Frequently Asked spy stories it is most always the papers.” Questions on Hitchcock: What’s a MacGuf- Five years later, he described it in Time as fin?” http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/ the “thing the hero chases, the thing the faqs_c.html#Answer%201. picture is all about.” As to its etymology, Time first went MACLAINE, SHIRLEY (1934– ) into detail in 1944, crediting a “hoary Brit- Before the indie-movie explosion of “manic ish joke” about two strangers meeting on a pixie dream girls”—those colorful icono- TRAIN. One has a package, and when the clasts who seemed to exist in stories only to second one asks what’s inside, he describes save the poor dull hero from himself—there

n 245 246 n MACLAINE, SHIRLEY

Marnie, with Tippi Hedren, seemed to spotlight its director’s most complicated feelings about women and his star. Universal Pictures/Photofest © Universal Pictures was Shirley MacLaine. The difference was T—moved to New York after high school the independent, melancholy heroines she to pursue a career in musical comedy. played sometimes couldn’t even save them- When star Carol Haney broke her ankle, selves. understudy MacLaine went on for her in Born in Virginia and named after The Pajama Game. It was the night Herbert Shirley Temple, Shirley Beaty—kid brother Coleman, Hitchcock’s assistant producer, Warren kept the family name but added a was in the house, and MacLaine quickly MACPHAIL, ANGUS n 247 found herself with a PARAMOUNT con- Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, tract. She was 20. 1999), 354–55; David Thomson, The New Her first film was to be THE TROU- Biographical Dictionary of Film (New York: BLE WITH HARRY for Alfred Hitchcock, Knopf, 2002), 546–48. and it was a bit of a mismatch all around, with a clear and very wide generation gap- MACPHAIL, ANGUS (1903–1962) ing between the bohemian redhead eager London-born, Cambridge-educated author to explore a role and the Victorian Eng- who entered filmmaking in the mid-’20s as lishman intent on asserting control. The an uncredited script doctor. Often work- shooting was plagued with various difficul- ing with IVOR MONTAGU, they would ties, from miscasting to weather, and on its re-edit and rewrite titles for troubled silent release, the film was not embraced. films, speeding up the action, and some- But MacLaine was launched—she times changing the plots. His skills soon won a Golden Globe for it as the best new caught the attention of SIR MICHAEL female star of the year—and, after a quick BALCON, who put him in charge of the comedy or two, expanded her range with story department at GAUMONT-BRITISH Some Came Running and the bittersweet studios; no film could be put into produc- The Apartment. The rest of the decade was tion, Balcon ordered, until the screenplay filled with far too many lackluster com- had MacPhail’s approval. edies, but she is iconic as the dime-a-dance MacPhail loved puns and JOKES girl in Sweet Charity (although the movie (according to Montagu, he was the one is egregiously overlong), terrific in The who first came up with “MACGUFFIN” to Turning Point, and quietly moving in Being describe the arbitrary engine of a thriller’s There. She finally won her much-wanted plot) and was an important part of script Oscar for Terms of Endearment. conferences during the British years of Since then, she has largely played vari- Hitchcock’s career; his first sizable screen ations on that part as the crusty, cantanker- credit on a Hitchcock film (he worked on ous old lady. She sees some missed oppor- the director’s two wartime shorts, AVEN- tunities in her career. (“I turned down two TURE MALGACHE and BON VOY- things I wish I had done: Alice Doesn’t Live AGE) came in 1945 with the treatment for Here Anymore and Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” SPELLBOUND, although the actual screen- she said. “I have no desire whatsoever to play was written by BEN HECHT. play Shakespeare unless I want to go to the MacPhail’s many other credits movie theater and laugh at myself, but I included the Christmas party ghost story think I have yet to do a real heart-searing in Dead of Night and the delightful Whis- drama.”) But she is still working, still out- key Galore! but by the 1950s, the writer’s spoken, and still a proponent of a variety alcoholism had reached a final, debilitating of spiritual beliefs, including reincarnation. stage. Hitchcock, citing the writer’s past Although why anyone who’s put as much work with British intelligence, brought into life as she has needs yet another one is him on as “consultant” for the 1956 THE hard to say. MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, but when he tried to give him a screenplay References credit, screenwriter JOHN MICHAEL Shirley MacLaine, interview with the HAYES rebelled and successfully peti- author, December 1996; Donald Spoto, tioned the Writers Guild to award him sole The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred authorship. 248 n MALDEN, KARL

That led to a break between Hayes War II interrupted his career, but Malden and Hitchcock that never healed; mean- returned to the stage, where he landed while, the director gave MacPhail a sec- important roles in Truckline Café, All My ond job afterward, taking over the writ- Sons, and A Streetcar Named Desire. ing of THE WRONG MAN after Maxwell When the play was filmed for Hol- Anderson’s early drafts had been judged lywood, Malden—who had already had too poetic. Managing to keep his drinking a handful of movie roles going back to in relative check (with some supervision 1940—repeated the part and won the by associate producer Herbert Coleman), Oscar for it. Two years later, he costarred MacPhail produced the final, grittily real- in I CONFESS and became an important istic screenplay. part of Hitchcock’s on-set team, serving as It was his last screen credit; although an intermediary between the emotionally he did some early work on VERTIGO, fragile METHOD-actor MONTGOMERY he begged off, telling Hitchcock he sim- CLIFT and the remote, results-oriented ply wasn’t up to it. His health worsening, director. (Hitchcock’s thank-you, Malden he grew more reclusive, keeping up with later said, came in an edit that favored Mal- friends through what the London Times den with more close-ups.) described as “always amusing and some- Malden’s honest, uncluttered style and times outrageous letters.” He died two rough-hewn features—he’d taken a few weeks after his 59th birthday. elbows to the face as a high school basket- ball player—left him at ease in both heroic References and villainous roles, although his name “Angus MacPhail,” IMDb, http://www.imdb. was usually down among the supporting com/name/nm0534191/bio?ref_=nm_ov_ players. He is the crusading priest in On bio_sm; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitch- the Waterfront, the disappointed suitor cock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New in Gypsy. Only with his hit ’70s TV series York: HarperCollins, 2003), 508–11, 529– The Streets of San Francisco did he really 32; “Obituary: Angus MacPhail,” Times, become the sympathetic lead. April 28, 1962, http://the.hitchcock.zone/ Malden—who was born Mladen Seku- wiki/The_Times_%2828/Apr/1962%29_-_ lovich and tried to work his family name Obituary:_Angus_MacPhail; Donald Spoto, into his movies’ dialogue when he could— The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred had his last onscreen role in an episode of Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, The West Wing in 2000. He died in Los 1999), 141, 271; Martin Stollery, “Angus Angeles at 97. MacPhail,” BFI Screenonline, http://www .screenonline.org.uk/people/id/447569/ References index.html. “Karl Malden,” IMDb, http://www.imdb .com/name/nm0001500/bio?ref_=nm_ov MALDEN, KARL (1912–2009) _bio_sm; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitch- Chicago-born performer who began act- cock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New ing in Serbian-language plays at the local York: HarperCollins, 2003), 460–62; Don- church and worked in the Indiana steel ald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life mills after graduating high school. Even- of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo tually he made it to drama school and to Press, 1999), 338–41; David Thomson, The New York, where he first encountered the New Biographical Dictionary of Film (New Group Theatre and Elia Kazan. World York: Knopf, 2002), 551–52. THE MALE GAZE n 249

THE MALE GAZE camera admiring the heroine’s taut calves First named and described at length by as she strides down a TRAIN platform. Laura Mulvey in her 1975 article “Visual This is the simplest, most classic Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” this the- example of the gaze with an onscreen ory begins with the assumption that, as character or the camera itself—and, behind heterosexual men control the cinema, the each, the director—standing in for the camera stands in for them and the male men in the movie house and serving up a viewer by looking at women in frankly and woman reduced, quite starkly, to her parts. purely SEXUAL ways. Its gaze is aggressive, (Chiefly legs, it seems; Hitchcock always objectifying, diminishing. seemed to find breasts and décolletage a bit Like many powerful ideas, the male vulgar, complaining about actresses whose gaze is easy to dismiss as being both obvi- sex appeal “hangs around their neck, like ous (of course movies present women as jewelry.”) sexual objects) and full of exceptions (How It reaches a deeper, darker level in does the camera’s relationship to actresses other films though, where it moves from change if the director is a gay man or a leering to stalking. Scottie’s careful shadow- straight woman or a gay woman?). Yet it ing of Madeleine in VERTIGO begins as a has survived those objections and possible job; his following of Judy is evidence of his exceptions to become an important tenet of obsession. Norman’s peeping on Marion in feminist and cultural criticism. PSYCHO is not just the prelude to violence It is also a central—and acknowl- but also its excuse; seen through a hole in edged—part of Hitchcock’s work. From the wall, she’s just an arm, a back, a flash of his earliest days as a filmmaker studying breast, a collection of parts. She’s a body, the early Soviet directors and the KULE- not a being. SHOV EFFECT, he knew that cinema was And then there is Bruno’s fixated look about looking and about not only what at Guy in the midst of a tennis match in we saw but also how we saw it. And in his STRANGERS ON A TRAIN; here is the best films, watching is not just an act but HOMOSEXUAL male gaze, twisted; Bru- also a complicated relationship: The audi- no’s stare reveals not only an intensity of ence watching Hitchcock watching a man attraction but also a determination to bend watching a woman. It stretches back almost this person to his will, to “turn” the unwill- into infinity, like a hall of mirrors. ing Guy to his ends. “Air, stare,” the heroine declares in In some films, the gaze itself becomes MARNIE, angrily free-associating as her the entire subject. Observing, snoop- husband-turned-amateur-shrink watches. ing, spying—Hitchcock films are full of “And that’s what you do.” them, although often the spies (SECRET The clearest examples of the male gaze AGENT, SHADOW OF A DOUBT) can’t are the admiring or lustful ones Hitch- bring themselves to act, and sometimes cock’s male characters (or his camera) have the witnesses (THE WRONG MAN) are for the film’s heroines. THE PLEASURE mistaken. GARDEN, his first film, begins with a man Seeing is believing, but those beliefs in a music hall checking out the legs of cho- aren’t always right, and they don’t always rus girls; THE LADY VANISHES, one of his lead to justice. Scottie sees Madeleine last English movies, features a hotel worker fall to her death in Vertigo—or does he? surrounded by the bare legs of female tour- Tourists watch Roger Thornhill stab that ists; Marnie, one of his last pictures, has the man at the United Nations in NORTH BY 250 n MALLESON, MILES

NORTHWEST—don’t they? We are always References watching, Hitchcock says, but what are we Sidney Gottlieb, ed., Alfred Hitchcock: Inter- really seeing? views (Jackson: University Press of Missis- REAR WINDOW—his practically sippi, 2003), 195; Laura Mulvey, “Visual feature-length meditation on the Kuleshov Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen effect—is all about gazing. Jeff is house- (Autumn 1975), 6–18; George Ritzer, ed., bound, stuck in a wheelchair, but what Encyclopedia of Social Theory (Thousand really imprisons him is his insistence on Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2004), 467–68. remaining a spectator—he looks at Lisa but cannot commit to her; he obsessively MALLESON, MILES (1888–1969) watches neighbors he never seems to have Surrey-born, Cambridge-educated per- met. Jeff looks at people through his huge, former who studied drama with Herbert phallic camera lens but remains impotently Beerbohm Tree and made his stage debut in removed; unable to enter their lives, he 1911. An educated and versatile actor, he also makes up names and situations for them. wrote plays, often about historical subjects or He reduces them to nicknames and clichés. political topics. (One of his dramas, the paci- He does in reality what the male gaze does fist Black ’Ell, was banned in England.) He in relationships; he strips people of their cowrote the 1940 film The Thief of Baghdad, humanity and turns them into a collection in which he appeared as the sultan; he also of obvious things. did an early script, never filmed, for a life of It is a cold VOYEURISTIC exis- T. E. Lawrence and in 1931 cowrote Sally in tence, but it bears one white-hot moment Our Alley with ALMA REVILLE. of shock—when Thorwald feels his eyes For Alfred Hitchcock, Malleson had a on him and looks back across the court- bit part in THE 39 STEPS as the manager of yard, when the watched watch back. That the Palladium and a larger one as Mr. For- moment was in Hitchcock’s first film, too, tescue in STAGE FRIGHT; for other direc- when the chorus girl caught the letch star- tors, he made a fine Canon Chasuble in ing, but it’s not played for a wry smile here. The Importance of Being Earnest, presided It’s presented as a startling turn-the-tables over the charnel house in the ALASTAIR reminder—those we look at have eyes, too. SIM Scrooge, looked forward to hanging Of course the genius of Rear Window is Dennis Price in Kind Hearts and Coronets, that the film takes it a step further, as we and ghoulishly advertised “Room for one watch the director watching Jeff watching more!” in Dead of Night. them—Hitchcock was always aware that Already in his 70s, he got a second going to the movies, sitting in the dark, career boost with Hammer, which fre- peering at people’s private lives, was a voy- quently cast him in its period horror films euristic act as well. as cabbies and clerics; he had to retire only It’s why so many of his films (The Plea- when his eyesight became too poor for him sure Garden, THE LODGER, MURDER!, to continue. He died at 80 in London. THE 39 STEPS, SABOTAGE, SABOTEUR, both versions of THE MAN WHO KNEW References TOO MUCH, and STAGE FRIGHT, among Catherine De La Roche, “Miles of Charac- them) are set in theaters or concert halls, ters,” Picturegoer, October 1, 1949, http:// where violence breaks out and nobody can www.powell-pressburger.org/Reviews/ do anything but watch. Life is a show, but Miles/Miles01.html; “Miles Malleson,” most of us are simply ticketholders stuck in IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ the cheap seats. nm0539942/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH n 251

MANNHEIM, LUCIE (1899–1976) Bob and Jill Lawrence are British tourists Berlin-born performer who became a star in Switzerland, where their young daugh- in 1920s theater, film, cabaret, and operet- ter frolics on the slopes. Jill does some tas. She played in productions of A Doll’s sharpshooting, and they meet another ami- House and Romeo and Juliet, nearly got the able vacationer, Louis Bernard. But then MARLENE DIETRICH part in The Blue Bernard is murdered—and, before dying, Angel, and had a contract with the State whispers details of a conspiracy centering Theater. That all ended when the Nazis on a dangerous plot in England. came to power in 1933; Mannheim, who When the Lawrences’ daughter is kid- was Jewish, fled, eventually landing in Lon- napped—to ensure their silence—they keep don. Her first film was Hitchcock’s THE 39 the plot to themselves and return to Eng- STEPS; she plays the mysterious and color- land. There, afraid to involve the authori- fully named Annabella Smith. ties, Bob tracks the kidnappers to a chapel She continued to act in England and in Wapping, where he learns they plan to made anti-Nazi broadcasts, but when the assassinate a diplomat during a concert at war ended, she happily returned to Germany the Royal Albert Hall. He manages to get and her career there, although she occasion- the information to Jill but is caught and ally came back to Britain for a part; her last locked away along with their daughter. film was Otto Preminger’s slightly HITCH- Jill foils the assassination by scream- COCKIAN Bunny Lake Is Missing in 1965. ing just as the shooter is taking aim, and She died at 77 in Lower Saxony. the police converge on the Wapping chapel. The spies are all killed (except for their References leader, who kills himself); Jill herself takes “Lucie Mannheim,” IMDb, http:// out the assassin as he holds her daughter www.imdb.com/name/nm0543169/ hostage with one perfectly aimed shot. bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Thomas Staedeli, “Lucie Mannheim,” Cyranos, http://www One of Hitchcock’s greatest successes in .cyranos.ch/smmanl-e.htm. Britain (much to the shock of his regular bête noire C. M. WOOLF, who first pro- THE MAN WHO KNEW nounced it “rubbish”) and the only film TOO MUCH (GB 1934) that the director remade in America— improving it further, he thought. “The first Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay: Charles Bennett, D. B. version is the work of a talented amateur,” Wyndham-Lewis, Edwin Greenwood, he told FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT, “and the A. R. Rawlinson, Emlyn Williams. second was made by a professional.” This is Producers: Ivor Montagu (Sir Michael Bal- uncharacteristically modest. con, uncredited). It is true that the second The Man Who Cinematography: Curt Courant. Knew Too Much has several, purely budget- Editor: H. St. C. Stewart. ary advantages over the first—it’s longer, Original Music: Arthur Benjamin. in wide-screen and COLOR, with bigger Cast: Leslie Banks (Bob Lawrence), STARS and real LOCATION work. It also Edna Best (Jill Lawrence), Peter Lorre has a slightly darker, more ambiguous tone. (Abbott), Nora Pilbeam (Betty Law- rence). But the first film is hardly the work of a Running Time: 75 minutes. Black and white. novice. Released Through: General Film Distribu- It is the work, though, of a filmmaker in tors. need of a jolt; coming off WALTZES FROM VIENNA, Hitchcock was dispirited and 252 n THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH without a contract. Producer SIR MICHAEL The Man Who Knew Too Much is very BALCON approached him about working definitely a popular entertainment, and it together again, this time at GAUMONT- has some marvelous set pieces, like LES- BRITISH. Did he have any ideas? Hitchcock LIE BANKS’s struggle with a murderous suggested a Bulldog Drummond story he had dentist (or the battle of the folding chairs been trying to adapt that revolved around an at the chapel or the assassination during a assassination plot and a child kidnapping. classical music concert, scenes so successful Balcon and Hitchcock signed the deal, Hitchcock kept them in the remake). and over many story conferences, the script Yet it also has hints of the more changed. Drummond dropped out, to be serious Hitchcock, too, and his favor- replaced by a typical English couple; a title, ite themes. There are bits of travelogue The Man Who Knew Too Much, was lifted in between the murders and that violent from a G. K. Chesterton book Hitchcock event at a theater, death as mere diversion. had the rights to. An overly complicated There’s also the specter of GUILT, as the MACGUFFIN—a spy’s code traced in ice British agent cruelly criticizes the parents by figure skater—was changed to a dying for giving in to the kidnappers’ demands man’s message. (“Well, if there is any trouble, I hope The opening was set in St. Moritz— you remember you’re to blame,” he says where the Hitchcocks had honeymooned— bluntly. “Not a very nice thing to have on and indeed, the film has a much sunnier one’s conscience.”) view of marital relations than later Hitch- And it has one of his signature cock stories. Bob and Jill Lawrence are touches—the charming, cultivated, cold- devoted spouses and unquestioning equals; hearted villain—in PETER LORRE, who, their union is solid, and the usual gender sporting a dramatic scar, a strange streak roles are fluid. (At the climax, it’s the hus- in his hair, and an almost constant chuckle, band who is helpless and held captive; it’s is Abbott, the gang’s leader. What are his the wife who saves the day with her calm real motivations? What, if anything, is his marksmanship.) relationship to the dour woman and cocon- Although there are one or two uncer- spirator at his side? tain moments—the rather abruptly edited We are never sure. But Lorre—who skiing accident at the beginning—most of learned his lines phonetically—is the dry, the film is masterful. Hitchcock once again black heart of this picture. And this pic- used the Schüfftan process he’d used in ture heralded another huge leap forward in BLACKMAIL, this time to expertly fake Hitchcock’s art. shots of the Royal Albert Hall; the final shootout at the spy’s hideout is done at a References breakneck pace. Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A There are some lovely touches, too, Life in Darkness and Light (New York: like the shots of EDNA BEST after the cou- HarperCollins, 2003), 156–69; Ivor Mon- ple returns home without their daughter, tagu, “Working with Hitchcock,” Sight and Hitchcock lighting her scenes so shadows Sound 49 (Summer 1980), 189–93; Donald seem to close in on her from every corner. Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life Or the close-up of NOVA PILBEAM as of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo the kidnapped girl, all muffled mouth and Press, 1999), 136–44; François Truffaut, wide shining EYES, as she’s borne away on Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: a sleigh with tinkling bells. Touchstone, 1985), 88–94. THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH n 253

THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO favorite song, Hank whistles along from MUCH (US 1956) upstairs—and Ben runs upstairs to rescue him. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay: John Michael Hayes, based on The second version of The Man Who Knew a story by Charles Bennett and D. B. Too Much isn’t, on first viewing, one of Wyndham Lewis. Hitchcock’s most interesting films. But it’s Producers: Herbert Coleman (Alfred Hitchcock, uncredited). fascinating to see how he approached the Cinematography: Robert Burks. same material more than 20 years later Editor: George Tomasini. and what he changed because of how he’d Original Music: Bernard Herrmann. changed. Cast: James Stewart (Ben McKenna), He had first wanted to redo the mate- Doris Day (Jo McKenna), Daniel Gelin rial in America for DAVID O. SELZNICK; (Louis Bernard), Reggie Nalder (Rien). an early memo dating back to 1941 sug- Running Time: 120 minutes. Color. gested beginning the remake in Sun Val- Released Through: Paramount. ley, ID, staging the near-fatal concert at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, and then crossing the Hudson to the spies’ redoubt Ben and Jo McKenna are American tourists in New Jersey. It didn’t happen. in Morocco with their son, Hank. There, But it wasn’t until the mid-’50s that they meet another amiable vacationer, Hitchcock circled back, entrusting regular Louis Bernard, who helps them navigate collaborator JOHN MICHAEL HAYES Muslim customs and taboos. But then with the script (Hitchcock reportedly told Bernard is murdered—and, before dying, him the basic story but warned him not to whispers details of a conspiracy, centering watch the earlier version) and quickly cast- on a dangerous plot in England. ing the film with JAMES STEWART and When the McKennas’ son is kid- DORIS DAY, an actress he’d liked very napped, though—to ensure their silence— much in the thriller Storm Warning. they keep the plot to themselves and go to There was LOCATION shooting in England. There, Ben tracks the kidnappers Morocco before the production returned to a chapel, where he learns they plan to to California, and while Stewart was used assassinate a diplomat during a concert. to Hitchcock at this point, Day found his Unable to find Ben but learning that the remoteness disturbing. (She was also upset police have gone to the Royal Albert Hall, by the way she saw the North Africans Jo hurries there. treating their beasts of burden, an experi- There, recognizing a sinister acquain- ence that only intensified her lifelong com- tance from Morocco, she realizes that the mitment to animal welfare.) murder has been scheduled to happen Day was so rattled on the set, in fact, during the concert. Ben escapes from the that finally she told Hitchcock she would chapel and rushes to the hall; Jo’s screams quit if he were unsatisfied. To her surprise, disrupt the assassination plot, and when he not only told her he approved of her Ben struggles with the gunman, the assas- performance but also that he was far more sin falls to his death. insecure than she could ever be. “He said Feted at the diplomat’s embassy, Jo he was more frightened—of life, of rejec- and Ben realize that the plotters are there, tion, of relationships—than anyone,” she too, along with Hank. When Jo sings a recalled later. “He told me he was afraid to 254 n THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH walk across the lot to the PARAMOUNT first foiling the assassination and then by commissary because he was so afraid of killing the assassin. In the second, it’s the people. I remember feeling so sorry for him husband who has to arrive and finish the when he told me this, and from that point job both times. The first The Man Who on I felt more relaxed about working for Knew Too Much is about a happy marriage him.” surviving a crisis. The second The Man Yet, returning to a story that he’d Who Knew Too Much is about an unhappy first done in England in 1934, you can marriage surviving a crisis because the man feel Hitchcock luxuriating in his hard- has the primary role in the relationship and won power and capabilities. The moody reasserts it. BLACK AND WHITE is replaced by gor- Hitchcock said that the second film geous COLOR (fully utilized in the souk was the better, “professional” one, but sequence, with a trail of blue dye instead modern audiences may not share his pref- of crimson blood marking a victim’s final erence. Still, Day gives a lovely perfor- stagger). The wide-screen is well used, too mance—particularly in the slowly building (although it’s the close-ups that linger emo- scenes of hysteria as she realizes that her tionally), and he has not only two major child has been kidnapped. There are some STARS but also a soon-to-be hit song, “Que nice faces among the supporting players, Sera, Sera” (albeit one sung at a somewhat including CAROLYN JONES as a friend painful volume). and BRENDA DE BANZIE as the most Yet in some ways, this is a rather conflicted of the kidnappers. (Although darker, riskier film than the first. In the PETER LORRE is badly missed, REG- first The Man Who Knew Too Much—set GIE NALDER is a frightening presence as in the Hitchcocks’ own posh honeymoon the actual assassin, but the spy ring here destination of cool St. Moritz—the English doesn’t have the color and character it did couple is devoted, attentive. In this one— in the original film.) set in uncomfortable, sticky North Africa— Is the 1956 version of The Man Who they’re quarrelsome, a little moody. Knew Too Much a better film than the 1934 Throughout the first half hour or so, one? No. But it’s a far more intriguing in fact, Ben and Jo seem just a drink or a one—as an illustration both of the blan- day away from what she characterizes as dishments that Hollywood had provided one of their “monthly” quarrels. She wants Hitchcock and of his own movies’ increas- another child. He doesn’t. She’s beginning ingly dark view of marriage and women. to chafe at having given up her singing career to be a midwestern doctor’s wife. He References doesn’t understand. They’re on an exotic Quentin Falk, Mr. Hitchcock (London: vacation, and all he can think about are the Haus, 2007), 132; A. E. Hotchner, Doris various unpleasant surgeries he did to pay Day: Her Own Story (New York: William for it. Morrow, 1975), 152; Patrick McGilligan, The contrast with the first film is strik- Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and ing. In the 1934 version, the duo shares Light (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), the bad news of their child’s kidnapping 515–22; Patrick McGilligan, ed., Backstory: together and supports each other. In the Interviews with Screenwriters of the 60s 1956 one, Ben secretly slips her a sedative (Berkeley: University of California Press, before telling her the truth. In the first film, 1997), 174–92; Donald Spoto, The Dark it’s the wife who literally saves the day by Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock THE MANXMAN n 255

(New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 359–67; of two friends. And it looks ahead a bit François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. to films to come; like THE SKIN GAME, ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 227–33. it’s about class differences, and unlike JAMAICA INN, which was merely set in THE MANXMAN (GB 1929) Cornwall, The Manxman was filmed there and makes full use of its rough seascapes. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. And, of course, like so many of Hitchcock’s Screenplay: Eliot Stannard, based on the films—at the time and to come—it centers novel by Hall Caine. on GUILT. Producer: Uncredited (John Maxwell). The Victorian melodrama is a little too Cinematography: Jack Cox. obvious (the original novel, billed as the Editor: Emile de Ruelle. Cast: Carl Brisson (Pete Quilliam), Anny “famous story” in the credits, had been a Ondra (Kate Cregeen), Malcolm Keen best seller in the 1890s), but Hitchcock used (Philip Christian). a small cast, including CARL BRISSON, Running Time: 110 minutes. Black and white. who had been in The Ring, and Malcolm Released Through: Wardour Films. Keen, who had been in THE MOUNTAIN EAGLE and THE LODGER. (Best is ANNY ONDRA, unencumbered here by her Czech accent; she would work for Hitchcock again Two young friends on the Isle of Man grow in BLACKMAIL.) up to take different paths, Pete becoming The cinematography by loyal collabora- a fisherman and Philip, an attorney. Pete tor JACK COX is fine, too, and Hitchcock’s asks local beauty Kate to marry him, but sense of visuals and editing is clear and eco- her father is opposed; leaving the island to nomical—as in a scene played without titles, make a success of himself, Pete asks Philip where Pete joyfully returns and Kate and to keep an eye on his girl. Philip have to conceal their own guilty feel- Of course Philip and Kate soon fall in ings. Sin and its consequences are really the love, but just as they’ve begun plans to wed main characters in the piece; although, when and Philip to take over the job of chief mag- Pete is thought dead and Kate exclaims to istrate, Pete returns, a wealthy man. With Philip, “We’re free!”—as Ruth does to Logan her father now approving of the match, in I CONFESS—there is no escape from Kate agrees to marry Pete instead, but her punishment; the reckoning is at hand. (As heart is torn, and she holds a guilty secret— Hitchcock emphasizes with occasional cuts she is already pregnant with Philip’s child. to a giant millstone, grinding away.) One child and a year later, she decides Like almost all of Hitchcock’s early to leave Pete for Philip—but Philip, con- English films, it seems, this one had a pro- cerned about his position in the town, ducer (this time John Maxwell at BRITISH won’t have her. A hysterical Kate tries to INTERNATIONAL PICTURES) convinced kill herself but fails. Finally, Philip relents, it would be a failure; in fact, the film was and he, Kate, and their baby leave the isle; a solid hit and earned Hitchcock strong Pete is left alone, robbed of everything. reviews for his handling of the material. But the director never really warmed to Hitchcock’s last silent is both a farewell and the project; it was done as a piece of work, a sort of summing-up; like THE RING, it begun only two weeks after the birth of his features a love triangle, and like DOWN- daughter, and he was already looking for- HILL, it highlights the contrasting fortunes ward eagerly to what might come next. 256 n MARMONT, PERCY

References Edgar is a professional thief who moves Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life from office job to office job, changing her in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- name and hair color, using false references erCollins, 2003), 106; François Truffaut, and a fake social security number, and then Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: absconding with the company funds. When Touchstone, 1985), 61. she applies for a job at Mark Rutland’s publishing company, however, he recog- MARMONT, PERCY (1883–1977) nizes her as the same woman who recently London-born performer and longtime embezzled money from an acquaintance, leading man whose career encompasses Sidney Strutt. Rutland finds Marnie’s both the first silent-film version of Lord duplicity intriguing, and so the handsome Jim and Hammer’s first sci-fi picture, Four- widower hires her. Sided Triangle; in between, he costarred She steals from him, too, of course, with Clara Bow in Mantrap and played but Rutland finds where she’s hiding—and small parts in three films for Hitchcock as reveals that he knows about her previous the lover in RICH AND STRANGE, as the crimes, too. He blackmails her into marry- father in YOUNG AND INNOCENT, and ing him, much to the disgust of his former as the unlucky Caypor in SECRET AGENT. sister-in-law. It’s clearly an unhealthy rela- He died in London at 93. tionship and only grows unhealthier—in addition to her compulsive thievery and References phobias about thunderstorms and the color Hal Erickson, “Percy Marmont,” Silent Hol- red, Marnie declares she can’t bear to have lywood, http://silenthollywood.com/percy men touch her. When Rutland rapes her on marmont.html; “Percy Marmont,” IMDb, their wedding night, she tries to kill herself. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0549385/ After their return home, Marnie only bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. grows more disturbed, finally having a breakdown during a foxhunt when she MARNIE (US 1964) finds herself surrounded by the color red— and, due to its broken leg, is forced to shoot Director: Alfred Hitchcock. her own beloved horse. Finally, Rutland Screenplay: Jay Presson Allen, from the insists on taking her back to her hometown novel by Winston Graham. of Baltimore to confront her mother. Producer: Uncredited (Alfred Hitchcock). They do, and eventually, the truth Cinematography: Robert Burks. Editor: George Tomasini. comes out. Marnie’s mother’s self-righteous- Original Music: Bernard Herrmann. ness stems from her shame over her own Cast: Tippi Hedren (Marnie Edgar), Sean past as a prostitute. Marnie’s phobias arise Connery (Mark Rutland), Alan Napier from the repressed memory of a childhood (Mr. Rutland), Diane Baker (Lil Main- trauma, when she killed one of her mother’s waring), Louise Latham (Bernice Edgar), clients during a thunderstorm. And Mar- Martin Gabel (Sidney Strutt). nie’s kleptomania is merely a way to replace Running Time: 130 minutes. Color. the love she never felt she got with “things.” Released Through: Universal. The couple leaves together under slowly brightening skies.

Cold and calculating—and yet still desper- One of Hitchcock’s greatest films or great- ate for her aging mother’s love—Marnie est failures? More than 50 years after its MARNIE n 257 premiere, Marnie continues to spur contro- the alternative pages. Hitchcock simply versy and, like its heroine, strong passions. fired him and hired another screenwriter, Its beginnings were convoluted. Hitch- JAY PRESSON ALLEN, to do yet another cock bought the rights to the WINSTON script. GRAHAM novel about a compulsive thief Although it seemed like an odd choice (and the man who yearns for her) in 1961, after the first two writers had failed—Allen hoping to use it to lure GRACE KELLY was a novelist and a successful playwright away from her throne and back to acting, at whose grasp of screenwriting was tenu- least for one movie. Having had a congenial ous—it could also be seen as doubly prag- collaboration with JOSEPH STEFANO on matic. As a newcomer, Allen was unlikely PSYCHO, he asked him to write up a script. to argue with Hitchcock over what the Stefano, who was interested in psy- script did or didn’t need; as a woman, she chology, dove in, turning in a treatment gave him cover in case there were any criti- that he felt combined some aspects of cal objections over the rape scene. (Allen SPELLBOUND (a psychiatrist who treated herself had no objections; years later, she Marnie was a central character) and of blithely asserted that she’d never seen it NOTORIOUS. (Marnie formed the apex of as a scene of a sexual assault but merely of a romantic triangle, with two men, already a couple going through a “trying marital rivals in real life, rivals for her romantic situation.”) Script finally in hand, and with attentions, as well.) more pliant collaborators than Kelly and But then Kelly ruled out a return to Hunter onboard, Hitchcock could finally the screen, and without her, Hitchcock lost proceed. interest. Stefano went on to his own proj- Yet the film’s production—due to start ect, the TV anthology series The Outer Lim- on November 25, 1963—was delayed by its, and Hitchcock began to develop THE the national days of mourning over John BIRDS with screenwriter EVAN HUNTER. F. Kennedy’s assassination, and the rest of It was while working on that film, the shoot remained shadowed by a dark however, that Hitchcock suddenly imag- mood. Although Hitchcock and star SEAN ined its STAR, his discovery TIPPI CONNERY seemed to get on relatively HEDREN, as Marnie. Another script was well—the director always liked leading men commissioned, this time from Hunter, but who simply got down to business—he was the writer worried about a central scene in alternately brusque and overfamiliar with which the SEXUALLY repressed heroine costar DIANE BAKER and MARIETTE is raped on her wedding night by the hero. HARTLEY, who had a small part as Mar- Hitchcock was very insistent on it being in nie’s coworker. At one point, Baker said, he the picture and talked at length about the even approached her in her dressing room shots he’d already planned out; Hunter and unexpectedly kissed her. thought the sequence was not only offen- Everyone who was present noted his sive but also unworkable. No male charac- relationship with Hedren, his once her- ter, Hunter declared, could retain the audi- alded discovery, had changed; he grew ence’s sympathy after such an act. more and more controlling (forbidding Hunter ended up writing the scene her, for example, to attend an award cer- under protest but also wrote his own ver- emony), and she grew more and more sion of the honeymoon, without the rape, resistant. Eventually they stopped speaking and sent them both to Hitchcock with a to each other entirely, although the rea- note, asking him to read both and consider son was unclear. The most that Hitchcock 258 n MARNIE would ever say was that she had commit- that Mark Rutland is sexually obsessed with ted the unforgivable sin of cruelly referring Marnie (he remembers her, months after a to his weight; years later, Hedren would chance meeting, as the “brunette with the publicly state that he had demanded she legs”) and particularly excited by her slip- become his mistress and, when she refused, pery deviousness. And she knows it. “You told her that he would ruin her career. don’t love me,” she says, as he begins black- Although many people, including mailing her into marriage. “I’m just some- Baker, back up parts of Hedren’s story, thing you’ve caught. You think I’m some others disagree; what no one disputes sort of animal you’ve trapped!” “That’s is that it was an unhappy set by the end right, you are,” Mark answers. “And I’ve of filming, and Hitchcock seemed even caught something wild this time, haven’t more removed from the actual day-to-day I? I’ve tracked you and caught you and by filmmaking than usual. Fifty years later, God I’m going to keep you!” though, what remains—most clearly, most That animalistic theme is braided vividly—is the film itself. And in some through the movie. Before he took over ways, it is as open for interpretation—or the family publishing business, Mark was a even angry argument—as the circum- zoologist; the only thing Marnie is passion- stances under which it was made. ate about is horses (“Oh Florio,” she says Marnie was meant, as Hitchcock to hers, “if you want to bite somebody, bite always stated, as a film about a FETISH me!”) His father, Marks says, believes in and, outside of the director’s films, prob- “animal lust”; even the names of the char- ably a very rare one: hybristophilia, in acters—Strutt, Rutland—suggest swagger- which the fetishist is sexually attracted to ing males and the mating season. All of criminals. In many of Hitchcock’s films, which could lead to a very easy reading of this is treated lightly—for example, in the the film as an endorsement of rape culture chase films (THE 39 STEPS, SABOTEUR), and brutal male privilege—Marnie is a neu- in which the woman has a love/hate attrac- rotic, frigid little girl, and what she needs is tion for the suspicious man on the run, a real man to snap her out of it. or the caper films (FAMILY PLOT, TO Except. CATCH A THIEF), in which the bad-boy Except that Marnie’s troubles began criminal exerts a certain sexual fascina- with the lusts of men and the constant tion. In the pitch-dark Marnie, though, paying parade of sailors to her MOTH- the very core of the film is, as Hitchcock ER’s flat—including, finally, the slightly frankly told FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT, the drunken, awkwardly violent customer that “fetish idea. A man wants to go to bed with led to Marnie killing him and embark- a thief because she is a thief, just like other ing on decades of crippling neurosis, par- men have a yen for a Chinese or a col- tial amnesia, horrible phobias, and sexual ored woman. Unfortunately this concept repression. doesn’t come across on screen. . . . To put Except that our sympathies, clearly, are it bluntly, we’d have to have Sean Connery with Marnie throughout. She’s very much catching the girl robbing the safe and show still a child—so much so that, when she vis- that he felt like jumping at her and raping its her mother, she’s jealous of the little girl her on the spot.” she babysits, that, when Mark finally pulls He didn’t include that scene but only off her nightgown, she can only answer because he found it dramatically implau- him with the shocked catatonic gaze of sible; the film, though, very much shows the abused innocent. She is a naïf, a lover MARNIE n 259 of pretty things and animals. She is more an obvious matte painting; and the final sinned against than sinning. theft is punctuated with the sort of flashy Hitchcock builds that sympathy zooms that less talented directors were slowly, introducing us to Marnie as a dark soon to embrace. femme fatale, walking away from the cam- But it was ROBIN WOOD who first era (and leaving the scene of her latest argued that the falsity of these effects were crime). She is merely a collection of parts intentional, and while that may seem like at first—arm, legs, hands, hair. But then the most flimsy of apologias, there is a she washes the black—the GUILT—out of strong, demonstrable support for that. her hair, and with a swell of music, we get After all, Hitchcock had often and rightly her first close-up and see her shining face at used unrealistic, even EXPRESSIONIS- last, clean and young and innocent. TIC, effects to mirror a character’s dis- Of course, Marnie is not innocent— turbed mental state—the spinning lights not really—but she is a bit of a child, emo- that Jill sees before passing out in the first tionally frozen back at that first moment of THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, the long-ago crisis, and Hitchcock reinforces spinning faces that haunt Iris after her acci- that over the course of the movie with her dent in THE LADY VANISHES, the disori- love of animals, with her irrational panics, enting perspectives that bedevil Scottie in with her unmet yearning to simply put her VERTIGO (and are reprised, briefly here head in her mother’s lap and have the cold, at the end, as we slip back into the past for crabby woman slowly brush her hair. Marnie’s flashback memory, and the apart- It’s what makes Mark’s marital assault ment seems to shift in size and dimensions on her all the more upsetting; it seems not before our eyes). Isn’t it just as likely that just a rape but also an act of child abuse. Marnie looks unreal because Marnie herself (Bolstered, perhaps, by Hitchcock’s own has lost grip with reality? fetishes, as well as the CENSORS of the Look again to the honeymoon sequence, time—we see nothing womanly of the naked with Marnie and Mark taking a very long Marnie, only her bare, vulnerable legs.) Pacific voyage. From the moment they board How can we not sympathize with Marnie the ship to the moment they leave, we barely when Mark says things like “I’m fighting see one other person—not a passenger, not an impulse to beat the hell out of you”? The even a steward. When, on the morning of complication at the heart of Marnie is that, Marnie’s suicide attempt, Mark runs down however Hitchcock intended it, whatever the ship’s decks, they are absolutely empty. issues he may have been confronting by Is this the unintentional mistake of a director making it, however much the movie details who was too bored or distracted or sexually the complete brutalization of a woman, it frustrated to bother hiring extras? Or is this always remains firmly on her side. just a very deliberate effect from a filmmaker It is easy to not see that, just as it is who wanted to show just how alone, and easy to focus on the movie’s supposed ultimately how codependent, these two sud- technical flaws. There are some scenes of denly married people were? back projection that fail to convince; the Certainly Marnie, like Marnie, has its sequence of Marnie horseback riding is fla- problems. Connery is absurdly unbeliev- grantly unreal, with odd editing and a fake able as a Philadelphian preppie (with ALAN horse (borrowed from the special-effects NAPIER as his British-accented father, to department at Disney); the set for Marnie’s boot), and although Hedren manages the childhood neighborhood is dominated by hysteria well, her calmer moments are flat 260 n MARSHALL, HERBERT and forced, her line readings ranging from went with playing the provinces, vowed amateurish to arch. Despite a few bravura early not to follow his parents into the pro- sequences—such as Marnie’s second rob- fession. Instead, he went to college to study bery, as she tries to slip out of an office past a business and after graduation got a job as charwoman—the film is slowly paced. an accountant. He was so bad with num- And yet there’s a duality to the film bers, though, that his employer fired him; that fascinates and is a part of all of Hitch- his next position, through a family friend, cock’s films. It’s just that, in much of his was as the assistant business manager of an other work, that tension—guilt and inno- acting company. Eventually, he was lured cence—is embodied in one character. onstage to take a part or two and, realizing Here, it’s in the film—and perhaps the he was better at acting than accounting, filmmaker—as Marnie struggles with both decided to commit. tormenting its heroine and grieving over He left the stage to enlist in World the indignity she suffers. The film is about War I; sent into the trenches, he was shot in abuse, yes—but also the abuser’s con- the knee, and after a series of badly botched science. operations, the doctors finally amputated his right leg. Marshall fell into a depres- References sion—a condition he would battle all his Jay Presson Allen, interview with the author, life—but eventually decided to return to the June 1999; Diane Baker, interview with the stage outfitted with an artificial limb. He author, September 2015; Patrick McGil- soon had a series of successes on the West ligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness End and Broadway, where he put his beau- and Light (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), tifully modulated voice to use in everything 635–49; Patrick McGilligan, ed., Backstory: from Noel Coward to Shakespeare. (His Interviews with Screenwriters of the 60s Jacques in As You Like It was supposed to (Berkeley: University of California Press, be particularly fine.) 1997), 15–42; Donald Spoto, The Dark Marshall’s mellow delivery made Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock him a prized property when sound films (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 468–76; came in, and his blasé manner was adapt- Donald Spoto, Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred able to amused bystanders, tender lovers, Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies (New detached narrators, betrayed husbands, or York: Harmony Books, 2008), 261–77; The even (rarely) cold killers. He is the hero in Trouble with Marnie, directed by Laurent Hitchcock’s MURDER! and, a decade later, Bouzereau (2000), documentary, http:// returned to play the villain in the director’s the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/The_Trouble_with FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT; in between, _Marnie_%282000%29_-_transcript; Fran- his wife at the time, EDNA BEST, costarred çois Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. in the original version of THE MAN WHO (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 300–307; KNEW TOO MUCH. (Their daughter, Sarah Robin Wood, Hitchcock’s Films (New York: Marshall, also went on to appear in three Paperback Library, 1969), 163–95. episodes of Hitchcock’s television shows.) The gentlemanly Marshall had a strong MARSHALL, HERBERT attraction for and to women—he was mar- (1890–1966) ried five times and, after relocating to Hol- London-born performer who came from lywood, played opposite almost all of the a theatrical family—and, having seen the era’s female stars, from Greta Garbo and cold hotel rooms and meager meals that Bette Davis to Joan Crawford and MAR- MARY n 261

LENE DIETRICH. (Undoubtedly his gen- -marshall-57294374; “Herbert Marshall,” uine modesty—he was dependable, pro- IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ fessional, and loathe to upstage—helped.) nm0003339/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; That he had a wooden leg was something David Thomson, The New Biographi- he worked hard to conceal with the help of cal Dictionary of Film (New York: Knopf, his directors; when necessary, scenes (such 2002), 566–67. as his famous death in The Little Foxes) were carefully choreographed to keep his MARY (GB 1931) disability hidden. To his immense great credit, though, Director: Alfred Hitchcock. during the war, he spent a great deal of Screenplay: Alma Reville, Herbert Juttke, George C. Klaren, based on the novel time traveling to military hospitals, where Enter Sir John by Clemence Dane and he spoke to wounded veterans, particularly Helen Simpson. amputees, giving nonpitying, practical Producers: Uncredited. advice (even showing one worried young Cinematography: Jack Cox. man how, even with a prosthesis, he could Editor: Uncredited. still take his sweetheart dancing). Marshall Original Music: Uncredited. never publicized the visits—he was angry Cast: Alfred Abel (Sir John Menier), Olga when a movie magazine finally did—and Tchechowa (Mary Baring). paid for his own travel and expenses. Running Time: 78 minutes. Black and white. After the war, Marshall—like many In German. members of Hollywood’s ENGLISH COL- Released Through: Sud-Film. ONY—found the sort of suave gentleman they used to specialize in less in demand. Unlike many, though, he stayed, finding During the very early days of talkies, before roles in period films, sci-fi pictures, and the intricacies of postproduction dubbing television shows. He is in two episodes of had been worked out, occasionally two ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS; he versions of the same film would be shot in played the inquisitive inspector in the Vin- shifts, the second using the identical sets cent Price film The Fly (a script so absurd, but with a translated script and a foreign Price later said, that he and Marshall some- cast and crew. This is BRITISH INTER- times had to be shot separately; every time NATIONAL PICTURES’ made-for-export they made eye contact, they burst into version of MURDER! done in German; laughter). as Hitchcock had studied the language in Marshall had always been emotionally school and picked up a little more from his sensitive, and his war injury had left him in shoots there in the mid-’20s, he stayed on constant discomfort and occasional pain; in as director, working with his regular tech- 1965, he checked himself into the Motion nical collaborators but imported actors. For Picture Relief Fund Hospital for depres- Hitchcock—who found even shooting one sion. He stayed until January 1966; barely film, once he’d worked it out in his head, a a week after his release, he had a fatal heart bore—the experience was not a happy one. attack in Beverly Hills. He was 75. Although he spoke German well enough to make himself understood, he couldn’t References really grasp the nuances of the actors’ per- “Herbert Marshall,” Hollywood.com, http:// formances, and while HERBERT MAR- www.hollywood.com/celebrities/herbert SHALL had been charming on the first set, 262 n MARY ROSE

Alfred Abel, his Teutonic replacement, was But the relationship with Hedren humorless and argumentative, and the plot ended acrimoniously, and in any case, the was changed to eliminate the “half-caste” ele- studio was determined to keep the “Mas- ment. The film, perhaps to Hitchcock’s relief, ter of Suspense” churning out thrillers; was long considered to be lost; a print, how- a ghostly romance, Hitchcock sadly told ever, recently resurfaced in Germany, and it Whitlock, “isn’t what the audiences expect is now included as an extra on some DVD of me.” Although the director occasion- editions of other Hitchcock films. ally spoke wistfully of the project—and its influence may be seen in VERTIGO—he Reference was never able to get it financed. (UNI- Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life VERSAL was so opposed to the project, in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- he sometimes swore, they’d had a specific Collins, 2003), 136–39. prohibition against making the film written into his contract.) MARY ROSE In an odd twist of fate, 20 years Hitchcock saw this J. M. Barrie play dur- after Hitchcock’s death, MELANIE ing its original 1920 production in Lon- GRIFFITH—Tippi Hedren’s daughter— don and was immediately entranced by it; bought the rights and commissioned a new a twist on the author’s earlier Peter Pan, screenplay. But it, too, was never made, and in this drama, the story is not about a boy Mary Rose—like her namesake—remains who refuses to grow up but about a young maddeningly out of reach. woman who doesn’t grow old. The play revolves around two odd References occurrences. In the first, Mary Rose is a Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A young child vacationing with her father on a Life in Darkness and Light (New York: remote Scottish island when she disappears. HarperCollins, 2003), 650–53; Donald She reappears three weeks later, unharmed Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life but with no memory of what happened dur- of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo ing her time away. In the second act, Mary Press, 1999), 62, 474–76; François Truffaut, Rose is now a wife and MOTHER who has Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: a sudden urge to revisit that fateful island; Touchstone, 1985), 308–9. once again she disappears. She reappears not weeks but decades later, unaged, to find MASON, JAMES (1909–1984) her son a grown man. No explanation is Yorkshire-born performer, the son of a ever given for the vanishings. wealthy merchant, who studied architec- Hitchcock tried several times to make ture at Cambridge, where he began doing this into a film, first speaking to Darryl amateur theatricals. After graduating, he F. Zanuck at Fox about it as a follow-up went out on some auditions for fun and to LIFEBOAT. The mogul wasn’t inter- by 24 was at the Old Vic, acting under the ested, but almost 20 years later, Hitch- formidable influence of Tyrone Guthrie. cock announced that he would be doing He had yet to take an acting class and never the Barrie play under the title The Island would. Still, Mason’s dark good looks and That Likes to Be Visited; he had JAY PRES- seductive voice made him successful early SON ALLEN write a script and ALBERT on, particularly in films; he came to par- WHITLOCK draw up some preproduction ticular prominence in the 1940s, where his sketches. TIPPI HEDREN was to star. satiny menace enlivened The Wicked Lady MASSEY, ANNA n 263 with MARGARET LOCKWOOD; Fanny heavily adapted Lolita; following this, he by Gaslight with Phyllis Calvert; and The began to move into supporting parts, with Seventh Veil with poor, brutalized ANN memorable ones in Georgy Girl, Child’s TODD. Play, The Boys from Brazil, and Salem’s By the late ’40s, Mason was in Odd Lot. His last great role was as the unscru- Man Out and perhaps Britain’s biggest pulous lawyer in The Verdict, for which he male STAR—even more of an accomplish- received his third Oscar nomination. Once ment as, registering as a conscientious again, he did not win. objector, he had refused to serve in World Mason, who had suffered a heart attack War II, a stance that could have crippled the year he made NORTH BY NORTH- his career. But while his fans could accept WEST, had a second, fatal one at his home that, they could not forgive him leaving for in Switzerland at age 75. America, which he did as the next decade dawned—an act many seemed to take as a References true desertion. “James Mason,” IMDb, http://www.imdb Still, Mason prospered in his new .com/name/nm0000051/bio?ref_=nm_ov home, giving a fine performance as the _bio_sm; Brian McFarlane, “James Mason,” tragic Norman Maine in the (butchered) BFI Screenonline, http://www.screenon George Cukor version of A Star Is Born and line.org.uk/people/id/447497/index.html; becoming a fantasy hero in 20,000 Leagues David Thomson, “Every Word a Poison under the Sea and Journey to the Center of Dart,” Guardian, May 14, 2009, http:// the Earth. For Hitchcock, he played Van- www.theguardian.com/film/2009/may/15/ damm, the cultured spymaster who refuses james-mason; David Thomson, The New to believe that Roger Thornhill isn’t George Biographical Dictionary of Film (New York: Kaplan. Elegant and respected, he’s a type Knopf, 2002), 571–72. seen before in THE 39 STEPS and SABO- TEUR, but Mason gave him an extra bit of MASSEY, ANNA (1937–2011) weary humor. (“That wasn’t very sporting, Sussex-born performer, daughter of Cana- using real bullets.”) dian actor Raymond Massey and British Director and star had a professional, if actress Adrianne Allen, who began her somewhat distant, relationship on the set. career with a stroke of luck. Only 17 and “You can see from the way he uses actors then concerned only with the London that he sees them as animated props,” social scene, she was spied by playwright Mason said later of Hitchcock. “He casts William Douglas Home, who thought her his films very, very carefully and he knows perfect casting for his new play The Reluc- perfectly well in advance that all the actors tant Debutante. The real-life debutante that he chooses are perfectly capable of accepted without reluctance and was a hit playing the parts he gives them, without in the play both in England and on Broad- any special directorial effort on his part. He way. Her film career began in 1958. gets some sort of a charge out of directing With her boyish figure and sharp, the leading ladies, I think, but that’s some- inquisitive features, Massey wasn’t an thing else.” obvious choice for movies, but she had Mason worked on an episode of fine roles in several thrillers, including ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, played the pre-PSYCHO psycho thriller Peeping Maxim in a TV remake of REBECCA, and Tom and Otto Preminger’s HITCHCOCK- was the best thing about Stanley Kubrick’s IAN Bunny Lake Is Missing. Massey later 264 n MATÉ, RUDOLPH called Preminger “one of the cruelest and aries/anna-massey-awardwinning-actress most unpleasant directors that I have ever -on-stage-film-and-television-acclaimed worked with,” but she had a better time -for-her-subtlety-and-intelligence-2306941 on FRENZY; she’d gone in to read for the .html; Peter Maitland, “Anna Massey smaller part of the receptionist, and Hitch- Recalls Sudden Leap to Stardom on Stage,” cock chose her for Babs instead, the good- November 23, 1956, Saskatoon Star-Phoe- hearted barmaid who ends up stuffed into nix, https://news.google.com/newspapers?i a potato sack. d=16lkAAAAIBAJ&sjid=E28NAAAAIB It was a relaxed set, she remembered AJ&pg=4773,3328168&dq=anna-massey later, with Hitchcock beginning most &hl=en; The Story of Frenzy, directed by scenes by telling a “dirty schoolboy JOKE” Laurent Bouzereau (2000), documentary, (“He did that to relax you, because it http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/The_Story relaxed him”), at first paying attention to _of_Frenzy_%282001%29_-_transcript. “every detail—clothes and COLORS and sets and dressings. But then he got slow MATÉ, RUDOLPH (1898–1964) physically. Off the set the only conversa- Krakow-born cinematographer, active in tion that seemed to interest him was about films since 1919. He was an assistant to FOOD—he taught me how to make a good Karl Freund and worked on many of direc- batter—and later I realized that this was apt tor Carl Dreyer’s pictures, including the at a time we were making a film so crowded starkly beautiful The Passion of Joan of Arc with food.” and the grayly nightmarish Vampyr. Despite the privilege she’d been born Part of the vast European exodus of into, Massey’s life was not untroubled; she Jewish talent during the early ’30s, Maté had difficult relationships with both par- relocated to Hollywood, where one of his ents, as well as with her brother, Daniel, first jobs was on the hallucinatory Dante’s also an actor; her first husband, Jeremy Inferno in 1935; subsequent highlights Brett, left her for a man, and in the late ’60s, included the deep-focus compositions of she suffered a nervous breakdown. But she William Wyler’s Dodsworth and the rain- put her life back together and eventually swept assassination sequence and thrilling resumed a busy and lauded career onstage airplane crash in Hitchcock’s FOREIGN and on television (including a new adapta- CORRESPONDENT. tion of REBECCA, in which she played Mrs. Maté continued as a cinematographer Danvers). She died in London at 73 from into the late ’40s (including some uncred- cancer. ited work on Orson Welles’s The Lady from Shanghai) before moving into directing; References among his films are the grimy noir classic “Anna Massey,” IMDb, http://www.imdb D.O.A. and the effects-heavy When Worlds .com/name/nm0557281/bio?ref_=nm_ov Collide. He died of a heart attack in Beverly _bio_sm; “Anna Massey Obituary,” Tele- Hills at 66. graph, July 4, 2011, http://www.telegraph .co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/ References tv-radio-obituaries/8615826/Anna-Massey “Rudolph Maté,” IMDb, http://www.imdb .html; Anthony Hayward, “Anna Massey, .com/name/nm0005789/bio?ref_=nm_ov Award-Winning Actress on Stage, Film _bio_sm; “Rudolph Maté,” Internet Ency- and Television,” Independent, July 5, 2004, clopedia of Cinematographers, http://www http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obitu .cinematographers.nl/GreatDoPh/mate.htm. MAUGHAM, W. SOMERSET n 265

MATHERS, JERRY (1948– ) FROM VIENNA; according to her lead- Iowa-born performer who began modeling ing man, ESMOND KNIGHT, Hitchcock as a toddler for a local department store. failed to hide his dislike of both actors and TV commercials soon followed and then was particularly annoyed at the size of Mat- movies, with Son of Paleface in 1952. His thews’s salary. (For her part, Matthews later unspoiled attitude and nearly complete dismissed the director as an “imperious checklist of cute-kid clichés—cowlicks, young man who knew nothing about musi- freckles, slightly buck teeth—won him cals. . . . He was out of his depth.”) regular work in Hollywood; his first sizable Dogged by scandals and emotional part was in THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY troubles, Matthews’s career faltered after in 1955 as SHIRLEY MACLAINE’s son. the war, with gaps bridged by work in TV Two years later, he got the starring and some success on radio; she died of can- role in the Leave It to Beaver sitcom, which cer at 74 in London. ran until 1963; almost as innocent as his onscreen character, after the show ended, References Mathers graduated high school, went on Roger Phillip Mellor, “Jessie Matthews,” to college (he got his degree in philoso- BFI Screenonline, http://www.screenonline phy from Berkeley), and enlisted in the .org.uk/people/id/449354; Donald Spoto, Air Force Reserve, serving for nearly six The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred years. Mathers returned to show business Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, in his 30s, first appearing in TV spinoffs 1999), 134–36; Michael Thornton, “Jessie of the original Beaver show but doing live Matthews: The Diva of Debauchery,” Daily appearances and even Broadway as well. In Mail, June 27, 2007, http://www.dailymail 1998, he published his memoirs, And Jerry .co.uk/femail/article-445576/Jessie-Mat Mathers as the Beaver. Like him, they were thews-The-Diva-Debauchery.html. squeaky clean. MAUGHAM, W. SOMERSET References (1874–1965) Jerry Mathers, http://www.jerrymathers Parisian-born author—his father was .com; “Jerry Mathers,” IMDb, http:// attached to the British embassy—who www.imdb.com/name/nm0558487/ lost both his parents in childhood. The bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. death of his beloved mother was a lifelong wound. Sent to live with his nearest MATTHEWS, JESSIE (1907–1981) (albeit unwelcoming) relative, the vicar of London-born performer from a large, work- Whitstable, Maugham had a lonely child- ing-class family who first went onstage as hood, growing up with a painful shyness a dancer at the age of 12. She was a star by and debilitating stammer. At his uncle’s 17, soon appearing in stage hits by Rodg- insistence, Maugham eventually went to ers and Hart and Noel Coward, introducing London to train as a doctor. He found his the Cole Porter song “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall studies unsatisfying, but the work gave in Love,” and captivating countless males, him a chance to meet a variety of people, whether they were costars, royals, or even often under highly dramatic conditions; homosexuals. “No man was safe in her pres- he had always enjoyed writing, but now he ence,” recalled JOHN GIELGUD. turned seriously to fiction. At 23, he pub- She made her movie debut in 1923 and lished his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, an was the (expensive) costar of WALTZES instant best seller. 266 n MCA

Maugham went on to become a prolific friends, wounded by his sharp tongue and short-story writer, novelist, and traveler, as occasional fits of spite. He died at 91 at his well as playwright (at one point, he had four villa in Nice; his ashes were scattered on the simultaneous hits in London) and a gentle- grounds of his old boarding school in Kent. man with a surprising taste for adventure; while in his 40s, he served in the ambulance References corps in World War I and undertook various Alfred Hitchcock, “My Screen Memo- espionage missions for the Crown, mostly ries,” Film Weekly (May 1936), http://the aimed at keeping the tsarist regime in power .hitchcock.zone/wiki/Film%20Weekly%20 and in the war. (During the Second World %281936%29%20-%20My%20Screen%20 War, he would renew his relationship with Memories; “Somerset Maugham,” IMDb, the British government’s spy service.) Mar- http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0560857/ ried for a little more than a decade in early bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; “W. Somerset middle age, he was nonetheless gay. Maugham,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Maugham, who often drew directly on http://www.britannica.com/biography/W other aspects of his personal life for his fic- -Somerset-Maugham. tion (the first half of his greatest novel, Of Human Bondage, is a very direct remem- MCA brance of his young adulthood), later Originally the Music Corporation of Amer- turned his Great War adventures into a ica, a booking agency that specialized in jazz collection called Ashenden, or The British bands (and, during the Prohibition era, often Agent. Two stories, “The Hairless Mexican” had to deal with speakeasies and the mob- and “The Traitor,” plus a play by Campbell sters who ran them); by 1939, it had relocated Dixon were combined to form the screen- to Beverly Hills and become a major talent play for Hitchcock’s SECRET AGENT. agency, with LEW WASSERMAN (then only “We switched the two stories round 26) its brightest and boldest agent. By 1950, completely,” Hitchcock later explained. Wasserman was president of the company, “Made (the traitorous) Caypor the innocent which had also launched Revue Productions, victim; turned the Greek into an American; a regular supplier of TV shows to the net- introduced a TRAIN smash for dramatic works. In 1958, it bought the UNIVERSAL purposes; and obtained the love interest from backlot, renting it back to the studio; in 1962, the play.” (Ashenden, first published in 1928, it took over the studio itself. also influenced several generations of British Alfred Hitchcock, an agency client thriller writers, from Eric Ambler and GRA- since 1945, became a major beneficiary HAM GREENE to Ian Fleming and John Le when he sold the company various rights, Carre; although he never gave the character including his television show, in exchange any further adventures, Maugham would for stock; he immediately became its third- occasionally use him as a narrator and stand- largest stockholder. Yet some colleagues, in for himself in other novels.) such as BERNARD HERRMANN, thought Maugham’s many works over a the deal a bit of a devil’s bargain; the more 65-year career include the excellent novel closely Hitchcock was tied to this single The Razor’s Edge, the play The Letter, and studio and his fortune to its stock price, the the short story “Rain,” all of which have more his artistic independence was com- been adapted multiple times for the movies; promised by commercial considerations. he also left behind many other works and a After several mergers, the company number of alienated family members and ceased to exist as a separate entity in 2000. MCCREA, JOEL n 267

References Gay for Today, http://gayfortoday.blogspot Royal S. Brown, “An Interview with Ber- .com/2007/05/alec-mccowen.html. nard Herrmann,” Bernard Herrmann Soci- ety, http://www.bernardherrmann.org/arti MCCREA, JOEL (1905–1990) cles/an-interview-with-bernard-herrmann; South Pasadena–born performer who grew Brian Lamb, “When Hollywood Had a up in and around Hollywood. As a boy, King,” Booknotes, http://www.booknotes he delivered Cecil B. De Mille’s newspa- .org/Watch/159444-1/Connie+Bruck.aspx; per, and as a teenager, he helped out with Dennis McDougal, “The Last Mogul: Lew the horses on Tom Mix movies. Always Wasserman, MCA and the Hidden History interested in acting, he studied drama at of Hollywood,” http://www.dennismcdou Pomona College and worked at the Pasa- gal.com/_br_the_last_mogul__lew_was dena Playhouse; by 1930, he had his first serman__mca_and_the_hidden_history contract at RKO. Although his good looks _of_hollywood_24553.htm; Donald Spoto, and unintimidating charm made him The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred an easy fit for romances and comedies, Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, McCrea also made thrillers (The Most Dan- 1999), 417–18. gerous Game) and dramas (These Three) and was personally fond of westerns; two MCCOWEN, ALEC (1925– ) early hits were Wells Fargo and Union Kent-born performer onstage since 17. Pacific. After years in rep (and touring India and Hitchcock had wanted Gary Cooper Burma during the war with the Entertain- for FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, but ments National Service Association), he when Cooper turned it down, he took began a long and honored career chiefly McCrea instead; the director would later in the classics and with such groups as complain that, in these early days of Hol- the Royal Shakespeare Company and the lywood casting, “I always ended up with National Theatre Company. the next best,” pointing specifically to He made his film debut in 1953 in McCrea as an example. On the set, Hitch- The Cruel Sea; when Hitchcock decided to cock took particular delight in making cast FRENZY with veteran stage perform- the actor as wet and uncomfortable as ers, McCowen got the role of the inspec- possible during the plane crash sequence, tor. But despite the film’s success (and a exulting that “it was quite a show!” (For follow-up role for George Cukor in Trav- his part, McCrea was no more impressed, els with My Aunt the same year), McCow- remembering that the director often en’s primary venue remained the stage. He drank so much champagne at lunch that originated the role of the psychiatrist in he would fall asleep during the after- Equus, and among his singular successes noon’s work.) was a reading of The Gospel According to McCrea had better luck with film- St. Mark. His last screen appearance was maker Preston Sturges, for whom he in 2002 in Martin Scorsese’s The Gangs of worked several times, including the sub- New York. lime The Palm Beach Story and Sullivan’s Travels; after a nicely comic turn in The References More the Merrier, the actor turned almost “Alec McCowen,” IMDb, http://www.imdb exclusively to westerns, including the ele- .com/name/nm0566680/bio?ref_=nm_ov giac, late-in-life Ride the High Country for _bio_sm; Peter Jacobs, “Alec McCowen,” Sam Peckinpah. Quietly modest, inherently 268 n MCGILLIGAN, PATRICK masculine, he was the perfect movie cow- along with the varied personal interests he boy. brings to the material, particularly regard- “I always felt so much more comforting Hollywood’s wartime propaganda, the able in the Western,” McCrea said in 1978, blacklist era, and the role of the screen- shortly after he retired. “The minute I got writer. Not a particularly flashy writer but a a horse and a hat and a pair of boots on, I strong and important voice. felt easier. I didn’t feel like I was an actor anymore. I felt like I was the guy out there References doing it.” “Discover Author Patrick McGilligan,” He died at age 84 in Los Angeles. HarperCollins Publishers, http://www.harper collins.com/authors/6508; Patrick McGil- References ligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness “Joel McCrea,” IMDb, http://www.imdb and Light (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), .com/name/nm0566948/bio?ref_=nm_ov 428, 432, 647. _bio_sm; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New MCINTIRE, JOHN (1907–1991) York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 230–31; David Spokane, WA–born performer who grew Thomson, The New Biographical Diction- up in Montana and had a long career in ary of Film (New York: Knopf, 2002), 582. radio. He tended to be cast as cowboys and ranchers in Hollywood after his late-in- MCGILLIGAN, PATRICK (1951– ) life movie debut in The Hucksters in 1947; Milwaukee, WI–born film historian and among his many credits were Winchester biographer. His subjects have included ’73, The Far Country, The Kentuckian, and directors from Nicholas Ray to Clint East- Rooster Cogburn; he replaced Ward Bond wood and actors from James Cagney to on TV’s Wagon Train, where his creased Jack Nicholson, and he has edited several face and gravelly voice were a familiar volumes of the terrific series Backstory, presence. which collects interviews with Hollywood McIntire appeared on two episodes of screenwriters. Although he has, to date, ALFFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS and written only one book about Hitchcock, was Sheriff Chambers in PSYCHO, where 2003’s ALFRED HITCHCOCK: A LIFE IN the small-town lawman gets the memorable DARKNESS AND LIGHT, it is one of the line “Well, if the woman up there is Mrs. few essential ones, probing deeper than Bates . . . who’s that woman buried out in FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT’s HITCHCOCK/ Greenlawn Cemetery?” The picture was, in TRUFFAUT yet taking a less relentlessly some ways, a family effort; McIntire’s long- critical view of the man than DONALD time wife, actress Jeannette Nolan, helped SPOTO’s ALFRED HITCHCOCK: THE dub Mrs. Bates. DARK SIDE OF GENIUS. And while the He died in Los Angeles at 83 of emphy- book remains in the minority in strongly sema and lung cancer. doubting TIPPI HEDREN’s account of her harassment at Hitchcock’s hands (as References well as being the only biography to suggest “John McIntire,” IMDb, http://www.imdb that ALMA REVILLE had her own affair .com/name/nm0570615/bio?ref_=nm with WHITFIELD COOK), it’s exactly that _ov_bio_sm; Stephen Rebello, Alfred minority opinion that makes McGilligan’s Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho (New sometimes contrarian work so valuable— York: HarperPerennial, 1991), 132–33. MEMORY OF THE CAMPS n 269

MEMORY OF THE CAMPS (GB/ ated victims, stacked like firewood; in one US/USSR 1945/1985) long sequence, we watch captured German soldiers, under the eyes of Allied soldiers, Director: Uncredited (Alfred Hitchcock). forced to drag the corpses across the empty Screenplay: Richard Crossman, Colin Wills. campgrounds and toss them into mass Producers: Sidney Bernstein, Sergei Nol- graves. It was said that, after watching the bandov. footage, Hitchcock retreated to his London Cinematography: Uncredited. Editors: Stewart McAllister, Peter Tanner. hotel room for a week. Original Music: Uncredited. He returned, though, and then gave Running Time: 56 minutes. Black and white. some broad advice to the editors. Pre- Originally Broadcast By: PBS. sciently, it seemed, he knew that people would try to minimize the horrifying details, even deny the camps’ very existence. In editing the film, he said, they should try to use as During World War II, many Hollywood many wide-angle establishing shots as pos- directors contributed to the Allied effort sible, so the size and scope of the gruesome by shooting newsreels, training films, or operation was clear. Also, he advised, cutting propaganda; some, like John Ford and Wil- should be minimized, so there was no hint liam Wyler, went under fire to bring back of trickery or manipulation. footage. Hitchcock—perhaps stung by SIR Eventually the editing was finished MICHAEL BALCON’s characterization and narration written. The gruesome irony, of him as a deserter for leaving England— however, was that, by the time it was done, particularly felt a need to contribute. His the Allies were beginning to have second wartime features FOREIGN CORRESPON- thoughts; German cooperation would DENT, LIFEBOAT, and SABOTEUR all be needed to rebuild their own country feature strong patriotic messages; he shot at (and resist an expansionist Soviet Union). least two films for the British government, Reminding Germans of their nation’s AVENTURE MALGACHE and BON VOY- crimes—and their own complicity—was AGE, and reportedly worked on several considered unwise. The film was shelved, more in the United States, uncredited. although not forgotten. After the war in Europe ended, he “At the end of the war, I made a film was asked by British producer SIDNEY to show the reality of the concentration BERNSTEIN—soon to become his part- camps, you know,” Hitchcock said decades ner in the short-lived TRANSATLANTIC later. “Horrible. It was more horrible than PICTURES—to supervise a nonfiction any fantasy horror. Then, nobody wanted film about Nazi atrocities made from to see it. It was too unbearable. But it has footage shot by the Soviet, American, and stayed in my mind all of these years.” British armies as they liberated the death It clearly influenced his films. Many camps. When Hitchcock arrived in Lon- of Hitchcock’s following Hollywood proj- don, about a half-hour of film had been ects—THE PARADINE CASE, ROPE, already roughly assembled. UNDER CAPRICORN, and I CONFESS— The movie bore only the official title would be far darker and more despairing German Concentration Camps Factual than his previous work and fail to find Survey, and the footage was even more acceptance among the postwar audiences. harrowing than most. There were many Several would also show a different style— clear, unblinking shots of the naked emaci- long, single takes; an aversion to quick 270 n MENZIES, WILLIAM CAMERON cuts—from not only most of his previous His work impressed producer DAVID films but also his central belief in the aes- O. SELZNICK, who gave him full visual thetics of PURE CINEMA. Not coinci- reign over the look of Gone with the Wind dentally, perhaps, this unblinkingly realis- and had him supervise the construction tic style was precisely the one that he had of the sets for REBECCA. Annoyed by the urged on the editors of the atrocity film. SALVADOR DALI dream sequence of Eventually Hitchcock went back to SPELLBOUND, the mogul had Menzies more energetically envisioned movies—and supervise a reshoot; ultimately, no one— eventually, the Holocaust film was redis- Menzies, Hitchcock, or particularly Dali— covered. In 1952, about an hour of foot- was pleased with the result. age—the sixth reel remained in the Soviet Menzies, who won best art direc- Union—was transferred to the Imperial tion for The Dove and Tempest at the first War Museum in London. In the ’80s, the Academy Awards, did much to increase surviving footage was unearthed again and the power and prestige of his profession; broadcast on the PBS show Frontline, now he even created the title of “production titled Memory of the Camps; a documen- designer” to better define its myriad duties. tary about the making of the documentary, One of his most striking works, though, NIGHT WILL FALL, was shown on HBO was the low-budget Invaders from Mars, in 2015. which wed its nightmarish story of mind It was still horrifyingly difficult to control with surreally stripped-down sets watch. Heaven help us if it ever becomes and a tiny, tentacled alien in a fishbowl. easier. Even Dali would have been delighted.

References References Richard Brody, “Hitchcock and the Holo- David Bordwell, “William Cameron Men- caust,” New Yorker, January 9, 2014, http:// zies: One Forceful, Impressive Idea,” David www.newyorker.com/culture/richard Bordwell’s Website on Cinema, http://www -brody/hitchcock-and-the-holocaust; Pat- .davidbordwell.net/essays/menzies.php; rick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- erCollins, 2003), 372–75; David Parkinson, Collins, 2003), 258, 363; “William Cameron “Night Will Fall: The Story of File Number Menzies,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ F3080,” BFI, http://www.bfi.org.uk/news name/nm0580017/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. -opinion/news-bfi/features/night-will-fall -story-file-number-f3080. MERCHANT, VIVIEN (1929–1982) Lancashire-born performer onstage since MENZIES, WILLIAM CAMERON her early teens. By the ’50s, she was a main- (1896–1957) stay on the London stage, even more so New Haven–born, Yale-educated artist who after her husband, Harold Pinter, whom began his work in silent movies and became she married in 1956, became an important famous for his elaborate and exotic produc- playwright. She received particular plau- tion designs. He created the gorgeous back- dits for her roles in his The Homecoming drops for Douglas Fairbanks’s The Thief of and Old Times; among her other impor- Baghdad, made perhaps the first music vid- tant productions were The Maids, opposite eos, and directed the alternately striking and Glenda Jackson, and Peter Hall’s 1967 Mac- stultifying Things to Come. beth, with Paul Scofield. METHOD ACTING n 271

Merchant was a regular presence on MICHAEL CHEKHOV and Stella Adler to British TV and film, as well, bringing her Uta Hagen and Richard Boleslawski—syn- winsome looks and slightly plummy voice thesized different approaches. to parts in Georgy Girl, Accident, and “The Method means the method that Under Milk Wood; she is ALEC MCCOW- works for you,” explained Actors Studio EN’s doting wife (and dreadful would-be member Shelley Winters. cook) in FRENZY. The public breakup of Both hugely influential and widely her marriage to Pinter—they divorced in misunderstood, method acting quickly 1980, and he almost immediately married became the dominant dramatic approach his lover, writer Antonia Fraser—left Mer- in postwar American theater and film— chant bitter and deeply depressed. She died and also the target of ridicule. It is still in London of complications from alcohol- occasionally criticized by performers com- ism at 53. ing from a more classical tradition, particularly in Britain, where there is more References of an emphasis on consistent “technique.” Herbert Mitgang, “Vivien Merchant, 53, LAURENCE OLIVIER and Anthony Hop- Actress,” New York Times, October 6, 1982, kins both made jokes at its expense, Olivier http://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/06/ famously suggesting that its ever-anguished obituaries/vivian-merchant-53-actress practitioners “just act.” .html; “Vivien Merchant,” IMDb, http:// “The Method is a blind alley and an www.imdb.com/name/nm0580357/ extremely baleful influence,” English actor bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. George Rose once proclaimed. “It became a way of sidestepping structure and intel- METHOD ACTING ligence and of making everything personal. An approach to performance, rooted in There is no Method that enables you to the turn-of-the-century work of Konstan- play everything from medieval morality tin Stanislavski, who during his work at plays to Joe Orton. In many cases, it dis- the Moscow Art Theatre and with Anton cards art in favor of cheap psychotherapy.” Chekhov developed the “system,” in which For Hitchcock, method acting was at the actors used both their own emotional best an annoying inconvenience. At worst, memories and a clear understanding of the it ran counter to his picture-first approach characters’ motivations and objectives to to cinema, in which it wasn’t the actor but reach “theatrical truth.” In America, the what was in the frame—and how that com- “system” was adopted and adapted by New bined or contrasted with what was in the York’s Group Theatre and Actors Studio, frame to come—that created a response among others, where it became known as in the audience. This was PURE CIN- the “Method.” EMA, and it went back to the KULESHOV Various schools later coalesced around EFFECT: The camera was the star. It didn’t various approaches: Like Stanislavski, Lee matter what the actor was feeling. All that Strasberg and his followers stressed the mattered was that he looked left or right or importance of the actor accessing and crossed the room on cue. incorporating his or her own feelings and There was madness in these perform- memories, while Sanford Meisner tended ers’ method, Hitchcock declared, and he to emphasize a more direct relationship was having none of it. “The method actor with your scene partner and living “in the is OK in the theatre because he has a free moment.” Other acting teachers—from space to move about,” Hitchcock told 272 n METHOD ACTING

Bryan Forbes during a long BBC televi- DIANE BAKER, he reached his hands out sion INTERVIEW. “But when it comes to and literally molded her face into it. cutting (to) the face and what he sees and The most frustrating collaboration so forth, there must be some discipline. I came, as Hitchcock would often recount, remember discussing with a Method actor on the set of I CONFESS. MONTGOMERY how he was taught and so forth. He said, CLIFT was not only a committed method ‘We’re taught using improvisation. We are actor but also already abusing alcohol and given an idea and then we are turned loose so deeply insecure that he brought his act- to develop in any way we want to.’ I said ing coach with him on the set for consulta- ‘That’s not acting. That’s writing.’” tions; for a director who had already cut the Most of the British actors Hitchcock entire film in his head—who only needed worked with his whole career—from HER- an actor to perhaps say three lines, look up, BERT MARSHALL to ANNA MASSEY— say another line, look left, and then briskly had no trouble with his sort of explicit walk down a flight of stairs—all this talk of do-this, look-there direction (or with his motivation was not only beside the point disinterest in discussing their characters). but also an intolerable waste of time. Neither did the Hollywood icons—such as “He was a Method actor, and neurotic CARY GRANT—who had always relied on as well,” Hitchcock later said. “‘I want you instinct and their own personas. Some per- to look in a certain direction,’ I’d say, and formers, such as KIM NOVAK and JANET he’d say ‘Well, I don’t know whether I’d LEIGH, remembered Hitchcock’s hands- look that way.’ Now immediately you’re off approach to their work as rather freeing. fouled up because you’re shooting a precut “I hired you because you are a talented picture. He’s got to look that way because actress,” Leigh recalled the director tell- you’re going to cut to something over ing her before they began PSYCHO. “You there. So I have to say to him, ‘Please, you’ll are free to do whatever you wish with the have to look that way, or else.’” Eventually role of Marion. . . . But there is one rule on the relationship got so bad that Hitchcock the set—my camera is absolute. I tell the relayed all his instructions to KARL MAL- story through that lens, so I need you to DEN, who—knowing both the Method move when my camera moves, stop when and how Hollywood worked—was able to my camera stops. I’m confident you’ll be translate them for Clift. able to find your motivation to justify the The irony was that, for all his criticism motion. Should you have difficulty, how- of these actors’ approach, in many ways ever, I will be happy to work with you. But Hitchcock was a method director. He liked I will not change the timing of my camera.” to keep his players off balance, sometimes Some actors accepted these rules eas- whispering a dirty word or JOKE before ily. Even some method actors—such as a scene; it broke down barriers, prompted Chekhov, a leading teacher in his own spontaneity, kept them from reciting lines right—found a way to adapt. But for other by rote. And he would go further, if neces- performers, it could be a shock to see how sary, deliberately breaking down an actor’s cavalierly Hitchcock seemed to treat the confidence if he needed them to convey art of acting. When INGRID BERGMAN uncertainty onscreen—as in the way he would begin to agonize over how to truth- famously manipulated JOAN FONTAINE fully express a character’s emotion, the on the set of REBECCA. Although he regu- director blithely told her, “Fake it.” When larly treated actors like props, Hitchcock he required a certain expression from knew that they were vulnerable human MILES, VERA n 273 beings and realized early on that he could cock and His Leading Ladies (New York: exploit those vulnerabilities in order to get Harmony Books, 2008), 92–99. the one thing he wanted: an emotion he could photograph. (In that way, Baker said, MILES, BERNARD (1907–1991) he was a great deal like Elia Kazan.) Middlesex-born actor who, despite his Perhaps what Hitchcock really meant rural, working-class origins—his mother when he once politely objected, saying was a cook, and his father worked on a that he’d never said that actors were cattle farm—went on to Oxford, a long career in but that they should be “treated like cattle” theater, and eventually a peerage (on his was not that they had no feelings but that death, he was Baron Miles of Blackfriars). those feelings could be exploited. And He was adept at both comic, rural charac- that, in the end, they were at the mercy of ters and in classical plays; in 1959, he offi- a man with a prod, stubbornly shocking cially opened the much-respected Mermaid them to get what he wants, moving them Theatre, the first theater to open in London relentlessly in the direction he alone had in roughly 300 years. mapped out. For Hitchcock, he played Drayton, the cold kidnapper in the 1956 version of References THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH; his Diane Baker, interview with the author, most beloved character may be Joe, Pip’s September 2015; Ingrid Bergman and Alan simple guardian in David Lean’s Great Burgess, My Story (New York: Delacorte Expectations, and his most memorable one Press, 1980), 150; Peter Bogdanovich, “Is for British audiences, the Long John Silver That Ticking (Pause) a Bomb?” New York he played in two different TV versions of Times, April 11, 1999, http://www.nytimes Treasure Island, 25 years apart. He died in .com/1999/04/11/movies/film-is-that-tick Yorkshire at 83. ing-pause-a-bomb.html; Mel Gussow, “The Method, Still Disputed but Now Ubiqui- References tous,” New York Times, April 14, 1987, “Bernard Miles,” IMDb, http://www.imdb http://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/14/ .com/name/nm0587061/bio?ref_=nm_ov_ arts/the-method-still-disputed-but-now bio_sm; “Bernard Miles, 83, an Actor, Peer -ubiquitous.html; Alfred Hitchcock, and Founder of London Theater,” New interview by Bryan Forbes, BBC One, York Times, June 15, 1991, http://www December 30, 1969, http://the.hitchcock. .nytimes.com/1991/06/15/obituaries/ber zone/wiki/Alfred_Hitchcock_and_Bryan nard-miles-83-an-actor-peer-and-founder _Forbes_%281969%29; Janet Leigh with -of-london-theater.html. Christopher Nickens, Psycho: The Clas- sic Thriller (New York: Harmony Books, MILES, VERA (1929– ) 1995), 42; David Shipman, ed., Movie Talk: Oklahoma-born, Kansas-raised performer Who Said What about Whom in the Mov- who parlayed a long series of beauty-con- ies (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), test wins (Miss Chamber of Commerce, 36; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: Miss Texas Grapefruit, and finally Miss The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Kansas) into a series of short-lived Holly- Da Capo Press, 1999), 339; Donald Spoto, wood contracts; as she later joked, “I was Laurence Olivier: A Biography (New York: dropped by the best studios in town.” Harper Paperbacks, 1993), 460; Donald She was busy on TV however, and when Spoto, Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitch- Alfred Hitchcock saw her in an episode of 274 n MILES, VERA

The Pepsi-Cola Playhouse in 1955, he called on her—let along acted on them—she did her in for an interview and offered her a per- agree that he clearly wanted to mold her, sonal five-year contract. He compared her to to “create another Grace Kelly out of me,” GRACE KELLY (flattery later recycled for a dream that she had no intention of ful- TIPPI HEDREN and DIANE BAKER). He filling. “Hitchcock had a bit of a Pygma- demanded total control over her appearance lion Complex,” she said years later. “He and wardrobe, even off the set, so that she wanted to make me into a superstar, but I didn’t go around looking like a “Van Nuys just wasn’t interested. . . . It just wasn’t me. housewife.” I was a working mother, busy raising my A petite, reserved brunette, Miles children and my private life has never been seemed an unlikely heir to Kelly’s glamor- discussable.” ous throne, but the calm surface she pro- Unlike Hedren, Miles, who had jected proved to be the perfect camouflage worked steadily before Hitchcock—she had for emotionally troubled characters; she costarred in John Ford’s The Searchers— is excellent as the disturbed heroine of worked just as regularly after. She acted for “REVENGE,” the Hitchcock-directed pre- Ford again in one of his last and greatest miere episode of ALFRED HITCHCOCK films, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. PRESENTS, and in her first feature for him, She also guest-starred on a wide variety of THE WRONG MAN, she gives a chilling television shows, including a classic epi- portrayal of a woman slipping into mental sode of JOSEPH STEFANO’s The Outer illness. Limits, “The Form of Things Unknown,” But by then Miles was heading into and booked several stays at that television her late 30s, with an ex-husband, a new retirement village for old Hollywood stars, marriage, and two children. She had plans Murder, She Wrote. of her own. As, in late 1956, Hitchcock Miles retired from acting in 1995 and moved forward into the final stages of pre- has not given an interview or made a pub- production on VERTIGO—the movie that, lic appearance since. But it’s safe to say that he promised, would “make Vera a major she’s never regretted turning down Hitch- STAR, a real actress”—she announced that cock and Vertigo. After all, “he got his pic- she was pregnant again. She quit the film. ture,” she noted once. “And I got a son.” Hitchcock recast the movie with KIM NOVAK, an actress he quarreled with on References the set and occasionally belittled afterward; Richard Freedman, “‘Psycho’ Actress although he would not treat Miles with Defends Hitchcock,” Spokesman-Review, the hostility he would later treat Hedren, June 25, 1983, http://the.hitchcock.zone/ he did view her choice of a family over his wiki/The%20Spokesman-Review%20 film as a disappointment, if not an outright %2825%2FJun%2F1983%29%20-%20’Psy betrayal. “I lost interest,” he confessed. “I cho’%20actress%20defends%20Hitchcock; couldn’t get the rhythm going with her Donald Spoto, Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred again.” He cast Miles in a few more televi- Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies (New sion roles and in the thankless part of Lila York: Harmony Books, 2008), 220–24; in PSYCHO. (Years later, she reprised the François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. character in Psycho II.) When her contract ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 247– lapsed, he did not renew it. 48; “Vera Miles,” IMDb, http://www.imdb Although Miles firmly denied the com/name/nm0587256/bio?ref_=nm_ov director had any sort of SEXUAL designs _bio_sm. MINICOTTI, ESTHER n 275

MILLAND, RAY (1907–1986) “Milland did everything he was told Welsh-born performer and a born lead- and then made it better,” Hitchcock said ing man blessed with good looks and after the film was released. “He made a easy charm. An accomplished equestrian great movie for Billy Wilder and a very and expert shot, he joined the Household good movie for me.” Cavalry, the division of the British Army Dial M for Murder turned out to be a devoted to protecting the royal family, and final high point for Milland’s acting career; won several marksmanship trophies. he was nearing 50 and losing his hair, and The cavalry, however, was an unpaid leading parts were disappearing. He turned position—it was expected that its mem- first to directing (The Safecracker, Panic in bers would be gentlemen with private the Year Zero, a TV adaptation of ROBERT sources of income—and after several BLOCH’s “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper”). years, Milland was forced to resign. He He dipped into genre pictures (The Prema- decided to try acting on an impulse and ture Burial, X—The Man with X-Ray Eyes). quickly began picking up film work; by He played in films from Frogs to Love Story. 1930, he was in Hollywood with a nine- He kept working. month contract at MGM. “He was a man who was afraid to say Milland’s early career was spotty—he no,” John Houseman said. “He needed keenly felt his lack of training and found it work and was always afraid that his career hard to rise above bit parts. MGM dropped was over after a picture was over. He his contract, and he briefly returned to should have been tougher, but he was such England. A second try at Hollywood a pleasant man that he never pushed it. He seemed no more welcoming—he was always thought he was lucky to be working. about to take a job running a gas station But his best work was truly memorable.” in 1934—when suddenly a British actor Milland died of lung cancer at 79 in dropped out of the movie Bolero and Mil- Torrance, CA. land was offered the role. The actor was kept busy, although References unchallenged, over the next decade, largely Michael Blowen, “Milland’s Best Work Was appearing in exotic romances and light Very Very Good,” Boston Globe, March 12, comedies, but in the mid-’40s, a series of 1989, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Bos pictures—the ghost story The Uninvited, the ton_Globe_%2812/Mar/1986%29_-_Mil FRITZ LANG thriller The Ministry of Fear— land’s_best_work_was_very,_very_good; offered a chance to stretch. Finally, Billy “Ray Milland,” IMDb, http://www.imdb Wilder’s The Lost Weekend in 1945 pro- com/name/nm0001537/bio?ref_=nm_ov vided the breakthrough and an Oscar. It also _bio_sm; “Ray Milland Dies of Cancer; featured an emotional vulnerability, even Won Fame for ‘Lost Weekend’ Role,” Los fragility, that the actor rarely got a chance Angeles Times, March 11, 1989, http:// (or chose) to show, largely playing cool, articles.latimes.com/1986-03-11/news/ even cold, sophisticates; it’s that arch, arctic mn-3089_1_cancer. chilliness that characterizes his performance in DIAL M FOR MURDER as the unflap- MINICOTTI, ESTHER pable murderer who—like the spymasters (1888–1962) in THE LADY VANISHES and NORTH BY Turin-born performer, née Esther Cunico, NORTHWEST—greet their climactic failure who immigrated to America with her fam- with merely a shrug and a quip. ily in 1894; long associated with the theater 276 n MISTAKEN IDENTITY in Italy, the clan became active in Italian- created his current predicament. In THE language drama in the United States, stag- BIRDS, Mitch mistakes Melanie for a sales- ing both translations of classic works and clerk at a pet store; the character’s assump- modern plays for immigrant audiences in tion reveals not only his unconscious bias cities across the country. In 1911, she mar- (any single woman in a store must, of ried a costar, Silvio Minicotti; they contin- course, be there to serve him) but also her ued as frequent onstage partners. fondness for foolish pranks and surrounds Based in New York, she was in her them with not only sarcastic metaphors 60s when she made her English-language (cooing lovebirds, a bird in a gilded cage) debut on Broadway with Katherine Cor- but also the eventual villains of the film. nell in That Lady; with the Italian-lan- Although Hitchcock was happy to guage theater in decline in America, she use mistaken identity for a quick point or began working in television and appeared JOKE (as in MR. AND MRS. SMITH, where in a limited number of excellent films, the husband assumes his wife’s boss is her including Shockproof, House of Strangers, lover), his second and more obvious use of it Marty, and Full of Life. In THE WRONG becomes an important plot device. In some MAN, she played Mrs. Balestrero, Manny’s films, it practically becomes the whole plot: devout MOTHER. She died at 74 in Jack- Richard Hannay is assumed to be a mur- son Heights, Queens. derer in The 39 Steps, Barry Caine a traitor in SABOTEUR, Roger Thornhill a secret References agent in NORTH BY NORTHWEST; it’s this “Esther Minicotti,” IMDb, http://www mistake that sets them on the run, with both .imdb.com/name/nm0591034/bio; Alfred the police and the real villains in pursuit. E. Twomey and Arthur F. McClure, The Yet more than simply sparking the Versatiles: Supporting Character Players in story, the device illuminates character, as the Cinema, 1930–1955 (New York: Castle well, as in their travels these protagonists Books, 1969), 160. also begin to take on some of character- istics of the characters they’ve been mis- MISTAKEN IDENTITY taken for. Hannay learns to elude police; Going back to antiquity, a favorite device Caine discovers a skill for tall tales and of both tragedians and farceurs, allowing trickery; Thornhill, a taste for espionage. kings to move among commoners in dis- They grow into their new roles, in some guise, husbands to flirt unknowingly with ways becoming the people they’re playing. their own wives, and innocents to blunder They also, in so doing, develop a richer into horrible fates. Hitchcock’s films use identity of their own. All of them are the conceit in several very different ways. rather bland and somewhat rootless bach- In the first, being mistaken for some- elors at the beginnings of the films, simply one else allows for a moment of humor or going through their day-to-day existences; a surprising insight into the character or all of them by the ends of the films have theme. In THE 39 STEPS, Richard Hannay not only found a passionate love but also runs into a meeting hall and is mistaken for a new appreciation for life. Their cross- a campaigning candidate. He gives a rous- country voyages have become another ing speech, completely stitched together kind of journey. out of platitudes; it illuminates not only his These sort of mistaken-identity films easy charm but also the basic mindlessness are among Hitchcock’s most enjoyable— of the politics that surround him and have still, as his CATHOLIC school education THE MOLIERE PLAYERS n 277 would have told him, penance must often being Judy? When Norman goes PSYCHO be paid for pleasure. THE WRONG MAN and “becomes” his MOTHER, is he really is that attempt to make amends, with being his mother—or only his own, twisted Hitchcock soberly detailing what a true-life interpretation of her? “He was never all case of mistaken identity means—a slow Norman,” the psychiatrist glibly announces slide into a justice system out of FRANZ at the end. “But he was often only Mother.” KAFKA, a ruined career, a broken mar- But was he? And how often are any of us riage. Grimly told, without humor or even “only” one person at any one time? What the diversion of a real Hitchcock cameo, sort of multitudes do all of us really contain? this is not the lighthearted romp of The “Mother . . . what is the phrase?” Nor- 39 Steps, and unlike Barry Caine or Roger man stammers to Marion. “She isn’t quite Thornhill, Manny discovers nothing new herself today.” Which is perhaps a dark about himself through this mistake; in fact, film’s darkest joke: No, she’s not herself he merely loses the little identity he has as today; she’s Norman, instead. But then, in a husband and musician, slowly fading into Hitchcock, the greatest mistake we make nothing more than a case number. about identity is thinking we have only one. But in the most interesting Hitchcock films, mistaken identity isn’t used for a joke THE MOLIERE PLAYERS or even the starting point for a plot but as Founded in London by actor Paul Bonifas, a theme—with the nature of identity itself a member of the Free French Forces, the becoming the point. In these movies, who Moliere Theatre was a group of actors— and what we are is endlessly mutable. Is French refugees who’d previously been THE LODGER just another avenger, look- with the Comedie Francaise, the Theatre ing for justice in his sister’s death—or is he Sarah Bernhardt, and other companies— literally “the Avenger,” the man who killed who now performed the works of that her? Is Uncle Charlie in SHADOW OF A titular playwright and other classics in DOUBT a beloved relative or a serial killer? England for the public and the armed ser- Is Guy in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN an vices. They also lent their talents to several accomplice in his wife’s death or merely a British propaganda films, including Hitch- GUILTY beneficiary? cock’s AVENTURE MALGACHE and BON In some cases, the answer is both. In VOYAGE, although the first was long sup- some cases, the answer remains ambigu- pressed out of fears that it was close enough ous, even at the end. No, Maxim didn’t to actual events to possibly result in a libel murder REBECCA; John Robie is not the suit. Onscreen, the actors were billed only burglar at work in TO CATCH A THIEF; as “the Moliere Players” chiefly to protect Johnnie is not trying to murder his new their families back in occupied France but wife, despite her SUSPICION—in every included Bonifas (who years later played case, their “identity” is mistaken, the label the stamp dealer in the HITCHCOCKIAN attached to them by others not correct. But Charade), Paul Clarus, and Paulette Preney. none of them is truly innocent. All of them are guilty of something. References And in the most complex Hitchcock “Paul Bonifas,” IMDb, http://www.imdb films of all, identity is at its most compli- .com/name/nm0094585; Donald Spoto, cated, as well. When, in VERTIGO, is Judy The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred being Madeleine, and when is Judy being Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, Judy, and when is she Judy being Madeline 1999), 270. 278 n MONTAGE

MONTAGE For workaday directors churning out main- Although it is perhaps the most modern stream Hollywood films, however, much art, in many ways, the cinema is an amal- of the product consisted of scenes photo- gam of other, older fields. It has the nar- graphed with a fixed camera from several ratives of fiction and the performances standard angles, all of which would be cut of drama, the orchestral scores of music, together later by the editor (often under the the scenery and costumes of art and fash- watchful eye of the producer, who could ion—even dance enters into it, if you can reorder the cuts to emphasize or mini- consider how elaborately some action mize a performance). It was a safety mea- sequences are choreographed. What makes sure—an insurance against some director’s cinema its own, unique art is montage. eccentric style or a star’s unusual perfor- The careful practice of cutting mance—that sought to turn art into a risk- between two scenes, or even among dif- free, assembly-line entertainment made up ferent perspectives within the same scene, of interchangeable parts. and through that contrast and combina- The word montage, meanwhile—which tion making something new—that magical once covered all sorts of editing—now came math of adding one and one and somehow to mean one specific thing: A collection of making three—that is something that only often-silent footage played over music, the movies have, and it’s at the heart of illustrating the passage of time. This could Hitchcock’s work. be as simple (and simplistic) as close-ups Of course, Hitchcock did not invent of various newspaper headlines and falling montage—there are classic examples calendar pages, or it could be a more art- from the work of Eisenstein and D. W. ful sequence of shots bridged by optical Griffith—but in some ways, he rescued it. effects. (Many fine directors, such as Don During the rise of the Hollywood studio Siegel and Robert Wise, began their careers film, for many overworked filmmakers, in the editing room, cutting together mon- editing had become something more like tage sequences.) This sort of editing—often assembling. Nervous executives usually relying on old stock footage—was strictly a demanded “coverage,” meaning that every visual shortcut, a way of packing a certain scene would be shot, often from start to amount of necessary but dull, exposition finish from a small variety of angles. If the into a minute or so of screen time. Hitch- scene was of two people talking on a couch, cock objected to both ideas. there would be a long shot of the room; an He disliked coverage, chiefly because occasional medium shot showing the two he felt—as GRAHAM GREENE had rightly people clearly; and then intercut, over-the- surmised he did in an early review—that shoulder close-ups of each. there was really only one best place for the This was the standard practice, camera in every situation. Hitchcock also although, of course, there were always knew that giving the producer postproduc- exceptions, particularly when strong, tion options was giving up control of the independently minded directors were production, allowing someone else to ulti- involved—from the crazed close-ups of mately impose their vision (exactly why, James Whale’s campy Bride of Frankenstein of course, DAVID O. SELZNICK loved through the idiosyncratic camera move- coverage). So Hitchcock precut the film in ments of Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. his head and recorded those thoughts on Such filmmakers as John Huston and John paper, carefully sketching out each scene Ford developed their own, singular styles. shot-by-shot before shooting even began. MONTAGE n 279

But beyond that, he was entranced at one thing, look at another—without his by classic montage because this—the jux- speaking, you can show his mind at work, taposition of images—was at the heart of comparing things—any way you run there’s the PURE CINEMA he often spoke of and complete freedom. It’s limitless, I would proof that movies created a singular, pow- say, the power of cutting and the assembly erfully emotional response in viewers. It of the images.” wasn’t even enough to simply choose the This is, of course, the famous KULE- right camera angles; you had to know how SHOV EFFECT, and it’s one that Hitch- to put them together. cock was also adept at—the quick con- “There are two primary uses of cutting trasting close-ups of Mr. and Mrs. Verloc or montage in film,” Hitchcock explained in SABOTAGE that herald the murder, the to PETER BOGDANOVICH in 1963. slow interplay between Lila Crane’s ques- “Montage to create ideas, and montage to tioning face and what she sees in the Bates create violence and emotions. For exam- house in Psycho—these are sequences in ple, in REAR WINDOW, where JIMMY which our feeling about the character’s feel- STEWART is thrown out of the window in ings come directly from seeing what they the end, I just photographed that with feet, see. Its purest example comes, of course, in legs, arms, heads. Completely montage. I Rear Window. What kind of person is Scot- also photographed it from a distance, the tie, anyway? We don’t know as we sit there, complete action. There was no comparison watching him watching—until Hitchcock between the two. There never is. . . . It is shows us precisely what he’s looking at. much more effective if it’s done in mon- Hitchcock was too complete a crafts- tage, because you involve the audience man to be wed to only one technique. He much more—that’s the secret.” was nearly as skilled with moving the cam- If it was a secret, it was one Hitchcock era as with editing within it (the breath- used again and again. The climactic scene lessly complicated crane shots in NOTORI- in SABOTEUR as he cuts between Barry’s OUS and YOUNG AND INNOCENT, the face, Fry’s anguish, and the slowly rip- heartbreaking reverse DOLLY in FRENZY). ping sleeves; the struggles in DIAL M FOR He could also lose his way—being so intim- MURDER and SHADOW OF A DOUBT, idated by the writing that he shot JUNO as the women’s open mouths and writh- AND THE PAYCOCK like a play or being ing legs add a level of sick SEXUALITY to so momentarily besotted by long takes the violence; the infamous shower mur- that he made ROPE without any real use der in PSYCHO that makes a minute feel of montage at all. (Both, he later admitted like 30 and convinces us we’ve seen nudity frankly, were fundamental mistakes.) and knife wounds when all we’ve seen is But it is his use of montage—his spe- a blur—this is Hitchcock creating violent cial brilliance in stitching together little emotions simply by cutting together differ- pieces of film—that we truly remember ent pieces of film. today. And for which he’d probably most The other type of montage, Hitchcock like to be remembered. went on to explain to Bogdanovich, was the “juxtaposition of imagery relating to the References mind of the individual. You have a man Peter Bogdanovich, The Cinema of Alfred look, you show what he sees, you go back to Hitchcock, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ the man. You can make him react in vari- Alfred_Hitchcock_and_Peter_Bogda ous ways. You see, you can make him look novich_%281963%29; Alfred Hitchcock, 280 n MONTAGU, IVOR interview by Bryan Forbes, BBC One, times uncredited) on THE MAN WHO December 30, 1969, http://the.hitchcock KNEW TOO MUCH, THE 39 STEPS, SAB- .zone/wiki/Alfred_Hitchcock_and_Bryan_ OTAGE, and SECRET AGENT. Forbes_%281969%29; François Truffaut, Montagu’s individual contributions Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: to those later films, though, are difficult to Touchstone, 1985), 110–13, 214–15. ascertain; preproduction story conferences were often freewheeling affairs, and Hitch- MONTAGU, IVOR (1904–1984) cock could be stingy with sharing praise. London-born son of a baron who studied (Talking to FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT zoology at Cambridge and developed a decades later about The Lodger, Hitchcock precocious interest in and appreciation of failed to credit Montagu at all, merely say- film, particularly the avant-garde. He was ing that an amorphous “they” had recom- the first film critic hired by the Observer mended changes to his cut, and he had and the New Statesman and by 21 had “agreed to make about two.”) cofounded the London Film Society, which Although his early association with championed foreign films and experimen- Hitchcock was a historic one, it was not tal efforts. It was his public enthusiasm the only history Montagu was to make. He for Soviet and Germanic cinema that led shot his own experimental comedies (often producer SIR MICHAEL BALCON to collaborating with CHARLES LAUGH- approach him with Hitchcock’s first cut of TON and H. G. Wells), went to Hollywood THE LODGER in 1926; the studio didn’t with Sergei Eisenstein, documented the know enough to call it EXPRESSIONIS- Spanish Civil War, spied for the Soviets in TIC, but they knew they didn’t want to World War II (codename: “Intelligentsia”), release it. cowrote Scott of the Antarctic, and spent “What was the distributor’s chief decades working to promote Marxism and grudge against the latest Hitchcock—‘The table tennis. He died at 80 in Hertfordshire. Lodger’ by name?” Montagu wrote later. “It was supposed to be highbrow, the most References scarlet epithet in the film trade vocabulary. Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life Hitch, indeed, was deeply suspected by the in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- distributors of this damning fault. Had he Collins, 2003), 190; Ivor Montagu, “Work- not even been trained in an art school?” ing with Hitchcock,” Sight and Sound 49, Montagu praised the film, however, no. 3 (1980), http://the.hitchcock.zone/ while offering some suggestions—drasti- wiki/Sight_and_Sound_%281980%29 cally cutting back the number of title cards, _-_Working_with_Hitchcock; “Obitu- for example. Although Hitchcock was ini- ary: Ivor Montagu,” Times, November tially resistant to changing the film at all, 7, 1984, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ he found the ideas useful and incorpo- The_Times_%2807/Nov/1984%29_-_Obitu rated them. The recut movie was not only ary:_Ivor_Montagu; Tom Ryall, “Ivor approved for release but also made him a Montagu,” BFI Screenonline, http://www famous filmmaker. .screenonline.org.uk/people/id/446857; Montagu helped edit Hitchcock’s Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: DOWNHILL and EASY VIRTUE, as The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da well, and eventually joined Balcon at Capo Press, 1999), 88–89; François Truf- GAUMONT-BRITISH Studios, where he faut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New worked as an associate producer (some- York: Touchstone, 1985), 49–51. MOORE, BRIAN n 281

MONTGOMERY, ROBERT Montgomery continued to direct and (1904–1981) dabble in politics—he was a supporter of New York–born performer whose comfort- the hunt for Communists in Hollywood able life of private schools and European and later advised President Eisenhower on jaunts ended abruptly in 1922, when his his television appearances. He directed his bankrupt father leapt from the Brooklyn last film, The Gallant Hours, in 1960 and Bridge. His son was soon taking whatever after directing a final Broadway play in jobs he could find while looking for work as 1962, Calculated Risk, quietly retired. He a writer or actor, making his Broadway debut died at 77 in New York of cancer. One of two years later in the farce The Mask and the his children was TV’s beloved witch, Eliza- Face. It closed after 19 performances. beth Montgomery. It was the first in a long line of one- month wonders over the decade—Mont- References gomery’s biggest stage hit, Dawn, managed Peter Bogdanovich, The Cinema of Alfred about eight weeks—but his good looks and Hitchcock, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ unobtrusive style kept him employed and Alfred_Hitchcock_and_Peter_Bogdanov eventually won him an entrée into Holly- ich_%281963%29; “Robert Montgom- wood and a contract at MGM. ery,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ Over his career, Montgomery was nm0599910/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; mostly cast in lightly comic roles, such as David Thomson, The New Biographi- Hitchcock’s MR. AND MRS. SMITH (he cal Dictionary of Film (New York: Knopf, was second choice, after CARY GRANT), 2002), 610. but he looked for darker parts, too. He won an Oscar nomination for his role as a mad MOORE, BRIAN (1921–1999) killer in Night Must Fall and, after serving Belfast-born author of short fiction, novels, with distinction in World War II, returned and screenplays, including ghost stories, to direct several films, including Ride a mysteries, and dramas. Born and raised Pink Horse (produced by JOAN HARRI- as a Catholic in Protestant-dominated SON) and the Raymond Chandler adap- Northern Ireland, he left for Canada after tation Lady in the Lake. For that picture, World War II, originally writing thrillers Montgomery—who also starred—stayed with titles like Wreath for a Redhead and offscreen, having the camera see only what A Bullet for My Lady, all published under his character saw, a stylistic twist Hitchcock pseudonyms. Although The Lonely Pas- ridiculed years later in an INTERVIEW sion of Judith Hearne made his reputation with PETER BOGDANOVICH. as a novelist in 1955, Moore continued to “Young directors always come up with occasionally write thrillers and, in the ’60s, the idea, ‘Let the camera be someone and began doing scripts, as well. His first major let it move as though it’s the person, and assignment was TORN CURTAIN for you put the guy in front of a mirror and Alfred Hitchcock. then you see him,’” he said. “It’s a terrible Although Moore enjoyed California, mistake. Bob Montgomery did that in ‘Lady he later charged that the director had a in the Lake’—I don’t believe in it myself. “profound ignorance of human motiva- What are you really doing? You are keep- tion” and that working on the script was ing back from the audience who it is. What “awful, like washing floors”; after turn- for? That’s all you are doing. Why not show ing in his draft, he told Hitchcock that he who it is?” thought neither the plot nor the characters 282 n MORTON, MICHAEL worked and suggested the director simply .html; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitch- write the whole thing off. The advice was cock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New not well received. York: HarperCollins, 2003), 662–65; Don- “Taking criticism or confronting dis- ald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life agreement was another problem for Hitch- of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo cock,” Moore later said. “As with all living Press, 1999), 488–90. legends, no one had the courage to tell him anything that was wrong. That was very MORTON, MICHAEL (1864–1931) bad for the poor man. And because of his English-born author and popular drama- own personality and background—as the tist whose hits—many adapted into silent lonely, frightened boy—he had a horror films—included The Yellow Passport, Colo- of confrontation with people. He wasn’t nel Newcome, and WOMAN TO WOMAN. able to argue something out face to face. He was the first to adapt Agatha Christie to So he did things through intermediaries, the stage, turning her novel The Murder of or he sent someone on a vacation and then Roger Ackroyd into the play Alibi, although replaced him.” Christie said his proposed changes—he Which was what Hitchcock did to wanted “to take about 20 years off Poirot’s Moore, telling him to take some time off age, call him Beau Poirot, have lots of girls and then passing the script on to two other in love with him and give him a strong love screenwriters, Keith Waterhouse and Willis interest”—convinced her to start doing her Hall, asking them to liven up the dialogue. own dramatizing. The indestructible The They continued those fixes even during Mousetrap was one of the results. shooting, although Moore ended up receiv- Morton had a longer and presumably ing sole credit for the screenplay. (Later, more satisfying relationship with Hitch- Moore channeled some of his anger over cock, who adapted Woman to Woman the incident into his novel Fergus.) into the similarly titled film, turned Mor- Moore continued to write scripts and ton’s novel Children of Change into THE novels, and sometimes one came from the WHITE SHADOW, and shared screenplay other; his last produced screenplay was credit with him on THE PASSIONATE for 1991’s Black Robe, based on his own ADVENTURE; Hitchcock also served as book. Many of his works deal with religion, the art director and assistant director on all doubt, loneliness, and the continued strife three movies, which were directed by GRA- in Northern Ireland; GRAHAM GREENE HAM CUTTS and released between 1923 once called Moore his “favorite living and 1924. author.” Morton died at 67 in London. Moore died in Malibu at 77 of emphy- sema. References “Michael Morton,” Omics International, References http://research.omicsgroup.org/index “Brian Moore,” IMDb, http://www.imdb .php/Michael_Morton_%28dramatist%29; .com/name/nm0600972/bio?ref_=nm_ov_ Matthew Pritchard, “Why They Wanted bio_sm; Christopher Fowler, “Invisible to Take 20 Years Off Poirot,” Daily Mail, Ink: Michael Moore,” Independent, March July 10, 2010, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ 20, 2011, http://www.independent.co.uk/ home/moslive/article-1293355/Agatha arts-entertainment/books/features/invisi -Christie-Why-wanted-20-years-Poirot ble-ink-no-69—brian-moore-2246881 -girlfriend.html. MOTHERS n 283

MOTHERS Hollywood with his wife and daughter and “Well, a boy’s best friend is his mother” he seemed to identify even more strongly with the women in his films, they, like —Norman Bates him in this new world, become more hesitant, rootless, uncertain. The mother of The maternal figure is a constant image in SHADOW OF A DOUBT is the most truly Alfred Hitchcock’s work—but also a far pathetic—so emotionally fragile a creature more complicated one than in many other that her own daughter is willing to let a directors’ films. Sometimes she is an inef- murderer go free rather than risk letting fectual, shadowy presence. Sometimes she her find out the truth. (Most significantly, is a nurturer. Sometimes she is a domineer- perhaps, Shadow of a Doubt was made ing monster. And sometimes she is an even while Hitchcock was in the process of los- more ambiguous character—part leader, part ing his own ailing parent; like the charac- lover. And different mothers come at differ- ter in the film, she was named Emma.) It ent points in Hitchcock’s career and life. is in some ways a fond, teary goodbye to In his silent films, they are mostly his mother (and, with his daughter now a absent, although they occasionally serve as teenager, in some ways to the idea of gentle a repository of the audience’s own fears and motherhood itself). doubts (THE LODGER) or authority fig- And now, from here on in—apart from ures who drive the plot forward with their the second THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO worries about social status, suitable mar- MUCH, a remake of his own ’30s film— riages, and what people will think. Most of mothers will be far more fearsome crea- these characters were created while Hitch- tures in his work. The next one we meet cock was still a bachelor and living at home is in NOTORIOUS, the formidable, old- or newly married and childless. His own world matriarch whose adult son troops mother remained the prime template. into her bedroom to confide (much as, His treatment of maternal figures, when he was a child, Hitchcock used to though, changes after the arrival of his have to dutifully recount his day’s adven- daughter, an event that made his wife, tures to his mother); her judgments of him ALMA REVILLE, once simply his partner, are withering, and her plans for cleaning now the newly dominant maternal figure up his messes are coldheartedly precise. in his life. After this, the status of mothers She protects her son, as you’d protect any increases in his films. And so in JUNO AND weak thing, but she is also contemptuous of THE PAYCOCK, the woman is a patient his weakness. Wrapped in satin and disap- and long-suffering source of strength; in proval, she is motivated by duty, not love. THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, a At first, the mothers who follow her in fierce defender; in THE LADY VANISHES, Hitchcock’s ’50s films aren’t quite as for- a plucky symbol of British intelligence; and bidding. In fact, they may seem to be essen- in SABOTAGE, an avenging angel. These tially comic figures—like Bruno’s dithering, women are far braver and bolder than the overindulgent mother in STRANGERS ON flawed and sometimes hesitant men around A TRAIN. But they can also be smother- them. To Hitchcock, a new husband and ingly attentive, even flirtatious, an element father, mothers and older women are now that now brings an uncomfortable tinge genuine, unembarrassed, unironic heroes. of incest to the proceedings. Jessie may be There is an interesting, subtle shift Francie’s meddling mother in TO CATCH ahead, though. After Hitchcock went to A THIEF, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t 284 n MOTHERS interested in John Robie herself; Clara may Not that there weren’t more—if be Roger’s mother in NORTH BY NORTH- less melodramatic—monster mothers to WEST, but sometimes she’s so weary of come. In THE BIRDS, the widowed Lydia him that you’d think he were her husband. Brenner is so reliant on her son, Mitch, so (Complicating matters in both films is that terrified of being abandoned again, that— the actors—JESSIE ROYCE LANDIS and like Madame Sebastian in Notorious—she CARY GRANT—are, in reality, only a few drives away every woman who comes near years apart in age.) him. In MARNIE, Bernice Edgar is so The incest reaches a Grand Guignol ashamed of her own past, so determined to climax in PSYCHO. The film is full of raise her daughter “decent,” that she creates pushy, domineering parents—the Texas a daughter who’s both starved for affection oilman who wants to buy off his daugh- and pathologically terrified of men—and ter’s unhappiness, the mother who gives who therefore sedates herself through long Caroline tranquilizers to get through her horseback rides and compulsive thievery. honeymoon, the father who’s left Sam in For a film about two bachelors, mean- debt, the mother whose picture on the wall while, FRENZY is a film filled with moth- judges Marion’s love life. None, however, ers. True, the only real one we meet in it quite touches Mrs. Bates, who—at least is the parent of the film’s psychopath, according to the state psychiatrist who and however briefly we see her, she’s of a examined her son Norman—was a “cling- type with the moms in the director’s other ing, demanding woman” who spent years serial-killer movies—indulgent, jovial, living locked away with her only son “as if overly familiar. But if she’s the only flesh- there was no one else in the world.” But, as and-blood parent, then it’s the rest of the her own son admits, a “son is a poor substi- women in the film who, while being child- tute for a lover,” and eventually she found less, emerge as truly maternal—Brenda a real one. (who still worries about Richard, her angry And when she did—and, when ex-husband, and slips money into his stunned by this act of betrayal, the jealous pocket when he’s not looking); Babs (who Norman killed them both—his mother stubbornly sticks up for Richard at work has her postmortem revenge by taking and believes him when nobody else will); his life, too, bit by bit, slowly infecting his even Mrs. Oxford, the inspector’s wife, who personality until she takes it over com- cooks elaborate (if apparently inedible) pletely. Not just a controlling personal- meals for her hardworking husband. ity, she controls him utterly. No longer These kind, caring, giving women just a possessive mother, she now pos- feel very much like a rebuke to the hor- sesses him. There are several Mrs. Bates rendous harridans Hitchcock’s postwar in Psycho—the one of flesh and blood films have given us. And yet how does the and the one of Norman’s memory, the world reward them for their sacrifices and one of chemicals and sawdust who sits in worries and oversolicitous service? Mrs. the fruit cellar and the one in a cheap wig Oxford is mocked behind her back. Babs is and black dress who stalks the motel— raped and killed and shoved into a sack of and all of them are made up of love and potatoes (only to have her body unpacked hate. They are the figures of a son’s awed and cruelly abused again). And Brenda is worship and sublimated desire, and taken raped and killed, too, in excruciating detail, together, they are the scariest character in and then abandoned like a half-eaten piece all of Hitchcock. of fruit—much as, afterward, the killer THE MOUNTAIN EAGLE n 285 tosses away an apple core. Even when the In a remote Kentucky town, bitter widower filmmaker seems to treat them sympatheti- J. P. Pettigrew is incensed when he sees his cally—they are three of the kindest char- son, Edward, has fallen in love with the acters in Hitchcock—they are ridiculed schoolteacher, Beatrice Brent—perhaps and minimized and assaulted by others. It because he desires the woman himself. But cannot be merely a coincidence that this when he approaches her, she rejects him, portrayal of the maternal figure as warm, and his son disappears. as vulnerable, as endangered, came just at Now even more infuriated, Pettigrew the point when Hitchcock’s own wife was decides to have the schoolteacher arrested increasingly battling illnesses and remind- on moral charges. But a hermit and old ing him of how yet another maternal figure rival, John Fulton—who once romanced might be lost to him soon; like Shadow of Pettigrew’s wife—saves Beatrice from jail by a Doubt, it is a sad, complicated tribute. It marrying her. Undaunted, Pettigrew then became his final and ultimately forgiving accuses Fulton of murdering his missing son word on the subject. and eventually has him thrown into prison. And so, the story of mothers in Hitch- A year later, John escapes from prison cock’s films is a complex one of both objec- and returns to his mountain cabin to find tification and identification, of figures who that his child with Beatrice is deathly sick. are at first protective; then ineffectual; then Battling a blizzard to get back into town domineering and destructive; and finally, and find a doctor, he runs into Pettigrew simply, at risk. It is a love story. It is a hor- again—and Edward, who has suddenly ror story. And—most ironic of all—it is one reappeared, putting an end to the murder that our greatest storyteller may not even charge. have realized he was telling all along. Hitchcock’s second film (although only Reference released after his third film, THE LODGER, Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: had become a hit), it was shot in Austria The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da and Germany, with the Alps doubling for Capo Press, 1999), 18, 260–61, 288. the mountains of Kentucky and famous vamp NITA NALDI trying to pass as a THE MOUNTAIN EAGLE backwoods school marm. (According to (GB 1927) Hitchcock, she arrived with “four-inch heels, nails like a mandarin’s, and a black Director: Alfred Hitchcock. dog to match her black, swathed dress.”) Screenplay: Eliot Stannard, Max Ferner, Although Hitchcock later pronounced Charles Lapworth. the finished film “awful,” the melodrama Producer: Sir Michael Balcon. was relatively well received on both sides Cinematography: Gaetano di Ventimiglia. of the Atlantic, with Britain’s Daily Mail Editor: Uncredited. guardedly saying that it was “full of charac- Cast: Nita Naldi (Beatrice), John F. Ham- ilton (Edward Pettigrew), Bernhard ter though undramatic” and the Bakersfield Goetzke (J. P. Pettigrew), Malcolm Californian enthusing, “There are more Keen (John “Fear o’ God” Fulton). than the usual number of thrills even for a Running Time: 83 minutes. Black and white. Naldi picture and the picture, in addition, Released Through: Wolf and Freedman offers some scenic gems.” Film Service. Although some stills survive, the film itself is considered lost. 286 n MR. AND MRS. SMITH

References now she’s out of a job. Ann declares that Alfred Hitchcock, “Life among the Stars,” now she’ll never remarry David, although News Chronicle, March 15, 1938, http:// Jeff, David’s law partner, assures him he’ll the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/News_Chron persuade her to change her mind. icle_%281937%29_-_Life_among_the Instead, though, Jeff and Ann begin _Stars; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitch- to date—and it seems likely to grow seri- cock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New ous, although various accidents keep the York: HarperCollins, 2003), 71–72; “Nita lovers apart. Finally, the two take a ski- Naldi Appears in Mountain Film,” Bakers- ing vacation with Jeff’s parents at Lake field Californian, February 1, 1927, http:// Placid—only to discover that David has the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Bakersfield_Cali rented the cabin next to theirs. Pretend- fornian_%2801/Feb/1927%29_-_Nita ing to be suddenly sick, David arouses _Naldi_Appears_in_Mountain_Film; Fran- Ann’s sympathies and forgiveness; real- çois Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. izing the two are truly in love, Jeff leaves (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 39–41. them alone to patch up, for now at least, their marriage. MR. AND MRS. SMITH (US 1941) An unusual departure for Alfred Hitch- Director: Alfred Hitchcock. cock. And yet, in retrospect, perhaps not so Screenplay: Norman Krasna. unusual. Producer: Harry E. Edington. Apart from certain properties (such Cinematography: Harry Stradling Sr. as MARY ROSE, which the director tried Editor: Uncredited (William Hamilton). to adapt for years), Hitchcock’s true Original Music: Edward Ward. Cast: Carole Lombard (Ann Smith), Rob- investment in a project is sometimes dif- ert Montgomery (David Smith), Gene ficult to judge in hindsight. Typically, he Raymond (Jeff Custer). was enthused about most assignments, at Running Time: 95 minutes. Black and white. least through preproduction; during the Released Through: RKO. shooting, though, unless a sudden technical challenge presented itself, he grew utterly bored. Afterward, his final judgment seemed directly tied to the film’s suc- Ann and David Smith are a generally cess—if it wasn’t a hit with audiences and happy but frequently contentious Man- critics, then he was likely to disown it, even hattan couple who, three years into their claiming, in a bit of sour grapes, that he had union, suddenly discovers that their mar- never really wanted to make it in the first riage certificate is not technically valid. A place. simple, second ceremony will set things So Mr. and Mrs. Smith is a difficult right, but a planned romantic night out film to place, as far as Hitchcock’s origi- turns into a disaster, and when David nal feelings were. According to DONALD hesitates in proposing again, Ann kicks SPOTO, the director was enthused about him out. the project early on (and indeed, it fits When David goes back the next morn- into his often-stymied attempt in the ’40s ing, he sees her with an older gentleman; to do different sorts of films); according to jealous, he causes a scene only to find out Hitchcock, who talked down the picture in that the fellow was Ann’s new boss, and later life, it was merely a movie he’d taken MR. AND MRS. SMITH n 287 on as a “favor” to Lombard, a dear friend ride foretells a bet Hitchcock later had with who wanted to work together. his own daughter, briefly stranding her at The simple truth seems impossible to the top of a Ferris wheel during STRANG- discern at this point, but it is a fact that, ERS ON A TRAIN. before leaving England, Hitchcock had said There’s also a darkly humorous scene he wanted to direct CAROLE LOMBARD about trying to recapture past romance; on and that, after arriving, he spoke of making their big night out, David and Ann revisit a “typical American comedy.” Mr. and Mrs. a favorite restaurant, only to find that it, Smith, with its marriage-license gimmick like their marriage, has lost a great deal of and slightly threadbare screwball antics— its charm. It’s a slightly sour view of mar- the carefree genre had begun to seem less riage that would reoccur more regularly in funny once the war began—fit the bill. And Hitchcock’s ’50s films, particularly DIAL M Lombard had been doing dramas then with FOR MURDER and the remake of The Man mixed results—a carefree comedy was what Who Knew Too Much. her career needed. Although Mr. and Mrs. Smith did well Although Lombard and Hitchcock on release, it—like the Smiths’ favorite res- weren’t able to get their first choice for the taurant—hasn’t aged well. The situations male lead—CARY GRANT, by now a busy feel forced, and the characters aren’t very freelancer, didn’t have a spare moment in likable. (There’s no real reason, beyond his schedule—ROBERT MONTGOMERY wishing for an end to the movie, to even seemed like a safe replacement, and Gene want the Smiths to reunite.) Although Raymond was cast as the third part of the it has a number of Hitchcock moments triangle. The set was a happy one, too, with (like his naughty-boy teasing of the CEN- Lombard tweaking the director’s already- SORS with a bathroom scene and another infamous remark about actors being cattle sequence when someone gets unexpect- by setting up a small pen on the set. Inside edly drunk), the moments don’t add up to were three cows with nametags reading a film. “Lombard,” “Montgomery,” and “Ray- Yet it was, nonetheless a hit—and mond.” sadly the last of Lombard’s films released A happy set but hardly a thrilling one. before her death in a plane crash. “I more or less followed NORMAN KRAS- NA’s screenplay,” Hitchcock told FRAN- References ÇOIS TRUFFAUT later. “Since I didn’t Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A really understand the type of people who Life in Darkness and Light (New York: were portrayed in the film, all I did was HarperCollins, 2003), 276–78; Donald photograph the scenes as written.” Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life Yet there were HITCHCOCKIAN of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo touches throughout, from the MACGUF- Press, 1999), 236–40; François Truf- FIN of the technically invalid marriage faut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New license to the MISTAKEN IDENTITY of York: Touchstone, 1985), 139–40; J. Dan- Ann’s boss. The ski-resort vacation looks vers Williams, “What I’d Like to Do with back to Hitchcock’s own honeymoon with the Stars,” Film Weekly, March 4, 1939, Alma (already referenced in THE MAN http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Film WHO KNEW TOO MUCH); a scene with _Weekly_%281939%29_-_What_I%27d Ann and Jeff stuck at the top of a parachute _Do_to_the_Stars. 288 n “MR. BLANCHARD’S SECRET”

“MR. BLANCHARD’S SECRET” (US; ORIGINALLY AIRED Running Time: 30 minutes with commer- DECEMBER 23, 1956) cials. Black and white. Originally Broadcast By: NBC.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay: Sarett Rudley, based on a story Another cynical take on marriage for by Emily Neff. ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, in Producer: Joan Harrison. Cinematography: John L. Russell. which, given a mink by her lover, a married Editor: Edward W. Williams. woman tries to figure out a way to bring it Original Music: Stanley Wilson. home without arousing suspicion. Cast: Mary Scott (Babs Fenton), Robert Horton (John Fenton), Dayton Lummis References (Mr. Blanchard). Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Com- Running Time: 30 minutes with commer- plete Directory to Prime Time Network cials. Black and white. TV Shows, 8th ed. (New York: Ballantine Originally Broadcast By: CBS. Books, 2003), 29; Jack Edmond Nolan, “Hitchcock’s TV Films,” Film Fan Monthly (June 1968), 3–6. ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS’s low- key, lightly comic twist on REAR WIN- MURDER! (GB 1930) DOW, with an inquisitive (and increasingly suspicious) mystery writer who becomes Director: Alfred Hitchcock. convinced her neighbor is up to no good. Screenplay: Alfred Hitchcock, Walter C. Mycroft, Alma Reville, based on the References novel Enter Sir John by Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson. Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Com- Producer: Uncredited (John Maxwell). plete Directory to Prime Time Network Cinematography: Jack E. Cox. TV Shows, 8th ed. (New York: Ballantine Editor: Rene Marrison. Books, 2003), 29; Jack Edmond Nolan, Original Music: John Reynders. “Hitchcock’s TV Films,” Film Fan Monthly Cast: Herbert Marshall (Sir John Menier), (June 1968), 3–6. Norah Baring (Diana Baring), Esme Percy (Handel Fane). “MRS. BIXBY AND THE Running Time: 98 minutes. Black and white. COLONEL’S COAT” Released Through: Wardour Films. (US; ORIGINALLY AIRED SEPTEMBER 27, 1960) The police arrive at a cheap hotel to find Director: Alfred Hitchcock. a young actress dead on the floor, beaten Screenplay: Halsted Welles, based on the to death, and another actress, Diana Bar- story by Roald Dahl. ing, still in the room, dazed, a poker at her Producers: Joan Harrison, Norman Lloyd. feet and blood on her clothes. She has no Cinematography: John L. Russell. Editor: Edward W. Williams. memory of the murder, but as she and the Original Music: Frederick Herbert. other woman had been quarreling—and Cast: Audrey Meadows (Mrs. Bixby), Les she refuses to explain about what—she is Tremayne (Dr. Bixby), Stephen Chase quickly arrested and charged with murder. (the Colonel). At the trial, most of the jurors vote “guilty,” with only Sir John Menier—an MURDER! n 289 actor and impresario who knew the young REAR WINDOW. And the jury room woman slightly—resisting. But the others sequence—introducing a variety of comi- browbeat him, and finally he goes along. cal types and, artfully staging through a The woman is sentenced to death and sent succession of close-ups and repeated lines, to jail to await the hangman. their bullying of Sir John Menier—works But Menier begins to feel he acted too very well. hastily. Tracking down members of Bar- But Menier’s investigation of the mur- ing’s stock company, he investigates the der is improbable (although not quite as murder himself. Eventually he begins to impossible as being a juror at the murder suspect another actor in the troupe, Handel trial of a young woman he already knew Fane. He’s a female impersonator and occa- and had mentored). And instead of the sional high-wire artist but also—and this is chase through the British Museum that the secret he’s desperate to conceal—only climaxed Blackmail, Murder! ends with a half white. talky scene at Menier’s home and then the Taking a tip from HAMLET, Menier villain’s suicide. It’s dramatic, but it’s not asks Fane to audition for a play he’s written great drama. based on the actual crime, in which he plays Yet the film does incorporate sev- a murderous “half-caste”—but although eral HITCHCOCKIAN touches and sty- shaken, Fane refuses to confess and leaves. listic flourishes. There is, for example, Menier follows him to the circus where the EXPRESSIONISTIC use of spinning he is currently working, and—seeing him lights and imagined faces that haunt Fane, waiting in the audience—a despairing Fane the murderer, just before he leaps to his ties a rope around his neck and leaps from death. The marvelously surreal—truly the high wire, killing himself. silent comedy—touch when a lowly stage Baring is released from jail, and we manager visits Menier and his feet liter- next see her embracing Menier—but only ally sink into the plush carpets. And an onstage, where they are now costars. ongoing visual motif of frames-within- frames, as we see people in mirrors or A return to genre, if not to outright great- hanging out of windows or a prop door ness. continually obscures half of the action we Just as BLACKMAIL had seen Hitch- see onstage—always reminding us that cock getting back to the thrills of THE there are things hidden from view and our LODGER after six straight dramas, Murder! understanding. was another attempt at a mystery done after And thematically, there is, of course, the less-than-dramatic adaptation of JUNO the wrong man—although here, it’s the AND THE PAYCOCK, some work on the wrong woman—and both Hitchcock’s revue ELSTREE CALLING, and the com- attention to pertinent detail (we follow the edy short (now presumed lost) An Elastic police along on their investigation, see the Affair, done in conjunction with a studio testimony at the trial) and occasional ironic talent search. Murder! however, never earns disinterest (as the death sentence is about its exclamation mark. to be read, the camera decides to stay in the The BRITISH INTERNATIONAL jury room instead and watches the porter PICTURES film begins strongly, with a sweep up). welter of overlapping dialogue and sound But there are more subtle subtexts, effects and a pan across a rooming-house too, interests that would only become wall, as heads pop out of windows—a small clearer with the films to come. Such as foreshadowing of the images to come in the work of FREUD, which the director 290 n MURNAU, F. W. seemed both intrigued and suspicious of in the cities, with the London Times hail- (one of the jurors, a fatuous upper-class ing it as “not simply a brilliant exercise in woman, has a variety of theories about the mystery melodrama” but a serious charac- defendant’s “fugue” state). There is also a ter study and the sort of film “of which any nod to GUILT (Menier blames himself for country might be proud”; Hitchcock’s sta- Baring’s conviction) and, if not outright tus as the country’s brightest young direc- HOMOSEXUALITY, then certainly a sort tor was once again affirmed. It would be of SEXUAL exoticism (a cross-dressing tra- something he would have to remind him- peze artist?). self of as the next few years would bring But what also runs through the film— only such commercial disappointments as it does in so many Hitchcock films to as THE SKIN GAME, NUMBER 17, and come—is an awareness of actors and audi- WALTZES FROM VIENNA. ences, of PLAYS WITHIN PLAYS and the shows we all put on in public. Here, it’s References rooted in the plot—the characters are per- Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A formers, the police conduct their interviews Life in Darkness and Light (New York: during a performance, the story climaxes at HarperCollins, 2003), 133–39; “Murder!” the circus, and it all ends up back onstage. Times, September 23, 1930, http://the Yet Hitchcock also draws deeper paral- .hitchcock.zone/wiki/The_Times_%2823/ lels between spectators. (The jurors at the Sep/1930%29_-_%22Murder%22; Donald trial, their heads swiveling back and forth, Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life are no different from the folks in the stalls of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo at the circus.) Connections between per- Press, 1999), 126–28; François Truffaut, formances on- and offstage, too. Onstage, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Diana Baring is the sweet, young ingénue; Touchstone, 1985), 73–77. offstage; is she perhaps something else? Onstage, Fane is a man pretending to be MURNAU, F. W. (1888–1931) a woman; offstage, a murderer pretending Westphalian-born filmmaker and child to be innocent. Everything is an act, and prodigy who was reading Nietzsche and everyone is an actor; all that ever changes is Schopenhauer while still in grammar the crowd we play to. school and studied philology and literature Concurrent with filming the English in Berlin and Heidelberg. After valiant ser- Murder! Hitchcock also directed a Ger- vice with the German Air Force in World man-language version, shot with a different War I, he began a film career, starting a stu- cast and eventually released under the title dio with Conrad Veidt. MARY. It was not a successful effort, the Many of Murnau’s most famous early director confessed; he spoke German but films were fantasies—Der Janus-Kopf, not well enough to judge the nuances in the Faust, and the classic Nosferatu, an unau- actors’ performances, and the STAR, Alfred thorized adaptation of Dracula (which Abel, was particularly stiff and stubborn. was suppressed—though not successfully (While there had been the announcement destroyed—by Bram Stoker’s widow). His of a third version to be done in French, the style was marked by EXPRESSIONIST film was never made.) techniques—exaggerated shadows, askew Although Hitchcock later claimed the angles, and effects that more closely mir- original English-language film was “too rored the characters’ inner feelings than sophisticated for the provinces,” it was a hit any objective reality. MURNAU, F. W. n 291

Murnau was not wed to genre, how- and 1925,” he remembered, who were “try- ever. His The Last Laugh—which, on ing very hard to express ideas in purely one of his trips to Germany, Hitchcock visual terms.” When he went to Germany had watched him shoot—was the story as a young filmmaker, Hitchcock visited of a man who is humiliated when he is their studios in hopes of watching them on demoted from hotel doorman to bathroom the set; later, when he finally had control attendant; Sunrise, one of the most beau- over his own productions, he would recall tiful silents, tells a story of true love and being inspired by their inventive imagery corrupting seduction. Both films avoid an and their championing of emotional truth excess of titles—The Last Laugh has only over mere factual recording—their church one—to tell their stories visually. of PURE CINEMA. From 1926 on, Murnau worked in Hollywood, where he was respected—Sun- References rise won a special Oscar as a “unique and “F. W. Murnau,” Biography, http:// artistic production”—but his films were www.biography.com/people/fw-mur not huge commercial successes. His last nau-20717047; “F. W. Murnau: Biog.,” film, Tabu, was an impressionistic docu- Lenin Imports, http://www.leninimports mentary of life in Polynesia. A week before .com/murnau_fw.html#partone; Donald its opening in 1931, Murnau was killed in a Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life car crash. He was 42. of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Murnau was, along with FRITZ Press, 1999), 67–71; David Thomson, The LANG, one of Hitchcock’s few directing New Biographical Dictionary of Film (New models—the “German filmmakers of 1924 York: Knopf, 2002), 619–21. NA

NALDER, REGGIE (1907–1991) inspired vampire. He died in Santa Monica Viennese-born performer, the son of (in at 84 of bone cancer. his own words) a “celebrated courtesan” and an operetta star. During the war, he References played clubs and cabarets, finally end- David del Valle, “The Face That Launched ing up in occupied Paris, working as an a Thousand Trips,” Kinoeye, http://www Apache dancer. After the war, he began .kinoeye.org/03/02/delvalle02.php; “Reg- getting small parts in movies, where his gie Nalder,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ oddly hard, masklike features—partly the name/nm0620513/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. result of disfiguring burns, although Nalder was always vague on the circumstances— NALDI, NITA (1894–1961) won him roles as a villain, including that of New York performer and working-class the assassin in the 1956 THE MAN WHO Irish girl named Mary Dooley, who had KNEW TOO MUCH. to go to work to support her brother after “Hitchcock never gave actors any real her father abandoned the family and her direction,” he told David del Valle in 1989. mother died. Early work as an artist’s “I was a bit put off at first. You really didn’t model led to a vaudeville act and parts in know where you stood with him. He told Broadway choruses. When she was picked very crude and dirty stories like a school- to be a Ziegfeld girl, she changed her name. boy. He knew exactly what he wanted from Hollywood offers soon followed, with you, and once you were there he felt it was Naldi starting out strong costarring in Dr. up to you not to disappoint him.” The only Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with John Barrymore guidance he ever gave Nalder, the actor (a lifelong friend) and Cecil B. De Mille’s remembered, was “to regard the man I was first version of The Ten Commandments; going to assassinate as if he were a beautiful costarring with Rudolph Valentino in woman.” Blood and Sand, A Sainted Devil, and Cobra After the success of the Hitchcock film, established her as Hollywood’s premiere Nalder began to work steadily in America, “vamp.” Offscreen, Naldi added to the ico- mostly on television (Thriller, Star Trek— nography with her heavy drinking, frank where he sported antennae on “Journey to language, and rumored bisexuality. Babel”) and in genre pictures, including That femme fatale image, though, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, the infa- began to pale by the mid-’20s, along with mous Mark of the Devil, and TV’s Salem’s Naldi’s career; playing a small-town school- Lot, in which he plays a very Nosferatu- teacher in Hitchcock’s THE MOUNTAIN

292 n North by Northwest featured Cary Grant in a celebration of Hitchcock’s classic man-on-the-run thrillers. MGM/Photofest © MGM 294 n NAPIER, ALAN

EAGLE was supposed to be a chance to Art and performed with the Oxford Play- take on a different sort of part, although ers. He spent much of the ’30s in West the director was initially horrified to see End theaters before leaving for Hollywood. her arrive at the European set done up in Tall, lean, and confident, he was often cast extravagant Hollywood style. as doctors in such films as Madame Curie, “However,” he had to admit, “Nita The Song of Bernadette, The Uninvited, and turned out to be a grand person. For all Ministry of Fear. her entourage, there was nothing high- He was in three episodes of ALFRED hat about her. She talked to everybody HITCHCOCK PRESENTS (including the in her heavy New York drawl. The Ger- three-part show “I Killed the Count”) and mans, accustomed to the starchiness of the two episodes of THE ALFRED HITCH- Hohenzollerns, fell hard for this American COCK HOUR; in MARNIE, he plays SEAN royalty.” CONNERY’s father, the two of them por- The film, though, failed to reestablish traying two of cinema’s least likely Phila- her stardom, nor did the few that followed. delphians. He was, however, much to his Naldi retired before the talkies came in, but surprise, best known for playing Alfred, her investments didn’t survive the crash; Bruce Wayne’s butler, on TV’s Batman. by 1932, she was bankrupt. She never acted He died in Santa Monica of pneumo- in films again, although she did appear nia at 85. onstage—usually summer stock—and always showed a ready wit. When impresa- References rio Billy Rose congratulated her on her suc- “Alan Napier,” IMDb, http://www.imdb cessful engagement at his Diamond Horse- .com/name/nm0621002/bio?ref_=nm_ov shoe Nightclub, reciting Kipling’s “A Fool _bio_sm; Alfred E. Twomey and Arthur F. There Was,” she waved the praise away. McClure, The Versatiles: Supporting Char- “Don’t be a fool,” she said. “It’s curiosity. acter Players in the Cinema, 1930–1955 They think I’m dead.” (New York: Castle Books, 1969), 170. She died alone of a heart attack in a rented hotel room subsidized by generous NARCEJAC, THOMAS friends and the Actor’s Fund; it was two days (1908–1998) before the maid found her. Naldi was 66. Rochefort-sur-Mer-born author who taught philosophy at Nantes for more than References 20 years and wrote several novels about Donna L. Hill, Joan Myers, and Chris- sailors and the sea. He is best remembered, topher S. Connelly, Nita Naldi, http:// though, for his partnership with PIERRE nitanaldi.com; Alfred Hitchcock, “Life BOILEAU, with whom he wrote dozens of among the Stars,” News Chronicle, March thrillers, young-adult mysteries, and autho- 15, 1938, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ rized sequels to Maurice Leblanc’s novels News_Chronicle_%281937%29_-_Life about the jewel thief Arsene Lupin. _among_the_Stars; “Nita Naldi,” IMDb, Hitchcock, who was scouting con- http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0620519/ stantly for new stories to adapt, had origi- bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. nally tried to buy the rights to the duo’s Celle Qui N’Etait Plus; they went instead NAPIER, ALAN (1903–1988) to HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT, who Worcestershire-born performer who made it as LES DIABOLIQUES in 1955. trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic (Prefiguring PSYCHO, the film had a nasty NESBITT, CATHLEEN n 295 scene inside a bathroom—and an advertis- HARRY for Miss Gravely. She was, he ing campaign that warned audiences not thought, one of the few in the cast who got to give away the twist.) Hitchcock then the dry, slightly British tone of the humor bought one of the pair’s subsequent books, absolutely right. D’Entres Les Morts, and began transform- Later, Natwick was busy on televi- ing it into VERTIGO. sion (including two episodes of ALFRED The director and his screenwrit- HITCHCOCK PRESENTS); won an Oscar ers made a significant change, however; nomination for the genteel mother-in-law whereas, in the novel, you only learn about in Barefoot in the Park; and had her own Judy’s masquerade at the end, Hitchcock mystery series, The Snoop Sisters, with had a scene put in toward the last third, Helen Hayes. Natwick died of cancer in her when she writes a letter confessing every- Park Avenue apartment at 89. thing. It was a bold move, and Hitchcock doubted the wisdom of it himself; until the References film’s final release, he tried cuts both with “Mildred Natwick,” IMDb, http:// and without the scene. But ultimately he www.imdb.com/name/nm0622450/ left it in as the clearest proof of his stron- bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Donald Spoto, gest storytelling belief: Surprise is a simple The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred shock; suspense is the anticipation of one. Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, Although Boileau died in 1989, Narce- 1999), 287; Alfred E. Twomey and Arthur jac continued to credit his new mysteries to F. McClure, The Versatiles: Supporting Boileau-Narcejac. He died of a heart attack Character Players in the Cinema, 1930– in Nice at 89. 1955 (New York: Castle Books, 1969), 171.

References NESBITT, CATHLEEN Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life (1888–1982) in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- Cheshire-born performer who, after finish- Collins, 2003), 563–64; “Thomas Narcejac,” ing her education at the Sorbonne, began a Encyclopaedia Britannica, http://www.bri career on the stage after Sarah Bernhardt, a tannica.com/biography/Thomas-Pierre family friend, urged her on. She was in the -Ayraud-Narcejac. cast of The Playboy of the Western World when its Broadway performance nearly NATWICK, MILDRED caused a riot (as it had in Dublin); was John (1905–1994) Barrymore’s first leading lady in the John Baltimore-born performer who attended Galsworthy play Justice; and was courted by Bryn Mawr School and made her Broad- Rupert Brooke, who wrote her ardent love way debut in 1932. She was a particular poems (but died in World War I of blood hit onstage in George Bernard Shaw’s poisoning from a mosquito bite). Candida and Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit In movies since 1919, her first Ameri- and in her film and television work was can film was Three Coins in the Fountain frequently cast as flustered but well- in 1954; although she was already 66, she mannered eccentrics. There had been talk would act for another three decades, appear- about (mis)casting her in NOTORIOUS, as ing in films from An Affair to Remember CLAUDE RAINS’s MOTHER; that luck- to the original The Parent Trap. In FAM- ily did not come to pass, but Hitchcock ILY PLOT, she played Julia Rainbird, the later signed her for THE TROUBLE WITH wealthy—and GUILT-ridden—eccentric, 296 n NEWMAN, ALFRED whose desire to find a lost heir sets the entire _bio_sm; “Alfred Newman,” mfiles, http:// plot in motion. www.mfiles.co.uk/composers/Alfred-New She died in London at 93. man.htm.

References NEWMAN, PAUL (1925–2008) “Cathleen Nesbitt,” IMDb, http:// Ohio-born performer who, after service in www.imdb.com/name/nm0626350/ World War II, earned a degree in drama bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Chris Hast- at Kenyon University and then got some ings, “Letters Reveal Rupert Brooke’s practical experience with touring stock Doomed Love,” Telegraph, October 14, companies. A year’s study at the Yale 2007, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ School of Drama followed and then work uknews/1566128/Letters-reveal-Rupert on the “METHOD” at the Actors Studio in -Brookes-doomed-love.html. Manhattan; in 1953, he made his Broadway debut in Picnic. NEWMAN, ALFRED (1901–1970) By the following year, Newman was New Haven–born musician and child in Hollywood, starring in the faux-biblical prodigy who played in theaters, restau- epic The Silver Chalice. (When it appeared rants, and eventually the vaudeville circuit on television years later, he publically apol- as the “Marvelous Boy Pianist.” By 20 he ogized for it in a newspaper ad.) In 1956, was a regular fixture in the orchestra pit of though, he got a break with Somebody up Broadway theaters, conducting the scores There Likes Me (originally intended for for musicals by Jerome Kern and George James Dean, who died before filming); Gershwin. within five years, the hits Cat on a Hot Tin Going out to Hollywood to conduct Roof, Exodus, and The Hustler had estab- the score for Irving Berlin’s Reaching for lished him as a top STAR. Although his the Moon, he soon found steady work at popularity was partly based on his chis- studios, eventually settling in at Fox (for eled torso and sky-blue eyes, Newman whom he wrote the signature, triumphant always had more to offer; like Dean, he fanfare accompanying their logo). Credited projected a rebelliousness and vulnerabil- with more than 200 scores—including that ity. But his best parts also showed a core of of FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT—some inner strength, too; unlike Dean, who often of his most memorable work included the seemed on the edge of hysterics, Newman dreamy romanticism of Wuthering Heights always showed a steely sense of self. and the rousing, Copland-esque How the It was his red-hot fame, though, that West Was Won. made UNIVERSAL insist Hitchcock cast Newman died at 68 in Los Angeles. Of Newman as a rocket scientist in TORN his four children, three work in music, with CURTAIN. Hitchcock had wanted CARY daughter Maria being an accomplished GRANT, but Grant told him he was retir- soloist, and David and Thomas both writing, and the studio felt a bankable star was ing for films. Other musically inclined necessary after the director’s last two films Newmans include his brothers, Lionel and with TIPPI HEDREN. As added insurance, Emil, and his nephew Randy. JULIE ANDREWS would be cast as New- man’s wife. References Hitchcock resented the imposition “Alfred Newman,” IMDb, http://www.imdb (and the stars’ huge salaries) and was put .com/name/nm0000055/bio?ref_=nm_ov off when Newman, arriving at the Hitch- NEWTON, ROBERT n 297 cocks’ for a dinner party, promptly doffed NEWTON, ROBERT (1905–1956) his jacket and asked for a beer; the fact that Dorset-born performer from an artis- Newman was also one of those dreaded tic family—his great-grandfather had Method actors, like MONTGOMERY cofounded the Winsor and Newton art CLIFT, also drew his distrust. When the supply company, and his father was an actor persistently questioned Hitchcock esteemed landscape painter. Newton was about the part, the conflict-averse direc- onstage since his early teens and followed tor considered it bad manners and simply the roles wherever they took him, filling withdrew. “I think Hitch and I could have in the gaps between engagements with really hit it off, but the script kept getting in odd jobs—waiting tables in New York’s the way,” Newman said later. Hell’s Kitchen, working on a cattle ranch in The film, which had cost $5 million to Canada. By the ’30s, he was back in Eng- make, made only a disappointing $7 milland and an established stage star, and by lion in its initial release and led to another the late ’30s, he began to concentrate on frustrating lull in Hitchcock’s career; New- movie work; in Hitchcock’s JAMAICA INN man, however, was unscathed and went on he is Jem, the thief who turns out to be an to one of his biggest hits, Cool Hand Luke. undercover agent. Newman’s star would continue to He was a romantic hero in that picture, rise, as his antiestablishment individualism but Newton was a prodigious drinker, and proved to play just as well in the ’60s and his looks began to go quickly; it’s hard to ’70s as it had in the ’50s; the work would see the soft, almost feminine features of continue to deepen and broaden, too, hav- Jem in his Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist, a part ing room for entertainments like Butch Cas- Newton played less than a decade later. sidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, and (It was around this time that Hitchcock Slap Shot and more serious dramas like The thought of using the now-dissipated New- Verdict, Absence of Malice, and The Color of ton again as the lover in THE PARADINE Money, for which he finally won an Oscar. CASE, but DAVID O. SELZNICK insisted Happily married to actress Joanne on LOUIS JOURDAN.) Woodward for 50 years and an avid race Newton continued to work—his por- car driver and dedicated philanthropist, trayals of Blackbeard, the Pirate and Long Newman died at his Connecticut home of John Silver in Treasure Island made him lung cancer at 83. particularly popular among schoolboys and fans of pirate impressions, and he References would appear on an episode of ALFRED Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A HITCHCOCK PRESENTS—but he had Life in Darkness and Light (New York: a tendency to both chew the scenery and HarperCollins, 2003), 664, 672; “Paul drink everything in sight; even Rich- Newman,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ ard Burton was said to be appalled by name/nm0000056/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio his excesses. “I had a great weakness for _sm; “Paul Newman,” Paul-Newman.com, Bobbie Newton,” director David Lean http://www.paul-newman.com/bio.htm; confessed. “[But] he used to drink far Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: too much. And when he had a couple of The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da drinks, he would speak the absolute truth, Capo Press, 1999), 490; David Thomson, which could be horrifying.” The New Biographical Dictionary of Film Newton died in Beverly Hills, in his (New York: Knopf, 2002), 630–31. wife’s arms, of a heart attack. He was 50. 298 n NEW YORK FILM CRITICS CIRCLE

References the Holocaust mixing old and new footage. Susan Dauenhauer Ciriello, A Tribute to Not to be confused with the 1985 restora- Robert Newton, http://www.mooncove tion of the original film broadcast on pub- .com/newton/index.htm; “Robert New- lic television or Night Must Fall, the 1937 ton,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ thriller with ROBERT MONTGOMERY. nm0628579/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Alfred E. Twomey and Arthur F. McClure, References The Versatiles: Supporting Character Play- Richard Brody, “Hitchcock and the Holo- ers in the Cinema, 1930–1955 (New York: caust,” New Yorker, January 9, 2014, http:// Castle Books, 1969), 172. www.newyorker.com/culture/richard -brody/hitchcock-and-the-holocaust; Pat- NEW YORK FILM rick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life CRITICS CIRCLE in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- The oldest critics organization in the United erCollins, 2003), 372–75; David Parkinson, States, founded in 1935 as a corrective to the “Night Will Fall: The Story of File Number ACADEMY AWARDS. In 1938, it gave its F3080,” BFI, http://www.bfi.org.uk/news best director honors to Alfred Hitchcock -opinion/news-bfi/features/night-will-fall- for THE LADY VANISHES, an early and story-file-number-f3080. important start in establishing his critical reputation in America. In years to come, NO BAIL FOR THE JUDGE GRACE KELLY, INGRID BERGMAN, TALLULAH BANKHEAD, and JOAN Long-gestating project based on the novel of FONTAINE would all win prizes for their the same name by wry British author Henry appearances in his films, although none of Cecil. The plot centers on a respected jurist his movies would ever win best picture. who is accused of murdering a prostitute; determined to clear him, his loving daughter inveigles a charming thief into helping her Reference investigate the crime. Hitchcock was inter- New York Film Critics Circle, http://www ested in the story and Cecil’s darkly humor- .nyfcc.com/awards. ous approach and, starting in the mid-’50s, began to develop a script. NIGHT WILL FALL (GB/US 2014) There were difficulties from the start, however, both with the material (prosti- Director: Andre Singer, Lynette Singer. tution was still a problematic subject for Producers: Brett Ratner, Sally Angel. the CENSORS) and the screenwriters; Cinematography: Richard Blanshard. although Hitchcock first approached JOHN Editors: Arik Lahav, Stephen Miller. MICHAEL HAYES, the two had a falling out Original Music: Nicholas Singer. after THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. Cast: Helena Bonham Carter (Narrator). He then went to ERNEST LEHMAN dur- Running Time: 75 minutes. Black-and-white and color. ing the production of NORTH BY NORTH- Released Through: British Film Institute. WEST, but Lehman turned him down. Originally Broadcast By: HBO. Hitchcock finally called in SAMUEL A. TAYLOR, who had worked on VERTIGO, and engaged him to write a treatment; in Hitchcock’s preferred telling of the story, the Nonfiction film about the making and daughter would be a barrister herself and the rediscovery of MEMORY OF THE CAMPS, villain a respected woman, the unsuspected the Hitchcock-supervised documentary on head of a major prostitution ring. Audrey NORTH BY NORTHWEST n 299

Hepburn, who had long wanted to work with ing in misfires like Night of the Generals, The the director, would play the lawyer; Laurence Assassination Bureau, and Who Is Killing the Harvey, her larcenous ally; and old depend- Great Chefs of Europe? In Alfred Hitchcock’s able JOHN WILLIAMS, the judge. muddled TOPAZ, he is the duplicitous Jarre. Ultimately, though, Hepburn turned Noiret found better parts in bet- down the project, although the reason is ter movies in Europe, where he made La somewhat in dispute. Several scholars, quot- Grande Bouffe, Coup de Torchon, Cinema ing Hitchcock’s associate producer Herbert Paradiso, and Il Postino among many oth- Coleman, insist it was because of a brutal ers. That he was able to find steady work scene in which—while disguised as a prosti- at all in the movies with his hangdog face tute—Hepburn’s character is abducted and sometimes amused and perplexed him. assaulted in a park; writer Stephen DeRosa “At the beginning, I was just doing it for insists Hepburn loved the script and only the money, and because they asked me to withdrew because she became pregnant. do it,” he told critic Joe Leydon. “But after In any case, after Hepburn refused two or three years of working on movies, I him, too, Hitchcock—who could be tem- started to enjoy it, and to be very interested peramental when denied—decided to in it. And I’m still very interested in it, abandon the film completely. Although because I’ve never really understood how it PARAMOUNT had spent at least $200,000 works. I mean, what is acting for the mov- developing the project, he told them to ies? I’ve never really understood.” write it off, saying it would be better to lose He died in Paris of cancer at 76. that money now rather than the entire budget after an obviously flawed film flopped. References Ronald Bergen, “Philippe Noiret,” Guard- References ian, November 24, 2006, http://www Steven DeRosa, “No Bail for the Judge,” .theguardian.com/news/2006/nov/25/ Writing with Hitchcock, http://www.writ guardianobituaries.france; Joe Leydon, ingwithhitchcock.com/nobailforthejudge “R.I.P. Philippe Noiret, 1930–2006,” Mov- .html; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: ing Picture Blog, November 23, 2006, http:// A Life in Darkness and Light (New York: www.movingpictureblog.com/2006/11/rip HarperCollins, 2003), 571, 576–78; Donald -philippe-noiret-1930-2006.html. Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life NORTH BY NORTHWEST of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo (US 1959) Press, 1999), 409–12.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock. NOIRET, PHILIPPE (1930–2006) Screenplay: Ernest Lehman. Lille-born performer who decided to study Producer: Uncredited (Alfred Hitchcock). theater after a bumpy time in school. He Cinematography: Robert Burks. toured with a theatrical troupe for seven Editor: George Tomasini. Original Music: Bernard Herrmann. years and also developed a satirical stand- Cast: Cary Grant (Roger O. Thornhill), Eva up act, in which he came onstage as Louis Marie Saint (Eve Kendall), James Mason XIV and discussed current politics. His film (Phillip Vandamm), Leo G. Carroll (the career began in earnest in Louis Malle’s Professor), Martin Landau (Leonard), Jes- Zazie Dans le Metro in 1960, and he rarely sie Royce Landis (Clara Thornhill). stopped acting after. Running Time: 136 minutes. Color. Acclaimed in French cinema, he had less Released Through: MGM. luck with his American films, often appear- 300 n NORTH BY NORTHWEST

Successful, staid, and utterly boring Man- When Thornhill realizes, however, that hattan executive Roger O. Thornhill is hav- Eve remains in danger, scheduled to fly ing a drink at the Plaza when he is acciden- away with Vandamm, he eludes the Pro- tally mistaken by foreign agents for George fessor and his men and sneaks into Van- Kaplan, an American spy; kidnapped and damm’s house. There he discovers that the interrogated by the villainous Phillip Van- statue has a belly full of stolen microfilm— damm, Thornhill barely escapes—only to and they’re already onto Eve. Grabbing the have no one—including his own mother— statue and Eve, he makes his escape, flee- believe him. ing over the heads of the Mount Rushmore Thornhill tracks Kaplan to a New York monument with Vandamm’s men in pur- hotel—the room is empty, but when he suit. Only a well-aimed bullet from a park unthinkingly answers the phone, the agents ranger saves them. become only more convinced that he’s their The film ends with Roger and Eve back target. And when, after visiting the United on the rails but now married, preparing to Nations, he becomes the suspect in the share an upper berth while the TRAIN hur- death of an American diplomat, the police tles into a tunnel. join the chase. Knowing that Kaplan had a hotel res- They had spent fruitless weeks meeting ervation in Chicago, Thornhill takes a train, about adapting THE WRECK OF THE where he meets the flirtatious Eve Kendall. MARY DEARE—but mostly talking about She offers to help him—without revealing wine and movie-industry gossip—when that she’s secretly working for Vandamm. screenwriter ERNEST LEHMAN finally When they arrive in Illinois, she sends him told Alfred Hitchcock he hadn’t the foggi- to a meeting with Kaplan—but the location est idea of how to tackle the script. Hitch- turns out to be an empty field, and Thorn- cock told him not to worry about it, and hill is almost killed by a dive-bombing when Lehman protested that they’d still plane. owe a film to MGM, Hitchcock told him Thornhill tracks Eve to an auction they’d simply do something else. house, where she’s with Vandamm, bus- “I want to do a Hitchcock picture ily bidding on a primitive statue. When he to end all Hitchcock pictures,” Lehman sees he’s not meant to leave alive, Thorn- blurted out. That caught the old AUTEUR’s hill causes a scene, bringing the police. attention because North by Northwest is They take him away but instead of rushing certainly that—both a summing-up and him off to jail take him to the Professor, a kind of finale, bidding farewell to his an American spymaster who explains that mischievous man-on-the-run films with George Kaplan is a fiction meant to distract their mix of lighthearted travelogue and Vandamm from their real agent—Eve. how-far-can-we-push-it SEXUAL tension. Realizing she’s been put in jeopardy, From now on—until that final wink at the Thornhill agrees to one more bit of play- audience in FAMILY PLOT, also scripted acting—he will follow the agents to their by Lehman—the movies would be darker, next stop, Mount Rushmore, where he will grimmer, more despairing. demand custody of Eve to have his revenge; North by Northwest is huge and elegant instead Eve pretends to kill Thornhill, fun, although getting to that point was even thereby proving her loyalty to Vandamm harder work than usual, as Lehman found and eliminating “Kaplan” from the plot. himself under deadline and in the usual position of the Hitchcock screenwriter, NORTH BY NORTHWEST n 301 stitching together different, somewhat dis- spree at Bergdorf’s for her costumes. It was connected ideas. the only time, she later said, she felt like she There would be the central gimmick had a “sugar daddy,” as she watched his of a “pretend” secret agent put in place obvious delight in spending money on her to distract attention from the real spy (an expensive clothes. idea Hitchcock bought from a journalist). “He was a gentleman, he was funny, he There would be some moments borrowed was so attentive to me, with the character, and bettered from other Hitchcock films and he cared about everything Eve Kendall (the knife-in-the-back murders from THE wore,” she said. “He had an eye for the spe- 39 STEPS and the second THE MAN WHO cifics of the character.” (But, she pointed KNEW TOO MUCH). And then there out, he was always strictly polite and pro- would be the pet ideas that the director had fessional—if, perhaps, because he also knew always wanted to get onscreen—such as the she was happily married and with a new chase across the carved, impassive faces on baby at home.) Mt. Rushmore. The hard work continued during pro- Lehman worked frantically, and the duction. Denied permission to film on the process dragged on—which actually suited grounds of the United Nations, Hitchcock Hitchcock’s purposes. He had already had to “steal” the wide shot of Grant walking vaguely discussed the project with JAMES up the steps and into the building by hiding STEWART; now he realized that CARY his camera in a hired van parked across the GRANT was the better choice, but Hitch- street. (So in a way, Hitchcock, terrified of cock, characteristically loath of any confron- the police since childhood, finally got to face tation, shrank from telling Stewart he was no his secret fear and commit a crime.) The longer wanted. Finally, the deadline for Bell, complicated picture went an extra $1 mil- Book and Candle loomed, and the actor had lion over budget, and more than a month to withdraw; Hitchcock could counterfeit into shooting, Grant complained to Hitch- his polite regret while quickly signing up the cock that he still didn’t understand the story. ever-charming, ever-unknowable STAR the Hitchcock told him that was perfect, as his project really needed. character wasn’t supposed to be able to EVA MARIE SAINT, meanwhile, was make heads or tails of it, either. brought onboard as double agent Eve Ken- There was one more problem, too, dall (over the objections of MGM, which after the film was finished; the studio felt would have preferred contract star Cyd it was too long. Couldn’t Hitchcock trim Charisse); the supporting cast was filled it back to something closer to two hours? out with JAMES MASON (Yul Brynner Perhaps cut the scene in the woods between had actually been first choice), New York Grant and Saint after she “shoots” him? theater actor MARTIN LANDAU, JES- Hitchcock not only resented the intrusion SIE ROYCE LANDIS (who’d previously but also disagreed strongly—the scene is sparred lightly with Grant onscreen in TO the first honest one between the two char- CATCH A THIEF), and favorite Hitchcock acters and the core of their deepening supporting actor LEO G. CARROLL. romance. But then he found a lovely fact; Trusted cinematographer ROBERT his contract included the right of final cut BURKS and composer BERNARD HERR- without exception. The scene stayed in. MANN were hired, as well; SAUL BASS Despite the cost overruns and occa- was asked to design the titles; and Hitch- sional second thoughts from star and stu- cock personally took Saint on a shopping dio, North by Northwest was a success with 302 n NORTH BY NORTHWEST audiences and critics. And if it wasn’t quite cutting and composition (which is why, the Hitchcock picture to “end all Hitchcock no doubt, Hitchcock first thought of hav- pictures”—PSYCHO, THE BIRDS, and ing the shower murder in Psycho played in MARNIE would all follow and go deeper silence, too—until Herrmann talked him and darker—then it did serve as a sort of out of it). Hitch’s greatest hits, showcasing his artistry The film also shows Hitchcock’s bril- and, even with the framework of a light liance at getting the casting absolutely right entertainment, his most consistent themes and then turning the actors loose. Grant is and favorite aesthetic approaches. perfectly at ease in the role of the shallow The craftsmanship throughout the Madison Avenue ad man who believes a lie movie is evident right from Bass’s titles, in is just an “expedient exaggeration” until he which a grid of intersecting lines eventually gets caught in a thicket of them. (He gets to turns into the façade of a typical midcen- show off his old acrobatic grace, too, as he tury skyscraper. It’s a design that works on takes several falls, making one of them, into several levels, immediately setting the start an irrigation ditch, almost balletic.) Saint of the story in modern Manhattan and sug- is cool and graceful as Eve; Mason, silkily gesting (along with the actual title, with menacing as Vandamm; and as his trusted its directions from Hamlet) the grid of the aide Leonard, Landau adds more than a map the hero will traverse. touch of homoerotic obsessiveness. It’s also, though, the foreshadowing The gay subtext—and sometimes out- of a compositional form that continues right text—between Leonard and Vandamm throughout the film—the tall vertical and is another Hitchcock theme; at their worst, the broad horizontal. It’s a combination his films seem to conflate HOMOSEXU- that appears again in Psycho with the man- ALITY and emotional instability (if not sion and the motel, but in North by North- outright insanity). But it’s only one part of west, we see it several times—in that stolen a movie that serves as a virtual checklist of wide shot of the United Nations buildings; HITCHCOCKIAN subjects; domineering in the running man and the chasing plane; maternal figures (hauled in by the police, in the tall pines and low cars in Eve and Thornhill’s first call isn’t to his lawyer but Roger’s meeting in the woods; and finally his MOTHER); icy BLONDES who are in the sheer, modernist planes of Van- really “snow-covered volcanoes” (the chilly damm’s house in South Dakota. Eve propositions Roger over lunch); villains It is, indeed, a contrast that’s “quite who move easily through society (like the pleasing to the eye,” as FRANÇOIS TRUF- traitors of The 39 Steps and SABOTEUR, FAUT later called its use in Psycho, but Vandamm is a well-respected man); and the here, it also suggests opposites and inter- violent climax played out against the famous sections—a world in which people pretend backdrop of a national landmark. to be exactly what they aren’t, in which More than that, though, North by utterly different worlds violently collide. Northwest, like so many Hitchcock films, Also strongly used in the film is sound, is a film about IDENTITY. Who is Roger not only with Herrmann’s score (even bet- O. Thornhill? The O, he tells Eve, stands ter in its quietly insinuating moments than for nothing (as it did for the self-inventing its loudly percussive ones), but also without DAVID O. SELZNICK). He doesn’t seem it; the famous crop-dusting sequence has to stand for much either. Twice divorced only a few lines of dialogue and no music (“They said I led too dull a life”), he makes at all and delivers its effects purely through his living in advertising, selling people NOTORIOUS n 303 things they don’t need, taking business .hitchcock.zone/wiki/Destination_Hitch meetings with people who don’t hear him, cock:_The_Making_of_North_by_North basically slipping through Manhattan with- west_%282000%29_-_transcript; Patrick out leaving a trace. McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in He is a man who figuratively isn’t Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- there—until he’s confused with George Collins, 2003), 548–49; Eva Marie Saint, Kaplan, a man who literally isn’t there, interview with the author, November 2009; a fictional construct who is (in actual Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: truth) an empty suit, moved around from The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: vacant room to vacant room. And the curi- Da Capo Press, 1999), 406–9; François ous thing is that, by being confused with Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New Kaplan, Thornhill, who isn’t really present York: Touchstone, 1985), 248–57, 269; Bar- for anyone or anything in his life, suddenly bara Vancheri, “Film Emissary Eva Marie becomes real and of vital importance. He Saint Plays Role Well,” Pittsburgh Post- is pursued by villains, he pursues a lovely Gazette, November 4, 2012, http://www woman, he takes action. He is alive, and he .post-gazette.com/movies/2012/11/14/ has an identity at last—and only because Film-emissary-Eva-Marie-Saint-plays-role his own identity was MISTAKEN for some- -well/stories/201211140179. one else’s and his own life was taken over by a man who never lived. NOTORIOUS (US 1946) The strange, shifting idea of who we are and how we see ourselves and how oth- Director: Alfred Hitchcock. ers see us—it’s a constant in Hitchcock’s Screenplay: Ben Hecht. works, and in his darkest films (VERTIGO, Producer: Uncredited (Alfred Hitchcock). Cinematography: Ted Tetzlaff. Psycho), it’s a black and bottomless hole. Editor: Theron Warth. Who we are changes with any moment, Original Music: Roy Webb. crumbles under every stress. Cast: Ingrid Bergman (Alicia Huber- But in his lightest films, the subject of man), Cary Grant (T. R. “Dev” identity takes on a slightly more optimis- Devlin), Claude Rains (Alexander tic tinge. Who are we, really? Only who Sebastian), Madame Leopoldine Kont- we really want to be. And no one knew stantin (Madame Sebastian), Louis Cal- that better than the poor abandoned son hern (Paul Prescott). from Bristol who reinvented himself as the Running Time: 101 minutes. Black and white. world’s most sophisticated lover and the Released Through: RKO. fearful fat boy from London who became cinema’s coldblooded master of suspense. If North by Northwest is not the great- After the Second World War and the est Hitchcock film ever made, then it is conviction of her traitorous father, Alicia undeniably his most American because it Huberman slips into a self-loathing haze validates its central promise in every frame: of parties, alcohol, and casual affairs. She’s Here, you can be anyone you want to be. pulled out of her tailspin by T. R. Devlin, an American agent who offers her a chance References to strike back at her father’s old Nazi cir- Destination Hitchcock: The Making of cles by helping the government infiltrate a North by Northwest, directed by Peter group of Germans who have already fled to Fitzgerald (2000), documentary, http://the South America. 304 n NOTORIOUS

The Americans’ plan is to have Alicia The first was John Taintor Foote, a seduce the leader of the group, Alex Sebas- sometimes-outdoors writer (and eventual tian, an old admirer of hers, and Devlin— screenwriter—he did The Mark of Zorro) who has begun to fall in love with her— who, in 1921, had his two-part story “The assumes she’ll refuse. But he presents the Song of the Dragon” published in the Sat- scheme to her anyway without voicing any urday Evening Post. It was the tale of a objections, and she glumly agrees—and so young Broadway ingénue who, to help the they both proceed, each disappointed in the American war effort, agrees to seduce one other. of the Kaiser’s enemy agents; afterward, In Rio, Alicia not only contrives to a letter from the president himself helps catch Sebastian’s eye but soon wins a pro- convince her fiancé’s family that, despite posal from him, as well. She agrees to marry this, she is still worthy of marriage. It’s an him and, ensconced in his house, begins absurd melodrama, but something in it reporting back to Devlin about the men appealed to DAVID O. SELZNICK, who who come there for meetings and some- bought the rights and filed them away. thing that seems to be hidden in the wine More than 20 years later, Hitchcock cellar—to which only Sebastian has a key. was finishing up SPELLBOUND and eager Devlin convinces her to get Sebastian to find another project for INGRID BERG- to throw a huge party and steal the key; at MAN. He began to rough out a story about the party as a guest, Devlin sneaks down to a woman who becomes part of a big confi- the cellar with Alicia, where they acciden- dence game; to pull it off, she has to marry tally discover that many of the wine bottles a wealthy man. Hitchcock thought the story seem to be filled with a mineral ore. Sebas- might be set in South America, Argentina tian almost discovers them, and Devlin perhaps, and suggested it to Selznick, Berg- quickly covers up by embracing Alicia and man, and RKO. (He also may have been letting her husband think they slipped away reminded of two colleagues—CHARLES for a kiss—but soon Sebastian finds out the BENNETT and Reginald Gardiner—who truth (so does Devlin—the mineral ore is had both been asked by the British govern- enriched uranium). ment to “befriend” women thought of aid- Sebastian’s mother is horrified when ing the Nazi cause.) Selznick recalled the he tells her he’s married an American spy; story he had bought (and vaguely thought if he tells his cohorts, they’ll kill him for his about turning into a project for Jennifer stupidity. They must murder Alicia first, she Jones). Slowly, all the disparate ideas began proclaims, and soon she begins slipping poi- to come together. son into her daughter-in-law’s coffee. When Turning them into a screenplay fell Alicia shows up at her scheduled meeting to BEN HECHT, who had already written with Devlin appearing ill, he assumes she’s Spellbound and had helped to anonymously hungover, but when she misses another one, punch up several other Hitchcock scripts he grows concerned. He goes back to Sebas- (and would continue to). He and Hitch- tian’s house and, realizing she’s being poi- cock hashed out the basic outline over soned, carries her out to a hospital—leaving long story conferences; then Hecht would Sebastian behind to deal with his suddenly, quickly turn the ideas into pages. There murderously suspicious colleagues. were additional conferences with Selznick, which Hitchcock particularly dreaded, as One of Hitchcock’s greatest films began they were always scheduled for late at night two decades apart in the minds of three dif- and never began on time. (Selznick had one ferent men. perfect idea, though, on casting: for Sebas- NOTORIOUS n 305 tian, no to Clifton Webb, yes to CLAUDE all we see for the longest time is the back RAINS.) of his perfectly groomed head.) But he is Selznick had his own troubles, though, also unobtainable, unknowable, and coldly with Duel on the Sun and his mount- cruel; his hard-boiled words to Alicia are ing debts; eventually, reluctantly, he sold like slaps in the face. (“Dry your eyes, baby, Notorious, its director, script, and STARS it’s out of character.”) to RKO as a complete package. He would As Alicia, Bergman is full off the take the “A Selznick Release” credit but yearning vulnerability we saw in Inter- would have no further involvement; for mezzo: A Love Story and Casablanca. But Hitchcock, who had suffered the mogul’s she is no virgin here, and as PAULINE constant supervision and second-guessing KAEL noted, it was those “fallen woman” (even recutting his scenes on Spellbound) performances (in Saratoga Trunk, in Dr. it was a welcome relief (albeit a short-lived Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) that were often Berg- one; Selznick would be back to his med- man’s most interesting. The pain she shows dling on their next and last film together, at Devlin’s bitter insults is palpable; the THE PARADINE CASE). whispered urgency of her lovemaking is Not that Hitchcock’s troubles ended thrilling. there. The CENSORS raised objections to Rains is the third part of the triangle; the material, primarily to the portrayal of always one of Hollywood’s greatest voices Alicia as a “loose” woman (rewrites made (he was an instructor at the Royal Acad- her more drunken than promiscuous, emy of Dramatic Art when JOHN GIEL- although slighting allusions to her being GUD was a pupil) and a versatile charac- “not a lady” and a reference to her “play- ter actor, he brought the part, as Selznick mates” still remained); Hitchcock worried knew, the sort of smooth sympathy Webb about the ending (at one point, a far more would have had to strain for. But here also violent one was considered, with Sebas- is Rains showing his own vulnerability, the tian’s MOTHER shooting her son and try- short old man in love with a vital young ing to kill Alicia and Devlin stopping her woman, the DOMINATED son still in only by wrecking their car). thrall to Mommy. And Hitchcock later said that he him- The maternal instinct is a strong sub- self was followed by government agents, text in Notorious, and for the first time, alarmed by his making a movie about it begins to take on a darker tone. The nuclear material—although, this may be mother in SHADOW OF A DOUBT, made another instance of him preferring a slightly after Hitchcock’s own mother had died, is embroidered anecdote to the plain truth. (By a loving one, if somewhat vulnerable and the time Notorious went into production, the in need of protection; in Spellbound, made bomb had already been dropped.) directly after, Dr. Petersen takes on a sort Yet, as many talents had been involved of no-nonsense mothering role with Bal- in Notorious, the final product was very lantyne, not unlike the parentally protec- clearly—very brilliantly—a Hitchcock tive relationship ALMA REVILLE had film. Like many of the great Hollywood with Hitchcock himself (a role Bergman studio films, the performances are based tries unsuccessfully to assume again in on personas, with the stars both playing to Notorious with Grant, referring to herself (and playing off our expectations of) their as “Mama”). onscreen iconography. CARY GRANT is But by Notorious, that maternal char- a fantasy figure, impossibly gorgeous and acter has hardened; Madame Sebastian elegantly tailored. (When he’s introduced, (and “Madame” was the way Hitchcock 306 n NOTORIOUS always referred to Alma in public) is coldly she’s still the woman he knows she was. He practical and guiltlessly domineering. Like hopes she’ll refuse. She, needing some defi- Hitchcock with his own mother, Sebastian nite proof of his love, hopes he’ll forbid her meekly goes to her bedroom to give her first. the news of the day; like Hitchcock with And when he doesn’t tell her no, his own wife, he listens carefully while she she knows he doesn’t love her, and when gives him no-nonsense advice on how to she says yes, he knows she’s doesn’t love protect himself from the envious people him—both equally convinced, both equally around him, all jockeying for position. wrong. In Notorious, however, this guidance The irony, of course, is that they so comes with a price; although Alma under- clumsily misread and misunderstand each stood a director had to have leading ladies, other in a film that is in love with and Madame Sebastian will have no other attentive to detail—from the precise title woman in her son’s life. (As Sebastian pro- card that begins the drama, telling us where tests bitterly, “You’ve always been jealous we are and when it is (something reprised of any woman I’ve ever shown any interest later in Psycho) to the very careful close-ups in.”) She is the first example of the cling- of seemingly innocent, suddenly significant ing, demanding mother—more spurned objects—a bottle of wine, champagne in an lover than loving parent—who we see in ice bucket, a key clutched in a hand, dirt on later, even darker Hitchcock films like PSY- a cellar floor. CHO and THE BIRDS. Madame Sebastian They are tiny details that Hitchcock’s had no hand in her son’s wedding, but she camera, wielded by TED TETZLAFF, cap- is quite happy to take charge of the events tures expertly, particularly in a complicated leading up to her daughter-in-law’s funeral. crane shot (which required the construc- But if Madame Sebastian has a twisted tion of an on-set elevator) that swoops view of a mother’s love, then few people down and across a formal entryway to cap- love simply in Notorious; it’s a film of faulty ture the key in Alicia’s hand or the nicely images and unmet expectations, of ugly edited moment (cleanly cut by Theron doubts and unspoken obligations. Devlin Warth, usually stuck on B movies) in which falls for Alicia, even though her past dis- Devlin accidentally smashes a bottle in the turbs him; a prisoner of a sexist double wine cellar. standard, it’s hard for him to be with her And, best of all, there is the kiss—a knowing that other men got there first. stunning sequence in which (cheekily get- “You’re sore because you’ve fallen for ting around censorship restrictions) Hitch- a little drunk you tamed in Miami and you cock has Grant and Bergman prolong the don’t like it,” Alicia tells him. “It makes you moment by locking lips, breaking off, nuz- sick all over, doesn’t it? People will laugh zling some more, cuddling a bit, going back at you, the invincible Devlin, in love with for another session—all the while talking someone who isn’t worth even wasting the about a chicken dinner while the camera words on.” She’s right, and so even though itself, hanging close, seems to join them in he stands up for her in private (turning an embrace à trois. quickly on a colleague who refers to her as Full of romance and regret, passion a “woman of that sort”), Devlin constantly and GUILT, Notorious remains one of tortures them both, testing her by setting Hitchcock’s signature accomplishments— up situations—Will you sleep with Sebas- and his last great film until STRANGERS tian? Will you marry Sebastian?—to see if ON A TRAIN five years later. NOVAK, KIM n 307

References nant and withdrew), and the relation- Ingrid Bergman and Alan Burgess, My Story ship may have been further strained when (New York: Delacorte Press, 1980), 160; Pat- shooting was held up due to her salary fight rick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in with Cohn. In fact, in many ways—frankly Darkness and Light (New York: HarperCol- voluptuous, creatively independent, intel- lins, 2003), 374–81; Donald Spoto, The Dark lectually questing—Novak was precisely Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock the sort of leading lady Hitchcock usually (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 283–90; avoided. But even if the director never Donald Spoto, Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred quite warmed to his STAR, then his star Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies (New never lost her affection for the part, and York: Harmony Books, 2008), 147–60; Bob his typical refusal to engage her questions Thomas, Selznick (New York: Pocket Books, about motivation actually ended up giving 1972), 209; François Truffaut, Hitchcock/ her a kind of freedom. Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, “I was so used to being told what I was 1985), 167–72. supposed to be thinking,” she said. “But when I went to him to talk about how to NOVAK, KIM (1933– ) play the part, he said, ‘That’s what you’re Chicago-born performer whose early supposed to do, my dear.’ And that’s when beauty-contest title—“Miss Deepfreeze”— I started enjoying it. ‘This is incredible,’ I seemed to presciently signal both the good thought, ‘I’m going to be able to work this looks and slightly cool persona that would out myself.’ And who could identify with mark (and sometimes hamper) her time in this more than I could, because of what I Hollywood, where shyness is so often mis- was dealing with at Columbia Pictures and taken for hauteur. with Harry Cohn? I really identified with Her first love as a student had been art, the fact of someone who was being made but modeling paid the bills and won her a over, who was saying ‘Please, see who I am. contract at Columbia, where the bullying Fall in love with me.’” mogul Harry Cohn would micromanage Audiences seemed to have, but Novak her career, trying to make her over into the struggled to express herself, and while there next Rita Hayworth or Marilyn Monroe were still fine films ahead—including the “or, better yet, a composite of both,” Novak delightful Bell, Book and Candle with Ver- said later. “That always was amazing to me tigo costar JAMES STEWART—there were in Hollywood. They hire you because they many other poor films and some bad busi- think you have something special. Yet they ness decisions. She felt betrayed by direc- feel the need to make you over into what tors—with Robert Aldrich redubbing her they want, into something else.” in The Legend of Lylah Clare and Mike Fig- Novak resisted, though, and after gis drastically recutting Liebestraum—and a strong debut in the B movie Pushover finally retired from films in the early ’90s to (made even more remarkable by the free- paint and putter. spirited Novak’s obvious refusal to wear a Private life suits her. Novak seems to bra), she had a string of hits with The Man have found a kind of peace with her hus- with the Golden Arm, Pal Joey, and the ach- band, her art, and her pets, yet her occa- ingly romantic Picnic. sional brave returns to the spotlight have She was not Hitchcock’s first choice sometimes felt uncomfortable (an appear- for VERTIGO (VERA MILES had been ance at a film festival, where she spoke scheduled to do it until she became preg- tearfully for the first time about her bipolar 308 n NOVELLO, IVOR disorder) if not outright cruel (a spot at the Novello was not particularly a subtle 2014 Academy Awards, where her suspi- actor, and in films, he tended to specialize ciously “youthful” looks were harshly scru- in shy, tortured types or honorable young tinized). But the woman who stood up to prep-school boys. That made him fine for Harry Cohn isn’t going to hide. And when The Lodger and even Downhill (which also it comes to her love for Vertigo, she isn’t exploited his appeal among female and gay going to be quiet. male audiences by having him strip to the waist) but led to smirks from British crit- References ics, who saw him as Cardiff’s poor answer Kim Novak, http://www.kimnovakartist to Rudolph Valentino (and just as suspi- .com; Kim Novak, interview with the ciously “unmanly”). author, October 1996; “Kim Novak,” Biog- Novello, who also wrote some lyrics for raphy, http://www.biography.com/peo ELSTREE CALLING, went to Hollywood in ple/kim-novak-9425476; “Kim Novak,” the early ’30s but found few parts and was IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ mostly employed as a rewrite man on other nm0001571/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; people’s movies. (Reportedly, he penned the Obsessed with Vertigo: New Life for Hitch- “Me Tarzan, you Jane” exchange for Tarzan, cock’s Masterpiece, directed by Harrison the Ape Man.) Pronouncing his own efforts Engle (1997), documentary, http://the in America “rubbish,” he returned to Eng- .hitchcock.zone/wiki/Obsessed_with_Ver land and to a long and successful career as a tigo:_New_Life_for_Hitchcock’s_Master composer and stage performer. piece_%281997%29_-_transcript; David Novello died at age 58 in London of Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary a coronary thrombosis; he is perhaps best of Film (New York: Knopf, 2002), 640–41. remembered today through the British songwriting award established in his name NOVELLO, IVOR (1893–1951) in 1955. Welsh-born performer, whose mother was a well-known vocal coach. She encouraged References his interest in music, and Novello went “Ivor Novello,” IMDb, http://www.imdb from being a child prodigy to singing in the .com/name/nm0637040/bio?ref_=nm_ov choir at Oxford, to which he’d won a schol- _bio_sm; Geoffrey Macnab, “Homme Fatal,” arship. At 21, he wrote the lyrics to “Keep Guardian, January 9, 2004, http://www.the the Home Fires Burning,” an extraordi- guardian.com/film/2004/jan/10/1. narily popular song during World War I. Novello’s songwriting continued, NUMBER 13 (GB 1922) although after the war, he began to act, as well; blessed with dark, matinee-idol Director: Alfred Hitchcock. looks, he made his film debut in 1920 and Screenplay: Anita Ross. his stage debut the next year. He starred Producers: John Hitchcock (Alfred Hitch- in Hitchcock’s THE LODGER (although cock, Clare Greet, uncredited). his stardom required a rewrite so that he Cinematography: Joe Rosenthal. was not exposed as the murderer) and in Cast: Clare Greet (Mrs. Peabody), Ernest the movie version of his own play DOWN- Thesiger (Mr. Peabody). HILL, which he cowrote with CON- Running Time: Unfinished. Black and white. STANCE COLLIER (who’d used the pen- Released Through: Unreleased. name “David L’Estrange”). NUMBER 17 n 309

A comedy short about a wealthy Ameri- Investigating an abandoned house in Lon- can couple who build a low-income hous- don, an undercover police detective finds ing project in Britain. This was slated to be a comical hobo, Ben—and an unidenti- Hitchcock’s first film as a director, but the fied dead body. They are soon joined by a financing abruptly disappeared; although woman, Miss Ackroyd, who falls through friends and relatives contributed funds—as the skylight—and by three mysterious peo- did the lead actress, Clare Greet—filming ple who are thieves, there to retrieve a dia- eventually had to stop. mond necklace they’ve hidden in a toilet. “A rather chastening experience,” After a protracted struggle, the thieves the director later confessed; production escape, with the rest in pursuit and a wild never restarted, and whatever footage was chase ensuing by bus and freight TRAIN. completed was written off as lost long When a stray bullet kills the engineer, the ago. Yet although he may have chosen to train speeds out of control and crashes into a forget this picture, rarely mentioning it in departing ferry. Everyone is rescued from the INTERVIEWS, he did not forget Greet’s water, and the necklace is safely recovered. generosity; he continued to cast her in his films, even in bit parts, until the end of Told that his next directing project for her life. BRITISH INTERNATIONAL PICTURES would be Number Seventeen (identified on References some contemporary posters as Number 17), Hitchcock was annoyed. Not only had the Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A script he really wanted to direct, London Life in Darkness and Light (New York: Wall, been given to another director, but HarperCollins, 2003), 54–55; “Num- also he thought this property (based on a ber Thirteen,” BFI, http://explore.bfi.org play, first a novel, by Joseph Farjeon) was .uk/4ce2b74ea4923; François Truffaut, hackwork full of old-dark-house clichés. Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Then he had an idea: Why not play the Touchstone, 1985), 27–29. whole thing for laughs as a satire of mystery thrillers? And, indeed, it might have NUMBER 17 (GB 1932) worked as a comedy—if Hitchcock and his coscenarists had thought of including any Director: Alfred Hitchcock. jokes. But Number 17 only plays like a par- Screenplay: Alfred Hitchcock, Alma Reville, ody with all the funny bits taken out. Rodney Ackland, based on the play by The completed film—which runs Jefferson J. Farjeon. barely over an hour—splits into two Producers: Leon M. Lion (John Maxwell, unequal parts. In the first, a variety of uncredited). people converge on the abandoned house, Cinematography: Jack Cox. Editor: A. C. Hammond. getting into various fights and, occasion- Original Music: Adolph Hallis. ally, revealing their surprise true IDENTI- Cast: John Stuart (Barton), Leon M. Lion TIES. A long, dull slog, it has most of the (Ben), Anne Grey (Nora), Donald Cal- action taking place on a dimly lit flight of thorp (Brant), Ann Casson (Miss Ack- STAIRS and only Leon M. Lion, who origi- royd). nated the role of the tramp onstage—he Running Time: 66 minutes. Black and white. served as producer, too—showing any life. Released Through: Wardour Films. The second half then turns into an exaggerated chase, ending in an almost childish 310 n NUMBER 17 orgy of destruction. It briefly wakes up the touches of BONDAGE. But the plot is a film, thanks to its frantic crosscutting (and muddle, the characters uninteresting, the prefigures some of the more adult work to acting undistinguished, and the comedy come in THE LADY VANISHES), but the never really connects. “A disaster” Hitch- deliberately hyperbolic nature of the action cock called it years later, and it would be doesn’t induce the gales of laughter Hitch- difficult to argue with him. cock assumed it would. There are a few Hitchcock touches, References such as a SUBJECTIVE shot of a fist com- Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life ing straight at the camera, followed by a in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- reaction shot of a man falling backward— erCollins, 2003), 146–48; Donald Spoto, a set-up the director would repeat sev- The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred eral times in years to come, even as late Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, as NORTH BY NORTHWEST. There are 1999), 129; François Truffaut, Hitchcock/ also a few Hitchcock obsessions, such as a Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, fondness for scenes set in bathrooms and 1985), 81–82. O

OAKLAND, SIMON (1915–1983) http://www.nytimes.com/1983/09/01/ Brooklyn-born performer—some sources obituaries/simon-oakland-61-actor-who list his birth date as 1922—and the son -starred-in-3-tv-series-dies.html. of a laborer, who began his career in the arts as a violinist; later, after World War O’HARA, MAUREEN (1920–2015) II, he turned to the stage instead, making Dublin-born performer who yearned to his debut in 1948 and getting his big break act from an early age and was in music and when he took over from Paul Muni in the dance classes from the age of six, including original Broadway production of Inherit dramatic studies with the Abbey Players. the Wind. She made a screen test at 18 under her own He had made his screen debut in a name, Maureen FitzSimons. CHARLES bit part in The Desperate Hours in 1955 LAUGHTON, who was then beginning and tended to play stern authority fig- his own company, Mayflower Productions, ures—doctors, newspaper editors, police- signed her to a seven-year contract; pro- men. Alfred Hitchcock cast him as the nouncing her name too long for marquees, psychiatrist in PSYCHO who’s called upon he changed it. to “explain” Norman Bates; that it’s a grat- Her first major role was with Laugh- ingly dull scene says less about Oakland ton as the spirited orphan girl who finds than it does, perhaps, about Hitchcock’s her uncle’s Cornish house is a nest of cut- suggestion that all explanations of charac- throats and smugglers in JAMAICA INN; ter are pointless. although Hitchcock seemed to take his Oakland would appear in West Side usual perverse interest in getting his lead- Story, The Sand Pebbles, Bullitt, and many ing lady as wet and uncomfortable on the TV episodes; he was a regular on several set as possible, O’Hara had no problem series, including the cult fantasy show The with his direction and wrote later in her Night Stalker. He died at 68 of cancer in memoirs that she “never experienced the Cathedral City, CA. strange feeling of detachment with Hitch- cock that many other actors claimed to References have felt.” “Simon Oakland,” IMDb, http://www “Hitchcock was fabulous to work .imdb.com/name/nm0643000/ with,” she said another time. “But he bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; “Simon Oak- couldn’t help it. He had the gift of genius land, 61, Actor Who Starred in 3 TV Series, from the heavens and gave the world won- Dies,” New York Times, September 1, 1983, derful stories and movies.”

n 311 312 n O’HARA, MAUREEN

Laurence Olivier escorts Joan Fontaine into Manderley in Rebecca, as Edward Fielding looks on. United Artists/Photofest © United Artists

She reteamed with Laughton in Amer- her favorite films were Miracle on 34th ica for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, in Street; How Green Was My Valley; and, of which she played the gypsy Esmerelda; this course, The Quiet Man. led to a long career in Hollywood, where “Every STAR has that certain some- her flaming hair and Junoesque stature thing that stands out and compels us to kept her busy in costume dramas, although notice them,” she said once. “As for me I OLIVIER, LAURENCE n 313 have always believed my most compelling frankly modeling his casual style after actor quality to be my inner strength, something Gerald du Maurier. I am easily able to share with an audience. “If I wasn’t an actor, I think I’d have I’m very comfortable in my own skin.” gone mad,” Olivier said years later. “You She died at 95 in Boise, ID, one year have to have extra voltage, some extra tem- after being awarded an honorary Oscar for perament to reach certain heights. Art is a a lifetime of performances that “glowed little bit larger than life—it’s an exhalation with passion, warmth and strength.” of life and I think you probably need a little touch of madness.” References Slowly establishing himself, Olivier “Actress Maureen O’Hara Dies at 95,” USA married actress JILL ESMOND in 1930 Today, October 25, 2015, http://www.usa and—although denigrating the medium— today.com/story/life/people/2015/10/24/ took a stab at films, which paid better than actress-maureen-ohara-dies-at-age the stage. (“You’ve no artistic integrity, -95/74536318; Ronald Bergen, “Maureen that’s your trouble,” Noel Coward told O’Hara: Obituary,” Guardian, October him.) It proved unsuccessful, though—the 24, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/ studios suggested he change his name to film/2015/oct/25/maureen-ohara; “Mau- “Larry Oliver”—and ended with him being reen O’Hara,” IMDb, http://www.imdb fired from Queen Christina, in which he .com/name/nm0000058/bio?ref_=nm_ov was to have appeared with Greta Garbo. _bio_sm; Nick Thomas, “Oscar-Winning Returning to England and the stage, Maureen O’Hara Speaks about Her Life as Olivier joined the Old Vic, although his a Hollywood Legend,” Irish Central, Sep- naturalistic reading of Shakespeare’s lines tember 25, 2015, http://www.irishcentral. was often compared (unfavorably) with the com/culture/entertainment/Oscar-winning more poetic style of older actors, such as -Maureen-OHara-speaks-about-her-life- JOHN GIELGUD. By the late ’30s, though, as-a-Hollywood-legend.html#. Olivier had finally drawn acclaim for his performance in Coriolanus—and begun his OLIVIER, LAURENCE affair (later to blossom into marriage) with (1907–1989) the gorgeous, erratic Vivien Leigh. Surrey-born performer who came from A second try at Hollywood was more a long line of clergymen. His father was a successful, with Olivier’s performance little too extravagantly “high church” to in Wuthering Heights—a difficult one, find regular employment (he styled himself with director William Wyler pushing him as “Father Olivier”) but was a good speaker toward an even smaller, more cinematic who had once dreamed of his own career style—winning him an Oscar nomination on the stage and encouraged his youngest for best actor and no doubt getting him son to explore drama professionally. the lead in Alfred Hitchcock’s REBECCA A precocious star, Olivier drew atten- (based, oddly enough, on a novel by tion even in grammar-school plays; actress DAPHNE DU MAURIER, the daughter of Ellen Terry raved about his Brutus in Julius his old idol). Caesar when the boy was only 10. Olivier Olivier was too young for the role—a went on to Oxford and then won a schol- problem only exaggerated by the obviously arship to the Central School of Speech fake gray streaks in his hair—but he caught Training and Dramatic Art. (PEGGY ASH- the character’s arrogance and quicksilver CROFT was a classmate.) By 1925, he was moods. Not all of that was strictly acting, appearing regularly on the London stage, either; Olivier was furious that Leigh hadn’t 314 n OLIVIER, LAURENCE been cast as his costar (producer DAVID some ways, Olivier—despite his technical O. SELZNICK, who had already put her prowess and disdain for METHOD ACT- in Gone with the Wind, wanted the STARS ING—served as the perfect bridge between kept separate until Olivier’s divorce came the prewar British classicists and the post- through), and the actor frequently took war acolytes of the Actors Studio, bringing out his anger on the skittish JOAN FON- to his parts both accomplished technique TAINE, mocking her mercilessly. and visceral immediacy. It was a difficult working relation- Unlike his friends and compatriots ship—Olivier would occasionally spray Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, however, her with spittle during their close-ups, Olivier maintained a healthy appreciation then upbraid her for complaining—made for stardom and its iconography. Person- deliberately more difficult by Hitchcock, ally, like Orson Welles, he had an enor- who, even as he encouraged Fontaine, mous love for wigs, costumes, and putty took pains to remind her that no one else noses, always feeling a bit naked onstage liked her. The psychological torture was without them; privately, like almost every- cruel but effective; Fontaine ended up one, he stood in enormous awe of CARY projecting precisely the sort of wounded GRANT, who seemed to exist so perfectly uncertainty that the role and her director easily onscreen. required. In the ’50s, Olivier appeared with After Pride and Prejudice—in which Leigh for the last time in Titus Androni- again, much to Olivier’s anger, Leigh was cus, a performance that brought him more not cast—the couple got the chance to raves, and then dazzled in the gritty The appear onstage in a production of Romeo Entertainer, a role he later repeated on and Juliet they helped finance. The play film. Throughout the ’60s, he would move flopped, but another pairing, in the movie between the screen and the stage, excel- That Hamilton Woman, was more success- ling in Spartacus, the HITCHCOCKIAN ful. Following its release, the now-married Bunny Lake Is Missing, and Oh! What a couple returned to England, where Olivier Lovely War and helping found the National volunteered his services for the war effort. Theatre, where he served as director for 10 It was with the encouragement of the Min- years. istry of Information that he made his rous- By the ’70s, his health had grown too ing version of Henry V. frail to encourage long theatrical runs, but Olivier would follow this after the he continued to appear regularly in films war with his acclaimed (and Oscar-win- and television, with memorable roles in ning) film of Hamlet—an obligation that ANTHONY SHAFFER’s Sleuth, Marathon prevented him from starring in THE Man, The Boys from Brazil, and A Little PARADINE CASE—and racked up further Romance—admitting, without a touch of stage successes; Leigh was by now sadly guilt, that he did the vast majority of his battling both alcoholism and manic depres- movie roles for the money, although in sion. (The couple would finally divorce in 1983 he rallied to do a fine King Lear for 1960; in 1961, he married his last wife, television. Knighted in 1947, he was made actress Joan Plowright.) a peer of the realm in 1970; unlike many Critics who had first been suspicious others, he resisted using the titles in his film of his more naturalistic approach to the and stage credits. classics now acclaimed his work for its He died of renal failure at 82 in West modern vigor and unforced physicality; in Sussex. “ONE MORE MILE TO GO” n 315

References Schmeling; she continued to make films, “Biographies: Laurence Olivier,” History, mostly light comedies and musicals under http://www.history.co.uk/biographies/lau the direction of her mentor and former rence-olivier; “Laurence Olivier,” IMDb, lover Carl Lamac. Although Ondra and http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000059/ Schmeling were of formidable propaganda bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Patrick McGil- value to the Nazi regime—at least until the ligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Dark- boxer lost his second fight with Joe Louis— ness and Light (New York: HarperCollins, they also quietly resisted it, even briefly 2003), 249–50, 391; Donald Spoto, The hiding two Jewish children in their Berlin Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred apartment. Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, Ondra essentially retired in 1943, 1999), 212–19; Donald Spoto, Laurence although she returned for two more films Olivier: A Biography (New York: Harper in the 1950s. She died in Hollenstedt of a Paperbacks, 1993), 170–71; Donald Spoto, stroke at 83. Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies (New York: Harmony References Books, 2008), 87–99; David Thomson, The “Anny Ondra,” IMDb, http://www.imdb New Biographical Dictionary of Film (New .com/name/nm0648565/bio?ref_=nm York: Knopf, 2002), 647–49. _ov_bio_sm; “Anny Ondra Screen- test,” BFI, https://www.youtube.com/ ONDRA, ANNY (1903–1987) watch?v=7Z8mSwzSQQk; Tim Bergfelder, Galicia-born performer who by 17 was “Anny Ondra,” BFI Screenonline, http:// already appearing onstage and making www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/460529. films. To engage in such a disreputable profession brought her a beating from her “ONE MORE MILE TO GO” father, an army officer, but the free-spirited (US; ORIGINALLY AIRED woman redoubled her efforts, soon becom- APRIL 7, 1957) ing a leading lady in first Czech and then German cinema; as language was no barrier Director: Alfred Hitchcock. in the silent era, by the late ’20s, she was Screenplay: James P. Cavanagh, from a lending her BLONDE good looks to British story by F. J. Smith. films as well. Producer: Joan Harrison. Cinematography: John L. Russell. In 1929, Alfred Hitchcock cast her Editor: Edward W. Williams. in THE MANXMAN, as the third part of Original Music: Stanley Wilson. the triangle, and then in BLACKMAIL. Cast: David Wayne (Sam Jacoby), Steve Her Czech accent, however, proved to Brodie (Motorcycle Cop). be a problem when the decision came to Running Time: 30 minutes with commer- shoot the film with sound; the director cials. Black and white. had actress JOAN BARRY stand offscreen Originally Broadcast By: CBS. and speak the lines while Ondra mouthed them. (Ondra’s first, giggly sound test, with the portly director making risqué remarks, survived and can be found online.) After accidentally killing his wife, Sam puts With the talkies ending her interna- her in the trunk of his car and decides to tional career, Ondra returned to Germany, dump the body in a lake; on the drive there, where in 1933 she married boxer Max however, he’s stopped by a motorcycle cop 316 n ORMONDE, CZENZI who notices his broken taillight and insists for Hitchcock as an assistant when she was on helping him fix it. A simple story whose approached with the assignment. long periods of silence and basic situa- In any case, Hitchcock gave her the tions—the nerve-racking drive, the suspi- writing job with the instructions she read cious policeman, the body to be sunk and neither the novel nor Chandler’s script; disposed of—seems to prefigure PSYCHO, instead, he told her the story and then which the same cinematographer would sent her off to write. Working under the shoot three years later. supervision of his associate producer, Barbara Keon, and ALMA REVILLE and References with the start of production looming, she Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Com- did the final script in less than a month. plete Directory to Prime Time Network (Chandler—who actually didn’t want any TV Shows, 8th ed. (New York: Ballantine credit—still shared it, as the studio wanted Books, 2003), 29; Jack Edmond Nolan, to trade on his fame.) “Hitchcock’s TV Films,” Film Fan Monthly Ormonde wrote several television epi- (June 1968), 3–6. sodes over the next decade, another novel, and two movies—the crime picture Step ORMONDE, CZENZI (1906–2004) Down to Terror and the Mr. Magoo cartoon Tacoma, WA–born writer—née Gladys feature 1001 Arabian Knights—but later Snell—whose family relocated to Los Ange- retired to live quietly in Idaho. When Once les while she was a teenager. In her 20s, she You Meet a Stranger, a gender-switched TV began working for various studios as a sec- remake of Strangers on a Train was done in retary, writing short stories in her spare 1996, Ormonde once again got screenplay time. She sold to a number of slick maga- credit—and once again had to share it with zines, including Collier’s, Liberty, and the Chandler. Saturday Evening Post; some of the stories She died in Hayden, ID, at 98 of com- she wrote for Cosmopolitan were reworked plications from a fall. and published as her first novel, Laughter from Downstairs, in 1947. References When Alfred Hitchcock was looking “Czenzi Ormonde,” IMDb, http://www for a new screenwriter for STRANGERS .imdb.com/name/nm0650262; Carl Gid- ON A TRAIN—he already had a treatment lund, “Czenzi Ormonde: A Private Per- from WHITFIELD COOK and several son, a Prolific Writer,” Spokesman Review, screenplay drafts he deemed unusable from August 14, 2004, http://www.spokesman RAYMOND CHANDLER—he turned to .com/stories/2004/aug/14/czenzi-ormonde various “name” writers, including his old -a-private-person-prolific-writer; Patrick collaborator BEN HECHT. Here the facts McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in grow a little fuzzy. According to several Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- sources, Hecht turned him down but rec- Collins, 2003), 443, 445–49; Donald Spoto, ommended Ormonde, his extravagantly The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred named assistant; according to her son, Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, however, Ormonde was already working 1999), 324, 328, 332. P

THE PARADINE CASE (US 1947) valet, who seems to have had a more intimate relationship with his mistress than he Director: Alfred Hitchcock. should. Over Mrs. Paradine’s objections, Screenplay: David O. Selznick, Alma Keane determines to defend her by suggest- Reville, James Bridie, from the novel by ing that the servant might have committed Robert Hichens. the murder in order to collect a bequest. Producer: David O. Selznick. During the trial, though, the misogy- Cinematography: Lee Garmes. Editor: Hal C. Kern. nist Judge Horfield is clearly biased against Original Music: Franz Waxman. Keane’s client, and Mrs. Paradine is furious Cast: Gregory Peck (Anthony Keane), when Keane tries to cast suspicion on the Alida Valli (Maddalena Paradine), valet. After a day of angry testimony, the Charles Laughton (Judge Horfield), servant kills himself—and the distraught Ethel Barrymore (Sophie Horfield), Mrs. Paradine confesses on the stand to Louis Jourdan (Andre Latour), Ann having been in love with him and having Todd (Gay Keane). poisoned her husband to extricate herself Running Time: 125 minutes. Black and white. from the marriage. Released Through: Selznick Releasing Defeated, Keane slinks home to his Organization. forgiving wife.

A picture only its producer wanted to The beautiful, coolly reserved—and make. recently widowed—Mrs. Paradine is DAVID O. SELZNICK had first read arrested one night at her London home, Robert S. Hichens’s novel The Paradine charged with murdering her blind, older Case in the ’30s (he would later adapt husband at their country estate. She is Hichens’s novel The Garden of Allah) and quickly taken to prison, where she is tried three times over the decade to get a greeted by her solicitor, Sir Simon, who production up and running. Each time, brings the barrister who will argue her case, though, the screenplay—with its central Anthony Keane. story of adultery—ran afoul of the CEN- Keane, though happily married, is SORS. By the mid-’40s, though, Selznick almost immediately besotted by his client, decided to take another pass at it. His whom he endeavors to defend. And the seven-year contract with Alfred Hitch- more he investigates, the more suspicious cock was about to lapse, and the director he is of the dead man’s handsome young had shown no real interest in renewing;

n 317 318 n THE PARADINE CASE

Anthony Perkins found huge success as Norman Bates in Psycho but also a typecasting that followed him for years. Paramount Pictures/Photofest © Paramount Pictures as he was still on the payroll at $5,000 a warmed to the idea. Although the “Master week—and his last project had been sold of Suspense” had already done a comedy off to RKO as a package deal—Selznick was (MR. AND MRS. SMITH) and a straight determined to squeeze at least one more drama (LIFEBOAT) since his arrival in movie out for his own studio. Once again, America, courtroom thrillers were one The Paradine Case was dusted off. of Hitchcock’s least favorite genres; in No one apart from Selznick—who had fact, his films generally cut away from tri- to buy back the rights from MGM—really als entirely or reduced them to a few lines THE PARADINE CASE n 319 of overheard dialogue. Nor were STARS (a record for Hitchcock) and cost $4 mil- clamoring to perform in it. LAURENCE lion, or nearly as much as Gone with the OLIVIER turned down the lead role—he Wind—and this for a film in black and was already busy preparing HAMLET— white, with no spectacular crowd scenes or and the all-important female lead was a special effects. Some of this was Hitchcock’s question mark. (Reportedly, Greta Garbo fault (his first, laborious, time-consuming had been approached and refused it with a experiments with long takes and elaborate simple, firm “No murderesses.”) tracking shots), some was Selznick’s (con- Eventually GREGORY PECK was set stant on-the-set and in-the-editing-room for the lawyer, and two new Selznick dis- meddling), and some simply bad luck (a coveries—Italian actress ALIDA VALLI stretch of bad weather that complicated the (billed here simply as “Valli”) and French exterior sequences). actor LOUIS JOURDAN—were cast as All would have been forgiven and for- Mrs. Paradine and her lover. Neither was gotten if the film worked. But there was Hitchcock’s choice. The raven-haired Valli little life to the performances. The Paradine was far more in line with Selznick’s taste Case is supposed to be—like VERTIGO, in leading ladies, and Jourdan was simply like MARNIE—a story of SEXUAL obses- too handsome for the role; for the story to sion, in this case both Keane’s for Mrs. have any power, Hitchcock insisted, the Paradine and Mrs. Paradine’s for the ser- lady should be having an affair with some- vant. Peck, however, remains too sensible one crude, like ROBERT NEWTON, big and polite throughout and—Hitchcock was and rough and “with horny hands, like the right—Valli’s adultery too understandable devil.” (Clearly the director knew, from his for the mad act of passion it’s supposed personal connections to the famous EDITH to be. (Who but a saint wouldn’t cheat on THOMPSON murder case, the way the a bitter old blind man with a handsome flouting of social taboos could add fire to young Louis Jourdan?) any obsessive romance.) There are flashes of some interest- Nor did the story conferences go ing themes that a better script (or a more smoothly. Hitchcock, who was already involved director) might have drawn out. not-so-secretly planning a break with Selz- There is the implication (cut by the cen- nick and preparing for his new venture, sors) that Judge Horfield gets a singular TRANSATLANTIC PICTURES, delegated sexual frisson out of sentencing women work on the script to others. An old friend, to death; there are also the three unhappy James Bridie, did an initial treatment with- marriages (the Paradines, the Keanes, the out conferring with the director; after a Horfields) that fill the film. But there are number of screenwriters turned down the no explicit comparisons drawn between assignment, ALMA REVILLE took charge. them, and Mrs. Keane is made so blandly, Although she ended up getting an “adapta- selflessly understanding—perhaps serving tion” credit (BEN HECHT lent an invisible as Selznick’s wish-fulfillment version of his hand, too), Selznick thought even this too own wife, as the entire film seems to plug generous; he insisted on writing the screen- into the obsession with Jennifer Jones that play himself, although often his pages wrecked Selznick’s marriage—that the ten- would arrive only as the day’s shooting was sion dissipates. about to begin. And while there are the usual Hitch- The difficulties continued during the cock subtexts of GUILT and innocence, shoot, which lasted a grueling four months IDENTITY and performance, another 320 n PARAMOUNT deeper layer—as in, for example, the pos- trimmed by nearly a third. (Among the sibility that the valet’s relationship with missing: the scenes that, in the film’s early his master was more erotic than dutiful— engagements, had probably helped ETHEL is never explored or given even the vague BARRYMORE win an Oscar nomination.) hints Hitchcock sneaked past the censors An intrusive FRANZ WAXMAN score in ROPE and STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. only played up the jarring shifts in mood Frankly, Hitchcock seemed to find the between domestic tranquility and illicit story dull—and as he always did when a obsession; worse, it shamelessly recycled a film failed to arouse his deeper interests, he theme from Waxman’s work on REBECCA. diverted himself with technical challenges. In the end, Selznick’s interferences Visually, the film is certainly very rich. only took a middling film and muddled Director of photography LEE GARMES— it; the movie became Hitchcock’s biggest who had immortalized MARLENE DIET- financial failure to that date (only TOPAZ RICH a decade before—gave both Jour- eventually surpassed it), and Peck later said dan and Valli the full star treatment; a it was the only film he’d made that he’d jailhouse scene between Peck and Valli is like to take out and burn. Although one a symphony of slowly shifting lighting, as can speculate as to what the director’s cut if clouds were passing by just out of sight. would have looked like, speculation is what There are also some interesting long takes it must remain; reportedly all the alternate (an idea Hitchcock possibly brought back footage was lost in a 1980 flood. from his work on MEMORY OF THE CAMPS) and some nicely, subtly angled References shots in the courtroom in which the cam- Rudy Behlmer, ed., Memo from David O. era consistently looks up to emphasize Selznick (New York: Viking Press, 1972), CHARLES LAUGHTON’s status and looks 374, 377–79; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred down to emphasize Peck’s lack of power. In Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light another bravura sequence, we stay tight on (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 384–96; Valli’s face as Jourdan enters behind her “The Paradine Case: Notes,” TCM, http:// and see her intense awareness of the man, www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/86212/The as if she can almost smell him. -Paradine-Case/notes.html; Donald Spoto, But despite these flourishes, The The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Paradine Case is still more a Selznick movie Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, than a Hitchcock picture. The relationship 1999), 293–302; Donald Spoto, Spellbound between director and producer had always by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Lead- been its own mix of power and status and ing Ladies (New York: Harmony Books, hard-won compromise, but with Hitchcock 2008), 163–73; Bob Thomas, Selznick (New already distracted by future projects and York: Pocket Books, 1972), 242–43; Fran- clearly uninterested in any further collabo- çois Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. rations, Selznick grew more forceful and (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 173–77. less likely to compromise than ever. He had already rewritten the script; in postproduc- PARAMOUNT tion, he took over the editing and scoring. The second-oldest American film studio, None of this was for the better. Long, com- after UNIVERSAL, and the last one to still plicated camera movements were abruptly have its base in Hollywood, Paramount cut into separate, mismatched shots; Pictures grew out of Adolph Zukor’s entire scenes were lost, as what reportedly Famous Players Film Company, which had been close to a three-hour film was tried to broaden the motion picture audi- PARKER, DOROTHY n 321 ence by offering better-educated custom- working-on-the-lot/general-info/history ers more literary offerings; “Famous Play- .html; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: ers in Famous Plays” was their slogan. A Life in Darkness and Light (New York: Two years later, the company was recon- HarperCollins, 2003), 47–50. stituted as Paramount, although much of Zukor’s mind-set held fast and would PARKER, CECIL (1897–1971) continue—well into the 1930s and 1940s, Sussex-born performer who, after service in Paramount had a reputation for literate, the First World War, began his stage career slightly naughty sophistication. It was also in London. Although his first successes were known as being more of a writers’ haven in Shakespeare, he soon became best known than most, with some of their best screen- for his light, comic performances (or at writers—Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder— least his comical characters—even his vil- ascending to the director’s ranks. lains were never as important or impressive As government antitrust regulations as they thought they were). For Hitchcock, hurt Paramount badly in the 1950s—more he was the craven Mr. Todhunter in THE than most studios, it had relied heavily on LADY VANISHES and the blustering gov- aggressive “bloc-booking” practices and ernor in JAMAICA INN and later dropped maintained an extensive chain of theaters— by for an episode of ALFRED HITCHCOCK Hitchcock’s arrival there in 1954 was wel- PRESENTS; a regular presence in Ealing come. (Coincidentally, his first studio job comedies, he was particularly delightful in had been at a British subsidiary of Para- The Man in the White Suit and The Ladykill- mount, British Famous Players-Lasky, Ltd.) ers and had a long and successful stage run And the relationship was mutually benefi- in Blithe Spirit. He died at 73 in Brighton. cial, with Hitchcock doing his best work for the studio—REAR WINDOW, TO CATCH References A THIEF, THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY, “Cecil Parker,” IMDb, http://www.imdb THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, and .com/name/nm0662116/bio?ref_=nm_ov VERTIGO. _bio_sm; Bruce McFarlane, “Cecil Parker,” It was PSYCHO, though, that was the BFI Screenonline, http://www.screenonline breaking point—dismayed by the subject .org.uk/people/id/448873. matter, the studio refused to fund it, even to let it be shot on their lot, although they PARKER, DOROTHY (1893–1967) grudgingly agreed to distribute it. Hitch- New Jersey–born, ultra-Manhattan writer cock left shortly thereafter for UNIVERSAL who brought her sharp and extremely and with his own, very nice parting gift; focused wit to everything she did; although thanks to the contract LEW WASSERMAN some lamented the fact that she never wrote had negotiated for him, the rights to all his a novel or even her memoirs, her talent was Paramount films reverted back to him eight best lit by flashes of lightning, glimpsed years after their initial release dates. quickly in short stories; brief poems; and the brisk, rude dialogue of screenplays. References She began her writing career during Ivor Davis, “Return of the Missing Hitch- World War I, working at the “slick” maga- cocks,” Times, November 15, 1983, http:// zines, including Vogue and Vanity Fair; she the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/The_Times_%2815/ was fired from the latter when her wickedly Nov/1983%29_-_Return_of_the_miss negative reviews began to annoy too many ing_Hitchcocks; “History,” Studios at Para- Broadway producers, but she found a more mount, http://www.paramountstudios.com/ congenial home at the New Yorker. Her 322 n THE PASSIONATE ADVENTURE moving “Big Blonde” won the O. Henry ories. “These were no giants,” she said of Prize as best short story of 1929, and she her old New York friends. “Think who was published several best-selling collections of writing in those days—Lardner, Fitzgerald, poetry. Faulkner and Hemingway. Those were the In 1934, she and new husband Alan real giants. The Round Table was just a Campbell moved to Hollywood, where they lot of people telling jokes and telling each found, as BEN HECHT had said, that writ- other how good they were. Just a bunch of ers worked in teams, “like piano movers”; loudmouths showing off.” the duo wrote the original A Star Is Born She died of a heart attack in New York and worked on friend Lillian Hellman’s at 73. A lifelong champion of civil rights, The Little Foxes, but many of their other she left her entire estate to the Rev. Martin contributions went uncredited or survived Luther King. only as stray bits and pieces. Alfred Hitchcock, for example, who References remembered her as an “extraordinary “Dorothy Parker,” Academy of Ameri- woman” recalled her contributing “some can Poets, http://www.screenonline.org very funny lines to SABOTEUR, including .uk/people/id/448873; “Dorothy Parker,” the quarrel between the thin man and the Biography, http://www.biography.com/ midget” but feared many of her touches people/dorothy-parker-9433450; “Doro- were too subtle for most audiences. (In thy Parker,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ a sign of how much he enjoyed her com- name/nm0662213/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio pany, he offered her the rare invitation to _sm; Roger Ebert, “Never Mess Around join him in his cameo in the picture, play- with a Dead Body,” Chicago Sun-Times, ing the older couple who spot ROBERT December 14, 1969, http://www.rogerebert CUMMINGS and PRISCILLA LANE on .com/interviews/hitchcock-never-mess the road; in the end, other actors were used, -about-with-a-dead-body-you-may-be-one; and Hitchcock appeared alone in a differ- Dorothy Herrmann, With Malice toward ent scene.) All: The Quips, Lives and Loves of Some Cel- Parker had always been prone to sui- ebrated 20th-Century American Wits (New cidal depressions, and a growing drinking York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1982), 78. problem—and a difficult marriage to Camp- bell, who apparently cheated on her with THE PASSIONATE ADVENTURE either sex—made it hard for her to concen- (GB 1924) trate on her screenwriting. The advent of the McCarthy era made that unnecessary, as her Director: Graham Cutts. leftist politics led to her being blacklisted in Screenplay: Alfred Hitchcock, Michael 1950; her last produced screenplay was The Morton, based on the novel by Frank Fan for Otto Preminger. Stayton. Producers: Sir Michael Balcon. Returning to New York permanently Cinematography: Claude L. McDonnell. after a brief divorce and then remarriage Editor: Uncredited. to Campbell (who committed suicide in Cast: Alice Joyce (Drusilla), Marjorie Daw 1963), she moved into a residential hotel, (Vicky), Clive Brook (Adrien), Lillian Hall- occasionally writing book reviews or doing Davis (Pamela), Victor McClaglen (Herb). television appearances. Of the Jazz Age— Running Time: 68 minutes. Black and white. and her central spot at the famed Algon- Released Through: Gaumont British. quin Round Table—she had no fond mem- PECK, GREGORY n 323

“A thrilling dramatic story,” according to Although he was nominated for an its ads, “of a West End husband who sought ACADEMY AWARD for his second an East End sweetheart and revolution- film, The Keys to the Kingdom, there was ized his wife.” Perhaps sowing the seeds of a certain wooden righteousness to Peck’s the GRAHAM CUTTS–Alfred Hitchcock performances that narrowed his range; enmity, the Times pointedly differentiated unlike other Hitchcock leading men, such between the contributions of the director as CARY GRANT, HENRY FONDA, or and the screenwriter, praising an “inter- (especially) JAMES STEWART, he had esting production” that had been “rather few shadows to him and was best at play- spoiled by a poor plot.” Only incomplete ing stalwart heroes who never questioned versions of the film survive. themselves or their cause. He was excellent as the crusading journalist in Gentleman’s References Agreement or the committed lawyer in To Advertisement, Hammond Lake County Kill a Mockingbird, less compelling as the Times, September 11, 1926, http://the sociopaths of Moby Dick or The Boys from .hitchcock.zone/wiki/Hammond_Lake_ Brazil. County_Times_%2811/Sep/1926%29 On SPELLBOUND—only his fourth _-_The_Passionate_Adventure; “The Film film, and a complex, multilayered part—an World: The Passionate Adventure,” Times, uncertain Peck appealed to his director for August 18, 1924, http://the.hitchcock.zone/ guidance. Hitchcock, faced perhaps with wiki/The_Times_%2818/Aug/1924%29 the first of the METHOD actors he would _-_The_Film_World. meet in Hollywood, merely told him to make his face a blank; the camera would do PECK, GREGORY (1916–2003) all the work. Peck left unsatisfied. “I wanted San Diego–born performer whose long, lean more than that; the business was so new to figure; dark good looks; and sonorous voice me,” the actor confessed later, noting that made him a leading man for three decades. the filmmaker seemed distracted, even The son of a pharmacist, he was pre-med at depressed. “I had the feeling that some- the University of California, Berkeley; the thing ailed him,” Peck said, “and I could director of the school’s drama program, never understand what it might be.” however, encouraged him to try out for pro- Someone who knew Hitchcock’s ductions, and Peck ended up appearing in obsessions with his leading ladies might five plays during his senior year alone. have given him a hint; Spellbound was the After graduation, Peck moved to New director’s first picture with his beloved York, studying with acting coach Sanford INGRID BERGMAN, but it was Peck, not Meisner and taking whatever work he him, with whom she would soon be having could find. (He was briefly an NBC page.) a brief affair. It was not enough that Hitch- He made his Broadway debut in 1942 and cock had to direct them in their love scenes by 1944 was in Hollywood and very busy; on the set; now he had to imagine their real unlike many young actors, he was exempt ones after the lights were turned off. from the draft, having injured his back Peck returned to work for Hitchcock taking a dance class with Martha Gra- again on THE PARADINE CASE and pro- ham. (Although, Peck later said, the stu- fessed himself once again perplexed at the dio publicists claimed it was from an old director’s apparent unhappiness (“He was sports injury, believing fans wouldn’t find obviously suffering terribly about some- a dance-class deferment “macho enough.”) thing during the shooting”); most likely it 324 n THE PERFECT CRIME was due to DAVID O. SELZNICK’s con- THE PERFECT CRIME stant interfering, which, Peck admitted, As a child and teenager, Alfred Hitchcock was “so foreign to (Hitchcock’s) method had been fascinated by the careful inter- of working” and “created an unavoidable locking details of TRAIN timetables and tension between them.” Although director had been a neat and precise artist. From the and STAR got along well enough, the film time he was a young adult, he had a pas- was a low point for both; later in life, Peck sion for true-crime stories—often personal proclaimed it the only film of his he wished INTERVIEWS set up to promote his most he could burn. recent films would be interrupted by his The ’50s, however, brought Peck the happy recitations of the “acid bath” mur- delightful comedy Roman Holiday and a ders or exactly how Dr. H. H. CRIPPEN part with some shading in The Man in the had been caught. And the two obsessions Gray Flannel Suit; Cape Fear was a prickly combined neatly, nicely—and profitably— noir, and To Kill a Mockingbird, of course, in his lifelong interest in the “perfect crime” an instant classic, the perfect melding of and how seemingly mild men (almost character and actor. “I put everything I had always men) might get away with it. into it—all my feelings and everything I’d The morbid fantasy receives its most learned in 46 years of living, about fam- thorough working-out in SHADOW OF A ily life and fathers and children,” he said. DOUBT, in which old friends Joseph New- “And my feelings about racial justice and ton and Herbie Hawkins gleefully discuss— inequality and opportunity.” in a purely theoretical fashion, of course— Peck went on to star in two of the bet- how they’d set out to kill each other and get ter HITCHCOCKIAN thrillers—Mirage away with it. It’s a sort of game they indulge and Arabesque—as well as the horror hit in over dinner or sitting on the porch. How The Omen and remained busy in films, phi- to do it? Fast-acting poison? Blunt object? lanthropy, and progressive causes through- “Well, if I was gonna kill you, I out the ’90s. He died of bronchopneumonia wouldn’t do a dumb thing like hitting you in Los Angeles at age 87. on the head,” Herbie protests after Joseph brings up the lead-pipe solution. “First of References all, I don’t like the fingerprint angle. Of Ronald Bergen, “Gregory Peck Obitu- course, I could always wear gloves. Press ary,” Guardian, June 13, 1993, http:// your hands against the pipe after you were www.theguardian.com/news/2003/jun/14/ dead and make you look like a suicide. guardianobituaries.film; Brad Darrach, Except it don’t seem hardly likely that “Gregory Peck,” People, June 15, 1987, you’d beat yourself to death with a club. I’d http://www.people.com/people/archive/ murder you so it didn’t look like murder.” article/0,,20096523,00.html; “Gregory Joseph’s daughter, Charlie, grows dis- Peck,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ gusted by their bloodless after-dinner chats— nm0000060/bio; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred but by then, she knows there’s a real killer Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light in the house, an uncle who seems to have (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 357–60, already racked up several perfect crimes. But 391; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: she also doesn’t realize the sort of vicarious The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da joy that these mild men—and Hitchcock, Capo Press, 1999), 276, 298; David Thom- too, perhaps—took in these deadly day- son, The New Biographical Dictionary of dreams, utterly safe ways of dissipating anger Film (New York: Knopf, 2002), 670–71. or frustration without cops or consequences. “THE PERFECT CRIME” n 325

In Hitchcock’s films, of course—mostly sors demanded a similar scene at the end thanks to the CENSORS and the audience of VERTIGO, explaining that the murderer expectations they had engendered—there had been tracked to Europe—and to shut were no perfect crimes; the criminal, no mat- them up, Hitchcock dutifully shot a few ter how carefully he plotted, would be killed minutes of Scottie and Midge listening to or caught by the end. Yet you can feel the a news report of it on the radio—but he chilly delight the director must have taken never included it in the film, making Ver- in the story conferences leading up to the tigo one of the very rare studio pictures in filming, as the murderer’s perfect plans were which a murderer goes unpunished. carefully devised. It seems that, complicated as it was— There are several fatal ideas, of course, and the murder plot in Vertigo, if you make in SUSPICION—including the untrace- the mistake of thinking about it too much, able poisons Johnnie is so interested in— is the most preposterous in Hitchcock—the although in the final, unsatisfying version killing of the real Madeleine really was the of the film, Johnnie’s urges turn out to be perfect crime. Although not, perhaps, as suicidal rather than murderous in nature. perfect as the film that surrounds it. More straightforward is STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, in which Bruno has a novel insight References into committing the perfect crime—simply Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: have two men switch murders, each killing A Life in Darkness and Light (New York: the other’s intended victim, thereby remov- HarperCollins, 2003), 562; Donald Spoto, ing the police’s usual starting point, motive. The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Details are, of course, the usual stum- Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, bling blocks in any attempt at perfection, 1999), 20, 32–34, 115. and Hitchcock—so wed to routine that he meticulously planned out not only his art “THE PERFECT CRIME” but also his daily life—enjoyed having his (US; ORIGINALLY AIRED criminals bedeviled by unforeseen, tiny, OCTOBER 20, 1957) but suddenly crucial circumstances. The lighter that Bruno drops down a storm Director: Alfred Hitchcock. drain in Strangers on a Train, the car that Screenplay: Stirling Silliphant, based on the Norman can’t quite get to sink in PSYCHO, story by Ben Ray Redman. Producer: Joan Harrison. the monogrammed stickpin that Bob Rusk Cinematography: John L. Russell. needs to retrieve in FRENZY—all threaten Editor: Edward W. Williams. to keep them from success. And it is Hitch- Original Music: Stanley Wilson. cock’s manipulative mastery that we iden- Cast: Vincent Price (Charles Courtney), tify with these characters and want them to James Gregory (John Gregory). succeed—even though they are the stories’ Running Time: 30 minutes. Black and white. villains and we know they must fail. Originally Broadcast By: CBS. And yet, not always. The villains on Hitchcock’s television shows often seemed to get away with it—even if the director returned after what seemed to be their Devastated when an attorney tells him his final triumph to quickly (if not convinc- work once sent an innocent man to his exe- ingly) assure us that they were eventually cution, an egotistical criminologist vows to caught and sent to prison. In fact, the cen- cover up his mistake—by killing the attorney 326 n PERJURY and disposing of the body in a kiln. Not a leading man in the silents and a character particularly new murder method for Vin- actor in such talkies as Scarface but died cent Price, who had not long ago starred in when his son was five years old. Anthony House of Wax and The Mad Magician, nor Perkins, who had always had a vivid, oedi- for ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, in pal connection to his mother, remembered which the signature puzzle was often not the relationship growing even unhealthier how to kill someone but how to dispose of after his father’s death. “She was constantly the body. touching me and caressing me,” he said years later. “Not realizing what effect she References was having, she would touch me all over, Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Com- even stroking the inside of my thighs right plete Directory to Prime Time Network up to my crotch.” TV Shows, 8th ed. (New York: Ballantine At sleepaway camp, Perkins discovered Books, 2003), 29; Jack Edmond Nolan, acting could be a release from his unhappy “Hitchcock’s TV Films,” Film Fan Monthly home life; by 14, he was playing in summer (June 1968), 3–6. stock and at 20 was cast by George Cukor in The Actress. For the rest of the ’50s, Per- PERJURY kins, although determinedly presented by Another unproduced project, although publicists as a teen heartthrob, tended to this one progressed further than some; be at his best playing SEXUALLY uncer- designed as a follow-up to YOUNG AND tain, emotionally fragile young men: The INNOCENT, press releases boasted it boy “saved” from HOMOSEXUALITY in would have a screenplay by Hitchcock, Broadway’s Tea and Sympathy, the fearful ALMA REVILLE, and JOAN HARRI- father-dominated baseball player in Fear SON (inspired by a short story by Mar- Strikes Out. cel Archard) and star NOVA PILBEAM. Perkins hesitated taking the role Originally called False Witness or The False in PSYCHO, knowing that appearing Witness, by 1938 it had been given a new onscreen in a dress was an enormous career title (probably to evoke the earlier BLACK- risk. (Playing a mad serial killer was far less MAIL, MURDER!, and SABOTAGE) and of a gamble, as leading men from ROBERT was said to revolve around a con man and MONTGOMERY to Robert Mitchum had his daughter—but then Hitchcock moved already proven; it wasn’t onscreen psycho- on to THE LADY VANISHES instead and sis that ever hurt your career but effemi- then to JAMAICA INN, and whether there nacy.) But Hitchcock urged him on and ever truly had been a finished script or not, repaid Perkins’s faith with his own con- the idea was dropped. fidence; although he typically bristled at actors’ involvement, he incorporated many Reference of Perkins’s suggestions—slightly overlap- Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life ping some dialogue, compulsively gobbling in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- candy—into the film. Hitchcock even let Collins, 2003), 202. him pick his wardrobe (ultimately, Perkins wore his own clothes). PERKINS, ANTHONY Perkins’s Norman Bates—flashing (1932–1992) from boyish grins to steely-eyed anger Manhattan-born performer and only son within the space of a few minutes of con- of actor Osgood Perkins, who had been a versation, walking with a softly hip-sway- PICCOLI, MICHEL n 327 ing femininity or contorting his face into a that time the actor had been diagnosed mad rictus of pain—is complex and origi- with AIDS, and his next few, flawed proj- nal, one of the great, enduring characters of ects were more about providing for his cinema. Hitchcock was right to pick him. family than personal achievement. He died But Perkins’s doubts were right, too—the at his Los Angeles home at 60 of AIDS- twisted Norman was so indelible that he related pneumonia; almost exactly nine got conflated with the actor, and for most years later, Berenson was murdered when of the rest of the ’60s, Perkins could only the plane she was on was flown into the find work outside Hollywood. Although World Trade Center. some of those movies were outstanding— Orson Welles’s The Trial, the darkly moody References The Fool Killer, the cynical thriller Pretty “Anthony Perkins,” Biography, http:// Poison—most never played beyond a small www.biography.com/people/anthony cult of admirers. -perkins-9437779; “Anthony Perkins,” The ’70s, though, saw a middle-aged IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ Perkins reestablishing himself as a char- nm0000578/bio; Steve Biodrowski, “Inter- acter actor (albeit one who often played view: Psycho Star Anthony Perkins,” slightly unhinged people and would occa- Cinefantastique Online, http://cinefantas sionally give his lines an unexpected, arti- tiqueonline.com/2008/09/interview- ficially staccato twist). He starred in Equus psycho-star-anthony-perkins; Brad Dar- on Broadway. He cowrote the clever thriller rach, “Return of Psycho,” People, June The Last of Sheila with longtime friend 13, 1983, http://www.people.com/people/ Stephen Sondheim. He even—after years archive/article/0,,20085251,00.html; Ste- of literally running away from interested phen Rebello, Alfred Hitchcock and the actresses like Jane Fonda and Brigitte Bar- Making of Psycho (New York: Harper dot—had his first heterosexual experience, Perennial, 1991), 59–60, 88–89. with Victoria Principal, while shooting The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. PICCOLI, MICHEL (1925– ) As the ’80s began, now married to Paris-born performer, the product of a photographer Berry Berenson and with musical family—his mother was a pianist; two sons, Perkins finally returned to the his father, a violinist—he made his film part of Norman with Psycho II. “It is the debut in 1945, although he perhaps only Hamlet of horror roles,” he said later, as the grew truly prominent in 1963 in Jean-Luc franchise continued. “You can never quite Godard’s Contempt. Following that suc- get enough of playing Norman Bates. It’s cess, he would work with many of the great always interesting. . . . He’s a character who directors, including Agnes Varda, Costa- has really emerged in a dimensional way. Gavras, Louis Malle, Jacques Demy, and— And of how many characters, how many especially—Luis Bunuel, with whom he screen characters can that be said? You made seven films, including Belle du Jour. know it’s a great compliment to the original Unfortunately, his collaboration with concept by Hitchcock.” Hitchcock was on the lackluster TOPAZ, in Now firmly typecast—and resigned to which he played spymaster Jacques Gran- it—Perkins worked almost exclusively in ville, a partnership made even more dif- horror films as the decade went on, even- ficult by the fact that when the film was tually playing Norman his fourth and final previewed—and its ending greeted with time in a made-for-TV movie in 1990; by catcalls—the busy Piccoli was unavailable 328 n PILBEAM, NOVA for reshoots. Hitchcock desperately cobbled Hitchcock also considered casting her in together a new ending in which Piccoli’s his next film, THE LADY VANISHES, character returned home and shot himself he ultimately opted for the rather more offscreen; that the only usable footage he sophisticated MARGARET LOCKWOOD; had of a man entering the house was a long other Hitchcock-Pilbeam collaborations, shot of another actor, PHILIPPE NOIRET, including PERJURY, were announced but was something he had to pray audiences never made.) wouldn’t notice. (As they stayed away in “Hitch had everything in his head any case, the worry was unfounded.) before he went to the set; therefore one was Sixty years after his debut, Piccoli con- rather moved around and manipulated a tinues to appear regularly onscreen and lot,” Pilbeam said of her films with him. challenge himself by working with difficult “Having said that, I liked him very much. scripts and young directors. For instance, in Young and Innocent, there was a dog that both Hitch and I adored; References there came a time that we had finished the “Michel Piccoli,” IMDb, http://www.imdb sequences with the dog and he was sup- .com/name/nm0681566/bio?ref_=nm_ov posed to go back. We were both so upset _bio_sm; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of that Hitch decided to write him another Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New sequence so we could keep him around for York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 502–3; James another five or six days.” Travers, “Michel Piccoli,” Films de France, The British film industry was still eco- http://www.filmsdefrance.com/biography/ nomically unstable in the late ’30s—one of michel-piccoli.html. the reasons Hitchcock happily left for Hol- lywood—and just as Pilbeam was transition- PILBEAM, NOVA (1919–2015) ing to adult roles, it seemed there were fewer London-born performer and daughter of of them to be found. DAVID O. SELZNICK, actor Arnold Pilbeam who made her stage who of course had screened Hitchcock’s debut at five in a charity performance. By British work and noticed her in Young and 12, she was a trained actress, appearing Innocent, thought she might be right for onstage regularly. She made her first movie, REBECCA; although DONALD SPOTO the marital drama Little Friend, at 15 and says Hitchcock was “bitterly” opposed to was quickly signed by GAUMONT-BRIT- casting her, the director had even floated her ISH to a 7-year contract. Her next movie name himself in INTERVIEWS as a possible was the 1934 version of THE MAN WHO STAR, opposite Ronald Colman. But Pil- KNEW TOO MUCH. beam’s advisors were leery of signing a long She was a small, alert, terrified pres- contract, and Hitchcock—perhaps because ence in that film, all curls and wide, fright- he had such strong memories of her as a ened EYES, and she also impressed the child—eventually decided she was too young next year in the period film Tudor Rose; for the part. She stayed in Britain. Hitchcock cast her again in 1937’s YOUNG In 1939, Pilbeam married Pen Tenny- AND INNOCENT, and although he could son, a great-grandson of the poet who had be brusque on the set—sometimes using a met her when she was 15 and he was a very stopwatch to get the actors to speed up the young assistant director on The Man Who dialogue—he remained particularly solici- Knew Too Much; he joined the navy in 1940 tous of Pilbeam, who was 18 and appearing and died the next year in a plane crash. Pil- in her first somewhat adult role. (Although beam continued to act, mostly onstage, THE PLAUSIBLES n 329 including a season with the Old Vic, and of films that were, in many ways, waking married BBC journalist Michael Whyte in dreams—after all, how plausible is it that a 1951; after the birth of their daughter in spy ring would try to assassinate a man by 1952, she officially retired and successfully dispatching a crop duster?—he also took avoided most interviewers. She died at 95 pains to head them off early. During pre- in London. production, assistants would fact-check the details in the script; photographers would References be sent out, not only to document the real Philip Hoare, “Nova Pilbeam: Alfred locations, but also the fictional ones. Hitchcock’s Star Who Vanished from “Film should be stronger than reason,” View,” Independent, July 21, 2015, http:// Hitchcock insisted. But he always grounded www.independent.co.uk/news/obituar his cinematic emotions in hard reality, ies/nova-pilbeam-alfred-hitchcocks-star trying to answer an audience’s questions -who-vanished-from-view-10402905 before they were even raised. “Hitchcock .html; “Interview with Actress Nova Pil- had what he called the ‘icebox theory,’” beam,” Hitchcock Zone, June 1990, http:// said Brian Moore, who worked with him— the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Interview:_Nova unhappily—on TORN CURTAIN. “A man _Pilbeam_%28Jun/1990%29; “Nova Pil- goes to a film with his wife, comes home. beam,” Classic British Cinema, http://www They take a piece of chicken out of the ice- .wickedlady.com/films/ladies/Pilbeam box and start talking about the film, and Nova/index.html; “Nova Pilbeam,” IMDb, she says, ‘You know, the bus doesn’t run http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0683345/ from Oxford to Ireland on Thursdays.’ bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Donald Spoto, And they sit down and destroy your movie, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred because they find all the other things that Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, are wrong with it.” 1999), 163, 176, 217. Hitchcock worked hard to avoid those postmovie postmortems by doing nearly THE PLAUSIBLES endless and precise preplanning, from Hitchcock’s dismissive nickname for the scouting locations to researching the script nitpickers in the audience who, rather than to casting extras. What sort of domestic being swept away by the drama onscreen, staff would a foreign embassy have in Lon- often poked holes in the narrative, wonder- don? How easy is it to sell a car in a hurry? ing, for example, why the endangered hero How would a middle-class man be booked and heroine didn’t simply go to the police. in a New York police station? What sort (“Because it’s boring,” was the director’s of neighbors might you have in a modest, often-stated riposte, although in actuality slightly artistic West Village neighborhood? his scripts usually provided a solid reason One of the reasons we don’t stop to ask our- the authorities couldn’t be trusted either.) selves these questions watching THE MAN Frankly, the idea that a storyteller had WHO KNEW TOO MUCH or PSYCHO or to follow the rules of everyday life annoyed THE WRONG MAN or REAR WINDOW is Hitchcock. “In the fiction film, the direc- that Hitchcock had already asked them and tor is the god,” he insisted to FRANÇOIS made sure he had the answers. TRUFFAUT. “We should have total free- And that we believe him when he dom to do as we like, just as long as it’s not shares them with us makes it easier to dull.” Yet while Hitchcock could be bedev- believe him when he tells us far more inter- iled by people who demanded logic out esting things. 330 n PLAYS WITHIN PLAYS

References interrupt themselves to rush out onstage “Moore: Ireland’s Runaway, Rebel Son,” to applause. (Nor is it just the theater he’s Vancouver Sun, June 9, 1990, http:// concerned with; public performances of the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Vancouver all kinds appear regularly as backdrops _Sun_%2809/Jun/1990%29_-_Moore:_Ire in Hitchcock, whether it’s the auction in land’s_runaway_rebel_son; François Truf- NORTH BY NORTHWEST or the ballet in faut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New TORN CURTAIN.) York: Touchstone, 1985), 99–103. The boisterous world of the music hall figures largely in THE 39 STEPS (in PLAYS WITHIN PLAYS which the story begins and ends with the “The play’s the thing,” boasts HAMLET, spies’ pathetic catspaw, Mr. Memory) and “wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the in THE LADY VANISHES (where a magi- king,” and so he has the traveling players cian has helped make more than rabbits put on a deliberately, painfully inappropri- disappear). The imagery is pushed further ate work—hoping that its obvious parallels in SABOTAGE and SABOTEUR, in which to a real-life crime will shock his murder- some of those films’ crucial action unfolds ous uncle into confessing. It’s a theatri- in theaters while other, more comic films cal trick and so, not surprisingly, one that are being shown; like a distorting hall of actor Sir John Menier explicitly turns to in mirrors, the audience for these movies MURDER! as he hopes to startle his prime watches another audience watching other suspect into confessing. movies, as the merry onscreen laughter of It doesn’t work for Menier (nor did it the fictional viewers mocks the worries of provide a quick and painless solution for the real ones. Hamlet), but even when it doesn’t figure Sometimes—as in STAGE FRIGHT— in the plot, it is a part of many Hitchcock the world of the theater and the drama of films—the person who assumes another actors assuming roles is a quite literal one. IDENTITY, the performance within the More often—most interestingly—in Hitch- performance, the pretty polished entertain- cock, players and playacting are a more ment into which real life suddenly intrudes. flexible metaphor for real life. Barry in (Hitchcock actually considered doing a Saboteur, Alicia in NOTORIOUS, Judy in modern-dress version of Hamlet with VERTIGO, Eve in North by Northwest, the CARY GRANT, until other considerations titular MARNIE, and the bumbling George and a nuisance lawsuit intruded.) in FAMILY PLOT—all are playing parts. Show business—with its mad mix of (So are John in SPELLBOUND and Nor- assumed roles, ever-changing poses, and man in PSYCHO—they just don’t know it.) purposefully accepted lies—is a large part All of then perform their own plays within of Hitchcock right from the beginning. His the play—pretending to be different people first film, THE PLEASURE GARDEN, is set with different agendas from the ones they in the cheap and brittle world of the the- truly are. ater; his first thriller, THE LODGER, begins Which, the movies suggest, we all do, against the backdrop of a stage show’s every day—while trying hardest not to flashing sign. The smooth falsity of fantasy catch the “conscience of the king” but per- contrasted with the rough lies of life: This haps to disguise or ignore our own. And is a contrast made clearer in Murder! as while all the world is, indeed, a stage, it’s we see the police awkwardly interviewing the amateur players who are the most likely suspects backstage as the actors constantly to find the curtain ringing down early. THE PLEASURE GARDEN n 331

References Hugh, he accuses his friend of seducing “Filming Hamlet,” Aberdeen Journal, her; when Levett turns on Patsy in a rage, September 5, 1945, http://the.hitchcock he is shot dead. .zone/wiki/Aberdeen_Journal_%2805/ Hugh and Patsy return to London, Sep/1945%29_-_Filming_Hamlet; Caroline where the newspapers report that Jill and Moorehead, Sidney Bernstein: A Biography her noble fiancé are to be married. (London: Jonathan Cape, 1984), 173–74. Hitchcock’s first film and a very bumpy THE PLEASURE GARDEN debut. (GB 1925) What actually should have been his first feature, NUMBER 13, had been aban- Director: Alfred Hitchcock. doned in 1922 when the money ran out; Screenplay: Eliot Stannard, based on the three years later, producer SIR MICHAEL novel by Oliver Sandys. BALCON was going to give the 26-year- Producers: Sir Michael Balcon, Erich old director another, better chance. With Pommer. a screenplay by the busy ELIOT STAN- Cinematography: Gaetano di Ventimiglia. Editor: Uncredited. NARD—who would write eight more Cast: Virginia Valli (Patsy Brand), Carmel- scripts for Hitchcock—The Pleasure Gar- ita Geraghty (Jill Cheyne), Miles Mander den had a strong, melodramatic plot and (Levett), John Stuart (Hugh Fielding). international appeal; its leading ladies had Running Time: 93 minutes. Black and white. been imported from Hollywood, there Released Through: Woolf & Freedman would be LOCATION shooting in Italy, Film Service. and studio space had been reserved in Munich. Problems arose immediately. Travel- Jill, a young actress, comes to London to ing from Germany to Italy, cinematogra- pursue a career and is almost immediately pher GAETANO VENTIMIGLIA advised robbed; Patsy, a slightly worldlier chorus the novice director to hide the film stock girl, takes her under her wing and finds her and camera equipment to save money on a job at a theater called the Pleasure Gar- the obligatory import duties; the authori- den. Jill soon finds her new job brings her ties missed the camera, but when they dis- far more interesting men than her atten- covered the smuggled film at the Austrian tive boyfriend, Hugh; Patsy, meanwhile, border, it was confiscated. (As bad as the is attracted to Hugh’s friend and business financial blow was, the emotional cost to colleague, Levett. Hitchcock—morbidly afraid of the police— Hugh is sent by his company to “the must have been even worse.) East”; Levett, after marrying Patsy, follows. Money troubles continued in Genoa, Jill, meanwhile, begins to enter into a seri- where Hitchcock’s hotel was robbed—the ous romance with a foreign nobleman and thieves getting away with much of his ready grows distant from Patsy. cash. New film stock had to be purchased, Levett writes Patsy to tell her that he is with the director now forced to borrow from ill, but when Patsy borrows the money to Ventimiglia and his leading man, Miles join him, she finds him living with a “native Mander. (Meanwhile his leading ladies, used woman.” She leaves, heartbroken; infuri- to Hollywood budgets, were quickly running ated, he murders the woman, and then goes through money as well; traveling separately in search of Patsy. When he finds her with with ALMA REVILLE, who was working as 332 n THE PLEASURE GARDEN

Hitchcock’s assistant, they demanded first- cheap most British filmmaking looked class accommodations.) at the time—and planned a 1926 release. Nor did things go any more smoothly The stodgy distributor C. M. WOOLF, when actual shooting began; an important though—who had been getting critical scene at Lake Como had to be delayed when reports back from Hitchcock’s old mentor, another actress confessed she couldn’t get GRAHAM CUTTS—disagreed. To him it in the water because she was menstruating. appeared “German”—in other words, arty, Hitchcock—then almost 26 and still living confusing, and definitely noncommercial. with his mother—hadn’t heard the word He demanded it be put on the shelf—and before, and the cinematographer had to so it was, even though Balcon had thought take him aside and provide a crash course enough of it to give Hitchcock his next in the female reproductive cycle. (Hitch- assignment, THE MOUNTAIN EAGLE. cock recounts the production disasters at Only after the success of THE length—with the philosophical equanimity LODGER in 1927 would The Pleasure Gar- only eventual triumph can bring—in the den find wide distribution and, even then, book HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT.) often in crudely truncated form; recent Once the location work was out of the efforts have restored some once-scissored way, though, and cast and crew had reas- footage. sembled at the studios in Munich, things went better, as Hitchcock—once again References back on a soundstage—found himself in Sarah Kaufman, “Hitchcock’s Restored his element. He began the film with a shot First Film Shows Roots of Fascination in a theater of chorus girls coming down a with Dance,” Washington Post, August 2, spiral STAIRCASE, while a patron spies on 2012, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ one dancer’s legs through his opera glasses; entertainment/theater_dance/hitchcocks as critic Dave Kehr remarked, that opening -restored-first-film-shows-roots-of-fasci sequence alone functions as a sort of “clip nation-with-dance/2013/08/01/cdb47ece reel” of Hitchcock themes and images— -f95c-11e2-b018-5b8251f0c56e_story.html; VOYEURISM, spirals, PLAYS WITHIN Dave Kehr, “Hitchcock: Finding His Voice PLAYS—that he would return to for the in Silents,” June 19, 2013, New York Times, rest of his career. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/mov The story (although typically melodra- ies/silent-hitchcock-films-come-to-the matic, complete with a hallucinatory mad -harvey-theater-in-brooklyn.html?_r=0; scene, and marked by some obvious per- Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A formances) also featured the love triangles, Life in Darkness and Light (New York: personal betrayal, romantic cynicism, and HarperCollins, 2003), 69–71; Donald exotic locations that his films would con- Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life tinually rely on, as well as a fondness for of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo visual symbolism; when Patsy awakes from Press, 1999), 77–84; François Truffaut, her honeymoon night, the camera lingers Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: on an apple, a bite taken out of it. We are in Touchstone, 1985), 31–39; Holly Williams, the pleasure garden indeed, where the for- “Alfred Hitchcock: Dial R for Restoration,” bidden fruit has been tasted. Independent, June 27, 2012, http://www Balcon was pleased with the film, .independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/ remarking on how “American” it seemed— films/features/alfred-hitchcock—dial-r-for a compliment, considering how flat and -restoration-7893106.html. “POISON” n 333

PLESHETTE, SUZANNE no. 2 (1999), http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ (1937–2008) Literature_Film_Quarterly_%281999%29 Brooklyn-born performer who attended _-_Hitchcock’s_women_on_Hitchcock; New York’s High School of the Performing Anita Gates, “Suzanne Pleshette, 70, Arts and Finch College before delving into ‘Newhart’ Actress, Dies,” New York Times, classes with Sanford Meisner at the Neigh- January 21, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/ borhood Playhouse. She made her televi- 2008/01/21/arts/21cnd-pleshette.html?_r=0; sion debut in 1957 and also landed a part in “Suzanne Pleshette,” Biography, http:// the Broadway production of Compulsion, a www.biography.com/people/suzanne- play about the LEOPOLD AND LOEB case. pleshette-265943; “Suzanne Pleshette,” She remained busiest onstage and in IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ television at first, including an episode of nm0687189/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS; her first sizable movie role came in 1962 in Rome “POISON” (US; ORIGINALLY Adventure, a romance with Tab Hunter (to AIRED OCTOBER 5, 1958) whom she was very briefly married). The next year, she appeared in THE BIRDS as Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Annie, the slightly wounded, lightly sar- Screenplay: Casey Robinson, based on the story by Roald Dahl. donic teacher who’d once loved Mitch and Producers: Joan Harrison, Norman Lloyd. stuck around Bodega Bay afterward. Cinematography: John L. Russell. Pleshette brought her own confident Editor: Edward W. Williams. SEXUALITY and husky Scotch-and-ciga- Original Music: Uncredited. rettes voice to the part, making Annie one Cast: James Donald (Harry Pope), Wen- of Hitchcock’s more memorable supporting dell Corey (Timber Woods). characters, although the director didn’t seem Running Time: 30 minutes. Black and white. to appreciate her at the time. “Hitch didn’t Originally Broadcast By: CBS. know what to do with me,” Pleshette said in a 1999 Literature Film Quarterly interview, remarking that her METHOD training threw A reworking of a classic Roald Dahl story, him. “He regretted the day that he hired me.” in which James Donald wakes in the middle It was mostly back to movie romances of the night to discover a poisonous snake and TV episodes after that, although her has slithered into his bed and is now curled wicked wit on talk shows won her fans; up asleep on his chest. Does he move and after seeing her banter with Bob Newhart risk its fangs or just—wait? Veteran screenon The Tonight Show, sitcom producers writer Casey Robinson’s changes to Roald cast her as his wife in The Bob Newhart Dahl’s spare tale softens the focus somewhat Show, which became a deadpan hit. When (and eliminates its racial angles), although its six-season run ended, she starred or his teleplay’s new twist has a nice sting. guest-starred on several more mostly short- lived television shows. After battling lung References cancer for several years, she died in Los Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Com- Angeles at 70 of respiratory failure. plete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, 8th ed. (New York: Ballantine References Books, 2003), 29; Jack Edmond Nolan, Greg Garett, “Hitchcock’s Women on “Hitchcock’s TV Films,” Film Fan Monthly Hitchcock,” Literature Film Quarterly 27, (June 1968), 3–6. 334 n POLICE

POLICE The fear of arrest was not a fake one, It is a story Hitchcock told many times either. Writer CZENZI ORMONDE, while over many years. This is how he told it to working on STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT. was also given the job of chauffeuring “I must have been about four or five Hitchcock around; once when they were years old,” he said. “My father sent me to on the highway, their car was stopped by the police station with a note. The chief of a policeman. Apparently he’d spotted them police read it and locked me in a cell for leaving the studio and only wanted to tell five or 10 minutes, saying ‘This is what we the director how much he liked his films, do to naughty boys.’” It’s a brief ANEC- but when Ormonde looked to the backseat, DOTE, and the usual lesson taken from it she saw Hitchcock in a kind of trance. “He is that this is why Hitchcock protagonists didn’t care what was said, perhaps had not are so often bedeviled by the law and often heard it,” she said. “Fists were clenched, end up arrested, handcuffed, or confined. face was pale, his eyes stared ahead. Visibly But it was not the claustrophobic this was a very frightened man.” image of the cell that truly seemed to lin- Hitchcock, of course, used all his ger with Hitchcock (although many of his fears to fuel his films. But while they are films, including PSYCHO and THE BIRDS, sometimes necessary to knit up the loose feature people trapped in confined spaces). threads of the plot and arrest the villain at Nor was it even the loss of liberty (although the end—as in DIAL M FOR MURDER, the elements of BONDAGE—handcuffs, REAR WINDOW, TO CATCH A THIEF, keys, ropes, and locked doors—occur again or FRENZY—police officers are never the and again in his films, many of which also main characters in Hitchcock films and carefully detail the dehumanizing process are almost always ineffectual. Ted Spencer of arrest). No, what truly struck the boy— and Jack Graham can poke around all they and lingered with him—was the utter, inex- like in SABOTAGE and SHADOW OF A plicable arbitrariness of it. DOUBT, but in the end, the heroines are Did he know why he was being pun- the ones who bring the cold killers to rough ished, Truffaut asked the director, some 60 justice; not only does the local sheriff in years after the fact. “I haven’t the faintest Psycho see nothing odd when he goes out idea,” Hitchcock said. “As a matter of fact, to interview Norman—even after searching my father used to call me his ‘little lamb the place—but he’s apparently ignored sev- without a spot.’ I truly cannot imagine eral local missing-persons cases, too. what it was I did.” And it’s that detail that’s Sometimes Hitchcock’s police- the important one and was to color all the men actively make things worse. In THE decades of work to come. LODGER, Joe’s jealousy of the upstairs Because it’s not merely the sudden tenant hampers his own investigation; in arrival of authority that interests Hitch- THE 39 STEPS (and all the innocent-man- cock nor the way it’s able to rob someone on-the-run films to come), the officers of liberty and control. More than the loss stubbornly refuse to listen to the hero’s of freedom, it’s the complete KAFKA-esque protestations of innocence, blindly (and capriciousness of it that terrifies—that the often clumsily) pursuing him based on punishment that comes may have nothing circumstantial evidence alone. They make to do with justice or even the facts, that it up their minds quickly and turn all their can simply arrive and catch you up without attention to punishment—like the parents warning or even any kind of logic. who, seeing a broken window, don’t need POLITICS n 335 to waste time listening to their child’s tear- tures, he felt Hitchcock too often settled ful denials. for purely commercial ventures and pro- And sometimes—often most inter- claimed NOTORIOUS one of the “worst of estingly—the police are more malevo- his career.”) And admittedly, this was writ- lent forces, using their power to hurt and ten during a particular lull in Hitchcock’s harass. The highway patrolman who, EYES filmmaking; in 1949, he had just finished hidden behind his mirrored sunglasses, THE PARADINE CASE and ROPE, and stops Marion Crane on her way to the Bates fans had only UNDER CAPRICORN and Motel—What’s really going on inside his STAGE FRIGHT to look forward to. Even head? Scottie Ferguson, so carefully tailing if one felt it necessary to defend Hitchcock Madeleine and Judy in VERTIGO, mask- as a great artist, for many it would take the ing his obsessiveness with the excuse that 1950s, with its long string of complicated he’s just on a job—What’s his true motiva- films, to prove the case. tion? We’ll know soon enough, but in these But to a committed, politically engaged films, the police aren’t just plot devices— filmmaker like Anderson, what clearly they’re also sinister forces, characters who kept Hitchcock out of the ranks of “seri- seem to appear out of nowhere. ous” directors is what seems like his total Like the sergeant who so blandly, disinterest in the great conflicts of the cen- blithely locked little Alfred away. Like the tury. For Hitchcock, it seemed, politics was universe that suddenly—as in The Birds— just a tool that provided a ready villain— one day simply turns itself upside down. Nazis in the ’40s, Communists in the ’60s. Although he worked regularly—and with- References out pay—throughout the ’40s to contrib- Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life ute propaganda films to the war effort, for in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- Hitchcock, it seemed, ideologies were just erCollins, 2003), 448; François Truffaut, another MACGUFFIN. Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Yet Hitchcock was still more quietly, Touchstone, 1985), 25. personally political than Anderson—or many others—gave him credit for. POLITICS Born on the edge of the Victorian era, “Hitchcock has never been a ‘serious’ he was raised in an extravagantly class-con- director,” filmmaker LINDSAY ANDER- scious Britain with several marks against SON—then a critic—wrote dismissively in him—he was Anglo-Irish; he was CATH- Sequence in 1949. “His films are interesting OLIC; and his father, who sold vegetables neither for their ideas nor for their charac- and poultry, was “in trade.” Hitchcock ters. None of the early melodramas can be did not go to university, and (although his said to carry any sort of a ‘message’; when elaborately slow drawl sometimes disguised one does appear, as in FOREIGN CORRE- it from American ears) his speech was thick SPONDENT and LIFEBOAT, it is banal in with Cockney inflections. Once he began to the extreme—‘You’ll never conquer them,’ make movies, he began to move in a very ALBERT BASSERMAN [sic] wheezes on different circle—actor Gerald du Maurier his bed of torture, ‘the little people who was a knight, screenwriter IVOR MON- feed the birds.’” TAGU the son of a baron—in which he Obviously, Anderson was not a par- knew he did not fit. ticular admirer of the director. (Although “I think he felt a bit uncomfortable he praised many of the early British pic- with all these established stage actors,” 336 n POLITICS

JOAN FONTAINE said of his attitude on or cold and callous, like Mark in MARNIE. the set of REBECCA and his general dis- They are rarely people to depend on. connect from Hollywood’s expat ENG- Often, they are people to fear. LISH COLONY. “I think that there was Although Hitchcock’s films featured many also a social thing there,” she remembered. foreign enemies—from the vague fascists “Hitchcock’s origins were within the sound of the ’30s British films to the Third Reich of Bow bells, so he didn’t get around much agents of the ’40s ones to the undefined socially.” Cold War villains of the ’50s—there is one Beyond his social unease with the clear point throughout: Rarely are they industry’s C. AUBREY SMITHS, Hitch- acting alone. And when they need reliable cock’s own class consciousness comes collaborators in an unsuspecting land, they through in his films. Although there are choose from among that country’s upper exceptions, most of Hitchcock’s heroes are classes. (It is not a coincidence that the two working class or part of the genteel poor: survivors who most quickly befriend the the “second Mrs. de Winter” in Rebecca, German sailor in Lifeboat are the two rich- Richard Hannay in THE 39 STEPS, Barry est passengers, Rittenhouse and Connie.) Caine in SABOTEUR, Richard Blaney This theme of upper-class treachery in FRENZY, George Lumley in FAMILY is not a point that Hitchcock emphasizes, PLOT. His characters work as bank clerks yet it’s not an unimportant one because it and own run-down hardware stores, drive sets him apart from many of his contem- cabs, and tend bar; dance in chorus lines or poraries—British spy fiction, from the days quietly labor as “paid companions” to bul- of JOHN BUCHAN to the heyday of Ian lying older women. Fleming, was always shot through with There are exceptions, of course, peo- xenophobia, touched by nasty paranoid ple in his films with careers and advanced suspicions that there were traitors among degrees; some of them are even heroes. Yet us, nasty and duplicitous foreigners whose often, there’s something a little wobbly in real allegiance was to another land. their character, something unprofessional In Hitchcock, though, it’s our own in their professional demeanor. Dr. Con- upper classes that we have to watch out stance Petersen lets herself fall in love with for, people who’ve been given everything a dangerous patient in SPELLBOUND; Dr. and still want more. In films like The Ben MacKenna secretly sedates his own 39 Steps, Saboteur, and North by North- wife in the second THE MAN WHO KNEW west, the villains aren’t men with heavy TOO MUCH (while in the first version, a accents and greasy overcoats but wealthy, dentist turns out to be a murderous trai- well-dressed, and respected natives. They tor). Education is no guarantee of common give parties. They hold charity balls. And sense, let alone morality, among the elite. when a beloved wife comes in to check on As a predictor of bad behavior, them—and finds them holding a gun on though, money seems to be a reliable one someone—she merely quietly retreats, clos- in Hitchcock films. Sometimes the rich are ing the door behind her. Unlike the spies merely shallow and a little careless—Roger at work in their own countries, in TORN Thornhill in NORTH BY NORTHWEST, CURTAIN and TOPAZ—unlike the Sovi- Jessie and Frances Stevens in TO CATCH ets and Cubans who are risking their lives A THIEF, Melanie Daniels in THE BIRDS. for a cause—these men don’t even have the But they’re just as regularly pompous and excuse of idealism. They’re in it for profits, ineffectual, like Rittenhouse in LIFEBOAT, not patriotism. THE PRUDE’S FALL n 337

“You’re one of the ardent believers—a hold onto his own, lifelong suspicions. good American,” Tobin sneers at Barry in That he didn’t make movies about “seri- Saboteur. “Oh, there are millions like you. ous” issues doesn’t mean that, from child- People who play along, without asking ques- hood, he had been taught to treat class and tions. I hate to use the word stupid, but it money and power very seriously—and with seems to be the only one that applies. The a certain degree of distrust. He knew who great masses, the moron millions. Well, the enemy was. And that often that villain there are a few of us unwilling to troop was living in the loveliest house in town. along. . . . A few of us who are clever enough to see that there’s much more to be done References than just live small complacent lives, a few of Lindsay Anderson, “Alfred Hitchcock,” us in America who desire a more profitable Focus on Hitchcock, edited by Albert type of government. When you think about LaValley (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice it, Mr. Kane, the competence of totalitarian Hall, 1972), 48–59; “Anti-U.S. Charge nations is much higher than ours. They get Denied,” Gloucestershire Echo, March things done.” It’s a long speech in a fast- 16, 1944, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ moving movie, and Hitchcock’s choice to Gloucestershire_Echo_%2816/Mar/1944 stop things for a bit and let Tobin give it— %29_-_Anti-U.S._Charge_Denied; Nor- on top of the speeches he’s already given and man Lloyd, interviews with the author, with the treasonous dowager’s charity gala November 2007, July 2015; Patrick McGil- already going on downstairs—shows how ligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Dark- important the director thought it was. ness and Light (New York: HarperCol- Of course Hitchcock had already lins, 2003), 526; Donald Spoto, The Dark become a wealthy and respected man, with Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitch- rich California property and an extensive cock (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), wine cellar; later, he would add an impres- 218; Dorothy Thompson, “A Film That sive art collection and a fortune in MCA Could Aid German Morale,” Amarillo stock. He was no strident foe of capitalism, Globe, January 31, 1944, http://the.hitch and the proof of his outwardly apolitical cock.zone/wiki/Amarillo_Globe_%2831/ nature is that even as many of his collabo- Jan/1944%29_-_A_Film_that_Could_Aid rators—DOROTHY PARKER, ARTHUR _German_Morale. LAURENTS, NORMAN LLOYD—were being caught up in the witch hunts of the THE PRUDE’S FALL (GB 1924) McCarthy era, Hitchcock continued working, uncontroversial and unscathed. (Yet Director: Graham Cutts. when he could, he quietly defied the black- Screenplay: Alfred Hitchcock, from the play list and reached out to its victims—he hired by May Edginton and Rudolph Besier. Producer: Michael Balcon. Lloyd as a producer on his television shows Cinematography: Hal Young. over network objections and personally Editor: Uncredited. contacted other actors and directors, such Cast: Jane Novak (Beatrice), Julanne John- as Paul Henreid, to ask them to contribute ston (Sonia), Warwick Ward (Andre), as well.) Miles Mander (Sir Neville). That Hitchcock himself was never sus- Running Time: 70 minutes, estimated. Black pected of “subversive” ideas—at least, not and white. since Lifeboat brought charges of being Released Through: Wardour Films. “un-American”—doesn’t mean he didn’t 338 n PSYCHO

A French naval officer tests a widow’s stabs her to death. Minutes later, Norman character by asking her to be his mistress. arrives and cleans up the bloody mess that The theme of cruelly testing a true love’s he knows his maniacal mother has left character hints perhaps at NOTORIOUS, behind, dumping Marion’s body (and, while the report that BETTY COMPSON unknowingly, the $40,000) in a nearby appeared in an unbilled part is intriguing— swamp. But Marion’s disappearance and her but the film opened to poor reviews (“Not theft have been noticed. A private detective, of first-rate quality”) and survives today Arbogast, traces her as far as the motel—but only in fragments. when he tries to sneak inside the house to talk to Mrs. Bates, he’s killed as well. References Finally, Loomis and Marion’s sister, Iris Barry, “The Prude’s Fall,” Daily Mail, Lila, team up to try to find Marion them- November 23, 1925, 6; “The Prude’s Fall,” selves. They get as far as Arbogast did, but BFI Screenonline, http://explore.bfi.org this time, while Loomis tries to keep Nor- .uk/4ce2b6bf19466. man busy, Lila gets inside the house to try to talk to his mother. She finds a strange, PSYCHO (US 1960) frozen-in-time home—and, in the fruit cellar, the mummified corpse of the long-dead Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Mrs. Bates. Norman appears, dressed in her Screenplay: Joseph Stefano, from the novel clothes and wielding a knife but is quickly by Robert Bloch. disarmed by Loomis. Producer: Uncredited (Alfred Hitchcock). Later, at the police, a psychiatrist gives Cinematography: John L. Russell. his explanation: A pathologically jealous Editor: George Tomasini. Original Music: Bernard Herrmann. Norman killed his mother years ago when Cast: Anthony Perkins (Norman Bates), she began to see another man and then, Janet Leigh (Marion Crane), John Gavin unable to face his own guilt, dug up her (Sam Loomis), Martin Balsam (Milton corpse, stuffed it, and finally began to speak Arbogast), Vera Miles (Lila Crane). for her, eventually giving her his own mur- Running Time: 109 minutes. Black and white. derous personality. Meanwhile, in a hold- Released Through: Paramount. ing cell, the now completely mad, completely “Mother” killer only sits and smiles, insisting she wouldn’t even hurt a fly. In love with Sam Loomis, a man too poor to marry her, desperate Marion Crane steals Hitchcock’s darkest, sickest JOKE—and his $40,000 from the company safe and drives most heart-wrenching cry of despair. off to see him. After a nerve-racking and The director’s morbidly funny, blackly rainy drive, she pulls in for the night at a bitter masterpiece began, though, as a dif- nearly deserted motel, where Norman Bates, ferent kind of technical challenge. The mid- the shy young owner, makes her a sandwich. to late ’50s had seen an explosion in horror They talk a little about themselves—Norman films, from Britain’s Hammer studios, the mostly about his demanding mother, who tiny American International Pictures, and “goes a little mad sometimes”—and Marion the loudly attention-grabbing producer turns in, determining to return the money William Castle. All were shot very cheaply the next day. (usually, apart from the Hammer efforts, in Then, as she’s taking a shower, a shad- BLACK AND WHITE), and most made a owy figure enters the motel bathroom and great deal of money. PSYCHO n 339

What, Hitchcock mused, if you took CENSORS; Hitchcock struggled with a the same building blocks—a gruesome crew that was quick but perhaps not quite story leavened by sardonic humor, a cheap as polished as his usual feature-film tech- production pushed by sensationalistic nicians. Perkins remained worried about advertising—and asked a really good direc- what such an extreme role would do to tor to construct something out of it? Then his career; JANET LEIGH, whose previ- what would you get? Something like Psy- ous parts had been largely decorative, cho, he decided. wondered if she could tackle such a tough The book had already been read and complex heroine. Hitchcock assuaged their dismissed by the story department at PAR- doubts and encouraged them to add their AMOUNT. “Too repulsive for films, and own touches to their roles—as long as they rather shocking even to a hardened reader,” knew their lines and hit their marks. went the memo. But Hitchcock read the The shower scene—storyboarded by book himself on the recommendation of “pictorial consultant” SAUL BASS, who his assistant Peggy Robertson and bought later claimed to have directed it as well— it anonymously through an agent at MCA. took a week of shooting a nearly nude When he brought it back to Paramount, Leigh, along with body doubles for both however, announcing it as his next project, her and Perkins. (Hitchcock, who usually they were horrified. They refused to fund had little patience for surprise endings, was it. They even refused to let him shoot it on intent on keeping this one intact; a female their lot. body double for Norman-as-Mother was So Hitchcock announced that he extra insurance, so no one recognized Per- would pay for it himself and shoot it at kins’s broad shoulders.) Other scenes— UNIVERSAL, where he did his televi- such as the state psychiatrist’s literally anti- sion show. All Paramount had to do was climactic summation—were handled more distribute it. He’d take all the risk—he’d briskly. even waive his director’s fee—in return Eventually Hitchcock wrapped the for a 60 percent stake. The studio agreed picture, edited it, and added the score. (something they’d regret later—the film (BERNARD HERRMANN’s music was turned out to be Hitchcock’s biggest hit, very nearly the opposite of the modern making roughly $32 million theatrically jazz the director had requested—he had before it ended its years-long run). Budget- also wanted silence for the shower scene— ing the production at a lean $800,000, the but so delighted Hitchcock that he raised director cast it economically (ANTHONY Herrmann’s fee and gave him a prominent PERKINS still owed a film to Paramount, place in the opening credits.) After some VERA MILES was under personal contract, more squabbles with the censors—there and JOHN GAVIN was on salary at Uni- is a brief blurry flash of body double Marli versal) and assembled much of the crew Renfro’s breasts as Marion pulls open the from his television show, where people curtain that stayed in and one clear shot knew how to work fast. of the corpse’s buttocks, which Hitchcock There were some tensions and sec- cut, probably having always meant it as a ond thoughts before and during shoot- bargaining chip—the picture was sent out ing. Some of JOSEPH STEFANO’s ideas, to theaters. including making the incestuous relation- It was sent out with two more mar- ship between Norman and his MOTHER keting innovations meant to preserve explicit, would never have gotten past the its secrets: Critics weren’t given advance 340 n PSYCHO screenings, and no one was admitted after There are also some superb perfor- the picture began (a promotional trick sto- mances, particularly from Leigh and Per- len from rival HENRI-GEORGES CLOU- kins, who go deep into their characters ZOT’s LES DIABOLIQUES but also a way and themselves. Leigh had been in Hol- of ensuring that latecomers didn’t come in lywood since the late ’40s, but she had after the shower scene and wonder where finally aged out of her ingénue roles into Janet Leigh was). Unless they’d already a less certain future—Psycho captures a read the novel, people wouldn’t know what hard, adult determination here that other they were in for. movies hadn’t. And Perkins gives Norman They soon did. The critics were largely so many qualities—flashes of madness, unimpressed—“A blot on an honorable yes, but also humor and bashfulness and career,” declared the New York Times—but even touches of effeminacy—that, when audiences got the film and the joke. Hitch- the film demands we switch allegiances cock and Stefano had layered the film with and identify with him instead of Marion, tiny quips and inside references, some of we immediately oblige. which would only be apparent on a sec- Not every actor’s performance is quite ond or third viewing—Norman’s apology as interesting—yet their flatness works for that his mother wasn’t “quite herself” that the parts they’ve been asked to play. MAR- day—but audiences roared nonetheless, TIN BALSAM is dull, methodical, consci- partly to dispel the tension, partly because entious—just what you’d expect from a the film seemed to tap into the sick humor private detective working a case. Gavin is then coming into vogue. The crowds were handsome enough to imagine a woman so vocal, in fact, that Hitchcock consid- willing to commit a crime to be with ered pulling the prints and remixing the him—and dull enough to push her to have soundtrack; people might be laughing too second thoughts. SIMON OAKLAND’s loud to hear some of the dialogue. (As the psychiatrist is smug and glib—but isn’t picture was already in wide release, the plan that the point? Each actor serves the film was abandoned.) perfectly. But Psycho is more than just a dark But Hitchcock is the real STAR here, joke. Yes, there are many bits of grim fore- and the cinematic flourishes are many. In shadowing and knowing nudges through- some ways the most audacious is the sim- out the sneakily sardonic film, which plest—getting rid of Leigh’s character early sometimes plays like a live-action Charles in the picture. Although that may not reso- Addams cartoon. Within a few minutes of nate as strongly with contemporary audi- the opening, Marion will be joking to Sam ences, at the time, her dismissal was nearly about cheap hotels that don’t care when as shocking as the form it took. Hollywood you check in, but “when your time is up movies simply didn’t write a major star out . . . ”; moments after Marion’s corpse is of a script like this; if Hitchcock was willing sunk into a swamp, a customer enters to do that, then clearly Psycho was willing Sam’s store looking for poison, insisting to do anything. (And it was—among the that “death should always be painless.” many taboos the movie broke was the pro- But there’s also bravura filmmaking. hibition against seeing a toilet, let alone a There’s beautifully realized imagery and flushing one.) extended metaphors. And, more than any- Then, of course, there was the shower thing, there’s an almost palpable sense of murder itself, the KULESHOV EFFECT existential dread. gone mad—knife, mouth, knife, abdomen, PSYCHO n 341 drain, mouth, knife, showerhead, all cut ding gift, the mother who gives Marion’s together by GEORGE TOMASINI into an friend tranquilizers for her honeymoon, orgy of near-subliminal images, so delib- the departed mom whose picture looks erately fast and sometimes intentionally down on Marion and Lila, the possessive blurred that the audience never knew what Mrs. Bates who finally, literally, possesses it was seeing and always remained con- her own son. vinced it had seen more than it had. But more than anything, Psycho is a But there were quieter, more elegantly movie filled with a kind of silent-scream formal sequences, too. Like the opening, anguish, a Munch painting come to life. It starting with the Phoenix skyline, then begins in the harsh, pitiless light of the des- picking out a building, then slowly going ert and ends in the dank muck of a swamp, inside the window of one room, a com- and nothing in between seems to happen plicated move Hitchcock had vainly tried according to any plan or any sense of jus- to do in a single shot; even assembled out tice. A sinning woman determines to make of several separate ones, it still silently amends and takes a shower to wash herself grounded the story, at least for now, in clean—and is murdered anyway. A young dully recognizable reality. Or the ending, man comes across enough money to help with Norman/Mother sitting against that him start over—and unthinkingly throws blank featureless wall, thinking, thinking— it away. and then his/her smile dissolving into a No one gets what they want in Psycho, corpse’s skeletal grin. All of this was beau- and to some extent that includes the audi- tifully shot and edited, but what also filled ence. You like the heroine? Too bad. Psycho Psycho with meaning were the symbols kills her in the first act. You have hopes for within those images. the detective? Good. Psycho kills him off, It’s a movie filled with EYES—the ones too. You think, well, maybe now Marion’s a highway patrolman hides behind glasses, boyfriend and her sister will fall for each the “cruel” ones studying you that Nor- other? No, they won’t. Whatever your man imagines in the madhouse, his own expectations were, Psycho ignored them at as he peeps at his pretty guest, Marion’s every turn. A happy ending? There’s only dead staring pupils as she lies on the cold one person smiling at the end of the movie, bathroom floor, the sightless sockets of the and it’s dear dead Mom. lifeless Mrs. Bates, the unseen ones that are The universe is random, Psycho said; “probably watching” Norman at the end. movies can be just as capricious. Ironically, It’s a movie filled with BIRDS, too— it took Hitchcock, the most meticulous of Marion Crane from Phoenix, to begin with, directors, to embrace the modern moral but also the pictures of pretty songbirds chaos—and throw down that artistic gaunt- that fill the murder cabin, Cabin 1 (and let. Very few filmmakers since have dared only Cabin 1), and the stuffed predators pick it up. that look down on Norman in his parlor, But still, thanks to Psycho, that possi- and Marion, as she pecks at her sandwich bility exists onscreen—that the good people “like a bird.” will not win, that the bad people will win And it’s a movie filled with domineer- our hearts, that nothing will turn out right ing parents who still rule their adult chil- or even conclusively. For Marion Crane dren’s lives—the dead father whose debts may have lost her life when she stepped Sam fights to pay off, the daddy who’s giv- into that shower. But the American movie ing his “sweet baby girl” a $40,000 wed- audience lost its innocence forever. 342 n PSYCHO

References cast, with Vince Vaughn, Anne Heche, Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen, and in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- William H. Macy taking over, respectively, erCollins, 2003), 578–601; Donald Spoto, for ANTHONY PERKINS, JANET LEIGH, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred VERA MILES, JOHN GAVIN, and MAR- Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, TIN BALSAM. Few are improvements. 1999), 413–21; François Truffaut, Hitch- Macy is a little livelier than Balsam, cock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Touch- and Mortensen more interesting than stone, 1985), 266–83; Stephen Whitty, “A Gavin. But Moore has nothing to add to Psycho Analysis,” NJ.com, http://www what was always a minor role, and Heche .nj.com/entertainment/movies/index lacks Leigh’s weary warmth. And Vaughn’s .ssf/2010/10/a_psycho_analysis_alfred Norman—big, beefy, slightly lunkish— _hitchcocks_spookiest_movie_brought strikes a definite off-note. And with the _with_it_the_end_of_hollywood_innocence cinematography and editing basically aping .html. the first, nearly shot for shot, the movie seems less like an aesthetic exercise than a PSYCHO (US 1998) waste of time; it’s as pointless (and appalling) as colorizing a classic, and the few Director: Gus Van Sant. touches Van Sant adds feel like mistakes. Screenplay: Joseph Stefano, based on the In the first film, for example, we novel by Robert Bloch. saw Norman spying on Marion as she Producers: Brian Grazer, Gus Van Sant. undressed, then retreating silently to his Cinematography: Christopher Doyle. Editor: Amy E. Duddleston. house; here, he masturbates while he Original Music: Bernard Herrmann. watches. The change is not only crude but Cast: Vince Vaughn (Norman Bates), Anne contradictory; part of the point and power Heche (Marion Crane), Viggo Mortensen of the shower murder is that the mad Nor- (Sam Loomis), William H. Macy (Arbo- man can’t express his SEXUALITY in any gast), Julianne Moore (Lila Crane). other way. To allow him this sort of physi- Running Time: 105 minutes. Color. cal release removes some of the reason for Released Through: Universal. his attack. For all its careful copying, Van Sant’s Psycho feels like a movie made by someone It’s an idea best suited perhaps for an aca- who watched the original a hundred times demic paper or maybe a late-night dorm and yet never really saw a thing. discussion: What would a classic movie look like if you took the shooting script and Reference remade it precisely, shot for shot, but with Scott Tobias, “Gus Van Sant,” AV Club, different actors and in COLOR instead http://www.avclub.com/article/gus-van of BLACK AND WHITE? Well, it might -sant-13800. look a bit like Gus Van Sant’s redo of PSY- CHO—although, one would hope, more PSYCHOANALYSIS interesting. Although SPELLBOUND is rightly cred- Van Sant’s inexplicable remake—he ited with being one of the first Hollywood has since called it an “experiment” and a films to take psychoanalysis seriously—and “prank”—follows the Hitchcock film pretty often noted as being a personal project for slavishly but in color and with a different DAVID O. SELZNICK, who had his own PUBLICITY n 343 analyst hired and credited as a consultant— publicists almost as soon as THE LODGER Hitchcock’s interest in the subject predates gave him a name to push, and his actual it by more than a decade with a rather fatu- signature (and later his own minimalist ous FREUDIAN showing up as one of the caricature of his profile) became a part of jurors in MURDER! Even when psychiatry film titles, posters, and merchandizing tie- isn’t explicitly mentioned, its theories and ins. He wrote a number of bylined articles diagnoses are often a part of his early thrill- for both film-oriented and general-interest ers—the temporary traumatic amnesia that magazines and newspapers and sat for Diana suffers in Murder!, the combination countless INTERVIEWS. of GUILT and vengeance that drives the His personal involvement grew tenant in THE LODGER. even stronger once he escaped the ego of Although many of Hitchcock’s vil- DAVID O. SELZNICK and became his lains are clearly disturbed, if not outright own producer; he would not only pose mad—Charlie in SHADOW OF A DOUBT, drolly for preproduction publicity photos Brandon in ROPE, Norman in PSYCHO, but also eventually appear in the advertis- Bob in FRENZY—it’s unlikely the curdled ing trailers, presenting the same sort of MOTHER fixations and thwarted sexual sarcastic, gleefully morbid character he had desires that drive them to kill could ever used on his television show. have been defused with a rigorous appli- Right from the start, Hitchcock’s cation of talk therapy. In fact, the few point of view was “You make pictures for Hitchcock characters who do seek out the press,” his old British colleague IVOR professional help for problems—Scottie in MONTAGU remembered. “This, he VERTIGO, Rose in THE WRONG MAN— explained quite frankly, was the reason for find it provides little immediate relief. ‘the Hitchcock touches’—novel shots that In the end, Hitchcock remains a the critics would pick out and comment romantic, not a clinician, and only in upon—as well as those flash appearances those cases when the therapy comes from that gradually became a trademark in his a lover—Constance in Spellbound, Mark films. He went on to explain that, if you in MARNIE—is there any sort of break- made yourself publicly known as a direc- through. All of our relationships are tor—and this you could only do by getting marked by assumed IDENTITIES, will- mention in the press in connection with ful dishonesty, deeply hidden shames, his your directing—this would be the only way films insist. Only being honest with one you became free to do what you wanted.” another—utterly, emotionally naked—is Particularly elaborate—and instruc- there ever any hope for change. tive—was the campaign for PSYCHO. The trailer (with Hitchcock giving a tour Reference of the empty set and even giving away Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life some important plot points) ran 6½ in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- minutes; a separate, 11-minute “press Collins, 2003), 356. book on film” about the film’s admit- tance policies was made and shown to PUBLICITY distributors to explain the special mar- From the start of his directing career, keting. The requirements—“No one—but Alfred Hitchcock was very conscious of no one—will be admitted after the start advertising, public relations, and the as-yet- of each performance of Psycho” read unnamed “branding”—he hired personal the signs posted outside theaters and in 344 n PURE CINEMA their lobbies—were similar to ones used cize the filmmaker. Hitchcock had always for the release of HENRI-GEORGES suspected, right from the beginning, that CLOUZOT’s LES DIABOLIQUES. They the director was the true star of the movie; also brought to mind some of the bal- for years, all he had been attempting to lyhoo beloved of producer William Cas- accomplish, with his interviews, his image, tle, whose 1958 Macabre, a self-styled his inescapable appearances, was to ensure B-movie, had offered every audience audiences recognize that top billing. Psycho member an insurance policy guaranteed gave it to him forever. to pay out if they died of fright during a screening. (No one ever collected.) References There was a practical purpose for these Stephen Rebello, Alfred Hitchcock and the admission requirements; at the time, mov- Making of Psycho (New York: Harper- ies in major cities ran nearly continuously, Perennial, 1991), 147–57; Donald Spoto, with some fans wandering in after a pic- The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred ture had started and simply staying until Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, the next showing. Hitchcock knew this 1999), 85–87. would be disastrous for a film with huge surprises in both its first and third acts, PURE CINEMA and so he insisted on people seeing it from Although the term dates back to at least the beginning or not at all, even suggesting the 1920s and early debates among French theater owners hire extra security to keep critics on the nature of film as art, Alfred order. But beyond the obvious benefits Hitchcock had been using the phrase in the of preserving the secrets of Psycho—an early ’60s, and in his 1963 monograph for unusually crucial matter to Hitchcock, who an upcoming Museum of Modern Art ret- generally avoided classic whodunits—this rospective, PETER BOGDANOVICH tried approach ensured that other patrons would to pin him down: How would you define see people lining up for the next screening. pure cinema? The film would definitely be talked about, “Pure cinema,” Hitchcock replied, before and afterward. (Along with his other “is complementary pieces of film put demands to theater owners came the insis- together, like notes of music make a mel- tence that, after the final title, the room go ody.” He then went on to describe two dark for a half-minute before the house slightly different examples of MONTAGE, lights came up; “Never, never, never will I both from REAR WINDOW, in which an permit Psycho to be followed immediately action sequence is broken down into dif- by a short subject or newsreel,” he added.) ferent shots (arms, legs, faces) or, as with It was the sort of advertising campaign the KULESHOV EFFECT, a static shot of that Castle—who by now was hiding plastic someone looking is broken up and defined skeletons in the rafters (House on Haunted by an insert shot of what he is looking at. Hill) and electric buzzers in the seats (The The way you put the different pieces of film Tingler) could only dream of, and it clearly together, he suggested, is what moviemak- worked; after its long run in theaters ing was all about. (including a 1965 re-release), Psycho had But pure cinema is more than editing, earned back more than 40 times its budget although editing is perhaps the only thing and made Hitchcock millions. that the movies can claim as their own. For All of this was more than a way to pub- Hitchcock, “pure cinema” was very simply licize a film, though. It was a way to publi- visual storytelling—the way that an art- PURE CINEMA n 345 ist used composition, imagery, planes of excelled at. The way that the cleaning lady’s action, focus, and lighting within a single scream fades into the noise of a locomotive shot to express an idea and then multiplied in THE 39 STEPS and immediately hurtles that idea by joining that shot to another. us along into the action; the careful cut- “The screen rectangle must be charged ting between a ticking bomb, the innocent with emotion,” he insisted to FRANÇOIS child carrying it, and the clocks surround- TRUFFAUT, and it is a theme Hitchcock ing him that almost unbearably ratchets up returns to throughout their long conver- the tension in SABOTAGE; the simple stare sations: Cinema is an emotional medium, into the camera that Uncle Charlie gives in and the director’s job is to consciously use SHADOW OF A DOUBT, a breaking of the visual methods—the size of the image, the fourth wall that both invites us to join him contrast between shots—to incite uncon- in his madness and makes us shrink back. scious feelings in his audience. Rarely merely visual flourishes, Hitch- Hitchcock’s first work in films came cock’s choices almost invariably advance during the silent era (and his first job, the plot or deepen our relationship to the designing title cards, was more visual still), characters. He could use an inexorably long so using pictures, not dialogue, to tell a story shot, moving from a vast crowd into a sin- was always important to him. “In many of gle detail, to stress the narrative importance the films now being made, there is very little of a facial twitch (YOUNG AND INNO- cinema,” he complained in the ’60s. “They CENT) or a simple key (NOTORIOUS); he are mostly what I call ‘photographs of peo- could pull the camera up high for a static ple talking.’ When we tell a story in cinema, bird’s-eye view to encourage us to dispas- we should resort to dialogue only when it’s sionately view humans in turmoil (DIAL M impossible to do otherwise.” FOR MURDER, THE BIRDS); or he could The idea, after all, was to make a film, use the SUBJECTIVE CAMERA to bring us not a radio show; if, as Hitchcock said close and have us feel the impact of a punch another time, you could close your eyes and (STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, NORTH BY still follow a movie perfectly, then the direc- NORTHWEST) or identify with a charac- tor wasn’t doing his job. It was not merely ter’s horrible actions (PSYCHO, FRENZY). because of age or stubbornness that he still Yet while Hitchcock always remained most often referred to his chosen medium first and foremost a visual storyteller—the not as “films” or “movies” but “the pictures.” strongest evidence of his brilliant, early To list the moments of pure cinema in career in silent film—he was always a com- Hitchcock’s work is, essentially, to list the plete filmmaker. Although he insisted that most memorable sequences from his mov- motion pictures should, naturally enough, ies, but they would probably begin with use motion and pictures to tell their sto- the shot of THE LODGER pacing his room ries, he respected the written word; he not upstairs—a fact we know only because the only worked with outstanding screenwrit- director dissolves from the ceiling, with its ers, such as BEN HECHT, but frequently slightly wobbly light fixture, to the heavy collaborated with acclaimed authors, too, pane of plate glass that IVOR NOVELLO is from THORNTON WILDER to (less treading. It is not a rational moment; it is a felicitously) RAYMOND CHANDLER purely visual and emotional one. and JOHN STEINBECK. The dialogue in And it is using imagery to convey Shadow of a Doubt, in Notorious, in VER- complex situations—even slightly inde- TIGO, in Psycho is always beautiful and scribable emotions—that Hitchcock always sometimes even poetic. 346 n PURE CINEMA

His reliance on actors was less obvious; in Hollywood, with its wealth of talented as someone who never tired of quoting the composers, Hitchcock was ready to add lessons of Kuleshov, he knew that, given a music to his visuals in a way that he hadn’t simple close-up of an actor’s face, he could really been able to in Britain. BERNARD create any effect he wanted later in the edit- HERRMANN, with his brilliant ear for ing room (the reason he so often advised— orchestration (and shared appreciation of and frustrated—uncertain actors by telling Wagner), turned out to be the perfect pair them not to show any emotion at all). of ears for his eyes; the sinuous repetitions Yet Hitchcock had a strong respect of his score for Vertigo, the stabbing strings for the power of a STAR’s persona; of the music in Psycho, both emphasize the complex, self-doubting JAMES STEW- and elaborate on those movies’ moods and ART was right for certain roles; the ulti- meanings. mately unknowable CARY GRANT, This was always Hitchcock’s firmest perfect for others. And if he had no belief: A movie is not just story and action, patience for actors inquiring after their actor and dialogue; it’s also imagery, edit- motivation—that was their job, and he ing, and sound. And it was Hitchcock’s preferred they had figured all that out innate ability to keep all those different ele- before they arrived on his set, delaying his ments separate in his head yet find a way schedule—as long as they hit their marks, to join and juxtapose them onscreen, that he was perfectly open to them improvis- made him one of the movies’ greatest pro- ing and making their characters their own. ponents of pure cinema—and one of its He may have enjoyed insulting actors or purest cinematic geniuses as well. pretending to—he certainly did not enjoy their demands on his budgets—but the References number of remarkable performances in Peter Bogdanovich, The Cinema of Alfred his films refutes any suggestion that he Hitchcock, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ didn’t appreciate acting. Alfred_Hitchcock_and_Peter_Bogdano For someone who had begun in silents, vich_%281963%29; Alfred Hitchcock, he adapted to sound easily, too. Both interview by Bryan Forbes, BBC One, BLACKMAIL and MURDER! are experi- December 30, 1969, http://the.hitchcock menting with aural montage and layered .zone/wiki/Alfred_Hitchcock_and_Bryan soundtracks at a time when many direc- _Forbes_%281969%29; François Truffaut, tors were still wondering how to hide the Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: microphone; by the time he had arrived Touchstone, 1985), 61, 110–13, 214–15. Q

QUAYLE, ANTHONY also did a great deal of television, includ- (1913–1989) ing Moses the Lawgiver, Masada, and the Lancashire-born, classically trained actor 1981 remake of DIAL M FOR MURDER, in who joined the Old Vic in 1932 and the which he played the inspector. army in 1939. After serving with distinc- Quayle had only a small part in Hitch- tion (and behind enemy lines in Albania cock’s THE WRONG MAN, but one of his with Special Operations) during World scenes was particularly memorable; as the War II, he returned to the theater, special- defense lawyer, he meets with Manny and izing in the classics, his efforts as a director Rose in his office to go over new develop- and actor leading to the establishment of ments in the case. But as Hitchcock’s cam- a vital theater scene at Stratford-on-Avon era slowly circles him, Quayle’s quietly and the eventual birth of the Royal Shake- inquisitive look shows us what Manny is speare Company. oblivious to; although the news is guard- Quayle had made his film debut in edly hopeful, Rose is already unresponsive 1938 in a small part in Pygmalion; little and sinking into a dangerous depression. more than character work ever followed for He died of cancer at 76 at his London the strapping actor with the fine voice and home. the moon face. “I wasn’t asked to be a handsome young man in films because I wasn’t References a handsome young man,” he declared later, “Anthony Quayle,” IMDb, http://www noting that his film work was mostly pay- .imdb.com/name/nm0703033/bio?ref_=nm check parts. “I was in the Tarzan films and _ov_bio_sm; Glenn Collins, “Sir Anthony Fall of the Roman Empire and one dreary Quayle, British Actor and Theater Director, thing after another,” he said. Dies at 76,” New York Times, October 21, He was, characteristically, being mod- 1989, http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/21/ est. Quayle’s natural, authoritative bearing obituaries/sir-anthony-quayle-british- let him play noble Romans, stern British actor-and-theater-director-dies-at-76 officers, or men of the church; among his .html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2; Roger better films were Laurence of Arabia, The Phillip Mellor, “Anthony Quayle,” BFI Guns of Navarone, and Anne of the Thou- Screenonline, http://www.screenonline.org. sand Days. In addition to his stage work, he uk/people/id/491735.

n 347 RA

RADFORD, BASIL (1897–1952) Although he did other, more properly Chester-born performer and minister’s son prestigious films, sometimes solo (such who fought in the brutal trenches of World as The Winslow Boy), it was his playing War I—emerging with that shocking scar sweetly dim, impossibly stalwart types that across one cheek—and then came home won him the hearts of many Britons, in the to enroll in the Royal Academy of Dra- movies and on the BBC; he died in Lon- matic Art. He made his London debut in don at 55 while rehearsing for a new play 1924 and spent most of the next few years with Wayne. Reportedly, the heart attack abroad on the stages of New Zealand, Can- hit him as he was in the pub, reaching for a ada, and California. pint—precisely as you might have expected Radford made his movie debut in Charters to go. 1929 and did several films for Hitchcock, including YOUNG AND INNOCENT, References in which he plays Erica’s uncle, and “Basil Radford,” IMDb, http://www.imdb JAMAICA INN, in which he shows up as com/name/nm0705509/bio?ref_=nm one of Sir Humphrey’s unnamed dinner _ov_bio_sm; “Obituary: Basil Rad- guests. In between, though, he nabbed ford,” Times, October 21, 1952, http://the his most famous role, playing Charters in .hitchcock.zone/wiki/The_Times_%2821/ THE LADY VANISHES, the slightly fuddy- Oct/1952%29_-_Obituary:_Basil_Radford; duddy Englishman whose only interest Matthew Sweet, “Mustard and Cress,” is the cricket results (until, hang it all, old Guardian, December 29, 2007, http://www man, the Fascists attack and one simply has .theguardian.com/film/2007/dec/29/film. to pick up a revolver and pitch in). It’s a cheekily satiric yet, in the end, RAINS, CLAUDE (1889–1967) quietly approving portrayal of Eng- London-born actor (and son of a struggling lish values, and—often partnered with actor) who grew up with a lisp, a stammer, NAUNTON WAYNE, who played his and a rough Cockney accent. Performing, traveling companion, Caldicott—Radford nonetheless, since childhood, he was dis- would continue to milk the character for covered by fabled actor/manager Sir Her- much of the rest of his career, particularly bert Beerbohm Tree, who paid for the vocal in Night Train to Munich and Crook’s Tour coaching Rains needed—which would help (which gave the characters new adventures) turn him into one of the most mellifluous and such classics as Dead of Night and actors of his generation. Whiskey Galore!, which basically continued A veteran of World War I (where a the partnership under different names. gas attack left him permanently, partially

348 n RAINS, CLAUDE n 349

Alfred Hitchcock and Alma Reville at the beginning of their personal and professional partnership, on the set of The Mountain Eagle with two unidentified crew members. Photofest blinded) and of the Royal Academy of Dra- effects left him faceless until the end, his ster- matic Art (where, as a star pupil, he later ling-silver voice made the most of the witty returned to teach, numbering JOHN GIEL- dialogue and made him a movie favorite. GUD among his students), Rains made his Short and already middle-aged, Rains talkie debut in James Whale’s The Invisible was an unlikely leading man. And so he set- Man in 1933; although bandages or special tled comfortably into a long reign as one of 350 n RAPHAELSON, SAMSON the art’s most dependable character actors, Rains received his last best supporting nominated four times for the best support- actor nomination for Notorious (and lost ing actor prize (he never won) and leav- again) and continued to work regularly, ing an indelible mark on Casablanca; The although the rebellious, youth-oriented ’50s Adventures of Robin Hood; Mr. Skeffington; were not a congenial time for 60-ish Brit- Now, Voyager; Mr. Smith Goes to Washing- ish character actors with beautiful speaking ton; Laurence of Arabia; and many others. voices. He still kept busy, though, starring For Hitchcock, his by far finest in everything from the kiddie-matinee work—despite five separate appearances remake of The Lost World to playing Herod on ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS— in The Greatest Story Ever Told; in between, would be in NOTORIOUS as Nazi col- he retreated to his sprawling farm in New laborator Alex Sebastian. Hitchcock had England. He died at 77 from an abdominal originally thought of Clifton Webb, who hemorrhage in New Hampshire. No one had previously scored in a similar role—the has ever sounded quite like him since. older, beauty-obsessed murderer in Laura. But Webb’s delicate archness would have References deprived Sebastian of the warmth that this “Claude Rains,” Encyclopaedia Britan- villain nonetheless needed to have, and at nica, http://www.britannica.com/biogra DAVID O. SELZNICK’s insistence, Rains phy/Claude-Rains; “Claude Rains,” IMDb, was cast. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001647/ Selznick had never been shy about bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Donald Spoto, meddling, but this suggestion may have The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred been his best; Sebastian is a villain work- Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, ing secretly with fugitive Nazis to develop 1999), 287; David Thomson, The New Bio- an atomic weapon and, eventually, plotting graphical Dictionary of Film (New York: to poison his wife—yet Rains shows us, not Knopf, 2002), 709–10. a monster, but a MOTHER-DOMINATED weakling, who, at this late date in his life, RAPHAELSON, SAMSON has finally taken over running the family (1894–1983) business (no doubt disappointingly, in his New York–born playwright and screen- mother’s eyes) and at last dared to fall in writer who first worked in advertising. love. Encouraged by his secretary, he turned his His scenes with INGRID BERGMAN’s short story “Day of Atonement” into the Alicia are full of soft words and crackling play The Jazz Singer; it became not only energy—she does, indeed, clearly affect him the Broadway hit but also Hollywood’s “like a tonic”—and Rains never fails to con- first talkie smash. Raphaelson continued to vince us that this short older man has fallen produce hit plays but by the ’30s was an in- completely, adoringly for this tall slim god- demand Hollywood screenwriter, where his dess (much as, perhaps, a certain fat older work ranged from Trouble in Paradise and man already worshipped the actress play- The Shop around the Corner to The Last of ing the part). Arguably, Sebastian deserves Mrs. Cheyney and The Harvey Girls, and he Alicia more than Devlin does—he loves her was known for his tight construction and more completely, unashamedly, unreserv- sparkling, sophisticated dialogue. edly. And it’s a love that never fades, even For Hitchcock, he worked—along with as he’s coolly watching her drink her coffee JOAN HARRISON and ALMA REVILLE— full of arsenic. on SUSPICION (which, before the director REAR WINDOW n 351 had come onboard, already had a script http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0710723/ from Nathaniel West and Boris Ingster that bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Donald Spoto, apparently Hitchcock discarded). Based The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred on the excellent Francis Iles novel Before Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, the Fact, it is the story of a born victim— 1999), 243–46. an insecure woman who remains besotted with her husband, even as it becomes clear REAR WINDOW (US 1954) he’s planning to poison her. The screenplay follows the book Director: Alfred Hitchcock. faithfully enough, but the central idea of Screenplay: John Michael Hayes, based on a story by Cornell Woolrich. the story posed a problem, not just for Producer: Uncredited (Alfred Hitchcock). the CENSORS but also the studio—How Cinematography: Robert Burks. could leading man CARY GRANT play a Editor: George Tomasini. murderer? DONALD SPOTO insists that Original Music: Franz Waxman. Hitchcock had known of this problem Cast: James Stewart (L. B. “Jeff” Jefferies), from the beginning and was, in fact, more Grace Kelly (Lisa Fremont), Thelma Rit- interested in the study of a wife’s paranoia; ter (Stella), Raymond Burr (Lars Thor- Hitchcock himself claimed the objection wald), Wendell Corey (Det. Thomas was only raised later. Doyle). The effect, though, remained the Running Time: 112 minutes. Color. same—a novel about a plotting sociopath Released Through: Paramount. of a husband now became a movie about a morbidly distrustful wife. Even Hitchcock’s and Raphaelson’s skills can’t sell that switch After breaking his leg running after the (although the movie remains entertaining perfect shot of a racetrack crash, photojour- for the most part and won JOAN FON- nalist L. B. “Jeff” Jefferies is stuck in a cast, TAINE the best actress Oscar). in a wheelchair, and in his stifling Green- Raphaelson and his wife enjoyed the wich Village apartment. To pass the time, company of the Hitchcocks (although he he sits by his window overlooking the back once remarked, quite intriguingly, that in courtyard, using his telephoto lens to spy private they seemed like a slightly gender- on the little dramas unfolding in his neigh- switched couple—Hitch a bit effeminate, bors’ apartments—a pastime that amuses Alma a trifle mannish). Raphaelson, who neither the prickly Stella, his visiting health turned down a later offer to write I CON- aide, nor Lisa, the socialite fashion model FESS, began to curtail his screenwriting in to whom he refuses to commit. the ’50s but continued to write and teach Jeff gives his neighbors nicknames— and discovered a new love for photography. the leotard-clad “Miss Torso,” who He died in New York at age 89. energetically does her dance routines; “Miss Lonelyhearts,” who is dateless and References dejected—but finds his attention increas- Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life ingly drawn to one apartment, where the in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- quarreling Mrs. Thorwald has suddenly erCollins, 2003), 280; “Samson Raphael- vanished and Mr. Thorwald disappears for son,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, http:// long stretches of time in the middle of the www.britannica.com/biography/Samson night. Convinced that a homicide has hap- -Raphaelson; “Samson Raphaelson,” IMDb, pened, Jeff tells his suspicions to Stella and 352 n REAR WINDOW

Lisa, who begin to share them, and a friend WEST; and, not to stretch the point, in the police department (who remains PSYCHO (which would begin filming in unconvinced). November 1959). Lisa volunteers to be Jeff’s legs and Preproduction went smoothly. Hayes’s investigate and, finally slipping into the initial treatment—based on a COR- Thorwalds’ apartment, finds the wife’s NELL WOOLRICH story Hitchcock had wedding ring—strong proof that the the rights to—was polished enough that woman has not, as her husband claims, JAMES STEWART agreed to star even simply gone on a long trip. But the police before the script was written and GRACE arrive and arrest Lisa for burglary, and KELLY turned down On the Waterfront to Stella has to go post bail, leaving Jeff alone play Lisa. After having a massive set con- and defenseless in the apartment. structed on the Paramount lot compris- Thorwald, who has realized his across- ing more than two dozen apartments—all the-courtyard neighbor has been spying on with windows and fire escapes and at least him, goes over to Jeff’s apartment to end a dozen completely furnished—Hitchcock the surveillance permanently. Jeff tempo- then turned his attentions to Kelly, confer- rarily blinds Thorwald by setting off flash- ring with her and EDITH HEAD to make bulbs, but the burly man rushes forward sure her wardrobe was precisely correct, and manages to push Jeff out the window right down to the strappy sandals. It was before the police arrive and arrest him. Jeff, like dressing a doll (or, as Head said later, however, survives the fall—albeit now with with perhaps unintentional insight, like two broken legs—and is soon recuperating “putting a dream together”). at home, with Lisa in hovering attendance. Filming was typically precise but without problems, with journalists coming by An essential Hitchcock film and an insight to wonder at the impressive set—one of into the essence of Hitchcock himself as a the largest ever built at Paramount, Hitch- man and an artist. cock bragged. Refining and advancing “If someone were to ask ‘What are the the techniques he’d used to create a real- movies of Alfred Hitchcock like,’” film- istic city backdrop in ROPE, Hitchcock maker Curtis Hanson says in the docu- had steam rising from rooftop pipes and, mentary ‘Rear Window’ Ethics, “someone in one brief shot, even a few pigeons on a who knew nothing about movies, you could roof. Rather than mix the sound carefully, show them Rear Window and in a sense artificially, later, much of it was played and touch on everything in Hitchcock.” re-recorded live, so that the street noises Rear Window marked a new studio would have depth and distance. Apart from for Hitchcock (after the less-than-thrilling FRANZ WAXMAN’s jittery, jazzy theme, union with WARNER BROS., LEW WAS- most of the music was deliberately diegetic, SERMAN had arranged for a multipicture too, sourced to onscreen radios or pianos. deal at PARAMOUNT) and a new screen- The film was a deserved and enormous writing collaborator in JOHN MICHAEL hit and, as the rights eventually reverted HAYES (who would turn out to be one of to Hitchcock, a huge financial success for his best). It also definitively marked the him, as well. ’50s as Hitchcock’s greatest, most creative Certainly it was a film full of fine decade—an era that would also include performances. Stewart projects just the such masterpieces as STRANGERS ON A right mixture of painful boredom, help- TRAIN; VERTIGO; NORTH BY NORTH- less anguish, and slightly sweaty obsession. REAR WINDOW n 353

(The last two would come in handy again often spoken of the KULESHOV EFFECT in Vertigo.) And Kelly does indeed look like to critics, used it to dismiss the honest wor- a dream, a metaphor Hitchcock underlines ries of actors: All you needed to create a by giving her a pale green outfit (always an feeling, he insisted, were two close-ups, otherworldly COLOR for him), and having with an insert shot stuck between them. the camera slip briefly into stuttering slow It didn’t matter what the actor was trying motion when she leans in to give the lightly to convey; in fact, it might be better if he dozing Stewart that first kiss. Although remained emotionless. What you cut to is Kelly’s socialite line readings are occasion- what created the emotion. ally a trifle too affected—as an acting stu- That three-shot sequence is the pri- dent, she had worked perhaps a little too mary visual code of Rear Window end- hard to lose her Philadelphia accent—it lessly repeated. We see Jeff, we see what ends up working with her character, and he is looking at, and then we cut back to the street-corner snap of THELMA RIT- him. Stewart is, of course, too emotional an TER and WENDELL COREY are always actor not to react—he doesn’t give Hitch- there to bring the film back to earth. cock the utterly blank slate that the direc- Excellent, too, is RAYMOND BURR tor might have demanded from others. But as Thorwald, whom we barely get to know it is always the object of his gaze—“Miss in the film—like Jeff, until the end we’ve Torso,” “Miss Lonelyhearts,” Thorwald— only seen him from afar. But when we do that allows us to interpret his gaze. meet him, he’s hesitant, halting. “What do The constant cutting in Rear Window is you want from me?” he asks, and Jeff has important to provide not only information no answer. Yes, ostensibly, Jeff is doing his but also pace—apart from Jeff’s brief fall to duty as a citizen, helping to bring a mur- the courtyard, we never really leave his apart- derer to justice. But there has been a kind ment, and its own small environs prohibit of sadism to Jeff’s investigation, too, a kind any fancy camera movements (beyond that of harassment in his anonymous notes and lovely pan at the beginning, which quickly phone calls that brings to mind HENRI- tells us—in simple, discrete images—that his GEORGES CLOUZOT’S Le Corbeau. How name is J. B. Jefferies, that he’s a photogra- many other Thorwalds are out there, some pher, and that he was injured taking photos of them inconveniently innocent, being of a tremendous race car accident). prodded by neighbors? How many are vic- That sort of storytelling approach— tims of this kind of prying gossip? stingy with words, lavish with visuals—is Thorwald is a complex character not only part of Hitchcock’s love of PURE enriched by the way that Burr, a deeply CINEMA, but it also harkens back to his closeted gay man in real life, was able to silent days, when information was always put so much persecuted pain in that single best conveyed through pictures. (It still is, line: “What do you want from me?” (And Hitchcock would argue later; it’s just that also perhaps by Hitchcock’s wicked sense filmmakers got lazy once sound came in.) of humor: Thorwald, who sells junk by day That simple love of imagery is part of Rear and then butchers at night, is—with his Window, too; in some ways, the apart- silver hair, rimless glasses, and imposing ments across the courtyard all function as bulk—a veritable stand-in for the meddling separate, silent movies. We rarely overhear mogul DAVID O. SELZNICK.) more than shred of dialogue; the action is Rear Window is inarguably Hitch- almost always confined within the single cock’s most formally perfect film. He had rectangle—screen—of their windows. 354 n REAR WINDOW

And yet, wordlessly—just as he had must sit in their seats and watch helplessly, in the ’20s—Hitchcock tells complete little as characters we’ve grown to identify with vignettes just through pictures. The honey- walk into danger and far away from any mooning couple who eventually wake from chance of our help). the blush of first love. The artist struggling But in the end, what Jeff is seeing isn’t with a composition, who finally discovers just sex and violence. He’s also seeing life, inspiration. The lonely woman fighting off or at least many different versions of it. Sit- depression, who finds hope at last. Even ting there in his apartment, staring across the bouncy “Miss Torso” gets her own tiny into other people’s homes, he and Lisa are tale—and like everyone besides the Thor- catching glimpses of possible futures. Will walds, her own happy ending. (The idea of they be like the lusty honeymoon couple all those small stories, the screenwriter later or the fatally battling Thorwalds? Will Jeff said, was Hitchcock’s contribution.) be like the angry, frustrated pianist or the Yet Rear Window is, for all its clock- aimlessly puttering artist? Is Lisa, as he sug- work precision and old-school mastery, gests, like the overly popular “Miss Torso”? one of his darkest films. Hitchcock’s mov- Or, as she fears, like the forgotten “Miss ies had touched on the MALE GAZE Lonelyhearts”? before, that cold, hard objectifying look Hitchcock’s pictures had always shown turned on pretty women out of lust (THE unhappy marriages, unions built out of PLEASURE GARDEN) or jealousy (NOTO- expedience or sundered by betrayals, and RIOUS). This was an entire movie based on in Rear Window, the timeless questions it, as Jeff sits impotently in his wheelchair are ones of compatibility and compromise. and “plaster cocoon” of a cast and turns his Jeff wants to get back to trotting around EYES, then his binoculars, and then finally the Third World and doesn’t think Lisa is his huge phallic telephoto camera lens on tough enough to keep up with him. She his neighbors across the empty courtyard. insists she is—but frankly would much “The New York State sentence for a rather he took a safe, posh job in New Peeping Tom is six months in the work- York. Yet she will win him over by prov- house,” snaps Stella, his no-nonsense nurse, ing herself by climbing up fire escapes in and there’s certainly no denying that pure heels and fighting off murderers (and then prurience is the initial spur to Jeff’s snoop- win again when he ends up with two bro- ing (brought home by the—uncharacter- ken legs and has to stay home, and she— istically obvious for Hitchcock—admiring despite the dressed-down outfit of loafers shot of “Miss Torso” as she bends over to and cuffed jeans—can go back to reading look in her refrigerator). Jeff may defend Vogue when he’s not looking). himself later by saying he’s trying to solve It is a slightly sardonic ending—the a crime—but it’s the sex and soap operas he final shot of her pulling out that fashion sees that really catches his attention. magazine only after she sees he’s asleep And because Jeff has derived pleasure suggests that, while she’s remained true to out of this VOYEURISM, according to herself, she’s perfectly happy to keep that the rough CATHOLICISM of Hitchcock’s secret from him for now. Will he bend to films, there must be pain, too—so he has to her will in the end, or she to his? But then sit there in his chair and writhe uselessly, the film ends, and the shades—not just only watching while across the way Lisa is metaphorically but also literally—come manhandled by the murderous Thorwald down. The peeping into other people’s lives (just as movie audiences—voyeurs, too— has ended. For now. REBECCA n 355

References they return together to Manderley, his Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life enormous manor in Cornwall. in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- The house is full of memories of his Collins, 2003), 480–90; Patrick McGilligan, beautiful late wife, Rebecca—and run by an ed. Backstory: Interviews with Screenwriters imperious housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, who of the 60s (Berkeley: University of Califor- remains loyal to her former mistress. Shy nia Press, 1997), 174–92; ‘Rear Window’ and unsophisticated, the new Mrs. de Win- Ethics, directed by Laurent Bouzereau ter begins to doubt her husband’s love—a (2000), documentary, http://the.hitchcock. fear Danvers happily feeds. zone/wiki/Rear_Window_Ethics:_Remem Then, during a storm, Rebecca’s cap- bering_and_Restoring_a_Hitchcock_Clas sized ship is recovered from the ocean sic_%282000%29_-_transcript; Donald floor—and signs point to “foul play.” Max Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life confesses the truth to his new bride—he of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo did not worship Rebecca but loathed her. Press, 1999), 345–49; Donald Spoto, Spell- When she taunted him that she was preg- bound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and nant by another man, he struck her; she His Leading Ladies (New York: Harmony fatally hit her head, and to conceal the Books, 2008), 209–12; François Truffaut, body, he deliberately sank the boat. Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: At the inquest, Favell, one of Rebec- Touchstone, 1985), 213–23. ca’s old lovers, tries to blackmail de Win- ter by revealing the pregnancy. A trip to REBECCA (US 1940) her doctor reveals, however, that it was a fatal cancer she was carrying, not a child; Director: Alfred Hitchcock. her mockery of Maxim was a clever way of Screenplay: Joan Harrison, Robert E. Sherwood, Phillip MacDonald, Michael both committing suicide and blaming him Hogan, based on the novel by Daphne for her death. De Winter will not be pros- du Maurier. ecuted. Producer: David O. Selznick. Flavell calls Danvers to tell her the Cinematography: George Barnes. news; tipped into madness, she sets fire to Editor: Uncredited (W. Donn Hayes). Manderley. The new Mrs. de Winter and Original Music: Franz Waxman. the rest of the staff flee, while the man- Cast: Laurence Olivier (Max de Winter), sion—and Danvers—are destroyed. Joan Fontaine (Mrs. de Winter), Judith Anderson (Mrs. Danvers), George Sand- It was supposed to be TITANIC. ers (Jack Favell), Leo G. Carroll (Dr. That was DAVID O. SELZNICK’s Baker), C. Aubrey Smith (Col. Julyan), original plan for Alfred Hitchcock’s first Florence Bates (Mrs. Van Hopper). picture, and as in everything Selznick, the Running Time: 130 minutes. Released Through: United Artists. scale was grandiose: The mogul would buy the Leviathan—a World War I–era Ger- man passenger ship seized by the Ameri- cans and currently docked in Hoboken— While working as the paid companion and tow it to Santa Monica, and then film the social secretary to a demanding old dowa- entire disaster picture aboard. The actual ger, a young woman is quickly, impetu- sinking of the vessel would serve as climax. ously romanced by the dashing widower When that plan fell apart (even if he Max de Winter—married within weeks, could have purchased the ship, which was 356 n REBECCA being sold for scrap, his assistants were increasingly clear that Britain would soon told it would cost $2 million just to get it be at war, estates were scouted through- to California), Selznick went to his second out the United States and Canada. When choice: Hitchcock would adapt the best- no property could be found that matched selling gothic romance Rebecca. both requirements—immensely baronial There were arguments for and against and geographically convenient—Selznick this. On the positive side, all of Hollywood reluctantly agreed to the use of miniatures, was currently taken with Selznick’s ongoing which Hitchcock was accustomed to any- efforts to adapt another best seller, Gone way. Manderley was re-created on the scale with the Wind, and DAPHNE DU MAU- of one inch to one foot. RIER’s Rebecca was a property that Hitch- Casting was a thornier problem. cock had tried (and failed) to buy while he Selznick suggested both David Niven and was back in England. On the negative side, William Powell, neither of whom Hitchcock he had already managed to make a film of really wanted; another possibility, Ronald du Maurier’s, JAMAICA INN—and she had Colman, whom Hitchcock favored, begged loathed it. And when Hitchcock presented off, seeing it correctly as the woman’s pic- the producer with his first, quite cavalier ture. (Apparently unmentioned was CARY adaptation of this novel—he began it on GRANT, who would have been perfect as the an ocean liner with everyone getting sea- irresistible, unknowable Max—but he hadn’t sick—Selznick responded with an angry, yet really shown the shadows he would when even more verbose memo than usual. (“I Hitchcock finally began to work with him the just finished reading it,” Hitchcock dead- next year, on SUSPICION.) panned some 30 years later.) The short Finally, LAURENCE OLIVIER was version of Selznick’s thunderous ultima- cast—although part of the appeal for him tum: “We bought Rebecca and we intend to was that Selznick agreed to consider cast- make Rebecca, not a distorted and vulgar- ing Olivier’s then-love, Vivien Leigh, as his ized version of a successful work.” costar. Eventually, Selznick demurred, say- Although being called vulgar by a ing that he didn’t want to give their affair— Hollywood producer must have stung a an open secret—any possible publicity, but director as class-conscious as Hitchcock, a the choice was the right one artistically, as new, more faithful script was devised (with well. Leigh’s screen test, done with Olivier, Selznick, as he had with Gone with the survives, and she’s far too confident, he Wind, insisting on screenwriters using far too solicitous; for Rebecca to work, de the original novel as their Bible). Most of Winter needs to be cold and withdrawn; his the work was done by increasingly trusted wife, nervous and unsure. Hitchcock colleague JOAN HARRISON; Many other actresses were tested— playwright ROBERT E. SHERWOOD got with Selznick deliberately trying to gin up an inordinate share of the credit but con- the same enthusiasm he had before finally tributed the crucial work-around that made choosing Leigh for Scarlett in Gone with Rebecca’s death an accident and thereby the Wind—and some were clearly unsuit- slipped it past the CENSORS. able. ANNE BAXTER, still a teenager, Thinking again of spectacle, Selznick was deemed too young; Selznick, who had dispatched a staff headed by WILLIAM a mogul’s hunger for signing up new tal- CAMERON MENZIES to find a grand ent, pushed for NOVA PILBEAM, whom mansion where they could shoot the Hitchcock had worked with twice before film on LOCATION; as it was becoming and had originally suggested himself. But REBECCA n 357 the director—perhaps still remembering Olivier is less effective as Max; he the actress as a teen—ended up vetoing seems more imperious than confident, the choice. Finally, after many screen tests, more paternal than romantic, someone JOAN FONTAINE was picked. who looks at his bride and muses, “It’s a Fontaine was only 22 and lacking in pity you have to grow up.” Of course, the confidence; she had always been second- script doesn’t help him (“I’m asking you to best at home, behind older sister Olivia de marry me, you little fool” is hardly the most Havilland, and things had settled into the romantic of proposals), nor do the obvious same pecking order in Hollywood. (When silver streaks applied to his hair, but it’s still she began acting, her mother had even for- a less romantic performance than the film bidden her from using the family name in requires (or that he had just given, under case she did anything to detract from her William Wyler’s stern and constant direc- sister’s starry standing.) If she was natu- tion, in Wuthering Heights). rally a bit vulnerable, then she found little The supporting parts, however, drawn on the set to give her confidence; most of chiefly from the ENGLISH COLONY of the supporting actors were cool to her, and ex-pat actors—including LEO G. CAR- Olivier—still bitter that he was not playing ROLL, soon to become a Hitchcock favor- opposite Leigh—was openly hostile. ite—are all filled nicely. GEORGE SAND- And Hitchcock—brilliantly, coldly— ERS is evasive and insinuating as Flavell, used that, controlling the actress with and JUDITH ANDERSON is extraordinary small, passive-aggressive insinuations. It as Mrs. Danvers. Rarely seen in motion, was true, he told her sadly, nobody else often holding her head at a bit of an angle liked her. But he did, and if she only relied like a hungry BIRD regarding a worm, she on him . . . is a consistently unsettling presence, with “He was a Svengali,” Fontaine remem- her cold jealousy of the new Mrs. de Win- bered later. “He wanted control over me ter surpassed only by her passionate devo- and he seemed to relish the cast not liking tion to the old, as she wanders Rebecca’s one another. . . . It kept him in command bedroom or longingly strokes her sheer and it was part of the upheaval he wanted. negligee. (Although years later, Anderson He kept me off balance, much to his own denied that there were any overtones of delight.” It seemed sadistic, but it was also HOMOSEXUALITY, Hitchcock, as always, effective; as Fontaine would also admit, “Of knew precisely what he was suggesting—as course this helped my performance, as I had the censors, who’d warned him to be was supposed to be terrified of everyone.” careful.) Fontaine gives a lovely, delicate perfor- Given a large budget and a capacious mance, and while it was definitely helped soundstage, Hitchcock gives Rebecca a by Hitchcock’s manipulation (during and glossier look (and a slower pace) than he after filming, with more-than-usual care had given his English pictures. GEORGE taken in shaping her performance in the BARNES’s camera prowls the (deliber- editing room), she perfectly embodies the ately oversized) sets, using deep focus to part of a hesitant, sheltered, virginal bride. draw our eyes to every detail; there is more She completely wins us to her side—which movement here than in earlier Hitchcock is what makes her eventual, assertive “I am films and less editing. Mrs. de Winter now” (a bit of a nod to the Less action, too, as Rebecca is really a “I am Mrs. Norman Maine” from Selznick’s mood piece. Although it’s still mischarac- 1937 A Star Is Born) so satisfying. terized as noir, in fact it is Gothic and owes 358 n REDGRAVE, MICHAEL so much to Jane Eyre—the forbidding man- du Maurier’s celebrated novel”—had put sion, the Byronic hero, the naïve working- the director’s art and ego firmly in their girl-turned-lover, the mysterious first place; later, when it won best picture, it was wife—it’s good for du Maurier that Char- Selznick as producer who would, of course, lotte Brontë’s copyright had long lapsed collect the prize, his second in a row. This (which hadn’t prevented a Brazilian author was not quite London, where for most of from claiming that du Maurier had plagia- the last decade, it had been Hitchcock’s rized her when the novel first appeared). name up on the movie marquee. True, that dark-and-stormy-night But it was his start in America, and a moodiness doesn’t necessarily play to successful one. And it didn’t even begin to Hitchcock’s strengths. He works hard at hint at the successes to come. using cross-cutting to ratchet up tension in an early scene—Will Max propose mar- References riage before the heroine has to leave with Rudy Behlmer, ed., Memo from David O. her hated boss?—but his skill at creating Selznick (New York: Viking Press, 1972), jangling moments of suspense chiefly goes 259–97; Gerald Gardner, The Censorship unused in a movie built on slow revelations Papers: Movie Censorship Letters from and done under the watchful eye of a lit- the Hays Office, 1934–1968 (New York: eral-minded producer who wouldn’t allow Dodd, Mead, 1987), 84–86; Patrick McGil- for the invention the director would bring ligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Dark- to other sinister character pieces, such as ness and Light (New York: HarperCollins, SHADOW OF A DOUBT. 2003), 237–43, 248–53; Harrison Smith, Nonetheless, the film is marked by “Was ‘Rebecca’ Plagiarized?” Saturday HITCHCOCKIAN touches. The upper Review of Literature, November 29, 1941, classes and their empty morality continue http://www.unz.org/Pub/SaturdayRev to underwhelm him; death does not end -1941nov29-00003; Donald Spoto, The people’s control over others, nor does Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred legal innocence assuage people’s painful Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, GUILT. And Rebecca is, even more than 1999), 212–19; Donald Spoto, Laurence many of his films, about IDENTITY and Olivier: A Biography (New York: Harper performance; literally anonymous (the Paperbacks, 1993), 170–71; Donald Spoto, film never calls her by name), the heroine Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and is first one woman’s hired friend and then His Leading Ladies (New York: Harmony another man’s bullied wife. But who is she Books, 2008), 87–99; Bob Thomas, Selznick really? Yes, “I am Mrs. de Winter now,” (New York: Pocket Books, 1972), 186–92; she proclaims at last, but even that sign of François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. independence is one of dependence; even ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 127–33. that role is one another person has already played, and better. REDGRAVE, MICHAEL “This is turning out to be a Selznick (1908–1985) picture,” Hitchcock groused during film- Bristol-born performer from an acting ing, and that was true, although those signs family. His mother told him frankly that, had come early and only grown more pro- at 6’4”, he was “too tall to make a success” nounced. Right from the start, the cringe- as a stage actor, and so after graduating worthy opening title—“Selznick Interna- Cambridge, he took a job teaching mod- tional presents its picturization of Daphne ern languages at a boys’ school. But he REDGRAVE, MICHAEL n 359 spent much of his three years there staging so enormously appealing. Ironically, by not Shakespeare’s tragedies, always saving the thinking very much of the job, Redgrave leads for himself, and by 1934 had begun ended up giving the best sort of onscreen his dramatic career in earnest. performance—the one that never seemed After two years with a Liverpool like acting. He’s fresh, funny, and insouci- company (during which he met and mar- antly charming throughout. ried his wife, actress Rachel Kempson), Hitchcock soon saw that Redgrave’s he moved on to the Old Vic in London, “throwaway” style was exactly what the where he played Laertes to LAURENCE picture needed. But although Redgrave OLIVIER’s Hamlet and scored a particular admired Hitchcock’s unerring instincts hit as Orlando in As You Like It. Elegant in for camera angles and audiences (Red- bearing, with a quick and sensitive under- grave thought the line in the script about standing of the text and a naturally soft and Cambridge was silly, and yet in theaters musical voice, he became a stage favorite. it always got the biggest laugh), he found Redgrave looked down on film act- Hitchcock’s taste for practical JOKES ing—his father, who had deserted the rather cruel, and it was very clear the film- family shortly after his birth and run off maker wasn’t interested in working closely to Australia, had been in silent films—but with performers. The stage actor returned his friend JOHN GIELGUD urged him to happily to the stage. do more movie work (even though Giel- Redgrave’s triumphs there were gud was currently having a rough time many, including leading roles in most of on SECRET AGENT). So when Hitchcock the great Shakespearean tragedies; he also offered him the lead in THE LADY VAN- wrote (and starred in) his own adaptation ISHES, Redgrave thought about it and of Henry James’s The Aspern Papers and finally agreed—albeit with a reluctance directed many plays, in addition to writing he didn’t bother to hide. “I suppose I was a novel and several books, two of them on something of an intellectual snob at the acting. He was knighted by the queen and, time,” he wrote later. of course, became the patriarch of another Always sensitive to slights, particu- generation of actors, Vanessa, Corin, and larly from the upper classes, Hitchcock got Lynn (whose own children have continued his back by trying the sort of direction-by- the tradition further). intimidation he would practice later on And, despite his early indifference to JOAN FONTAINE, bluntly telling Redgrave screen acting, Redgrave gave a number of he’d been his second choice, after ROBERT indelible and widely varied performances DONAT. Redgrave shrugged it off. (“I sup- in films; he stars in the best version of pose it was meant to make me feel a little Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being unwelcome, but it didn’t.”) Besides, the actor Earnest and in the coal-mining drama The noted, any criticism was probably deserved. Stars Look Down; he is the cold and emo- “I really wasn’t trying very hard anyway,” he tionally awkward teacher in The Browning said (as his costar PAUL LUKAS agreed and Version and the memorably mad ventrilo- pointed out acidly on the set). quist in the classic Dead of Night. What neither Redgrave nor Hitch- Always adept at playing emotionally cock quite realized at first was that it was vulnerable heroes, Redgrave’s personal life exactly that sort of casual carelessness—Oh, was sadly equally fragile; despite his long for heaven’s sake, it’s only a movie!—that and apparently happy marriage to Kemp- made Redgrave’s performance in the film son, Redgrave was bisexual, and while some 360 n REMAKES BY HITCHCOCK of his relationships were of long standing, characters, and others, such as THE BIRDS, he was also drawn compulsively to rough, throw out nearly everything but the title. anonymous pickups (which he later reviled FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, based on himself for). Then, in the mid-’60s, he a reporter’s memoirs, is entirely a work of began to have problems remembering lines fiction, SUSPICION completely subverts onstage, and people whispered that he was the book’s theme, and many of Hitchcock’s drunk. It would be another decade before movies—from THE LADY VANISHES to he was finally diagnosed as having Parkin- REAR WINDOW—introduce romances son’s disease. not present in the books or stories that “I’m not going to pretend that this is inspired them. an easy or especially happy time for me,” Naturally, a filmmaker so liberal in he said a few years later while being inter- his adaptations wouldn’t care that a prop- viewed for his 70th birthday. “For a long erty had been adapted before, either; what time nobody understood the Parkinson’s mattered, as always, was the stamp that condition and doctors thought I was just he would put on it. So early in his career, forgetful or drunk, and even now the work Hitchcock calmly turned out new ver- isn’t easy.” But he kept working, kept try- sions of THE MANXMAN (already made ing, and, he said, continued to look back 13 years before in 1916) and THE SKIN “almost always in amazement and grati- GAME (previously made 11 years before tude at the way my career has gone and the in 1920). And he remade himself, helming people I’ve been allowed to know.” the German-language adaptation of MUR- He died at 77 in Buckinghamshire. DER! (MARY) and filming a Hollywood version of THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO References MUCH 22 years after he’d done the first in Lynn Barber, “His Necessary Degradations,” England. (Although he had also wanted to Telegraph, April 28, 2004, http://www.tele remake THE LODGER in the ’40s, spend- graph.co.uk/culture/books/3616047/His ing his own money to acquire the rights, it -necessary-degradations.html; Brian McFar- was eventually made by someone else.) lane, “Michael Redgrave,” BFI Screenonline, Then, of course, in addition to http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/ remakes, he indulged in redos—lines of id/460508; “Michael Redgrave,” IMDb, dialogue and bits of business that reoccur http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0714878/ in several films, as well as wholesale situa- bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Donald Spoto, tions that repeat—there could have been no The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred NORTH BY NORTHWEST without SABO- Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), TEUR and no SABOTEUR without THE 39 152, 175–76; Matt Wolf, “Obituary: Sir STEPS. In some ways, you could argue that Michael Redgrave,” Boston Globe, March 22, he was constantly plagiarizing himself— 1985, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Boston GUILTY hero, frosty heroine, treacherous _Globe_%2822/Mar/1985%29_-_Obitu authority figures, panicky flights from jus- ary:_Sir_Michael_Redgrave. tice. But as the director was fond of pointing out, true plagiarism is actionable. Self- REMAKES BY HITCHCOCK plagiarism is style. Like many great stylists, Alfred Hitchcock was not particularly reverent of his source Reference material. Films like JAMAICA INN and “25 Remarkable Alfred Hitchcock Quotes,” REBECCA rework their novels’ plots and Magical Quotes, http://www.magicalquote REMAKES OF HITCHCOCK n 361

.com/25-remarkable-alfred-hitchcock became Step Down to Terror in 1958 and -quotes. was then remade for TV in 1991 under its original title, with TIPPI HEDREN cast— REMAKES OF HITCHCOCK largely for publicity value—in a small part. With their well-known titles and finely REAR WINDOW also had a small- honed plots, Hitchcock’s films offer a screen outing in 1998 (in a genuinely charming enticement to filmmakers. A inventive rethinking that made Jeff para- daunting challenge as well: If Hitchcock lyzed and cast real-life quadriplegic actor already made a hit out of the material, then Christopher Reeve in the role). It was also your film will suffer hugely by comparison. the obvious, if uncredited, inspiration And if he couldn’t do something with the for the 2007 teen-oriented film Disturbia, story, then what on earth makes you think which brought an unsuccessful lawsuit you’ll manage any better? from the copyright holders to CORNELL Still, some directors have made the WOOLRICH’s original short story; Wool- attempt. The most successful have been rich’s tale has also given rise recently to a the various versions of THE LODGER, play that follows his original short story possibly because Hitchcock’s British silent more closely. films aren’t as well known as his Ameri- Other popular Hitchcock projects can sound movies, probably because he include THE 39 STEPS (remade twice in had to take liberties with MARIE BEL- Britain and later turned into a successful LOC LOWNDES’s novel to keep the hero comic play), REBECCA (remade several from being the murderer that later versions times for British television and planned for could forgo. The most atmospheric version but never produced as a Broadway produc- was probably the lushly produced 1944 film tion), and THE LADY VANISHES, remade with Laird Cregar as the killer undertaken badly in 1979 and again for television in after Hitchcock couldn’t get his own new 2013. (In addition, that film’s cricket-loving remake up and running; a further 1953 Charters and Caldicott have popped up in remake with Jack Palance has a certain other movies of their own.) grimy power. Another modern, L.A.-set There have also been various, less version followed in 2009. prominent versions—chiefly for televi- Equally as popular is STRANGERS ON sion—of JAMAICA INN, SUSPICION, A TRAIN, although the instinct is often to LIFEBOAT, and NOTORIOUS, as well as switch the characters’ genders. Once You a sequel to THE BIRDS, titled unimagina- Kiss a Stranger tried that in 1969, and Once tively The Birds II: Land’s End and featur- You Meet a Stranger took another stab at ing Hedren in a small part. When ALFRED it for television in 1996; it fell to Danny HITCHCOCK PRESENTS was briefly DeVito to burlesque the entire idea in revived for TV, it, too, recycled some old Throw Momma from the Train in 1996. In scripts from the original show (and found 2015, yet another version was announced, another bit part for Hedren, as well). with David Fincher set to direct. The most fertile property, however, DIAL M FOR MURDER has also still remains PSYCHO. It gave birth even- been remade for television in 1981 and as tually to Psycho II and Psycho III, both of a movie in 1998 under the title A Perfect which are at least true to the spirit of the Murder, but then it had already been a play story; Psycho IV: The Beginning was a pre- (and first a BBC film) before Hitchcock got quel made for television, which also gave to it; SHADOW OF A DOUBT unwisely a home to the 1987 TV movie Bates Motel 362 n “REVENGE” and the unrelated TV prequel series Bates ENTS, and it set the tone, with Hitch- Motel, which began its run in 2013. There cock drily insulting the sponsors and the was also Gus Van Sant’s slavishly faithful, ending providing a nasty little jolt. That completely unnecessary COLOR remake in Hitchcock cast VERA MILES in this 1998 and any number of films that steal the important role—good preparation for story’s twist or find their own inspiration her breakdown scene in THE WRONG in the crimes of ED GEIN. It remains the MAN the following year—showed how most enduring of all of Hitchcock’s films highly he thought of her and her pros- and, for merchandisers, certainly the most pects and helped underline how bitterly profitable: Paying visitors to UNIVERSAL disappointed he would be when she then Studios can snap photos of the old Bates dropped out of VERTIGO. place and buy all the overpriced souve- nirs—from posters to bars of soap—that References their budgets, or MOTHERS, will allow. Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Com- plete Directory to Prime Time Network Reference TV Shows, 8th ed. (New York: Ballantine Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: Books, 2003), 29; Jack Edmond Nolan, The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da “Hitchcock’s TV Films,” Film Fan Monthly Capo Press, 1999), 248. (June 1968), 3–6.

“REVENGE” (US; ORIGINALLY REVILLE, ALMA (1899–1982) AIRED OCTOBER 2, 1955) Devoted wife and nearly lifelong creative partner of Alfred Hitchcock who was born Director: Alfred Hitchcock. in Nottingham. Her parents worked in the Screenplay: Francis Cockrell, from a story lace business, but after the family moved to by Samuel Blas. Twickenham, her father found a new job at Producers: Alfred Hitchcock, Joan Harri- son. a film studio, working on costumes. Tiny, tomboyish Alma—who had already missed Cinematography: John L. Russell. Editor: Edward M. Williams. several years of school due to ill health— Original Music: Stanley Wilson. joined him in the industry while still a teen- Cast: Vera Miles (Elsa Spann), Ralph ager, getting a position in the company’s Meeker (Carl Spann). editing department. Running Time: 30 minutes with commer- Her title was “cutter” and the work cials. Black and white. was—at the time—more detail oriented Originally Broadcast By: CBS. than artistic, but Reville’s career progressed quickly. Although she appeared onscreen briefly in the 1918 film The Life When a man returns home from work, his Story of David Lloyd George, this was due traumatized wife tells him she was SEXU- more to the studio’s lack of actors than any ALLY assaulted; when she points out the desire on her part to perform; behind the assailant later on the street, her husband scenes was where she preferred to be (and follows him and beats him to death. Only as indeed, after her marriage to Alfred Hitch- they drive away does he realize that his wife cock, her influence would become even is delusional—she sees rapists everywhere. more invisible). This was the first episode of Hitch- But Reville took on many jobs at cock’s new ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRES- Islington Studios, quickly moving on REVILLE, ALMA n 363 to assistant director. When Hitchcock disagree—during her final onscreen moment met her, in fact, she was already a valued in PSYCHO. (It was fixed in editing.) staffer, while he was still only a part-time Hitchcock had a habit of minimizing title designer; later, a 1925 story in the other people’s contributions to his films, movie magazine The Picturegoer would and in 1974, when an author suggested profile her as a rising young filmmaker including Reville in a book about female who, alas, has “never had time to get mar- screenwriters, the director declined on her ried!” It was only after Hitchcock had not behalf, insisting that she was “never a cre- only established his own career but also ative writer in the sense we know it today.” surpassed hers that he felt bold enough Perhaps he felt he was protecting a shy and to propose. (He did it during an ocean ailing woman from reporters. Certainly two voyage while she was seasick because, he decades before, in his article for McCall’s, JOKED, he knew she’d be too weak to he had been far more generous about her resist.) contributions (if, at the same time, a little “I had wanted to become, first, a defensive). movie director and, second, Alma’s hus- “She does read for me and I rely on her band—not in order of emotional pref- opinion,” he wrote then. “She helped work erence, to be sure, but because I felt the out on paper the chase scene in TO CATCH bargaining power implicit in the first A THIEF. She tries to be on the set the first was necessary in obtaining the second,” day we begin shooting a film, sometimes Hitchcock explained in an article for goes to rushes, and always gives me her criti- McCall’s in 1956. “I had met her a few cisms. They’re invariably sound.” Although years before at the PARAMOUNT studios he said he suspected he was “accused a lot in London when I was only an editorial of overshadowing her,” he protested, “it errand boy told by everybody to keep out isn’t my fault, really, that Alma has stayed so of the way. She was already a cutter and much out of sight of the public.” producer’s assistant and seemed a trifle “He listened to everything she said,” snooty to me. I couldn’t notice Alma said NORMAN LLOYD, who knew the without resenting her, and I couldn’t help couple for 40 years and has always objected noticing her.” to portrayals of the director as a misogynist They had worked together before the or the Hitchcocks’ marriage as anything marriage—she took on a variety of roles dur- but supportive. “His admiration for her was ing the disastrous LOCATION SHOOT of enormous.” THE PLEASURE GARDEN—and remained In fact, Reville was Hitchcock’s favor- a team afterward, although she was not ite collaborator; she has more than a dozen always credited. (She reportedly appears credits, ranging from continuity to screen- unbilled in THE LODGER, for example, as a play, on his films from THE RING in 1927 woman listening to the radio.) An extremely through STAGE FRIGHT in 1950—and observant viewer, she worked continuity that can’t begin to account for whatever on many of his films, sometimes receiving suggestions she made to him privately as to credit—her name appears on some of his possible projects, solutions to thorny script best British films—and often not. She was problems, or music. (It was her advice to always the last pair of eyes on every fin- keep BERNARD HERRMANN’s score for ished production; famously it was Reville the shower scene in Psycho rather than who noticed that a supposedly dead JANET have it play out in silence, as Hitchcock LEIGH either blinked or gulped—sources had originally wanted.) She kept an eye on 364 n REVILLE, ALMA casting, too; DIANE BAKER, among other not only her art but also her entertaining actresses, remembered her taking a serious (complete with recipes), while studiously interest in their careers and their potential. avoiding any talk of domestic disagree- Although Reville was thoroughly ments or extramarital rumors. involved in her husband’s work—and at What really happened inside their times seemed to have few friends of her marriage is ultimately unknowable. own—she had her own professional inter- What’s inarguable is that Hitchcock was ests, as well. She had doggedly pursued her a man compulsively dedicated to rou- career before meeting Hitchcock and, even tine—from his preproduction plans to his after their marriage, continued to write identical dark-blue suits—and the great- scripts for other directors; her filmogra- est, most emotional part of that routine phy counts nearly a dozen extracurricu- was his more-than-50-year marriage to lar efforts, her last one—the Jack Benny Alma Reville, whom he almost invari- farce It’s in the Bag!—coming in 1945. She ably referred to in public, with formal kept her name professionally after mar- respect, as “Madame.” Her role seemed riage and her own boyish style; for a long to change throughout their marriage— time, she favored pants suits made for her going from his lover to Pat’s mother to in London by a men’s tailor. Yet she also (after his mother’s death) his own mater- very carefully catered to “Mr. H,” worry- nal figure. Yet he was always almost child- ing about what to serve for dinner, making ishly dependent on her, and when—late sure that nothing disrupted his obsessive in their lives—she began to have serious devotion to routine. health problems, he was often frantic with Postmortem biographies and various worry. movies have speculated wildly on Reville’s In 1979, an ailing Hitchcock was real relationship with her husband, her given a lifetime achievement award from opinion of his alleged SEXUAL transgres- the American Film Institute. Although sions, and her own private life. DONALD he was known for being flippant in SPOTO’s study describes a marriage that public and rude if he thought the prize was basically sexless and often contentious, was less than he deserved—he picked up with a director who was “terrified” of his his Irving Thalberg Award at the ACAD- spouse; PATRICK MCGILLIGAN’s biog- EMY AWARDS a decade before with raphy suggests Hitchcock merely deeply only the briefest of thank-yous—this time respected her opinion (and that she, for her he spoke at some length, at least when it part, had her own affair, or at least emo- came to her. tional dalliance, with screenwriter WHIT- “I beg to mention by name only four FIELD COOK). The film HITCHCOCK people who have given me the most affec- presents Reville as a take-charge character tion, appreciation and encouragement,” he who actually directed part of Psycho; THE said. “The first of the four is a film editor, GIRL portrays her as, at best, a meek help- the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mate and enabler of her husband’s abuses mother of my daughter Pat, and the fourth of other women. is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles As for daughter PATRICIA HITCH- in a domestic kitchen—and their names are COCK, the protector of the family leg- Alma Reville. Had the beautiful Miss Reville acy, her 2004 book Alma Hitchcock: The not accepted a lifetime contract, without Woman behind the Man, takes a far homier options, as ‘Mrs. Alfred Hitchcock’ some 53 approach to her MOTHER—emphasizing years ago, Mr. Alfred Hitchcock might be RICH AND STRANGE n 365 in this room tonight—not at this table, but RICH AND STRANGE (GB 1931) as one of the slower waiters on the floor. I share my award, as I have my life, with her.” Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay: Alfred Hitchcock, Alma Reville, Alma Reville died in Bel Air at 82. Val Valentine, based on a story by Dale Collins. References Producer: John Maxwell. “Alma in Wonderland,” Picturegoer Cinematography: Jack E. Cox. (December 1925), http://the.hitchcock Editor: Winifred Cooper, Rene Marrison. .zone/wiki/Picturegoer_%281925%29 Original Music: Adolph Hallis. _-_Alma_in_Wonderland; “Alma Reville,” Cast: Henry Kendall (Fred Hill), Joan Barry IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ (Emily Hill), Percy Marmont (Com- nm0720904; John Anderson, “Alfred mander Gordon), Betty Amann (the Hitchcock’s Secret Weapon Becomes a Princess). Star,” New York Times, November 16, 2012, Running Time: 93 minutes. Black and white. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/ Released Through: Wardour Films. movies/hitchcock-and-the-girl-remem ber-alma-reville.html?_r=1; Diane Baker, interview with the author, September A bored and quarrelsome married couple, 2015; Josephine Botting, “Will the Real Fred and Emily Hill, are startled by a tele- Mrs. Hitchcock Please Stand Up?” BFI, gram from a rich uncle who offers to give February 11, 2014, http://www.bfi.org.uk/ them an advance on their expected inheri- news-opinion/bfi-news/features/will-real- tance so they can enjoy their lives while mrs-hitchcock-please-stand-up; Nisha they’re young; quickly, Fred quits his dull Lilia Diu, “Mrs. Alfred Hitchcock: The office job, and they board a ship bound for Unsung Partner,” Telegraph, February 8, Ceylon. 2013, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/ The Hills aren’t very experienced film/film-news/9832084/Mrs-Alfred-Hitch world travelers; Fred gets seasick before cock-The-Unsung-Partner.html; Alfred they’re even out of sight of England, and Hitchcock, “The Woman Who Knows both of them are a bit shocked by Paris. Too Much,” McCall’s (March 1956), http:// Back onboard, though, they begin to give in the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/McCall’s%20 to temptation—Fred starts a romance with %281956%29%20-%20The%20Woman%20 a pretty German princess, and Emily falls Who%20Knows%20Too%20Much; Pat for a handsome bachelor. The flirtations Hitchcock O’Connell and Laurent Bou- soon turn serious. zereau, Alma Hitchcock: The Woman After the ship reaches Ceylon, though, behind the Man (New York: Berkeley Trade, Emily learns that the “princess” is in fact 2004), 1–5; Norman Lloyd, interviews with a con artist. She returns, too late, to warn the author, November 2007, July 2015; Pat- Fred, who’s already lost most of his money. rick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life The couple cobbles together enough funds in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper to book a passage back to London on a Collins, 2003), 427–28, 439; Stephen freighter. Rebello, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Their troubles, however, are not yet at Psycho (New York: HarperPerennial, 1991), an end—the ship crashes in the fog and is 118; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: abandoned. Fred and Emily are rescued by The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Chinese looters and make their way back to Capo Press, 1999), 340, 485, 507. England—definitely poorer and perhaps no 366 n THE RING wiser, as once again they fall into an argu- flirt with bad taste (including a rather grisly ment. scene on the Chinese junk). Contemporary audiences and critics Poor and dull. agreed, with the film failing in both Eng- Hitchcock developed the material land and America (where it was given the with Dale Collins (an Australian journalist more exotic title East of Shanghai). “The and novelist who specialized in maritime story moves slowly and disconnectedly,” adventures) about experiences he and his opined the London Times, “and the dia- wife had (including a rambunctious eve- logue is not even broadly funny. Mr. Hitch- ning they’d enjoyed long ago in Paris with cock is clearly out of form. And Mr. Henry NITA NALDI). In fact, Hitchcock told Kendall and Miss Joan Barry are as clearly FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT, he and his wife out of luck.” Later critics have been some- had taken a round-the-world trip before what kinder, however, finding autobio- filming in order to “do some preliminary graphical touches in the story—with Fred research” for the film—which included a and Emily Hill standing in for Alfred and surprising detour one night when, think- Alma Hitchcock—and hints of his marital- ing they were going to see a belly dancer, discord movies to come. they ended up in a bordello. “We had As for Hitchcock, he had clearly been behaving exactly like the couple in invested something of himself in the movie, the book—two innocents abroad!” he and while he was often quick to disown his exclaimed. (Hitchcock, at least by his own commercial failures, he always remained a accounts, had an odd habit of accidentally little fond of this one. “I liked the picture,” wandering into suggestive situations.) he told Truffaut more than 30 years later. Hitchcock cast music hall performer “It should have been more successful.” HENRY KENDALL as Fred and, for want of a better option, the BLONDE but bland References JOAN BARRY; PERCY MARMONT and “New Films in London: Rich and Strange,” Betty Amann were to play their dalliances. Times, December 14, 1931, http://the The production itself gave Hitchcock the .hitchcock.zone/wiki/The_Times_%2814/ chance to indulge in both miniatures and Dec/1931%29_-_New_Films_in_Lon detailed sets (Fred’s office, with the clerks don:_Rich_and_Strange; François Truffaut, lined up in soulless rows, is particularly Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: good), as well as to incorporate some defi- Touchstone, 1985), 78–81. nitely risqué material. And the film, like many of his to come, centers on a marriage THE RING (GB 1927) that is far from perfect; Fred is impulsive and selfish, and it’s only Emily’s steadying Director: Alfred Hitchcock. hand that keeps him on his feet. Screenplay: Alfred Hitchcock. But while the theme was interesting, Producer: Uncredited (John Maxwell). the actors weren’t engaging, and some per- Cinematography: Jack E. Cox. Editor: Uncredited. formances were off-puttingly exaggerated; Cast: Carl Brisson (“One-Round” Jack meanwhile, Hitchcock’s later, masterful Sander), Lilian Hall Davis (the Girl), Ian touch at alternating comedy and drama Hunter (Bob Corby). was still underdeveloped, and although the Running Time: 89 minutes. Black and white. concept is full of wry sophistication, some Released Through: Wardour Films. of the supposedly lighter scenes fall flat or THE RING n 367

At a small country carnival, swaggering ing milieu seemed like an odd one for him, fighter “One-Round” Jack Sander takes on the story’s real focus—an unsatisfying mar- all challengers, while his girlfriend takes riage and a dangerous romantic triangle— the tickets. His supremacy is challenged on was one he had already explored and would several fronts, though, when he’s beaten by turn to again. a fairgoer who turns out to be Australian Danish CARL BRISSON—blue-eyed, champ Bob Corby, who collects the prize curly-haired, and a trained boxer—was cast money and promptly spends it on a brace- as Sander, with beefy South African IAN let for Jack’s girl. HUNTER getting one of his first film roles When she seems responsive to Cor- as Corby. “The Girl”—she doesn’t seem by’s attentions, Jack decides to take more to be named in the film, although some aggressive action, finally asking his girl- sources identify her as “Nelly”—was played friend to marry him and going to the city by the tragic LILLIAN HALL-DAVIS. Bris- to pursue his career as a prizefighter. He son is given to popping his eyes a bit, but quickly rises in fame and formidability, but Hall-Davis—still spelling her name as “Lil- his marriage grows strained, and she begins ian” here and forgoing the posh hyphen—is to seek outside consolation with Corby. much better, affecting an insolent slouch in Enraged, Jack quarrels violently with her early scenes and a hungry, appraising her and then challenges Corby to meet look. him in the ring. Jack is, once again, getting Budget worries and salary disagree- the worst of it, until his wife rushes to him ments left Hitchcock without a top camera- between rounds, assuring him, “I’m in your man, so he worked for the first time with corner.” Jack rallies to win the fight and JACK E. COX as his cinematographer; it goes off with his wife, who takes off Corby’s was perhaps to his advantage, as this was bracelet and drops it on the floor. an even more ambitious film visually than THE LODGER, and Cox, who specialized A winner. in “trick” work, was unlikely to balk at any Shortly after the success of THE of Hitchcock’s shots as being impossible or LODGER, Hitchcock signed a new contract confusing. with BRITISH INTERNATIONAL PIC- And The Ring is perhaps the most TURES, starting his career there as Eng- interesting looking of all of Hitchcock’s land’s most famous—and, undoubtedly silents. It begins with an almost surreal, to the moguls’ displeasure, highest-paid— very F. W. MURNAU, sequence of the director. He had not yet turned 28. fair—all rides and legs and giant gaping Although BIP would soon frustrate mouths (although it is hard to tell whether him by assigning uninteresting or unsuit- they are open in laughter or terror). Once able projects, to start off their associa- again, as in THE PLEASURE GARDEN— tion, they asked the young director what and as in many Hitchcock films to come— he’d like to work on; he surprised them a parallel is drawn between public amuse- by announcing it would be the story of ments and secret dangers. two boxers, The Ring, based on his own From there, we move on to the tent screenplay. This was the first (and last) where the boxing exhibition is—and the time Hitchcock would have sole credit on film’s first metaphor, a bit of DOUBLING a script (although frequent collaborator that presents the tent as a kind of stand-in ELIOT STANNARD reportedly helped for the movie theater where another audi- with some ideas here). Yet while the box- ence is watching. Standing outside, the girl 368 n RITCHARD, CYRIL even lifts a flap to peer inside at the bouts— filmmaker’s head, praised as the “greatest creating a rectangle of action in the middle production ever made in this country” and of the photographed square we’re already Hitchcock being touted as the industry’s watching. It is, if not a hall of mirrors, then savior. “You have set the standard not only a series of lenses. for your own company, but for every Brit- Hitchcock, beginning here and con- ish producer,” ran one notice in Bioscope. tinuing throughout the film, uses many “Our first hope is that you will long con- clever devices to tell the story wordlessly. tinue to make films in this country, because (Ironically, for a filmmaker who’d begun as the producing industry—which owes you a a designer of intertitles, he uses very few of debt of gratitude—can ill afford to be with- them here.) The rarity of a second-round out your talent.” fight for “One-Round” Jack is illustrated It was only his sixth film, and already by the appearance of a brand-new, never- English film lovers were worried about los- used “Round 2” card; the slow deflation ing him to Hollywood. They were right, but of romantic joy is suggested by a glass of it would take another dozen years—and at champagne going flat. least another cycle of disappointments and Champagne occurs again and again in successes. the film—poured over the fighters’ heads in the ring to revive them, cast aside in a References nightclub when Sander has his final quar- “Great British Film: The Ring,” Daily rel with Corby—but the most extended Mail, October 1, 1927, http://the.hitch metaphor comes from the title itself. It is cock.zone/wiki/Daily_Mail_%2801/ the squared circle in which the boxers com- Oct/1927%29_-_Great_British_Film pete; it is also the circular bracelet, shaped :_The_Ring; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred like a viper, that Corby gives to this story’s Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light untrustworthy Eve, Jack’s girl. Jack then (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 94–98; twists it small, into the size of a ring, when Tom Ryall, Alfred Hitchcock and the Brit- he proposes; later, she restores it to its orig- ish Cinema (London: Continuum Inter- inal shape and wears it high up on her arm national, 1996), 93–94; François Truffaut, as a symbol of Corby’s hold on her. Rings Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: and cycles, circles and snakes—the world Touchstone, 1985), 52–55. goes round and round. Add to this a gallery of grotesques RITCHARD, CYRIL (1897–1977) (from the carnival sideshow performers Sydney-born performer who fell in love who attend Jack’s wedding, in a sort of with the theater during a childhood per- dry run for Freaks, to his not-much-more- formance of Peter Pan; although his par- presentable ringside entourage of grinning, ents had hopes he would follow a career in oafish friends) and some stunning, impres- medicine, he was squeamish at the sight of sionistic work with distorting lenses (turn- blood and dropped out of school, finding ing backgrounds into a dizzy blur or piano work as a chorus boy in comic operettas. keys into a row of slashing vertical lines), He ascended to stardom fairly rapidly and and you have a movie that, however melo- danced and sang his way through a num- dramatic its storyline, is full of visual inven- ber of revues and musicals in Sydney, New tion and thematic sophistication. York, and London; the titles—Bubbly; Puz- The picture opened in Great Britain zles of 1925; Oh, Lady! Lady!—give some of to the sort of raves that might turn any their flapper flavor. RITTER, THELMA n 369

He had only made one other feature, she retired to raise her two children; she the excellent Piccadilly, when Hitchcock returned to her career in her mid-40s with cast him as the attempted rapist in BLACK- bit parts in Miracle on 34th Street and MAIL; considering Ritchard was an elegant Joseph Mankiewicz’s A Letter to Three musical-comedy star at the time, it was Wives. The latter didn’t get her an onscreen an interesting bit of casting and one that credit, but it got the director’s attention; the Hitchcock couldn’t help trumpeting with next year he cast her as Birdie, Bette Davis’s a small visual trick: setting up the scene dresser, in All About Eve, and Ritter’s sar- so that a light fixture cast a shadow, like a donic, streetwise performance won her the Victorian villain’s curling moustache, along first of what would be six Oscar nomina- Ritchard’s upper lip. It was, Hitchcock said tions. later, a “sort of farewell to silent pictures.” Ritter’s no-nonsense, don’t-kid-a-kid- Ritchard continued to work chiefly der delivery made her a fan favorite, partic- onstage and later on TV; in the 1950s, the ularly in comic roles, where she punctured two combined (along with his earlier stab at pretensions so easily you’d think she was villainy and his first theatrical memory) in armed with a dozen hatpins: The Mating a much-beloved portrayal of Captain Hook Season; The Model and the Marriage Bro- in Peter Pan with Mary Martin, first done ker; With a Song in My Heart, A Hole in the on Broadway and later as an oft-repeated Head. But she had more serious parts in TV special. The show gave Ritchard an The Incident and The Misfits and brought entirely new career as a children’s per- frantic life to Moe, the police informant in former, which—in between more adult Pickup on South Street. work—he kept alive with appearances in REAR WINDOW was very much in Hans Brinker and The Dangerous Christ- Ritter’s wheelhouse—as Stella, Jeff’s visit- mas of Red Riding Hood and by providing ing nurse, she dispatched salty wisdom voices for The Daydreamer and an early and alcohol rubdowns with equal verve. animated version of The Hobbit. Although it was clearly a supporting role, He died in Chicago of a heart attack at it was also central: while Jeff may intellec- 80 while touring with a Stephen Sondheim tualize everything and Lisa lose herself in revue. romantic idealism, Stella is not only the voice of reason but also the movie’s humor- References ous moral center, unafraid to call people “Cyril Ritchard,” IMDb, http://www out for their foolishness (or dangerous .imdb.com/name/nm0728509; Cyril obsessions). Ritchard: 1897–1977, http://users.bestweb “The humor that Thelma Ritter .net/~foosie/cyril.htm; François Truffaut, brought to Rear Window was absolutely Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: wonderful,” PATRICIA HITCHCOCK Touchstone, 1985), 69. said. “My father loved that, because he knew that you couldn’t keep going. You RITTER, THELMA (1902–1969) had to give the audience a break. You Brooklyn-born performer and an indis- had to have them laugh at something. His pensable character actress for 20 years of whole life was the importance of having a roles on stage, screen, and television. Rit- sense of humor in whatever you do.” ter studied at the American Academy of Although Ritter never won an Oscar— Dramatic Arts and had begun a career as “Now I know what it feels like to be the a stage actress and radio performer when bridesmaid and never the bride,” she said 370 n ROHMER, ERIC after being nominated and losing for the length study of the director’s films. (The fourth time in a row—she did get a Tony book was later translated into English and for best actress in a musical for New Girl in reprinted as Hitchcock: The First Forty-Four Town (sharing it that year, in an unusual Films.) tie, with her costar, Gwen Verdon) and Rohmer and Chabrol took Hitch- was a steady and welcome presence on cock seriously as a CATHOLIC artist; television. that focus has been occasionally criti- She died in New York of a heart attack cized or ignored by subsequent writers at 66. who’ve chosen to analyze the director’s work from Marxist, feminist, or other References viewpoints. But most importantly, the ‘Rear Window’ Ethics, directed by Laurent two critics took Hitchcock seriously as Bouzereau (2000), documentary, http:// an artist—still somewhat daring during the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Rear_Window a time when America’s own intellectuals _Ethics:_Remembering_and_Restoring_a reflexively derided Hollywood “product” _Hitchcock_Classic_%282000%29_-_tran and routinely worshipped at the thrones script; “Thelma Ritter,” IMDb, http:// of foreign AUTEURS like Bergman and www.imdb.com/name/nm0728812/ Fellini. Years later, Rohmer and Chabrol’s bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Alfred E. book remains essential, and its emphasis Twomey and Arthur F. McClure, The Ver- on the director’s obsession with GUILT satiles: Supporting Character Players in the and innocence, prescient. Cinema, 1930–1955 (New York: Castle Rohmer himself remained at Cahiers Books, 1969), 195. as an editor for some time, even as younger colleagues were establishing their film- ROHMER, ERIC (1920–2010) making careers; although he made his first Tulle-born filmmaker born Maurice feature, Sign of Leo, in 1959, it would be Scherer, who studied history in college and another decade before he began the long later worked as a teacher before becoming string of successes that started with 1969’s a freelance writer and journalist. Although My Night at Maud’s and would include he had used other pen names, he eventually Claire’s Knee, Love in the Afternoon, and settled on “Eric Rohmer”—saluting film- Pauline at the Beach. Filled with bright maker Erich von Stroheim and pulp nov- sunshine and personal shadows, his unique elist Sax Rohmer—to hide his career from films turn on issues of morality, hypocrisy, his disapproving family. (In fact, they never and self-knowledge. found out—even after he started making He died at 89 in Paris. films.) An early and important critic, Rohmer References began his own film journal in 1950, later “Eric Rohmer,” IMDb, http://www.imdb joining ANDRE BAZIN’s CAHIERS DU .com/name/nm0006445/bio?ref_=nm_ov CINEMA, where he became a central fig- _bio_sm; Dave Kehr, “Cahiers Back in the ure, serving as a somewhat conservative Day,” Film Comment (September/October counterbalance to Jean-Luc Godard and a 2001), http://www.filmcomment.com/ tireless advocate for American directors, article/cahiers-back-in-the-day; Derek particularly Howard Hawks, and Alfred Schilling, “Eric Rohmer,” New Wave Film, Hitchcock. In 1957, with CLAUDE CHAB- http://www.newwavefilm.com/french-new ROL, he published Hitchcock, the first full- -wave-encyclopedia/eric-rohmer.shtml. ROPE n 371

ROMAN, RUTH (1922–1999) Times, September 11, 1999, http://www Massachusetts-born performer who grew .nytimes.com/1999/09/11/movies/ruth up in straitened circumstances. Her father, -roman-75-glamorous-and-wholesome a carny, died when she was still a child, and -star-dies.html; “Ruth Roman,” IMDb, her mother had to wait tables and work in a http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0738746/ laundry to support them. For a while, they bio; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of moved monthly—always just before the Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New rent came due. York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 325. Roman stayed optimistic. “When you start out poor, you don’t know what you’re ROPE (US 1948) missing,” she said later, and after dropping out of high school, the teenager soon Director: Alfred Hitchcock. started getting work with local theaters. By Screenplay: Arthur Laurents, Hume Cronyn, based on the play by Patrick Hamilton. the early ’40s, she was in Hollywood, living Producers: Uncredited (Sidney Bernstein, in a boarding house with Linda Christian Alfred Hitchcock). and five other would-be stars; they called Cinematography: Joseph Valentine, William their place, Roman joked, “The House of V. Skall. the Seven Garbos.” Editor: William H. Ziegler. She had gotten mostly small parts in bad Original Music: Uncredited (David But- movies and serials when Stanley Kramer cast tolph). her in Champion in 1949, not a flashy role Cast: James Stewart (Rupert Cadell), Jon but a good movie; WARNER BROS. signed Dall (Brandon), Farley Granger (Philip), her to a contract and began pushing her as a Sir Cedric Hardwicke (Mr. Kentley), STAR, which is how she came to be cast in Constance Collier (Mrs. Atwater). Running Time: 80 minutes. Color. STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. Because she was Released Through: Warner Bros. mogul Jack Warner’s idea, not Hitchcock’s, his attitude toward her ranged from disinterest to cordial dislike; as costar FARLEY GRANGER observed, “He had to have one To prove their superiority to the com- person in each film he could harass.” mon man, roommates Brandon and Philip Roman survived the memorable expe- strangle a friend in their Manhattan apart- rience (and the frankly unmemorable part) ment, hide his body in a trunk, and then to do other movies, including The Bottom of host a dinner party to celebrate their execu- the Bottle, Anthony Mann’s The Far Coun- tion of a perfect murder and clear status as try, and a great deal of television, including intellectual “supermen.” an episode of THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK Among the guests are the victim’s HOUR; her most memorable performance, father, aunt, and fiancée; also in atten- however, undoubtedly came at sea in 1956, dance is Rupert Cadell, now a publisher when she grabbed her three-year-old son but once Brandon and Philip’s teacher and and fled the sinking Andrea Doria. (Both a great advocate of Nietzsche’s theories of survived, albeit on separate lifeboats.) the Übermensch, that man who is above Roman died at 76 in Laguna Beach, CA. conventional morality. Certainly, Brandon and Philip feel, their murder is proof of his References theory. William H. Honan, “Ruth Roman, Glamor- As the evening goes on, though, Bran- ous and Wholesome Star, Dies,” New York don overconfidently begins to drop hints 372 n ROPE and taunts, and the more guilt-ridden through the original play’s dialogue, elimi- Philip gets drunk and argumentative. The nating all the antique British-isms—“Oh, party eventually breaks up, but as Rupert my dear boy”—that were already drawing leaves, the housekeeper mistakenly hands unwelcome, if mistaken, American atten- him the dead boy’s monogrammed hat; his tion. But Laurents sharpened the rest of it, suspicions growing, Cadell returns to con- so much so that—without ever mention- front the two murderers and, after discov- ing the word homosexual—there was no ering the body, summons the police. doubt that its two main characters, single men sharing a lush New York apartment, A story of emotional BONDAGE and a were in a relationship (as, at times, were production of self-imposed artistic con- Laurents and star FARLEY GRANGER; straints—which ironically marked the start indeed, Rope was decidedly the most “it” of Hitchcock’s true Hollywood freedom. movie Hitchcock had ever made, with He had, for seven years, chafed under costar JOHN DALL—and even Francis his contract with DAVID O. SELZNICK— Poulenc, the composer whose piano piece a business arrangement that often brought Granger is practicing—gay as well). him larger budgets and STARS but also Laurents also added the sort of black saw him loaned out to other studios and, humor that Hitchcock loved; throughout worst of all, gave Selznick the final say on the story, there are lines with DOUBLE everything from casting to cutting. Before meanings (“One guest who must be gotten THE PARADINE CASE had even finished, rid of,” “like the grave,” “knock ’em dead”) Hitchcock was in busy consultation with that comment surreptitiously on the story SIDNEY BERNSTEIN—who had worked and provide more evil laughs than any film with him on the Free French films and the until PSYCHO. “These hands will bring Holocaust documentary—and preparing you great fame,” says a dotty psychic, as she what would be the first project for their examines the fingers of the young pianist; new TRANSATLANTIC PICTURES ven- unknown to her, he’s a young STRAN- ture, UNDER CAPRICORN. GLER, too, and it’s only infamy that’s When INGRID BERGMAN was ahead for him. unavailable to star, however, the men After the script came casting, a tricky decided to postpone the production and thing for a film whose subject was still embark instead on Rope, an adaptation “it,” no matter how subtly. Hitchcock of the 1929 PATRICK HAMILTON play wanted CARY GRANT for the young (which itself had obviously been inspired men’s influential teacher, but he was by the LEOPOLD AND LOEB case). Hitch- unavailable—according to DONALD cock assigned old friend HUME CRONYN SPOTO, because he was under contract to to do the initial treatment; later, ARTHUR RKO; according to Laurents, because he LAURENTS was hired to turn it into a refused to play a gay character. MONT- screenplay. It would be the first feature- GOMERY CLIFT was approached and film writing credit for both. demurred, too, for the same skittish rea- CENSORSHIP, they knew, would be a sons, and so Hitchcock signed JAMES problem; word was, Laurents later said, that STEWART to play the teacher—his first the story was about HOMOSEXUALITY role for the director—and Granger and (or “it,” as the topic was referred to). There Dall to play the two killers. SIR CEDRIC could be no suggestion of “it” in the script, HARDWICKE and CONSTANCE COL- Laurents was told, and so he went carefully LIER rounded out the cast. ROPE n 373

Even more than usual, however, the typical pride in the size and scope of his real star of the film would be Hitchcock and self-imposed challenges, he didn’t always his camera. Determined to make a splash succeed at them; a great deal of Technicolor with his new company’s debut produc- footage had to be reshot when it came back tion, Hitchcock decided that Rope would from the lab too garishly COLORED, and not only be his first film in Technicolor— even in the final print, some of the DOLLY inspired by the LONG TAKES he’d tried to SHOTS are noticeably wobbly. do in The Paradine Case (which had been After the shoot, Stewart grumbled butchered by Selznick), he also would go that Hitchcock had rehearsed his camera, even further this time, telling the story in not his actors, and it’s true that the perfor- 80 minutes of “real time” and letting single mances are inconsistent. Collier—whom shots literally run as long as there was still Hitchcock knew since the ’20s, when she film left in the camera. There would be no had written the play Down Hill with IVOR editing in the traditional sense; instead, the NOVELLO—gave the film some gentle camera would be constantly on the move, humor as the daffy dowager, and Hard- and at the end, the various single-take, wicke provided the story’s real heart as the 10-minute-long scenes would merely need victim’s worried father (as well as a bit of to be quickly spliced together. an implicit lecture to the heartless audi- Hitchcock had been interested in this ence: You might find murder mysteries approach for a while, spurred on possibly amusing, but in real life, there is loss and by his work supervising the documentary misery). on the Nazi death camps, in which he urged But Dall is even more affected than the editors to do as little cutting as possible the part calls for, and Granger is a bit in order to head off any charges of trickery; uncertain. As for Stewart, he never truly if long, uninterrupted takes gave a feeling convinces as a professor of Nietzsche. of truthfulness to a documentary, then they (It’s also doubtful that Hitchcock ever might add a heightened sense of realism to told him that his character was supposed a feature, as well. It was, like the choice to to be gay, as Laurents said he was always shoot in Technicolor, a modern approach intended to be.) and a chance for a filmmaker on the edge of Nor does his third-act speech really 50 to show that he was still as comfortable ring true; “You’ve given my words a mean- on the cutting edge as he’d ever been. ing I never dreamed of,” Stewart protests Yet this style of editing also ran con- when he realizes he’s inspired two mur- trary to everything Hitchcock had ever derers, but this is a self-serving dodge. preached about the art of MONTAGE— His character may gild his philosophy in the cumulative, dramatic effect of join- small jokes and cynical asides, but his talk ing together short, separate images—and of “superior” men and “inferior” victims is it would provide endless headaches on the talk of bigots and fascists, and that the the set, where walls had to suddenly roll two impressionable preppies he raised on it away on casters and a single muffed line would later use it to justify their own cru- could require an entire 10-minute retake. elties shouldn’t be such a surprise; giving INGRID BERGMAN and other stars would Stewart’s character this easy way out weak- drop by to see the shoot (which required ens the sense of GUILT that Hitchcock’s incredibly complicated lighting cues to best work addresses. (Also underdeveloped create a gathering dusk through the apart- is the metaphor of bondage itself—Brandon ment windows), but despite Hitchcock’s and Philip strangled David with a rope, but 374 n RÓZSA, MIKLOS the couple is tied together as well, bound ald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life not only by their shared guilt but also by of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo their corrosive and unequal relationship.) Press, 1999), 302–8; François Truffaut, Stewart was right, of course; more than Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: most of Hitchcock’s films, it’s the camera Touchstone, 1985), 179–84. that’s the real actor here, and often it’s a worthy star. Although usually on the prowl, RÓZSA, MIKLOS (1907–1995) it sometimes gets its most dramatic effects Budapest-born musician raised in a wealthy by simply standing still and watching— family and inculcated with an appreciation action revealed through a now-open, now- of music and his country’s culture, whose closed swinging door or a long static shot influence on him was “vital,” he said later. in which the maid prepares to open up the “I was never a methodical folksong collec- trunk where the body is hidden as charac- tor like Kodály or Bartók,” he said. “I was ters talk unconcernedly offscreen. There’s interested only in the music, which I found also a nice SUBJECTIVE shot (copying one strong in expression and fascinating rhyth- in REBECCA) in which Stewart’s character mically. I sometimes played violin with the theorizes about the murder; as he describes gypsies for fun, and we might join together what must have happened, the camera’s eye to serenade a certain village beauty (whose moves about the room, imagining. name I still remember).” Yet despite a few moments—the stark, Having mastered the violin, viola, and onscreen murder, his most shocking since piano as a child, Rózsa continued his musical THE LODGER, the heart-rending shot of studies in Leipzig and, after moving to Paris, Hardwicke looking out the window, wait- began his career as a classical composer in ing for a son who’ll never arrive—Rope is earnest. Yet he was interested in cinema, as as cold as its antiheroes, a film that’s mostly well, and his first film work came in Lon- about its own cleverness. “It was worth don in the late ’30s, where fellow Hungar- trying,” Stewart observed later, summing ian émigré Alexander Korda hired him to up the one-take experiment. “Nobody do the score for Knight without Armor; it but Hitch would have tried it. But it really was enough of a success that Rózsa was soon didn’t work.” hired full time, turning out lush music for Except to announce that Hitchcock The Four Feathers and Thief of Baghdad. had finally won his independence—and In Hollywood since the early ’40s, was ready to use it. Rózsa wrote the scores for several Billy Wilder pictures, including the noir clas- References sic Double Indemnity; he also pioneered Farley Granger, interview with the author, the use of the THEREMIN, whose eerie, April 2007; Farley Granger with Robert electronic tones in The Lost Weekend and Calhoun, Include Me Out: My Life from SPELLBOUND duplicate the heroes’ dis- Goldwyn to Broadway (New York: St. Mar- turbed emotional states. But Rózsa resented tin’s Press, 2007), 68–71; Arthur Laurents, producer DAVID O. SELZNICK’s interfer- The Rest of the Story (Milwaukee, WI: ence (he always wanted more violins), and Applause, 2012), 39; Patrick McGilligan, Hitchcock thought Rózsa’s score was over- Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and bearing—although he may have merely Light (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), resented the fact that it was the composer 402–14; Rope Unleashed, directed by Lau- who won an Oscar for the picture. The rent Bouzereau (2001), documentary; Don- partnership was discontinued. RUSSELL, JOHN L. n 375

Rózsa, though, continued as a Holly- kov turned down both—Hitchcock brought wood favorite, particularly for noir proj- his comical, coin-thief concept to the writ- ects; among his later credits are The Red ers of the lighthearted Italian caper Big House, Brute Force, Kiss the Blood off My Deal on Madonna Street, Agenore Incrocci Hands, and The Asphalt Jungle (although, and Furio Scarpelli. They worked on it on as Ben Hur, King of Kings, and El Cid and off for several months without success proved, he could do epic, too). One of his until Hitchcock dropped the idea to return last credits is for Dead Men Don’t Wear to developing Torn Curtain, this time turn- Plaid in 1982, a pastiche that cleverly recy- ing to BRIAN MOORE instead. cled clips from various Hollywood classics, including SUSPICION and NOTORIOUS References (although not Spellbound, the one Hitch- Steven DeRosa, “Alfred Hitchcock’s Ital- cock film Rózsa had worked on). Sadly, a ian Connection,” Writing with Hitchcock, severe stroke later that year ended Rózsa’s http://stevenderosa.com/writingwith regular work for films, although he contin- hitchcock/italianconnection.html; Donald ued to compose orchestral music. Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life He died in Los Angeles at 88. of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 484–85. References Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life RUSSELL, JOHN L. (1905–1967) in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- New York–born cameraman who, after Collins, 2003), 379; “Miklós Rózsa,” IMDb, an abortive start in the ’30s, resumed his http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000067/ movie career following World War II; bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; David Raskin, assignments included interesting but often “David Raskin Remembers His Colleagues: awkwardly economical projects like Orson Miklós Rózsa,” American Composers Welles’s beleaguered Macbeth, Edgar G. Orchestra, http://www.americancomposers Ulmer’s The Man from Planet X, and the .org/raksin_rozsa.htm. early Ray Harryhausen picture The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. R.R.R.R. Both professionally capable and aes- Another aborted project from the uncer- thetically unobtrusive, Russell soon moved tain ’60s, this one had its genesis in a much on to television, where he would become older idea of Hitchcock’s about a family-run the busy director of photography on many hotel in which everyone but the proprietor series, including M Squad, Thriller, and was a crook; in this latest version, a glamor- General Electric Theater. He was director ous woman (Sophia Loren was mentioned) of photography on both ALFRED HITCH- would check into a Manhattan hotel, car- COCK PRESENTS and THE ALFRED rying a treasure in rare coins; the hapless HITCHCOCK HOUR, overseeing nearly manager’s thieving relatives would all work 100 episodes; when Hitchcock decided to overtime trying to steal them from under use his television crew on the low-budget his nose. (The title refers to a grading system PSYCHO, Russell came along to provide used by coin dealers; “R.R.R.R.” is the finest.) the cinematography. After approaching the rather wildly Like his work for the television show, inappropriate Vladimir Nabokov with Russell’s work was mostly flatly lit and a this idea, as well as with the germ of what little gray, although that worked for the would become TORN CURTAIN—Nabo- sterility of Marion Crane’s Phoenix and 376 n RUSSELL, JOHN L. the ugly low-budget environs of the Bates from a few rare movie assignments—an Motel. And under Hitchcock’s careful ill-advised remake of The Cabinet of Dr. direction, other images came to life—the Caligari written by ROBERT BLOCH, the low angles of a looming Norman, the high subpar HITCHCOCKIAN Jigsaw—the rest bird’s-eye view that obscures MOTHER as of his career was spent turning out episodes she’s carried down the STAIRS, the clini- of TV’s McHale’s Navy, The Virginian, and cal blankness of the cell at the end. And, of Run for Your Life. course, the shower scene, with the blind- He died at 62 in Los Angeles. ing whiteness of the tiles, the silver flashes of the knife, the water, and at the end the References empty blackness of Marion’s unseeing Jim Hemphill, “DVD Playback: Psycho,” EYE. American Society of Cinematographers, Although Psycho was an extraordinary https://www.theasc.com/ac_magazine/ hit (and won Russell an Oscar nomina- December2008/DVDPlayback/page3.php; tion), he quickly returned to his typically “John L. Russell,” IMDb, http://www.imdb modest work on the Hitchcock show. Apart .com/name/nm0005852. S

SABOTAGE (GB 1936) not to be paid for his latest work; rather than terrifying the city, the blackout, it Director: Alfred Hitchcock. seems, was merely laughed off by London- Screenplay: Charles Bennett, Ian Hay, ers. Verloc is told that for his next assign- Helen Simpson, E. V. H. Emmett, Alma ment he’s to plant a bomb in a busy down- Reville, based on the novel The Secret town subway station. Agent by Joseph Conrad. Already suspicious of Verloc, Scotland Producers: Uncredited (Sir Michael Balcon, Ivor Montagu). Yard has assigned an agent, Ted Spencer, to Cinematography: Bernard Knowles. work undercover, posing as a helper at the Editor: Charles Frend. neighborhood greengrocer’s. He befriends Original Music: Uncredited (Hubert Bath, the family, and the obviously unhappy Jack Beaver, Louis Levy). Mrs. Verloc responds to his attentions. Cast: Sylvia Sidney (Mrs. Verloc), Oscar Meanwhile, Verloc gets the “package” from Homolka (Karl Verloc), John Loder (Ted the gang’s bomb maker, who tells him it’s Spencer), Desmond Tester (Stevie). timed to go off at 1:45. When one of Ver- Running Time: 76 minutes. Black and white. loc’s confederates identifies Spencer as a Released Through: Gaumont British Dis- lawman, Verloc realizes he’s being watched tributors. and decides to use an unknowing Stevie to deliver the bomb. Along the way, though, Stevie is con- As London grinds to a halt during a black- stantly delayed—by sidewalk salesmen, by a out, saboteur Karl Verloc quietly returns parade, by pokey traffic. The bomb goes off to the apartment above his cinema and before he can deliver it, killing him. Hear- carefully washes his hands. No one—not ing the news later that night, Mrs. Verloc his wife or her young brother, Stevie, who slips into a daze, even as Verloc blames lives with them—suspects that he is part Scotland Yard for the boy’s death—if he of a gang of foreign terrorists. In fact, he wasn’t being watched, then he could have pretends to have slept through the power delivered the bomb himself, he says—and failure, and when the patrons at his the- suggests that, perhaps now, the couple will ater demand their money back, he tells his have a child of their own. His wife fatally wife to pay them, assuring her they can stabs him with a carving knife and prepares afford it. to give herself up to the police. However, at a meeting with his boss Scotland Yard has just arrived, how- at a public aquarium, Verloc finds out he’s ever—as has the bomb maker, who is

n 377 378 n SABOTAGE

Patricia Hitchcock looks on in horror as Robert Walker demonstrates his favorite murder method to Norma Varden in Strangers on a Train. Warner Bros./Photofest © Warner Bros. worried there may be evidence in the also Verloc’s body and any evidence of apartment tying him to the crime. While the murder. Mrs. Verloc is free. the sympathetic Spencer stops Mrs. Ver- loc from confessing, the police chase the A dark little movie about acts of violence, terrorist into the house. He sets off a not the least of which is committed against bomb—destroying not only himself but the audience. SABOTAGE n 379

After finishing SECRET AGENT, grocer’s shop—constructed on a sound- Hitchcock turned immediately to his next stage. Even a working tram was set up, an project, an adaptation of a Joseph Conrad expense that annoyed the studio—particu- novel about anticzarist revolutionaries at larly producer IVOR MONTAGU—but work in England. That storyline would that Hitchcock insisted on, determined to have to be changed, as would the book’s give the film every bit of urban realism he title, The Secret Agent. could. As usual, Hitchcock and his writers His attention to this sort of detail kept the spine of the plot while adding undoubtedly helped keep up his interest characters and incidents for commercial in a film whose cast failed to engage him; reasons (there would now be a romance he remained unenthused about the stolid for Mrs. Verloc, and she would not commit Loder (the very opposite of the lightly suicide at the end) or to pique Hitchcock’s charming Donat) and Sidney, who was artistic interests. (Instead of selling por- used to carefully playing a scene all the nographic books, Verloc now ran a movie way through and was jangled by Hitch- theater, allowing the director to once again, cock’s jigsaw method of short, sharp cuts— as he had in THE PLEASURE GARDEN, look down, grab this, look left, turn here THE RING, and THE 39 STEPS, contrast (although it was precisely that HITCH- innocent public pleasures with private dirty COCKIAN MONTAGE that provided her secrets.) with her best scene, in which, much to her Having failed to get him for Secret own apparent astonishment, she kills her Agent, Hitchcock again tried to sign husband). ROBERT DONAT for the lead—there Although Sabotage still maintains the were even ads in Variety prematurely basic idea and much of the glum mood announcing him as cast in the film, then of Conrad’s work, it is also very much a called The Hidden Power—but the actor Hitchcock film, not least of all because of had to beg off due to ill health; dull JOHN its visual style. Short, staccato images and LODER got the part instead. (The persis- quick words or phrases quickly lay out tent Hitchcock would try to reteam with the story. Verloc is identified seamlessly Donat again for THE LADY VANISHES within the first few minutes as we see the and again be unsuccessful.) Although the act of sabotage, are told how it was done, director flirted with the idea of casting and then watch him washing sand from PETER LORRE again—playing a foreign his hands at home. The murder scene— agent in a Hitchcock film for the third which so frustrated Sidney—is a marvel time in three years—OSCAR HOMOLKA of both editing (the flurry of close-ups as was given the role of Verloc, the terrorist, she is tempted, resists, and then gives in to possibly because Lorre’s morphine addic- the urge for revenge) and moral ambigu- tion had already caused delays on Secret ity. (Verloc seems to willingly thrust him- Agent. Hollywood star SYLVIA SIDNEY self onto the knife as much as she thrusts was cast as Mrs. Verloc in keeping with it into him, and both give a little gasp of SIR MICHAEL BALCON’s fondness for pain and surprise as it happens.) American names. There is also the film’s stunning set The production was particularly lavish, piece, in which—almost sadistically toy- with several city streets—the sort of rough- ing with the audience—Hitchcock gives and-tumble East End neighborhood where the time bomb to Stevie (played, in another Hitchcock’s father had had his own green- touch of realism, not by a cherub but the 380 n SABOTAGE slightly geeky, awkward Desmond Tester) WITHIN PLAYS, movies within mov- and then sets him off on his way. We know ies. When Verloc meets his boss, it’s at an that the device is set to go off at 1:45; fre- aquarium, with huge tanks glowing bale- quently the camera cuts to clocks ticking fully like projected films; when Spencer away. But then Hitchcock delays the child goes to spy on Verloc, he slips behind the with one distraction after another. And movie theater’s screen, the image always then, after fraying our nerves almost to the behind him playing in reverse. snapping point, he finally seats the boy on And of course it’s the movies them- a slow-moving bus, next to a woman with selves that influence this movie’s climax; an adorable puppy—and sets the bomb off, fleeing to the theater after Stevie’s death, blowing bus, boy, dog, and everyone else to his sister is first distracted by the comic smithereens. cartoon playing there and then struck It is a remarkable sequence—remark- by its violence and repeated cry in WHO able most of all in its ending. (To kill not KILLED COCK ROBIN? (BIRDS are, only a child onscreen but also a dog is an hardly for the last time, a motif as well, act few mainstream directors would try from the pet shop where the bomb maker even today.) And it was a mistake, Hitch- works to the birdcage where he hides the cock later felt; to build such tension and explosives to Verloc’s promise to “kill two then not let it safely dissipate put the birds with one stone” to the coded “the film slightly, permanently off kilter and birds will sing at 1:45” about the bomb’s angered audiences. “A grave error on my timing.) part,” he soberly told FRANÇOIS TRUF- Carefully constructed and rapidly and FAUT. vividly told, Sabotage is one of the most Yet it’s all of a piece with this dour, accomplished—and certainly the bleakest— somewhat depressing film. Its heroine is, of Hitchcock’s British talkies. like so many of Hitchcock’s women, a character without her own clear IDENTITY—a References wife to Verloc who shows little interest in “Alfred Hitchcock: The Hidden Power,” him, a sister to Stevie who acts more like Variety, June 10, 1936, http://the.hitch his mother. She has no clear image of her- cock.zone/wiki/Variety_%281936%29 self (the film doesn’t even give her a first _-_Alfred_Hitchcock:_The_Hidden_Power; name) and no true hold on her own feel- Hillel Italie, “Hollywood Queen: Actress Syl- ings. Minutes after mourning Stevie, she’s via Sidney, 80, Recalls Full Career,” Kitch- laughing at a cartoon and then anguished ener-Waterloo Record, November 28, 1990, again; her murder of her husband seems to http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Kitchener surprise her more than it does him. She’s -Waterloo_Record_%2828/Nov/1990%29 emotionally confused and morally com- _-_A_Hollywood_queen_Actress_ plicated in a way Hollywood CENSORS Sylvia_Sidney,_80,_recalls_full_career; never would have allowed—not only is Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life she a married woman clearly attracted to in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- the single man pursuing her, but also the erCollins, 2003), 184–91; Donald Spoto, unresolved ending (in a borrowing from The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred BLACKMAIL) literally lets her get away Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), with murder. 155–58; François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truf- Sabotage is also, like many other faut, rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), Hitchcock films, interested in PLAYS 107–11. SABOTEUR n 381

SABOTEUR (US 1942) a ghost town. Pat hides, and Kane passes himself off as one of the gang in order to Director: Alfred Hitchcock. get to the bottom of their plot. Pat runs off, Screenplay: Peter Viertel, Joan Harrison, while he travels with them to New York, Dorothy Parker. where they meet with their other members Producers: Uncredited (Frank Lloyd, Jack at a society ball. Pat is there, too, captive H. Skirball). and already waiting—as is Tobin, who now Cinematography: Joseph Valentine. Editor: Otto Ludwig (Edward Curtiss, exposes Kane’s lie. Kane and Pat are locked uncredited). up—Kane in a storeroom and Pat at the Original Music: Frank Skinner. gang’s headquarters in Rockefeller Center. Cast: Robert Cummings (Barry Kane), Pris- Kane escapes, while Pat slips a note for cilla Lane (Pat), Otto Kruger (Tobin), help out the window. Kane chases the spies Alma Kruger (Mrs. Sutton), Norman to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and discovers Lloyd (Fry), Ian Wolfe (Robert). Fry, ready to set off a bomb and blow up a Running Time: 108 minutes. Black and white. new ship. Kane foils him, but Fry and the Released Through: Universal. gang take him back to their office—where the police, alerted by Pat’s note, are already waiting. Fry ducks inside Radio City Music A fire breaks out in an aircraft hangar of Hall, with the police and Kane in pursuit— a US defense plant—and turns into a fatal there’s a shootout, and Fry flees again. inferno when a worker uses an extin- Kane, detained by the police, tells Pat guisher that’s been secretly filled with gaso- to follow him—and finally Fry, Pat, and line. Barry Kane, who gave the dead man eventually Kane all converge at the Statue the extinguisher, tells the investigators of Liberty. Kane and Fry fight at the top of he’d first been given it by another worker the statue—and Fry falls to his death. named Fry—but when they can find no one by that name in the plant’s records, they After SUSPICION, Hitchcock began devel- assume Kane is the killer, and Kane goes on oping a script for a new movie for DAVID the run. O. SELZNICK, calling on the faithful Kane tracks Fry to the California des- JOAN HARRISON and young screenwriter ert and a well-appointed ranch—whose PETER VIERTEL. The egotistic and work- millionaire owner, Tobin, turns out to be aholic Selznick—who found Hitchcock’s the leader of a group of saboteurs. Tobin lack of suitable deference and reluctance calls the police, who arrest Kane and put to work around the clock maddening— him in handcuffs, but Kane escapes, finding assigned one of his associates, John House- refuge at the cabin of a blind man. When man, to supervise the team’s efforts. the man’s niece, Pat, shows up, her uncle Houseman was immediately taken by urges her to take Kane to a blacksmith to the director, a “man of exaggeratedly deli- have the cuffs taken off, but she doesn’t cate sensibilities, marked by a harsh CATH- believe Kane’s protestations of innocence OLIC education and the scars from a social and stops the car, hoping to flag down help. system against which he was in perpetual Kane uses the car’s fan to break his hand- revolt.” Yet even as he marveled at Hitch- cuffs—wrecking the car in the process— cock’s intelligence and cinematic savvy, he and he and Pat set off on foot. found the filmmaker’s approach to writing After briefly taking shelter with a cir- a screenplay oddly scattered; various set cus, Kane and Pat follow the saboteurs to pieces, images, and bits of business were 382 n SABOTEUR first proposed and then strung together his hero is a worker in a leather jacket, its rather than arising logically and organically villains a gang of plutocrats who sneer at from the story. (Later, Hitchcock would Kane’s honest patriotism. Saboteur isn’t agree, telling FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT that just a trek across America but also through the final screenplay had a “mass of ideas but America, and its observations are very they weren’t sorted out in proper order; they clear. Whenever Kane turns to a figure of weren’t selected with sufficient care.”) wealth or authority for help, he’s batted Although the script went through away or betrayed; whenever he appeals rewrites, Selznick never warmed to it; after to one of the overlooked—a truck driver, shopping it around, he sold it to another an elderly blind man, a van full of circus producer, Frank Lloyd, who set it up at freaks—he’s embraced. UNIVERSAL. Hitchcock resented the out- Hitchcock had his fun with the big set side deal—once again, Selznick would be pieces. The shootout at Radio City Music making a fat profit off him—as well as the Hall took an idea from SABOTAGE and usual economics that smaller studios and added guns to make a mirrored image producers were prone to; although Hitch- of real and onscreen violence, creating cock hoped for Gary Cooper and Barbara another PLAY WITHIN A PLAY; the Stanwyck in the leads, he was told to take famous climax at the top of a national ROBERT CUMMINGS and PRISCILLA monument, with the villain’s life liter- LANE. (He also wanted popular cowboy ally hanging by a thread, would later be star Harry Carey to play Tobin, but the restaged and improved in NORTH BY actor—at the urging of his outraged wife— NORTHWEST (with Hitchcock correcting refused to play a traitor.) his “error” that time by making sure it was Despite the compromises and con- the hero and heroine who were in jeop- straints, Saboteur is still a smart, fast ardy). He also achieved some striking com- adventure—and perhaps the most purely positions—the black smoke of the defense HITCHCOCKIAN Hitchcock picture since plant fire slowly entering our view from the THE LADY VANISHES, unencumbered by right until it practically fills the screen, the the period trappings of JAMAICA INN or contrast between the tiny human figures at the ostentatious “good taste” of REBECCA. the bottom in Radio City and the enormous It’s propulsive and peripatetic, like THE projected close-ups behind them. 39 STEPS but a little more serious, with its And there are smaller pleasures, too, hero carrying the GUILT of an innocent such as the nicely sketched-in villains— man’s death—and, like the big new coun- OTTO KRUGER, NORMAN LLOYD as try it’s set in, a movie done on a grander the smirking Fry, Alan Baxter as the slightly scale and shot through with working-class perverse Freeman, and IAN WOLFE as a idealism. sadistic butler with a blackjack. Or another, Some of those were undoubtedly quietly comic touch in which Pat—whom DOROTHY PARKER’s touches (she we’ve been told is a commercial model— was brought in for a rewrite and con- keeps constantly showing up on billboards tributed the scene with the blind man, as that comment on the action. Or the topical well as most of the dialogue for the circus insertion of newsreel footage of the sunk sequence); some came from that sore class S.S. Normandie, lightly implying that she’d resentment of Hitchcock’s that Houseman been destroyed by enemy sabotage, too (a had so perceptively noticed. Saboteur is one quick scene that brought angry objections of Hitchcock’s most proletarian pictures; from the navy). SAINT, EVA MARIE n 383

Saboteur tends to be devalued in the ing chamber music. . . . I don’t know what Hitchcock canon, judged as having neither happened later. That Marlon you saw— the originality of The 39 Steps nor the daz- that wasn’t the Marlon I knew. He almost zling scale of North by Northwest; Hitch- seemed ashamed of being an actor.” cock himself, while remaining proud of Saint scored again in A Hatful of Rain the Statue of Liberty shot, tended to speak and Raintree County and on television, slightingly of it, too, later on, complaining where she was often cast in realistic, down- that neither Cummings nor Lane was up to beat, “kitchen-sink” dramas. Enjoying the the material. But it’s exactly their regular, idea of casting against type, Hitchcock then accessible attitudes that make the movie chose her for the glamorous spy Eve Kend- work as a celebration of working-class hon- all in NORTH BY NORTHWEST. esty and perseverance; his first film with an “I still have no idea why he saw me all-American cast, it remains his most all- as this sexy spy lady,” she said. “But who American film. doesn’t want to be a sexy spy lady? He knew exactly what he wanted, too. He References oversaw everything—my hair, my makeup, Norman Lloyd, interviews with the author, my shoes. And when he didn’t like the cos- November 2007, July 2015; Patrick McGil- tumes MGM came up with, he took me to ligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Dark- Bergdorf’s and said, ‘All right, Eve, what- ness and Light (New York: HarperCollins, ever you like’—that’s where I found that 2003), 294–306; Donald Spoto, The Dark beautiful black dress with the roses.” Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock She is very good in North by North- (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 249–55; west, perfectly embodying the sort of fire- François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. and-ice BLONDE that Hitchcock had ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 145–51. made a FETISH of—dressed with prim, proper elegance yet able to calmly bat ris- SAINT, EVA MARIE (1924– ) qué double entendres back and forth over Newark-born actress who was studying to luncheon. “Externals were very important become a teacher when a college play awak- to (Hitchcock),” she said. “That was, actu- ened a love of drama. After graduation, she ally, the only direction he’d give me. ‘Lower moved to New York, where she pursued your voice.’ ‘Don’t move your hands.’ ‘Look modeling jobs and went out on auditions. Cary in the eye.’ Of course, that wasn’t The stage and live TV presented plenty of hard! People ask sometimes, ‘What was opportunities—if not plenty of money— CARY GRANT really like?’ And I always until 1954, when Elia Kazan cast her in On say, ‘Just as beautiful as you think he was, the Waterfront. Admittedly thrown—and inside and out.’” kept—off balance by Marlon Brando’s fresh The director—whom, she stresses, and unpredictable performance, she gave a never said or attempted anything inappro- touching portrayal of shy, sheltered Edie priate with her—took a particular pleasure Doyle and won the ACADEMY AWARD in the new look he’d given her and begged for best supporting actress. her to hold on to it. “I don’t want you to “When he did ‘Waterfront’ he really do a sink-to-sink movie again ever,” she was at the height of his joy in what he did,” remembered him telling her. “Women go she said of Brando. “He was so observant, to the movies, and they’ve just left that sink he would pick up on any little thing you at home. They don’t want to see you at the did—doing a scene with him was like play- sink.” 384 n SANDERS, GEORGE

In fact, Saint did a variety of motion through several careers (he was report- pictures after North by Northwest—includ- edly fired from his position with a Latin ing the modern epic Exodus and the rol- American tobacco firm for drunkenness licking farce The Russians Are Coming! The and dueling) before taking a job in adver- Russians Are Coming! as well as a few more tising. It was there that a secretary, Eileen downbeat dramas—but in the end, it wasn’t Fogelson, suggested he pursue a career on the “sink-to-sink” movies that called her the stage. (She would be pursuing her own but the demands of her own domestic life. career soon enough under two of her mid- Married and with two children, she turned dle names: Greer Garson.) down many of the movie offers that came Sanders began his career as a cho- her way; eventually, they stopped coming rus boy and a cabaret performer—he had as regularly, and she turned to TV roles a fine singing voice and actually recorded and occasional stage work. For more than a an album late in life, The George Sanders decade, she didn’t do movies at all. Touch: Songs for the Lovely Lady—before She refuses to write an autobiography. starting in films in the early ’30s, eventu- (“They’re all so boring! Me, me, me, me, ally moving to Hollywood, where he landed me.”) But she’s still happy to appear at film steady work in a movie mystery series play- festivals and retrospectives and talk about ing “the Saint.” Kazan and Marlon and Hitch. She still Hitchcock cast him twice in 1940, first reads scripts, too. But she says, “The char- as the caddish Jack Favell in REBECCA— acters are always grandmothers on oxygen, car salesman, adulterer, blackmailer, and and while there’s nothing wrong with that all-around bounder—and then, slightly if you need it, I don’t, yet. I’m still upright. against type, as the more heroic but no I’m still going.” less sardonic ffolliott in FOREIGN COR- RESPONDENT. Both quickly perceptive References and elegantly lazy, Sanders immediately Destination Hitchcock: The Making of understood Hitchcock’s method of direct- North by Northwest, directed by Peter ing and incorporated it into his own under- Fitzgerald (2000), documentary, http://the stated approach. “The important thing for .hitchcock.zone/wiki/Destination_Hitch a STAR is to have an interesting face,” the cock:_The_Making_of_North_by_North actor said later. “He doesn’t have to move west_%282000%29_-_transcript; Eva it very much. Editing and camerawork can Marie Saint, interview with the author, always produce the desired illusion that a November 2009; Barbara Vancheri, “Film performance is being given.” Emissary Eva Marie Saint Plays Role Sanders was, however, being char- Well,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Novem- acteristically, coolly self-deprecating; he ber 4, 2012, http://www.post-gazette was, in fact, quite capable of giving a per- .com/movies/2012/11/14/Film-emissary formance and gave good ones in a vari- -Eva-Marie-Saint-plays-role-well/stories/ ety of pictures, including The Picture of 201211140179. Dorian Gray; The Ghost and Mrs. Muir; and, of course, his Oscar-winning turn as SANDERS, GEORGE (1906–1972) the bitter drama critic in All about Eve. Russian-born performer of Scottish-Esto- And although many of his roles called for nian ancestry. When the revolution came, a certain smug superiority, Sanders played his family fled to England, where he went comedy well and showed other sides of his to prep school and college and cycled talent in FRITZ LANG’s While the City SARRIS, ANDREW n 385

Sleeps, Roberto Rossellini’s Viaggo in Italia, There he met FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT and and even the sci-fi favorite Village of the other cinephiles—still journalists then, not Damned. Still, he remained typecast as a yet directors—and became an enthusiastic snob and a scoundrel, even calling his 1960 convert to the AUTEUR THEORY, which autobiography Memoirs of a Professional saw the director as the true author of the Cad (although, in his own mild defense, he film and found consistent themes and asserted, “I was beastly but never coarse. A interesting artistic approaches in the work high-class sort of heel”). of such often-underestimated Hollywood Eventually, however, even those parts filmmakers as Nicholas Ray, Alfred Hitch- stopped coming, and Sanders’s personal cock, and Howard Hawks. life, always complicated—of his four wives, Returning to America, Sarris began two were Gabor sisters—spun further out writing on film for a variety of alternative of control. There were personal tragedies— weeklies or specialty publications; his first over the course of 1967, he lost his mother, review for The Village Voice, of PSYCHO, his wife, and his brother, actor Tom Con- was a rave, declaring Hitchcock the “most way—and health issues. Sanders began to daring avant-garde filmmaker in America drink heavily, suffered a small stroke, and today.” In 1962, his piece in the periodi- started showing signs of dementia, none of cal Film Culture, “Notes on the Auteur which he bore quietly. (When he became Theory,” brought the pioneering work of unable to play his piano, he hacked it to Truffaut and the rest of the CAHIERS DU pieces with an axe.) He finally checked into CINEMA crowd to a much larger audi- a hotel on the Spanish coast, wrote a short ence and established Sarris as the Church suicide note—“Dear World, I am leaving of the Director’s leading American dis- because I am bored. I feel I have lived long ciple. enough. I am leaving you with your wor- Sarris’s 1968 book The American Cin- ries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.”— ema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968 and swallowed five bottles of barbiturates. remains both an essential text and an end- He was 65. lessly debatable ranking of filmmakers; John Huston, Billy Wilder, and especially References Stanley Kubrick came in for pointed criti- “George Sanders,” Hollywood’s Golden cism, but Sarris placed Hitchcock in the Age, http://www.hollywoodsgoldenage highest classification, the Pantheon, call- .com/actors/george_sanders.html; “George ing him not only the “supreme technician Sanders,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ of the American cinema” but also a moral name/nm0001695/bio?ref_=nm_ov artist whose “reputation has suffered from _bio_sm; “George Sanders: Biography,” the fact that he has given audiences more TCM, http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/per pleasure than is permissible for serious son/169430|59366/George-Sanders/biogra cinema” and whose harshest critics were phy.html; David Thomson, The New Bio- clearly “intellectual puritans.” graphical Dictionary of Film (New York: An inspiration to generations of Knopf, 2002), 773–74. critics—and a lively and combative coun- terweight to the equally acerbic and SARRIS, ANDREW (1928–2012) assertive PAULINE KAEL—Sarris wrote, Brooklyn-born writer and hugely influen- taught, and reviewed for more than 50 tial critic who, after college and a stint in years. He died in New York from compli- the army, moved to Paris in the early ’50s. cations of a fall at 83. 386 n SECRET AGENT

References Ashenden arrives there, along with a Kent Jones, “Hail the Conquering Hero: new colleague—a girl-chasing eccentric Andrew Sarris Profiled,” Film Com- who calls himself “the General”—to dis- ment (May/June 2005), http://www.film cover another fellow agent, the attractive comment.com/article/hail-the-conquer Elsa, already waiting for them. Their first ing-hero-andrew-sarris-profiled; Michael contact is murdered before they can talk Powell, “A Survivor of Film Criti- to him, but a button found at the murder cism’s Heroic Age,” New York Times, scene leads them to identify another British July 9, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/ tourist, Caypor, as the killer. 2009/07/12/movies/12powe.html?_r=2& Ashenden and the General lure Caypor pagewanted=all&; Andrew Sarris, The to the top of a mountain, and when Ashen- American Cinema: Directors and Direc- den refuses to go through with it, the Gen- tions, 1929–1968 (New York: Dutton, eral guiltlessly pushes Caypor off the cliff. 1968), 56–61. After they return to town, though, there is a coded message from headquarters telling SECRET AGENT (GB 1936) them that Caypor is innocent. A horrified Elsa announces she is quitting the assign- Director: Alfred Hitchcock. ment, and she and Ashenden quarrel. Screenplay: Charles Bennett, Alma Reville, Ashenden and the General get a lead Ian Hay, based on short stories by W. that the spies have been working out of a Somerset Maugham and the play by local chocolate factory; after a large bribe, Campbell Dixon. one spy reveals that the real enemy agent is Producers: Uncredited (Sir Michael Balcon, Ivor Montagu). Marvin, a guest at the hotel who has been Cinematography: Bernard Knowles. amiably flirting with Elsa all along—and Editor: Charles Frend. has now left the country with her. Ashen- Original Music: Uncredited (John Green- den and the General rush off after them, wood). and soon all four are on the same train to Cast: John Gielgud (Richard Ashenden), Constantinople. The train is attacked by Madeleine Carroll (Elsa Carrington), British forces and crashes. A dying Marvin Peter Lorre (the General), Robert shoots the General, and Elsa and Ashenden Young (Robert Marvin), Percy Marmont resign from the secret service. (Caypor). Running Time: 86 minutes. Black and white. THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH had Released Through: Gaumont British Pic- ture Corporation. been a huge hit, and its follow-up, THE 39 STEPS, became Hitchcock’s first truly international success. So for his next picture, he turned to another spy story—and A British captain home on leave during decided to turn the genre on its head by the First World War is surprised to see his emphasizing, not breathless intrigue and own obituary in the newspapers—and then dashing heroes, but GUILT and mistakes to be summoned to the office of a govern- and regret. ment official named only “R,” who informs Based on two spy stories by W. SOM- him that he’s being given a new identity, ERSET MAUGHAM (with a romantic Ashenden, and a new job as a spy. His first angle borrowed from the stories’ previ- assignment is to go to Switzerland, where a ous stage adaptation by Campbell Dixon), German agent is at work. Hitchcock and chief writer CHARLES SECRET AGENT n 387

BENNETT developed a script that revolved Gielgud was right to worry; he seems around uncertainty and indecision. Their cold and detached onscreen here, turning hero would be a reluctant spy, someone his hawklike profile left and right with- who didn’t want the job (and, in fact, out ever developing any connection to doesn’t do it when the moment comes); the Carroll—a severe problem, as the script theme of the movie would be the shades-of- demands that she fall in love with him gray morality of espionage itself. practically at first sight (a problem also The HAMLET-like struggles of the exacerbated by the fact that ROBERT hero appealed to JOHN GIELGUD, who YOUNG, playing the duplicitous Mar- was still uncertain about the rewards of vin, is far more smoothly charming). And movie work (although Hitchcock was Lorre—sporting not only a curly wig but uncertain about him, too; as usual, he also an earring—steals everything in the would have preferred to have had ROB- scenes that isn’t nailed down. ERT DONAT). MADELEINE CARROLL, And, of course, the hero’s motiva- so lovely in The 39 Steps, was brought back tion was somewhat backward; his drive is to play Elsa, and the scene-stealing PETER not to accomplish something but to avoid LORRE of The Man Who Knew Too Much it. That, Hitchcock realized too late, was was given the role of the General, a mys- fatal. “In an adventure drama your cen- terious figure who is also known as “the tral figure must have a purpose,” he told Hairless Mexican” (because, “R” explains FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT. “That’s vital for with surreal logic, he is neither hairless nor the progression of the film and it’s also a Mexican). key factor in audience participation. The The story, though, would have its own public must be rooting for the charac- HITCHCOCKIAN story logic; because ter; they should almost be helping him part of it, like The Man Who Knew Too to achieve his goal.” But, he said, as this Much, would be set in Switzerland, where character himself didn’t want to achieve it, the Hitchcocks had honeymooned, it was “it’s a negative purpose, the film is static— important that a few Swiss details were it doesn’t move forward.” woven into the plot. So, Hitchcock decided, The film gets off to a good start, one murder would take place in the Alps, though, with a deliberately faked funeral— and the spies’ headquarters would be in a an empty casket, a one-armed mourner, chocolate factory. Somehow cuckoo clocks and a cold wit that predates the Bond films were overlooked. by a quarter of a century. There’s also a Production was difficult. Gielgud, who strong scene in which Ashenden and the was simultaneously starring in Romeo and General enter a church for a planned ren- Juliet onstage at night, realized early that dezvous, as a long, absurdly sustained the beautiful Carroll was getting all the chord plays on the pipe organ; it’s only close-ups and Lorre, an inveterate ham, when the two approach the organist that all the attention. It didn’t help that Hitch- they realize he’s dead, the keys pressed cock, who had at first emphasized the down by his lifeless fingers. hero’s moral quandaries, now seemed to Also well staged is the assassination regret them, as he was stuck with the very scene, with Ashenden and the General undramatic story of a spy who didn’t want taking Caypor up into the mountains to complete his assignment. (Also adding while Elsa keeps Caypor’s wife busy with to the on-set difficulties: Lorre’s mounting a request for German lessons. Hitchcock morphine use.) cuts between the two sequences, with 388 n SELZNICK, DAVID O.

Caypor (PERCY MARMONT from RICH SELZNICK, DAVID O. AND STRANGE) hiking happily to his (1902–1965) death, while back at the hotel, his dog Pittsburgh-born producer who entered grows more and more agitated, scratching the business as a teenager, working for at the door, as Mrs. Caypor begins to have his father, pioneering mogul Lewis J. premonitions of disaster. It is the sort of Selznick (who had actually distributed intuitive, dreamlike effect that Hitchcock some of Hitchcock’s earliest work in would often reach for in his silent films, America). After high school let out, David and it’s the best scene in the picture. would head to the Selznick office to nego- The scene in the chocolate factory, tiate contracts. When his father, never a however, doesn’t really exploit the poten- cautious businessman, managed to lose tial of those endless conveyor belts, and his business in 1923 at the height of the although he daringly cuts to a completely silent era, his son David set out on his black screen at the moment of the TRAIN own quest—although whether to redeem crash, the miniature work is far below what his father’s name or merely replace it with he later achieved on THE LADY VAN- his own, writ larger, is both debatable and ISHES. not necessarily contradictory. (The family And, most fatally, Carroll and Gielgud saga helped inspire the hugely entertaining never click. “No good you standing there roman à clef film The Bad and the Beauti- looking middle-aged,” she snaps at him ful.) David’s brother, Myron, meanwhile, early on; “Bit fond of yourself, aren’t you?” eventually became an agent—and was the he fires back. The lines feel, not like banter, connection that eventually brought Hitch- but like signs of a genuine real-life antipa- cock and David O. Selznick together and thy, and the romantic-comedy element of ended up bringing Hitchcock to America. Marvin, Ashenden’s supposed rival, seems It is easy for Hitchcock’s most fervent like an awkward, out-of-character after- admirers to see David O. Selznick as the thought in a glum movie that’s really about epitome of the crude Hollywood mogul: a coldhearted government, a reluctant hero, good enough to buy the Hitchcock family a botched mission, and the murder of an their steamship tickets and pay the director innocent man. There are some good scenes a nice salary but no more than a money- here and some typical Hitchcock concerns— and-marquee-names vulgarian in the end, GUILT and IDENTITY and grim duty. But someone whose crass and obvious tastes they’re never successfully integrated into a hampered Hitchcock’s work and com- whole, or the film. promised his art until the director finally, relieved, rid himself of his contract. It References would also be desperately unfair. John Gielgud, Early Stages: An Autobiogra- Selznick was full of faults. His taste in phy (San Francisco: Mercury House, 1989), material was, if not low-, then definitely 163–65; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitch- middle-brow (and, unlike Hitchcock, he cock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New then treated those properties with unearned York: HarperCollins, 2003), 178–84; Don- respect). He preferred conventional film- ald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life making techniques—not Hitchcock’s tricky of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo MONTAGE (“Goddamn jigsaw cutting”) Press, 1999), 152–54; François Truffaut, but standard coverage, with plenty of shot Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: choices (not just for aesthetic reasons but Touchstone, 1985), 105–7. also to give the producer more control in SELZNICK, DAVID O. n 389 the editing room). He was a poor delegator, of course, Gone with the Wind, the most often thinking—and often wrongly—that successful movie of all time. But while he could write a better script, coax out a Selznick had space on the RKO lot and dis- better performance, than the veterans he’d tribution initially through United Artists, hired to do just that. But what he was was he did not at first have that other important a great producer—a man who recognized studio asset, a large list of contract play- talent, who understood detail, who appre- ers; he worked hard on signing actors to ciated audiences, who remained a genius at long-term deals and, at various times, had promotion. “The way I see it,” he said once, JOSEPH COTTEN, INGRID BERGMAN, “my function is to be responsible for every- and Vivien Leigh on his roster. thing”—and it was a job he loved. Occasionally frustrating to those tal- Although his 1930 marriage to Louis ents, though, was that Selznick—chroni- B. Meyer’s daughter Irene was the source cally overextended, both artistically and of plenty of snickers—“The son-in-law also financially—would set up a film only to sell rises,” went the joke—Selznick had already the package to another studio or tell a star left the MGM story department at that or director under contract that their next point, taking on executive positions first assignment would be for someone else. (He at PARAMOUNT and then at RKO, while signed up, then sold off, Gene Kelly’s ser- occasionally selling story ideas. (Dracula’s vices before he had even gotten the actor on Daughter was his, credited to his pseud- a frame of film.) The practice gave Selznick onym “Oliver Jeffries”—perhaps the inspi- breathing room and ready cash—he invari- ration for Hitchcock’s hero in REAR WIN- ably pocketed the difference between what DOW, “L. B. Jefferies,” and another of the he was paying his talent and what he was director’s frequent tweaks of his old boss.) renting them out for—although it left some The Selznick touch was evident early, stars dizzy. as he demonstrated a fearless embrace “Of course he rented me out for large of spectacle (the big-risk King Kong) all- sums,” said Bergman, whom Selznick had STAR casts (Dinner at Eight) and the sort discovered working in Sweden. “A lot of of leather-bound 19th-century classics my friends said, ‘What an interesting agent he remembered from his father’s library: you have. The roles are reversed. He takes David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, ninety per cent and you get ten per cent.’” Anna Karenina. At, first, RKO (and then But Bergman remained practical about it; back at MGM in a triumphant return), he she liked to work, and however much of nurtured new stars, like Katharine Hep- her loan-out fees Selznick kept for him- burn; played the stern parent to unreliable self, she was still making far more than she talents, like John Barrymore; and worked would have back home. closely with directors, like George Cukor Hitchcock was less sanguine about the who shared his devotion to strong stories; situation. At first, a Selznick contract felt rich production values; and a clear, clean like a winning lottery ticket. By the mid- pictorial style. ’30s, Hitchcock was Great Britain’s most Striking out on his own in 1935, Selz- acclaimed (and highest paid) director, nick riskily established his own studio, Selz- but he had become a very large fish in an nick International Pictures (later dissolved increasingly shallow pond; British film pro- and then reformed as the Selznick Studio). duction dropped in half from 1936 to 1937, Further hits came, including A Star Is Born; and the films that were getting made had Nothing Sacred; The Prisoner of Zenda; and, to contend with tight budgets and often 390 n SELZNICK, DAVID O. crude special effects (Hitchcock had been ERSET MAUGHAM, then he certainly particularly angry when he had to argue wasn’t concerned about staying faithful to with producers to build a working street- DAPHNE DU MAURIER (and, in fact, car for SABOTAGE). Yet negotiations with had already broadly changed her novel larger American studios—as Selznick was JAMAICA INN, infuriating her). Selznick, not averse to reminding him later—had not on the other hand, had a certain reverence seemed promising. for the published word—and the more Finally, in a 1938 deal brokered by popular the original had been, the greater brother Myron, Selznick International his respect grew. He loathed Hitchcock’s offered a contract with options and vari- first-draft screenplay for Rebecca and ous bonuses (and agreed to bring over and would later worry that his script for SABO- hire Hitchcock’s assistant, JOAN HAR- TEUR was emotionally cold and gimmicky. RISON, too). According to press reports, And Hitchcock’s firm control of every shot Selznick even had the director’s first three left Selznick little elbow room to jump into films picked out: REBECCA, TITANIC, and postproduction and recut the films the way something called The Flashing Stream with he wanted. (Not that he didn’t try; toward CAROLE LOMBARD playing a mathema- the end of the partnership, with Hitchcock tician. (Later, Selznick even floated a fourth already beginning to disengage, Selznick one—his remake of Intermezzo with Berg- leapt in and drastically re-edited THE man, its original Swedish star and his latest PARADINE CASE, chopping up its long “discovery.”) Finally, though, Rebecca was camera movements and removing nearly chosen as the pair’s premiere collaboration. an hour of narrative. The results were no Right from the start, it illustrated the improvement.) contrast and conflict between the two And yet, more than some moguls, equally egotistical men. Temperamentally, Selznick truly loved the movies with a pas- they were simultaneously too alike and too sion that went beyond profits. (“He had different to get along. Both men were con- such enormous enthusiasm, and such vinced they knew everything about mak- enormous energy,” Bergman said after ing pictures; both men wanted what was his death. “He really burned his candle at up on the screen to reflect their vision and both ends.”) He gave Hitchcock budgets theirs alone. Yet each man also had very he could never have dreamed of in Brit- different ways of working. Even on the set, ain—as astonishing as the miniatures are Hitchcock preferred to keep office hours, in Rebecca, the sets are even more impres- returning home in time for dinner with his sive. And he understood the importance of wife. Selznick, fueled by energy, amphet- talent, making sure that CLAUDE RAINS amines, and around-the-clock secretar- was cast in NOTORIOUS and engineer- ies (they were actually assigned in relays), ing Hitchcock’s important collaborations would summon directors to his home at 10 with Bergman, JOAN FONTAINE, Joseph o’clock at night and then keep them waiting Cotten, and screenwriter BEN HECHT. for hours before calling them in for lengthy, (Had composer BERNARD HERRMANN, all-night conferences. whom Selznick had originally wanted, been They had a lot to confer about, too. free for SPELLBOUND, the mogul would Hitchcock had always treated story mate- have forged that crucial partnership, too.) rial liberally, rejiggering it for the screen “Selznick was totally disorganized but as necessary; if he’d had no qualms about essentially a loveable man, while Hitchcock, rewriting Joseph Conrad and W. SOM- whose manner was not quite so lovable, SELZNICK, DAVID O. n 391 was totally organized,” said GREGORY Hitchcock-Selznick collaborations is that PECK, who made both Spellbound and The the less Selznick collaborated on the pro- Paradine Case with the duo. “This created duction and postproduction of a particular an unavoidable tension between them, and Hitchcock film—Foreign Correspondent, it clearly affected Hitchcock’s attitude dur- Saboteur, SHADOW OF A DOUBT, LIFE- ing production.” BOAT, Notorious—the better the movies Yet both men gave the other some- were. The films on which he truly earned thing he wanted—Selznick providing and took producer credit—Spellbound, Hitchcock with resources, Hitchcock pro- The Paradine Case—are among the least viding Selznick with popular and award- interesting of their output. Even the initial, winning movies. It cannot have been easy Selznick-produced Rebecca—while enter- getting a second best picture award after taining and full of Gothic style—was, its having just won one for Gone with the own director admitted, more a Selznick Wind, but Hitchcock’s Rebecca gave Selz- picture than a Hitchcock one. nick that extra acclaim; five years later, Much to Selznick’s annoyance, Hitch- Spellbound would bring another best pic- cock had been plotting his escape from this ture nomination. And Hitchcock—albeit embrace for years; he had founded TRANS- not by choice—gave Selznick the cash he ATLANTIC PICTURES with SIDNEY needed to sink into his own lavish produc- BERNSTEIN in 1946 and even while mak- tions of Since You Went Away and Duel ing The Paradine Case was planning what in the Sun, as the mogul banked large fees they thought would be the company’s first for renting Hitchcock out for pictures like production, UNDER CAPRICORN—all FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT and selling the while avoiding Selznick’s increasingly off already-developed projects like Saboteur anxious offers of a new five-picture deal. and Notorious. Hitchcock had had enough of Selznick’s Still, as mutually beneficial as the rela- interference (and, as the mogul’s choice tionship was at times, it was doomed to be of The Paradine Case seemed to prove, his short-lived. Hitchcock had not borne med- taste for glossy, old-fashioned melodrama). dling easily, even as a novice director; to Hitchcock wanted something new, some- be in his 40s, an internationally acclaimed thing modern, something daring. Most of filmmaker, and still have to suffer a pro- all, he wanted out. ducer’s second-guessing was intolerable. It wasn’t an easy break at first. When And in his own, utterly self-assured convic- Bergman wasn’t yet available for Under Cap- tion that every one of his suggestions could ricorn, Bernstein and Hitchcock rushed into only make the picture better, Selznick simply ROPE instead, with Hitchcock indulging could not get out of his own way—demand- his new independence by doing even lon- ing extra violins for the Spellbound score ger takes and more elaborate camera move- (and alienating both composer MIKLOS ments than the ones Selznick had hated RÓSZA as well as Hitchcock) or insisting on in The Paradine Case. The film was not a new discovery LOUIS JOURDAN for The particular success, nor was Under Capri- Paradine Case (and thereby, Hitchcock was corn, nor STAGE FRIGHT, which followed; convinced, destroying the picture’s theme of Transatlantic soon crumbled under its own a degrading, obsessive love). weight. But STRANGERS ON A TRAIN at If only the mogul could have occasion- WARNER BROS. marked a return to form, ally not sent that memo, not insisted on and with REAR WINDOW—whose villain, this change. The final irony of the famous Hitchcock colleague NORMAN LLOYD 392 n SETS suggested, also bore a more-than-coinciden- 1972), 259–71, 336, 407; Ingrid Bergman tal resemblance to a certain movie mogul— and Alan Burgess, My Story (New York: Hitchcock regained his stride. Delacorte Press, 1980), 151; “David O. Selznick never did. His last commercial Selznick,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ success as a producer, the overheated Duel name/nm0006388/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio in the Sun, was released before he parted _sm; “David O. Selznick, Producer of ways with Hitchcock; after the split, his ‘Gone with the Wind,’ Dies,” New York projects grew further apart, more problem- Times, June 23, 1965, http://www.nytimes. atic, and increasingly primarily devoted to com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0510 second-wife Jennifer Jones’s career: Portrait .html; “Hitchcock to Direct Three Ameri- of Jennie, Gone to Earth (which he then re- can Films,” Dundee Evening Telegraph, edited and re-released as the equally disap- March 17, 1939, http://the.hitchcock. pointing The Wild Heart), Indiscretion of zone/wiki/Dundee%20Evening%20Tele- an American Wife, and A Farewell to Arms. graph%20%2817%2FMar%2F1939%29%20 When in 1965 the Producers Guild -%20Hitchcock%20to%20Direct%20 gave Hitchcock a testimonial dinner, Three%20American%20Films; “Ingrid Selznick—who had not made a movie in Bergman,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ eight years—was invited to speak. Although name/nm0000006/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_ introduced wittily by his old employee— sm; Norman Lloyd, interviews with the Hitchcock JOKED that he was going to turn author, November 2007, July 2015; Patrick one of Selznick’s gargantuan old memos McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in into its own movie, The Longest Story Ever Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- Told—Selznick used his time at the podium Collins, 2003), 277–78, 301, 369; Donald to complain endlessly about the current state Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of the industry. He sounded tired and bitter. of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo He sounded, Garson Kanin said later, “like Press, 1999), 168–80, 277–78, 293–99; a man who was dying.” Three months later, Bob Thomas, Selznick (New York: Pocket Selznick had a fatal heart attack in his law- Books, 1972), 251, 302–3; David Thomson, yer’s office in Los Angeles. He was 63. The New Biographical Dictionary of Film “Not half a dozen men have been able (New York: Knopf, 2002), 796–98; François to keep the whole equation of pictures in Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New their heads,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in York: Touchstone, 1985), 127, 165, 173. The Last Tycoon. He was talking about his main character, boy-wonder producer SETS Monroe Stahr (and Irving Thalberg, the Like so much of what went into his films, character’s true inspiration). But if he Hitchcock’s sets serve two purposes, some- wasn’t also thinking about the man who’d times simultaneously, sometimes alter- briefly brought him on for Gone with the nately—the creation of a plausibly real Wind rewrites, then he should have been. world and the illustration of the sometimes Few knew more about the movies than surreal things that happen within it. David O. Selznick—and no one was less Much as he enjoyed the work of the able to keep it to himself. German EXPRESSIONISTS as a young man, Hitchcock had no abiding interest in References re-creating the mad, nightmarish world of Rudy Behlmer, ed., Memo from David The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari—outside of the O. Selznick (New York: Viking Press, dream sequence in SPELLBOUND. His sets SETS n 393 were usually rooted in a kind of hyperreal- convey information. And of course, the sets ity; if circumstances prohibited filming in themselves had to be made practical—walls a real LOCATION (or if, simply, the big- on wheels and disappearing furniture, so studio style at the time mandated a sound- that the particularly bulky COLOR (and, stage), then what Hitchcock put onscreen for Dial M for Murder, 3-D) cameras could would look more like the real thing than roam freely. the thing itself. But apart from conveying a realistic Interiors of famous locations, from the sense of place and feeling for character Old Bailey to the United Nations to Ernie’s and adding interest to the frame—all while in San Francisco, were studiously docu- allowing a major studio camera crew to mented and then later re-created to perfect move about—Hitchcock’s sets could break scale at the studio for THE PARADINE with reality, too, using those old Expres- CASE, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, and sionist tricks to convey a feeling or a mood. VERTIGO. Locations that did allow for a It isn’t logical that the first-floor ceil- camera crew—the New York City settings ing of the house in THE LODGER would of THE WRONG MAN, Washington land- suddenly turn to plate glass—but it allowed marks for STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, a Hitchcock to show the nervous pacing flower market for TO CATCH A THIEF— of the man upstairs. It makes little archi- were carefully picked and prepped. The tectural sense for the doorknobs to be right location brought the audience into placed as high as they are in Manderley the story. in REBECCA—but it quietly underlined Into the character, too. What sort of the idea of the heroine as a child playing apartment would a retired San Francisco at being a grownup. The vast emptiness detective have? What might a bohemian, of the final jail cell in PSYCHO, the lack middle-class West Village apartment com- of any courtroom sets at all in Dial M for plex look like? All of this was researched Murder—these aren’t realistic choices. But before a frame of Vertigo or REAR WIN- they immediately help us focus on the sin- DOW was ever shot, and the ensuing gle, abandoned character in the camera’s realism brought the audience into these eye. And they help Hitchcock do what he characters’ lives, too; the slightly stuffy fur- always said every director’s primary job nishings of the Newton house in SHADOW was: to fill the screen with emotion. OF A DOUBT, the portraits of the dead father in the Brenner living room in THE References BIRDS, and Lina’s new home in SUSPI- Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life CION say more about those families than in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- an entire paragraph of dialogue could. erCollins, 2003), 390, 533–34, 553–55; Sets served other purposes, too. In sin- George Perry, “Hitchcock on Location,” gle-setting films like ROPE and LIFEBOAT American Heritage (April 2007), http:// (and, to some extent, Rear Window and the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/American_Heri DIAL M FOR MURDER), it was important tage_%282007%29_-_Hitchcock_on that the backgrounds be, if not busy, then _Location; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of at least interesting; if we were going to be Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New largely stuck in a single apartment, then it York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 70, 258–59, 325, was important that, as the camera panned 347; Joseph A. Valentine, “Using an Actual about, there were things—broken cameras, Town Instead of Movie Sets,” American Cin- framed pictures—to catch our eyes and ematographer (October 1942), http://the. 394 n SEXUALITY hitchcock.zone/wiki/American_Cinematog of “this odd, weird, little faggish man and rapher_%281942%29_-_Using_an_Actual this sweet little boyish woman.” Yet the two _Town_Instead_of_Movie_Sets. were definitely, powerfully linked, although whether Hitchcock worshipped her or was SEXUALITY DOMINATED by her is one issue biogra- Born at the end of the Victorian age, raised phers are still arguing over. in an Irish CATHOLIC family, and given According to his movies, at least, a religious education that stressed tempta- Hitchcock’s own sexual interests seemed tion, sin, GUILT, and punishment, Hitch- to lie in icy BLONDES with shapely legs, cock entered adulthood knowing very little although his films also regularly touched about sex and having experienced even less. on such specific predilections as VOYEUR- Called upon to write the screenplay for ISM or BONDAGE. (Asked on the set of WOMAN TO WOMAN at 24, he struggled REAR WINDOW why he was taking such with its romantic melodrama of single care to shoot a close-up of GRACE KEL- motherhood and lost love; “I’d never been LY’s feet, which would never appear in the with a woman,” Hitchcock said later, “and I movie, he responded, “Haven’t you ever didn’t have the slightest idea what a woman heard of the shoe FETISH?”) The clichés of did to have a child.” When at 26 he was postwar erotica—busty actresses who wore shooting THE PLEASURE GARDEN and sex “like a necklace”—left him unmoved. didn’t know why an “indisposed” actress Meanwhile Hitchcock’s view of the sex act couldn’t get in the water one day, someone itself was complex, fueled by lust and guilt, had to explain what menstruation was. complicated by religious prohibitions and According to several sources, after the physical difficulties. “He was as intrigued birth of his daughter, Hitchcock’s sex life by varieties of sexual life and conduct as he was basically one of abstinence, with actual was by the varieties of moviemaking—in relations complicated by his obesity and, fact, he was like a child who’s just discov- finally, chronic impotence. Yet his interest ered sex and thinks it’s all very naughty,” never waned. Late in life, Hitchcock him- ARTHUR LAURENTS wrote in his mem- self recounted various tales of visiting a pair oirs. “He thought everyone was doing of lesbian exhibitionists in 1920s Germany something physical and nasty behind every (Hitchcock drank cognac and observed), closed door—except himself: he withdrew, mentioned an “accidental” trip to a bor- he wouldn’t be part of it.” Perhaps because dello (his wife in tow), and enthusiastically he recognized its power. recommended a Parisian museum of vice. Hitchcock’s films are full of sex and Like so many of his characters, he liked to sexual variations (or at least as much as he watch. could sneak past the CENSORS); they fea- Certainly the odd pairing of Alfred ture gay men and lesbians, cross-dressing, and ALMA REVILLE—one a somewhat promiscuity, adultery, and barely subli- prissy gargantuan, the other a gamine in mated Oedipal urges—in addition to the custom-made men’s suits—must have usual, garden-variety assortment of com- occasionally raised an eyebrow, too, if not bative courtships and unhappy and unful- outright questions about their own private filling marriages. But what they share is a arrangements. Writer SAMSON RAPHA- firm belief that sex is its own, life-changing ELSON, who had worked amiably on SUS- force—and that it can be a powerful and PICION with both of them, couldn’t help destructive weapon in the hands of those once sharply remarking about the vision who wield it. SEXUALITY n 395

It’s shown, most obviously, in his Brandon? Would Guy have gone through many films about sex crimes, starting with with his crime in STRANGERS ON A THE LODGER and going on to include TRAIN if he hadn’t so quickly, obviously obvious examples like SHADOW OF A been eager to impress Guy? And what of DOUBT, PSYCHO, and FRENZY (and Mrs. Danvers and her besotted worship of making room for less obvious sex crimi- her mistress? Wasn’t the spark for Dan- nals, like Mark, the hero—and marital rap- vers’s final, mad act of arson struck the ist—of MARNIE). These are men driven by very first time her heart began to burn for fetishes but often mostly by fury—a fury Rebecca? that, in Psycho and Frenzy at least, has its But this is what sex does to us—clouds roots in smothering, sexualized relation- our judgment, blunts our logic, leads us to ships with their own MOTHERS. martyred selflessness and senseless self- But in Hitchcock’s films, if men wield destruction. It’s a primal, powerful force, sex like an axe, often blundering about and and while the villains and villainesses of inevitably bringing about only their own Hitchcock can manage it for a while, turn- deaths, then his female characters employ it ing that energy against others, Hitchcock’s like a stiletto. REBECCA seduced everyone heroes and heroines almost always suc- around her—her husband, her maid, her cumb. cousin, the family business advisor—and, Think of Lina in Suspicion, convinced even after her death, still holds them in her that her husband is a murderer and yet too thrall. At first, in NOTORIOUS, Alicia used in love to stop him. Or of Marion in Psycho, sex as a sedative for herself and a punish- so desperate for Sam Loomis that she not ment against her father—but soon deploys only sneaks away for tawdry trysts but also it more carefully to ensnare Alex Sebastian is willing to risk prison to finance their life in a lie of a marriage. together. Or Anthony in The Paradine Case Yet her attraction to Devlin ensnares or Scottie in Vertigo, basically destroying her, too, trapping her in an unequal, even their reputations, even perhaps their lives, masochistic, relationship because this because of their pull toward an enigmatic is the power that sex has—we can use other. Because this is what it does. Sex it against others, but if we’re not care- blinds you. Sex wrecks you. Sex can even ful in how we wield it, then its sharp edge kill you. can draw our blood, too. Think of Mad- No wonder that Hitchcock, as Lau- dalena, whose calm beauty has drawn in rents suggested, preferred to keep it shut Anthony Keane—but who, herself, is emo- behind a door—except for those times tionally enslaved to her husband’s valet when he would briefly take it out and look in THE PARADINE CASE. Or of Judy in at it in the light from a projector. VERTIGO, who is the pretty bait in the trap that’s been set for Scottie—but soon References becomes ensnared herself. Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Sex can cloud our judgment, bind us Life in Darkness and Light (New York: to partners in ways that are unhealthy for HarperCollins, 2003), 280; Donald Spoto, both—a situation, interestingly, that Hitch- The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred cock mostly explores with his HOMOSEX- Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, UAL (albeit closeted) characters. Would 1999), 304–5, 348; François Truffaut, Philip have joined in the murder in ROPE Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: if he weren’t in love with the domineering Touchstone, 1985), 29, 34, 39, 78–80. 396 n SHADOW OF A DOUBT

SHADOW OF A DOUBT (US 1943) another suspect is killed trying to escape, he decides there’s no longer any need to run. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. After she insists, he attempts to kill her— Screenplay: Thornton Wilder, Sally Ben- once by sawing through a step on a steep son, Alma Reville, Gordon McDonnell. staircase, another time by locking her in a Producer: Jack H. Skirball. Cinematography: Joseph Valentine. garage filling up with carbon monoxide. Editor: Milton Carruth. Charlie survives both attempts, and Original Music: Dmitri Tiomkin. when Charles realizes she will now go to Cast: Joseph Cotten (Charles Oakley), the detectives—with the ring as evidence— Teresa Wright (Charlotte “Charlie” he announces his intention to leave town. Newton), Patricia Collinge (Emma As Charlie is on the train saying goodbye, Newton), Henry Travers (Joseph New- though, he grabs her, intending to push her ton), Hume Cronyn (Herbie Hawkins), off and under the tracks. He slips instead Macdonald Carey (Jack Graham), Wal- and is killed by an oncoming train—and his lace Ford (Fred Saunders). body later returned to Santa Rosa, where Running Time: 108 minutes. Black and white. he’s given a big sentimental funeral, while Released Through: RKO. Charlie and the chief detective stand in the back of the church, alone in the truth.

Charles Oakley is a serial killer, STRAN- Hitchcock’s own favorite and one of his GLING wealthy older women and pocket- very best. ing their jewels—but when the police begin He was looking for a project after SAB- to close in, he flees his cheap Newark, NJ, OTEUR and was at first uncertain. DAVID rooming house and heads west to Santa O. SELZNICK’s office suggested an adap- Rosa, CA, to visit his unsuspecting sister tation of Gaslight, but Hitchcock passed, and her family. There, he’s welcomed as a and that eventually went to George Cukor, favorite—particularly by his namesake nice, who made it with INGRID BERGMAN Charlotte “Charlie” Newton, who sees him (although Hitchcock would later work as a bright, beautiful burst of excitement in through the same material somewhat with her dull, small-town life. Bergman in his own period drama, UNDER He’s soon followed to Santa Rosa by CAPRICORN). Several JOHN BUCHAN two detectives, however, who, posing as novels were suggested and batted around, census takers, start interviewing and pho- including GREENMANTLE; Hitchcock, in tographing this “typical American family.” turn, mentioned an idea he had for a story When Charlie learns that they’re really about a mad ventriloquist, which Selznick investigating her uncle, she’s outraged— was not enthusiastic about. then concerned when she realizes he has Finally, Hitchcock came back with one of the victim’s rings. When, over a something provisionally called Uncle Char- casual family dinner, he goes on a rant lie from writer Gordon McDonnell, the about women as “fat, wheezing animals,” husband of a Selznick story editor. This was she realizes he’s not the eccentric charmer readily approved, albeit as a loan-out proj- she thought he was. ect for UNIVERSAL, and Hitchcock began Knowing that Charles’s arrest would working on a treatment with THORNTON kill her emotionally fragile mother, Char- WILDER, the esteemed author of Our lie resists helping the detectives, urging Town. When Wilder was called away by the her uncle to simply leave town—but when army—he ended up serving three years in SHADOW OF A DOUBT n 397 intelligence in Africa and Italy—Hitchcock In a difficult part, Cotten’s perfor- finished the screenplay with Sally Benson mance is precise, easily turning from airy and ALMA REVILLE. charm to baleful menace; his very con- Benson—who had just published the trolled, utterly cold monologue on wealthy New Yorker stories that would become older women is chilling, its final shot of the Meet Me in St. Louis—added to the small- actor breaking the fourth wall and turning town touches that Hitchcock felt so impor- to stare directly at us, as sharp and cold as tant to the story, a picture that, following an icicle. And so it is perfectly right that his Saboteur, would help establish him as a DOUBLE, Wright—playing his “twin” but truly American director. For more veri- also his reversed, mirror image—should be similitude, he insisted on shooting on so warm and easy, all soft edges and gentle, LOCATION in Santa Rosa (although the slightly MOTHERLY concern. interiors were later done on a Hollywood And perhaps the most delicate per- soundstage). formance at all comes from Collinge, play- As Uncle Charlie, the murderous ing the mother, Emma—named perhaps misogynist who covers it all with good after Hitchcock’s own mother. “He never manners and natty clothes, Hitchcock brought personal things into movies,” his had originally thought of William Powell daughter protested years later in a docu- (whom he’d once suggested for REBECCA), mentary on a Shadow of a Doubt DVD. but the actor was unavailable. JOSEPH “This is what everybody doesn’t realize. COTTEN, whom Selznick had under con- Everything came from his imagination.” tract anyway, became a similar outside-the- And it’s said that many friends called box choice; TERESA WRIGHT played his Hitchcock’s mother “Emily,” anyway. opposite number, his adoring niece Char- Yet no matter how personal it was, lotte. MACDONALD CAREY played the what he and his screenwriters imagined dull policeman, while veterans PATRICIA here was both touching and, for Hollywood COLLINGE and HENRY TRAVERS played movies, ahead of its time—the character of Charlotte’s parents, and new Hitchcock a woman who used to be a laughing girl, confidante HUME CRONYN played their who used to be full of fun, but now “works neighbor. A local girl, Edna May Wona- like a dog,” Charlotte worries. “Just like a cott, played Charlotte’s bratty sister; she dog.” A woman who distracts herself with was the child of a local grocer, whose store recipes and her women’s club but can’t reminded Hitchcock of his father’s. quite escape the sense that she’s lost some- It’s possible that the bespectacled, thing. Her errant brother, yes. But perhaps skinny little girl reminded him a little of his herself, as well, after marriage and mother- own daughter, too; family was on Hitch- hood. “You sort of forget you’re you,” she cock’s mind a great deal at this time, as just starts to say once, but then the camera cuts before filming began, he received word that away. Those who wish to make an argu- his mother, Emma, already in ill health, had ment for Hitchcock as feminist should gotten worse. Wartime restrictions and stu- begin here, with Emma Newton. dio obligations made a trip home to see her Strong as all the characters are—per- nearly impossible; she died while the film haps the most complex of this period, along was still being shot. She was 78. Work was with those of NOTORIOUS—Hitchcock perhaps a welcome distraction from her never forgets the visual or loses sight of his death; certainly the film shows his complete metaphors. Santa Rosa is a slow, even static, and utter focus. place, where most things stay the same, so 398 n SHADOW OF A DOUBT forms of transportation represent not only dry run for Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful motion but also literal engines of change. Life. Yet on a second viewing, you realize Uncle Charlie arrives on a TRAIN belch- it doesn’t need a magic spell to turn into ing black smoke and gains a brief reprieve Pottersville; its dark side is right there, just when the police’s other likely suspect is barely hidden. killed running headlong into an airplane Look again at slatternly Louise Finch, propeller; a train not only provides Char- who’s been fired from restaurants all over lie’s final escape but also, he hopes, a way of town and now waits tables at the sleazy eliminating his own threat, Charlotte. Till Two; watch Charlotte’s painfully plain Shadow of a Doubt is also, like so many friend Catherine and how avidly she runs Hitchcock films, a story about IDENTITY— her EYES up and down every man she not only the misplaced one of Emma New- meets. What do they do when they’re not ton but also the shared one of Charlie and at work or church? And what of Herb, the Charlotte. It’s in their names, of course; it’s twitchy middle-aged bachelor who still also in their posture. (The film begins with lives with his mother and immerses himself nearly matching sequences of them both in true-crime stories and murder fantasies? lying alone in their separate bedrooms, What happens when he draws the shades? a continent apart, their arms above their Santa Rosa’s innocence is as sweet—and heads.) “We’re like twins,” Uncle Charlie about as deep—as the icing on a wedding tells her; later, he’ll take her to the Till Two cake. Yes, you can see why Uncle Charlie bar and order two double brandies. likes this town. “It might seem easy to read too much into Hitchcock films but you can always References prove it,” Wright mused decades later over Beyond Doubt: The Making of Hitchcock’s his use of symbolism. “It’s always so, and I Favorite Film, directed by Laurent Bou- don’t think it’s ever an accident.” zereau (2000), documentary, http://the But the two characters are linked by .hitchcock.zone/wiki/Beyond_Doubt more than that, too. Eventually, Char- :_The_Making_of_Hitchcock’s_Favor- lotte finds out about her uncle’s crimes ite_Film_%282000%29_-_transcript; and shrinks from him in disgust. But bur- Gaye Lebaron, “Film That Put Santa Rosa ied underneath that disgust, is there a bit on the Map,” Press Democrat, March 28, of recognition, as well? The way he talks 2009, http://www.pressdemocrat.com/ about the world—as a place full of “swine,” csp/mediapool/sites/PressDemocrat/ of unthinking animals—isn’t far from how News/story.csp?cid=2269915&sid=555& she talks about her own disgustingly dull fid=181; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitch- family. (“We eat and sleep and that’s about cock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New all.”) He breaks the law because he doesn’t York: HarperCollins, 2003), 306–21; Don- think it applies to him, but she’s willing ald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The to break the law, too, and let a serial killer Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da escape. Special rules for special people. Capo Press, 1999), 256–62; François Truf- Shadow of a Doubt is the title, but the faut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New film has shadows, too, and that’s part of York: Touchstone, 1985), 151–55; Joseph its brilliance. It’s easy to accept Santa Rosa A. Valentine, “Using an Actual Town as Hitchcock’s idealized version of small- Instead of Movie Sets,” American Cin- town America; complete with stern spinster ematographer (October 1942), http://the librarian and overprotective cop, it’s like a .hitchcock.zone/wiki/American_Cinema SHAYNE, KONSTANTIN n 399 tographer_%281942%29_-_Using_an he bristled. “What do you mean ‘just’?” he _Actual_Town_Instead_of_Movie_Sets. demanded once. “It’s a bloody sight harder to entertain than to bore.” SHAFFER, ANTHONY He died in London at 75. (1926–2001) Liverpool-born writer who, after graduat- References ing Cambridge with a law degree, began Nigel Fountain, “Anthony Shaffer,” writing whodunits with his twin brother Guardian, November 7, 2011, http://www Peter, published under the pen name “Peter .theguardian.com/news/2001/nov/08/ Anthony.” Later turning to plays, he had an guardianobituaries.nigelfountain; Paul enormous success with the clever mystery Lewis, “Anthony Shaffer, 75, Author of Sleuth; although the first film Shaffer wrote, Long-Running ‘Sleuth,’ Dies,” New York Mr. Forbush and the Penguins, was a disas- Times, November 12, 2011, http://www ter, Hitchcock hired him to work on the .nytimes.com/2001/11/12/theater/anthony London-set FRENZY, seen as a return not -shaffer-75-author-of-long-running-sleuth only to Hitchcock’s birthplace but also the -dies.html; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of film THE LODGER, which had established Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New him as the “Master of Suspense.” York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 509. “It was a film he really had to do,” Shaffer said later. “He had lost some of his SHAYNE, KONSTANTIN self-confidence, and he had no interest in (1888–1974) politics. Spy thrillers were out of the ques- Ukraine-born actor from a family of writ- tion because of the recent failures he’d had ers and performers. After fighting a los- but he seemed to have this excited interest ing war against the Bolsheviks, like many in bizarre SEXUAL crimes. So this rather other White Russians, he went into exile, grim story of a rapist-STRANGLER was eventually arriving in America, where—at perhaps inevitable.” age 50—he made his Hollywood debut. After the film’s success, Shaffer would After five years of small parts in B mov- go on to adapt Sleuth for the movies (the ies, he began to land slightly larger roles in film, coincidentally, to costar Michael better productions, including Five Graves Caine, who had turned down Frenzy, and to Cairo, None but the Lonely Heart, The LAURENCE OLIVIER, who had reviled Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and Orson Shaffer’s original play as a “piece of piss”) Welles’s HITCHCOCKIAN The Stranger, and write the original script for the much- in which he plays the fugitive Nazi who lauded horror film The Wicker Man. Shaf- leads authorities to Welles’s hiding place fer’s successful adaptation of Agatha Chris- in Connecticut. Television work followed tie’s novel Murder on the Orient Express in the 1950s, including two episodes of typed him a bit; he would eventually adapt ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS; three more Christie books for the screen. Shayne’s last film appearance was as Pop, Still, it was brother Peter Shaffer—who the bookseller and amateur historian in wrote the plays Equus, The Royal Hunt of VERTIGO. He died at 85 in Los Angeles. the Sun, Five Finger Exercise, and Ama- deus—who always drew most of the criti- References cal kudos; Anthony’s work was often called “Konstantin Shayne,” IMDb, http:// clever, but his works tended to be dismissed www.imdb.com/name/nm0790164/ as “just entertainment,” a charge at which bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; “Konstantin 400 n SHERWOOD, ROBERT E.

Shayne: Biography,” Hollywood, http:// Collins, 2003), 242; “Robert E. Sherwood,” www.hollywood.com/celebrities/konstan Encyclopaedia Britannica, http://www.bri tin-shayne-59056412. tannica.com/biography/Robert-E-Sherwood; “Robert E. Sherwood,” IBDb, http://ibdb SHERWOOD, ROBERT E. com/person.php?id=8367; “Robert E. Sher- (1896–1955) wood,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ Born in New Rochelle, NY, the son of a nm0792845/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. stockbroker and a well-known illustrator, Sherwood went to Harvard and then to THE SHORT NIGHT war before returning to become a Manhat- One of Hitchcock’s longest-gestating tan journalist. By the ’20s, he was review- projects—although eventually stillborn. ing movies for the first incarnations of Plans for The Short Night began in 1968, Life and Vanity Fair and, before the end when Hitchcock bought the rights to the of the decade, was a successful playwright. novel by Ronald Kirkbride. Based on the He would win three Pulitzer Prizes for prison escape of the British double agent drama (a fourth for biography); his hits, George Blake (Hitchcock later purchased many adapted into movies, included Idiot’s the rights to a nonfiction account of the Delight, The Petrified Forest, Abe Lincoln case as well), it would be a story about in Illinois, and Waterloo Bridge and often treachery and deceit, a part of espionage revolved around historical crises and social that had fascinated Hitchcock since the injustices. defection of British spy Kim Philby in 1963. Sherwood’s first movie job was rewrit- Although Hitchcock went so far as ing some of the titles for the Lon Chaney to scout some LOCATIONS in Finland— The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1923; where the bulk of the film was to be set— later, he would turn out the screenplays for and discuss the script with TOPAZ writer the charming The Ghost Goes West with SAMUEL A. TAYLOR, after the failure ROBERT DONAT, as well as The Bishop’s of that spy film, Hitchcock decided not Wife and William Wyler’s powerful The to tackle yet another espionage picture Best Years of Our Lives, for which he won and eventually ended up going back to the ACADEMY AWARD. He also received the beginnings of his career and THE credit for REBECCA, although that was LODGER, with a story about another Lon- largely a matter of DAVID O. SELZNICK don serial killer in FRENZY. trading on a famous name; reportedly Sher- After finishing FAMILY PLOT, wood’s largest contribution to the script though, Hitchcock—having briefly consid- was finding a way to work around the ered an Elmore Leonard novel, Unknown CENSORS’ objections by making Rebecca’s Man No. 89—decided to revive The Short death an accident rather than a murder. Night, and in 1977, it was announced as Sherwood left Hollywood shortly his next film. For the rest of that year— thereafter to work for the war effort and and well into the next—preproduction write speeches for Roosevelt; he returned to continued, with EDITH HEAD, ROBERT plays and screenplays afterward and died in F. BOYLE, and ALBERT WHITLOCK all New York at 59 of a heart attack. reporting for duty. Yet the script never worked, even as four different writers— References James Costigan, ERNEST LEHMAN, Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life NORMAN LLOYD, and David Freeman— in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- took their turns in the chair opposite the SIDNEY, SYLVIA n 401 increasingly distracted director, going over effort of filmmaking was at last beyond ideas and then later trying to turn them him. He told LEW WASSERMAN he was into pages. retiring—actually, still shrinking from any Costigan didn’t last long. Lehman overt emotional engagement, he asked endured for a while but confessed the someone else to relay the message—and whole process “has bad memories for me. gave orders for the office to be packed up It’s something I prefer to forget. We had a and his personal effects moved to his home. number of arguments about it. He wanted He was dead within a year. the hero to rape a woman at the beginning of the picture. . . . I just refused to do it. I’ve References always wondered why he insisted on that.” “North by Northwest,” Creative Screen- It was like the fights with EVAN writing (November 2000), http://the. HUNTER over the SEXUAL assault in hitchcock.zone/wiki/Creative_Screen MARNIE, and after being denied by a writing_%282000%29_-_%22North_by writer once again, Hitchcock turned to _Northwest%22:_An_Interview_with someone he probably felt would be more _Ernest_Lehman; Donald Spoto, The Dark compliant—this time, longtime collabora- Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock tor Lloyd, whom he’d known for 35 years (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 509, 537– and who had helped produce both of his 38, 541–44, 732–34, 742. TV series. But after three months, Lloyd hadn’t made any headway and advised SIDNEY, SYLVIA (1910–1999) the director to move on to something else. Bronx-born performer, the daughter of a Hitchcock moved on to yet another screen- seamstress and a clothing salesman. Her writer instead. parents divorced when she was five, and Freeman was young, with only a few her mother later married a dentist, who credits. (He would eventually go on to write adopted her. Sylvia, a bashful teenager Street Smart and The Border.) Perhaps he with a stutter, took some acting classes as a suggested the combination of energy and way of overcoming her shyness; she began malleability Hitchcock needed at that junc- appearing in plays and at 16 was discovered tion; certainly the director wanted no more by a Hollywood talent scout. arguments over the rape with which he was Her first important film was the proto- determined to start the picture. But work Hollywood gangster film City Streets in progressed fitfully, as Hitchcock seemed to 1931; it was followed by Fury and You Only spend most of his time reminiscing about Live Once for FRITZ LANG, and William the past and downing “brandy by the bea- Wyler’s Dead End. In between the last two kerful,” as Freeman later wrote. Finally, films, and a little tired of the parts being after five months, they had a script. offered, she went to London to do SABO- But Hitchcock was growing increas- TAGE; English studios were convinced ingly frail; his wife was already basically Hollywood STARS broadened their box an invalid. The idea that he could rally to office, and SIR MICHAEL BALCON had direct a picture—let alone one that still jumped at the chance to sign her. called for location work in Scandinavia— Yet Sidney, who had trained as a the- was beginning to resemble the sort of ater actress, didn’t understand Hitchcock’s fantasy even his own films couldn’t make PURE CINEMA of quick cuts and contrast- plausible. Finally, in the spring of 1979, ing images; it seemed abrupt even by Hol- Hitchcock himself realized the physical lywood standards, a new kind of direction in 402 n SIM, ALASTAIR which the actor became just another prop. Kitchener-Waterloo_Record_%2828/ She had to admit, once she saw the famous Nov/1990%29_-_A_Hollywood_queen kitchen sequence in which she stabs her hus- _Actress_Sylvia_Sidney,_80,_recalls_full band, that it worked; still, she said, “It was all _career; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitch- Hitchcock. It had nothing to do with people cock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New acting.” York: HarperCollins, 2003), 187–90; “She could not piece together in her Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: mind what Hitchcock was after,” pro- The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: ducer IVOR MONTAGU remembered. Da Capo Press, 1999), 156; Alyssa Gallin “She had always acted a scene right Steinberg, “Sylvia Sidney,” Jewish Wom- through, and she badly needed words, a en’s Archive, http://jwa.org/encyclope single sentence or even a phrase, to start a dia/article/sidney-sylvia; “Sylvia Sidney,” mood off for her, as a singer needs a note IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ to find the key.” nm0796662/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Sidney returned to Hollywood but “Sylvia Sidney, ’30s Film Heroine, Dies at continued to buck at the parts she was 88,” New York Times, July 2, 1999, http:// given, complaining the studios always cast www.nytimes.com/1999/07/02/mov- her as the “girl of the gangster, then the ies/sylvia-sidney-30-s-film-heroine-dies sister who was bringing up the gangster, -at-88.html. then later the mother of the gangster, and they always had me ironing somebody’s SIM, ALASTAIR (1900–1976) shirt.” She brought real life to those peo- Edinburgh-born performer whose par- ple—a real wounded sense that happiness ents were a tailor and a country girl who, was fleeting and life was fragile—but she at first, spoke only Gaelic. The daydream- was also said to be difficult to work with, ing Alastair was a marked disappointment and from 1956 to 1973, she made no films to his father. (“Mark my words, that boy at all. will end up on the gallows,” was frequently She worked on television, though, and heard in the family’s rooms above the in 1973 won an Oscar nomination for her shop.) When Sim announced that, rather comeback movie role in Summer Wishes, than continuing with his college studies in Winter Dreams; her last movie was in Mars chemistry, he was becoming an actor, he Attacks! in 1996, and two years later, she was turned out of the house. notched her last TV job, joining the cast of Sim eventually became a teacher, the reboot of Fantasy Island. Working until instead, with a specialty in elocution—he the end, the diminutive actress smoked would later be hailed as having one of the like a fiend, turned out endless works of British theater’s most resonant and dis- needlepoint (she wrote two books on the tinctive voices—even opening a drama craft), and told Hollywood exactly what she school for children. (Years after his death, thought of it; she died at 88 from esopha- tabloid rumors surfaced about the real geal cancer in New York. nature of his mentorship of young performers; undeniable was the fact that he References married one of his young pupils as soon Hillel Italie, “Hollywood Queen: Actress as she turned 18. They remained married Sylvia Sidney, 80, Recalls Full Career,” until his death.) Kitchener-Waterloo Record, November Finally, at the age of 30, Sim made his 28, 1990, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ own stage debut. He was an understudy SIMPSON, HELEN DU GUERRY n 403 and a bit player in Paul Robeson’s fabled “It was revealed to me many years production of Othello and, in a slightly ago with conclusive certainty that I was a more than year-long stint with the Old Vic, fool and that I had always been a fool,” he drew admiring notices for his skill with the observed once. “Since then I have been as classics, particularly his Claudius in HAM- happy as any man has a right to be.” LET. Sim was only 32 by then, but already He died in London of lung cancer at 75. balding and with a natural gravity (which he was happy to tweak and tease for come- References dy’s sake), he became a valuable supporting “Alastair Sim,” IMDb, http://www.imdb player, frequently playing figures of some- .com/name/nm0799237/bio?ref_=nm what dubious authority. _ov_bio_sm; Stephen Hopley, Alastair Sim, He had fine film roles in Green for http://www.alastairsim.net; Geoffrey Wan- Danger and The Belles of St. Trinians; the sell, “The Weirdo of St. Trinians,” Daily latter had been meant to reunite him with Mail, June 30, 2008, http://www.dailymail a favored costar, Margaret Rutherford, .co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1030063/The but when she had to bow out, he took on -Weirdo-Of-St-Trinians-New-book-claims her role, too, in drag. (Similarly, when he -Alastair-Sim-scholarly-young-girls.html. turned down the lead in The Ladykillers, Alec Guinness took it on—and played it SIMPSON, HELEN DU GUERRY as a rather mischievous impersonation of (1897–1940) Sim, complete with lank hair and tatty car- Sydney-born author from a prominent digan.) family whose works covered many genres— In 1950, Sim had a supporting role poetry, plays in blank verse, biographies, in Hitchcock’s STAGE FRIGHT—play- mysteries, historical dramas, and even ing the eccentric father of an actress and a a guide to home economics, The Happy sort of HITCHCOCKIAN stand-in—but Housewife. (She also decoded messages his most indelible character came the next for the British Admiralty during World year in Scrooge (released in the United War I, studied music at Oxford, and was States as A Christmas Carol). It’s a fully active in Australian politics.) Boomerang felt and beautifully cast film, down to the and Saraband for Dead Lovers were per- smallest part, and even the occasionally haps her best-received books, but Enter Sir awkward special effects can’t detract from John, one of three novels she cowrote with what is not only one of Sim’s best perfor- Clemence Dane, would serve as the basis mances but also the best Scrooge ever put for Hitchcock’s MURDER! She also con- on the screen. tributed some dialogue to SABOTAGE, and By the end of the ’50s, the comfort- later, the director would adapt her novel ably wry, terribly British films in which UNDER CAPRICORN. She died of cancer Sim made such an impression were being in Worcestershire at 42. crowded out by movies about Teddy boys and angry young men; Sim made two References pictures in 1960 and then didn’t appear “Helen Simpson,” IMDb, http://www onscreen again until the blistering The Rul- .imdb.com/name/nm0801026; Alan Rob- ing Class in 1972. But he made occasional erts, “Helen du Guerry Simpson,” Austra- appearances on television, continued to lian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb work on the stage, and kept living as private .anu.edu.au/biography/simpson-helen-de a life as possible. -guerry-8433. 404 n THE SKIN GAME

THE SKIN GAME (GB 1931) dismissing The Skin Game some 30 years after he’d shot it. “There isn’t much to be Director: Alfred Hitchcock. said about it.” Loyal Hitchcock students Screenplay: Alfred Hitchcock and Alma might disagree. Reville, based on the play by John Gals- worthy. Although in later life Hitchcock Producer: Uncredited (John Maxwell). tended to devalue films he’d made outside Cinematography: Jack E. Cox. his genre (as perhaps they tended to detract Editors: A. Gobbett, R. Marrison. from his brand as the “Master of Sus- Original Music: Uncredited. pense”), right into the 1940s, he had shown Cast: C. V. France (Mr. Hillcrist), Helen an openness to different sorts of films and Haye (Mrs. Hillcrist), Jill Esmond (Jill approaches. This was particularly true dur- Hillcrist), Edmund Gwenn (Mr. Horn- ing the first decade of his career in Britain, blower), John Longden (Charles Horn- when he adapted a number of straight plays blower), Frank Lawton (Rolf Horn- and seemed to have a particular fondness blower). for romantic melodramas. Running Time: 88 minutes. Black and white. He was also an awed admirer of John Released Through: Wardour Films. Galsworthy and his play The Skin Game, which he had seen performed in London; while it’s true that the film was an assign- In the bucolic British countryside, the newly ment from his bosses at BRITISH INTER- rich Hornblower family has begun to assert NATIONAL PICTURES, and one he soon their power by throwing tenant farmers off was bored with, it still has a number of their land and making plans for modern, striking effects, including Hitchcock’s still- smoke-belching factories; the old-money experimental use of sound (a traffic jam Hillcrists are appalled but seem powerless to that becomes nothing but blowing horns— stop them, even as the Hornblowers begin an aural pun on Hornblower; conversations buying up land near their own estate. that deliberately fade away into unimport- When the Hillcrists learn that Horn- ant, inaudible rumbles). blowers’ daughter-in-law has a past as a The visuals are generally less interest- “professional correspondent” in drummed- ing, with some flat and even awkward com- up divorce cases, they threaten to expose her positions. Yet there are also a few EXPRES- unless the Hornblowers sell them back the SIONISTIC effects (as haunting images of neighboring land. Mr. Hornblower reluc- angry faces or ugly factories appear before tantly gives in to the blackmail. the characters’ eyes). And an auction scene The whispers have already begun, is also particularly well handled, with however, and realizing that his wife has Hitchcock forgoing his usual MONTAGE been keeping a secret from him, the effects in favor of swish pans, having his younger Hornblower announces his excited camera constantly moving from intention to divorce her. His pregnant face to face as a bidding war breaks out. wife drowns herself, and the once-arro- The script and the cast definitely give gant Hornblower family stands tragically Galsworthy’s play a slightly more pointed, ruined—as the Hillcrists begin to wonder if class-conscious emphasis, too, with they’ve only debased themselves. EDMUND GWENN—who had already played the same part in a silent-movie ver- “I didn’t make it by choice,” Alfred Hitch- sion—investing Hornblower with a sort cock later told FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT, of crude vitality and C. V. France’s gouty SLEZAK, WALTER n 405 old Hillcrist appearing far more concerned he would get full producer’s credit on with his own way of life than the tenant SHADOW OF A DOUBT and two years farmers whose hard work supports it. later would hire ALMA REVILLE to do The movie is stage bound and was the screenplay for It’s in the Bag! a raucous perhaps fated to be; as the London Times Fred Allen comedy. (It would be Reville’s observed on release, the “plot is too closely last script for anyone but her husband.) knit and the action too localized to make the A longtime Hitchcock admirer—and best cinematographic material.” But some always more of a mensch than a mogul— of the strongest Hitchcock themes—upper- Skirball worked hard to make sure that class cruelties, marriages built on deceit, the director, not DAVID O. SELZNICK, “innocent” people who are nonetheless com- got any promised studio bonuses. Unfor- plicit in violence—are there to be seen, too. tunately, after his brief association with Still, the film was a box-office disap- Hitchcock, Skirball began to quickly slide pointment, the first in a string of increas- back into mostly undistinguished B pic- ingly flat, early-’30s films—RICH AND tures, a decline that continued until he STRANGE, NUMBER 17, WALTZES pretty much retired in the mid-’50s to FROM VIENNA—that Hitchcock only concentrate on real estate development; he finally broke free of in 1934 with THE came back for one more project, Vincente MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. And Minnelli’s A Matter of Time in 1976. once he did break free of anything, as his Skirball died at 89 in Los Angeles. conversations with Truffaut proved, he tried not to look back. References “About Our Namesake,” Skirball Cultural References Center, http://www.skirball.org/about/ Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A about-our-namesake; “Jack H. Skirball,” Life in Darkness and Light (New York: IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ HarperCollins, 2003), 139–40; “New Films nm0804382; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred in London: The Skin Game,” Times, May Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light 4, 1931, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 284, The_Times_%2804/May/1931%29_-_New 298–99, 306. _films_in_London:_The_Skin_Game; Fran- çois Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. SLEZAK, WALTER (1902–1983) (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 77–78. Viennese-born performer, the son of an opera tenor, who made his movie debut SKIRBALL, JACK H. (1896–1986) in 1922 in the Austrian film Sodom and Pennsylvania-born independent producer Gomorrah from director Michael Curtiz. who served for years as a Reform rabbi and He soon became a leading man, with many then began making documentary shorts in friends among Viennese society and a the early ’30s. One of his first features was steady career in German film. Presciently, the 1940 Birth of a Baby, which went on to he left Germany in 1930 for America, have a long life on the exploitation circuit where he became a popular musical com- in a variety of cut and recut versions. edy actor on Broadway, although his large Skirball’s work as an associate pro- appetites soon made leading-man parts less ducer on UNIVERSAL’s SABOTEUR in likely. By the end of the decade, he said, he 1942 was a small step down in title but had happily accepted his new role as a char- a large step up in status; the next year acter actor. 406 n SMITH, C. AUBREY

“When I think of what leading men go Arthur F. McClure, The Versatiles: Support- through trying to look young and slim!” he ing Character Players in the Cinema, 1930– exclaimed later. “I just said to myself, ‘Aw, 1955 (New York: Castle Books, 1969), 204; let it spread.’ I got obese, married, fat and “Walter Slezak,” IBDb, http://ibdb.com/ prosperous, in that order. I started play- person.php?id=60293; “Walter Slezak,” ing nasty roles. With them, my disposition IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ changed. I got fat and amiable.” nm0805790/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. By the early ’40s, he was in Hollywood; an early nasty role was Willie, the German SMITH, C. AUBREY (1863–1948) captain in LIFEBOAT. His eyes always alert London-born performer, the son of a doc- in a baby face, a small, tight smile playing tor, who went to Cambridge, prospected around his lips, Slezak creates a cold and for gold in South Africa, and was a champi- cunning villain who remains truly formi- onship cricketer. Returning to England, he dable even though vastly outnumbered; went on the stage in 1895, where one of his the very careful, studied opposite to TAL- first important jobs was playing the hero LULAH BANKHEAD’s pampered, shallow (and his royal lookalike) in The Prisoner Connie, he is in every way the force that of Zenda. (Forty years later, playing one of drives the ship and the film. (Bankhead, the character roles in the Hollywood ver- no METHOD actress, nonetheless ended sion, he dryly remarked, “In my time I have up conflating the actor and his role, berat- played every part in The Prisoner of Zenda ing him off set as a Nazi; Slezak, in self- except Princess Flavia.”) imposed exile from Fascist Europe, bore it By the time he made his silent-movie all with his own tolerant smile.) debut in the late teens, Smith was already Slezak would go on to play a number 55, yet he would have a remarkable 30 years of villains, although there was often the ahead of him in films, much of them in touch of the outlandish about them; he was America, where he would almost invariably in The Spanish Main with Paul Henreid, play some stalwart symbol of British pro- The Inspector General with Danny Kaye, priety and perseverance. Offscreen, he also and the infamous Bedtime for Bonzo with served as the king’s unofficial ambassador Ronald Reagan. He returned to Broadway to Hollywood, where he founded a cricket (and won a Tony) for Fanny in 1955 and club and mentored a younger generation of remained active in TV throughout the ’60s. British actors, including David Niven, LAU- Later, failing health made work and life RENCE OLIVIER, and NIGEL BRUCE. more difficult; shortly before his 81st birth- Dubbed THE ENGLISH COLONY or day, he committed suicide, shooting him- the “Hollywood Raj,” the group served as self at his Long Island home. a sort of microcosm of old-school, upper- class life in Los Angeles—a world in which References the Hitchcocks had not moved easily even Peter B. Flint, “Walter Slezak, Actor, Is a at home. Yet although he didn’t turn out Suicide at 80 on Long Island,” New York for their cricket games, Hitchcock did draw Times, April 23, 1983, http://www.nytimes on the group’s ranks when casting his first .com/1983/04/23/obituaries/walter-slezak American pictures, particularly the very -actor-is-a-suicide-at-80-on-li.html; Pat- British REBECCA, FOREIGN CORRE- rick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in SPONDENT, and SUSPICION. Darkness and Light (New York: HarperCol- Smith played Col. Julyan in Rebecca lins, 2003), 341–42; Alfred E. Twomey and and would go on to appear in the Spen- SOUND n 407 cer Tracy Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Flesh otherwise.” The idea, after all, was to make and Fantasy; And Then There Were None; a film, not a radio show; if, as Hitchcock Cluny Brown; and his last film, the 1949 said another time, you could close your Little Women; although his range was nar- eyes and still follow a movie perfectly, then row, his every screen appearance—with the director wasn’t doing his job. that huge, Easter Island head and see-here- Yet as the consummate (and constantly now delivery—was strangely comforting. improving) craftsman, Hitchcock was not He died at 85 in Beverly Hills; his ashes going to ignore a new tool put before him were returned to England, the place he had simply because it was novel—once sound never really left. was available, he looked for ways to use it, not simply in a realistic way, but also as a References way to fill the screen with emotion. “C. Aubrey Smith,” IMDb, http:// In BLACKMAIL, for example, the www.imdb.com/name/nm0807580/ word knife becomes almost a leitmotif on bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; “The English the soundtrack; in MURDER! a voiceover Colony in Hollywood,” Sydney Morning narration serves as internal monologue. Herald, March 2, 1937, http://trove.nla Sound meant far more than simple dia- .gov.au/ndp/del/article/17348532; Patrick logue to Hitchcock; in fact, he often played McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in with sound to show how unimportant Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- someone’s conversation was. In THE SKIN Collins, 2003), 243–44; Ken Robichaux, GAME, the pleas of the two poor tenant “C. Aubrey Smith: Hollywood’s Resident farmers fade away as a distracted Mr. Hill- Englishman,” Picture Show Man, http:// crist stares out the window, obsessing over www.pictureshowman.com/articles_per how the new order of things is going to sonalities_SirAubrey.cfm; Donald Spoto, affect him; in NORTH BY NORTHWEST, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred the professor’s long (and, for the audience, Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, unnecessary) bit of exposition is drowned 1999), 210, 216; Alfred E. Twomey and out by airplane noises. Arthur F. McClure, The Versatiles: Support- Expository dialogue is, in fact, fre- ing Character Players in the Cinema, 1930– quently cut to the minimum in Hitchcock 1955 (New York: Castle Books, 1969), 205. films with important court proceedings—in films from Murder! to NOTORIOUS often SOUND reduced to a line or two overheard through As someone who began in the silent cin- a suddenly opened door. (It is when Hitch- ema, image was always paramount to cock actually pauses and lets this sort of Hitchcock. Ideas, emotions, character—this explanatory dialogue unfold at length, was best conveyed visually, and he often that you realize he is either bored with the complained that with the coming of sound, material, as in THE PARADINE CASE, many filmmakers had forgotten how to tell or suggesting that perhaps you should be a story through pictures. bored with the speaker, as in PSYCHO.) “In many of the films now being made, He could paint with sound as he did there is very little cinema,” he complained with light and shadow, too, and for a vari- in the ’60s. “They are mostly what I call ety of effects. Was hyperrealism indicated? ‘photographs of people talking.’ When we Then he would carefully work with micro- tell a story in cinema, we should resort to phones and mixers to make sure that any- dialogue only when it’s impossible to do thing you heard on the soundtrack was 408 n SPELLBOUND not only diegetic but also perfectly placed arrives to take over from Dr. Murchison, in space (like the noises rising from the who is finally, reluctantly retiring. But street in ROPE or the far-away music and Edwardes seems oddly excitable and prone barely overheard dialogue in REAR WIN- to fits—usually brought about by paral- DOW). Was a more EXPRESSIONISTIC lel lines, particularly when drawn against effect necessary? Then the sound would be a bright white background. This does emphasized to the point of distortion—the not, however, prevent one of his new col- scream that turns into a TRAIN whistle in leagues, Dr. Constance Petersen, from fall- THE 39 STEPS, the clattering cacophony of ing immediately in love with him. the shower-curtain rings in Psycho. Soon, however, she realizes that As an artist who had always had a Edwardes is not only an imposter but also visual sense—his first job in movies, after an amnesiac—who, he himself admits, may all, had been designing title cards—pic- have killed the real Edwardes and taken tures meant the most to Hitchcock. But his place. He flees Green Manors, but when sound arrived, he embraced it—as she follows him to New York. Although he would later embrace COLOR—and then “Edwardes’s” secret is now out, Petersen bent it to his will. helps him escape the police and takes him to the home of her mentor, Dr. Alexander Reference Brulov. François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. After “Edwardes” has another spell— ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 61, in which he wanders downstairs clutch- 64–65. ing a straight razor—Brulov and Petersen analyze one of his vivid dreams. Deci- SPELLBOUND (US 1945) phering the symbols, they deduce that he was on a ski trip with the real Edwardes Director: Alfred Hitchcock. and witnessed his death. Petersen takes Screenplay: Angus MacPhail, Ben Hecht, him back to relive his last memories, from the novel The House of Dr. and there’s a breakthrough—“Edwardes” Edwardes by Francis Beeding. remembers that his real name is John Producer: David O. Selznick. Ballantyne and that his true traumatic Cinematography: George Barnes. Editors: Hal C. Kern, William H. Ziegler. memory was of a childhood accident Original Music: Miklos Rózsa. that caused his brother’s death. He also Cast: Ingrid Bergman (Dr. Constance remembers that Edwardes died when he Petersen), Gregory Peck (John skied off a cliff. Ballantyne/“Dr. Edwardes”), Leo G. Petersen notifies the police, but when Carroll (Dr. Murchison), Michael Chek- they find Edwardes’s body—with a bullet hov (Dr. Alexander Brulov), Rhonda in it—Ballantyne is arrested for murder Fleming (Mary Carmichael), Norman anyway. Petersen returns to Green Man- Lloyd (Garmes). ors, where—reinterpreting Ballantyne’s Running Time: 111 minutes. Black and dream—she realizes it implicates Murchi- white, with color insert. son as the murderer, who followed both Released Through: United Artists. men on their ski trip and killed Edwardes to try to avoid being dismissed. After briefly menacing her, Murchison kills him- At the Vermont sanitarium Green Manors, self, and an exonerated Ballantyne and a new director, Dr. Anthony Edwardes, Petersen are happily reunited. SPELLBOUND n 409

DAVID O. SELZNICK only took a pro- Greta Garbo out of retirement to play the ducer’s credit on three of the films Hitch- heroine). Eventually GREGORY PECK cock made while under contract to him— and INGRID BERGMAN, both of whom REBECCA, THE PARADINE CASE, and were signed to Selznick, got the leads, while this one—and like the other two, it was a Hitchcock cast several of his own favor- film on which he had a larger-than-usual ites, including LEO G. CARROLL and involvement from the start, thanks to his NORMAN LLOYD, in supporting parts. recent and intense interest in PSYCHO- In addition, Selznick saw that RHONDA ANALYSIS. It was not surprising, perhaps, FLEMING, who had just done a bit part that Selznick would have been drawn to in his Since You Went Away, got the flashy analysis; the man liked to talk at length. But role of a nymphomaniacal patient; his own he was also, by the early ’40s, facing several therapist, Dr. May E. Romm, was hired and personal crises. credited as the film’s “psychiatric adviser.” The enormous success of Gone with Production was difficult and not the Wind had, ironically, left the mogul merely because Selznick insisted on visiting depressed, feeling that all he had to look the set to see how things were progressing. forward to was anticlimax. He had already Oddly, as Bergman would remember later fallen in desperate love with Jennifer Jones in her memoirs, every time the producer (which would eventually lead to an affair did appear, Hitchcock would immediately and the wrenching end of two marriages). announce that they were having a prob- And his brother Myron—with whom he lem with the cameras and couldn’t shoot a had a fiercely close and contentiously fierce frame; only when the producer left would relationship—had become a desperate alco- the “problem” be instantaneously cor- holic, despite Selznick’s attempts at inter- rected. vention, and died in 1944 at the age of 46. “Although I think Selznick finally Knowing his producer’s interest in the guessed that it was a ruse, he said nothing,” material, Hitchcock got ahead of the game she wrote. “I think Hitchcock was one of by buying up the rights to The House of Dr. the few directors who could really stand up Edwardes, a modern Gothic thriller about to him. Selznick then left him alone after a madhouse that, he thought, could be that. They were two strong men, but I think easily—which is to say liberally—adapted they had great respect for each other.” (“I into a screenplay. Selznick approved the left him entirely alone on the set,” Selznick project enthusiastically, saying he was demurred. “During Spellbound I don’t “desperately anxious” to do it, and Hitch- think I was on the set twice during the cock began work on the script. Early entire film.”) drafts with ANGUS MACPHAIL made The actors had their own problems. Dr. Murchison the villain rather than the Bergman enjoyed Hitchcock’s company victim and added the ski-resort denoue- but had trouble with the role, feeling that ment; subsequent work with BEN HECHT the love-at-first-sight conceit didn’t play. fleshed out the scenes at the sanitarium (“Fake it,” was her director’s response.) and amped up the mystery and romance. And Peck—both trained in the Stanislav- Casting was the usual combination of ski METHOD and new to movies—was the Selznick’s interest in promoting his own sort of actor designed to bring out the pet- contract players (JOSEPH COTTEN for ulant worse in Hitchcock who, whenever the hero, perhaps) and grabbing headlines queried, told his leading man to simply (trying, and not for the last time, to lure make his face a blank. “I wanted more than 410 n SPELLBOUND that; the business was so new to me,” Peck something to put in a museum,” as Berg- confessed later, noting that the filmmaker man said, but it would have stopped the seemed distracted, even depressed. “I had picture dead (although film writer James the feeling that something ailed him,” Bigwood has suggested that Bergman prob- Peck said, “and I could never understand ably inflated the length of the sequence what it might be.” (Possibly it was that over time and that the original scene was Peck and Bergman had begun an affair— perhaps only a minute longer than the ver- a hard thing to ignore for a director who sion Selznick passed for the final cut). Yet had already formed a close attachment to Hitchcock was correct, too, as he used his his leading lady.) usual craftsmanship and attention to imag- Nor would the problems end with the ery and metaphor to develop his favorite final shot, as Selznick typically now inserted themes of GUILT, IDENTITY, and roman- himself into the postproduction pro- tic obsession. cess. The deliberately outré, SALVADOR The film opens with a quote from DALI–designed dream sequence—which Shakespeare, and some rather self-impor- was supposed to include a shot of Bergman tant stuff, thanks to Romm, about psycho- covered in ants—was drastically cut by analysis’s ability to “open up the locked Selznick, who detailed WILLIAM CAM- doors”—and this is an image Hitchcock ERON MENZIES to reshoot some of it. A makes real, superimposing (in his old, chunk of footage (Selznick later claimed silent-movie, EXPRESSIONISTIC fash- two reels, although that seems like an exag- ion) an image of a long hallway, with geration) was trimmed from the entire doors opening one after another, to illus- movie, and composer MIKLOS RÓSZA— trate breakthroughs. Breakthroughs plural a Selznick second choice, after BERNARD because it is not just “Edwardes” who must HERRMANN was unavailable—was bad- remember his real identity as John Ballan- gered about adding more violins to the love tyne but also Constance Petersen who must theme. Some dialogue was—inexpertly— discover her rightful identity as a woman. relooped as well. (If Hitchcock was able to To her colleagues, she is seen as bear Selznick’s changes, then it was only authoritative, controlling, even dully because he was already planning his escape asexual. Interestingly, these attitudes are route; two days after shooting wrapped, he conflated with maternity; she’s told she is was in London, discussing the formation of giving in to the “MOTHER instinct,” treat- what would eventually be TRANSATLAN- ing Ballantyne like a child. “You’re not his TIC PICTURES.) The final print of the film mama, you’re an analyst,” Brulov snaps spotlighted everyone’s contributions—and at her. (The idea of domineering mothers proved most of everyone’s worries true, and their submissive sons being underlined too (although it turned out to be a hit with again when—in a seemingly unconnected audiences). moment—one of two investigating detec- Yes, Bergman was right—the imme- tives remarks offhandedly to the other diate, doctor-patient romance is frankly about recently being dubbed a “mama’s unbelievable. Peck was correct, too— boy” himself.) he did clearly need more direction to What Petersen needs to do, the movie get past some of his awkwardness. And suggests, is unlock her real self and open Selznick’s hand, while heavy, wasn’t always her own doors to the SEXUALITY she’s unneeded—a 20-minute dream sequence, hidden away—a process that the script sug- as initially planned, may have been “really gests involves taking off her glasses, going SPELLBOUND n 411 for a picnic, and throwing some of her pro- constantly reoccurs, from the tines of a fork fessional cautions aside. Yet while these to the furrows that children’s sleds leave in suggestions are totally of their unliberated the snow. So, too, does the shining glint of time—all that Petersen really needs is some a violent blade—a letter opener eyed by a man to take her to bed, it seems—the film Green Manors patient, the razor in Ballan- has a more feminist undertone as well. tyne’s hand—and the blinding brilliance Petersen isn’t treated seriously by her male of white, from an overly lit bathroom to colleagues, one of whom is constantly flirt- a steep ski slope. The straight lines, sharp ing with her and all of whom are repeatedly edges, high contrasts, and crystal clar- shown lined up against her in a disappoint- ity reach their own climax in the dream ing row, like judges; although her former sequence, which Hitchcock envisioned as mentor, Brulov, praises her work as an drawing not only on Dali’s fabled sense of assistant, he also flatly dismisses her ideas imagery but on the noonday sharpness and as feminine nonsense, warning, “You’ll clean angles he saw in Giorgio de Chirico’s make a fool of yourself,” while Murchison, style, as well—“the long shadows, the infin- even while praising her analytical skills, ity of distance, and the converging lines of calls her “rather a stupid woman.” perspective.” As accomplished as she is, no one Other scenes show Hitchcock’s skill at seems to take Petersen seriously as a doctor conveying complicated narrative informa- (a house detective immediately pegs her as tion both quickly and obliquely—as Ballan- a lovesick schoolteacher or librarian look- tyne’s quick arrest, trial, and imprisonment ing for a runaway husband); as attractive as are illustrated solely by successive close-ups she is, no one is able to see past her eye- of a pleading Petersen, with shadows indi- glasses (which, apparently, serve as enough cating policemen or prison bars. They show of a disguise that those two investigating his love of challenges and sense of playful- detectives never recognize her). ness, as well; for a SUBJECTIVE shot in Ballantyne is searching for his own which the villain kills himself, he had a identity, too, and—significantly for giant hand a revolver constructed so that Selznick perhaps—his crisis has its roots in it could turn and face the camera and then his relationship with his late brother, whose gave instructions to tint a few frames in death he feels responsible for. (Although every print crimson to illustrate the lethal Selznick had intervened to get his brother explosion. treatment for his alcoholism, the therapy Although it was one of the first Hol- didn’t take.) Yet even making allowances lywood films to attempt to deal seriously for his distressed state, Ballantyne is hardly with psychoanalysis, Spellbound is not an overly sympathetic hero; he snaps at a terribly serious film. As Bergman sus- Petersen (“If there’s anything I hate, it’s a pected, Petersen’s sudden love for Ballan- smug woman”) and remains a rather pas- tyne and eagerness to disregard all profes- sive participant in his own treatment. This sional prohibitions is far-fetched at best; is Petersen’s story, not his. Ballantyne’s sudden breakthrough on the Petersen’s story, and one that Hitch- ski slope (while heading toward a cliff, no cock tells with great visuals. The image of less) has more melodrama than believabil- parallel lines—indicating not only the ski ity. Yet its STARS are gorgeous, and their tracks at the original murder scene but also attraction for each other is clearly real. And the parallel tracks on which both Petersen’s if the film sometimes has no more logic and Ballantyne’s breakthroughs develop— than Ballantyne’s own dream, Hitchcock’s 412 n SPOTO, DONALD craftsmanship ensures it is a dream from trayal of the filmmaker as a deeply con- which we are in no hurry to wake. flicted man who worked out his SEXUAL neuroses on film and whose obsession with References his female STARS sometimes tipped over Rudy Behlmer, ed., Memo from David O. into crude sexual harassment. Selznick (New York: Viking Press, 1972), Of course, some of its facts were chal- 303, 381; James Bigwood, “Solving a Spell- lenged (with PATRICIA HITCHCOCK bound Puzzle,” American Cinematographer O’Connell still disputing a story that her 72, no. 6 (June 1991), 34; Brad Darrach, father, as a practical JOKE, once stranded “Gregory Peck,” People, June 15, 1987, her for hours on a Ferris wheel). “Hitch http://www.people.com/people/archive/ Hatchet Job,” ran the headline in a Lon- article/0,,20096523,00.html; Leonard Leff, don Times review that managed to mis- “Selznick International’s Spellbound,” Cri- spell Spoto’s name throughout—yet never terion Collection, https://www.criterion mentioned that the assigned critic, JOHN .com/current/posts/223-selznick-interna RUSSELL TAYLOR, was the author of the tional-s-spellbound; Patrick McGilligan, family’s preferred, authorized biography. Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and (O’Connell’s own book on her mother, Light (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), Alma Hitchcock: The Woman behind the 354–64; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Man, while avoiding any mention of the Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New harassment stories, does at least list Spoto’s York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 272–78; Don- books in the bibliography—but also curi- ald Spoto, Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred ously manages yet another, different mis- Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies (New spelling of his name.) York: Harmony Books, 2008), 130–44; Still, many of Spoto’s most shocking Bob Thomas, Selznick (New York: Pocket assertions, particularly regarding Hitch- Books, 1972), 224–25; François Truffaut, cock’s treatment of TIPPI HEDREN, have Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: been echoed by others, and if Spoto some- Touchstone, 1985), 163–67. times reads the films as a little too literally biographical, then as a Catholic, he SPOTO, DONALD (1941– ) seems particularly attuned to Hitchcock’s New Rochelle, NY–born, CATHOLIC-edu- themes of GUILT and dangerous sexu- cated scholar with a doctorate in theology, ality. Although his book remains debat- who along the way turned to writing about able, it is also essential—inspiring films; movies and the people who make them, as a pro-Hitchcock website; and, to some well as producing more sober studies of extent, PATRICK MCGILLIGAN’s equally Jesus, St. Francis of Assisi, and Joan of Arc. important but almost consistently contrary His longstanding interest, how- biography ALFRED HITCHCOCK: A LIFE ever, has been in Hitchcock. The Art of IN DARKNESS AND LIGHT, which takes Alfred Hitchcock, a study of the films, a less determinedly downbeat view of the first appeared in 1976 (a revised edition subject’s life (and calls into question a few appeared in 1999); a posthumous biogra- of Spoto’s stories). phy of the director, THE DARK SIDE OF Although several of Spoto’s books GENIUS: THE LIFE OF ALFRED HITCH- deal with Hitchcock colleagues, including COCK, came in 1983. The latter book GRACE KELLY, INGRID BERGMAN, and was particularly controversial at the time, LAURENCE OLIVIER, and his Spellbound attacked by some for its unrelenting por- by Beauty, a study of the director’s leading STAFFORD, FREDERICK n 413 ladies, recycled much of the material from band in SABOTAGE, the scissors Margot The Dark Side of Genius—and served as the impales Swann with in DIAL M FOR MUR- basis for the Hitchcock biopic THE GIRL— DER, the knife the farmer’s wife attacks recent books have turned to other subjects. Gromek with in TORN CURTAIN. Spoto lives in Denmark with his husband. The knife may indeed be a phallic symbol—but in Hitchcock’s films, and in the References hands of Hitchcock’s heroines, it becomes “Interview with: Donald Spoto—Biographer/ a phallus appropriated by the threatened Historian,” Writers Store, https://www and turned against the threat. .writersstore.com/interview-with-donald -spoto-biographer-historian; “Finding Aid STAFFORD, FREDERICK for the Donald Spoto Papers, 1940–1988,” (1928–1979) Online Archive of California, http://www Czech-born actor who was discovered .oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/ in 1964 while taking a Bangkok vacation tf6q2nb47s; Pat Hitchcock O’Connell and and immediately pressed into two of the Laurent Bouzereau, Alma Hitchcock: The OSS 117 spy films then popular in Europe. Woman behind the Man (New York: Berke- From there, he moved on to other obvi- ley Trade, 2004), 153, 287; John Russell ously derivative movies, including the war Taylor, “Hitch Hatchet Job,” Times, May adventure Dirty Heroes (“They go where 19, 1983, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ eagles dare not!”) and the Battle of Britain The_Times_%2819/May/1983%29_-_Hitch knockoff Eagles over London. _hatchet_job. Hitchcock, who had bitterly resented the large salaries paid to PAUL NEW- STABBINGS MAN and JULIE ANDREWS on TORN Although STRANGLING is the more inti- CURTAIN—especially because their STAR mate act of violence—flesh to flesh and power hadn’t seemed to draw audiences often face to face—knives and other sharp anyway—was determined to cast his next objects recur frequently in Hitchcock, spy thriller, 1969’s TOPAZ, more eco- sometimes emphasizing the anonymity of nomically, populating it with European an attack (THE 39 STEPS, the 1956 THE (and a few lesser-known American) actors. MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, NORTH Stafford was assigned the lead role of the BY NORTHWEST) but more often its French agent, Andre Devereaux. SEXUAL violence. The most obvious phal- The picture, however, played disas- lic symbol in Hitchcock’s films—apart, of trously with audiences, even after Hitch- course, from the final shot of the TRAIN cock substituted a different, hastily assem- in NORTH BY NORTHWEST—they would bled ending. The director’s career, already seem to be most suited as the weapon in slowing, seriously stalled, and Stafford a rape by proxy, as when Norman Bates returned to Europe, where he made films attacks Marion Crane in the shower. like the Italian tearjerker White Horses of Yet, significantly, Norman is dressed Summer and the German horror Werewolf as his MOTHER in that film, as through- Woman. He died at 51 in a plane crash in out Hitchcock, sharp objects are a woman’s Switzerland. weapon, used to defend against an aggressor—the bread knife Alice wields against References her attacker in BLACKMAIL, the kitchen “Frederick Stafford,” IMDb, http://www blade Mrs. Verloc turns against her hus- .imdb.com/name/nm0821277/bio?ref 414 n STAGE FRIGHT

_=nm_ov_bio_sm; “Frederick Stafford,” pretending to be Charlotte’s new backstage Journey of Life, http://frederick-stafford.jour dresser—so that she can investigate. nal-of-life.com/#!biographies; Donald Spoto, There is, of course, a real investigator The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred on the case—Wilfred Smith, with whom Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), Eve becomes very friendly—but Eve keeps 488–90. her activities and Jonathan’s whereabouts a secret. When her father surprises Char- STAGE FRIGHT (US 1950) lotte midperformance with a doll wearing a bloody skirt, the star is unable to finish Director: Alfred Hitchcock. the performance, and Eve takes it as a clear Screenplay: Whitfield Cook, Ranald Mac- sign of her guilt. Dougall, Alma Reville, based on the With Smith’s help and Jonathan wait- novel Man Running by Selwyn Jepson. ing close by, Eve sets up a trap at the the- Producer: Uncredited (Alfred Hitchcock). Cinematography: Wilkie Cooper. ater to get Charlotte to confess to the kill- Editor: E. B. Jarvis. ing; instead, she only insists that, while Original Music: Leighton Lucas. it was her idea, Jonathan carried it out. Cast: Jane Wyman (Eve Gill), Marlene Diet- Trapped, Jonathan decides to murder Eve rich (Charlotte Inwood), Michael Wild- as well—to commit such a senseless mur- ing (“Ordinary” Smith), Richard Todd der would only clinch his insanity defense, (Jonathan Cooper), Alastair Sim (Com- he says—but Eve runs away, and trying to modore Gill), Sybil Thorndike (Mrs. Gill), escape, he’s killed when the heavy, fireproof Miles Malleson (Mr. Fortesque), Patricia safety curtain comes crashing down. Hitchcock (“Chubby” Bannister). Running Time: 101 minutes. Black and white. Not so much a new production as an inter- Released Through: Warner Bros. mission. After the financial disappointments of THE PARADINE CASE, ROPE, and UNDER CAPRICORN, it was essential that In London, acting student Eve Gill gives Hitchcock course-correct his career before actor (and unrequited love) Jonathan Coo- it truly drifted into disaster. He had talked per a quick lift out of town as he hurriedly in the past about crises like these; the best explains his mortal predicament—his own thing to do, he always said, was to go back love, famous musical actress Charlotte to something you knew, something safe. So Inwood, recently murdered her husband with Stage Fright (a project in development and came to Cooper for help, her dress still for some time), he went back to the world red with blood. When he tried to slip into of theater—which had given him the back- her house to get her a change of clothes, he ground to some of his earliest successes, was recognized—and now the police think including THE PLEASURE GARDEN; he’s the killer. THE LODGER, and MURDER! And he Eve takes him to the country home went back to a London story, dominated by of her eccentric father, the commodore, thoroughly English actors (and influenced where they share their suspicion—Char- perhaps by a true-crime story he person- lotte tricked Jonathan into going back to ally knew something about: the EDITH the scene of the crime so as to frame him for THOMPSON case). the murder. Determined to help him, Eve Preproduction was very much a family decides to take on a high-stakes acting job— affair. The story—from a novel by Selwyn STAGE FRIGHT n 415

Jepson—was largely adapted by ALMA It is, along with the bomb that actually REVILLE and WHITFIELD COOK, a explodes in SABOTAGE and the leading longtime friend and the playwright behind lady who gets abruptly killed off in PSY- one of PATRICIA HITCHCOCK’s early CHO, one of Hitchcock’s most daring nar- New York stage appearances. The cast rative choices because it has always been was headed up by JANE WYMAN (who a strange but unexamined rule in main- actually looked a little like a glamorized stream films that flashbacks always tell the Pat) and MARLENE DIETRICH, now to truth. Narrators may be unreliable; public become the most forbidding of Hitchcock testimonies can turn out to be sheer fic- BLONDES. tion. But if someone says this is what hap- It was Reville who—on her last cred- pened—and then the director shows it hap- ited screenplay—decided to add the theatri- pening in flashback on the screen—then cal setting and make the heroine an acting the audience assumes that it really did. student, like her daughter. Befitting that, Which, of course, isn’t the case in the film’s supporting players would grow Stage Fright—and the chief reason, the to include some of Britain’s best character practical Hitchcock would say, that the film actors, including ALASTAIR SIM, SYBIL didn’t succeed. He hadn’t played fair with THORNDIKE, and MILES MALLESON. the audience—at least, as they understood The film would be shot on LOCATION in fairness—and so they turned on him. England, some of it at Pat’s current school, Actually, the lying flashback isn’t the the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (with worst of the film’s problems. In some ways, Pat and a classmate or two given small roles). it’s the most intriguing aspect in a rather So, going into production, the feeling was dull film. More than a decade before, Hitch- already familial. But the expectations were cock had fled England’s weather and the also low—a murder mystery that didn’t pose English film industry’s limited resources; much of a mystery, and a man-on-the-run both weigh Stage Fright down like a damp story that didn’t turn into much of a chase. woolen blanket. The cinematography is Stage Fright begins with a safety cur- dominated by wishy-washy grays; one shot tain going up—a bit of foreshadowing of Dietrich changing while Wilding stands there—to reveal London and to signal to behind her, has been so crudely fiddled with audiences that this is going to be not just a in postproduction that she almost looks like film set in the world of the theater but also a ghost from A Christmas Carol. There is dealing with theatricality. Like so many of some nice lighting and one or two daringly Hitchcock’s films, it’s about IDENTITY extended shots, but most of the film feels and PLAYS WITHIN PLAYS. Eve will like a defeated step back. pretend to be a servant, Jonathan will pre- What Stage Fright does have is some- tend to be innocent, and Charlotte will play thing the director had definitely missed—an “director,” carefully manipulating everyone even deeper roster of character actors than into the parts she wishes them to perform. Hollywood could provide. Sim is delightful It’s Jonathan, though, who does the most as the commodore—his marvelous voice daring bit of acting—as the film begins, lit- managing to pack two or three notes into erally in the middle of a chase, he quickly a single syllable—and almost every scene launches into a long piece of exposition, boasts a strong stage performer like Thorn- telling us what he’s running from. It lasts dike or Kay Walsh. Particularly rich is Joyce nearly 15 minutes; it’s done as a flashback. Grenfell, here cast as the toothy mistress And it’s a lie. of a shooting gallery; her jolly offer to load 416 n STAIRCASES

Sim’s gun (“Shall I put it in for you?”) is one stevenderosa.com/writingwithhitchcock/ that must have delighted Hitchcock’s dirty stagefright.html; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred schoolboy heart. Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light But Wyman, the Hollywood STAR (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 432–37; who helped anchor this project, at least Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: commercially, is its weakest point (apart The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: from being wholly unbelievable as the Da Capo Press, 1999), 314–16; François progeny of Sim and Thorndike), and Wild- Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New ing is so lightweight as the hero that he York: Touchstone, 1985), 189–91. seems ready to blow away in a gust of Lon- don wind. Todd gets some power into his STAIRCASES one mad scene at the end—his wide eyes Flights of steps that ascend to the better shining in the dark—but the entire film is stages of our nature or descend into the so underdeveloped and lacking in tension depths of degradation, staircases are not that Hitchcock’s small jokes and quirky only a powerful symbol but also an obvi- sideshows run away with it. ous one—decades later Hitchcock would Dietrich is, of course, always watchable deplore his own “naïve touch” of hav- and steals every scene she’s in. (Being fitted ing the hero in DOWNHILL, after being for her widow’s weeds, she asks the seam- thrown out of his father’s house, board the stress to give the gown a little more décol- “Down” escalator. Much as the director letage.) She looks beautiful (in a rare ges- enjoyed the stark visuals of symbolism, he ture of respect, Hitchcock gave her a huge respected subtlety more. amount of leeway over her costumes, even So more often in Hitchcock films, her own lighting, as well as a Cole Porter stairs stand for a literal escalation—of per- song to sing), and the character is one of sonal emotions or life-altering stakes. In the director’s few, actual femme fatales. But some films, they function as a barrier, as she’s also still very much the diva—the film one more obstacle to be overcome or cur- comes to a stop whenever she performs, tain to be drawn aside. In THE LODGER Hitchcock again unsure of how to handle and THE 39 STEPS, they separate the mys- musical numbers—and she ends up over- terious tenants from the bustling life going whelming everything else. on down below; in SPELLBOUND, they Despite the bloody murder that begins divide the public rooms of Green Manors the film and the awful accident that ends it, from the private office of its not-to-be- Stage Fright does have a quiet, almost gen- trusted chief psychiatrist. In SUSPICION, tle feel, with its opening curtain suggesting they inexorably delay Johnnie’s slow, that what lay ahead was merely a story not slow walk to his wife with that mysterious to be taken too seriously. For a director glass of milk; in NOTORIOUS, they’re all reeling from several failures, it must have that stand between Alicia and Devlin and felt like a retreat to family and the famil- escape; in FRENZY, they provide a long, iar. But it was not sadly a return to form. dark, insulating barrier between what Rush That would have to wait for the next film— does in his apartment and the outside STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. world. In others, they are dangerous stages, References inherently uneven settings for violence. Steven DeRosa, “Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Guy’s climb up the stairs to warn Bruno’s Fright,” Writing with Hitchcock, http:// father in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, Arbo- STANNARD, ELIOT n 417 gast’s trip to interview Mrs. Bates in PSY- era. Eight of those credits were for Alfred CHO, the step Uncle Charlie saws through Hitchcock (he would have gotten a ninth, in SHADOW OF A DOUBT to remove the Stannard later protested, if he’d been given threat of Charlotte—in every case they are the credit he felt he deserved for helping on a place of danger and deception, where the THE RING). unwary can easily slip, literally or figura- Moving easily from heavily condensed tively, and hurtle to their death. versions of Dickens, Shakespeare, and Of course they figure most hugely Fielding to contemporary melodramas, in VERTIGO, which is all about dizzying mysteries, and comedies, Stannard was infi- heights—and paralyzing depths—and con- nitely flexible, and his work for Hitchcock cludes with a painful climb up the steps of was eclectic as well—he’s credited with the bell tower. And most humorously in THE LODGER but also most of the direc- the parody thriller NUMBER 17, in which tor’s love-triangle melodramas, includ- much of the film takes place on a stair- ing THE PLEASURE GARDEN and THE way—a winking metaphor for all the ups MANXMAN. While their work together and downs the characters are to face. was drawn from a variety of other sources, “Stairs are very photogenic,” Hitch- the same themes of thwarted romances and cock told FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT, and he bitter betrayals abound. certainly knew how to photograph them Stannard was prolific but never (his CAMEO in I CONFESS is even at the thoughtless; as early as 1918, he was writing top of a Quebec staircase). But more than about his craft and urging would-be screen- photogenic, they were dramatic—and he writers to first learn everything they could squeezed every bit of emotion from them about moviemaking, from cinematography he could. to scenery. (He was also presciently complaining that writers were often forgotten Reference when people rushed to praise a film’s art- François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. istry.) ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 51. Stannard’s insistence on showing things rather than describing them in title STANNARD, ELIOT (1888–1944) cards probably won an early ally in Hitch- London-born author whose mother— cock; his emphasis on structure and dislike under the pseudonym John Strange Win- of movies that are “comprised of a series ter—had written a popular series of books of exciting incidents and nothing else . . . about army life. After his father died in (but) improbable and often impossible situ- 1912, Stannard took over his manufactur- ations” suggests the working relationship ing business; by the end of the next year, it would not have survived once Hitchcock’s had gone bankrupt. Following his mother’s own tastes in narrative grew more episodic lead, he went into writing instead, concen- and even dreamlike. trating on the movies; in 1914 alone, he was In any case, once sound came in, credited with five shorts and two features. Hitchcock turned to other writers, begin- Stannard worked very quickly, an ning with the equally prolific CHARLES enormous advantage in the early, catch-as- BENNETT. As for Stannard—whose per- catch-can days of British cinema; although sonal life was far less orderly than his many of his earliest films are lost, he’s carefully planned scripts—the early talk- reported to have racked up more than 300 ies, which tended at first to the sort of dia- credits, the vast majority during the silent logue-driven stories he had always avoided, 418 n STARS turned out to be enemy territory. His last now becoming not only “The IMP Girl” film credit was in 1932. but also appearing for the first time under After that, facts grow sketchy; one her own name. Mary Pickford soon joined trade magazine described him as a “real the list of credited performers, and before character” possessed of a “mordant wit” the decade was out, a new flickering royalty and “brutal candour”—the usual polite had arisen—William S. Hart, Theda Bara, Anglicisms for “undependable,” “nasty,” the Gish sisters. And with fame, performers and “difficult.” What happened in his later gained leverage. years is unclear. According to PATRICK The cult of stardom was well estab- MCGILLIGAN, Stannard found a minor lished by the time Hitchcock reached films studio job at GAUMONT; according to in the early ’20s, and already, its difficult SIDNEY GILLIAT, he ended up pushing and contradictory nature was clear. On one papers in a motor vehicle licensing depart- hand, a “name” actor could bring larger ment. He died in London at 56 of a heart audiences and convey a certain exploit- condition. able persona; on the other, he or she would now demand a larger salary and might References require that characters, even entire scripts, David Cairns, “Eliot Stannard,” Shadow- be extensively and arbitrarily rewritten to play, https://dcairns.wordpress.com/tag/ accommodate his or her image. Through- eliot-stannard; Michael Eaton, “Script Spe- out his career, Hitchcock would wrestle cial: The Man Who Wasn’t There,” Sight with all of this. and Sound, June 6, 2012, http://old.bfi As a director, he had an honest appre- .org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49173; Pat- ciation of the benefits a star could provide. rick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life Famous faces were easy to identify with, in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- drawing an audience more quickly into the erCollins, 2003), 68, 77; P. L. M., “Eliot story. They had certain perceived character Stannard Passes,” Kine Weekly, November traits—CARY GRANT’s slippery charm, 30, 1944, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ GREGORY PECKS’s stolid decency, Kine_Weekly_%281944%29_-_Obituary ANTHONY PERKINS’s uncertain boyish- :_Eliot_Stannard_Passes. ness—that you could draw on or sneakily subvert. (And although he would call actors STARS “cattle,” even “stupid children,” many For the first 10 or 15 years of cinema, most actresses—JOAN FONTAINE, INGRID movie actors were anonymous, protecting BERGMAN, GRACE KELLY, JANET both their reputations—acting still being LEIGH—would give their very best perfor- considered a dubious calling in some cir- mances under his direction.) cles—and, not inconsequently, the studios’ Yet there were artistic limitations, as profits. Because, after all, if your leading well. Grant could not (or would not) play actress was billed only as “The Biograph a murderer; neither he nor MONTGOM- Girl,” when she proved difficult and asked ERY CLIFT would sign on for a character for a raise, you could always simply appoint whose heterosexuality was even vaguely someone else in her place. Anonymity kept questioned. Gary Cooper turned down actors powerless. several roles outright simply because he In 1910, though, “The Biograph Girl,” didn’t want to be in a thriller. Ego and Florence Lawrence, left for Carl Laemmle’s vanity could create other obstacles, too. Independent Motion Pictures Company, CHARLES LAUGHTON approached STARS n 419

JAMAICIA INN with demands that his part And yet, as frustrating as the idea of be expanded; NITA NALDI arrived to play stardom was to Hitchcock—partly because the part of a rural teacher in THE MOUN- he believed that the director was the star, TAIN EAGLE with long Hollywood finger- mostly because he felt the best actor was a nails. (The stars who arrived with their own blank canvas—he understood the concept acting approaches—and, in Clift’s case, his of charisma and used it better than most. own dramatic coach in tow—were a sepa- He knew a true star had something—like rate problem.) Gerald du Maurier, the matinee idol of his Financially, stars posed another diffi- youth “who could walk on a stage, flick a culty. In Britain, Hitchcock often had been speck of dust off his shoulder, study his fin- forced to cast certain foreign performers gernails for a whole five minutes, and do simply because their famous names helped it all so dramatically and with such accu- sell the film back in their own hometowns rate timing that he held an audience spell- of Berlin or New York; in America, stu- bound.” dio budgets might require he choose from And so while Hitchcock preferred a list of contract players whom could be Margaret Sullavan’s acting in her audi- had cheaply or whom some mogul was tions for REBECCA, he cast Joan Fontaine, determined to promote. It was through knowing her honest uncertainty was bet- marriages of convenience like these that ter for the role. He saw the private-school PRISCILLA LANE came to SABOTEUR, poise of Grace Kelly—but also saw through RUTH ROMAN was cast in STRANGERS it to the passion underneath. ON A TRAIN, and JOHN GAVIN joined Personas matter, and they matter the PSYCHO—and they were shotgun arrange- most in Hitchcock, where character isn’t ments that unsurprisingly never led to conveyed through dialogue so much as warm feelings on either side. a simple look, a gesture, a mood. It’s the Big stars who weren’t under contract, everyman decency of JAMES STEWART meanwhile, could be expensive—some- that makes his neuroses in REAR WIN- thing that particularly aggravated Hitch- DOW and VERTIGO more shocking ini- cock later as, post-SELZNICK, he became tially (and yet ultimately forgivable); it’s the his own producer and fixed his eyes more perfectly bone-deep shallowness of Cary intensely on costs. (The largest head- Grant that makes his husband in SUSPI- ache turned out to be TORN CURTAIN, CION so attractively untrustworthy. (And where, at the studio’s insistence, a substan- of course, it is the simple, old-fashioned tial part of the budget went to hire JULIE fame of Janet Leigh—It’s not as if he’s ANDREWS, whom Hitchcock didn’t want, going to kill off the star, is he?—that made and PAUL NEWMAN, whom Hitchcock PSYCHO so astounding.) disliked.) When early attempts at creat- Still, stars were just a particularly over- ing his own stable—VERA MILES, TIPPI grown kind of actor, and performers so HEDREN—went disastrously wrong, often complicated things, getting between Hitchcock finally gave up on “names” Hitchcock and his vision, his camera and entirely. TOPAZ and FRENZY were cast the screen. They interfered, the silly things, largely with little-known character actors, but what could you do? “I’ve always said and while he and the studio flirted briefly that Walt Disney has the right idea,” he told with attracting some marquee value to journalist Oriana Fallaci. “His actors are FAMILY PLOT, the “Jack Nicholson part” made of paper; when he doesn’t like them, was eventually taken by BRUCE DERN. he can tear them up.” 420 n STEFANO, JOSEPH

References suggest a flashback fleshing out Norman’s Oriana Fallaci, The Egotists: 16 Surprising oedipal attraction to his MOTHER, some- Interviews (Chicago: H. Regnery, 1968), thing he said the director was interested in 254; Richard Griffith and Arthur Mayer, doing even though they both knew they The Movies, rev. ed. (New York: Simon could never get it past the CENSORS. and Schuster, 1971), 46–55; Alfred Hitch- Working hard, Stefano took ROB- cock, “Life among the Stars,” News Chron- ERT BLOCH’s original novel and made it icle, March 15, 1938, http://the.hitchcock. something more than clever; he made it zone/wiki/News_Chronicle_%281937%29 poetic, particularly in the long exchange in _-_Life_among_the_Stars; Patrick McGil- the parlor, where Norman talks to Marion ligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Dark- about “private traps” and the “laughter, ness and Light (New York: HarperCollins, and the tears and the cruel eyes studying 2003), 239, 301, 450, 722–23; Stephen you”—as the sightless EYES of BIRDS of Rebello, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of prey look down on them both. It’s a scene Psycho (New York: HarperPerennial, 1991), of suddenly unmasked madness—like 65; Rope Unleashed, directed by Laurent Uncle Charlie’s monologue about “stupid Bouzereau (2001), documentary; Donald women” in SHADOW OF A DOUBT—but Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life it’s also one of despair and one of the finest of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo in any Hitchcock film. Press, 1999), 184, 337; J. Danvers Williams, But then perhaps the director, Ste- “What I’d Do to the Stars,” Film Weekly, fano later said, “had reached a point in his March 4, 1939, http://the.hitchcock. professional life where he was ready for a zone/wiki/Film_Weekly_%281939%29 totally different kind of picture. In his pre- _-_What_I’d_Do_to_the_Stars. vious films, he told things about himself he thought were true, but in Psycho, he told STEFANO, JOSEPH (1922–2006) more about himself, in a deeper sense, than Philadelphia-born son of a tailor who he realized. He had been very concerned dropped out of school and ran off to New about his health. . . . [H]e was grappling York to become an entertainer. Performing with his own mortality.” at first in Greenwich Village clubs under Despite the apparent ease of their col- the name Jerry Stevens, he sang, danced, laboration—and Hitchcock’s reluctance played piano, and worked up stage mate- to break in new writers—the two men did rial for others. A stint writing for TV’s Ted not really work together again. Although Mack Family Hour was his first onscreen Stefano roughed out some early ideas for credit; his first movie credit was The Black MARNIE when the director was still hop- Orchid, a 1958 crime drama for Martin Ritt. ing to sign GRACE KELLY (and Hitch- MCA executives recommended him to cock later approached him again for THE Hitchcock as a screenwriter for PSYCHO BIRDS), by 1963, the younger man was after a first attempt by James Cavanagh, busy producing (and occasionally writing) who’d written for ALFRED HITCHCOCK his own TV show, The Outer Limits, an PRESENTS, was deemed unusable; Stefano hour-long sci-fi anthology series that occa- came to the first meeting with good ideas sionally flirted with the surreal (while try- about expanding Marion Crane’s role and ing to avoid the more obvious moralizing making Norman more likeable, and Hitch- of The Twilight Zone). cock soon hired him for the job. Stefano, The series only lasted two seasons who was in analysis at the time, would also but finished the pigeonholing that Psycho STEINBECK, JOHN n 421 had begun; most of Stefano’s subsequent By the end of the decade, Steinbeck assignments were fantasies or thrillers. had made his name and his fortune with Of Although publicly critical of Psycho II and Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath, III (and the Gus Van Sant remake, which books of simple language but ringing dec- reused his old script), Stefano contributed larations of solidarity with the poor and a new script for the TV movie Psycho IV; exploited. (Both were almost immediately one of his favorite credits, though, was the made into films.) After reporting under fire far more family-friendly (and lightly auto- in the early days of World War II, Stein- biographical) South Philly drama Two Bits, beck then returned to California, where starring Al Pacino as a frail grandfather. he wrote several original treatments and He died at 84 in Thousand Oaks, CA, scripts for Hollywood. of a heart attack. By 1943, Hitchcock, who preferred working with novelists and playwrights on References the initial, prose treatments for his films, Ronald Bergen, “Joseph Stefano,” Guard- had already shopped his LIFEBOAT idea ian, September 13, 2006, http://www to Ernest Hemingway, James Hilton, and .theguardian.com/news/2006/sep/14/ A. J. Cronin; Steinbeck was the first author guardianobituaries.obituaries; Adam to accept. The novelist figured he’d maxi- Bernstein, “Joseph Stefano: Key Writer mize his profits by writing (and publishing) for Psycho,” Washington Post, August the story first and then selling the rights to 30, 2006, http://www.washingtonpost the studio. .com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/29/ It didn’t work out that way. No one AR2006082901421.html; Sylvia Caminer wanted to handle the novella (deemed a and John Andrew Gallagher, “An Inter- major falling-off from The Grapes of Wrath), view with Joseph Stefano,” Films in Review, and after Steinbeck turned in his treatment, January 31, 1996, http://the.hitchcock. it went through at least a half-dozen other zone/wiki/Films_in_Review_%281996%29 pairs of hands. After seeing the film, Stein- _-_An_interview_with_Joseph_Stefano; beck tried (unsuccessfully) to have his name Stephen Rebello, Alfred Hitchcock and removed, complaining that the final screen- the Making of Psycho (New York: Harper play mocked the labor movement and had Perennial, 1991), 31–50; Donald Spoto, turned his “Negro of dignity, purpose and The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred personality” into a comic figure. Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, Both criticisms seem oversensitive 1999), 590. today—the story’s leftist worker is much more a figure of authority than the boat’s STEINBECK, JOHN (1902–1968) squabbling capitalists, and whatever clichés Salinas-born author who grew up middle had been in the character of Joe (early drafts class but with a strong affinity for immi- had included some painful attempts at dia- grant workers and idealistic dreamers. He lect) had largely been overcome through the dropped out of Stanford and depended on patient work of actor CANADA LEE. The odd jobs, family handouts, and whatever final Lifeboat screenplay may not have been fish he could catch in Monterey Bay while the story Steinbeck turned in, but it was trying to establish himself as a writer. His hardly an embarrassment. first book, Cup of Gold, was published in Steinbeck, however, disowned the 1929; his first commercial success, Tortilla entire production, although he would con- Flat, came in 1935. tinue to contribute some screenplays to 422 n STEWART, JAMES

Hollywood, including ones for his own The his best friends backed into the simplest, Red Pony and Elia Kazan’s Viva Zapata. most straightforward ones. John Wayne, (Kazan would later bring Steinbeck’s last the Cowboy. HENRY FONDA, the Man major work, the novel East of Eden, to of Integrity. The personas fit them like the screen.) By the 1950s, however, Stein- tailored suits, and they wore them confi- beck had begun to seem a little out of step dently, almost without a break, for a half- with a new, postwar generation of Ameri- century. But Stewart was lucky enough—or can novelists who were seizing attention; smart enough—to pick the best one of all: while Jack Kerouac went On the Road with James Stewart, American. only another mad iconoclast for company, He was one kind of fellow at first, Steinbeck packed up his poodle and chron- the young, decent, slightly naïve idealist icled his Travels with Charlie. whose wrists and ankles peeked out from What should have been a crowning last year’s suit, who couldn’t get through a honor—his 1962 Nobel Prize for litera- conversation with a woman without stam- ture—only brought controversy and criti- mering or dropping his hat (or almost any cism from those who felt it wasn’t deserved conversation without an awed “Gosh!”). He (including, to be fair, Steinbeck himself). was an American, or at least what Ameri- He never published another piece of fic- cans wished they were, at their small-town tion (although he did surprise many with a best. sharp turn to the right, sending back favor- But then came the war. And when able dispatches from the war in Vietnam). Stewart came back, he seemed, not 5 or Steinbeck died in New York at 66 of 6 years older, but 20. The men he played heart failure. There are still rich old men liv- were innocent no longer. They wondered ing on California farmland who despise him. what exactly they had done with their lives. They worried, they raged, they obsessed. References They were impatient. They were lost. But “John Steinbeck,” Biography, http:// they were Americans, too—just a different, www.biography.com/people/john-stein wounded, wearier sort. beck-9493358; “John Steinbeck,” IMDb, He was born in Indiana, PA, where http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0825705/ his father ran a hardware store that Jimmy, bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; “John Stein- the oldest child and only boy, was expected beck: Biography,” National Steinbeck to take over one day. Instead he went to Center, http://www.steinbeck.org/pages/ Princeton and studied architecture—and john-steinbeck-biography; Patrick McGil- also joined the Triangle Club, where he ligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Dark- appeared in plays, occasionally played the ness and Light (New York: HarperCollins, accordion, and discovered a love of per- 2003), 328–36, 350–52; Emily Temple, formance. He did summer stock on Cape “John Steinbeck Wanted His Name Taken Cod and then after graduation moved on off Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat,” Flavor- to New York, where he began going out on wire, February 4, 2012, http://flavorwire auditions. Unlike George Bailey, he never .com/256717/john-steinbeck-wanted-his did go back home and take over the family -name-taken-off-hitchcocks-lifeboat. business. Although the plays he got cast in had STEWART, JAMES (1908–1997) the unfortunate habit of closing rapidly, He was born in an era when every lead- an MGM talent scout spotted him in one ing man had to find a type, and some of and signed him to a contract in 1935. The STEWART, JAMES n 423 studio wasn’t sure what to do with him at run the family business—appealed to him, first—he appeared in a musical and even and when he seemed once to waver on the as a couple of villains—but by the end of set, Lionel Barrymore gave him a stern lec- the decade, he had been firmly typed as ture on the importance of the arts and the a bashful, sincere, and genuinely decent nobility of the actor’s profession. Stewart young man in Made for Each Other; Destry rededicated himself to doing his best. Rides Again; and, of course, Mr. Smith Goes But it would be a different sort of to Washington. The Philadelphia Story, in Stewart who now loped across America’s which he played a slightly more sardonic movie screens. The cynical reporter of Call figure, won him a surprise best actor Oscar. Northside 777, the grizzled cowboys of “I’ve looked upon it as a skill rather Winchester ’73, The Naked Spur, and The than as an art,” he said once to American Man from Laramie—these were not inno- Film, describing his process—without ever, cents. These were men who’d known pain of course, using such a self-serious word as and compromise and disappointment— process. “And part of the skill, I’ve always and knew that only more lay ahead. thought, is to make it so the acting doesn’t “Gosh, Winchester ’73 was a lifesaver,” show. As the skill develops, the acting . . . he said decades later. “It rescued me from shows less, and believability comes sneak- a very serious situation. The audiences ing into the thing. This is the magic. People weren’t accepting the sort of muddled, just can’t put their finger on it, and it really slow-talking, vulnerable, small-town-boy, drives ’em right up the wall because they hem-and-hawer type of comedy that I had can’t. I hope they never can, because this been doing before the war. After the war is one of the fascinating things about the they just didn’t accept that.” business.” Although Anthony Mann’s darkly vio- Even after becoming a STAR, Stewart, lent westerns did much to turn Stewart’s a longtime aviator, was eager to continue image around, the first course corrections his family’s tradition of military service but came with Hitchcock’s ROPE, which cast was turned down at first—with less than the actor—wildly against type—as a prep- 140 pounds stretched out over his 6-foot-3 school headmaster, amateur philosopher, frame, he was seriously underweight. With armchair expert on Nietzsche (and very the help of some heavy meals and workouts possibly a closeted HOMOSEXUAL). at the studio gym (and, he later conceded, Stewart wasn’t completely comfortable in a friendly fellow reading the scales), he the role, but he would get better parts—and was inducted in March 1941, nine months be better in them—as, in quick succession, before Pearl Harbor. When America Hitchcock cast him in REAR WINDOW; entered the war, the star successfully fought the 1956 remake of THE MAN WHO to be sent overseas and into combat, where KNEW TOO MUCH, and, ultimately, VER- he flew bombing missions over Europe. TIGO. Like many far less famous Americans, Hitchcock’s American films are often Stewart came home from the war changed, about finding the cracks in the edifice of wondering if acting was any sort of serious the perfect American male, the lie that’s profession for a man to have. (For a while, so carefully concealed behind the matinee- he briefly considered going into commer- idol mask; just as the director’s films with cial aviation.) But the story of Frank Cap- CARY GRANT emphasized the untrust- ra’s It’s a Wonderful Life—and its hero, a worthy glibness that drove Grant’s charm, would-be engineer who did stay home and his projects with Stewart found something 424 n STEWART, JAMES curdling behind the actor’s ice-cream grin, sion sours, so adulterated by FETISH and something slightly pervy underneath the obsession that what had been love turns Boy Scout wholesomeness. Hitchcock into a simple, crude need to possess. And had turned Grant’s smooth manners into by the time Scottie’s conquered his great a metaphor for deception; now he trans- fear—recaptured his sense of self—it’s too formed Stewart’s innocence into SEXUAL late, his lost masculinity returning only just repression. in time for him to stand impotently on the So in Rope, we have Stewart as the edge of the abyss, while the one thing he academic mentor and molder of young loved lies smashed on the ground below. minds (who is also a creator of amoral The two men never worked together sociopaths). In Rear Window, we have after that. How could they? What stories Stewart as a professional photographer and were left to tell? To be fair, Stewart wanted observer of human nature (whose profes- to, though. It was Hitchcock—who could sion is an excuse to peep and pry yet stay be cold whenever commercial consider- uninvolved). Even in the lighter The Man ations arose—who avoided Stewart, pri- Who Knew Too Much, shadows loom. In vately blaming the modest box office of the first version of the film, the couple had Vertigo on the actor’s increasing age (and a marriage of equals, with LESLIE BANKS quietly reneging on his promise to star him even owing his life to his wife’s skills; in in NORTH BY NORTHWEST—which was the second, it’s a marriage of small rows honestly more of a Cary Grant role, any- and brusque abuses of power, with Stewart way). And so Stewart went on to other DOMINATING DORIS DAY at every turn. parts and, to some extent, went backward, He was very good in The Man Who retreating into the past of those aw-shucks Knew Too Much, brilliant in Rear Window. folks he’d played in the ’30s. However, making Rope, Stewart said, was There is, at least, a sense of irony in the “craziest, most difficult thing, it was those roles at first—his coolly clever attor- completely new. Making it was so com- ney in Anatomy of a Murder is not quite plicated that when I finished the picture I the plain-old country lawyer he pretends was talking to Hitch and I said ‘You know, to be, and his hero in The Man Who Shot I think you missed the boat a little with this Liberty Valance lives much of his life know- one-set thing. You should’ve built bleachers ing he’s playing a part. But that subtle self- around it and soaked them five, 10 bucks to awareness soon faded, and Stewart quickly watch us do this.’” relaxed into a long string of jobs as indul- It was Vertigo, though, that became gent dads and cranky old codgers. both men’s masterpiece. Stewart’s character Stewart retired from the movies in the seems, at first, to be a standard Hollywood late ’70s, when problems with his hearing hero, something out of his prewar movie and memory made acting more difficult; past—the dogged policeman-turned-pri- nonetheless, he appeared in the TV mini- vate-eye. But instead of being the hero, he’s series North and South, Book II and for a the villain’s stooge, chosen not because he’s long time remained a popular guest on talk smart enough to solve the case but because shows. When Gloria, his wife of 45 years, he’s damaged enough to help conceal the died in 1994, however, he retreated from crime even without trying. public life; when it was time to have the Everything in Vertigo is turned upside battery in his pacemaker changed in 1996, down, Scottie’s bravery undone by phobia, he quietly declined. He died of a blood clot his reason by passion. Then even that pas- the next year; he was 89. Few obituary writ- STRADLING, HARRY n 425 ers could resist the lead, “It Was a Wonder- particularly for young women, tended to ful Life.” None of them was wrong. rapidly deplete whatever little funds he garnered from paperback novels and TV References scripts. “Biography,” Jimmy Stewart Museum, “Story cheerfully thumbed his nose at http://jimmy.org/biography; Peter Bogda- the conventions and, like all genuine naïfs, novich, Pieces of Time (New York: Arbor was always mildly puzzled when things— House, 1973), 127–40; “James Stewart,” as they had a habit of doing—got out of IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ hand,” the Independent observed in its tart nm0000071/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; obituary. “He seemed to spend his life flee- Janet Maslin, “James Stewart Recalls ing—from wives, not-quite-wives, respon- Hitch,” New York Times, October 9, sibilities, tax inspectors—and never quite 1983, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/New making it.” _York_Times_%2809/Oct/1983%29 He died in Milton Keynes of a heart _-_James_Stewart_recalls_Hitch; Joseph attack at 74. McBride, “Aren’t You . . . Jimmy Stew- art?” American Film 1, no. 8 (June 1976), References http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Ameri Jack Adrian, “Jack Trevor Story,” Inde- can_Film_%281976%29_-_Aren’t_You pendent, December 9, 1991, http://jack ..._Jimmy_Stewart%3F; Patrick McGil- trevorstory.com/independent_obituary ligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Dark- .htm; Guy Lawley, Jack Trevor Story, http:// ness and Light (New York: HarperCollins, www.jacktrevorstory.com; Michael McNay, 2003), 565–66; David Thomson, The New “Jack Trevor Story: View from the Rapids,” Biographical Dictionary of Film (New York: Guardian, December 9, 1991, http://jackt Knopf, 2002), 835–36. revorstory.com/guardian_obituary.htm.

STORY, JACK TREVOR STRADLING, HARRY (1917–1991) (1901–1970) Hertford-born writer of humble origins— Newark-born filmmaker from a movie his mother was a maid, and he never met family (his uncle, Walter, had worked in his father, killed in World War I—who was the early silents; his son, Harry Jr., would largely self-educated and, as a writer, self- follow him into the profession) who spent taught. In the 1940s, he began publishing years shooting shorts for Poverty Row prodigiously in any genre that would have studios in Hollywood before leaving for him: mysteries, westerns, sci-fi. Many of his Europe. There he would get longer and books were touched by wild bits of humor; better assignments, climaxing with Hitch- Hitchcock particularly enjoyed the black cock’s JAMAICA INN in 1939. comedy of Story’s THE TROUBLE WITH When war came to Europe, Stradling HARRY, although his own movie adapta- returned to Hollywood. Hitchcock wanted tion transposed the action, not successfully, him for REBECCA, but producer DAVID from England to Vermont. O. SELZNICK overruled him; he would The screen sale remained a sore point finally work for the director on MR. AND for Story, who said he’d transferred all MRS. SMITH and SUSPICION, where he rights for only 150 pounds, but money was captured the iconic shot of CARY GRANT always a problem for the writer, who twice walking up the richly shadowed STAIR- declared bankruptcy and whose appetites, CASE carrying a luminous glass of milk 426 n STRANGERS ON A TRAIN

(literally luminous—they’d put a tiny light Cinematography: Robert Burks. bulb inside it to make it glow). Editor: William H. Ziegler. An assured and adaptable profes- Original Music: Dmitri Tiomkin. sional, Stradling changed his style to suit Cast: Robert Walker (Bruno Antony), Far- the mood and needs of the production— ley Granger (Guy Haines), Ruth Roman giving his Oscar-winning work in The (Anne Morton), Leo G. Carroll (Sen. Portrait of Dorian Gray a romantic rich- Morton), Kasey Rogers (Miriam Haines), ness and A Face in the Crowd a gritty docu- Patricia Hitchcock (Barbara Morton). mentary feel, conjuring up dank shadows Running Time: 101 minutes. Black and white. for A Streetcar Named Desire and glorious Released Through: Warner Bros. COLOR for My Fair Lady, creating both the lurid melodrama of Johnny Guitar and the sunny nostalgia of In the Good Old Tennis star Guy Haines is on a train, off to Summertime. ask his wife for a divorce—again—when Although the veteran clashed with he literally bumps into the rich, eccentric novice director Mike Nichols on Who’s Bruno Antony. The two men drink and Afraid of Virginia Woolf (and was eventu- share their similar troubles—just as Guy ally dismissed from the project), his ability can’t be rid of his wife, Bruno is eager to to flatteringly light and photograph Barbra shed his father. Wouldn’t it be the perfect Streisand for Funny Girl immediately made crime, Bruno suggests, if they each mur- him her favorite cameraman; she would dered the other’s victim, thereby providing insist on him shooting all of her films. He the police with no motive? Guy forces a died in Los Angeles at 68 of a heart attack laugh at the joke. while working on the fourth, The Owl and Except Bruno isn’t joking. He follows the Pussycat. Guy’s trashy, adulterous wife to a carnival and strangles her—then seeks out Guy and References calmly tells him it’s his turn. The horri- “Harry Stradling (Sr.),” Internet Encyclope- fied Guy refuses, so Bruno begins stalking dia of Cinematographers, http://www.cine him—a threatening presence soon noticed matographers.nl/GreatDoPh/stradling by Guy’s rich new girlfriend and her disap- .sr.htm; “Harry Stradling Sr.,” IMDb, proving father, a US senator. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005889; Eventually Guy halfheartedly agrees to Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: hold up his end of the deal but instead goes The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da to Bruno’s house to warn his father. There, Capo Press, 1999), 245; François Truffaut, however, he finds Bruno waiting for him, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: who says he suspected this would happen. Touchstone, 1985), 143. He tells Guy that now he’s going to make sure the police arrest him. STRANGERS ON A TRAIN With the police already focusing on (US 1951) Guy as a suspect—and Bruno soon on his way back to the carnival to plant Guy’s Director: Alfred Hitchcock. lighter as evidence at the murder scene— Screenplay: Raymond Chandler, Czenzi Guy has no other choice but to elude the Ormonde, Whitfield Cook, based on lawmen and confront Bruno. He follows the novel by Patricia Highsmith. him to the carnival, where they fight on a Producer: Uncredited (Alfred Hitchcock). crazily out-of-control merry-go-round. STRANGERS ON A TRAIN n 427

Bruno dies in a final, ride-wrecking acci- who were approached (Dashiell Hammett dent—but in his last moments unclenches and, reportedly and inexplicably, JOHN his fist, revealing the lighter to Guy and the STEINBECK, who’d loudly denounced his police. last Hitchcock collaboration, LIFEBOAT) turned him down. The one who did accept, A twisting meditation on DOUBLES and RAYMOND CHANDLER, soon regretted one of Hitchcock’s most singular and it, as did Hitchcock. meticulously worked-out films. Although the two men were alike in It came just in time. As the decade some ways—sharing not only an English began, Hitchcock had not had an unquali- Victorian upbringing but also all the con- fied hit since NOTORIOUS in 1946; his comitant convictions about the necessity of attempt at launching a new, independent duty and the dangerous mysteries of sex— production company had wrecked itself on they clashed almost from their first meet- the Great Barrier Reef of UNDER CAPRI- ings (typically gossipy get-togethers that, in CORN. Although he never went into a pro- Chandler’s opinion, dragged on for hours, duction not expecting it to resonate with and almost always uselessly). Chandler, who audiences, as well as with himself, this time only wanted to hammer out a script, found it was vital; another failure would turn a Hitchcock’s input distracting and often slump into a trend. quite arbitrary (“You find yourself trying He found it in a first novel by PATRI- to rationalize the shots he wants to make CIA HIGHSMITH titled Strangers on a rather than the story,” Chandler wrote his Train. It would obviously need a heavy British publisher. “Every time you get set he rewrite to avoid CENSORSHIP and meet jabs you off balance by wanting to do a love the demands of the marketplace; in High- scene on top of the Jefferson Memorial or smith’s book, Guy does murder Bruno’s something like that.”) Hitchcock, who pre- father and eventually is arrested. But it ferred talking expansively, even circuitously, already held—in its doppelgänger charac- before starting a project, thought Chan- ters, in its exploration of GUILTY wish- dler abrupt and sullenly uncooperative. (“I fulfillment, even in its bustling TRAIN— would offer him a suggestion,” Hitchcock themes and settings that deeply appealed recounted later. “Instead of giving it some to him. He bought the rights cheaply and thought, he would remark to me, very dis- began the writing process. contentedly, ‘If you can go it alone, why the The first to take a run at it was WHIT- hell do you need me?’”) FIELD COOK, who had already worked on Chandler eventually turned in a STAGE FRIGHT; although that film had screenplay—ending with Bruno mad and been a disappointment, Hitchcock always in an asylum, prefiguring the end of PSY- preferred to keep an amiable, if mediocre, CHO—only to be dismissed, without a relationship going rather than begin a new chance for revisions or even a further one. And Cook did some good early work in word. Speeding the dismissal, perhaps, had conference with the director, as they moved been that, at one point, Chandler referred the action to the East Coast and made the to the director, within his hearing, as “that book’s brutal Bruno into a charming and fat bastard”; referring to his weight was the SEXUALLY ambiguous villain. one insult Hitchcock could never forgive. Turning the lengthy prose treat- (The real reason for his later rift with TIPPI ment into a shooting script proved to be HEDREN, he once claimed, was that she’d more difficult, however. Some writers made a similar remark.) 428 n STRANGERS ON A TRAIN

With the start of production near- Guy’s prospective father-in-law, PATRI- ing, Hitchcock turned first to the fastest CIA HITCHCOCK as Barbara, the slightly and most dependable of his collabora- plain kid sister. Only RUTH ROMAN, the tors, BEN HECHT; he was unavailable leading lady, was imposed on Hitchcock but recommended his assistant, CZENZI by the studio, where Jack Warner was try- ORMONDE. With the help of ALMA ing to build her up as a new star (as shown REVILLE (and Barbara Keon, an old asso- by her second billing, ahead of Walker, ciate from the DAVID O. SELZNICK in the credits). Hitchcock, who found her days), they pulled together the final script, unappealing as an actress and even more with its consistent pattern of doubles—two distasteful as a fait accompli, remained men, two murders, two trips to the carni- unwaveringly cold to her throughout the val—contributed by Hitchcock himself. shoot. Casting had already begun. Hitchcock, The finished film, however, shows typically, had wanted the biggest STAR he Hitchcock triumphantly back in form after could get for his hero; William Holden was five years of mistakes and near-misses. And his first choice for Guy. But when that deal although Chandler had a small point—it didn’t happen, the director turned back to is a movie full of eye-grabbing visuals, of FARLEY GRANGER, the star of ROPE. It Hitchcock “moments”—they’re not only dissipated the conflict somewhat—apart integrated into the story but into the theme, from Holden’s charisma, his forceful mas- as in the famous shot of Bruno, the one culinity would have made his helplessness fixed point in an audience of head-swivel- in the situation that much more dramatic. ing tennis fans, turning the full force of his Yet Granger’s softness added a homo- MALE GAZE on Guy. eroticism to the story, making his first Strangers on a Train is, on one level, scene with ROBERT WALKER play like a a movie about the men’s attraction, a cruel HOMOSEXUAL pickup. parody of a romance—at first casually flir- Walker was a better choice as Bruno. tatious over drinks, then darkened by jeal- On some level, the casting seemed like ousy and demands, finally torn apart in a one of Hitchcock’s typically small, cruel flurry of recriminations and threats. But it JOKES at the expense of his old boss David is also a fable that, in a favorite Hitchcock O. Selznick. Walker was the ex-husband device, mirrors the two men, right from of Selznick’s new wife, Jennifer Jones, the start, as reflecting opposites: Bruno in and the actor’s very public anguish over (practically luminous) spectator shoes, Guy her initial affair with Selznick was well in plain business ones; Bruno very care- known; casting Walker took the last per- fully ordering his lunch, Guy settling for a son Selznick wanted to think about and hamburger and coffee; Bruno retreating to put him onscreen, front and center. But an indolent life of silk dressing gowns and Walker, whose career had cratered since allowances, Guy in shorts and sneakers, the divorce, was perfect in the role; like earning his living by sweating on the ten- JOSEPH COTTEN in SHADOW OF A nis court. DOUBT, like ANTHONY PERKINS in They are a different and yet strangely PSYCHO, he took the easy charm that had matched pair, and even more than Shadow first made him a star and twisted it into of a Doubt, the film makes this parallel con- something else. sistently explicit, through visuals (the open- The rest of the cast was drawn mostly ing shots of train tracks, the vertical neon from old standbys—LEO G. CARROLL as lights at the carnival), through dialogue STRANGERS ON A TRAIN n 429

(Bruno orders a “pair of doubles,” turns on definitely lower class—is the only barrier, Guy for being a “double-crosser”), through a living and distasteful memory of humble narrative (Guy’s panicky rush back to the backgrounds and guilty, sloppy pleasures. carnival intercut with Bruno’s delayed Won’t someone, anyone, just make her go trek to the crime scene, Bruno’s STRAN- away? GLING of Guy’s wife restaged in his near- Yet Hitchcock has his own doubled strangling of Guy’s future sister-in-law). nature, and even as he makes Miriam into a It is a complementary, contradictory film victim, he is also able to mourn her victim- of reflections that only present distorted ization. True, we see her snapping at Guy images, parallel lines that still eventually, early on, making quite clear her determi- brutally intersect. “Isn’t it a fascinating nation to bleed him for everything she can. design?” Hitchcock proudly asked FRAN- But then watch her in her next scene, as she ÇOIS TRUFFAUT decades later. “One lets two boys take her to the carnival. She could study it forever.” is flirtatious but in an almost innocently Yet if Strangers on a Train were only girlish way; she laughs easily, she bounces that, only offered a “fascinating design,” along, she incessantly gobbles snacks then it would be just the sort of movie (her “craving” a particularly sharp touch, that critics (like Chandler) often accused reminding us of her pregnancy). Without Hitchcock of making; visually interesting, Guy, she is a different woman. Even at the full of shots for cultists to champion, yet moment of her death, as Bruno comes up lacking any truly developed characters or and calls her name, her attitude is one of emotional depth. But there is more to the hopeful, even desperate, expectation. Per- film in that, not only in its exploration of haps this man—so much smoother than the Hitchcock’s old themes of wish-fulfillment local boys, so much more solicitous than and TRANSFERRED guilt—Guy exclaims her husband—will finally be the one she’s he “could strangle” his wife, and then she been looking for. is strangled—but in the character of Mir- And then he reaches out and strangles iam, that inconvenient woman who stands her, and her death throes are caught in the between Guy and the happiness he thinks twin, distorting lenses of her eyeglasses. he deserves. For all the clever, geometric preci- Miriam should be, and could initially sion of Strangers on a Train, selfish, dis- be taken as, a worthy sort of victim—no organized Miriam is its awkward, crude, longer in love with Guy, pregnant with yet ultimately sympathetic center. (“She another man’s child, and still happily dat- was a human being,” is the senator’s stiff ing several different boyfriends. (“She rejoinder to the flippant Barbara. “Let me was a tramp,” is Barbara’s blunt obitu- remind you that even the most unworthy ary.) Even worse—according, at least, to of us has a right to life and the pursuit of postwar dreams of upper mobility—she’s happiness.”) Yes, she stood in the way of an obstacle to Guy’s better, richer future. Guy’s perfect new marriage and poten- Like George in A Place in the Sun—also tial career—but ultimately, ironically, her released that year—Guy has a chance at a murder only emphasizes his own crippling very advantageous marriage, a union that weakness and moral passivity. And even could catapult his career. (Guy may be win- exonerated of the actual murder, what sort ning tennis matches now, but he wants to of political career can Guy expect? (Clearly go into politics.) And like Alice in A Place the senator, for one, no longer trusts him.) in the Sun, Miriam—clinging, carping, and Miriam’s death no more frees Guy than 430 n STRANGULATION

Villette’s death frees Logan in I CONFESS; important. Let me show you what I mean. it’s not a liberation but just another guilty You don’t mind if I borrow your neck for a burden. moment, do you?” And it is also Hitchcock’s consistent, The murder expert is Bruno Antony mournful reminder that, as much as we, in Hitchcock’s STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, and he, might like to gossip about true and he’s a trifle obsessed—so much so that crimes and fantasize about murder (the a particularly garish necktie he favors fea- neighbors in Shadow of a Doubt, the party tures a lobster, gigantic claws ready and guests here, Jeff in REAR WINDOW), the extended. But Hitchcock was obsessed, real thing is nasty and violent and ugly. too. For the director—who often posed for And leaves not only a victim but also a publicity photographs mock-strangling his coldly empty space. actresses, sometimes demonstrating a one- handed technique—it was, at least in mov- References ies sometimes, the “best way.” Dorothy Gardiner and Kathrine Sorley, The very first shot in the first “real” eds., Raymond Chandler Speaking (Boston: Hitchcock movie, THE LODGER, is of a Houghton Mifflin, 1962), 132–35; Gerald screaming BLONDE woman being throt- Gardner, The Censorship Papers: Movie tled, and strangulation appears again and Censorship Letters from the Hays Office, again in the movies to come. Sometimes, 1934–1968 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1987), it is an offscreen event or mentioned in 90–91; Farley Granger with Robert Cal- an aside—as in SECRET AGENT, where it houn, Include Me Out: My Life from Gold- means the death of one spy, or in NOTORI- wyn to Broadway (New York: St. Martin’s OUS, where it’s the planned end of one of Press, 2007), 107–10; Patricia Highsmith, the conspirators—but more often it appears Strangers on a Train (Baltimore: Penguin onscreen, dwelled on with sometimes lurid Books, 1974); Patrick McGilligan, Alfred detail. Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light And when it does occur onscreen, (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 441–53; its perpetrator’s intent is often SEXUAL Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: gratification, the execution a kind of coded The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: sex—the no-longer-merry widows whom Da Capo Press, 1999), 321–31; François Uncle Charlie dispatches in SHADOW OF Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New A DOUBT, the innocent boy victim of the York: Touchstone, 1985), 193–99. sociopaths in ROPE, trashy Miriam (and very nearly one of those flirty dowagers) in STRANGULATION Strangers on a Train. Margot barely escapes The party conversation has turned to being strangled in DIAL M FOR MURDER; silly things, flights of fantasy, mad hypo- many women in FRENZY do not. theticals. Two matrons and a handsome Because of the sexual connotations of younger man get on the subject of murder. the panting, spasmodic act—and Hitch- Suppose you had a spouse who was dread- cock often cuts in the middle of it to the fully in the way. How to do it? One woman victim’s legs, writhing—sometimes, as if suggests a gun. The other, poison. The ele- to mark their objectification of the victims, gant gentleman is unconvinced. “I have the the murderers won’t use their bare hands best way, the best tools,” he proudly insists, but an object (a scarf in Dial M for Mur- holding up his hands. “Simple, silent and der, a necktie in Frenzy, the titular object quick—the silent part being the most in Rope). SUBJECTIVE CAMERA n 431

For the killer in the first film, it is an Stuart played Hugh, the ill-treated fiancé extra barrier between himself and what is, in Hitchcock’s THE PLEASURE GARDEN, after all, merely a distasteful job for hire, and the detective in the muddled NUMBER like being a gigolo; for the killers in the 17; he also had a bit in ELSTREE CALLING. second and third movies, it illustrates their Although he had survived the advent of talk- contempt for their victims (as well as serv- ies, his fortunes fell along with that of Brit- ing symbolically—rough rope, club tie—to ain’s homegrown cinema; through the ’30s reassert their own, threatened masculinity). and ’40s, most of his films had low budgets Because although FRANÇOIS TRUF- and even lower expectations, and the modest FAUT claimed Hitchcock shot his mur- Stuart’s fame began to rapidly fade. ders like love scenes and love scenes like He continued to “work like the devil,” murders, his movie murders aren’t really however, and television brought new love scenes—they’re rapes. And unlike the opportunities, as did the British horror violence committed by his villains with boom, with Stuart finding supporting parts knives, guns, and poison—villains who are in Village of the Damned, Paranoiac, and almost always acting surreptitiously or in The Mummy. His last film role was as one disguise—these strangulations are crimes of Krypton’s elders in Superman. He died at committed by people determined to assert 81 in London. their IDENTITIES and proclaim their DOMINANCE, killers who want their vic- References tims to feel their touch, to know everything Jonathan Croall, “My Dad, the Silent Film that’s happening, to be terrifyingly aware Star,” Guardian, February 10, 2012, http:// right up until the moment that they are not. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/ There are more violent deaths in Hitch- feb/11/john-stuart-actor-silent-film-star; cock. There are rarely more vicious ones. Nick Smurthwaite, “My Father, the Silent Film Star,” https://www.thestage.co.uk/fea Reference tures/2013/jonathan-croall-on-john-stuart. Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da SUBJECTIVE CAMERA Capo Press, 1999), 261, 331. A use of the camera to show precisely what a character is seeing, perhaps even how he STUART, JOHN (1898–1979) or she is moving (now a cliché of a certain Edinburgh-born performer who, after typi- kind of slasher movie, in which the camera cally brutal service in World War I—he itself stalks the victims, both encouraging enlisted with many of his friends, only to the audience’s identification with the villain see them die next to him in the trenches— and crudely concealing his IDENTITY). returned home to become an actor. He Unlike the close-up/insert/reaction set-up made his film debut in 1920; in just the next of the KULESHOV EFFECT (which Hitch- year he would make 10 films, heralding the cock used extensively, particularly in REAR start of a career busy even in those break- WINDOW), with the subjective technique, neck days. When one interviewer later asked the camera actually “becomes” the character. him his approach, Stuart’s summation was Hitchcock disliked any exaggerated simple: “Keep learning, work like the devil, use of the approach, singling out for spe- never relax and never be satisfied.” cific criticism ROBERT MONTGOM- Handsome and athletic—he was a pop- ERY, his old STAR from MR. AND MRS. ular leading man through the silent era— SMITH. Montgomery used the subjective 432 n SUBJECTIVE CAMERA camera exclusively in his direction of Lady ple who are no longer there, whose violent in the Lake, showing his main character’s actions persist only in memory. The cam- face only when he happened to stop and era becomes its own character. look in a mirror; throughout the entire Even more often, though, it encour- film, we only saw what he saw. “A terrible ages us to take sides. In almost too many mistake,” Hitchcock called it in an early films to count—but including SPELL- INTERVIEW with PETER BOGDANO- BOUND, PSYCHO, and THE BIRDS— VICH. it helps prolong tension, as a character It’s not that Hitchcock didn’t use the climbs a STAIRCASE, getting closer and style; he did, and often. But it was always closer to danger, and we walk with them, more carefully and more sparingly, with an step by step. Or it increases the violence of eye toward a very specific emotional effect. the assault, as in attacking the protagonist, The first idea—a trick picked up someone seems to attack us personally—in perhaps from F. W. MURNAU and his NORTH BY NORTHWEST, in STRANG- EXPRESSIONISTIC approach, particu- ERS ON A TRAIN—as Hitchcock cuts from larly as seen in The Last Laugh—was to use the approaching fist to the injured hero the approach to take the audience into a falling back. Just because we’re sitting in a character’s personal and very intense emo- theater seat doesn’t mean we’re safe. tional state. Frequently, Hitchcock does Or innocent. There are a number of this to show a character who’s about to subjective shots in Psycho, and each one pass out due to alcohol (THE RING), stress encourages us to enter the mind of the (the first THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO character. Like desperate Marion, we look MUCH), or a blow to the head (THE LADY at the stolen money in our hands and won- VANISHES). Images may blur, darken, or der; like suspicious Lila, we climb the walk swirl like a kaleidoscope. (It’s done most to the Bates house and worry what we’re famously and effectively to show Scottie’s going to find. The tension becomes not illness in VERTIGO, as a dizzying DOLLY just prolonged but also personal. And the zoom simultaneously seems to both bring method of identification is so strong, albeit the ground to us and thrust it away.) These subconscious, that Hitchcock’s best use of are subjective shots in the most literal sense it in the film may even slip by unnoticed— of the word, showing us not only what the as, coming back to clean up the mess that character is seeing but also the heightened, MOTHER has made, Norman washes the even hysterical, way in which he or she is blood off his hands. Our hands, actually, as seeing it. the camera looks at them under the faucet. More frequently and realistically, Because this one shot is the precise however—although no less emotionally— fulcrum point of the movie where we are Hitchcock also uses the subjective shot to made, invisibly but undeniably, to shift our draw us further into the story or to increase allegiances, to abandon our interest in Mar- our identification with the character. Some- ion and identify with Norman instead, to times it serves a purely narrative function. move from merely identifying with a thief In REBECCA and again in ROPE, the hero to cheering on someone who is at the very describes an event that happened earlier in least an accessory after the fact to a mur- a particular room; we don’t get the usual der (and, by the end of the film, has turned flashback, but as he speaks, the camera out to be quite a good deal more than that). pans from place to place, emphasizing the It is the most daring thing in the entire facts and encouraging us to “see” the peo- movie—narratively, artistically, morally— SUSPENSE VS. SURPRISE n 433 and Hitchcock does it with a single subjec- between us. Nothing happens, and then all tive shot. But then every kind of shot, every of a sudden, ‘Boom!’” This, he said, would angle, had a specific meaning to him and result in no more than 15 seconds of sur- a singular purpose. To do an entire movie prise. with a subjective camera would be like “Now,” he continued, “let us take a writing an entire story in capital letters. suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows Reference it, probably because they have seen the Peter Bogdanovich, The Cinema of Alfred anarchist place it there. . . . The audi- Hitchcock, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ ence is longing to warn the characters Alfred_Hitchcock_and_Peter_Bogdanov on the screen: ‘You shouldn’t be talking ich_%281963%29. about such trivial matters. There’s a bomb beneath you and it’s about to explode!’” SUSPENSE And this, he pointed out, could provide a CBS radio anthology show that enjoyed a good 15 minutes of suspense. long run from 1942 to 1962; it had a try- The most important lesson from that, out in 1940 with a special presentation of Hitchcock said, was that “whenever possi- THE LODGER. Alfred Hitchcock directed ble the public must be informed.” And this, the story, which he was still contemplating like most of the important information of remaking in America as a film; EDMUND his films, is best conveyed visually. GWENN and HERBERT MARSHALL In SABOTAGE, we know the bomb appeared. (Not coincidentally, all were will explode at 1:45—and so Hitchcock also involved in FOREIGN CORRESPON- consistently cuts to ticking clocks. We see DENT, for which the show served as a the gun poke out of the curtains in THE plug.) When Hitchcock’s own TV anthol- MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, the ogy series began in the ’50s, it would look shoe starting to fall out of a coat pocket back to this series and draw on much of in MARNIE, the murderer coming back to the same material. his apartment in REAR WINDOW—and always, always, before the person in dan- Reference ger does. This multiplies the audience’s Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life engagement because now we can antici- in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- pate the dangers ahead; it underlines (and Collins, 2003), 275–76. exacerbates) our VOYEURISM because we’re absolutely unable to do a thing SUSPENSE VS. SURPRISE about it. He was billed from early on in his Hol- Occasionally, Hitchcock would break lywood days as the “Master of Suspense,” his own rules. Although it’s briefly prefig- not as the “Master of Surprise,” and the ured, the shower attack in PSYCHO still distinction was important to Hitchcock. owes much more to shock than suspense He would often draw a firm line between (and the murderer’s true IDENTITY is the two words, as he pointed out carefully concealed until the end); some of the to FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT during their attacks in THE BIRDS come without any famous INTERVIEW. warning. But Hitchcock was always on “We are now having a very inno- the side of drawing the audience into the cent little chat,” he said. “Let us suppose story, a partnership nowhere more dra- that there is a bomb underneath this table matic than in VERTIGO, where he gives the 434 n SUSPICION big “surprise” of the impersonation away. SUSPICION (US 1941) Anyone could have a shock ending in the final scene; far more interesting, Hitch- Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay: Samson Raphaelson, Joan Har- cock thought, to have an entire third act of rison, Alma Reville, based on the book breathless anticipation: What will happen by Before the Fact by Francis Iles. when Scottie finds out? (Even so, Hitch- Producer: Uncredited (Harry E. Edington). cock wrestled with that decision until the Cinematography: Harry Stradling. final cut.) Editor: William Hamilton. Still, even Hitchcock could sometimes Original Music: Franz Waxman. make a mistake—as he felt he had in Sabo- Cast: Joan Fontaine (Lina McLaidlaw), Cary tage by actually letting the bomb go off. “I Grant (Johnnie Aysgarth), Cedric Hard- made a cardinal error there in terms of sus- wicke (Gen. McLaidlaw), Nigel Bruce pense,” he told PETER BOGDANOVICH. (“Beaky”), Dame May Whitty (Mrs. “The bomb should never have gone off. If McLaidlaw). Running Time: 99 minutes. Black and white. you build an audience up to that point, the Released Through: RKO. explosion becomes strangely anti-climactic. You work the audience up to such a degree that they need the relief. The critics were very angry. One woman said, “I could hit Johnnie Aysgarth is handsome, charming, you.” . . . One should have done the kill- lazy, and irresponsible—so sheltered Lina ing a different way, off the screen or some- McLaidlaw can’t help but fall for him. They thing. I shouldn’t have made a suspense get married, despite her rich father’s disap- thing of it.” proval, and have a lavish honeymoon—on borrowed money, Lina finds out. Although References he likes to live in high style, Johnnie doesn’t Peter Bogdanovich, The Cinema of Alfred like to work, preferring to pawn his wife’s Hitchcock, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ possessions or hope for a big bet to come in Alfred_Hitchcock_and_Peter_Bogdano at the racetrack. vich_%281963%29; Patrick McGilligan, Although eventually she shames John- Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and nie into taking a job with his cousin, an old Light (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), school chum of Johnnie, “Beaky,” tells her 563–64; François Truffaut, Hitchcock/ that Johnnie is a lovable scoundrel who Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, can’t quite be trusted. When Lina finds out 1985), 73. Johnnie lost his job for embezzlement, she decides to leave him—but then her father SUSPICION dies, and Johnnie becomes a comfort. Stretching himself a little thin, Alfred Her father’s will, though, provides no Hitchcock took on this anthology mys- windfall, so Johnnie convinces Beaky to tery series for NBC in 1957, even as he was become his partner in a highly risky busi- working on films and ALFRED HITCH- ness proposition. When Beaky mysteri- COCK PRESENTS was airing on CBS; ously dies, Lina becomes convinced that JOAN HARRISON produced, while he Johnnie killed him; when she discovers that took an executive producer credit; he Johnnie has been researching undetectable also directed the first episode, “FOUR poisons, she’s convinced she’s next—par- O’CLOCK.” The series managed 42 one- ticularly one night when he brings her a hour episodes before being cancelled. suspicious glass of milk. SUSPICION n 435

Lina doesn’t drink it and the next day but, in the next scene, unknowingly mails announces she is going to her mother’s for a letter his wife has given him in which a while; an angry Johnnie insists on driv- she denounced him as her murderer. (In ing her. When along a mountain road she some more emphatic tellings of this story, becomes convinced he’s trying to push this was his plan right until the very end.) her out of the car, she becomes hysteri- The only problem, the director said later, cal; Johnnie stops the car and tells her he was that the studio or his STAR wouldn’t was merely trying to keep her from falling agree, and the story had to be drastically out. In fact, he confesses, the poison was rewritten. for him—he can’t pay back the embezzled According to DONALD SPOTO’s money and is likely to go to prison. As for THE DARK SIDE OF GENIUS, though, Beaky’s death, he had nothing to do with it. Hitchcock always intended to make a A tearful Lina apologizes, and she and movie about a paranoid wife, and his sto- Johnnie drive back to their house—to face ries about studio censorship were just him their future together. typically trying to shift the blame for a critically disparaged film; in fact, Spoto insists, Whenever he felt disappointed in the last Hitchcock’s earliest treatments made no project and uncertain about the next, mention of the husband being a killer, Hitchcock’s strategy was to retreat to the focusing instead on the wife’s delusions. familiar. So after the boredom of MR. Indeed, Hitchcock’s own initial notes to the AND MRS. SMITH, Hitchcock decided studio emphasize his interest in telling the to go back not only to mysteries but also story of an overly suspicious spouse. to the sort of cozy tea-and-arsenic thrill- Regardless of who first decided on ers that writers like Dorothy L. Sayers and that change in the novel, however, dis- Agatha Christie had been turning out for carding the book’s original ending posed years, with their English village settings and a real problem. What to put in place of it? their determinedly conservative messages And how does Johnnie—who is definitely of chaos confounded and order blissfully a wastrel, if not a killer—redeem himself? restored. Hitchcock and his writers wrestled with a Given that, though, Before the Fact variety of endings. (In one, Johnnie atoned by Francis Iles was in some ways an odd by going off to enlist in RAF.) Another choice to adapt; its story was about a climax, which was actually shot, had Lina woman who gradually becomes convinced drinking the “poisoned” milk—only to dis- that her husband is going to kill her but is cover that it’s a glass of plain homogenized too in love with him to save herself. (She’s because Johnnie is preparing to drink the right, too—he does kill her.) RKO had been real poison in the other room. (She stops trying to make a film of it since at least him, of course.) 1935, but the CENSORS wouldn’t allow But a sneak preview was disastrous, it—not because the main character was a and so the writers came up with yet another murderer but because, by knowingly drink- climax, in which Johnnie is shown to be ing the poison her husband gives her, the innocent of everything except the embez- heroine was committing suicide. zlement and Lina’s worries are proven to Years later, Hitchcock would protest be merely wild misinterpretations. Blam- that he had intended to confound the cen- ing herself, Lina vows to stand by him as sors, faithfully adapt the novel, and make he faces justice and, instead of heading to a film in which the husband succeeds— her MOTHER’s as planned, steers their car 436 n SUSPICION home, taking an abrupt U-turn—an unwit- throughout is feminine, rejecting his usual ting symbol perhaps for the film’s entire phallic, masculine metaphors for vaginal or awkward ending. maternal ones—the dark tunnel the movie If the script process was headache- begins in (daringly, in total blackness), the inducing, being back in England—or at purse Lina snaps shut when declining John- least RKO’s backlot version of the same— nie’s advances, the mailbox that receives was comforting, as were the familiar faces. important letters (and provides Hitchcock’s HARRY STRADLING, who had worked CAMEO), the milk that may bring death with Hitchcock on JAMAICA INN, was instead of life. his cameraman again; JOAN FONTAINE, But those visual images are just the NIGEL BRUCE, and LEO G. CARROLL most obvious signifiers of a film that is were held over from REBECCA, as was told—relentlessly and almost without composer FRANZ WAXMAN, and many relief—from its heroine’s point of view. It’s of the smaller parts were filled with old a choice made not just to insist that this British friends. (DAME MAY WHITTY, is her story (although Hitchcock actually Hitchcock’s Miss Froy from THE LADY always wanted to call the film Johnnie) but VANISHES, even showed up to play Lina’s also to make clear that this is a story told mother.) through her eyes. And although this would be the first This is emphasized again visually time Hitchcock had worked with CARY when Johnnie and Beaky are talking about GRANT (they would do three more films their new business venture and a trip out together), he immediately got to the heart to see the land. We see Lina’s face. We see of the actor’s dark appeal—the inherent her forming the word MURDER with let- duplicity in all that charm, the infinitely ter tiles. We see a picture of the cliff-side flexible morality behind that seductive property and her imagining of Johnnie smile. Johnnie is irresistible, as Beaky pushing Beaky and the poor stooge fall- points out, which is his fatal danger, and ing (all played surreally to the real-life drawing that quality out monopolized Beaky laughing stupidly at one of Johnnie’s Hitchcock’s attention during the shoot (a JOKES). consideration that irked Fontaine, who It’s a smartly done sequence, and it had received the director’s full focus on ends with the emotionally overwrought Rebecca). But then Fontaine had already Lina fainting. That’s something she does played a version of Lina in that film—the again, and that and her generally over- shy, bookish romantic in sensible shoes. whelmed attitude throughout suggest that, She could be left to her own devices, now. yes, Hitchcock’s interest all along was in What Grant was doing, even if he wasn’t jumping into the dark whirlpool of paranoia playing an outright murderer, was very new and telling the story of a hysterical woman for him and required special handling. who saw criminal behavior where there was Yet even if on the set Hitchcock was none. (A situation that so intrigued him devoting most of his attention to his male that more than a decade later it served as star, Suspicion—like Rebecca, like SABO- the basis for the first episode of ALFRED TAGE, like MARNIE—is one of his most HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, “REVENGE,” complicatedly female-oriented films, as which he directed himself.) the director both insists on tormenting his Because despite Fontaine’s wounded heroine (like a sadist) and identifying with feelings, she is very much the star of Sus- her (as a feminist). Even the symbolism picion, a fact borne out by her winning the SWERLING, JO n 437 best actress Oscar that year for her perfor- By the dawn of the talkies, Swerling mance. (And the only Oscar ever won by a was in Hollywood, where people who Hitchcock performer—although, honestly, could write dialogue were in high demand; Fontaine had deserved it more for Rebecca he wrote several dramas for Frank Capra the year before.) And like so many of Hitch- (Ladies of Leisure, The Miracle Woman) cock’s greatest movies—NOTORIOUS, and such popular hits as Pride of the Yan- VERTIGO—it’s a story about feminine kees and Blood and Sand (in addition doubt. “I thought you’d stopped loving me,” to being one of the many writers work- Lina barely breathes at one point. And as ing piecemeal on Gone with the Wind). A Hitchcock knew, this worry—for someone competent veteran, he helped turn JOHN who’s only capable of seeing themselves as STEINBECK’s treatment for LIFEBOAT a reflection in their lover’s EYES—could be into a workable screenplay (or into a trav- the most existential doubt of all. esty, according to Steinbeck). Adaptable, if not particularly stylish, References Swerling did the screenplay for the mar- Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life velously lurid noir Leave Her to Heaven, in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- helped with some rewrites for Capra’s It’s erCollins, 2003), 284–90; Donald Spoto, a Wonderful Life, and cowrote the book for The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred the Broadway hit Guys and Dolls. He died Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, at 67 in Los Angeles. 1999), 243–46; Donald Spoto, Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Lead- References ing Ladies (New York: Harmony Books, “Jo Swerling,” IMDb, http://www.imdb 2008), 107–15; François Truffaut, Hitch- .com/name/nm0842485/bio?ref_=nm_ cock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Touch- ov_bio_sm; “Jo Swerling,” Interna- stone, 1985), 140–43. tional Dictionary of Film and Film- makers, http://www.encyclopedia.com/ SWERLING, JO (1897–1964) doc/1G2-3406802624.html; Donald Spoto, Berdichev-born author who began writing The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred for the New York stage in the early ’20s. Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, He was at first known for his comedies 1999), 267; Emily Temple, “John Stein- and scripted Humor Risk, a 1921 short that beck Wanted His Name Taken off Alfred marked the first appearance of the Marx Hitchcock’s Lifeboat,” Flavorwire, Febru- Brothers. (The film is now considered lost; ary 4, 2012, http://flavorwire.com/256717/ according to one story, Groucho hated it so john-steinbeck-wanted-his-name-taken much that he had it burned.) -off-hitchcocks-lifeboat. AT

TANDY, JESSICA (1909–1994) ated theater actors—and had known her London-born performer, the daughter of for years through Cronyn—was keen to a traveling salesman and an educator who have her in THE BIRDS. (She had already worked with mentally disabled children. appeared on three episodes of ALFRED Outwardly pale and delicate but with a core HITCHCOCK PRESENTS.) And although of inner strength, Tandy made her stage it may not be apparent now, at the time debut at 18, and although some directors Tandy was one of the biggest names in a dismissed her as not being pretty enough film starring newcomer TIPPI HEDREN, for leads, “in a way it was rather good,” she TV actress SUZANNE PLESHETTE, and said later. “I didn’t get the part of the young Aussie import ROD TAYLOR in only his ingénue. I got more interesting parts.” Soon second leading role. she was being acclaimed for her work in Tandy was one of its biggest assets, Shakespeare, her Ophelia in JOHN GIEL- too. Although slightly too old to be play- GUD’s 1934 production of HAMLET being ing the MOTHER of a grade-schooler, particularly prized. Tandy brought heart to the character of After her marriage to actor Jack a lonely and clinging mother, and her Hawkins began to end, Tandy moved to performance is full of stark, wordless America, eventually marrying fellow actor touches—her silent gasping horror as she HUME CRONYN, making her Hollywood flees the dead farmer’s house, her barely- debut in The Seventh Cross in 1944, and held-at-bay hysteria as she tidies up the following that up with small parts in the house after another avian onslaught. Her period dramas Dragonwyck and Forever later scenes with Hedren have a particu- Amber. The stage, however, continued to larly striking, guarded tenderness—deep- offer her the greatest awards; her perfor- ened perhaps by the knowledge that the mance as Blanch du Bois in A Streetcar veteran actress was responding not only to Named Desire, a role she took on at Ten- a character but also to a similarly unsteady nessee Williams’s request and played for young STAR. two years, was said to be one of Broadway’s “Working with Jessica Tandy was just greatest. (Brando, being Brando, later pro- celestial,” Hedren said later. “I mean, con- claimed that they’d both been miscast and summate actress. You know, just watching insisted the play hadn’t worked as a result.) her working was just thrilling. Absolutely Tandy’s work in Hollywood continued thrilling. And what a beautiful person to be sporadic and somewhat less reward- she was—not just physically but just, you ing; Hitchcock, however, who appreci- know, really considerate and fun.”

438 n TANDY, JESSICA n 439

Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll pause, but only briefly, in the fast-paced The 39 Steps. Gaumont British Picture Corporation of America/Photofest © Gaumont British Picture Corporation of America

After The Birds, Tandy rededicated she grew older, the cinema’s interest was herself to the stage, often appearing with rekindled; she had good parts in The Bos- Cronyn and racking up a long list of suc- tonians, The World According to Garp, and cesses in New York and regional theater; Fried Green Tomatoes and won the best their two-hander The Gin Game became actress Oscar for Driving Miss Daisy. She a particularly sweet success. And yet as was already 80, and although she would 440 n TAYLOR, JOHN RUSSELL soon be diagnosed with cancer, she worked As a review in American Film said at right until her death in Connecticut five the time, “Obviously, (Taylor) would not years later. have got the director’s cooperation were they not relatively close personal friends, References but when that friendship leads to a gen- All about The Birds, directed by Laurent erally uncritical point of view, even spill- Bouzereau (2000), documentary, http:// ing over into worshipfulness, it is unclear the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/All_About_The whether the bargain was worth the price. In _Birds_%282000%29_-_transcript; Marilyn biographies of famous men published while Berger, “Jessica Tandy, a Patrician Star of the subjects are still alive, this is almost Theater and Film, Dies at 85,” New York always the case.” Times, September 12, 1994, http://www Later, when DONALD SPOTO’s THE .nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/ DARK SIDE OF GENIUS raised ques- bday/0607.html; “Jessica Tandy,” IBDb, tions of personal obsession and SEXUAL http://ibdb.com/person.php?id=68863; harassment, particularly on the sets of “Jessica Tandy,” IMDb, http://www.imdb THE BIRDS and MARNIE, Taylor rose to .com/name/nm0001788/bio?ref_=nm_ov the late director’s defense, heatedly deny- _bio_sm. ing the charges on Hitchcock’s behalf. (The real reason the filmmaker had broken TAYLOR, JOHN RUSSELL with TIPPI HEDREN, Taylor claimed, was (1935– ) because, when Hitchcock refused to give Dover-born author who went to Cam- her time off during shooting to fly to an bridge, studied art, and began writing on awards show, she had publicly called him a film, theater, and television in the early “fat pig” and badly hurt his feelings.) Tay- ’60s, becoming the movie critic for the lor reviewed Spoto’s book for the Times; Times in 1962. He has written examina- unsurprisingly, he panned it. tions of Britain’s “angry young man” Taylor still writes about Hitchcock dramas; critical biographies of STARS, occasionally, and despite history’s deep- including Alec Guinness and INGRID ening and darkening portrait of the direc- BERGMAN; and many more books on art tor, his own viewpoint remains essentially and artists. unchanged. “He was possibly a monster,” For much of the ’70s, Taylor lived in he says now. “But a very loveable monster.” California, where he taught at UCLA and became friendly with Alfred Hitchcock; he References eventually became the director’s official “John Russell Taylor: Biography,” Fan- biographer, too, publishing the authorized dango, http://www.fandango.com/johnrus Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitch- selltaylor/biography/p188022; John Rus- cock in 1978. The book had all the advan- sell Taylor, “Hitch Hatchet Job,” Times, tages—and disadvantages—of the family’s May 19, 1983, http://the.hitchcock.zone/ cooperation. On the one hand, it had many wiki/The_Times_%2819/May/1983%29 personal details, particularly of the direc- _-_Hitch_hatchet_job; John Russell Taylor, tor’s childhood; on the other, it seemed to “A Loveable Monster,” Times, February 16, praise his work indiscriminately while stu- 2008, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/The diously avoiding any questions about the _Times_%2816/Feb/2008%29_-_’A_love films’ darker meanings or the filmmaker’s able_monster’; Kenneth Turan, “Nothing personal life. Too Personal,” American Film (Decem- TAYLOR, ROD n 441 ber 1978), http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ lady TIPPI HEDREN; the director insisted American_Film_%281978%29_-_Books on having tea alone with her every day and :_Nothing_Too_Personal. bristled when Taylor even touched her. “She was like a precious piece of jew- TAYLOR, ROD (1930–2015) elry he owned, and little by little, no one Rugged, Lidcombe-born performer who was permitted to come physically close to grew up in the Australian suburbs, the son her during the production,” Taylor told of a family with some artistic leanings. His DONALD SPOTO. “He was putting a father was a draftsman, and his mother, a wall around her, trying to isolate her from prolific author of children’s books. Initially everyone else so that all her time would interested in art, Taylor switched to drama be spent only with him.” Taylor tried to after seeing LAURENCE OLIVIER on tour be supportive of his costar—Hedren later in Richard III. Supporting himself at first called him a “great pal to me and a real by working as a window dresser, Taylor strength”—but the actor was in the middle began landing small parts on television and of a tempestuous relationship with Anita in Australian films; when a 1954 prize for Ekberg at the time and decidedly preoccu- his radio work won him a ticket to London, pied. he impulsively hopped off the plane during After The Birds, Taylor held on to his a Los Angeles layover and stayed to pursue leading-man status for a few more years— his chances there instead. he made two movies with DORIS DAY, The handsome, virile Taylor quickly including the spy parody The Glass Bot- picked up supporting parts in westerns, tom Boat, and starred in the Sean O’Casey dramas, even light romantic comedies; story Young Cassidy—but as the ’60s grew although he failed to win the audition for shaggier, his old-fashioned, square-jawed the boxing drama Somebody up There appeal began to feel a little out of fashion. Likes Me, he did get the part in The Time By the ’70s, Taylor was mostly doing Machine, his first lead role, which led to low-budget action thrillers in Europe; by more TV work (and doing the voice of the ’80s, he’d moved on to smaller charac- Pongo in Disney’s 101 Dalmatians). THE ter parts. “Pretending to still be the tough BIRDS was only his second lead. man of action isn’t dignified for me any- “I got this call out of the blue from Mr. more,” the former STAR frankly admitted. Hitchcock and was totally amazed,” Taylor “There comes a time when you’re over the said years after. “And I came out, and being hill and there are plenty of great looking a brash young brat, I guess I didn’t show younger actors who can take your place. any kind of respect that I was supposed to, The action stars of today are making some and I think he kind of liked it. And we got wonderful films. There are no ‘I could do it on extremely well. And I did the wrong better’ feelings in me.” thing—I called him Alfred!” Taylor retired in 2000, only to be lured Overcoming that initial, unwanted back for two, tongue-in-cheek projects— familiarity, Hitchcock came to like the playing Winston Churchill in Quentin Tar- young actor, Taylor said, particularly when antino’s Inglourious Basterds, a tribute to it was clear he didn’t have a lot of actorly the sort of Euro-exploitation movies Taylor questions about motivation. But as the had churned out in the past and, in a nod filming went on, Taylor said, he noticed to The Birds, Kaw, a low-budget burlesque that Hitchcock began to ignore him while about lethal ravens. He died at 84, in Los being strangely possessive about leading Angeles, of a heart attack. “One of the most 442 n TAYLOR, SAMUEL A. fun people I have ever met, thoughtful and “In those first talks, we decided that classy,” Hedren said afterward. “There was the more emotion there was in the man, everything good in that man.” the stronger the picture would be,” Taylor said of their early meetings. “And he found References without even thinking about it that he was All about The Birds, directed by Laurent making a picture that went much deeper Bouzereau (2000), documentary, http:// than most of his pictures just because the the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/All_About_The basic story—not the plot—but the basic _Birds_%282000%29_-_transcript; Ronald story had a true human emotion; this Bergan, “Rod Taylor Obituary,” Guardian, obsession of a man who, for the first time January 9, 2015, http://www.theguardian in his life, had fallen deeply in love.” .com/film/2015/jan/09/rod-taylor; “Rod It would be another one of the direc- Taylor,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ tor’s close, working relationships. “I gave name/nm0001792/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio him the characters and the dialogue he _sm; “Rod Taylor, Star of ‘The Birds,’ needed and developed the story, but it was Dies Aged 84,” BBC News, http://www.the from first frame to last his film,” Taylor guardian.com/film/2015/jan/09/rod-taylor; said. “There was no moment that he wasn’t Donald Spoto, Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred there.” Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies (New The two men became friends, as did York: Harmony Books, 2008), 250. their wives—the Hitchcocks attended the wedding of the Taylors’ son, and the TAYLOR, SAMUEL A. couples even occasionally vacationed (1912–2000) together—and Hitchcock would turn to Chicago-born author who, after a stint in him again for help when other writers were the Merchant Marine, moved to New York, unavailable or couldn’t provide the touch where he began writing for radio com- he wanted. The results, though, were never edies and serving as an anonymous script as magical as Vertigo. NO BAIL FOR THE doctor for bad plays. His own Broadway JUDGE ended up not being made when career began late in life with the nostalgic Audrey Hepburn dropped out; TOPAZ, The Happy Time in 1950. It was followed which was shot, unfortunately survived and three years later by Sabrina Fair, and when staggered into theaters. Billy Wilder decided to turn that into the Although they remained friends, movie Sabrina, Taylor shared the adapta- Taylor concentrated on other projects tion assignment (with ERNEST LEHMAN) after Topaz, including the soapy The Love and began a new life in Hollywood. Machine and Wilder’s Avanti! Neither He became Hitchcock’s last but came to much, and a 1976 return to Broad- best choice to write VERTIGO. Maxwell way—the western comedy Legend—closed Anderson’s script had been unusable after five performances. Taylor retired (which should not have been surprising, as shortly thereafter; knowing that Hitchcock Hitchcock hadn’t liked his script for THE was by then depressed and in failing health, WRONG MAN either—but liked break- he made a point of calling him most Sun- ing in a new writer even less). The second days just to check in. script, courtesy of ALEC COPPEL, hadn’t “He never really had any close friends,” been much better, the director decided, and Taylor said years later. “It must have been so he turned to Taylor, who had enjoyed very hard for him. Hitch was taken very several recent successes. seriously by the whole world—but not by TETZLAFF, TED n 443

Hollywood until it was too late. He was a of the atomic bomb, The Beginning or the great artist, but people in Hollywood . . . End. In 1947, he triumphantly returned to thought he just told a good yarn.” Shakespeare in the lauded Broadway pro- Taylor died of heart failure in Blue duction of Antony and Cleopatra opposite Hill, ME, at 87. Katherine Cornell; his last film was the gentle comedy The Titfield Thunderbolt in References 1953. He died at 68 in London. Obsessed with Vertigo: New Life for Hitch- cock’s Masterpiece, directed by Harrison References Engle (1997), documentary, http://the “Godfrey Tearle,” IMDb, http://www.imdb .hitchcock.zone/wiki/Obsessed_with_Ver .com/name/nm0853607/bio?ref_=nm tigo:_New_Life_for_Hitchcock’s_Master _ov_bio_sm; “Godfrey Tearle: Biography,” piece_%281997%29_-_transcript; “Samuel Fandango, http://www.fandango.com/god A. Taylor,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ freytearle/biography/P70160. name/nm0853138/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio _sm; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of TETZLAFF, TED (1903–1995) Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New Los Angeles–born filmmaker, the son of York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 401–2, 552. racecar driver and early stuntman Teddy Tetzlaff. Tetzlaff (whose given name was TEARLE, GODFREY (1884–1953) actually Dale) began his career in the ’20s Anglo-American performer born in New photographing forgettable silent comedies. York but raised in England. His father was By the 1930s, his star had risen consider- the Shakespearean actor George Osmond ably, thanks largely to CAROLE LOM- Tearle, and Tearle made his stage debut at BARD, who declared him her favorite nine in his father’s production of Richard cinematographer; he ended up shooting III, continuing as a member of the com- 10 of her films. He shot NOTORIOUS for pany; in 1908, he made his film debut in an Hitchcock, and you can see some of what early, abridged version of Romeo and Juliet. Lombard loved in his work with INGRID As a young man, he would go on to play BERGMAN there—she never looked love- in many other classics, including a particu- lier, her skin soft and supple, her golden larly acclaimed Othello. hair giving off its own special light. Tearle’s film work began to pick up It was a beautiful achievement, and in the ’20s and, given his resonant voice, as if he knew he couldn’t better that film’s suffered no slowdown when the talkies many memorable visuals—the long slow arrived; his movie career got a substan- crane shot at the party, the never-ending tial boost in 1935, when Hitchcock had kiss—Tetzlaff made that film, his 115th, the regal actor play Professor Jordan, the his last as a cinematographer and refocused respectable English gentleman who is his energies on directing. Although they identified by part of a missing finger as tended to be bottom-of-the-bill features the leader of a gang of enemy agents called (Son of Sinbad, The Treasure of Lost Can- THE 39 STEPS. yon), a number of noirs, particularly the The roles that followed were less vil- HITCHCOCKIAN The Window, about a lainous; during the war, Tearle played a boy who witnesses a murder but finds no long line of valiant officers onscreen and, one believes him, suggests that he would after the conflict ended, even imperson- have done more had he access to better ated Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the story material. 444 n TEY, JOSEPHINE

After a few TV episodes and a cheap from many times more (including for the cowboy picture, The Young Land, in 1959, film Paranoiac). Tetzlaff quit the industry; he died at 91 in Most of her stories warn about taking Fort Baker, CA. things at face value, and for all the puzzles she posed, the greatest may have been Tey References herself; she gave no interviews and strenu- “Great Cinematographers, Part 12: Ted ously avoided all publicity. If she had any Tetzlaff,” The Iron Cupcake, https://the romances, their names remained as secret ironcupcake.wordpress.com/2014/03/30/ as their genders; although some friends said great-cinematographers-part-12-ted-tetz she had lost a love in battle in World War I, laff; “Ted Tetzlaff,” IMDb, http://www modern writers have made other assump- .imdb.com/name/nm0005898. tions about her sexuality, pointing out the writer used the man’s name Gordon Daviot TEY, JOSEPHINE (1896–1952) not only for her more “serious” works but Inverness author, born Elizabeth Mackin- in private life, as well. She remains her own tosh. An athletic young woman, originally last, best mystery. a gym teacher at a girl’s boarding school, Tey survived her father by only two she interrupted her career to come home years; when she died at 56, she left her and take care of her ailing mother. After entire estate to the National Trust. her mother’s death, it was simply assumed that Tey—as the eldest of three daughters References and unmarried—would continue to stay on Josephine Tey: A Very Private Person, and keep house for her father. She stayed http://www.josephinetey.net; Robert for almost 30 years. McCrum, “Elizabeth Mackintosh: Woman She had always written and during the of Mystery Who Deserves to Be Redis- ’20s began to publish poems and short sto- covered,” Guardian, July 30, 2011, http:// ries, her first novel, the mystery The Man www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jul/31/ in the Queue, arriving in 1929. She never robert-mccrum-elizabeth-mackintosh published under her real name, preferring -mystery. either Tey or “Gordon Daviot,” and wrote mysteries, plays, and historical novels; her THEREMIN drama of Richard II, Richard of Bordeaux, Originally developed in 1920 in the Soviet was a surprise stage hit and an early popu- Union as a proximity sensor used to detect lar triumph for JOHN GIELGUD, who nearby movements, Leon Theremin’s became a lifelong friend. invention eventually began to garner inter- Her best-known works starred Scot- est from avant-garde composers; its waver- land Yard inspector Alan Grant; A Shil- ing tones were singularly eerie although ling for Candles, liberally adapted, became not quite as unique as how you played it. Hitchcock’s YOUNG AND INNOCENT. By (Unlike other instruments, you never put far the most inventive book, The Daughter your hands on the theremin; you move of Time, has a convalescing Grant “inves- them near it, with one hand adjusting vol- tigating” the crimes of Richard III by dig- ume and the other regulating pitch.) ging into old histories; he concludes the In the Soviet Union, Dmitri Shosta- king was framed. Nearly as successful was kovich pioneered its use in film, but the her imposter-heir story Brat Farrar, which instrument gained its widest exposure has been adapted several times and stolen thanks to MIKLOS RÓZSA, who used THE 39 STEPS n 445 it in SPELLBOUND, The Lost Weekend, rush to the exits ensues, and Hannay finds and The Red House to dramatize dream- himself pressed up against an attractive for- like or disorienting moments. BERNARD eigner, who gives her name as Smith and HERRMANN’s score for The Day the Earth asks to come home with him. She’s only Stood Still and DMITRI TIOMKIN’s for looking for refuge, though—as she explains The Thing (From Another World) are other to him, she’s a secret agent currently work- classic Hollywood examples. ing for the British government, and there Although the theremin never became a are assassins after her. Hannay lets her stay standard component of orchestral music, it but doesn’t quite believe her—until she did influence new generations of electron- falls, dying, into his arms the next morn- ica; similar instruments can be heard in the ing, a knife in her back. movie Forbidden Planet, the Beach Boys Not waiting for the assassins to come song “Good Vibrations,” and the many back to him, Hannay flees. Remembering works inspired by the various inventions of a few phrases from the woman’s story—a Robert Moog. small town in Scotland, military secrets, and something called “the 39 steps”—he References heads north. But the police now suspect “Leon Theremin,” Theremin Times, http:// him of the murder—and when on a train www.theremintimes.ru/leon-theremin; he’s given away by Pamela, a beautiful Theremin World, http://www.theremin stranger, he has to escape, tramping across world.com. the moors. After taking brief shelter at a dour farmer’s cottage, he goes to the house THE 39 STEPS (GB 1935) of the town’s leading citizen, a professor, for help—only to find out that “the 39 Director: Alfred Hitchcock. steps” is a gang of spies and the professor Screenplay: Charles Bennett, Ian Hay, is their leader. based on the novel The Thirty-Nine Steps Hannay escapes the squire and goes to by John Buchan. the police, where he discovers they don’t Producers: Uncredited (Sir Michael Balcon, believe him. Running from the station, Ivor Montagu). he slips into a political meeting, where Cinematography: Bernard Knowles. Editor: D.N. Twist. he’s mistaken for the featured speaker. Original Music: Jack Beaver, Louis Levy. He improvises a rousing speech, but the Cast: Robert Donat (Richard Hannay), authorities arrive with Pamela in tow, there Madeleine Carroll (Pamela), Peggy Ash- to identify him. They put them both in a croft (Margaret, the Crofter’s Wife), car and handcuff them together for secu- Godfrey Tearle (Prof. Jordan), Wylie rity, while explaining that they have to Watson (Mr. Memory). drive to a distant police station—but Han- Running Time: 86 minutes. Black and white. nay, realizing they aren’t policemen but the Released Through: Gaumont British Dis- professor’s spies, escapes again, this time tributors. taking the handcuffed Pamela with him. They spend the night at a local inn, with Hannay pretending that they’re a run- Richard Hannay is watching a cheap, music away couple and Pamela still sure he’s a hall variety show—chorus girls and the murderer. But after slipping out of her cuffs astounding “Mr. Memory”—when, some- and overhearing the professor’s spies arrive where in the crowd, shots are fired. A mad and talking downstairs—shortly before the 446 n THE 39 STEPS landlady chases them away—she realizes hood—but the globe-trotting GREEN- Hannay is telling the truth. MANTLE seemed too ambitious a project. The next morning, she tells him that Eventually, they agreed on Buchan’s The she believes him now—also that she heard Thirty-Nine Steps—although Bennett the spies talking about the London Pal- argued that the 20-year-old novel was ladium. Hannay (followed eventually by humorless and thin on character and would Pamela) rushes off, when he spots the need work. Together, the two men concen- professor in the stands—and oddly Mr. trated on adding both while construct- Memory again. Hannay realizes they are ing the plot as a long series of breathlessly using the little man to memorize state strung-together chases—Hannay flees the secrets. “What are the 39 steps?” Hannay assassins, then the police, then the police shouts during the performance, and when again, then the professor, then the police the performer by rote begins to announce and the assassins simultaneously, all the the answer—that it is an organization of while hanging out of moving TRAINS, spies—the professor shoots him and tries to jumping through windows, or ducking escape. The police close in on the real spy, behind waterfalls. (The career-long criti- and Hannay is free at least. cism that Hitchcock films are just a series of fast-paced, illogical incidents begins Hitchcock’s first perfect movie and the here—Why, to start off with, do the assas- model for many to come, as well as a sins stab “Miss Smith” in the bedroom but beautiful distillation of all the themes and leave Hannay sleeping quietly in the par- motifs he had been thinking about since lor?) THE PLEASURE GARDEN—our world of Casting was a little trickier than the role playing and PLAYS WITHIN PLAYS, last film, as the studio wanted actors who the fluid nature of IDENTITY, GUILT and could play recognizable Britishers yet also innocence, BONDAGE both literal and appeal to foreign audiences. ROBERT emotional. DONAT was signed to play Hannay—he After the success of THE MAN WHO was English but already known to Ameri- KNEW TOO MUCH in 1934, both the stu- can movie fans. So, too, was MADELEINE dio, GAUMONT-BRITISH, and the team, CARROLL, an elegant, icy beauty who’d Hitchcock and CHARLES BENNETT, spent time in Hollywood and, the director were eager not only to repeat but also to later judged, was the “first BLOND who enlarge on their earlier triumph. The studio was a real Hitchcock type.” decided to increase the new film’s budget The “real Hitchcock type,” of course, by half and to earmark some of that extra was the “snow-covered volcano”—and money for signing STARS who had appeal when shooting began (only two days after beyond Britain’s borders; the filmmakers Carroll signed her contract), Hitchcock concentrated on reprising some of the ele- worried that perhaps she wasn’t going to ments (foreign spies, interesting locations, warm up at all. (On an early read-through, a couple in jeopardy, and a climactic shoot- he confessed, she read her lines “in a kind out in a public place) that had worked of mesmeric trance.”) So, when it came the first time around while expanding the time to shoot the first scene of the pic- drama and scope. ture—which, as the production was typi- Hitchcock thought JOHN BUCHAN cally working out of sequence, came more would be the perfect jumping-off point— than halfway into the plot, when she and he had been a fan of the author since boy- Donat are first manacled together—Hitch- THE 39 STEPS n 447 cock slipped a pair of real handcuffs on NORTHWEST—had to more obviously the couple. And then, pretending to have strive for. Donat—with kind eyes and a misplaced the key, he left them that way for chuckle in his voice—is one of the most hours. charming of Hitchcock heroes, under- The action can be read indulgently stated yet always fully present. (The direc- as one of the director’s typical practical tor so loved his leading man’s performance JOKES (or more sinisterly as an example of that he kept trying to sign him for further a fondness for hurting beautiful women— movies—SECRET AGENT, THE LADY the forged-steel cuffs left angry welts on VANISHES, SABOTAGE, even Rebecca— Carroll’s pale wrists). But far more prob- but other commitments and Donat’s own ably, and certainly practically, it was Hitch- fragile health always intervened.) cock’s way of not only breaking down Carroll, meanwhile, is, as Hitchcock Carroll’s reserve but also forging a natu- realized later, really the prototype for all his ral bond between his stars. He would play heroines—from her staid introduction as a similar and often misinterpreted “pranks” stuffy, bespectacled woman reading a book in the future—whispering a dirty word into (an entrance he’d reprise for Fontaine in actresses’ ears right before a take, slapping SUSPICION) to the revelation of her sur- JOAN FONTAINE on REBECCA, leap- prising sexiness as, in the midst of her flight ing on top of ANN TODD during THE with Hannay, she peels off her sodden PARADINE CASE—but they were almost stockings and shows a glimpse of thigh and always a way of breaking down artifi- garter. The actress and her character put up cial barriers and eliciting real emotions. with a lot—being grabbed, bound, prodded, While the director may have professed to pulled, and marched through water—yet hate METHOD ACTING, he always had a both survive without whining. method of his own. The money spent on those two mar- Donat had to agree it worked. “For quee stars—a decided step up from LES- nearly an hour Madeleine and I shared LIE BANKS and EDNA BEST in The Man this enforced companionship, while the Who Knew Too Much—had certainly been hunt for the key was sustained,” he later a good investment, as had the rest of the said. “There was nothing else to do, so we production budget. Comfortable as he was talked of our mutual friends, of our ambi- working with miniatures, it’s clear that tions, and of film matters generally. Gradu- Hitchcock also has real trains to play with ally our reserve thawed as we exchanged here, as well as far more detailed sets and experiences. When ‘Hitch’ saw that we the help of composers—Mr. Memory’s were getting along famously, he extracted little theme is particularly appropriately the ‘missing’ key from his waistcoat pocket, insistent. Although The 39 Steps was made released us, and said, with a satisfied grin, three years before The Lady Vanishes, its ‘Now that you two know each other we can production values are more polished and go ahead.’ Had it not been for Hitchcock’s sophisticated. little ruse, Madeleine and I would probably And the studio’s confidence seemed have taken quite a time to ‘get together’—to to inspire Hitchcock, too, to try some new the detriment of our work in the interim.” effects. The hallucinatory, double expo- And the stars do have a pleasantly sures of Smith’s face coming back to haunt informal connection here, giving The 39 Hannay were a standard trick, too, but Steps an easy give-and-take that later simi- Hitchcock added a deliberately distorting, lar pictures—SABOTEUR, NORTH BY mechanical quality to her voice; when the 448 n THE 39 STEPS maid discovers Smith’s corpse and screams, And those little things that often pop up in he overlaps the sound, so all that comes out Hitchcock’s films—spying on someone in of her mouth is the train whistle from the the theater through a pair of opera glasses next scene. (Hitchcock was also already (The Pleasure Garden, both versions of The experimenting with long, difficult camera Man Who Knew Too Much); characters movements, although he had to fake his suddenly getting knives in their backs (the best one here: The camera starts with Han- second The Man Who Knew Too Much, nay and Pamela inside a car in a process North by Northwest); and, of course, hand- shot and then moves outside—at which cuffs (THE LODGER, Saboteur). point it very briefly cuts to black and then But there is one theme that not only resumes as a LOCATION shot that pulls runs through The 39 Steps but also is the behind the car and watches it depart.) most carefully developed. And it’s that of More than charismatic performances romantic union. Within the film’s brief and intriguing style, though, the film is running time, Hitchcock and Bennett pres- suffused with a variety of themes that ent us with a variety of models for relation- would later become nearly trademarked as ships. First, we meet the milkman, a mar- HITCHCOCKIAN. To begin with, there is ried man (“Don’t rub it in!”) who, when he the world of theater and the drama of per- thinks Hannay is a lover fleeing a jealous formance. The 39 Steps begins in a cheap husband, gives a vicarious leer and all his music hall, takes a brief detour to a com- help; he’s not in a particularly happy union, munity center, and ends at the London Pal- we can assume. Later, we meet the profes- ladium—like The Pleasure Garden, Sabo- sor and his wife, a doughty matron who tage, Saboteur, STAGE FRIGHT, and many worries about how many guests she has for other of the director’s films, it’s a story that luncheon but not the fact that her husband contrasts the glitzy artifice of public enter- is holding a stranger at gunpoint; theirs is a tainments and the grim reality of private cold, obviously practical, businesslike rela- lives, while wondering if they are really that tionship. different at all. (The film’s first shot is a pan And then there is the crofter and across a generic marquee—Music Hall— his wife. The episode—which is not in and like the performers he is going to see, Buchan’s book—comes as Hannay is trudg- Hannay soon dons his own costumes and ing across the moors. He stops at the home identities, while trying desperately to see of a crofter, a grizzled tenant farmer. The the real people behind the parts they play.) man (a stereotypical movie Scot) is judg- It’s a movie about roles, and its true tragic mental, taciturn, and cheap; he’s also wed hero is WYLIE WATSON’s Mr. Memory— to a much younger woman (a lovely per- the little man so committed to giving his formance by a fresh-faced PEGGY ASH- best performance that, given the cue, he CROFT). It is not much of a marriage, can’t help but deliver his line, even though probably arranged, and although they it means his death. share this tiny cottage, Hannay’s arrival There are other touches, too—soon only shows how far apart they are: While to become Hitchcock tropes. The “snow- the crofter sees the stranger as a source of covered volcano,” yes, but also the inno- quick money for a night’s lodging, his wife cent man pursued by both the police and views him as a connection to the city life the real criminals. There’s the completely she left behind. arbitrary MACGUFFIN, as well—the plans Of course, different characters always to a noiseless aircraft engine, it turns out. see different things in Hitchcock’s films—a THOMAS, JAMESON n 449 point borne home in a wordless sequence reintroduced and taken out on a car ride that could have come from one of the by the authorities—a sort of chaperoned director’s own silents. The three are hav- date. Slipping away from their guardians ing a simple dinner while a newspaper lies but now joined together (physically as well on the table with a story about the escaped as emotionally), they move slowly toward murderer who’s fled to Scotland. Han- truth and trust. They come to depend on nay looks down at the headline. The wife each other. They even spend the night looks down at the headline. Their eyes together. And finally, in the film’s final meet—and in a brief exchange of glances, shot, they join hands as equals, freely—the she expresses her fear, and he vouches his empty handcuffs hanging uselessly from innocence. And meanwhile, her husband Hannay’s wrist like a bad memory. Our watches it all, and assumes the two of them story is over. Theirs can finally begin. are only sharing looks of lust and already Though touched with humor and making promises for an assignation. excitement, marked with visual style and It is done without a line of dialogue— subtle metaphor, and hailed as Hitchcock’s it is done, really, completely with separate first truly great thriller, the critically and close-ups and contrasting sightlines—and commercially successful The 39 Steps is also it is as clear an example of the director’s perhaps his most hopeful romance—and a much-beloved PURE CINEMA as any. product, not coincidentally, of a time when But although the sequence barely pushes his love for cinema was still in its first flush the plot forward, it gives us the film’s most and nothing was larger than his optimism negative example of a marriage, a husband for what lay ahead. and wife bound by traditional beliefs and inflexible expectations, a man and woman References so constrained by their own grim silences John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps (New and unspoken longings that they might as York: Popular Library, 1963); Patrick well be wearing real manacles. They are the McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in film’s saddest victims. Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- Marriages like these three—unhappy, Collins, 2003), 169–76; “Robert Donat unfaithful, or merely passionless—reoccur Tells His Life Story,” Courier-Mail, June throughout Hitchcock’s work, and by the 23, 1938, http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/ time he reaches Hollywood, the most prob- article/40995382; Donald Spoto, The Dark lematic unions are the ones that dominate. Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock But this is still England and early in the (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 148– director’s career (and in his own marriage), 50; Donald Spoto, Spellbound by Beauty: and so The 39 Steps also offers a correc- Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies tive, and even a model, in the relationship (New York: Harmony Books, 2008), 48–49, between Hannay and Pamela. 51–57; François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truf- Played out over a few days, their rela- faut, rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, tionship is a miniature of a courtship, a 1985), 94–99. love affair at high speed. First, they meet as strangers on a train, and he kisses her, THOMAS, JAMESON (1888–1939) something that seems to please her—we see London-born actor onstage since the turn her hands twisting in a ladylike ecstasy— of the century who could play drama or which, when witnessed, she then feels com- light comedy equally well. He starred in pelled to publicly denounce. Then they are Hitchcock’s THE FARMER’S WIFE in 450 n THOMPSON, EDITH

1928, appeared in the excellent Piccadilly His wife screamed, and the attacker fled, the next year, did a cameo in ELSTREE but after the police arrived, the agitated CALLING, and then followed his fame Thompson eventually identified the killer to Hollywood. Leads were harder to find as her lover, Freddy Bywaters. She fully there, but he notched roles in The Phan- expected that she would be called to testify tom President, the Colin Clive version of at his trial. Instead she was indicted along- Jane Eyre, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and side him for murder. the Clark Gable drama Parnell, a movie so The trial went badly for her. Her love dreadful that CAROLE LOMBARD teased letters, introduced into evidence, included Gable mercilessly about it for years; Thom- scandalously erotic passages—along with as’s most memorable part was probably in claims that she had already tried unsuccess- It Happened One Night, in which he played fully to poison her husband and entreaties Claudette Colbert’s shallow fiancé, “King” to Bywaters to “do something.” Although Westley. Thomas died of tuberculosis in Bywaters swore he had acted alone, on the Sierra Madre, CA; he was only 50. stand Thompson seemed alternately flirtatious and self-pitying; the appalled jury References voted to convict them both. They were “Jameson Thomas,” IMDb, http:// executed on the same day, with Thompson www.imdb.com/name/nm0858977/ in hysterics; according to some reports, she bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Simon McCal- had to be tied to a chair before they could lum, “Jameson Thomas,” BFI Screenonline, get the noose around her neck. http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/ The murder and her execution were a id/463274. sensation in 1920s Britain and would have caught Hitchcock’s attention under any THOMPSON, EDITH (1893–1923) circumstances; he was a lifelong devotee The London-born daughter of a clerk and of true-crime stories. Yet he had an actual amateur ballroom dancer who grew into a connection to the case. Before the attack, young woman with a head for business and not only had Edith Thompson’s sister great personal style. Bright and indepen- Avis worked with Hitchcock at Henley’s dent, she soon had a career as a buyer for Telegraph Works, but also the girls’ father a large milliner. Married but childless, both had taught him ballroom dancing; he had she and her husband seemed dedicated to even met Edith briefly, and Avis and his each other and their careers—the emblem own sister became friends (they regularly of a very modern couple. attended and volunteered at the same Then in 1920, Thompson became reac- church). The families exchanged Christ- quainted with Freddy Bywaters, a boyhood mas cards for years—never, ever, alluding chum of one of her siblings; Bywaters was to the crime. 18, a sailor, and hugely appealing. Even- Hitchcock, too, never spoke publicly tually, Thompson and Bywaters began an of the connection—even as he would wax affair. When Thompson’s husband found on and on about H. H. CRIPPEN and other out, he beat her; Bywaters went to sea. But famous killers. But he occasionally talked eventually the seaman returned, and he and about making a documentary about the Thompson resumed their affections. case and some of the emotional undertow One night, as the married couple was of the crime—the idea of a woman ruined coming back from the theater, Thompson’s by her own passions or caught up in her husband was knifed in the street and killed. lover’s—certainly figures in some of his THE THREE HOSTAGES n 451 films, most particularly in THE PARADINE Although always primarily a stage CASE and STAGE FRIGHT. actress, she made her film debut in 1921. Years later, JOHN RUSSELL TAY- Most of her early appearances were in LOR handed his authorized biography, cut-down versions of her Shakespearean Hitch, to the director for approval; Taylor successes, but later on, she would have said Hitchcock asked for only two edits in larger parts in Major Barbara and The Life order to spare his family any embarrass- and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby; in ment. One was the detail that his brother STAGE FRIGHT, she is JANE WYMAN’s William had died in part due to alcoholism. MOTHER and the most formidable mem- And the other was that the Hitchcocks had ber of a cast that Hitchcock crowded with ever known Edith Thompson. theatrical veterans. Although Thorndike would make a few more major movies, References including The Princess and the Showgirl Marcel Berlins, “Presumed Guilty,” Guard- and Shake Hands with the Devil, she con- ian, June 14, 2001, http://www.theguard tinued to do primarily stage work. ian.com/film/2001/jun/15/artsfeatures1; Married to actor Lewis Casson for more Molly Cutpurse, “Edith Thompson and than 60 years, Thorndike was a committed Frederick Bywaters,” Capital Punish- progressive (touring South Africa in the ment UK, http://www.capitalpunishment 1920s, she fought to allow blacks to attend uk.org/edith.html; John Russell Taylor, her shows) and a formidable wit; asked “The Truth about Hitchcock and Those if, over their long marriage, she had ever Cool Blondes,” Times, April 5, 2005, thought of separating from her husband, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/The%20 she thundered, “Divorce, never! Murder, Times%20%2805%2FApr%2F2005%29%20 often!” She acted right until the end of her -20The%20truth%20about%20Hitch life—which came at age 93 in Chelsea. cock%20and%20those%20cool%20blondes; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life References in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- Jonathan Croall, “Sybil Thorndike: A Star Collins, 2003), 37–38. of Life,” http://www.str.org.uk/events/ lectures/archive/lecture0810.shtml; “Dame THORNDIKE, DAME SYBIL Sybil Thorndike,” Encyclopaedia Britan- (1882–1976) nica, http://www.britannica.com/biogra Gainsborough-born performer whose phy/Sybil-Thorndike; “Sybil Thorndike,” father was a canon at Rochester Cathedral IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ and whose older brother, Russell, wrote the nm0861345/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. “Doctor Syn” thrillers. She first trained as a classical pianist, but when chronic “piano THE THREE HOSTAGES cramp” rendered performing impossible, Hitchcock had been a fan of author JOHN she switched to dramatic studies. By her BUCHAN and his “Richard Hannay” early 20s, she had joined a Shakespearean adventures since adolescence; he thought company and embarked on a 4-year tour several times of adapting GREENMANTLE of America; at 26, returning to England, she and did succeed with a wonderful (if hardly joined the Old Vic and went on to give a long faithful) adaptation of the author’s The string of acclaimed performances. In 1924, Thirty-Nine Steps. she originated the role of Saint Joan—a part After the failure of MARNIE in 1964, George Bernard Shaw had written for her. Hitchcock tried—as he often did after a 452 n TIOMKIN, DMITRI failure—to return to the familiar; Buchan then Paris, and finally New York. Tiom- sounded like a safe bet, and he even kin married ballerina Albertina Rasch, and announced Buchan’s The Three Hostages both toured internationally; Tiomkin gave as his next project. But the movie rights, as George Gershwin’s Concerto in F its Euro- they often were with Buchan, were difficult pean premiere at the Paris Opera. to obtain, and Hitchcock began to fear the The Depression, however, soon limited book hadn’t aged as well as he’d hoped. He the audience for classical performances, and was also leery of a major plot device, which the rising tensions in Europe made touring depended on a blind hypnotist; hypnotism, problematic; a broken arm in 1937 seemed Hitchcock asserted in INTERVIEWS, never to definitively end Tiomkin’s career as a played well onscreen (although he himself soloist. But by then, the couple had already had used it to comic effect in the first THE relocated to Hollywood, where Rasch MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH). helped choreograph musicals, particularly Although some work on a script was period ones like The Great Waltz; Tiomkin, done—possibly by Hitchcock, and so atro- meanwhile, was scoring films, getting atten- ciously it almost seems like an elaborate in- tion for his yearning score for Frank Capra’s JOKE—the project was abandoned, as were Lost Horizon. (He would continue to score several others during this period (KALEI- many of Capra’s best films, including Mr. DOSCOPE, R.R.R.R.). Eventually, Hitch- Smith Goes to Washington, Meet John Doe, cock would decide infelicitously on TORN and It’s a Wonderful Life.) It was on Lost CURTAIN. Horizon that Tiomkin first began a singular innovation in movie composition; before References writing, he would spend time with the Steven DeRosa, “The Return of Rich- actors and listen to their voices so that his ard Hannay,” http://stevenderosa.com/ music would complement the vocal tones of writingwithhitchcock/3hostages.html; Pat- the dialogue. rick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Tiomkin worked on four Hitch- Darkness and Light (New York: HarperCol- cock films—SHADOW OF A DOUBT, lins, 2003), 247–48, 264–65, 657; Donald STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, I CONFESS, Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life and DIAL M FOR MURDER. Although the of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo stories were more rooted in reality than Press, 1999), 256, 478; François Truffaut, some of Hitchcock’s other pictures—deny- Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: ing Tiomkin the extravagant emotions that Touchstone, 1985), 307–8. BERNARD HERRMANN was able to tap in VERTIGO and PSYCHO or the hallu- TIOMKIN, DMITRI (1894–1979) cinatory moods that informed MIKLOS Russian-born and trained musician who RÓZSA’s work for SPELLBOUND—Tiom- grew up in the Ukraine in a prominent kin mirrored that factual feel by inter- Jewish family. His father was a doctor and weaving well-known songs into his work his mother a musician who pushed her son to comment ironically on the action: “The toward the piano from early childhood. Merry Widow” in Shadow of a Doubt with Tiomkin studied at the St. Petersburg Con- its repetitive romanticism, “And the Band servatory, prepared music for early Soviet Played On” in Strangers on a Train with its agitprop spectacles, and played in silent cavalier innocence. movie houses; by the early 1920s, though, The most successful composers in he was slowly moving west, first to Berlin, Hollywood were always the most versa- TO CATCH A THIEF n 453 tile, and Tiomkin—Hollywood’s most suc- American debut with a film “to be based cessful composer throughout the 1950s— upon and called quote Titanic unquote,” switched easily between film genres and as he cabled Hitchcock’s agent (who at the musical styles, always providing whatever time also happened to be Selznick’s brother was appropriate. For 1951’s sci-fi The Myron). Development progressed slowly, Thing (From Another World), he brought with Selznick exploring the purchase of a in a THEREMIN; for 1952’s High Noon, he genuine ocean liner, which he proposed composed the rangy “Do Not Forsake Me, they actually sink in the Pacific, and Hitch- Oh My Darlin’,” a cowboy song so authen- cock JOKING of the story that at least they tic that it already sounded generations old knew “quite obviously what the last two and a piece of music so quietly dramatic reels would be.” But the costs looked to be that it helped tie the film together. (It prohibitive, and Selznick, who thought of also became an independent hit; Tiomkin himself as a literary man, could never resist smartly had bought back the rights.) the appeal of a best seller. It was decided Tiomkin won two Oscars for his work at the last minute to go with REBECCA on that movie and would go on to win two instead. more, for The High and the Mighty and The Old Man and the Sea; much of his film References work, though, would continue to be for Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A westerns, with him providing the scores Life in Darkness and Light (New York: for Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Rio Bravo, HarperCollins, 2003), 213, 216, 228–29; and The Alamo, among others. “A steppe Bob Thomas, Selznick (New York: Pocket is a steppe is a steppe,” the old Ukrainian Books, 1972), 187–88. wrote in his biography. “The problems of the cowboy and the Cossack are very TO CATCH A THIEF (1955) similar. They share a love of nature and a love of animals. Their courage and their Director: Alfred Hitchcock. philosophical attitudes are similar, and the Screenplay: John Michael Hayes, based on the novel by David Dodge. steppes of Russia are much like the prairies Producer: Uncredited (Alfred Hitchcock). of America.” Cinematography: Robert Burks. Tiomkin died in London at 85. Editor: Robert Burks. Original Music: Lyn Murray. References Cast: Cary Grant (John “The Cat” Robie), “Dmitri Tiomkin,” IMDb, http://www Grace Kelly (Frances Stevens), Jessie .imdb.com/name/nm0006323; “Dmitri Royce Landis (Jessie Stevens), John Wil- Tiomkin: Anyone for Westerns,” mfiles, liams (H. H. Hughson), Brigitte Auber http://www.mfiles.co.uk/composers/Dimitri (Danielle Foussard), Charles Vanel (Ber- -Tiomkin.htm; “Dmitri Tiomkin,” Dmitri tani). Tiomkin: The Official Website, http://www Running Time: 106 minutes. Color. .dimitritiomkin.com/biography/dimitri Released Through: Paramount. -tiomkin.

TITANIC A glittering season on the Riviera is being DAVID O. SELZNICK always thought marred by a series of jewel robberies—and big, and for a while in 1938, he entertained the police suspect John “The Cat” Robie, a the idea of Alfred Hitchcock making his hero of the French Resistance and a former 454 n TO CATCH A THIEF thief who swears he’s retired. But no one solved. But Robie protests that Foussard’s seems to believe him—including his old accomplice escaped—and that, as Foussard friends from the Resistance, many of them had a wooden leg, he could hardly be the similarly reformed criminals who now work nimble cat burglar that the authorities have at a restaurant. Robie asks the owner, Ber- been looking for. tani, for assistance—if he knew which vaca- Working with Hughson and the Ste- tioners were carrying jewels on them, then he venses, who now believe in his innocence, might be able to stake out their hotel rooms Robie attends a grand costume ball, expect- and catch the real thief in the act. Bertani ing the thief will strike again. Slipping agrees to help. away, he spies the burglar on the hotel roof Dodging the police at every turn—and and gives chase; the thief turns out to be dealing with the attentions of Danielle, the Danielle, who was working with her father teenage daughter of Foussard, another old and Bertani. She confesses in front of wit- friend—Robie meets Bertani’s contact, an nesses, and Robie and Frances are free to insurance investigator named Hughson. begin a life together—a life, however, that Reluctantly, he gives Robie a list of agency seems fated to include her mother. clients in the area and suggests he concentrate on two of them—Jessie Stevens and A soufflé—beautiful, airy, delicious, and her daughter Frances. Posing as a lumber not particularly filling. millionaire from Oregon, Robie meets the It was, however, precisely what Hitch- Stevenses, and while Mrs. Stevens is mildly cock wanted after the darkness of REAR flirtatious, her beautiful daughter seems WINDOW—something sunny and filled icily remote—until Robie escorts her to her with flowers, fresh air, and beautiful peo- room and she presents him with a passion- ple. He had been considering adapting To ate kiss. The next morning, Danielle warns Catch a Thief since he’d finished the bleak I him that his old friends are out to get him, CONFESS, and the idea of a trip to the Riv- convinced not only that he’s stealing again iera—at the studio’s expense, of course— but also that his crimes will ruin them all. appealed to a filmmaker who liked to travel Robie and Frances go for a drive but truly adored having someone else pay together—which turns perilous when they for it. have to elude the police—and then a pic- For the script, Hitchcock went back nic. Frances tells him she knows he’s really to JOHN MICHAEL HAYES, who had “The Cat,” but Robie denies it. That night, done such a good job on Rear Window; he meets her in her room—where she tries for his STARS, he immediately sought out to tempt him by wearing her most expen- GRACE KELLY, for what would be their sive jewels. He refuses to rise to the bait— third collaboration, and CARY GRANT, he also points out that her “jewels” are imi- whom he had wanted for the part since tation—but later that night, her mother’s he’d first proposed the film in 1952. Both gems are stolen. Frances calls the police, posed problems—Kelly was already com- and he slips away. mitted to three other movies, and Grant Investigating the other clients on had announced his retirement. But Hitch- Hughson’s list, Robie interrupts a robbery cock was always ready to wait for Kelly, and in progress and is attacked in the dark. One when Grant heard who his costar would robber gets away, but the other—Fous- be—and that the film would be shot on sard—is killed in the fall. The police arrive LOCATION in Cannes—he decided to go and pronounce the string of jewel thefts back to work. TODD, ANN n 455

Hayes’s script was light on suspense taining trifle. But for Hitchcock, it was but full of the sort of double entendres that ultimately a relaxing, working vacation— Hitchcock loved, with most of them—to his before he plunged into some of the darkest delight—falling to the elegant Kelly. “Even and most personal films of his career. in this light I can tell where your eyes are looking,” she tells Grant as she sits in her References hotel room wearing a low-cut dress. “Look. Tifenn Brisset, “Two Interviews about ‘To Hold them.” She is, of course, talking about Catch a Thief,’” Film International 11, no. her diamonds, just as earlier, on their pic- 6 (2013), 13–21; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred nic—“A leg or a breast?”—she is talking Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light about chicken. At least, that is what the (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 496– filmmakers would tell the CENSORS (who, 502; Patrick McGilligan, ed., Backstory: in the end, let the movie’s risqué dialogue Interviews with Screenwriters of the 60s pass—perhaps because Hitchcock’s regular (Berkeley: University of California Press, nemesis at the Production Code, Joseph 1997), 174–92; Donald Spoto, The Dark Breen, had recently retired and America’s Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock censorship rules were beginning to loosen). (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 349–53; Hayes’s script also made room for Donald Spoto, Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred some typical Hitchcock themes. Though Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies (New meant to be frank and colorful, Mrs. Ste- York: Harmony Books, 2008), 211–13; vens is also controlling—another pushy, François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. meddling MOTHER (the actress, JES- ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 223–26; SIE ROYCE LANDIS, would return as Thilo Wydra, Grace: A Biography (New much the same character in NORTH BY York: Skyhorse, 2014), 172–83. NORTHWEST). And there is, of course, another wrongly accused man as our hero TODD, ANN (1909–1993) and another “snow-covered volcano” as Cheshire-born performer whose petite our heroine. build and quiet beauty won her the nick- That those themes are never seriously name of Britain’s “pocket Garbo.” After developed is certainly deliberate; that so lit- studying elocution and fencing at the Cen- tle seems to be at stake, though, drags down tral School of Speech and Drama in Lon- the film. ROBERT BURKS’s Oscar-win- don, she began appearing on stage in the ning cinematography is gorgeous—a chase late ’20s and made her film debut in 1931. through a flower market crammed with Her early parts were mostly in “quota COLOR; a race along the coastline filled quickies”—cheap movies made strictly for with beautiful, albeit process-shot scenery; the British market—but in 1945, The Sev- some groundbreaking helicopter shots—but enth Veil, with Todd playing a talented pia- there’s more sensuality than suspense. Even nist tormented by JAMES MASON, was a the penultimate climax of the costume ball major hit and made her a STAR, at least in seems to be more about Kelly’s golden dress England. than conflict or character. She had not yet made an American For audiences, To Catch a Thief was movie, though; THE PARADINE CASE in a pretty entertainment. For Grant, it was 1949 would be her first. Hitchcock, who a successful lure back to acting. (It would had first seen her onstage in 1930—“In the be another decade before he truly retired.) right part, she would do extremely well” And for audiences, it was an elegant, enter- he told a reporter at the time—thought the 456 n TODD, RICHARD part of Gay Keane, the wife who realizes cock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New her lawyer husband has fallen in love with York: HarperCollins, 2003), 391; Donald his client, was just the one. Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life The part actually is a little bland, at of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo least to modern eyes—the character of the Press, 1999), 300; Tom Vallance, “Obitu- long-suffering spouse who forgives all her ary: Ann Todd,” Independent, May 7, 1993, mate’s transgressions sometimes seems http://www.independent.co.uk/news/peo more of a wish-fulfillment from producer ple/obituary-ann-todd-2321403.html. and cowriter DAVID O. SELZNICK, who had recently split from his wife, than a rich TODD, RICHARD (1919–2009) and vibrant character of its own. But Todd Dublin-born performer whose father was brought her own genteel grace to the role an army doctor often stationed with Brit- and has a memorable scene fending off the ish regiments in India. It was expected ugly advances of CHARLES LAUGHTON. that Todd would go into the military, as Hitchcock liked the pale BLONDE well, and he even attended Sandhurst, Todd, and she got on well with him, but he decided to pursue a career on the although she ached after—in one of his stage instead. The decision provoked an odder hijinks—he saw her lying down immediate, brutal, and long-lasting family on the set and playfully jumped on top of estrangement; when his mother later com- her. He was a “very complex man,” she mitted suicide, Todd coolly insisted, he did thought, but also “really a very sad person” not mourn. who had problems dealing with people. “I He had already begun his career (and think power was very important to Hitch,” even cofounded a theater in Ireland) when she said. “That was perhaps the most basic the war came; Todd ended up becoming a thing, beneath all the masks and veils he soldier anyway, even landing on Normandy wore—power over his cast, power over his on D-Day. (He deliberately hid his acting leading ladies, power with studio execu- background so he would be sent into com- tives. Perhaps this compensated for his feel- bat rather than placed in the entertainment ing that he was ugly and unpresentable in division.) Returning home after the war, he polite society.” resumed his theatrical career and in 1948 Unfortunately, The Paradine Case did was signed to a movie contract. Todd’s career no favors, and she went back One of his first films, The Hasty Heart, to mostly British pictures (The Passionate gave him a role he’d played in both Ireland Friends, Madeleine, and Breaking the Sound and England and eventually won him an Barrier, among them, all three directed by Oscar nomination. Suddenly a top STAR in her then-husband David Lean) and, later, Britain, he seemed a good choice for JANE occasional appearances on American TV, WYMAN’s costar in Hitchcock’s London- including an episode of ALFRED HITCH- set STAGE FRIGHT, but the director’s COCK PRESENTS. She later turned to beloved character actors really run away directing travel films and wrote her mem- with the film, and Todd only gets a few oirs. She died in London of a stroke at 84. memorable moments at the end, when the camera catches his mad, flashing EYES. References Although Stage Fright was not a suc- “Ann Todd,” IMDb, http://www.imdb cess, and while his costume pictures for .com/name/nm0002897/bio?ref_=nm_ov Walt Disney, including The Sword and _bio_sm; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitch- the Rose, didn’t buttress his standing as a TOMASINI, GEORGE n 457 serious actor, at least A Man Called Peter perhaps the one most reliant on the edi- and The Dam Busters were solid hits. But tor’s art. Tomasini would edit eight more by the 1960s, the heroic roles had given of Hitchcock’s pictures; when the director way to character parts (“My swash began embarked on PSYCHO and deliberately to buckle,” the aging actor joked), and by went with his faster, cheaper television the ’70s and ’80s, the character parts were crew, Tomasini was one of the few feature- mostly in cheap genre films: Dorian Gray, film colleagues he insisted on keeping. Asylum, House of the Long Shadows. He As Hitchcock famously, meticulously died at 90 of cancer in the country town of storyboarded his films in advance—could Little Humby. even, as many actors said, describe them before shooting, shot by precise shot—it’s References difficult to completely assess Tomasini’s Adam Bernstein, “Richard Todd, 90, personal contribution to the final product, Dies: Irish-Born Actor of ‘The Longest although several witnesses say Hitchcock Day,’” Washington Post, December 29, trusted Tomasini implicitly and depended 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ on him for the first assembly. wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/04/ According to Tomasini’s wife, actress AR2009120404344.html; “Richard Todd,” Mary Brian, “Mr. Hitchcock always gave IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ George first cut. He wanted to see his inter- nm0865262/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. pretation. Then they got down to the fine work.” And TIPPI HEDREN agrees that TOMASINI, GEORGE (1909–1964) the men worked in concert. “George would American film editor from Springfield, MA, assemble the piece to what he thought it who was orphaned as a child. He and his should be—or close,” she remembered. three sisters were split up and sent to various “And then Hitch would come in and do the foster homes. When, as a teenager, Toma- final editing. And he would edit almost . . . sini discovered that his current foster par- he would say, ‘Cut one frame out of here. ents had decided it was time he joined the Cut three frames out of this scene. Cut it priesthood, he decided he needed a change at the beginning, three frames.’ . . . He was of scenery; he ran away from home, eventu- such a perfectionist.” ally ending up in Los Angeles, where he got Tomasini’s work on Hitchcock films a job as an errand boy for a film editor. was a model of the editor’s art and always Eventually, Tomasini landed a job as matched perfectly to the content; unobtru- a studio projectionist at PARAMOUNT, sive and efficient on THE WRONG MAN, finally progressing to the editing depart- shockingly dramatic in MARNIE. And ment, where he would stay for nearly 30 while Hitchcock was hardly the sort of years. His reputation was clinched when director to leave the final look of his film up the troubled Vivien Leigh had to withdraw to anyone else, there are new things in his from Elephant Walk; Tomasini’s seamless films with Tomasini—the flurry of almost editing allowed the studio to use much of subliminal cuts in Psycho, the jump cuts the footage in which Leigh had appeared, in THE BIRDS—that stand out as singular even though she’d now been replaced by and unexpected breakthroughs in his work. Elizabeth Taylor. Realizing the editor’s skill, the direc- That skillful salvage job brought his tor tried to sign him to an exclusive con- name to Hitchcock, who quickly engaged tract early on; Tomasini agreed to always him for REAR WINDOW—of all his films, give Hitchcock’s projects preference but 458 n TOPAZ retained the right to take other assignments with sensitive information: first, that the in between and went on to cut The Time Soviets may be placing missiles in Cuba, Machine, The Misfits, and the original Cape and second, that the French government is Fear, a model of taut suspense. compromised by Communist agents. He died of a heart attack at 55 in Han- Needing further information but ford, CA. unable to approach any Soviet sources himself, Nordstrom asks a French spy he can References trust, Andre Devereaux, to get more details. All about The Birds, directed by Laurent Going to New York and enlisting the help Bouzereau (2000), documentary, http:// of Dubois, a Haitian agent, Devereaux gets the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/All_About_The photographs of the secret Soviet-Cuban _Birds_%282000%29_-_transcript; “George agreements from a visiting Cuban official, Tomasini,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ Victor Parra. name/nm0866462; Rachel Ingel, “I’ll Let Still lacking concrete proof of the mis- the Film Pile Up for You: An Interview siles, Devereaux then goes to Havana, where with Mary Tomasini,” Motion Picture Edi- he meets with his lover, Juanita de Cordoba. tors Guild Directory, http://www.editors A “widow of a hero of the Revolution,” she is guild.com/v2/magazine/newsletter/direc also Parra’s mistress—and working secretly tory/tomasini.html. against Castro’s government. Juanita gets proof of the bases and passes it along to TOPAZ (US 1969) Devereaux. He escapes, and Parra—discovering Juanita’s treachery—shoots her. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Devereaux returns to Washington to dis- Screenplay: Samuel A. Taylor, based on the cover that his wife has left him, having faced novel by Leon Uris. the truth about his affair and that his own Producers: Herbert Coleman (Alfred government is recalling him for working Hitchcock, uncredited). secretly for the Americans. Cinematography: Jack Hildyard. Editor: William H. Ziegler. Devereaux returns to Paris, now Original Music: Maurice Jarre. knowing that there are double agents C a s t : Frederick Stafford (Andre within his own organization. His son-in- Devereaux), Karin Dor (Juanita de Cor- law helps him confront one of them, Jarre, doba), John Vernon (Rico Parra), John who is later killed by his own men. His wife Forsythe (Michael Nordstrom), Michel confesses that a man named Granville is the Piccoli (Jacques Granville), Philippe other traitor—a fact she knows because she Noiret (Henri Jarre), Roscoe Lee was also having an affair with Granville and Browne (Philippe Dubois). saw Jarre leave his house. Running Time: 143 minutes. Color. Devereaux challenges Granville to a Released Through: Universal. duel to be held in an empty sports stadium. Before either man can fire, however, a shot rings out, and Granville falls dead; a Soviet In autumn 1962, a KGB official sneaks out marksman hidden in the stands wanted to of the Soviet embassy with his wife and make sure there were no loose ends. The daughter and defects to the Americans. Russian assassin escapes; Deveraux and his Brought to Washington by CIA agent wife are reunited; the Cuban crisis ends. Michael Nordstrom, he reluctantly pays for his new life by providing the Americans A new low. TOPAZ n 459

The late ’60s found Hitchcock uncer- cases a few hours—before they were shot.” tain and in some ways unmoored. TORN When finished, the result was a sad patch- CURTAIN had been an unhappy produc- work. The pace was glacial, the focus kept tion and had led to a bitter and lasting split shifting from character to character, the from longtime collaborator BERNARD suspense sequences were perfunctory, and HERRMANN; it had also, like the picture the ending—well, what was the ending? before, MARNIE, been a critical failure and That was the biggest and most appar- a commercial disappointment. For much of ent problem when the studio held a disas- the next year, he withdrew personally and trous sneak preview. The response cards professionally—leading ALMA REVILLE are preserved at the Academy of Motion to privately approach LEW WASSERMAN Picture Arts and Sciences research library, at UNIVERSAL in 1967 and implore him and many of them are covered in angry to come up with a new project for his aim- scrawls, with audience members writing less old friend. that the film was boring, the acting was Eventually, Hitchcock and Univer- terrible, and the dueling scene the worst of sal decided on Topaz, a recent best seller all. Some even said they refused to believe by Leon Uris about an old Cold War spy Hitchcock had directed it. One person’s case; the studio already had the rights and a brusque advice? “Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, commitment from Uris to do the first draft cut.” of a screenplay. As for casting, whether it It was a painful throwback to the bad was because he was still smarting over the old days in Britain, when C. M. WOOLF paychecks for the STARS of Torn Curtain would disgustedly pronounce the latest or merely interested in a more international Hitchcock picture as unreleasable—but feel, Hitchcock decided to do without any at least Woolf had been reliably wrong. marquee personalities; stolid JOHN FOR- Hitchcock feared the audience and the stu- SYTHE is the closest thing to a name in dio were right, and in any case, he said later the picture, with most of the rest of the cast that fighting it “didn’t seem worthwhile.” A drawn from European cinema. new ending was shot to replace the duel- But once preproduction began, signs ing sequence; in this one, Granville would of trouble arose. The self-consciously seri- escape, cheekily waving goodbye as he ous Uris bristled at Hitchcock’s attempts boarded a plane to Moscow and Devereaux to add any humor to the script; Hitch- took one to DC. cock refused to shoot the draft the novel- But everyone hated that ending, too, ist turned in, and Uris wasn’t obligated and so finally, reaching back perhaps to to write any further ones. The director the quiet defeat of Sebastian in NOTO- reached out to ARTHUR LAURENTS for RIOUS, Hitchcock came up with a third help; the screenwriter declined. Finally, ending—knowing he has been exposed, with the start of shooting practically upon Granville goes home, shuts the door, and him, he phoned SAMUEL A. TAYLOR. kills himself. (Complicating things further: As he had on VERTIGO, when previous The actor who’d played him, PHILIPPE screenwriters had failed to turn in a cam- NOIRET, was by now unavailable, and era-ready script, Taylor jumped into action. so the editor had to use a few frames of But this was a different experience, MICHEL PICCOLI entering the house, Taylor recalled, “because Hitchcock threw then freeze the image, and dub in a gun- out the screenplay entirely and had me shot.) The running time was cut down to writing scenes a few days—and in many 127 minutes (mostly by shortening shots 460 n TOPAZ in existing scenes), the new ending was inside a chicken carcass, and seagulls dis- tacked on, and the film went into final wide rupt a bit of espionage.) And there is one release. lovely image, when Juanita is shot and falls And was the failure it seemed fated to the floor, her purple dress spreading like to be all along. You can sense Hitchcock’s a pool of blood, or perhaps opening up like disengagement almost from the start, as the petals of a rose—flowers being a con- the film begins with stock footage of the stant image in the film. (Hitchcock, always May Day parade and a flat-footed, exposi- happiest when he could solve a technical tory title telling us that someone is about challenge, got the effect by threading her to defect. The actual defection is handled dress with wires that crew members would perfunctorily, the defector turns out to be then pull.) thoroughly unlikable, and the film contin- But ultimately the preview audience ues with no firm point of view, no protago- was right: Topaz is too long, and it doesn’t nist for us to identify with. The first mild have a proper ending. Worse, it stumbles bit of suspense—the photographing of the into the same trap that Hitchcock had secret papers—comes nearly an hour into fallen into with SECRET AGENT and I the story. CONFESS—his heroes are all passive. The Forsythe is as forgettable as he nearly defector only escapes because of the CIA always was, FREDERICK STAFFORD is agent, the CIA agent hands the real work little better, and—outfitted with a bushy over to the French spy—and the French revolutionary beard—JOHN VERNON is spy then gets the Haitian to get the secret almost laughable. ROSCOE LEE BROWNE papers, his Cuban lover to get the pho- has a sly presence as the Haitian agent, tographic evidence, and his son-in-law and KARIN DOR adds some passion to to expose one of the traitors. Even when the fiery Juanita, but by the time Piccoli Devereaux tries to take action, picking up and Noiret show up, any momentum has a gun to get the second villain, the man is been lost, beaten into boredom by Maurice shot dead by one of his own. It’s a movie in Jarre’s bland yet overwhelming score and celebration of passivity—perhaps a reflec- the sort of flat photography on (mostly) tion of the downbeat mood in which Hitch- back-lot sets that makes the picture look cock took it on. like one of the studio’s cheap made-for- “One of the tragedies of Topaz was that TV movies. Even a deliberate attempt at Hitch was trying to make something as if provocation—Hitchcock had decided to he had INGRID BERGMAN and CARY take advantage of Hollywood’s new free- GRANT,” Taylor said afterward. “But he doms and shoot a nude love scene—came didn’t have the story for it, and he certainly to naught when it turned out both Dor and didn’t have the cast.” Stafford had surgical scars that would, at His third failure in a row, it would—as best, have proved a distraction. usual—send Hitchcock running to familiar Every so often, the old Hitchcock territory. And in this case, he would run all seems to reappear. He cheekily stages the way back to England and the material two long bits of expository dialogue— of his first iconic hit, the story of an inno- Devereaux’s speech to the Haitian agent cent man mistaken for a serial killer. and the agent’s bribe of a Cuban official— behind glass, where we can’t hear a word References (because honestly we don’t need to). BIRD Arthur Laurents, The Rest of the Story (Mil- imagery pops up. (A spy camera is hidden waukee, WI: Applause, 2012), 40–41; Pat- TORN CURTAIN n 461 rick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life Gromek, though, has followed him there in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- and quickly realizes Armstrong’s real mis- erCollins, 2003), 683–95; Donald Spoto, sion. Armstrong, with the aid of a farmer’s The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred wife, brutally kills Gromek. Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, Armstrong continues to Leipzig, where 1999), 498–503; Topaz: An Appreciation, he is to meet a prominent rocket scientist; directed by Laurent Bouzereau (2001), doc- he finally reveals his real plan to Sherman umentary; François Truffaut, Hitchcock/ and tricks the East German scientist into Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, giving him a valuable secret formula. But 1985), 328–33. Gromek’s body has been found, and Arm- strong and Sherman have to flee, leaving TORN CURTAIN (US 1966) for East Berlin on a fake municipal bus operated by an anti-Communist network. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. With the East German forces on high Screenplay: Brian Moore. alert, it is necessary for Armstrong and Producer: Uncredited (Alfred Hitchcock). Sherman to sneak out of the country. After Cinematography: John F. Warren. several close scrapes at a post office and a Editor: Bud Hoffman. Original Music: Paul Addison. travel agency, they are hidden inside the Cast: Paul Newman (Michael Armstrong), costume trunks of a ballet company trav- Julie Andrews (Sarah Sherman), Lila eling to Sweden and sail back to the West Kedrova (Countess Kuchinska), Wolf- and freedom. gang Kieling (Gromek), Carolyn Con- well (Farmer’s Wife). The midpoint in a slow slide. Running Time: 128 minutes. Color. With the disappointment of MARNIE Released Through: Universal. still fresh (and the nadir of TOPAZ still to come), Hitchcock decided to turn to the spy genre and a real-life story that had American physicist Michael Armstrong intrigued him for some time: The Burgess- and his assistant and lover, Sarah Sherman, Maclean affair, in which two British double travel to Copenhagen to attend a scientific agents had fled to the Soviet Union. What conference. But while there, Armstrong most struck Hitchcock about the defec- behaves suspiciously, and when he secretly tor’s story was that Maclean’s family had books a flight to East Berlin, Sherman fol- followed him the next year. It would be an lows him. To her shock and horror, as soon interesting thing, Hitchcock thought, to tell as Armstrong arrives behind the Iron Cur- the tale of a man’s treason from his wife’s tain, he announces his defection, saying point of view. that America stands in the way of peace. As he often did, Hitchcock began the Armstrong is quickly debriefed by the East story process by looking for a novelist or German government and assigned a body- playwright to work with on the treatment; guard, Gromek, who will be keeping a care- Vladimir Nabokov begged off, however, ful eye on him. professing no facility with spy stories, and While there, Armstrong slips away to James Goldman was already busy with the a distant farm to make contact with a US screenplay for his own The Lion in Win- agent; Armstrong, it seems, is only pre- ter. Finally, the director settled on BRIAN tending to defect so that he can gain vital MOORE; it was the heroine’s point of view information from an East German scientist. that was the most important, Hitchcock 462 n TORN CURTAIN thought, and the Irish novelist had gotten the snow. “We all knew we had a loser on excellent notices for the female-centric The our hands with this picture,” Newman said Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne. later. “During the shooting, we all wished The final script showed some of that we didn’t have to make it.” initial intention. (It actually divides neatly The film begins with one of the direc- into three parts—the first act told from tor’s typically droll, slightly naughty Sherman’s point of view, the second from touches—the heat on Armstrong and Sher- Armstrong’s, and then the third from man’s cruise ship isn’t working, and while both.) But Moore protested that the char- they’re in bed together during the middle acters were still weak and their interactions of the day, they’re huddled under all their unbelievable; the plot was “little else than coats and blankets. (Although both are a Hitchcock compendium” of tricks and presumably topless; Hitchcock would try twists. Hitchcock told him to take a vaca- for onscreen nudity again in TOPAZ and tion and then gave the script to two British finally break the old taboo in his next film, “kitchen-sink” writers, Keith Waterhouse FRENZY.) And it climaxes with another and Willis Hill, for another draft. (In the Hitchcock JOKE—needing to both flee a end, Moore—who was never formally dis- ballet performance and slip away unde- missed—got sole screen credit.) tected, Armstrong literally cries, “Fire!” in As if to emphasize this conscious trip a crowded theater. back to the cloak-and-dagger world of In between, there is one bravura NORTH BY NORTHWEST, Hitchcock sequence, in which Gromek surprises Arm- thought briefly of reuniting that film’s strong at the farmhouse. With the help of STARS, but CARY GRANT had once again the farmer’s wife (who is never given a decided to retire (and this time was stick- name and played by Liv Ullmann looka- ing to it). UNIVERSAL, still smarting from like Carolyn Conwell), Gromek is first dis- Hitchcock’s attempts to make a star out of armed and then killed. It is a slow, brutal TIPPI HEDREN, insisted on the biggest murder (both Moore and Hitchcock said marquee names available: PAUL NEW- they wanted to show how ugly real violence MAN and JULIE ANDREWS. Both were is) and a grimly ironic one, as the tools certainly stars—it would, in fact, be the used are emblems of domesticity: a pot last time that Hitchcock would work with of FOOD, a kitchen knife, a shovel, a gas acknowledged A-list talent—but their sala- oven. (The scene of a German being gassed ries ate into the budget, and the director to death in an oven is particularly deliber- later grumbled that they were miscast. ately jarring.) Adding to the discomfort is Neither certainly was quite right for that, quickly and brilliantly edited as the a Hitchcock film. Newman was another sequence is, it plays out in utter silence. one of the director’s feared METHOD That was actually a last-minute actors, always asking about motivation choice—music had been written for the (and unafraid to bluntly express his opin- scene, but Hitchcock decided to have it ion, which rattled the conflict-averse film- unfold only to sound effects, the way he maker). And Andrews, fresh from Mary had first wanted the PSYCHO shower Poppins and The Sound of Music, still main- death to be shown. There had, in fact, tained a prim, virginal image, even during even been two scores he could have gone her opening scene in bed with Newman; if with—the first one, written by BERNARD Hitchcock’s ideal was the “snow-covered HERRMANN, which was turned down as volcano,” then all Andrews conveyed was not “pop” enough, and the second, con- TRAINS n 463 tributed by Herrmann’s replacement, John compositions (a raucous press conference Addison. Herrmann, a hot-tempered art- in which Armstrong is constantly half- ist to begin with, was not just insulted but obscured by jostling journalists; a strained also enraged by this rejection; he (rightly) conversation between Sherman and Arm- accused Hitchcock of being too in thrall to strong in an empty, airless room). But the the studio and its money concerns to take a film never comes alive, and for many, the stand, and he never worked with him again. only curtain it brought to mind was the one (Adding irony to injury, Addison’s score it threatened to ring down on a great film- isn’t particularly good and failed to provide maker’s long career. the popular movie music theme the studio had hoped for.) References Herrmann wasn’t the only regular Royal S. Brown, “An Interview with Ber- Hitchcock colleague missing. The direc- nard Herrmann,” Bernard Herrmann Soci- tor’s trusted editor, GEORGE TOMASINI, ety, http://www.bernardherrmann.org/arti had recently died; cinematographer ROB- cles/an-interview-with-bernard-herrmann; ERT BURKS was elsewhere, too (he would Guy Flatley, “I Tried to Be Discreet with die, too, tragically, in 1968), nor was title That Nude Corpse,’ New York Times, June designer SAUL BASS on hand. (The open- 18, 1972, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ ing credits would instead attempt a James New_York_Times_%2818/Jun/1972%29 Bond look, with flickering flames and _-_I_Tried_to_Be_Discreet_With_That slightly distorted clips from the film.) And _Nude_Corpse; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock’s increasing reliance on back- Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light projection and studio sets was beginning (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 667–74; to show; although ALBERT WHITLOCK’s Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: matte work is typically gorgeous, the film- The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: maker’s reluctance to spend much time on Da Capo Press, 1999), 486–92; François LOCATION SHOOTING robs the film of a Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New realism that, just a decade before, had been York: Touchstone, 1985), 309–13. a hallmark of I CONFESS, TO CATCH A THIEF, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO TRAINS MUCH, and VERTIGO. Alfred Hitchcock loved the idea of trans- In the end, Hitchcock was sadly right; portation from childhood, although at Newman and Andrews are wrong for the first it was simply the cold bare facts of the roles and never really connect onscreen. municipal transit system. As soon as he And Moore was right, too—the film isn’t was allowed to travel alone, he rode every a forward-moving narrative but a collec- tram line in London and most of the river- tion of bits. (A long scene with actress Lila boats. He kept track of the British ships at Kedrova as a Polish countess trying to get sea and studiously committed to memory to the West obviously entranced Hitchcock, every timetable he could find. It was an but it only slows down the film in the last all-consuming hobby. Considering that, third, after things have already begun to years later, he insisted that he’d never had a stall.) childhood playmate, he had plenty of time True, the scene with Gromek is a truly to devote to it. brutal standout—it is the closest thing in Today, perhaps, this might be diag- Hitchcock’s films to actual sadism until the nosed as something more than an intro- rape in Frenzy—and there are some nice vert’s eccentricity. Hitchcock grew up to be 464 n TRAINS a man who worried about detail; obsessed and then at the end mangles him under its over certain subjects; and was committed to wheels after he falls on the tracks. routine, particularly in dress and diet. He Trains can also—with their cramped dreaded anything that threatened conflict spaces and forced conviviality—create and sometimes misread people’s emotions fateful, even fatal, interactions. If Guy had badly. At the time, it was dismissed as odd rented an automobile instead of boarding (or not talked about at all). Today, it might a dining car, then he never would have be diagnosed as a sign of Asperger’s. bumped into Bruno in STRANGERS ON But back then, Hitchcock was seen as A TRAIN; if Roger Thornhill had hitched a simply someone who liked trains—not at ride to Chicago instead of slipping aboard a all an uncommon interest, particularly in train, then Eve Kendall wouldn’t have been an era when rail travel was far more com- able to arrange their “accidental” meeting mon than flying. In fact, railways play a in NORTH BY NORTHWEST; if Johnnie particularly important role in Hitchcock’s hadn’t ducked into Lina’s compartment in life. When he was starting his directing SUSPICION, then they never would have career, he and the cast and crew of THE embarked on their own parallel voyages of PLEASURE GARDEN took an event- lies and doubt. We not only travel fastest ful trip by rail to the LOCATION shoots when we travel alone, but in the world of in Germany and Italy; when he finally Hitchcock’s films, we also travel safest. arrived in Hollywood some 15 years later, All of those elements are put to work it was by pulling into Los Angeles’s Union in THE LADY VANISHES, set almost Station. entirely on a train, which becomes not only Later, of course, Hitchcock would a setting for its many characters but also a travel by plane or ocean liner, but trains microcosm for mid-’30s Europe. The Brit- reoccur in his films, although usually for ishers who don’t want to get involved out particularly logical and dramatic reasons: of personal self-interest; the untrustworthy They ensure conflict (whatever the hero if somewhat incapable Italian; the Eastern is trying to get away from is now in this Europeans whose true alliances are difficult enclosed space with him) and pace (what- to judge—these aren’t just characters in a ever is going to happen must occur before film but also symbols of their nations. And the next station stop). They are what make they are bound together by Europe’s bor- possible a very important and basic equa- ders and treaties, just as their living, breath- tion for suspense: tension plus time. ing emblems are held together by dining- Trains also provided a chance for spec- car assignments and timetables. tacle—as in the deliberately absurd climax It is one of Hitchcock’s finest films, of NUMBER 17 or the long-delayed one in largely because—thanks to its setting—it SECRET AGENT. Mostly, however, Hitch- plausibly collects a variety of people, locks cock used them instead as a means to an them in, and then hurtles them toward a end, a way of increasing suspense—and destination. It doesn’t allow for a moment’s introducing into his unforgiving world just release or a distracting side trip. And yet it one more object that may in the end betray ensures that, when they get off, they won’t you. In THE 39 STEPS, the train functions be the same people who boarded. first as a method of escape for Richard Hannay—and then, when he is recognized, Reference as a trap. In SHADOW OF A DOUBT, the Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: locomotive, belching black smoke, brings The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Uncle Charlie triumphantly into town— Capo Press, 1999), 20, 208. TRANSFERENCE n 465

TRANSATLANTIC PICTURES TRANSFERENCE Hitchcock’s own, ill-fated attempt at an GUILT is a movable feast in Hitchcock, a independent, international production thing neither tied to a person nor an action. company. Begun in 1946, with long- What does one have to feel guilty about? time colleague SIDNEY BERNSTEIN In Hitchcock’s darkly brooding, extremely (an instrumental figure in Hitchcock’s CATHOLIC world, sometimes it seems various wartime propaganda projects as if—Well, what doesn’t one have to feel for Britain), the project got under full guilty about? No matter how guilty the vil- steam as soon as Hitchcock finished lain is, there’s always enough guilt to be THE PARADINE CASE, his last film for transferred back to the hero. DAVID O. SELZNICK; the new compa- The trope of the “wrong man,” the ny’s first project, the director announced, accused innocent, is of course a constant would be UNDER CAPRICORN with in Hitchcock’s films, from THE LODGER INGRID BERGMAN. through FRENZY; to name all its occur- Bergman, however, wasn’t yet available rences would be to practically reprint for shooting, so the company pushed for- the director’s list of credits. Yet those are ward with ROPE, a production that failed chiefly instances of MISTAKEN IDEN- to excite audiences; when Under Capricorn TITY, not moral complexity. The far finally did begin, Hitchcock realized he had more pertinent part of Hitchcock’s typi- overspent to acquire his STAR and didn’t cally stern, traditionally Catholic world- really have the proper costar or story to view insists that there is no wrong man, no justify the project. When that film failed innocent victim—that we are all sinners, all as well, the company quietly disappeared, guilty of something. with WARNER BROS.—which had distrib- Under the Catechisms, he would have uted the two previous pictures—forging a been made to learn by heart at the turn of new deal with Hitchcock alone. the century “sin is an utterance, a deed or Selznick might be forgiven if he a desire contrary to the eternal law,” and cracked a small smile, watching his former even if we don’t commit that sin ourselves, director get a rude lesson in what it really then we share the guilt of others not only meant to be a mogul. But the new Warner by “participating directly and voluntarily” contract made Hitchcock the producer he in their sinful acts or “ordering, advising, had often unofficially been on his previous praising or approving them” but also by “loan-out films”—and with Transatlantic “not disclosing or not hindering them.” Pictures behind him and this deal before His Jesuit education, Hitchcock later said, him, Hitchcock would soon reach new had given him, a “consciousness of good heights in both artistic control and achieve- and evil, that both are always with me.” But ment. it also left him with a conviction that evil did not always require action. There were References sins of inaction, too. There were sins that Rudy Behlmer, ed., Memo from David O. you committed merely in your heart, with Selznick (New York: Viking Press, 1972), a single, fleeting, furtive wish. 407; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: Sometimes in Hitchcock’s films, his A Life in Darkness and Light (New York: heroes are led into sin out of fear or self- HarperCollins, 2003), 382–83, 399–402, interest. In STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, 467; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Guy knows that Bruno is a murderer—but Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New going to the police might only throw suspi- York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 294–95, 319. cion on him. In I CONFESS, Father Logan 466 n TRAP FOR A SOLITARY MAN knows that Otto is the killer—yet he cannot monwealmagazine.org/catholic-hitchcock; find a way to inform the authorities with- “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” The out imperiling his own soul by breaking a Holy See, http://www.vatican.va/archive/ holy vow. They end up enabling these vil- ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a8 lains, and so some of the guilt is transferred htm; Bess Twiston Davies, “Hitchcock: back to them—and not undeservedly so, as Monster or Moralist?” Times, September in both cases they’ve profited by the crime, 5, 2008, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ as the murderer has rudely dispatched The_Times_%2805/Sep/2008%29_-_Hitch someone the protagonists had fervently cock:_monster_or_moralist. wished would go away. That adds to their anguish. TRAP FOR A SOLITARY MAN In Hitchcock’s films, love can also One of the many dead-end projects that lead us into temptation, being just as likely filled the early ’60s, this one based on a to encourage our most self-destructive play by M. Robert Thomas. The story, instincts—crime, obsession, deceit—as it is according to an item in the London Times, to bring out our better natures. “shows us a young married couple on holi- Lina is in thrall to Johnnie in SUSPI- day in the Alps. The wife disappears, and CION, for example—and so she protects after prolonged search the police bring someone she knows to be a liar and embez- back someone they claim to be she; she says zler and believes to be a murderer. It takes she is the man’s wife, and only he denies forever for young Charlie to accept that her it.” The newspaper went on to confidently beloved uncle is a serial killer in SHADOW announce that it was to be in Cinema- OF A DOUBT—but when she does, rather scope, and that while no casting had been than turn him in, she only urges him to announced, it was to be made for Fox. slip away from the police. Mark knows that It isn’t hard to see how the story MARNIE is a compulsive thief—and is will- would have appealed to Hitchcock; the ing to pay any amount of restitution, use Alps had always had fond associations for any influence, to make sure that she never him since his honeymoon in St. Moritz. faces a judge’s justice. Everyone is complicit The idea of the DOUBLE goes back to the in their beloved’s crime; in the eyes of the old, influential days of the German silents, Church, and Hitchcock’s, everyone is just and the dramatic situation of the protago- as equally guilty of sin. nist who, alone, denies that someone is And if Hitchcock’s heroes rarely face who she says she is had been, of course, real punishment for their behavior in the the core of one of his greatest films, THE end—there will be no charges brought, LADY VANISHES. no jail time imposed, on Lina or Charlie Perhaps the problem was that the idea or Mark—then they still carry that weight appealed to too many people; it had already on their shoulders. They still bear that inspired a 1958 movie, Chase a Crooked mark on their souls. Unluckily for them, in Shadow (and would go on, over the next Hitchcock’s world, there’s always enough 25 years, to be adapted at least three more guilt to go around. times). But in any case, the announcement in the paper seemed to be as far as the proj- References ect went; it joined several other aborted Richard Alleva, “The Catholic Hitchcock: ideas, including THE BLIND MAN and A Director’s Sense of Good and Evil,” Com- VILLAGE OF STARS as Hitchcock moved monweal, July 12, 2010, https://www.com on to THE BIRDS and MARNIE. TRAVERS, LINDEN n 467

References References Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life “Henry Travers,” IMDb, http://www.imdb in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- .com/name/nm0871287/bio?ref_=nm_ov Collins, 2003), 609; “Mr. Hitchcock’s Plans,” _bio_sm; Mieka Smiles, “Wonderful Life of Times, September 23, 1960, http://the Henry Travers Revealed,” Journal, December .hitchcock.zone/wiki/The_Times_%2823/ 18, 2010, http://www.thejournal.co.uk/news/ Sep/1960%29_-_Mr._Hitchcock’s_plans; north-east-news/wonderful-life-henry-trav “Robert Thomas,” IMDb, http://www.imdb ers-revealed-4443717; Alfred E. Twomey and .com/name/nm0859436. Arthur F. McClure, The Versatiles: Support- ing Character Players in the Cinema, 1930– TRAVERS, HENRY (1874–1965) 1955 (New York: Castle Books, 1969), 298. Northumberland-born performer who grew up as the son of a country doctor TRAVERS, LINDEN (1913–2001) and studied architecture in school. By 20, Durham-born performer whose acting though, he had committed to being an career began quickly. She made her first actor. He was a stage actor exclusively for stage appearance at 20, her London debut nearly 40 years; one of his greatest suc- the following year (in an IVOR NOVELLO cesses was in the Broadway farce You Can’t play), and her screen debut the year after Take It with You (later filmed by Frank that. In 1938, Hitchcock cast her in THE Capra, with Lionel Barrymore taking Trav- LADY VANISHES as the adulterous Mrs. ers’s part). Todhunter; as one paper noted, the great- By 1933, though, Travers had begun est mystery of the film may have been what appearing in films as well—he is CLAUDE a beauty like her was supposed to have seen RAINS’s mentor in The Invisible Man— in a toad like Mr. Todhunter. and would go on to appear in many films, The British film industry couldn’t seem usually as amiable figures of authority or to find room for her, though, and the parts slightly dotty senior citizens: Dark Victory, began to shrink; “I seem to have jumped Mrs. Miniver, Random Harvest, The Year- out of being mistresses to playing with the ling. His most beloved role was, of course, comics,” she said of the farces she was soon as Clarence Oddbody, the sweetly uncer- being offered. The scandalously gruesome tain “Angel, 2nd Class” of Capra’s It’s a crime thriller No Orchids for Miss Blandish Wonderful Life. in 1948 was definitely more serious stuff, but Hitchcock cast him, very much to type, Travers soon retired to concentrate on her in SHADOW OF A DOUBT as Joseph New- family, taking only very occasional TV roles ton, Charlie’s father, whose favorite hobby afterward. The Hitchcock connection con- is chatting with his neighbor Herbie about tinued, however; her daughter Susan Travers how one might murder the other. It’s a deft is Rusk’s final victim in FRENZY. performance that delights without over- She died in Cornwall at 88. doing the cute-old-codger twinkling; particularly good are the small, furtive looks References Travers gives as JOSEPH COTTEN’s Uncle Ronald Bergan, “Linden Travers,” Guard- Charlie visits him at work and embarrasses ian, November 2, 2001, http://www him in front of his boss. .theguardian.com/news/2001/nov/02/ Travers quietly retired at the end of the guardianobituaries.filmnews; “Linden 1940s and died in Los Angeles of arterio- Travers,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ sclerosis at 91. name/nm0871298/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. 468 n TREMAYNE, LES

TREMAYNE, LES (1913–2003) (Mrs. Wiggs), Royal Dano (Deputy Sher- London-born performer who emigrated to iff Wiggs), Jerry Mathers (Arnie Rogers). Chicago with his family at the age of four. Running Time: 99 minutes. Color. His mother had been on the British stage, Released Through: Paramount. and in their new home, young Les soon began working in vaudeville, carnivals, and community theater. By 17, he was on the Harry is dead. That much is clear. But who radio; it would be the center of his career killed him? for many decades, with long stints as both Is it old Captain Wiles, a poor marks- an announcer and an actor, including radio man who was out shooting and fears his serials featuring “The Falcon” and Dashiell stray shot killed the man? Is it the elderly, Hammett’s Nick Charles. solitary Miss Gravely, who gave him a kick In films since 1949, he is particu- in the head when he grabbed her? Or is it larly remembered by genre fans for add- Jennifer Rogers, once reluctantly married ing his deep and distinctive voice to films to Harry, who, when he began to rudely from The War of the Worlds to The Slime renew the acquaintance, hit him over the People; Alfred Hitchcock cast him in sev- head with a milk bottle? eral episodes of ALFRED HITCHCOCK All of this is prologue to the opening PRESENTS and THE ALFRED HITCH- moment when Harry is found dead in the COCK HOUR, as well as the exasperated Vermont woods. And the driving force auctioneer in NORTH BY NORTHWEST. behind a long series of interments, disin- Tremayne had a long career, eventually terments, and clumsy body snatchings as working almost exclusively as a voice actor Harry’s poor body is hauled around small- for cartoons; he died at 90 in Santa Monica. town Vermont. Yet although Harry is as dead as a References doornail, love is still alive. Oddball artist Hal Erickson, “Les Tremayne,” All Movie Sam Marlowe falls for Jennifer. Wiles and Guide, http://www.nytimes.com/movies/per Gravely form a tentative, tender alliance. son/71705/Les-Tremayne/biography; “Les And yet, as romance blossoms, the law Tremayne,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ threatens to end it as Deputy Sheriff Calvin name/nm0871876/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. Wiggs gets doggedly on the case. Eventually, though—no thanks to any- THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY one—the facts are sorted out. Despite the (US 1955) various assaults to his person, Harry died of natural causes. Free of any charges, Miss Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Gravely and Captain Wiles and Sam and Screenplay: John Michael Hayes, based on the novel by Jack Trevor Story. Jennifer are free to go on with their lives. Producers: Herbert Coleman (Alfred And comfortably, too—a passing millionaire Hitchcock, uncredited). has decided to buy all of Sam’s paintings. Cinematography: Robert Burks. Editor: Alma Macrorie. A very personal film and a very public fail- Original Music: Bernard Herrmann. ure. Cast: John Forsythe (Sam Marlowe), Shir- ley MacLaine (Jennifer Rogers), Edmund Hitchcock had no doubt about the Gwenn (Captain Wiles), Mildred Nat- project, having read the novel by JACK wick (Ivy Gravely), Mildred Dunnock TREVOR STORY when it was published in 1950 and assigning it to JOHN MICHAEL THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY n 469

HAYES for a screenplay adaptation even Brooks Brothers bland as he always was; before their TO CATCH A THIEF had MacLaine was suitably quirky, but her been shot. On a practical level, the plot— independent and outspoken approach to How do you dispose of an inconvenient the part rattled the reserved director. Actu- corpse?—appealed to the director’s true- ally, Hitchcock said later, only Gwenn and crime fandom. On a thematic level—Are Natwick caught the very dry and under- you GUILTY of murder if you only wished stated flavor of what he was trying to do. the person dead?—was close to his CATH- The real stumbling block, though, OLIC heart. was that what Hitchcock was trying to do “I’ve always wanted to do a black com- had always been misguided. The charm edy,” he told associate producer Herbert of Story’s original book—what Hitchcock Coleman. “This story is perfect for that. . . . A had undoubtedly responded to—was the low budget film. Without high-price STARS. very Englishness of it, its studied refusal to We’ll cast it with New York stage actors.” acknowledge such an embarrassing situ- In that approach, Hitchcock was suc- ation as a possible murder. The Trouble cessful. Bland, button-down JOHN FOR- with Harry should have been an Ealing SYTHE—who had mostly done stage and comedy, with Alec Guinness as the artist, radio at that point—was cast as Sam. SHIR- Joan Greenwood as the single MOTHER, LEY MACLAINE made her movie debut as and perhaps BASIL RADFORD and Jennifer. (Fortuitously for her, Coleman NAUNTON WAYNE as background had caught the spritely young actress’s eccentrics. Simply transplanting it to Broadway debut in The Pajama Game after America didn’t work; the attitudes of Yan- she had to go on for injured star Carol kee townspeople are not those of British Haney.) The rest of the cast was filled out villagers, nor are the approaches of Ameri- with older theater veterans—Mildred Dun- can actors necessarily those of English nock; MILDRED NATWICK; and Hitch- ones. Things were lost in translation. cock’s old star from THE SKIN GAME and Despite the difficulties (and inevitable FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, EDMUND compromises), ROBERT BURKS managed GWENN. to deliver some striking COLOR cinema- Yet the production ran into trouble tography; the film also marked the begin- early. Hitchcock had told Hayes to change ning of Hitchcock’s collaborations with the setting from old England to New Eng- BERNARD HERRMANN, with the com- land; they would shoot on LOCATION poser contributing his most playful score. during the fall, the director told PARA- Hayes once again slipped some sexy dia- MOUNT, so as to catch the Technicolor logue past the CENSORS, and there are a beauty of the autumn foliage. But when the few striking images—mostly of poor dead crew arrived, they discovered most of the Harry’s big feet, rudely dominating the leaves had already fallen in a recent thun- frame in scene after scene as his corpse is derstorm; they were reduced to shooting continually hidden, rediscovered, and hid- mostly interiors and re-creating the Ver- den again. mont exteriors back in California. The And however lighthearted it’s meant bother of a location shoot had been for to be, the film is still Hitchcock’s largest nothing. examination of TRANSFERENCE—in There were other problems, too. the end, no one is really guilty for Harry’s Although he was supposed to be playing death, yet almost everyone shares in that a bohemian artist, Forsythe remained as guilt because of their actions or intentions, 470 n TRUFFAUT, FRANÇOIS their attempts to ignore their complicity TRUFFAUT, FRANÇOIS as unsuccessful as their attempts to hide (1932–1984) Harry himself. Paris-born filmmaker who helped popu- While Hitchcock had deliberately kept larize the AUTEUR THEORY, firmly the budget low, the film still lost money. establish the artistic reputation of Alfred “The distributors didn’t know how to Hitchcock, and emerge as one of the most exploit it,” he complained later to FRAN- talented and humanist directors of the ÇOIS TRUFFAUT. “It needed special FRENCH NEW WAVE. handling. They felt it was too special, but Born out of wedlock (a private detec- I didn’t see it that way. . . . To my taste, the tive the adult filmmaker hired later traced humor is quite rich.” Indeed, he often used his parentage to a Jewish dentist from Bay- the film as an example of the sort of amus- onne), Truffaut was raised chiefly by his ingly morbid mood he was going for in his arts-loving grandmother until the age of television shows. eight, when she died and he was sent to live Although he often disowned projects with his chilly mother and her new hus- that audiences failed to embrace—their band; his unhappy childhood was one of judgment, he felt, was the final one—this perpetual truancy and sneaking into movie was one “flawed” picture he remained stub- theaters. He quit school for good at 14; 2 bornly fond of. “I’ve always been interested years later, he formed a cinema club. in establishing a contrast, in going against By 20, after a disastrous time in the the traditional and in breaking away from army—he nearly served serious time for clichés,” he told Truffaut. “With ‘Harry’ desertion—fellow cinephile and regular I took melodrama out of the pitch-black mentor ANDRE BAZIN hired him to work night and brought it out into the sunshine. at his film magazine, CAHIERS DU CIN- It’s as if I had set up a murder alongside a EMA. There, in 1954, Truffaut wrote “A rustling brook and spilled a drop of blood Certain Trend of French Cinema,” an early in the clear water. These contrasts establish and passionate advocacy of auteurism, a counterpoint; they elevate the common- which insisted that the director was the true place in life to a higher level.” author of a film and that his or her influence could be seen in every work. References Truffaut also, along with ERIC Herbert Coleman, The Man Who Knew ROHMER and CLAUDE CHABROL, Hitchcock: A Hollywood Memoir (Lanham, became one of the fiercest defenders of MD: Scarecrow Press, 2007), 193; Shir- Hitchcock’s work; in 1955, Truffaut and ley MacLaine, interview with the author, Chabrol INTERVIEWED the filmmaker December 1996; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred for Cahiers, and seven years later, hav- Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light ing established himself as a filmmaker, (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 502–8; Truffaut reapproached the director, ask- Patrick McGilligan, ed., Backstory: Inter- ing this time for a book-length interview. views with Screenwriters of the 60s (Berke- Hitchcock eventually sat for 50 hours of ley: University of California Press, 1997), taped conversations, a translator in con- 174–92; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of stant attendance; the resulting mammoth Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New dialogue, HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT, was York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 354–56; Fran- first published in France in 1966, com- çois Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. ing out in America the following year and (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 226–27. later appearing in revised and expanded TRUFFAUT, FRANÇOIS n 471 editions. The two men remained close ing this one. (In 2015, the volume even friends. inspired its own documentary.) In his preface to the final revised edi- Although Truffaut’s book would have tion in 1983, Truffaut said that he had been been a major accomplishment on its own, spurred to write the book because, 20 years with his fine feature film debut in 1959, the before, Hitchcock was still viewed by many painfully autobiographical The 400 Blows, outside of the Cahiers circle as simply a Truffaut became an accomplished and crit- very slick entertainer; in some ways, Truf- ically acclaimed filmmaker himself; as his faut said, this was Hitchcock’s own fault. career went on, his own reputation would Although—or perhaps because of—the only increase. Full of invention and inno- director’s “genius for publicity was equaled vation, Truffaut would later experiment only by that of SALVADOR DALI,” he was with narrative and editing in Shoot the not taken seriously by American intellectu- Piano Player, switch to science fiction (and als. They tended to see him as a showman, English) for the flawed Fahrenheit 451, and and “his facetious response to interviewers direct several HITCHCOCKIAN thrillers and his deliberate practice of deriding their of his own, including two based on COR- questions” did not win them over. NELL WOOLRICH novels, The Bride Wore Truffaut’s book, with its attention to Black and Mississippi Mermaid. He will motif and meaning, was meant to correct probably be best remembered, however, for that. And it did in many ways. By the late his bittersweet meditations on the eternally ’60s, the Hitchcock reappreciation—aided perplexing challenges of art and love—Jules by ROBIN WOOD’s HITCHCOCK’S and Jim, Day for Night, The Story of Adele FILMS, first published in 1965, and H., and The Last Metro. ANDREW SARRIS’s The American Cin- His last film was the Hitchcockian ema, published in 1968—was fully under- thriller Confidentially Yours; his last com- way; the Truffaut book was its flagship. pleted project was the revised edition of The original volume is easy to criti- Hitchcock/Truffaut. He died the next year cize now. Truffaut was an unabashed and in Paris of a brain tumor. He was only 52. sometimes uncritical devotee; he occasionally fails to follow up on Hitchcock’s References own allusions and often functions only as “François Truffaut,” Biography, http://www a highly intelligent stenographer, carefully .biography.com/people/fran%C3%A7ois taking down every humorous ANECDOTE -truffaut-9511057; “François Truffaut,” and how-I-got-that-shot story. But that IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ stenography is important, too; Hitchcock nm0000076/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; was relaxed and expansive with his young “François Truffaut,” New Wave Encyclope- admirer, and if some of the stories here dia, http://www.newwavefilm.com/french are familiar, then they are also filled with -new-wave-encyclopedia/François-truf unequaled detail. The book remains a vital faut.shtml; François Truffaut, Hitchcock/ work of scholarship and a primary source Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, for many volumes that followed, includ- 1985), 11–20, 344–48. UA

UNDER CAPRICORN (US 1949) as a boy, he knew Flusky’s wife, Henrietta. Unfortunately, she seems to have had a Director: Alfred Hitchcock. nervous breakdown and is prone to fright- Screenplay: James Bridie, Hume Cronyn, ening hallucinations; the house is run by from the play by John Colton and Mar- Milly, the housekeeper, who terrorizes the garet Linden and the novel by Helen Simpson. help while quietly keeping Henrietta docile Producers: Uncredited (Sidney Bernstein, by plying her with strong drink. Alfred Hitchcock). Seeing the calming influence Charles Cinematography: Jack Cardiff. has on his wife, Flusky invites him to stay Editor: A. S. Bates. with them; touched by the fragile Henri- Original Music: Richard Addinsell. etta, Charles works hard to help her feel Cast: Ingrid Bergman (Henrietta Flusky), more like her old self. Finally, Henrietta Joseph Cotten (Sam Flusky), Michael tells Charles the real family story—when Wilding (Charles Adare), Margaret Leigh- she was a wealthy young Irishwoman, ton (Milly), Cecil Parker (Governor). Flusky was her stable boy. She ran off Running Time: 117 minutes. Black and white. with him and was pursued by her brother. Released Through: Warner Bros. In the ensuing fight, she shot and killed her own brother—only it was Flusky who took the blame and the six-year chain- In 1831, a new governor arrives in Austra- gang sentence in Australia. She followed lia from Great Britain accompanied by his him, waited for him—and now they are chipper but callow nephew Charles, who bound together through his love and her hopes to make his fortune. Charles has no obligation. obvious talents, unfortunately, but during Discovering them together in a ten- a trip to the bank, he meets Samson Flusky, der moment, the suspicious Flusky orders a gruff but prosperous landowner who pro- Charles out of the house; there is a struggle, poses a business venture—as he is barred and Flusky accidentally shoots Charles in from purchasing any more government the arm. The governor announces that, as land, Flusky will loan Charles the money an ex-convict, this crime means Flusky will to do so for him and then buy the property be returned to the chain gang; Henrietta back from Charles at a profit. protests that it was an accident and also Despite the governor’s warnings about confesses that it was she who was guilty of Flusky, who has a bad reputation, Charles her brother’s death back in Ireland. The pays a call on him—where he realizes that, governor warns her that if she persists in

472 n UNDER CAPRICORN n 473

Ingrid Bergman and Alfred Hitchcock share a momentarily carefree moment in London while shooting the nerve-racking Under Capricorn. Photofest that story, then he will return her to Ireland drive Henrietta mad. He dismisses Milly for trial. and is arrested for the assault on Charles. Returning home, Henrietta again falls Charles, however, realizing the real love prey to hallucinations—until Flusky dis- between Henrietta and her husband, swears covers that Milly, secretly in love with him, that there was no struggle and the gun dis- has been engineering the scares to try and charged accidentally. The governor frees 474 n UNDER CAPRICORN

Flusky and declines to pursue any charges cared for it and that it was Bergman who against Henrietta; Charles returns to Ire- really wanted to make it, with all its oppres- land alone, the one emigrant, he jokes, who sive melodrama and bleak moodiness—it did not find his fortune in Australia. “suited her rather than myself.” Bergman was fine in the role, at least— Underwhelming, and a rather lifeless period it’s basically an extended version of the sec- piece that helped end the fitful life of Hitch- ond half of NOTORIOUS—but MICHAEL cock’s TRANSATLANTIC PICTURES. WILDING and JOSEPH COTTEN added The idea of the independent pro- little fire as her costars. Of course, the duction company had been born in the director’s insistence on a camera moving mid-’40s, even as he was working on through long, elaborately choreographed THE PARADINE CASE for DAVID O. single takes hardly helped their perfor- SELZNICK; Hitchcock and his new part- mances; the cables and movable walls and ner, SIDNEY BERNSTEIN, had—after a furniture on wheels created an amazing flirtation with a modern version of HAM- clutter and soon frustrated Bergman and LET—decided on Under Capricorn for the rest of the stars. (Unlike Rope, though, their first production. But the director’s Hitchcock did make concessions to the must-have STAR, INGRID BERGMAN, conceit, incorporating insert shots and wasn’t yet free; Under Capricorn was then close-ups and rarely letting a take run more moved to second position, with ROPE than five or six minutes.) chosen as the company’s supposedly safe Bergman began to protest loudly, debut. As it came from a tested stage play, and when she grew angrier and angrier there would be no problem coming up with with him—according to the hypersensi- a script; with Hitchcock deciding on unin- tive Hitchcock, one day she became “hys- terrupted 10-minute takes, production—it terical”—he simply walked off the set. The was assumed—would be almost effortless. next morning, they went back to shooting Unfortunately, there were unforeseen as before, each of them still utterly con- problems, including a box-office reaction vinced they were right. “I think he did this to Rope that was less than thrilling, and so to prove to himself that he could,” Berg- it became ever more important that Trans- man later said. “It was a challenge only to atlantic’s next picture be a simple, unques- himself, to show the movie industry that he tioned success. And even more unfortu- could figure out and accomplish something nately, that high-stakes second picture so difficult—so much technique, so much now became the highly problematic Under to show off. . . . And of course the audience Capricorn. couldn’t care less.” The problems should have been evi- Bergman was right, though. Although dent right from the start. Hitchcock had in Rope the technique had at least added always loathed costume pictures, and his to the claustrophobic setting and the “real experiences on WALTZES FROM VIENNA time” unfolding of the story, here it served and JAMAICA INN had given him no rea- no obvious artistic purpose. And while it son to change his mind; they always felt had been another coup getting JACK CAR- fake to him. (“I couldn’t understand the DIFF, a wizard with COLOR, as cinema- characters; how they bought a loaf of bread tographer, Cardiff found the challenges or went to the bathroom.”) And although more frustrating than fulfilling (and sadly, he had optioned the Australian novel him- thanks to the film’s spotty postproduction self in 1945, he later claimed he’d never history, most of the ugly prints in circula- UNIVERSAL n 475 tion today give only a vague hint as to his sequence or memorable moment. It’s the original conceptions). “I think a film of sort of picture that Hitchcock always said Capricorn being made would have been far he hated—pictures of people talking—and more successful than Capricorn itself,” Car- it marks the lowest point in a dull period diff wryly observed later. of halfhearted efforts that stretched from There are hints of other Hitchcock The Paradine Case to STAGE FRIGHT. films here and HITCHCOCKIAN themes, More than a new beginning, it seemed to of course. Milly—superbly played by MAR- mark the end of something—beginning GARET LEIGHTON—is a smarter, saner with Transatlantic Pictures, which could Mrs. Danvers, a false MOTHER figure not afford this second flop. Bergman and cleverly maneuvering herself into a vacant Hitchcock never worked together again— position of authority (“I run this house”) there was first her scandalous affair with or, with seemingly sincere sympathy, slyly Roberto Rossellini and then his discovery enabling her mistress’s slide into useless of GRACE KELLY. And discounting the alcoholism. (“Don’t you think you should early-’60s setting of 1969’s TOPAZ, Hitch- have something to drink?” she murmurs, cock never again made a period film. holding her as the scene fades to black.) It’s a chilly portrait—so much so, Hitchcock References claimed, that English critics grew rather Ingrid Bergman and Alan Burgess, My Story cross at him for what he’d done with a (New York: Delacorte Press, 1980), 175, favorite actress. 177–78; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitch- And true, Under Capricorn is, along cock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New with I CONFESS, one of the director’s most York: HarperCollins, 2003), 419–27; Eric intriguingly CATHOLIC films (and one Rohmer and Claude Chabrol, Hitchcock: The of the commercial failures most fervently First Forty-Four Films, translated by Stanley defended by the CAHIERS DU CINEMA Hochman (New York: Frederick Ungar, crowd), with GUILT and sin and whip- 1979), 97–103; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side pings and Henrietta wandering through it of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New all barefoot like some medieval penitent. It York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 308–11; Donald is also one of the very few Hitchcock films Spoto, Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitch- to deal explicitly with self-sacrifice; many cock and His Leading Ladies (New York: Hitchcock characters passively accept the Harmony Books, 2008), 175–82; François villain’s guilt, but the heroes of Under Cap- Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New ricorn take action to protect others at some York: Touchstone, 1985), 184–89. cost to themselves. Flusky confesses to Henrietta’s crime to save her from prison; UNIVERSAL later, Charles lies to save Flusky and then The oldest surviving American film studio, exiles himself so that the woman he loves founded in 1912 by a consortium, including can be alone with the man who most Carl Laemmle, who had begun in the busi- deserves her. ness with nickelodeons (and gone on to start But the production design is cheap the Independent Moving Pictures Company, and unconvincing—the Flusky mansion a IMP, which pioneered the STAR system). more-than-usually-obvious matte painting, By 1915, Universal—now owned out- the waterfront and pier a cramped mock- right by Laemmle—was in California and up—and although Bergman is given a nice, not only producing films but also charg- dramatic entrance, there’s no standout ing admission fees to star-struck tourists. 476 n UNIVERSAL

The studio prospered in the ’20s under The Hitchcock deal, however, was the supervision of production chief Irving complicated and full of conflicting inter- Thalberg (later lured away to MGM), had ests. MCA head LEW WASSERMAN, an opulent success with Lon Chaney’s 1925 who had been Hitchcock’s wily agent, was Phantom of the Opera, and released a string now head of the studio and essentially his of now-classic horror films in the early boss; Hitchcock, who received a large bloc 1930s. of Universal shares in exchange for his But the company was rife with nepo- TV show and film rights, became both an tism—“Uncle Carl Laemmle / Has a very employee at Universal and, as the com- large faemmle,” Ogden Nash quipped— pany’s third-largest stockholder, one of his did not own its own theaters, and (ironi- own employers. cally, given Laemmle’s success with IMP) The deal gave the director both free- had few of the sort of major stars that dom and unforeseen limitations; while the MGM and WARNER BROS. had signed. studio backed the risks of THE BIRDS (and In 1936, the family gambled on director of his new discovery TIPPI HEDREN), James Whale’s massive production of Show it vetoed many of his pet projects, while Boat, borrowing—for the first time—funds pushing others. The director’s much- to finance it. But although the film ended adored MARY ROSE was one it specifically up being a hit, it went grievously over bud- vetoed; the dreary TOPAZ, one it thrust get, and the lender called in the loan. The upon him. Other specific dictates were Laemmles lost the company. handed down, with the studio insisting When Hitchcock did his work for not only on JULIE ANDREWS and PAUL Universal in the early ’40s, the studio was, NEWMAN for TORN CURTAIN but also although not poverty row, definitely sec- on a pop score, resulting in a permanent ond tier, relying heavily on teen musicals, rift between the director and longtime col- Abbott and Costello comedies, and endless laborator BERNARD HERRMANN. (and endlessly cheaper) sequels to its mon- “They made him very rich, and they ster movies. SABOTEUR and SHADOW recalled it to him,” Herrmann said later. OF A DOUBT were both prestige produc- “I said to Hitchcock, ‘What do you find in tions for them, and Hitchcock was given far common with these hoodlums?’ ‘What are more freedom than he had under DAVID you talking about?’ ‘Do they add to your O. SELZNICK, but Universal’s consistent artistic life?’ ‘No.’ ‘They drink your wine?’ inability to sign and keep major stars frus- ‘Yes.’ ‘That’s about all. What did they ever trated some of his casting ideas. do? Made you rich? Well, I’m ashamed of The studio continued to rely heavily on you.’” modestly budgeted genre films through the Universal was the director’s home for 1950s (and under a brief name change to 15 years. And yet sometimes, it seemed as Universal-International) until it was taken if he was really only an honored but very over by MCA, a talent agency that first well-paying boarder, whose luxurious bought the company’s production facili- accommodations came at a cost. ties in 1958 and assumed entire control in 1962. Top MCA clients, such as Hitchcock, References DORIS DAY, and CARY GRANT, signed “About Universal,” Universal Studios Hol- contracts with the studio, and Universal’s lywood, http://www.universalstudioshol production facilities—and its films’ pro- lywood.com/auditions/about-universal; duction values—were noticeably increased. Royal S. Brown, “An Interview with Ber- UNIVERSAL n 477 nard Herrmann,” Bernard Herrmann gal.com/_br_the_last_mogul__lew_wasser Society, http://www.bernardherrmann man__mca_and_the_hidden_history_of .org/articles/an-interview-with-bernard _hollywood_24553.htm; Steven C. Smith, -herrmann; Richard Griffith and Arthur “For the Heart at Fire’s Center: Norman Mayer, The Movies, rev. ed. (New York: Lloyd,” Bernard Herrmann Society, http:// Simon and Schuster, 1971), 46–55; Brian folk.uib.no/smkgg/midi/soundtrackweb/ Lamb, “When Hollywood Had a King,” herrmann/articles/smith/lloyd; Donald Booknotes, http://www.booknotes.org/ Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life Watch/159444-1/Connie+Bruck.aspx; of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Dennis McDougal, “The Last Mogul: Lew Press, 1999), 417; “Universal Studios,” Wasserman, MCA and the Hidden History Encyclopaedia Britannica, http://www.bri of Hollywood,” http://www.dennismcdou tannica.com/topic/Universal-Studios. AV

VALENTINE, JOSEPH A. INGRID BERGMAN. He died the next year (1900–1948) in Cheviot Hills, CA, at 48. New York–born cameraman who began his career as a still photographer and then References switched to cinematography in 1924. Early “Joseph A. Valentine,” Cyranos, http:// films include Frank Borzage’s dreamily www.cyranos.ch/spvale-e.htm; “Joseph romantic silent 7th Heaven. Later credits Valentine,” IMDb, http://www.imdb were less impressive, with Valentine even- .com/name/nm0884252; Joseph A. Val- tually settling in at the unambitious UNI- entine, “Using an Actual Town Instead VERSAL, where he nonetheless worked of Movie Sets,” American Cinematogra- hard to capture the comic improvisations pher (October 1942), http://the.hitch- of W. C. Fields on My Little Chickadee and cock.zone/wiki/American_Cinema made the most of the expansive interiors tographer_%281942%29_-_Using_an and fog-bound woods of The Wolfman. _Actual_Town_Instead_of_Movie_Sets. His crisp style and calm professionalism were a good match for Hitchcock, VALLI, ALIDA (1921–2006) and he was a solid director of photography Italian-born actress of Austrian heritage— on the director’s two pictures for Univer- her hometown, Pula, is now part of Croa- sal, capturing some fine images in SABO- tia—who came from an old and illustrious TEUR—the billowing clouds of smoke at family. She herself was christened the Bar- the burning hangar, the extreme close- oness Alida Maria Laura Altenburger von ups during the Statue of Liberty climax— Marckenstein-Frauenberg. Moving to Rome and working well with the LOCATION at 15 to study acting, she began with roles demands of SHADOW OF A DOUBT. The in the Italian cinema’s deliberately shallow, director was impressed enough that, when luxuriously posh “white telephone” films; he embarked on his first independent pro- by her early 20s, she had progressed to more duction, ROPE—whose 10-minute takes serious dramas, which sometimes earned would demand an unflappable technician— the wrath of Mussolini’s political censors he brought Valentine onboard. (although the dictator himself remained one Nominated five times for an ACAD- of her most ardent fans). EMY AWARD—often for Deanna Durbin DAVID O. SELZNICK “discovered” musicals like Mad about Music and Spring her after the war and signed her to a per- Parade—Valentine finally won for the sonal contract, hoping to repeat his success 1948 Technicolor epic Joan of Arc, starring with INGRID BERGMAN and billing her,

478 n VALLI, ALIDA n 479

Vertigo teamed Kim Novak and James Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock’s most complex study of identity and obsession. Paramount Pictures/Photofest © Paramount Pictures to foster comparisons with Garbo, as sim- tographer LEE GARMES made the most of ply “Valli.” The actress disliked the gim- her elegant cheekbones, lighting her with mick (“People get me mixed up with Rudy the sort of tender, worshipful devotion he’d Vallee,” she complained) but dutifully went once brought to MARLENE DIETRICH. to work, appearing in a radio adaptation of This film, however, was no Morocco, SPELLBOUND, playing the Bergman part, and American audiences failed to take to the and making her American film debut in raven-haired beauty or to any of her subse- THE PARADINE CASE. Her dark hauteur quent Hollywood movies. The actress soon apparently left Hitchcock cold, but cinema- returned to Europe and an unforgettable role 480 n VALLI, VIRGINIA in The Third Man as Harry Lime’s unwaver- British pictures, in 1925 she was imported ingly devoted love (opposite another Selznick to star in Alfred Hitchcock’s first film, THE STAR, JOSEPH COTTEN); the movie capi- PLEASURE GARDEN, as Patsy, the far talized on her chilly, unreadable gaze, and more worldly—but intrinsically far more her simple, unblinking walk toward the cam- moral—of the story’s two chorus girls. era and away from the friend who betrayed Her demands for expensive accom- her lover is one of the cinema’s great endings. modations and travel drove Hitchcock and Roles in Luchino Visconti’s Senso, assistant ALMA REVILLE to distraction, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Il Grido, and and the picture failed to impress mogul Georges Franju’s Eyes without a Face fol- C. M. WOOLF; put back on the shelf, lowed, and for a while, other great direc- it was only released in 1927, after THE tors continued to seek her out—CLAUDE LODGER had become a surprise hit (a sur- CHABROL, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo prise, at least, to Woolf, who had wanted Bertolucci. (Even if Valli was forced to to write that one off as well). By that do the occasional horror film, then at time, however, Valli’s fame was already least those were directed by Mario Bava in steep decline, having been dropped by and Dario Argento.) But as she grew her studio the previous year. She contin- older, finding work became difficult, and ued working for a while and then retired although she continued to appear onstage in 1931 after marrying Charles Farrell; she and on Italian television, money grew tight; died in Palm Springs of a stroke at 70. eventually the baroness accepted a small government pension for impoverished art- References ists. She died in Rome at age 84. Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New York: References HarperCollins, 2003), 68–70; Donald Spoto, “Alida Valli,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred name/nm0885098/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), Nadine Brozan, “Alida Valli, 84, Actress 80, 81, 86; François Truffaut, Hitchcock/ Memorable in ‘The Third Man,’ Dies,” New Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, York Times, April 25, 2006, http://www 1985), 31–39; “Virginia Valli,” IMDb, http:// .nytimes.com/2006/04/25/movies/25valli www.imdb.com/name/nm0885128. .html?_r=0; John Francis Lane, “Alida Valli,” Guardian, April 24, 2006, http://www.the VENTIMIGLIA, GAETANO guardian.com/news/2006/apr/24/guardian (1888–1973) obituaries.film; Bob Thomas, Selznick (New Catania-born filmmaker from an aristocratic York: Pocket Books, 1972), 244. family—he would occasionally use his baronial title in movie credits and sometimes VALLI, VIRGINIA (1898–1968) “Gaetano di Ventimiglia”—in the industry Chicago-born performer on the stage since since 1916, first in Italian movies and then her middle teens who made her movie in German and British productions. A gifted debut in 1916. A star by the early ’20s, she photographer and inventor, he was the appeared in actor John Gilbert’s only film cameraman on Alfred Hitchcock’s first film, as director, Love’s Penalty, the King Vidor THE PLEASURE GARDEN, in 1925, where picture Wild Oranges, and a variety of com- his chief contribution was disastrous—it was edies and romantic dramas. As part of SIR his suggestion that Hitchcock avoid paying MICHAEL BALCON’s plan to use Ameri- duty on the film stock by hiding it when the can celebrities to broaden the appeal of crew traveled throughout Europe, a petty VERTIGO n 481 crime that, when discovered, led to their as sleazy villains, from Point Blank in supply being confiscated. 1967 through several “women-in-chains” His next film for Hitchcock, THE exploitation movies in the 1980s. His most MOUNTAIN EAGLE, remains lost, but famous heavies were the liberal mayor of Ventimiglia served as director of photog- San Francisco in Dirty Harry and the bul- raphy for the director’s signature early lying Dean Wormer in Animal House; his success THE LODGER. It is, along with one role for Hitchcock was in the ill-fated THE RING, Hitchcock’s most visual bit TOPAZ, playing the revolutionary leader of early storytelling, and the images that Rico Parra under a not particularly con- remain in the mind—the startling initial vincing false beard. close-up of the screaming BLONDE, the A busy actor, Vernon retained a sense pacing footsteps of the boarder upstairs— of humor about his career; later in life, he are ones Ventimiglia captured. His cred- would often parody his bad-guy parts in its after that are desultory and cease alto- comedies or provide the voices for villains gether in 1928, save for one more film in in children’s cartoons. He died of compli- 1938, back in his native Italy, where he cations from heart surgery in Los Angeles was a professor at the state film school. at 72. He died at age 85. References References “Actor John Vernon of ‘Animal House’ “Gaetano di Ventimiglia,” IMDb, http:// Dies,” USA Today, February 3, 2005, http:// www.imdb.com/name/nm0893248; Pat- usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/people/2005 rick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life -02-03-vernon-obit_x.htm; Adam Bern- in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- stein, “John Vernon, 72, ‘Animal House’ erCollins, 2003), 68–69, 81, 95; H. Mario Dean,” Washington Post, February 4, 2005; Raimondo-Souto, Motion Picture Photogra- “John Vernon,” IMDb, http://www.imdb phy: A History, 1891–1960 (Jefferson, NC: .com/name/nm0006893/bio?ref_=nm_ov McFarland, 2006), 149–50; Donald Spoto, _bio_sm. The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, VERTIGO (US 1958) 1999), 77–80, 83, 86; François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Touchstone, 1985), 31–39. Screenplay: Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor, based on the novel D’Entre les VERNON, JOHN (1932–2005) Morts by Boileau-Narcejac. Producers: Herbert Coleman (Alfred Saskatchewan-born actor who studied the- Hitchcock, uncredited). ater in Canada and at the Royal Academy Cinematography: Robert Burks. of Dramatic Art. He was a regular presence Editor: George Tomasini. on Canadian TV beginning in the ’50s and Original Music: Bernard Herrmann. made his American debut, offscreen, as the Cast: James Stewart (John “Scottie” Fergu- voice of Big Brother in the 1956 adaptation son), Kim Novak (Madeleine Elster/Judy of 1984. Barton), Barbara Bel Geddes (Midge Although Vernon was a classically Wood), Tom Helmore (Gavin Elster), trained performer who’d appeared in Henry Jones (Coroner). Shakespeare and Chekhov onstage, in the Running Time: 128 minutes. Color. Released Through: Paramount. movies, his imposing baritone and pock- marked features conspired to type him 482 n VERTIGO

After seeing a police officer plunge to his What he doesn’t realize at first is that she death, San Francisco detective John “Scot- is Madeleine—or rather had pretended to tie” Ferguson retires from the force on a be her so that Elster could throw his dead disability pension, so traumatized by the wife from the bell tower and have a witness event that heights now wrack him with to her “suicide.” Scottie was picked solely crippling fear and dizzying nausea. He’s because they knew he could never follow lured back for a private case, though, when her up the stairs. an old college friend, Gavin Elster, asks him Unaware of all this, Scottie begins to to keep an eye on his wife, Madeleine—not fall in love with the made-over Judy—until because he suspects she’s unfaithful but one day he sees her wearing some of Mad- because he fears she’s emotionally dis- eleine’s jewelry. Telling her they’re going turbed and may even be suicidal. out to dinner, he drives her to the old mis- Scottie shadows the beautiful Made- sion instead and pulls her up the stairs of leine and discovers she has a preoccupation the bell tower, confronting her with her with an ancestor—Carlotta Valdes, a 19th- lies. The emotional shock cures Scottie of century beauty who lost her mind and took his acrophobia. A tearful Judy confesses. her own life after her rich lover took their But then a nun from the mission, hearing illegitimate child and sent Carlotta away. voices, enters suddenly and a startled Judy Madeleine grows more and more obsessed falls to her death, this time for real—while with the woman and one afternoon throws Scottie can only stand and look down. herself into San Francisco Bay. Scottie res- cues her and, hiding his identity, begins A film that’s superficially about a fear of to form a friendship with Madeleine, who heights but much more hauntingly about swears she has no memory of the event. the depths of obsession—while standing as The two spend time together and the pinnacle of its director’s long career. quickly fall in love. Madeleine begins to Alfred Hitchcock had been inter- share more of her story with him, includ- ested in the mystery novels of the French ing a recurring dream about an old Span- duo PIERRE BOILEAU and THOMAS ish mission. Scottie, convinced that it’s a NARCEJAC since the early ’50s, when memory of a real place she once visited, he had reportedly just missed out on the drives her down to one to confront her rights to Celle Qui N’Etait Plus—bought with the reality. But a suddenly distraught by HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT and Madeleine runs inside the church, climbing turned into the influential thriller LES the bell tower. Crippled by his acrophobia, DIABOLIQUES. When Hitchcock signed Scottie cannot follow and watches as she his new deal with PARAMOUNT, one of leaps, screaming, to her death. his first requests was that they get a copy An inquest all but blames Scottie for of Boileau-Narcejac’s new book D’Entre les Madeleine’s suicide; a mourning Elster Morts and work up an English synopsis. leaves for Europe. Scottie has a breakdown The rights were obtained in early 1955, and checks into a sanitarium. Months later, and shortly after THE WRONG MAN he sees Judy Barton, a saleswoman who wrapped, preproduction began. It ended up looks like Madeleine. He follows her and being a particularly difficult and protracted asks her out. Then, as a relationship begins, period. Always loath to have to break in a he starts to aggressively make her over— new writer, Hitchcock turned to one of the having her wear the same clothes, even screenwriters of the previous picture, Max- dye her hair the same color—as Madeleine. well Anderson. (ANGUS MACPHAIL, the VERTIGO n 483 other screenwriter and a longtime Hitch- pel efforts, still without a suitable script. A cock colleague, had a drinking problem and new writer was brought on, SAMUEL A. frankly told the director he simply wasn’t TAYLOR, who’d had a recent success with up to such a major project.) But Ander- the romantic Sabrina. He also knew the Bay son’s new screenplay was even more heav- Area well, a plus, as Hitchcock had already ily literary than the last—he titled it Dark- decided on some LOCATIONS, even ling, I Listen, a line from Keats—and it was sketching rough storyboards, including an deemed unusable. old mission church and the Golden Gate Health concerns—an abdominal her- Bridge. Taylor made progress quickly, and nia the director had tried to ignore for Hitchcock’s agent, LEW WASSERMAN, years finally necessitated surgery—brought suggested a current top star, KIM NOVAK, another delay, and also some breathing for the female lead; it required a loan-out room as screenwriter ALEC COPPEL tried from Columbia, where she was under a brand-new adaptation. But then Hitchcock contract. (As part of the deal, that studio needed to return to the hospital, this time for got the services of Stewart for a follow-up gall bladder surgery. When he emerged, he Novak picture, Bell, Book and Candle.) had to admit that Coppel hadn’t quite got- Her signing brought some new delays ten it either. Then came the final indignity— and headaches: Novak had a scheduled although JAMES STEWART was set for the vacation she was determined to take, and hero, costar VERA MILES announced that when she was ready to start, she began by she was pregnant with her third child and arguing with EDITH HEAD over her ward- would be unable to appear in a film still robe, saying she never wore the COLOR called From amongst the Dead. gray and that the skirt-suit and dark pumps Hitchcock was furious. He had signed made her legs look thick. (She was right, as Miles to a personal contract, trying to mold ALMA REVILLE pointed out later—they her—choosing not just her projects but did make her legs look thick.) But as usual, also her hair and clothes, even off set—in Hitchcock had visualized the heroine’s the way that he later would with TIPPI look months in advance, and he refused HEDREN. But Miles had her own ideas— to compromise. Eventually Novak gave in unlike Hedren, she’d already made a num- and wore the suit and the heels. Still, “he ber of other films with other directors, so learned very early on that I was not the she knew something about the industry, ideal woman for him,” said Novak, decades and she had no interest in being made over later. “He liked a woman to be very pliable, or turned into a major STAR. (“Hitch- very flexible as far as doing everything the cock,” she said years later, “had a bit of a way he wanted.” Pygmalion Complex.”) She was also newly Finally, in September 1957, shooting married, for the second time, and eager could begin. Novak continued to be a prob- to spend more time with her family. Per- lem, at least in Hitchcock’s eyes; “Kim’s sonally affronted, Hitchcock told her that, head was full of her own ideas,” he com- while one child was to be expected, three plained to Hedda Hopper. As usual, he had was simply “vulgar.” Eventually, he let her no interest in the METHOD, motivations, contract lapse. As for Miles, she had no or actors who didn’t hit their marks or look regrets. “He got his picture,” she reflected, in the appropriate screen direction, and decades later. “And I got a son.” he tried to leave Novak to her own devices Now Hitchcock was without a leading (which was actually liberating in her mind). lady—and he realized, rereading the Cop- Directing BARBARA BEL GEDDES as 484 n VERTIGO

Stewart’s ex-girlfriend was easier; when decided with his initial instinct and gave Hitchcock told her for her close-ups to sim- the mystery away early. As always, suspense ply look up or down and she did, her reac- trumped surprise. tions cut together—in the scene in which Finally, by 1958, a project that had Midge listens while Scottie talks obtusely begun four years earlier—and survived about their former relationship—is one of three different screenwriters, two leading her best moments in the picture and a small ladies, and a pair of surgeries for Hitch- clear-cut example of the director’s PURE cock—was at last ready. And, really, per- CINEMA of MONTAGE. fect. There were no problems with Stewart, Hitchcock’s pantheon is crowded however—giving his darkest, most complex with contenders. PSYCHO, with its narra- performance as a man full of childlike ter- tive experiments and pitch-black humor, rors and almost embarrassingly frank SEX- NOTORIOUS with its curdled romanti- UAL obsessions. And technical difficulties cism, SHADOW OF A DOUBT with its were handled with skill—a matte painting assault on small-town innocence—each standing in for a bell tower that wasn’t film has its disciples. As does the brilliant there, a model turned on its side substi- exercise in montage and VOYEURISM tuting for a full-scale STAIRCASE, and a that is REAR WINDOW; the meditation on pioneering DOLLY zoom (later dubbed the DOUBLES and GUILT that is STRANG- “Vertigo effect”) creating the sensation of a ERS ON A TRAIN; and the mad, pure, background simply dropping away before almost surreally entertaining assault that your eyes. is NORTH BY NORTHWEST. Yet Vertigo Postproduction, however, buried stands apart. Perhaps because it so clearly Hitchcock in an uncharacteristic avalanche stands for Hitchcock and his own divided of second-guessings and sudden doubts. self. Could he end the film as he wished, with As in Strangers on a Train and as in Scottie standing alone on the tower? (No, Psycho, the theme of doppelgängers is said the prevailing rules of CENSOR- explicit in Vertigo—a theme underlined by SHIP—you’re letting the murderer get the production design that, at Hitchcock’s away.) Was giving away the twist—that insistence, included mirrors and reflect- Madeleine and Judy were the same per- ing images whenever possible. But it is son—something to be saved for the end more than the idea of Judy pretending to or revealed earlier? Did the movie work at be Madeleine. It goes to the split nature all? (When Alma raised a small objection— of Scottie himself, a supposedly hardened about that one shot in which Novak’s calves big-city detective who’s reduced to a faint- did look fat—Hitchcock fell into a funk, ing panic by heights, a lanky, silver-haired reporting to colleagues that obviously his adult haunted by a child’s sweaty, mad- wife “hated” the film.) house nightmares. Judy plays two parts— But the fixes were made. The sequence the soft-spoken elegant BLONDE sophisti- with Novak was shortened. A censor- cate, the brassy small-town redheaded shop friendly ending, with Scottie and Midge girl—but Scottie contains two parts. And listening to news reports of the police in the end he is both creator and destroyer, tracking down Elster, was filmed (but bringing Madeleine back to life and then never shown). And after trying it both literally dragging her to her death. ways—with and without the early revela- The film functions as its own double, tion of Judy’s duplicity—Hitchcock finally too, as it portrays women as either victims VERTIGO n 485 or vixens, lovers or MOTHERS, objectify- Vertigo is a story of obsession, of ing them in its MALE GAZE and decrying FETISH and wish fulfillment, and it stands that objectification at the same time. The as perhaps the clearest exposition and credits begin with a woman broken into exploration of Hitchcock’s not-so-secret parts—an EYE, lips—and the early days of urge to control—the way that Scottie super- Scottie’s relationship with Judy is the story vises every bit of Judy’s transformation is of him trying to reassemble those parts. She precisely the way Hitchcock supervised the must wear a suit in this color and cut; her public image (and, if allowed, the social hair, eyebrows, and nails must all be dyed, life) of those actresses he truly fixated on. plucked, painted just so. And when she Yet there’s an unconscious, unexpected bit protests, he tells her it “can’t matter” to her of doubling, too, in the casting of Novak; how she looks; he is the male, and helping signed to a contract by Columbia mogul create (or, in this case, re-create) an object Harry Cohn, who wanted nothing more that pleases him visually should be her only than a new Rita Hayworth, his own Mari- concern, a job for which, he promises at lyn Monroe, she was constantly molded first, he’ll pay her for. and made over in real life, too (and mocked It sounds like a relationship between a whenever she pushed to do something dif- man and a kept woman, a reflection of the ferent or personal). Carlotta Valdes story, and it is the strongest “That always was amazing to me,” illustration of one of the film’s other themes: Novak said about the studios. “They hire masculine power and a man’s unfettered you because they think you have some- freedom. In fact, that’s a phrase that occurs thing special. Yet they feel the need to three times in the movie. First, when Gavin make you over into what they want, into Elster, talking about the old Barbary Coast something else.” Judy, she said later, was days, rhapsodizes over an era when there “just me, when I first got to Hollywood,” was “power, freedom”; then, when Pop, the and the things Judy went through—the old bookstore owner who recounts Car- hard, appraising gaze turned on her; the lotta’s cruel abandonment, explains, “You demands for change and attempts at know, a man could do that in those days. control—were things Novak had gone They had the power, and the freedom.” through, too, as she struggled to hold on And then, finally, they are words that Scot- to her own IDENTITY. Her experiences tie throws back in Judy’s face, pointing out fueled the warmth and sympathy that she that, when Elster’s wife was dead and her brought to the role. “I really identified with money his, when he finally did have “all of the movie because it was saying, ‘Please, that freedom and that power,” he deserted see who I am,’” she said. “‘Fall in love with her, leaving her with only a few pieces of me.’” Or as Judy asks Scottie, “Couldn’t you jewelry—gems that she, being a sentimental like me, just the way I am?” or, even more woman, couldn’t help but take out and wear. heartbreakingly, “If I do what you tell me, And yet, the film suggests, even as will you love me?” men use their own power to keep women But it is too late for her and too late imprisoned, they’re rarely free themselves. for Scottie (who, in another example of How free is Scottie, imprisoned by his the film’s pairings, loses her twice at that memories of a pale, mysterious blonde? bell tower—first as Madeleine and then as How free are any of us when our relation- Judy). He begins the film hanging from a ships are ruled by memories, past hurts, precipice and ends standing at another, in unrequited loves, unrecovered losses? both instances powerless, in both instances 486 n VIERTEL, PETER alone—and this is the way he shall remain. bigger hit disappointed a filmmaker who (Although his friend Midge remains always felt that the final verdict on any film devoted to him, he’s utterly clueless—and came from the audience. his complaints about her being “motherly” But slowly, the critical tide turned. and her soothing “You’re not lost, moth- And today, many see it as one of cinema’s er’s here”—suggests their relationship will premiere achievements and Hitchcock’s remain utterly sexless, too.) finest film. As well as his most nakedly Perhaps one of the greatest, unex- revealing. pected ironies of Vertigo was that all the difficulties that arose during its preproduc- References tion helped it, not only in the casting of Richard Freedman, “‘Psycho’ Actress Novak—a far more vibrant personality than Defends Hitchcock,” Spokesman Review, Miles—but also with the extended rewrites, June 25, 1983, http://the.hitchcock.zone/ which gave Hitchcock a chance to plan and wiki/The%20Spokesman-Review%20 replan his imagery. There is the motif of %2825%2FJun%2F1983%29%20-%20 concentric circles, of dizzying bottomless %27Psycho%27%20actress%20defends%20 whirlpools, that begins with SAUL BASS’s Hitchcock; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred titles and BERNARD HERRMANN’s spi- Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light raling music and then continues with the (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 540–49, way Madeleine (copying Carlotta) wears 552–57; Kim Novak, interview with the her hair in a tight circular bun and carries author, October 1996; Obsessed with Ver- a round, tightly arranged bouquet of flow- tigo: New Life for Hitchcock’s Masterpiece, ers or how the camera spins around Scottie directed by Harrison Engle (1997), docu- and Judy when they kiss. And there is the mentary, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ color green—always a signifier for Hitch- Obsessed_with_Vertigo:_New_Life_for cock of dreams and sometimes menace— _Hitchcock’s_Masterpiece_%281997%29 that reoccurs throughout the film, from _-_transcript; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side Madeleine’s green car and dress to the neon of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New light that bathes Judy’s cheap hotel room, York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 393–99; Donald and the fog filter that gives scenes in the Spoto, Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitch- cemetery, Muir Woods, and Judy’s rooms cock and His Leading Ladies (New York: an additional hazy, dreamlike quality. But Harmony Books, 2008), 222–27; François then the entire film feels somewhat like a Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New dream, a dream from which we cannot— York: Touchstone, 1985), 243–48. and do not wish to—wake. Vertigo was released to mixed reviews VIERTEL, PETER (1920–2007) and moderate box office. Publicly, Hitch- Dresden-born author raised in a literary cock would sometimes disparage Novak’s family—his parents were writers Salka and performance; privately, he would blame Berthold Viertel—who grew up in Southern Stewart for being too old for the part (a con- California after the family left Germany. viction that convinced the director to delay The Viertel home in Santa Monica was a North by Northwest, which he had promised famous and flexible salon, always full of to Stewart, just long enough so that the actor poets and filmmakers, and after graduation had to begin work on Bell, Book and Candle, from college, Viertel began his screenwrit- thereby “forcing” Hitchcock to cast CARY ing career by working on the screenplay for GRANT instead). That Vertigo was not a SABOTEUR—a lively enough film but one VISUAL EFFECTS n 487 whose script basically consists of ideas and Man—never got much beyond a simple situations lifted from other Hitchcock pic- press release. tures, spiced up with some bon mots courtesy of DOROTHY PARKER. References After finishing Saboteur and The Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Hard Way, a tough proletarian drama, Life in Darkness and Light (New York: Viertel served with the O.S.S. dur- HarperCollins, 2003), 609, 611; “Mr. ing World War II; come peacetime, he Hitchcock’s Plans,” Times, September 23, resumed his writing career and a colorful 1960, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/The life marked by his strong friendships with _Times_%2823/Sep/1960%29_-_Mr. domineering personalities, like Ernest _Hitchcock’s_plans. Hemingway and John Huston. He did some on-location rewrites for Huston on VISUAL EFFECTS The African Queen and later fictional- Hitchcock films are primarily visual ones, ized the experience as the excellent novel and the importance of specific images White Hunter, Black Heart (years later always trumps petty considerations about made into a film by Clint Eastwood). In reality; what matters chiefly is that the 1960, Viertel married Deborah Kerr, set- image feels right and conveys the proper tled in Europe, and wrote novels. emotion. This was something he learned He died at 86 in Marbella, Spain. from his first days as a filmmaker in the ’20s, observing the great German EXPRES- References SIONISTS, and brought to his own films; Ronald Bergan, “Peter Viertel,” Guard- although it’s most obvious in the early ian, November 7, 2007, http://www silents, it’s an idea that he incorporated .theguardian.com/news/2007/nov/07/ into much of his work, always pushing the guardianobituaries.booksobituaries; “rightness” of an image over the reality. Douglas Martin, “Peter Viertel, 86, Author (There is, for example, no logical reason and Screenwriter Is Dead,” New York in VERTIGO for the made-over Judy to Times, November 6, 2007, http://www emerge from her hotel room bathroom in a .nytimes.com/2007/11/06/arts/06viertel fog; there is a very thematic one.) .html?ref=obituaries&_r=0; “Peter Vier- The first and most important use of tel,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ visual effects in Hitchcock films, then, is nm0896830/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. to create images that exist not in life but in the minds and hearts of their characters. VILLAGE OF STARS An early clear example is in THE LODGER, One of the many projects announced in in which it’s necessary to show the nervous the early ’60s, this was to be based on the pacing of the tenant in the room above; novel by the same name by Arthur David Hitchcock’s camera shows the ceiling, Beaty (writing under the name “Paul Stan- which then dissolves into a plate-glass floor ton”) about a pilot sent on a bombing mis- to illustrate the man’s nervous walking, sion; the mission is aborted, but the bomb the thudding of his footsteps, and how his has already been armed and will explode if worrisome presence literally hangs over the the plane—which is running out of fuel— landlady’s family. dips below a specific altitude. Although the Other visual effects dramatize a char- adaptation rights were purchased, it seems acter’s emotional or physical state. In the that this project—like Trap for a Solitary first THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH 488 n VOYEURISM and THE LADY VANISHES, a swirling optical effects and an approach that com- parade of faces or images suggest tur- bined real birds, mechanical models, and moil or mental confusion; in Vertigo, the extraordinarily difficult multiple exposures DOLLY zoom at the top of the bell tower supervised by Ub Iwerks, a Disney veteran STAIRS helps us experience the same dis- who had perfected the sodium-vapor pro- orienting nausea as the hero. The overly cess that made them possible. brilliant whites of SPELLBOUND, the Hitchcock’s films were made, of murderous red flashes of MARNIE, the course, decades before computer-gener- gaily waltzing couples of SHADOW OF A ated images took over the world of special DOUBT—these are effects that discard the effects; for his 50-year career, he essentially camera’s objectivity for SUBJECTIVITY, used the same tools he always had. The showing us things that only the characters miniatures, matte paintings, and multiple might see or think and taking us inside exposures improved with time and larger their disturbed minds. budgets, and his imagination never dimin- But Hitchcock, always the master tech- ished. Yet his stubborn and somewhat nician, was just as skilled at using visual old-fashioned preference for studio work effects to heighten reality and always took a sometimes hampered him; decades after sort of boyish pride in describing in detail other directors were filming their perform- just how he and his cinematographers had ers inside actual moving cars, Hitchcock tricked the audience into seeing something still used a studio mock-up and a back- that they hadn’t—the Schüfftan process, projection screen. Whether the unreality of for example, which literally did it all with that process added to the surreal power of mirrors, turning still photographs into the Marnie or the antique charms of FAMILY backgrounds for MURDER! and the first The PLOT—or is just a sign of a once-meticu- Man Who Knew Too Much. Or the brilliant lous director distracted by personal issues crash sequence in FOREIGN CORRESPON- or ill health—is a question for each viewer DENT that had the plane hitting the ocean to decide. and water pouring in, all in a single shot—a problem finally solved, the director revealed, References by making the back-projection screen out of Kyle B. Counts and Steve Rubin, “The Mak- fragile rice paper and then sending thou- ing of The Birds,” Cinemafantastique (1980), sands of gallons bursting through it. (He http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Cinemafan relates the “secrets” of all, with great glee, in tastique_%281980%29_-_The_Making_of HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT.) _Alfred_Hitchcock%27s_The_Birds; Don- Working with skilled cinematogra- ald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life phers and visual-effects wizards—from of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo JACK E. COX in Britain to JOHN P. FUL- Press, 1999), 67–71; François Truffaut, TON in Hollywood—Hitchcock would Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: build memorable moments around care- Touchstone, 1985), 65, 135–36, 197. fully engineered images, whether it was the burst of bloody crimson covering the VOYEURISM screen in Spellbound, Fry’s spectacular fall “We’ve become a race of Peeping from the Statue of Liberty in SABOTEUR, Toms. What people ought to do is get or the carousel catastrophe from STRANG- outside their own house and look in ERS ON A TRAIN. The director’s greatest for a change.” effects triumph came with THE BIRDS, which contained more than 400 separate —Stella VOYEURISM n 489

The nurse in REAR WINDOW is talking barrier of a window, they watch others do about voyeurism, or scopophilia, but SIG- what they cannot. MUND FREUD’s term for it—schaulust, Yet they are not innocent; as Hitch- or “pleasure in seeing”—may be the best cock’s CATHOLIC lessons taught him, to in this context. For what is a love of mov- observe a sin and not attempt to stop it is, ies but a pleasure in seeing—in experiencing in some way, to participate in that sin your- places and things we never normally would, self. It is a secret sharing he extends to the in watching the unguarded, unembarrassed audience. When Jeff picks up that phallic actions of others? To go to a movie is, in lens and uses it to stare at the voluptuous itself, an act of voyeurism, a vicarious thrill “Miss Torso” in Rear Window, we stare garnered from peeping in at the concealed or with him; when Norman takes the picture forbidden; the act is doubled in Hitchcock’s off the wall to peep at Marion undress- films, so many of which center around the ing in the bathroom in PSYCHO, we peep art of looking and most often specifically eagerly, too. (As an added emphasis, the on THE MALE GAZE, that cold appraising painting covering the peephole is one of look that reduces women to sexual objects the Old Testament’s story of Susanna being and then attaches a calculated worth. surprised in her bath.) We watch men It is actually one of the first images we watching beautiful women—the loathsome get in the first completed Hitchcock film, Judge Horfield practically smacking his lips THE PLEASURE GARDEN, in which a the- over Gay Keane’s bare shoulder in THE atergoer spies on a chorine’s legs through PARADINE CASE, the obsessed Scottie his opera glasses. It a simple, stark image Ferguson wordlessly pursuing Madeleine of both SEXUAL pleasure and alienated through the streets and alleys of San Fran- removal (of anger, too—the chorus girl is cisco in VERTIGO—and we share in their aware of it and stares back, answering his pleasure. And in their GUILT. gaze with her own, as decades later, Thor- It is a hall of mirrors—we go to the wald will, too, in Rear Window). theater to see a film in which a director Observing life from a safe and chilly watches an actor watching an actress. But if distance; this is an integral part of voy- we look hard enough, in that final mirror, eurism and an integral part of watch- we see ourselves. ing in Hitchcock’s films, as his characters routinely spy on activities they’re afraid References or unable to participate in. The spy who “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” The cannot bring himself to carry out his mis- Holy See, http://www.vatican.va/archive/ sion watches someone else do it through a ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a8.htm; telescope in SECRET AGENT; the bachelor Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Nar- who is resistant to commitment uses a tele- rative Cinema,” Screen (Autumn 1975), photo lens to peer in on a variety of mar- 6–18; George Ritzer, ed., Encyclopedia of riages and relationships in Rear Window. Social Theory (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, Safely removed, protected by the fragile 2004), 467–68. WA

WALKER, ROBERT (1918–1951) who had been traumatized as a child by Born in Salt Lake City, he found refuge his parents’ divorce, went very quickly to from an unhappy childhood in acting. pieces, drinking heavily, causing public Later, he found a benefactor in his wealthy scenes, and eventually having a breakdown. aunt, a Bonwit Teller executive in Manhat- The end of his own marriage, he said, left tan who invited the teen into her home and his life “completely wrecked.” paid for his tuition at the American Acad- Although Walker still managed to emy of Dramatic Arts. There he met aspir- make several interesting films during this ing actress Phylis Isley—soon to change her period—including The Clock with the simi- name to Jennifer Jones. The two married in larly fragile Judy Garland and One Touch 1939 and began looking for work, chiefly in of Venus with Ava Gardner—his emotional New York. Walker eventually landed some state continued to deteriorate. He cycled jobs on radio, and the couple had two sons. through a brief marriage to John Ford’s “I was only 19 but even then I knew there daughter Barbara, had run-ins with the could never be anyone else,” he later said, police, and in 1949 entered the Menninger remembering the day he met her. “I didn’t Clinic for further psychiatric care. consider myself ‘good enough’ for her. She One of his first films after his release made me want to be somebody. We were was Alfred Hitchcock’s STRANGERS ON A happy. Or at least I thought we were.” TRAIN. The years of alcoholism had coars- After DAVID O. SELZNICK discov- ened Walker’s features; the one-time boy ered Jones in 1941, the couple relocated to next door looked a decade older than he Hollywood, where Walker got a deal with was. But casting him against type appealed MGM and Jones signed a personal con- to Hitchcock, who—after being denied on tract with the mogul. Physically slight and THE LODGER and SUSPICION—was finally projecting the eager neediness of a puppy, going to have his leading man play a psycho Walker soon began getting wholesome (and achieve perhaps another small, subter- juvenile parts, often as young soldiers; in ranean dig at Selznick; there was probably no Since You Went Away, he costarred with actor the mogul less wanted to see onscreen). Jones, playing her tragic love in uniform. Walker, knowing this was his best But there was just as much melodrama chance at a comeback, seized it. His Bruno offscreen; apparently Jones and Selznick Antony is charming, stylish, funny; he’s also had been having an affair for some time, the brightest STAR among Hitchcock’s vil- and Jones and Walker separated during lainous if stereotypical gays, devoted to his filming. They divorced in 1945. Walker, MOTHER and flashy clothes, full of airy

490 n WALKER, ROBERT n 491

Teresa Wright brought an alert intelligence to Shadow of a Doubt, a film the director often named as his favorite. Universal Pictures/Photofest © Universal Pictures witticisms, fixated on younger and more closeted hero’s respectable life.) Moving athletic men. (In some ways, the movie from strength to strength—the repartee on plays like a nightmarish metaphor for casual, the train, the cold-eyed murder, the scene at anonymous gay sex—Bruno is the pickup the party—it’s Walker’s finest performance who won’t go away and soon threatens the and the best thing in a great movie. 492 n WALTZES FROM VIENNA

It might have been the start of a sec- It is 19th-century Vienna, and Johann ond career; soon Walker began filming a “Schani” Straus and his beloved Rasi are so new movie, the (very bad) anti-Commu- immersed in performing his latest piece— nist film My Son John, chiefly so he could and so in love—that they don’t realize that work with Helen Hayes. But he couldn’t there’s a fire downstairs in the café. They stop drinking, and his nerves were always leave the smoky building and go next door rubbed raw; at home one night in Los to a dressmaker’s, where Schani meets the Angeles, a doctor-prescribed shot of a older, elegant countess, who has heard his powerful sedative combined fatally with work and wants him to set some of her the liquor already in his system. Walker poetry to music. was only 32. He left My Son John unfin- Schani goes off to his job—the second ished; the studio finally pieced his worst violinist in the orchestra of his father, the film together using outtakes from his best great Johann Strauss Sr. But the two men one, Strangers on a Train. are constantly at odds, and today, it comes to a head, with the son criticizing the older References man’s music and the father dismissing the “Robert Walker,” Hollywood.com, http:// younger man from his position. www.hollywood.com/celebrities/robert Schani returns to Rasi, where the -walker-57523337; “Robert Walker,” IMDb, sounds of the bakery inspire him, giving http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0908153/ him the rhythms he needs to finish a new bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; “Robert Walker piece, setting the countess’s words to music. Biography,” Robert Walker Tribute, http:// When the noblewoman hears it, she impul- www.robertwalkertribute.com/biobegin sively gives him a kiss, and Schani finds him- ning.htm; David Thomson, The New Bio- self suddenly torn between the two women. graphical Dictionary of Film (New York: Finally, Rasi gives him an ultimatum—stay Knopf, 2002), 910. with her and take a job in the bakery or leave and go on with his music. WALTZES FROM VIENNA When the countess invites Schani to (GB 1934) attend a famous festival, however, he can’t refuse—and when she conspires to make sure his father will be late, he can’t help but Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay: Guy Bolton, Alma Reville, take his place and debut The Blue Danube based on the play by Heinz Reichert to raves. When his father arrives, though, and Ernst Marischka. he is furious—and now both Rasi and the Producer: Tom Arnold. countess’s husband are enraged about the Cinematography: Glen McWilliams. affair going on beneath their noses. Editor: Charles Frend. Afterward, both run separately to Music: Johann Strauss Sr. and Johann Schani’s apartment to confront him with the Strauss, adapted by Hubert Bath. countess—but the countess slips away undis- Cast: Jessie Matthews (Rasi), Edmund covered, and Rasi, to protect him from the Gwenn (Johann Strauss Sr.), Fay Comp- enraged count, takes her place, pretending ton (Countess Helga), Esmond Knight to have been there all the while. The couple (Johann Strauss). reconciles, and even Schani’s father grudg- Running Time: 80 minutes. Black and white. Released Through: Gaumont British Dis- ingly admits his son’s genius, now signing his tributors. autographs Johann Strauss Senior.

A sour note. WARNER BROS. n 493

Having ended his relationship with Matthews’s part as much as possible. “An BRITISH INTERNATIONAL PICTURES, imperious young man who knew nothing and with three commercial disappoint- about musicals,” is how Matthews remem- ments—THE SKIN GAME, RICH AND bered him later. “I thought the film was per- STRANGE, and NUMBER 17—behind fectly dreadful.” him, Hitchcock was both at a low point and Audiences agreed, and the movie without any pressing engagements. When became his fourth middling release in a an independent producer offered the job row. Hitchcock, at liberty again, needed to of directing the film version of WALTZES do something different and great, and he FROM VIENNA—a two-year hit on the needed to do it soon. Luckily THE MAN stage—Hitchcock took it on. WHO KNEW TOO MUCH was just around At first, the director seemed to the corner. approach the challenge of an operetta with some new ideas and at least a flash of inter- References est. The opening sequence, with the fire Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life engine racing to the bake shop, has the in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- same fast cutting and stylized sound effects erCollins, 2003), 150–52; Donald Spoto, as a similar opening sequence in The Skin The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Game; he makes some amusing connec- Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, tions between the musique còncrete of the 1999), 134–37; François Truffaut, Hitch- bakery and Strauss’s new composition, cock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Touch- and the premiere of “The Blue Danube” is stone, 1985), 85–86. smartly edited to the rhythms of that familiar waltz. WARNER BROS. But the material itself gave him noth- A studio founded by Harry, Albert, Sam, ing to hold onto. It did have, as almost all and Jack Warner, four brothers from a his early films did, a romantic triangle; Polish immigrant family who got into the there was also a nod to the dramas of back- industry early. One of their first successes stage life and the struggle for IDENTITY. was as exhibitors showing The Great Train But he seemed uninterested in the father- Robbery in tough mining towns throughout son conflict, one he had rarely explored— Pennsylvania. Within a decade, they had Hitchcock’s parental dramas almost always begun producing their own films; Warner involve MOTHERS—and the book pro- Brothers Pictures was incorporated in 1923. vided a “musical without much music,” he The studio became a contender with observed. The whole thing had as much The Jazz Singer, an early sound film that substance as a Viennese pastry. rescued the company from debt and More critically, the director felt some- allowed it to expand. During the ’30s, War- what at the mercy of his leading players— ner Bros. became best known for its “Gold JESSIE MATTHEWS, who played Rasi, Diggers” musicals and hard-edged gangster was a major British STAR of the time, and films, as well as a pugnacious, working- ESMOND KNIGHT, who played Schani, class attitude; during the ’40s, it concen- had created the role in the West End. trated on war films and glossier “women’s They were clearly far more integral to the pictures,” like Now, Voyager and Mildred production than Hitchcock was, and left Pierce. feeling superfluous—and perhaps endan- Warner Bros. first entered Hitch- gered—Hitchcock responded by insulting cock’s life after the war as the Ameri- both of them regularly and cutting down can distributor for TRANSATLANTIC 494 n WASSERMAN, LEW

PICTURES; when that company sank, a ration of America as a booking agent, soon new multipicture contract was negotiated convincing MCA to send him to Los Ange- with Hitchcock alone, which allowed him les, where they would buy a talent agency to choose and produce his own directing and begin getting more involved in motion projects. picture production. Hitchcock would go on to make Hitchcock moved to MCA after the STAGE FRIGHT, I CONFESS, STRANG- death of his own agent, Myron Selznick; ERS ON A TRAIN, DIAL M FOR MUR- he was eventually represented by Wasser- DER, and THE WRONG MAN for the man, who became the agency’s president studio; of the five films, though, only in 1948. Wasserman’s sober, dark-suited Strangers on a Train and The Wrong Man style won Hitchcock’s approval, but more show the director operating at the peak of than that, the director appreciated the his powers. Hitchcock would later com- agent’s creativity; Wasserman not only plain that Jack Warner had vetoed his popularized the idea of selling a studio an original casting for I Confess, imposed already-assembled package of director and RUTH ROMAN on him as a leading lady cast, but also he pioneered profit-partici- for Strangers on a Train, and insisted that pation deals in which STARS like JAMES he shoot Dial M for Murder in 3-D, even STEWART worked for a smaller up-front though the process was already fading in fee but could reap millions in back-end popularity. percentages. Without Warner Bros., Hitchcock As Hitchcock’s agent, Wasserman went on to make his best films at PARA- engineered a generous deal that gave the MOUNT and his largest profits at UNI- director eventual ownership of his pro- VERSAL; without Hitchcock, Warner Bros. ductions; once MCA bought UNIVER- went on to change and transform itself SAL, Wasserman then bought back those through a variety of acquisitions and merg- rights, making Hitchcock a millionaire ers. As a result, its back catalog is particu- many times over (and, because he paid him larly deep and rich in classics; in addition in stock, the studio’s third-largest share- to the films Hitchcock made for the studio, holder). its home-entertainment division now also While the two men respected each has the rights to many of the films Hitch- other, however, as the 1960s began, their cock made for others. relationship changed; Wasserman’s chief concern became quarterly profits, and as References a result, he found himself turning down Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: Hitchcock projects that seemed uncom- The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da mercial (the director’s longed-for adap- Capo Press, 1999), 324, 337–38, 342; “Com- tation of MARY ROSE) or urging other pany Overview,” Warner Bros., http://www ones purely for the sake of the box office .warnerbros.com/studio/about/company (an adaptation of the best-selling TOPAZ). -overview. Although they remained friends, Hitchcock felt the relationship cooling in the 1970s; WASSERMAN, LEW (1913–2002) when he finally decided to close up his Cleveland-born businessman whose first office on the lot, he asked someone else to job in the entertainment industry was walk- tell Wasserman for him. ing the aisles as a movie usher. At 23, he Wasserman remained a major force in went to work for Chicago’s Music Corpo- entertainment, philanthropy, and govern- WATSON, WYLIE n 495 ment for years. (He was one of the driving A US war propaganda short heralding the forces behind Ronald Reagan’s entry into United Nations as a future force for peace. politics and made Jack Valenti into Hol- Hitchcock participated in story conferences lywood’s premiere lobbyist at the MPAA.) for the film and was said to have done some He sold MCA to Matsushita Electric in of the directing, as was Elia Kazan. Neither 1990 (Seagram bought a controlling inter- took any credit, nor did most of the crew est in 1995); Wasserman remained on the or the actors onscreen, including George board until 1998. He died in Beverly Hills Zucco, Miles Mander, and Lionel Stander. in 2002 of a stroke. The final days of Sam Rothstein in Martin Scorsese’s Casino—a Reference creative businessman pushed out by cor- Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life porate interests—is in many ways an affec- in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- tionate and knowing tribute, right down to Collins, 2003), 368–70. the carefully tailored clothes and enormous eyeglasses. WATSON, WYLIE (1889–1966) Lanarkshire-born performer raised in a References family of Scottish entertainers. His mother Brian Lamb, “When Hollywood Had a and father were with the Carl Rosa Opera King,” Booknotes, http://www.booknotes Company, and Watson later joined his par- .org/Watch/159444-1/Connie+Bruck.aspx; ents, along with his sister, in a traveling, Dennis McDougal, “The Last Mogul: Lew turn-of-the-century variety act. Watson, a Wasserman, MCA and the Hidden History “boy soprano,” also played the cello; later, of Hollywood,” Dennis McDougal, http:// as a teenager, he would join another com- www.dennismcdougal.com/_br_the_last pany and tour the world. _mogul__lew_wasserman__mca_and_the It was when he was 40 and on vacation _hidden_history_of_hollywood_24553. in America that he got his first movie role, a htm; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of bit part in an early musical called It’s a Great Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New Life; it led to little in Hollywood, but after York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 417–18. returning to England, he began a film career as a character actor. His most memorable WATCHTOWER OVER role came in 1935 in Hitchcock’s THE 39 TOMORROW (US 1945) STEPS as “Mr. Memory,” the fatally dedicated music hall performer. Four years later, Director: John Cromwell, Harold F. Kress. Hitchcock cast him again in JAMAICA INN Screenplay: Ben Hecht, Karl Lamb. as “Salvation” Watkins, the verse-quoting Producer: Jerome S. Bresler. cutthroat in Sir Humphrey’s gang. Cinematography: Uncredited (Lester Watson never rose above supporting White). roles; his small stature, tiny moustache, and Editor: Uncredited. fussy manner seemed to type him as con- Original Music: Uncredited. ductors, stage managers, and butlers. He Cast: John Nesbitt (Narrator), US secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius Jr. had quite a different part in Brighton Rock, (Himself). though, as Spicer and another memorable Running Time: 15 minutes. Black and white. role in Whiskey Galore! In 1952, he retired Released Through: War Activities Com- to Australia, returning for just one more mittee of the Motion Picture Industry. supporting role in The Sundowners in 1960. He died in Australia at age 77. 496 n WAXMAN, FRANZ

References Like the similarly versatile DMITRI Peter Hutchings, “Wylie Watson,” BFI TIOMKIN, Waxman was the perfect col- Screenonline, http://www.screenonline laborator for a film director. If the movie .org.uk/people/id/880716; “Wylie Wat- had great images and dramatic situations son,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ (Sunset Boulevard, A Place in the Sun), nm0914931/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. then his scores heightened that emotion; if the movie was somewhat lacking (Elephant WAXMAN, FRANZ (1906–1967) Walk, Taras Bulba), then his music mini- Silesia-born musician raised by wealthy, mized the flaws. (He was nominated 12 disapproving parents who preferred he times for Academy Awards and his scores go into finance. He got a job as a bank for Sunset Boulevard and A Place in the Sun teller but used it to pay for music lessons both won, back to back.) and then started playing the piano in a Although Waxman’s career began to dance band, the Weintraub Syncopat- slow in the late ’50s, he had already begun ers. Although his great love remained the to write more serious orchestral works, classics, Waxman would soon be work- culminating in 1965’s The Song of Terezin, ing in the German film industry, first as based on the lives of children in the There- an orchestrator (he wrote the charts for seienstadt concentration camp. He died Frederick Hollander’s score for The Blue from cancer at 60 in Los Angeles. Angel) and then as composer (debuting with FRITZ LANG’s Liliom, shot in France References in 1933). “About Waxman,” Franz Waxman, http:// By then, Waxman—who was already franzwaxman.com/about-waxman; “Franz partially blind as the result of a childhood Waxman,” IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/ accident—had fled Germany with his wife name/nm0000077/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio after being badly beaten in Berlin by a gang _sm; David Raksin, “Franz Waxman,” of anti-Semites. Following the well-worn American Composers Orchestra, http://www route of Lang, Billy Wilder, and other art- .americancomposers.org/raksin_waxman ists at that time, the Waxmans stayed in .htm; John Waxman, “Cinema’s Exiles: From Paris for a while and then moved on to Los Hitler to Hollywood—Franz Waxman,” PBS, Angeles. In Hollywood, he was befriended http://www.pbs.org/wnet/cinemasexiles/ by director James Whale, who hired him to biographies/biography-franz-waxman/195. do the score for 1935’s The Bride of Fran- kenstein. WAYNE, NAUNTON Waxman’s work for that film—with (1901–1970) its stirring marches, lush romantic inter- Glamorgan-born performer, the son of a ludes, and individual character motifs— solicitor who made his stage debut in 1920. drew comparisons to Wagner and steady Effortlessly amiable, he excelled in revues, employment. It was his swirling score for where it often fell to him to introduce the REBECCA, however, that made him an in- performers and tie the various sketches demand film composer; Waxman would together. By the end of the decade, he was go on to provide Hitchcock with scores for a popular London star, appearing regularly SUSPICION, REAR WINDOW, and THE onstage and in nightclubs. PARADINE CASE (which recycled some of Wayne made his film debut in 1932, his Rebecca themes). but THE LADY VANISHES in 1938 was WEBB, ROY n 497 the first movie to give him a major role WEBB, ROY (1888–1982) as Caldicott, a cartoon Englishman on New York–born musician who studied a trip with BASIL RADFORD’s equally classical composition at Columbia and cricket-obsessed Charters. It is a cheekily then went on to work on Broadway, con- satiric yet, in the end, quietly approving tributing both music and, with his brother portrayal of English values, and the two Kenneth S. Webb, plays. When the talkies actors nearly stole the film—so much so arrived, he headed for Hollywood, where that they would regularly reteam over he scored the early musical Rio Rita in their careers in Night Train to Munich 1929. and Crook’s Tour (which gave the charac- Webb would spend more than ters new adventures) and such classics as 30 years at RKO, where he eventually Dead of Night and Whiskey Galore!, which replaced mentor Max Steiner as head of basically repurposed them under different the studio’s music department. Webb’s names. best-remembered work may have been Throughout it all, however, the dap- for producer Val Lewton’s stylish cycle per little Welshman persevered, no mat- of B-movie horror films, particularly ter what difficulty he faced—fascists, Cat People and The Body Snatcher. For murderers, even death itself. “He was,” Hitchcock, he was the (uncredited) musi- the London Times wrote once about his cal director on MR. AND MRS. SMITH screen persona, “a man battling, with and contributed the romantic score for intense mental activity, against a world of NOTORIOUS. almost insoluble problems; that most of That movie’s moody mix of love them were trivial, and that conversational and danger suited Webb’s talents; he irrelevancies attracted him more than had already notched such genre cred- conversational points, was an indication its as Murder, My Sweet and The Spiral not of the silliness but of the complexity Staircase and would go on to contribute of his world.” music to such seminal noirs as Crossfire, Wayne also appeared in the comic The The Locket, The Window, and the immor- Titfield Thunderbolt, the noir-ish Circle tal Out of the Past. But his fortunes were of Danger, and the London production linked, and fell, with RKO’s, and when the of Arsenic and Old Lace, a four-year run; studio disappeared, so did the constant decades later, he proved his versatility by stream of work. appearing in a musical version of Vanity Webb freelanced for a few more years Fair. He died in Surrey at age 69. and then retired, his last job coming in 1960 for an episode of TV’s Wagon Train. References He died of a heart attack in Santa Monica “Naunton Wayne,” IMDb, http://www at age 94. .imdb.com/name/nm0915614; “Obituary: Mr. Naunton Wayne,” Times, November References 18, 1970, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/ Uncle Dave Lewis, “Roy Webb Biog- The_Times_%2818/Nov/1970%29_-_Obit raphy,” AllMusic, http://www.allmusic uary:_Naunton_Wayne; Matthew Sweet, .com/artist/roy-webb-mn0000355252/ “Mustard and Cress,” Guardian, December biography; “Roy Webb,” IMDb, http:// 29, 2007, http://www.theguardian.com/ www.imdb.com/name/nm0002202/ film/2007/dec/29/film. bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm. 498 n “WET SATURDAY”

“WET SATURDAY” LADY VANISHES and was adapted twice (US; ORIGINALLY AIRED more over the years. SEPTEMBER 30, 1956) A popular writer at the time whose books tended toward the neo-Gothic with Director: Alfred Hitchcock. their slowly relentless killers and alternately Screenplay: Marian B. Cockrell, based on terrified and resourceful heroines, White the story by John Collier. was often compared to Mary Roberts Producer: Joan Harrison. Cinematography: John L. Russell. Rinehart; her story “An Unlocked Win- Editor: Edward W. Williams. dow” later became an episode of ALFRED Original Music: Stanley Wilson. HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, and Hollywood Cast: Sir Cedric Hardwicke (Mr. Princey), bought her books Midnight House (made in John Williams (Capt. Smollet). 1945 as The Unseen) and Some Must Watch Running Time: 30 minutes with commer- (filmed in 1946 as The Spiral Staircase). She cials. Black and white. died in London at 68. Originally Broadcast By: CBS. References Martin Edwards, “Ethel Lina White,” Do You Write under Your Own Name, April When a disturbed young woman kills a 13, 2010, http://doyouwriteunderyou teacher in a fit of jealousy, her very proper rownname.blogspot.com/2010/04/ethel father sets out to frame someone else for -lina-white.html; “Ethel Lina White,” IMDb, the crime. A subpar installment of ALFRED http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0924781; HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, notable only for Christina Fowler, “Invisible Ink: Ethel Lina its pairing of two of the director’s favorite White,” Independent, October 14, 2012, English actors. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter tainment/books/features/invisible-ink References -no-145—ethel-lina-white-8210245.html; Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Com- Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life plete Directory to Prime Time Network in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- TV Shows, 8th ed. (New York: Ballantine Collins, 2003), 206–7. Books, 2003), 29; Jack Edmond Nolan, “Hitchcock’s TV Films,” Film Fan Monthly THE WHITE SHADOW (GB 1923) (June 1968), 3–6. Director: Graham Cutts. WHITE, ETHEL LINA Screenplay: Alfred Hitchcock, based on (1876–1944) the novel Children of Change by Michael Monmouthshire-born author and the Morton. daughter of an inventor who began pub- Producers: Sir Michael Balcon, Victor Saville. lishing short pieces as a child but came to Cinematography: Claude L. McDonnell. novel writing as an adult. After her first Editor: Alfred Hitchcock. Cast: Betty Compson (Nancy Brent/Geor- three books made little impression, she gina Brent), Clive Brook (Robin Field), turned to mysteries, publishing Put Out the A. B. Imeson (Mr. Brent), Henry Victor Light in 1931. Her 1936 thriller The Wheel (Louis Chadwick). Spins, about a temporary case of amnesia, Running Time: 82 minutes. Black and white. became—after some thorough rewriting Released Through: Woolf & Freedman by the scenarists, who added comic cricket Film Service. fans and a love interest—Hitchcock’s THE THE WHITE SHADOW n 499

Nancy and Georgina Brent are twins— few visual embellishments, like the fram- and identical only in appearance, with ing of certain dramatic scenes, that suggest Nancy leading a wild and impetuous life, the proscenium arch of a theater—and the while Georgina lives quietly at the fam- role playing of the characters themselves ily’s estate. After a furious quarrel with and their toying with IDENTITY—that he their father, Nancy leaves the house; later, would explore at length later. her father follows to look for her. But But whereas the first Cutts-Hitchcock both disappear, and Mrs. Brent dies of a collaboration, WOMAN TO WOMAN, had broken heart. been a huge success, this deliberate follow- Georgina goes to London, then Paris, up—which reunited some of the cast, as in hopes of finding her missing family. But well as the crew—was an immediate critical her father has lost his mind and become a and commercial failure. A significant one, homeless beggar, and Nancy has become too, earning the long-simmering enmity the habitué of a decadent club, The Cat of mogul C. M. WOOLF, who seemed to Who Laughs. Robin, an old beau of Nan- blame Hitchcock’s script for its failure and cy’s, appears and mistakes Georgina for whose bias would bedevil the director for Nancy; Georgina allows him, first to pro- the next decade (fed by Cutts’s apparent tect Nancy’s name, but later because she’s envy over Hitchcock’s burgeoning new fallen for him herself. career). Finally, Georgina finds and confronts After decades of being lost, several Nancy—but Nancy refuses to return reels of the film, roughly comprising the home. Her health broken by disappoint- first 40 minutes, were discovered in New ment, Georgina goes to a Swiss sanitarium. Zealand. Seeing as Hitchcock’s first film Robin finds her there, still assuming she is as a full director, NUMBER 13, was aban- Nancy and wishing to marry her. Georgina doned unfinished; his first short, ALWAYS arranges for Nancy to take her place—and TELL YOUR WIFE, is missing half its accept Robin’s proposal—then slips away footage; and his first feature as an assis- to die. When she does, her soul—the “white tant director, Woman to Woman, remains shadow”—passes to her sister. completely lost, this half-movie, how- Returning home to England, Nancy’s ever imperfect and wildly melodramatic, car strikes an old man. It is her father, and remains as much of the very early Hitch- he not only survives the accident but also cock as we’re ever likely to see. discovers it has restored his memory. Rec- onciled, father and daughter return to their References country estate. Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- A once lost, now (almost) rediscovered Collins, 2003), 60; Donald Spoto, The Dark film. Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitch- Hitchcock made five pictures with cock (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), director GRAHAM CUTTS, serving as 59; François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, assistant director, screenwriter, and pro- rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), duction designer. This was the second of 30; Aylin Zafar, “Lost for 80 Years, Alfred the five, and while it’s impossible to reliably Hitchcock’s Earliest Known Film Makes Its point out Hitchcock’s touches, the story— Debut,” Time, September 23, 2011, http:// with its themes of DOUBLES and a dra- newsfeed.time.com/2011/09/23/lost-for matic love triangle—certainly is of a piece -80-years-alfred-hitchcocks-earliest with the rest of his work. There are also a -known-film-makes-its-debut. 500 n WHITLOCK, ALBERT

WHITLOCK, ALBERT cock Hitchcock film, Psycho II. He died in (1915–1999) Santa Barbara at 84. London-born filmmaker who began his film career at 14 working as a messen- References ger boy for GAUMONT. He progressed “Albert Whitlock,” IMDb, http:// from there to building sets and painting www.imdb.com/name/nm0926087/ prop signs. His collaboration with Alfred bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Jonathan Jones, Hitchcock began with THE MAN WHO “Masters of Illusion,” Guardian, Septem- KNEW TOO MUCH, for which he assisted ber 27, 2002, http://www.theguardian.com/ in some of the miniature work, and contin- film/2002/sep/27/artsfeatures2. ued through THE 39 STEPS, SABOTAGE, YOUNG AND INNOCENT, THE LADY WHITTY, DAME MAY VANISHES, and finally JAMAICA INN, (1865–1948) with Whitlock now working as part of the Liverpool-born performer and the daughter art department. Whitlock remained in of a journalist onstage since 1881, appear- Britain during the war, but by the 1950s, he ing in both London and Broadway produc- was in Hollywood, having developed a for- tions. She made her film debut in 1914 in midable reputation for matte paintings— Enoch Arden, but movie appearances were careful works of art that, when combined rare until 1937, when she repeated her stage with a separate piece of film featuring live success in the Hollywood version of Night action, added in expertly faked, completely Must Fall; in 1938, she was the disappear- believable backgrounds. (Some of his more ing Miss Froy in Alfred Hitchcock’s THE fantastic work was done for television’s Star LADY VANISHES, a gentle governess who Trek.) is, in reality, a British agent. For his first decade in the States, Whit- Whitty—who was the first actress to lock was busy at Walt Disney; in 1961, he be made a dame commander of the Brit- switched to UNIVERSAL, where he began ish Empire, honored in 1918 for her war- again working with Hitchcock, helping time work—relocated to Hollywood, where him with the complicated effects for THE she became a busy performer in the ’40s, BIRDS, where he was credited with “picto- appearing in Gaslight and Hitchcock’s rial designs.” He would rack up additional SUSPICION, among others. She received credits—sometimes as “pictorial designer,” Oscar nominations for both Night Must sometimes for “special photographic Fall and Mrs. Miniver (although she did not effects”—on MARNIE, TORN CURTAIN, win) and remained a dedicated and good- TOPAZ, FRENZY, and FAMILY PLOT, humored performer even more than 60 making him the only Hitchcock colleague, years into her career. “I’ve got everything apart from ALMA REVILLE, who could Betty Grable has,” she quipped, “only I’ve truly say he was with the director both at had it longer.” the beginning and the very end. She died in Beverly Hills of cancer at 82. Whitlock won Academy Awards for his fine work on two dreadful mov- References ies, Earthquake and The Hindenburg; he “Dame May Whitty,” IMDb, http:// was also, in an inside JOKE, cast as the www.imdb.com/name/nm0926599/ kidnapped industrialist in Mel Brooks’s bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; “Dame May Hitchcock parody HIGH ANXIETY and Whitty Biography,” Journal of Life, provided the mattes for one last non-Hitch- http://dame-may-whitty.journal-of-life WILDER, THORNTON n 501

.com/#!biographies; Alfred E. Twomey and more clear-cut collaboration—Hitchcock Arthur F. McClure, The Versatiles: Support- wanted to shoot some of his proposed, ing Character Players in the Cinema, 1930– early-’60s feature THE BLIND MAN at Dis- 1955 (New York: Castle Books, 1969), 237. neyland—reportedly fell apart after Disney saw PSYCHO, however, and the film was WHO KILLED COCK ROBIN? never made. (US 1935) References Director: Uncredited (David Hand). Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life Screenplay: Uncredited (William Cottrell, in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- Joe Grant, Bob Kuwahara). Collins, 2003), 60, 622; “Sabotage by Alfred Producer: Walt Disney. Hitchcock,” Disney Archives and Myster- Cinematography: Uncredited. ies, http://marciodisneyarchives.blogspot Editor: Uncredited. Original Music: Uncredited (Frank .com/2010/08/sabotage-by-alfred-hitch Churchill). cock.html. Cast: Uncredited (Billy Bletcher, Clarence Nash, Purv Pullen, Martha Wentworth). WILDER, THORNTON Running Time: 8 minutes. Black and white. (1897–1975) Released Through: United Artists. Madison, WI–born author whose domineering, disapproving father was a journalist and, for eight years, the US consul A Silly Symphonies cartoon short made by general in China. Education and intellec- Walt Disney but released through United tualism were stressed in the family, and Artists, based on the nursery rhyme. Sev- four of the five Wilder children went on to eral of the animal characters are carica- become writers. Educated at private prep tures of then-current Hollywood STARS, schools Oberlin and Princeton, Wilder including Bing Crosby and Mae West, and published his first novel at 30; his next, The the story revolves around a murder trial. Bridge at San Luis Rey, was a best seller and As one of Hitchcock’s PLAY WITHIN A won the Pulitzer Prize. He would win two PLAY touches, it is the movie Mrs. Verloc more Pulitzers for his plays Our Town and watches in SABOTAGE in between learning The Skin of Our Teeth. of her brother’s death and killing her hus- Hitchcock, who greatly admired Our band; the film first distracts her from her Town, asked the playwright to work on the grief and then compounds it, and its mix of screenplay for SHADOW OF A DOUBT; it violence and humor matches Hitchcock’s would be Wilder’s first original feature (he own approach to his work. had previously adapted Our Town for the Hitchcock was an admirer of Disney, movies) and confirm Hitchcock’s prefer- and not only for his business acumen, care- ence for using novelists for initial movie ful storyboarding, and visual creativity; the treatments, which he always viewed as the special matte process used in THE BIRDS real creative work. (The actual screenwrit- (and the less-convincing mechanical horse ing was often done by a veteran scenarist, in MARNIE) had both been originally or as Hitchcock sometimes called them, a developed at the Disney studios, where “stooge.”) Hitchcock and Wilder looked past and future Hitchcock collaborator at locations in Santa Rosa together, and ALBERT WHITLOCK had landed in the Wilder delivered a prose outline for the ’50s after moving to America. A plan for a movie, although his time on the project was 502 n WILDING, MICHAEL cut short due to his upcoming intelligence six straight years, 1947 to 1952, he was work for the US Army. Hitchcock, though, voted among Britain’s most popular movie treasured the collaboration and inserted an actors. unusual, extra title in the opening credits Neither of his back-to-back pictures acknowledging Wilder’s contributions. for Hitchcock, UNDER CAPRICORN and After the war, Wilder’s busy career STAGE FRIGHT, were successes, however, would resume, and he would have another with the usually heroic Wilding stuck play- unexpected commercial success with The ing rather vague characters; his follow- Matchmaker, a rewrite of one of his earlier up Hollywood projects would be almost plays, The Merchant of Yonkers. (The play equally unmemorable, although he would would later be reworked into the musical have a small supporting part in the 1960 hit Hello, Dolly!) Although he remained deeply The World of Suzie Wong and guest star on closeted and somewhat introverted, Wilder an episode of THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK was an indefatigable and sparkling letter HOUR in 1963. writer; while a number of critics carped, Married four times, once to Elizabeth calling him everything from bourgeois to Taylor, the bluntly self-deprecating Wild- a plagiarist (there were a number of simi- ing (“I was the worst actor I ever came larities noted between Finnegan’s Wake across”) found roles harder to get as his and The Skin of Our Teeth), he remained epilepsy, a lifelong condition, began to a popular and respected American author. worsen in middle age; he tried working He died at 78 in Hamden, CT. as an agent for a while, representing his ex-wife’s new husband Richard Burton, References and then when that failed, he went back Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A to taking on whatever small parts he could Life in Darkness and Light (New York: find. He died at 66 after having a seizure HarperCollins, 2003), 308–13; Donald and falling down the stairs at his home in Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life Chichester. of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 256–58; “Thornton Wilder References (1897–1975), Playwright and Novelist,” “Michael Wilding,” IMDb, http:// Queers in History, http://queerhistory www.imdb.com/name/nm0928697/ .blogspot.com/2012/04/thornton-wilder bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; “Mr. Michael -1897-1975-playwright.html; “Thornton Wilding,” Times, November 16, 1979, Wilder Biography,” Thornton Wilder Soci- http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/The ety, http://www.twildersociety.org/biogra _Times_%2816/Nov/1979%29_-_Obitu phy; François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, ary:_Michael_Wilding. rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), 151–53. WILLIAMS, EMLYN (1905–1987) Flintshire-born author and performer from WILDING, MICHAEL (1912–1979) a Welsh working-class family who won Essex-born performer who entered the several scholarships, including a place at industry as an artist. He soon switched Oxford, where he was in the dramatic soci- to acting, making his film debut in 1933. ety. After graduation, he joined a repertory Starting in bit parts, Wilding was a STAR company and began writing his own com- by World War II, often playing valiant edies and dramas; the grim Night Must Fall, military men or elegant aristocrats; for a pioneering study of a psychopathic killer, WILLIAMS, JOHN n 503 was a major success in 1935, with Williams CASE was made even smaller by the edits of also starring as the madman. (It was later producer DAVID O. SELZNICK.) made twice as a film.) A subsequent play He won a Tony, however, playing and equal success, The Corn Is Green, told the inspector in the Broadway production the fictionalized story of his poor child- of DIAL M FOR MURDER; when Hitch- hood and the help provided by an excep- cock hired him to repeat the role in the tional teacher. 1954 movie, his film career began in ear- Williams provided some dialogue for nest. Tall, with a regimental moustache the script to the 1934 version of THE MAN and quietly amused delivery, Williams WHO KNEW TOO MUCH and had a good played countless butlers and stiff-upper-lip part in JAMAICA INN as Harry the Ped- authority figures; a favorite of Hitchcock’s, dler, perhaps the most dangerous member he was the insurance investigator in TO of Sir Humphrey’s gang. He would go on CATCH A THIEF and guest-starred on no to appear in The Stars Look Down, The less than 10 episodes of ALFRED HITCH- Scarf, and Ivanhoe, as well as in the (ulti- COCK PRESENTS, 3 of them directed by mately abandoned) Josef von Sternberg Hitchcock. picture I, Claudius and the version of THE Williams also starred in the HITCH- WRECK OF THE MARY DEARE made COCKIAN Midnight Lace; a TV adapta- after Hitchcock had moved on to NORTH tion of ROBERT BLOCH’s “Yours Truly, BY NORTHWEST. Later in life, Williams Jack the Ripper”; Sabrina; Witness for the wrote a novelistic true-crime book, Beyond Prosecution; and the 1974 film of Lost in Belief, and successfully toured in a one-man the Stars—although oddly he may be best show as Charles Dickens. remembered in America for appearing in He died at 81 from cancer in his home the longest-running commercial in TV his- in London. tory, a record ad for “120 Music Master- pieces.” He died at 80 of an aneurysm in La References Jolla. “Emlyn Williams,” Encyclopaedia Britan- nica, http://www.britannica.com/biogra References phy/Emlyn-Williams; “Emlyn Williams,” “John Williams,” IMDb, http://www.imdb IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/ .com/name/nm0002369/bio?ref_=nm_ov nm0930539/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; _bio_sm; “Obituary: John Williams,” Times, Albin Krebs, “Emlyn Williams, Welsh May 10, 1983, http://the.hitchcock.zone/ Actor and Writer, Dies,” New York Times, wiki/The_Times_%2810/May/1983%29 September 26, 1987, http://www.nytimes. _-_Obituary:_John_Williams. com/1987/09/26/obituaries/emlyn-wil liams-welsh-actor-and-writer-dies.html. WILLIAMS, JOHN (1932– ) New York–born musician whose father WILLIAMS, JOHN (1903–1983) played in small jazz bands. The family Buckinghamshire-born performer who later moved to California, where Williams made his stage debut at 13 as one of the attended high school and college before Darling children in Peter Pan. As an adult, continuing his musical studies at Man- he moved to America, where he had a hattan’s Juilliard. By the 1950s, he was a steady stage career in New York and, for regular session musician and an orches- two decades, a less notable film one in Hol- trator helping Henry Mancini, BERNARD lywood. (His small part in THE PARADINE HERRMANN, and other film composers. 504 n WOLFE, IAN

Williams received his first screen References credit in 1960 and became a steady col- “Ian Wolfe,” Hollywood.com, http:// laborator of producer Irwin Allen, writing www.hollywood.com/celebrities/ian the themes for TV’s Lost in Space and Time -wolfe-57302946; “Ian Wolfe,” IMDb, Tunnel (and, later, scores for the movies http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0938052; The Poseidon Adventure and The Tower- Alfred E. Twomey and Arthur F. McClure, ing Inferno). A dependable presence at The Versatiles: Supporting Character Play- UNIVERSAL, in 1976, he contributed the ers in the Cinema, 1930–1955 (New York: whimsical music for FAMILY PLOT. His Castle Books, 1969), 243. most famous scores, however, will always be his stirring compositions for Steven WOMAN TO WOMAN (1922) Spielberg and George Lucas, including Star Wars; Raiders of the Lost Ark; Jurassic Park; Director: Graham Cutts. Screenplay: Alfred Hitchcock, Graham E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial; Schindler’s List; Cutts, based on the play by Michael and, of course, Jaws. Morton. Producers: Sir Michael Balcon, Victor Sav- References ille. “John Williams,” IMDb, http://www.imdb Cinematography: Claude L. McDonnell. .com/name/nm0002354; Patrick McGil- Editor: Alma Reville. ligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Dark- Cast: Clive Brook (David Compton), Betty ness and Light (New York: HarperCollins, Compson (Louise Boucher). 2003), 729; Patsy Morita, “John Williams: Running Time: 82 minutes. Black and white. Biography,” AllMusic, http://www.allmusic Released Through: Woolf & Freedman .com/artist/john-williams-mn0000232480/ Film Service. biography.

WOLFE, IAN (1896–1992) English officer David Compton and French Canton, IL–born performer who spent the dancer Louise Boucher are in love—but first 15 years of his career onstage, where shortly after getting her pregnant and right he mastered a clipped, vaguely English before their marriage, they are accidentally intonation. That, plus premature bald- separated. He goes off to war, is wounded ness, seemed to type him as a British but- at the front, and loses his memory; Lou- ler, a part he played regularly in films for ise changes her name and raises their son more than 50 years. He made an amazing alone. Years later, David, still suffering 300 film and television appearances, many from partial amnesia, returns to England, uncredited, among which the best known resumes his old life, and marries. One are the 1935 The Raven; The Prince and the night, he goes to Louise’s show and rec- Pauper; Now, Voyager; Bedlam; Witness for ognizes her; recognizing him, Louise gives the Prosecution; and the Star Trek episodes David and his new wife the custody of her “All Our Yesterdays” and “Bread and Cir- son and, after a final performance, dies of cuses.” For Hitchcock, he played Stiles in heartbreak. FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT and Rob- ert, the butler with the blackjack, in SABO- The first of several films Hitchcock was to TEUR. His last appearance was in Warren make with GRAHAM CUTTS, serving as Beatty’s Dick Tracy in 1990. He died at 95 the older man’s assistant director, art direc- in Los Angeles. tor, scenarist, and occasional editor, the WOOD, ROBIN n 505 melodrama was a particular hit, encouraging Although the French had formed the cast and crew to reteam for THE WHITE their own Alfred Hitchcock appreciation SHADOW. That film, unfortunately, failed; society some time before—in fact, it was this one is now regarded as completely lost, ERIC ROHMER, in his role as Cahiers save for a press book and a few stills. Still, editor, who accepted Wood’s piece— Woman to Woman does show the earliest Hitchcock’s Films was not only one of versions of some Hitchcock tropes—the the- the first strong defenses in English of the atrical setting, the romantic triangle (and its director’s work but also a landmark in cast list—with young Victor McClaglen as film criticism that combined a close read- “Nubian slave”—hints tantalizingly at some ing of the films’ imagery with an under- exotic touches). It’s also the first picture on standing of their morality. It remains which Hitchcock and ALMA REVILLE, essential reading. his future wife, collaborated. And there’s “The book certainly got reactions,” another, prophetic connection to his later Wood later recalled. “A lot of people work; the film was distributed in America thought it was ridiculous, this idea of taking by Lewis J. Selznick, father of Myron and Hitchcock seriously. He was seen as simply DAVID O. SELZNICK. an entertainer; one was merely amused by his films, had a few shocks, a few laughs, References and that was it. But it was also reviewed in Michael Brooke, “Woman to Woman,” BFI a way that wasn’t entirely dismissive, and Most Wanted: The Hunt for Britain’s Miss- then it gradually caught on.” ing Films, http://old.bfi.org.uk/national Although Wood would later write archive/news/mostwanted/woman-to perceptively of Arthur Penn, Howard -woman.html; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hawks, Ingmar Bergman, and other Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light filmmakers, his singular appreciation of (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 56–60; Hitchcock never wavered; it did take on Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: new dimensions, however, as its author The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da did, too, gradually becoming more Marx- Capo Press, 1999), 59; François Truffaut, ist in his analyses and also finally com- Hitchcock/Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: ing out as a gay man. An expanded and Touchstone, 1985), 29. revised edition of the book looking at the director’s work from those new per- WOOD, ROBIN (1931–2009) spectives, Hitchcock’s Films Revisited, London-born author who studied at Cam- appeared in 1989. bridge, falling under the sway of literary He died of leukemia in Toronto at 78. critic F. R. Leavis and graduating with a commitment to academia. Over the rest of References his life, he would teach in England, Swe- William Grimes, “Robin Wood, Film den, France, and Canada, where he would Critic Who Wrote on Hitchcock, Dies at spend the bulk of his career. His first writ- 78,” New York Times, December 22, 2009, ing on Hitchcock, an analysis of PSYCHO, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/ was rejected by Britain’s Sight and Sound arts/22wood.html?_r=0; Armen Svad- magazine but later published by CAHIERS jian, “A Life in Criticism: Robin Wood at DU CINEMA; it would become a pivotal 75,” Your Flesh, January 1, 2006, http:// chapter in his book HITCHCOCK’S FILMS yourfleshmag.com/books/a-life-in-film in 1965. -criticism-robin-wood-at-75/am. 506 n WOOLF, C(HARLES) M(OSS)

WOOLF, C(HARLES) M(OSS) erCollins, 2003), 60, 168; A. R. Phillips, (1879–1942) “C. M. Woolf,” Hitchcock Report, https:// London-born mogul who entered film- thehitchcockreport.wordpress.com/tag/ making after World War I. He would head c-m-woolf; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of up various companies and remain a force Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New in film distribution for decades, succeeded York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 84–85, 88–89. finally by his sons John and James, who formed Romulus Films. From the start, WOOLRICH, CORNELL Woolf père was a successful if unimagina- (1903–1968) tive businessman; anything that seemed to New York–born author whose family splin- hint at “European” influences (rather than tered when he was young. He lived for a good old-fashioned, straightforward Eng- while with his father in Mexico and then lish storytelling) drew his immediate wrath. moved back to Manhattan when he was 12, It’s unclear when and why his antipa- where he would share an apartment with thy to Alfred Hitchcock began; it’s possible his mother for most of the next 40 years. he blamed the then-screenwriter for the Woolrich went (sporadically) to failure of the somewhat-metaphysical THE Columbia University, where he fell heav- WHITE SHADOW. But once Hitchcock ily under the influence of the works of F. began directing, Woolf almost invariably Scott Fitzgerald; he published his first book, disapproved of the ambitious results, suc- Cover Charge, in 1926. By the early ’30s, cessively pronouncing THE PLEASURE though, with Fitzgerald’s career in decline, GARDEN, THE MOUNTAIN EAGLE, and his imitators were faring even worse; even- THE LODGER all unreleasable and return- tually Woolrich switched styles and genres, ing them to the shelf (until some edits in The turning to popular “pulp” mysteries. Lodger, and some screenings arranged by Although some of his works fit com- Hitchcock’s mentor, SIR MICHAEL BAL- fortably within the hard-boiled genre of CON, were met with success—then all three tough detectives and clever professional films rapidly received real distribution). criminals, Woolrich’s most lasting books Woolf’s stubbornly low opinion of the are more definitively noir, full of lies, director never changed; he said 1934’s THE insomnia, GUILT, and revenge; typically, MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH was rubin a Woolrich story, an innocent choice bish and announced he was going to take suddenly opens up a frightening new it away and give it to another director to world, a love affair slowly leads to murder. reshoot. Hitchcock, who at that point in Woolrich’s most famous works are the his career desperately needed a comeback, “Black” books—The Bride Wore Black, The begged the mogul to release the film as it was; Black Curtain, Black Alibi, The Black Angel, Woolf finally, grudgingly agreed, as Hitch- The Black Path of Fear, and Rendezvous in cock’s name still might draw some publicity, Black—all written between 1940 and 1948, but put the film out as a B movie. It was a hit many adapted for movies. He also wrote anyway, much to Woolf’s annoyance. short stories and published under the He died on New Year’s Eve at age 63 names “William Irish” and “George Hop- in London. ley.” Hitchcock and his production staff were clearly close readers of Woolrich; References his short story “It Had to Be Murder” was Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life expanded into REAR WINDOW, The Black in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- Curtain was condensed for an episode of WORLD WAR II n 507

THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR, three not return to direct another feature until other short stories became episodes of UNDER CAPRICORN a decade later. ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, and a His relocation to America wasn’t an fourth was directed by Hitchcock himself unusual one at that time. Many past and for the television anthology SUSPICION. future Hitchcock colleagues—CHARLES Briefly married (the marriage was later LAUGHTON, DAME MAY WHITTY, annulled), Woolrich was gay and deeply EDMUND GWENN—had made the move conflicted about it, as he was about much in to Hollywood in the late ’30s, and most his life; he drank heavily and would some- never returned. Yet because Hitchcock was times disguise himself as a sailor and pick so admired in the industry, some saw his up men at the piers. After his mother died, departure from England on the eve of war he became even more reclusive, although ill as ungrateful, even unpatriotic. health—he had lost a leg due to an infec- His old mentor SIR MICHAEL tion—certainly played a part. He died in BALCON wrote an opinion piece—that New York at 64. He left his entire estate to wounded Hitchcock deeply—railing Columbia to endow writing scholarships in against these deserters, referring slight- honor of his mother. ingly to the director as a former “plump junior technician.” And even decades References after Hitchcock’s death, a British journal- “Cornell Woolrich,” IMDb, http://www ist—in an otherwise affectionate piece on .imdb.com/name/nm0941280; “Cor- actors BASIL RADFORD and NAUNTON nell Woolrich Biography,” Literal Media, WAYNE—would sneer at the director of http://www.literalmedia.com/index THE LADY VANISHES as a “man who .php?option=com_content&view=article& suspected that war was coming, and had id=56&Itemid=76; Wallace Stroby, “Into already decided to sit it out in Hollywood the Night: Cornell Woolrich’s Art of Dark- drinking orange juice.” It’s not a fair attack. ness Revisited,” Wallace Stroby, http:// It is true that Hitchcock left in March www.wallacestroby.com/writings_wool 1939 (while Britain was technically still at rich.html. peace). Once war did break out, though, obviously his health and weight made him WORLD WAR II ineligible for active service; he did not rush Throughout the ’30s, Hitchcock had been immediately back home to offer to direct chafing at—and publicly complaining propaganda films or join a documentary about—the state of the British film indus- unit recording combat footage. He mostly try. He told INTERVIEWERS he yearned stayed in America with his family and to work with top American STARS, like (unsuccessfully) urged his mother to leave Gary Cooper and CAROLE LOMBARD. England, too, and join them. And on that He criticized English filmmaking for being basis, he was considered by some to be a too staid and CENSORIOUS. He bristled shirker. Yet throughout the ’40s, Hitch- at the budget limitations put on him by cock’s films are invariably pro-Allies, anti- studio heads. It was clear that he wanted Nazi, and forcefully in favor of the war. a bigger field to play in, and when some True, in some of them, current events careful hunting finally brought a deal are kept successfully at bay; both REBECCA from DAVID O. SELZNICK, he packed and SUSPICION might as well be period up his family (and his family’s cook and pieces set in the ’30s (when, in fact, their housekeeper) and left in 1939. He would original source novels were written). Yet 508 n WORLD WAR II their very “English-ness” is a kind of pro- out that hateful theories of superior races paganda push, too—this verdant peaceful and of people worthy of extermination country of great manor houses and dotty don’t have to be expounded by someone neighbors was something that needed with a German accent to be bigoted and defending, and Hitchcock’s faux-British dangerous. They can come, in fact, from films, admittedly full of tea-cozy stereo- your well-dressed Uncle Charlie or a pair of types, nonetheless reminded audiences of elegant prep-school boys. (The connection what might be lost if it wasn’t. between the very rich and the ultraright is Hitchcock’s other wartime films are one Hitchcock draws again and again; in more obvious and ardent in their patrio- Lifeboat it’s the wealthy survivors who first tism. FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT ends warm up to the German sailor, the workers with a blatant speech to the American audi- who remain suspicious.) ence, exhorting them to support Britain And these are merely the features and prepare for war; SABOTEUR shows the Hitchcock put his name to. In Hollywood, dangers of the spies and Nazi sympathiz- he often lent a few ideas or several days’ ers in our midst. And LIFEBOAT, his most work to many more propaganda films; explicit (and frustratingly misunderstood) he never took credit, but they reportedly prowar film, gathers together—as The include WATCHTOWER OVER TOMOR- Lady Vanishes did—a motley collection of ROW and the ambitious feature FOREVER travelers in peril. This time they represent AND A DAY. (He even paid personally to classes, not countries—wealthy industrial- have a British short, Men of the Lightship, ists and artists, middle-class professionals, reworked and redubbed with American lower-class workers. But the message is actors for the US market.) He cochaired with the same: Stop your squabbling, and unite Whitty a fund-raising drive to evacuate chil- against a common and formidable enemy. dren from an English orphanage and resettle For all this patriotic tub thumping, them in Canada and the United States. Hitchcock was not insensitive to the hor- Hitchcock also went back to England rors of war; in SPELLBOUND, John Bal- in 1944 to direct two shorts for the British lantyne (who is admittedly disturbed Ministry of Information, BON VOYAGE and clearly suffering from posttraumatic and AVENTURE MALGACHE. (There stress disorder) talks about how much he were problems later, as there had been with hates fighting. But the director knew that John Huston’s Let There Be Light and the totalitarianism was even worse, and he US Army, but there always are when you always had; even if his 1930s films in Brit- mix independent artists with official pro- ain weren’t allowed to be too specific about paganda.) And he returned after the war, their villains for fear of losing the German too, to voluntarily supervise a particularly market, there was little doubt who those disturbing documentary of the Holocaust continental agents in THE MAN WHO (one put aside for years for fear of offend- KNEW TOO MUCH, THE 39 STEPS, SAB- ing a just-pacified Germany but finally OTAGE, SECRET AGENT, and The Lady broadcast on television as MEMORY OF Vanishes were really working for. THE CAMPS). Nor did Hitchcock let go of that As the postwar world turned into a theme once the war had ended. NOTORI- Cold War one, Hitchcock’s view changed, OUS warns presciently of the danger that too; the villains in his films were not Nazis escaped Nazis can still cause; ROPE (like now but Communists (even though pri- SHADOW OF A DOUBT before it) points vately he would do what he could in real WRIGHT, TERESA n 509 life to aid victims of the Hollywood black- Michael Anderson (of Around the World list). But the old worries about authoritar- in 80 Days) signed to direct. The finished ian regimes didn’t go away. They never project proved Hitchcock and Lehman’s had, and neither did his genuinely spirited reservations correct, although it did mark reaction to them—even when he was sitting one missed opportunity—the chance to in his sunny Hollywood kitchen, drinking direct Gary Cooper in a movie, whom the orange juice. director had wanted since FOREIGN COR- RESPONDENT and never been able to sign. References Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Reference Life in Darkness and Light (New York: Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: HarperCollins, 2003), 270–74, 280–81, The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da 372–74; Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Capo Press, 1999), 388–89, 391–93. Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 235–36; Mat- WRIGHT, TERESA (1918–2005) thew Sweet, “Mustard and Cress,” Guard- New York–born, New Jersey–raised per- ian, December 29, 2007, http://www former who began in school plays and .theguardian.com/film/2007/dec/29/film; summer stock and then understudied the François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, role of Emily in the original Broadway pro- rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), duction of THORNTON WILDER’s Our 159–61; J. Danvers Williams, “What I’d Town. (She eventually took over the role Do to the Stars,” Film Weekly, March 4, when Martha Scott left for Hollywood.) 1939, http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Film That stage hit was followed by another, Life _Weekly_%281939%29_-_What_I’d_Do with Father, and a movie deal with Samuel _to_the_Stars. Goldwyn. Wright—who wittily but firmly had it written into her contract that she THE WRECK OF THE MARY DEARE never be required to pose for corny public- This was to be Alfred Hitchcock’s next pro- ity photographs “attired in firecrackers and duction after VERTIGO. Set up at MGM, holding skyrockets for the Fourth of July” Hitchcock and screenwriter ERNEST or “looking insinuatingly at a turkey for LEHMAN worked on the script (and Thanksgiving”—immediately established delayed working on the script) for some herself as a bright young STAR, winning time, until Lehman finally confessed to Oscar nominations for her first three films: the director that he couldn’t find any way The Little Foxes, Mrs. Miniver, and Pride of to make it interesting. Based on a novel by the Yankees. (She won for Mrs. Miniver.) Hammond Innes, it was the story of sabo- Her fourth film, on loan-out from tage aboard a Merchant Marine ship, some- Goldwyn, would be SHADOW OF A thing Lehman couldn’t get a handle on, and DOUBT (which also reunited her with ended with a courtroom drama, a genre Wilder and with actress PATRICIA Hitchcock was never comfortable with. COLLINGE, who’d had a memorable Instead, they decided to do an role in The Little Foxes). Hitchcock called entirely new picture, a man-on-the-run Wright in for a meeting without first send- epic that eventually became NORTH BY ing her the screenplay. Instead, there in his NORTHWEST. The Wreck of the Mary office, he acted it out. Deare, meanwhile, eventually got a script “He told the story like no one else has from Hitchcock friend Eric Ambler, with ever told a story,” she remembered later. 510 n THE WRONG MAN

“He used anything on his desk as a prop, out a studio behind her, and the pictures whether it was a glass or a pencil or a book, grew smaller. to make a sound, do sound effects. He’d do She continued to do very good work, steps. He’d do anything he could as a sto- mostly on stage and television now, appear- ryteller to lure you into his story. And he ing in the original broadcast version of The told that story so beautifully that I was just Miracle Worker and several episodes of absolutely mesmerized. And when I finally THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR. Her saw the film, I said, ‘I’ve seen this film. I last film was The Rainmaker in 1997. She saw it in his office.’” died of a heart attack at 86 in New Haven. Hitchcock liked Wright and was particularly patient with her on the set and References open to suggestions. When she balked Beyond Doubt: The Making of Hitchcock’s at a romantic scene with MACDON- Favorite Film, directed by Laurent Bou- ALD CAREY, he tried another approach zereau (2000), documentary, http://the (Collinge actually did the rewrite). When .hitchcock.zone/wiki/Beyond_Doubt there was a particularly specific bit of stag- :_The_Making_of_Hitchcock’s_Favor ing, he took the time to explain why it ite_Film_%282000%29_-_transcript; needed to be done that way. Douglas Martin, “Teresa Wright, Stage “The interesting thing about Shadow of and Film Star, Dies at 86,” New York a Doubt is the twins theme, like when she Times, March 8, 2005, http://www.nytimes says, ‘We really are twins. We think things .com/2005/03/08/theater/teresa-wright the same,’” Wright said. “One piece of direc- -stage-and-film-star-dies-at-86.html?_r=0; tion I absolutely do remember, I was just “Teresa Wright,” IMDb, http://www.imdb lying on a bed some way or other, having .com/name/nm0942863/bio; David Thom- a rest. He said, ‘No, I want you to lie there son, The New Biographical Dictionary of with your hands behind your head.’ He told Film (New York: Knopf, 2002), 948–49. me exactly how it was, but he explained why. ‘Because,’ he said, ‘we are going to THE WRONG MAN (US 1956) come from a shot of Uncle Charlie lying on the bed. I want this duplicated.’ Those kinds Director: Alfred Hitchcock. of things make it harder for young Charlie Screenplay: Maxwell Anderson, Angus and the audience to accept him as anything MacPhail, based on the book The True Story of Christopher Emanuel Balestrero by except this charming uncle of hers.” Maxwell Anderson and the Life article Afterward, Wright went on to deliver “A Case of Identity” by Herbert Brean. a fine, unforced performance in The Best Producers: Herbert Coleman (Alfred Years of Our Lives, but disagreements Hitchcock, uncredited). with Goldwyn over publicity efforts and Cinematography: Robert Burks. her own independence led to her con- Editor: George Tomasini. tract being dropped in 1948. Wright pro- Original Music: Bernard Herrmann. nounced herself glad—“The types of con- Cast: Henry Fonda (Manny Balestrero), tracts standardized in the motion picture Vera Miles (Rose Balestrero), Anthony industry between players and producers Quayle (Frank D. O’Connor), Harold are archaic in form and absurd in concept,” Stone (Det. Lt. Bowers), Esther Mini- cotti (Mama Balestrero). she declared—and went on to do The Men Running Time: 105 minutes. Black and white. with newcomer Marlon Brando, but it soon Released Through: Warner Bros. became difficult to get the best roles with- THE WRONG MAN n 511

Manny Balestrero lives a quiet life of rou- lary to lock up little Alfred in a cell for five tine. He leaves his home in Queens and minutes to teach him some sort of lesson. takes the subway into Manhattan, where he Hitchcock claimed not to know the real plays the bass in a nightclub’s dance band. reason behind it—he was a meek boy, he He makes $85 a week—enough to support insisted, whose father used to call him, in his family but not so much that he doesn’t rather Biblical terms, his “little lamb with- dream about small things he feels he can’t out a spot”—but the experience stayed deep afford, like a car or a vacation. With a den- within him. tist’s bill due, he takes his wife’s insurance It would regularly reappear, though, policy into the agency, hoping to borrow a in his movies. Right from THE LODGER, little bit against it. And then his routine life Hitchcock’s films are full of people who turns upside down. are wrongfully accused (BLACKMAIL, Two women at the office identify him MURDER!, THE 39 STEPS, SABOTEUR, as a man who held them up previously. The NORTH BY NORTHWEST) or even know- police pick him up and bring him before ingly allow themselves to be to serve a other people who were robbed in the neigh- greater good (UNDER CAPRICORN, I borhood—owners of a deli and a liquor CONFESS, TORN CURTAIN). The trau- store. His handwriting seems to match a matic memory of that spotless little lamb holdup note. Manny is arrested, booked, standing in a dark and thickly barred cell briefly jailed (until his family can make never left Hitchcock, yet for decades he had bail), and then put on trial—for crimes he merely exploited it for entertainment. Now did not commit and yet has no alibi for. he would dive deep into its dark center. The Balestreros hire an inexpen- Although the mid-’50s had been busy sive lawyer, but the case against Manny with the back-to-back successes of TO is strong. Rose Balestrero, Manny’s wife, CATCH A THIEF and THE MAN WHO grows more and more dejected, eventu- KNEW TOO MUCH, Hitchcock still hadn’t ally slipping into a dangerous depression. given WARNER BROS. the production he The trial begins, and the evidence seems owed them under his old contract. So he unshakeable. Dull, too—so much so that happily seized on a Life magazine article a juror complains in open court about the Warner Bros. already had the rights to tediousness of the testimony. A mistrial is about the 1953 arrest of a musician at the declared and a new trial rescheduled. Stork Club and his eventual trial for crimes Then, while Manny prays desperately, he hadn’t committed. The picture was an the real stickup man—a double for the uncomplicated one logistically, without any quiet musician—is arrested and confesses. elaborate sets or effects, and—apart from Manny is finally free—although for now, some brief LOCATION FILMING in New his wife remains institutionalized. York—could be mostly done in the economical comfort of the studio. One of Hitchcock’s most CATHOLIC Hitchcock chose lauded playwright films—and in some ways an act of penance Maxwell Anderson to do the screenplay, for all the rest. and Anderson turned his research into The idea of an innocent person, the case into a stand-alone book, The True imprisoned by an uncaring authority, was Story of Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero. planted—actually forced—into Hitch- But the script was more poetic than prac- cock’s psyche back in childhood, when his tical, and the director’s old if somewhat father had prevailed on the local constabu- alcoholic colleague ANGUS MACPHAIL 512 n THE WRONG MAN was brought on to do further research PARADINE CASE.) Only in one feverish and another draft. HENRY FONDA, the shot at the end—after Manny has been film’s sole STAR, was cast as Balestrero; locked in the cell and the camera, while VERA MILES, a new Hitchcock “discov- looking at him, begins to revolve with the ery” (although she already had several mad tumult of his own emotions—is there other important credits), would continue a touch of the old, EXPRESSIONIST SUB- to be groomed for stardom by being cast as JECTIVITY. Manny’s fragile wife, Rose. Emphasized particularly is the KAF- Production began in March at the KAESQUE feel of the entire experience story’s real-life locations in Queens, Man- and the helplessness that Manny feels. “It’s hattan, and upstate New York, before nothing for an innocent man to worry moving back to Los Angeles for studio about,” the lead detective says at the begin- work. Shooting went without any reported ning, a sentiment he repeats several times. difficulties—although Hitchcock report- (“If you haven’t done anything, you have edly cut the location work short due to nothing to fear,” he offers later, along with, the uncomfortable cold—and BERNARD “An innocent man has nothing to fear, HERRMANN supplied a subdued, slightly remember that”—a phrase later borrowed jazzy score. for the film’s posters.) But in Hitchcock’s The result was an unusual picture, films, innocence is merely a construct, a out of character for the director in its fleeting virtue borne strictly of circum- documentary style, grim BLACK-AND- stance and the judgment of others. GUILT WHITE photography, and total absence is far more pervasive and far harder to of humor. (Significantly, Hitchcock even define, let alone ever truly discard. did away with his usually whimsical, wink- And as always in Hitchcock’s films, ing CAMEO—instead, he appeared at the the repetition of phrases, even words, is very beginning of the film, silhouetted on never insignificant. Does an innocent man a deeply shadowed soundstage, soberly truly have nothing to worry about, noth- announcing to the audience that this was a ing to fear? In the ’50s, many disagreed. different sort of crime story and that every- Although Senator Joseph McCarthy had thing they were about to see was true.) been formally censured by the Senate in The visuals would drive that home 1954 (he would die in 1957), the era he with a look that owed more to newsreel gave his name to lived on; the story of a photography (and perhaps the Italian Neo- quiet law-abiding citizen suddenly forced realists) than to Hitchcock’s most recent, to defend his own character and confront high-colored entertainments. Real loca- strange witnesses must have resonated not tions are used, and even when sets are nec- only with viewers but also with Hitchcock essary, the set decoration is precise, right himself, who had seen several friends and down to the products from a local bakery associates banned or “gray-listed” by ner- or the rumblings of the Queens subway. vous moguls after the Washington witch Manny’s police booking—the calmly cold, trials (people who, to his credit, Hitchcock dehumanizing process of fingerprinting, would continue to find work for, particu- arraignment, and final incarceration— larly on his television programs). is done with hollow precision. (It was a More than politics, though, The Wrong sequence Hitchcock had been thinking Man is about religion and faith. It’s not just about since at least Blackmail and a situ- that, as Manny, Fonda has the face of a fast- ation he had briefly touched on in THE ing saint; it’s that Manny is a Roman Cath- THE WRONG MAN n 513 olic who lives his faith every day. When Rose while an uncomprehending Manny he’s first booked and told to go through talks only about the upcoming trial.) But his pockets, he pulls out a rosary; the the trouble grows and grows (Miles is very police allow him to take it into his cell, and good as suggesting first the barely con- Manny continues to say his novenas, fin- tained hysteria and then the bleak despair) gering the beads even as he sits in court, lis- and eventually there is nothing left but a tening to people bearing false witness. And bed in a room where the windows are as if his prayers seem to be going unanswered, heavily screened as the ones in Manny’s then that hinges on a pivotal theological cell. A final title card announces that, point: Manny, it seems, has been praying within two years, Rose was “completely for help. Better, his old MOTHER says, he cured,” but faithful audiences knew better should pray for strength—left unsaid is the than to accept these sort of endings from belief that real grace comes not from asking Hitchcock; like the stories on his television God to end your trials but from imploring show, which always wrapped up with his Him to give you the faith you need to face assertion that the murderer was eventually them. caught, we know that true tales like these It is not a theological distinction the and horrors like the Balestreros’ are rarely majority of American audiences would so firmly resolved. draw, but it meant something to Hitch- The film was released to some confu- cock—and indeed, once Manny meekly sion among mainstream audiences, who surrenders himself to God’s plans and missed the usual Hitchcock verve and prays only for the resolve needed to live found it difficult to identify with such an through them, his suffering is swiftly unemotional, even passive hero. (Like Job ended. A close-up of Manny’s imploring or the early Christian martyrs, Manny’s face silently whispering prayers dissolves purpose is not to fight—this is no movie into a close-up of the real criminal—who about an amateur detective or incensed is quickly apprehended and whose arrest avenger—but simply to endure.) In France, finally brings Manny’s anguish to an end. it was embraced by critics, where its themes Or does it? A strong component of of spirituality and injustice were picked The Wrong Man is the way that not only apart, and FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT— the innocent are punished but also the whose ardor for it cooled over the years— innocent spouses of the innocent; Rose initially called it Hitchcock’s “best film,” Balestrero first blames herself (if her wis- comparing it favorably to Robert Bresson’s dom teeth hadn’t bothered her, then they A Man Escaped. In America, though, it wouldn’t have needed to borrow money; if was seen as a disappointing change of pace she were a better wife, then Manny’s pay- from the sort of thrillers that reviewers and check would have gone further) and then fans had come to expect from the “Master Manny (How can she really be sure he of Suspense.” didn’t do it?) and then slips into first para- They were about to have a far deeper noia and then clinical depression. Finally, shock with VERTIGO. she is committed to a sanitarium. It’s Manny’s pleasant, low-key law- References yer who first notices her changing mood; Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life Manny himself is too involved in the case. in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper- (In a pivotal scene, Hitchcock’s camera Collins, 2003), 414, 532–38; Eric Rohmer watches the worried attorney watching and Claude Chabrol, Hitchcock: The First 514 n WYMAN, JANE

Forty-Four Films, translated by Stanley president Ronald Reagan; although there Hochman (New York: Frederick Ungar, were always stories and gossip about the 1979), 145–52; Donald Spoto, The Dark union and the real reason for their divorce, Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock Wyman refused to speak against him and (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 374–80; claimed, as a loyal Republican, to vote for François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut, him every chance she got. rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1985), She died at 90 in Palm Springs. 235–43; François Truffaut, “The Wrong Man,” Hitchcock Zone, http://the.hitch References cock.zone/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Truf “Jane Wyman,” Biography, http:// faut_%281957%29_-_The_Wrong_Man. www.biography.com/people/jane -wyman-245894; “Jane Wyman,” IMDb, WYMAN, JANE (1917–2007) http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0943837/ St. Joseph, MO–born performer (some bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm; Richard sources give 1914 as her birthdate). Her Severo, “Jane Wyman, 90, Star of Film working-class parents were in the midst and TV Is Dead,” New York Times, Sep- of a divorce when her father died, and tember 11, 2007, http://www.nytimes Wyman eventually ended up with a fos- .com/2007/09/11/movies/11wyman.html; ter family. Her new father was the city’s David Thomson, The New Biographi- chief of detectives, and home life was strict; cal Dictionary of Film (New York: Knopf, Wyman got some singing jobs on local 2002), 950. radio and dropped out of high school to move to Hollywood and become an actress. WYNDHAM-LEWIS, D. B. Wyman’s career began in the mid-’30s (1891–1969) with bit parts, but by the ’40s, she was an Liverpool-born author who began writ- established performer and eventually a ing humor columns for newspapers and leading lady, bringing quiet warmth and later turned to biographies, often of French wide-eyed sympathy to The Lost Week- historical figures, and screenplays. His end and The Yearling and winning an most famous script was for the original Oscar as the mute rape victim of Johnny THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, Belinda. Hitchcock cast her as acting stu- on which he was one of five writers. (He dent Eve Gill in STAGE FRIGHT, but at 33, received a story credit on the 1956 remake, Wyman seemed too old to still be playing as well.) Wyndham-Lewis returned to such a childlike character, and the direc- journalism and historical biographies in tor seemed to focus most of his attention the 1940s; his most famous work, outside on MARLENE DIETRICH and the veteran of the Hitchcock film, was probably edit- supporting cast. ing The Stuffed Owl, a satirical anthology of Wyman had strong parts later in bad verse. He died at 78 in Altea, Spain. the decade in Douglas Sirk’s Magnificent Obsession and All That Heaven Allows References and later found a regular home on televi- “D. B. Wyndham-Lewis,” James Boswell. sion; she had her own anthology show for info, http://www.jamesboswell.info/ a while and was a regular on many oth- scholars/d-b-wyndham-lewis; “Lewis, D. B. ers, having a long run on the 1980s hit Wyndham (Dominic Bevan Wyndham), Falcon Crest. Married four times, her sec- 1891–1969,” SNAC, http://socialarchive ond husband was then–B actor and future .iath.virginia.edu/ark:/99166/w67945vw. Y

YOUNG, ROBERT (1907–1998) parts, including roles in Claudia, The Can- Chicago-born performer from a working- terville Ghost, and The Enchanted Cottage. class family who moved regularly during A particular standout was the grim noir his childhood. He attended high school in Crossfire, with Young investigating an anti- Los Angeles and, after graduation, landed a Semitic attack. Like many of Hollywood’s job at the Pasadena Playhouse, touring with supporting actors, he later found true star- a repertory company before signing with dom on television, spending most of the MGM in 1931. Pleasantly amiable and unre- ’50s as the wise parent in Father Knows Best markably good looking, Young soon found and then returning the next decade as fam- himself safely stuck in the second tier of the ily doctor Marcus Welby, M.D. studio’s leading men, while Clark Gable got The twinkling persona was perhaps all the sexy roles; Spencer Tracy, the serious his best acting job; privately, Young drank jobs; and Robert Taylor, the handsome lead- heavily, had always battled depression, and ing-man parts. Young felt overlooked and in 1991 attempted suicide. After his recov- underappreciated, and when the studio lent ery, he led efforts to improve mental-health him to GAUMONT BRITISH for a pair of treatment in his old home state of Illinois. pictures, he took it as a further rebuke. Young died at 91 of respiratory failure in One of those movies turned out to Westlake Village, CA. be SECRET AGENT, however, which gave Young one of his best roles during References that decade, allowing him to be both silk- Alfred Hitchcock, “My Screen Memo- ily romantic and coldly menacing. It also ries,” Film Weekly (May 1936), http:// won him kudos from Hitchcock, who later the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Film_Week lavishly praised his performance—“He is ly_%281936%29_-_My_Screen_Memories; completely at ease on the set, and he always “Robert Young,” IMDb, http://www.imdb knows his lines to the dot. His is a faultless .com/name/nm0001870/bio?ref_=nm_ov technique”—although that might also have _bio_sm; David Thomson, The New Bio- been the director’s passive-aggressive way graphical Dictionary of Film (New York: of criticizing STAR JOHN GIELGUD, with Knopf, 2002), 954–55; Bernard Weinraub, whom he’d been disappointed. “Robert Young of ‘Father Knows Best’ Dies Still, Young’s career began to pick up at 91,” New York Times, July 23, 1998, http:// after he returned to America—and got an www.nytimes.com/1998/07/23/arts/robert unexpected boost when his MGM contract -young-of-father-knows-best-dies-at-91. ended and he was able to seek out better html?pagewanted=all.

n 515 516 n YOUNG AND INNOCENT

Derrick de Marney, right, Edward Rigby, and Nova Pilbeam barely survive the wreck of her car in Young and Innocent. Gaumont British Picture Corporation of America/Photofest © Gaumont British Picture Corporation of America

YOUNG AND INNOCENT (GB 1937) Cinematography: Bernard Knowles. Editor: Charles Frend. Original Music: Jack Beaver, Louis Levy. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Cast: Nova Pilbeam (Erica Burgoyne), Der- Screenplay: Charles Bennett, Edwin Green- rick de Marney (Robert Tisdale), Percy wood, Anthony Armstrong, Gerald Marmont (Col. Burgoyne), Edward Rigby Savory, and Alma Reville, based on the (Old Will), George Curzon (Guy). novel A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Running Time: 83 minutes. Black and white. Tey. Released Through: General Film Distribu- Producer: Uncredited (Edward Black). tors. YOUNG AND INNOCENT n 517

A famous actress and her ex-husband argue father, much-loved roadster, and amateur ferociously; the next day, her protégée, detective work, seemed modeled on Nancy Robert, finds her on the beach, strangled Drew, the American young-adult heroine with the belt to his own lost raincoat. The then featured in regular best sellers (and police rapidly decide he’s the murderer, whose own popular film series would begin and seeing the case against him—and the the next year). incompetent lawyer he’s been assigned— In some ways, Young and Innocent Robert impulsively escapes in hopes of almost feels like Hitchcock’s apology to proving his innocence. his fans for his last two films. There is little On the run, he sees Erica, the daughter onscreen violence and no coldly calculated of the chief constable; she had met him at disappointments of an audience’s expecta- the police station and knows him to be a tions. (In Sabotage, Hitchcock had dared to fugitive but feels sorry for him, and Robert kill not only a small boy but also a puppy; gradually convinces her of his plight. He here, not only is the danger to the two leads also persuades her to join him on his mis- minimized, but also the welfare of Erica’s sion: Find the man who had his raincoat, scruffy dog is a constant concern.) There is and he’ll find the real murderer. a momentary bit of suspense when a sink- Evading the police (and Erica’s nosy hole begins to swallow Erica’s car (until, in aunt), they eventually track the coat down a sequence that foreshadows NORTH BY to a tramp, Old Will, who says a man with a NORTHWEST, Robert lifts her to safety), strange twitch gave it to him—although by but at no point does the murderer menace then its belt was already missing. Finding either character. It is a careful, “tasteful” a box of matches from the Grand Hotel in film. That, of course, is not necessarily what one of the pockets, the three decide to go Hitchcock had already become famous for, there in hopes of finding the murderer. and today the movie can seem especially The police follow them, but just as tame. they are arresting Robert, the drummer Yet even in this more family-friendly in the hotel dance band—who has been project, the familiar Hitchcock themes increasingly agitated since he saw Old poke through. Erica is, for all her youth, Will appear—collapses, his eye twitching a maternal figure—easily and naturally furiously. Old Will identifies him as the acting the MOTHER to her four younger man who gave him the coat, and Robert is brothers, worrying that Robert hasn’t eaten, cleared. practically taking charge and administering first aid when people faint. After Hitchcock A gentler Hitchcock. lost his own mother, these characters would After the dark espionage thriller eventually become less lauded (the clueless SECRET AGENT and the even grimmer Midge in VERTIGO), even forbidding, but SABOTAGE, the director clearly felt he and for now they are still welcome. his audience needed something lighter, And, of course, the story revolves so CHARLES BENNETT and other writ- around what was already a stock situation ers were charged with adapting the JOSE- for him, the character presumed GUILTY PHINE TEY mystery A Shilling for Candles. until proven innocent, as well as contrast- Liberally adapting, too—Tey’s regular hero, ing the roles played badly by his protago- Inspector Alan Grant, was completely writ- nists (the tramp dresses up uncomfortably ten out and two minor characters were as a rich man, Robert “disguises” him- made the young hero and heroine. The self by putting on a pair of thick glasses) tone was determinedly breezy and teen to the world of professional pretense his friendly—in fact, Erica, with her widowed antagonist moves in. (He plays the drums 518 n YOUNG AND INNOCENT in a blackface dance band; his ex-wife is an Grand Hotel, the camera soars over the actress.) All the world’s a stage, but not all crowded lobby and ballroom, passing over of us are equally proficient players. the heads of blissful dancers before going Although Hitchcock was patient closer, closer, closer on the drummer in the with Pilbeam on the set—he was perhaps band, until only his twitching EYES fill the paternally protective of a young STAR screen. who’d been a child actress in THE MAN Good natured and good humored, WHO KNEW TOO MUCH just three from its punning title (she’s young, he’s years before—and he praised her perfor- innocent) to Hitchcock’s own extended mance afterward, she doesn’t shine in the CAMEO as a frustrated photographer, it’s a part; there’s something a little washed out pleasant trifle. And although badly received about her close-ups, and the editing does in the United States (where distributors cut her no favors by repeatedly using the same one of its most charming scenes, set at a bad reaction shot of her in the sinkhole children’s birthday party, and Time pro- sequence. Derrick de Marney is equally nounced it “tedious”), it did point back forgettable as the hero, and George Curzon to THE 39 STEPS and the director’s fond- overacts dreadfully as the twitching vil- ness for mixing comedy and suspense— lain. (Only the veteran character actors— something he would soon indulge to even Edward Rigby, as the colorful tramp; Mary greater effect in THE LADY VANISHES. Clare, as Erica’s nosy aunt; and PERCY MARMONT, as Erica’s disappointed References father—add any real interest to the pro- Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life ceedings.) in Darkness and Light (New York: Harp- Still, the story moves along briskly, and erCollins, 2003), 194–97; Donald Spoto, there are some flashes of signature style—as The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred when the worst parts of the marital quar- Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, rel that begins the film are drowned out by 1999), 163–67; Donald Spoto, Spellbound crashing thunder or a scream turns into the by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Lead- screech of seagulls. And the movie features ing Ladies (New York: Harmony Books, a crane shot that’s both a dry run for the 2008), 72–75; François Truffaut, Hitchcock/ “key” shot in NOTORIOUS and famous Truffaut, rev. ed. (New York: Touchstone, in its own right—starting up high in the 1985), 111–16. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Agee, James. Agee on Film. 2 vols. New York: du Maurier, Daphne. Rebecca. New York: Avon Grossett Universal Library, 1969. Books, 1979. Barr, Charles. English Hitchcock. Petaluma, CA: Falk, Quentin. Mr. Hitchcock. London: Haus, Cameron Books, 2002. 2007. Baxter, Anne. Intermission: A True Story. New Fontaine, Joan. No Bed of Roses. New York: Wil- York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1976. liam Morrow, 1978. Behlmer, Rudy, ed. Memo from David O. Gardiner, Dorothy, and Kathrine Sorley, eds. Selznick. New York: Viking Press, 1972. Raymond Chandler Speaking. Boston: Bergman, Ingrid, and Alan Burgess. My Story. Houghton Mifflin, 1962. New York: Delacorte Press, 1980. Gardner, Gerald. The Censorship Papers: Movie Bloch, Robert. Psycho. New York: Award Books, Censorship Letters from the Hays Office, 1975. 1934–1968. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1987. Bogdanovich, Peter. The Cinema of Alfred Gielgud, John. Early Stages: An Autobiography. Hitchcock. New York: Museum of Modern San Francisco: Mercury House, 1989. Art Film Library, Doubleday, 1963. Gottlieb, Sidney, ed. Alfred Hitchcock: Inter- ——— . Pieces of Time. New York: Arbor House, views. Jackson: University Press of Missis- 1973. sippi, 2003. ——— . Who the Devil Made It. New York: Alfred Gram, Martin, Jr., and Patrik Wikstrom. The A. Knopf, 1997. Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. ——— . Who the Hell’s in It. New York: Knopf, Whiteford, MD: OTR, 2001. 2004. Granger, Farley, with Robert Calhoun. Include Buchan, John. The Thirty-Nine Steps. New York: Me Out: My Life from Goldwyn to Broad- Popular Library, 1963. way. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007. Butler, Ivan. Horror in the Cinema. New York: Greene, Graham. The Pleasure Dome: The Col- A. S. Barnes, 1970. lected Film Criticism of Graham Greene. Canning, Victor. The Rainbird Pattern. New London: Oxford University Press, 1980. York: Ace Books, 1980. Griffith, Richard, and Arthur Mayer. The Mov- Cohen, Paula Marantz. Alfred Hitchcock: The ies. Rev. ed. New York: Simon and Schus- Legacy of Victorianism. Lexington: Univer- ter, 1971. sity of Kentucky Press, 1995. Highsmith, Patricia. Strangers on a Train. Balti- Coleman, Herbert. The Man Who Knew Hitch- more: Penguin Books, 1974. cock: A Hollywood Memoir. Lanham, MD: Hotchner, A. E. Doris Day: Her Own Story. New Scarecrow Press, 2007. York: William Morrow, 1975.

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Hunter, Evan. Me and Hitch. London: Faber and Ryall, Tom. Alfred Hitchcock and the British Faber, 1997. Cinema. London: Continuum Interna- Kael, Pauline. 5001 Nights at the Movies: A tional, 1996. Guide from A to Z. New York: Holt, Rine- Sarris, Andrew. The American Cinema: Direc- hart and Winston, 1982. tors and Directions, 1929–1968. New York: ——— . Reeling. New York: Warner Books, 1976. Dutton, 1968. Kracauer, Siegfried. From Caligari to Hitler: A Shipman, David, ed. Movie Talk: Who Said Psychological History of the German Film. What about Whom in the Movies. New Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988. 2004. Spoto, Donald. The Dark Side of Genius: The La Bern, Arthur. Frenzy. Previously published Life of Alfred Hitchcock. New York: Da as Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Capo Press, 1999. Square. New York: Paperback Library, ——— . Laurence Olivier: A Biography. New York: 1972. Harper Paperbacks, 1993. Laurents, Arthur. The Rest of the Story. Milwau- ——— . Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock kee, WI: Applause, 2012. and His Leading Ladies. New York: Har- LaValley, Albert, ed. Focus on Hitchcock. Engle- mony Books, 2008. wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1972. Starr, Michael Seth. Hiding in Plain Sight: The Leigh, Janet, with Christopher Nickens. Psycho: Secret Life of Raymond Burr. Milwaukee, The Classic Thriller. New York: Harmony WI: Applause, 2008. Books, 1995. Taylor, John Russell. Hitch: The Life and Times McDevitt, Jim, and Eric San Juan. A Year of of Alfred Hitchcock. Boston: Da Capo Press, Hitchcock: 52 Weeks with the Master of Sus- 1996. pense. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2011. Thomas, Bob. Selznick. New York: Pocket McGilligan, Patrick, ed. Alfred Hitchcock: A Life Books, 1972. in Darkness and Light. New York: Harper- Thomson, David. The New Biographical Dic- Collins, 2003. tionary of Film. New York: Knopf, 2002. ——— . Backstory: Interviews with Screenwriters Truffaut, François. Hitchcock/Truffaut. Rev. ed. of the 60s. Berkeley: University of Califor- New York: Touchstone, 1985. nia Press, 1997. Twomey, Alfred E., and Arthur F. McClure. The Moorehead, Caroline. Sidney Bernstein: A Biog- Versatiles: Supporting Character Players in raphy. London: Jonathan Cape, 1984. the Cinema, 1930–1955. New York: Castle O’Connell, Pat Hitchcock, and Laurent Bou- Books, 1969. zereau. Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Wiley, Mason, and Damien Bona. Inside Oscar. behind the Man. New York: Berkeley 10th anniversary ed. New York: Ballantine Trade, 2004. Books, 1996. Perry, George. The Films of Alfred Hitchcock. Williams, Tom. A Mysterious Something in the London: Studio Vista, Dutton, 1970. Light: The Life of Raymond Chandler. Chi- Rebello, Stephen. Alfred Hitchcock and the Mak- cago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. ing of Psycho. New York: HarperPerennial, Wood, Robin. Hitchcock’s Films. New York: 1991. Paperback Library, 1969. Rohmer, Eric, and Claude Chabrol. Hitchcock: Woolrich, Cornell. Rear Window and Other Sto- The First Forty-Four Films. Translated by ries. New York: Penguin Books, 1994. Stanley Hochman. New York: Frederick Wydra, Thilo. Grace: A Biography. New York: Ungar, 1979. Skyhorse, 2014. INDEX

Academy Awards, 1, 113, 122, 358, 437 Balsam, Martin, 20 adaptations, 1–3 “Bang! You’re Dead,” 20–21 Agee, James, 3 Bankhead, Tallulah, 21, 28, 108, 179, 189, Aherne, Brian, 3 232, 298, 406; Lifeboat, and the making of, Albertson, Frank, 4 230–33 alcohol, 4, 142 Banks, Leslie, 21–22, 195, 252, 424 The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, 5–6 “Banquo’s Chair,” 22 Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 4–5, 11 Baring, Norah, 22 Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light, Barnes, George, 22–23 4–5, 74, 85, 164, 171, 268, 412 Barry, Joan, 23 Allen, Jay Presson, 6–7, 117, 163, 182, 220, 257, Barrymore, Ethel, 23, 210 262 Bass, Saul, 24, 301, 486; Psycho, and the contro- Allgood, Sara, 7 versy over, 227, 339 Always Tell Your Wife, 8, 168, 172 Basserman, Albert, 24–25 Anderson, Dame Judith, 8, 149, 218, 357 Bates, Florence, 25 Anderson, Lindsay, 9, 16, 335 Baxter, Anne, 25–26, 179 Anderson, Maxwell, 248, 483, 611 Bazin, Andre, 10, 26, 49, 189, 240, 370 Andrews, Julie, 9, 10, 296, 419; Torn Curtain, Bel Geddes, Barbara, 27, 217, 483–84 and the making of, 460–63 Belloc-Lowndes, Marie, 27, 193, 237 anecdotes, 10–11 Benchley, Robert, 28 Angel, Heather, 11 Bendix, William, 28 Archibald, William, 11–12 Bennett, Charles, 28–29, 124, 304, 386, 417, 446 Armstrong, Charlotte, 12 Bergman, Ingrid, 4–5, 18, 29–31, 39, 134, 161, “Arthur,” 12 173, 228, 240, 298, 389, 473; Notorious, and Ashcroft, Dame Peggy, 12, 313, 448 the making of, 303–7; Spellbound, and the Ashenden, 2, 146, 266, 386 making of, 408–12; Under Capricorn, and Atterbury, Malcolm, 13 the making of, 472–75 Auber, Brigitte, 5, 13, 85 Bernstein, Sidney, 31, 74, 152, 173, 242, 391, auteur theory, the, 13, 26, 49–50, 184, 200, 300, 465; Memory of the Camps, and the making 385 of, 269–70; Transatlantic Pictures, and the Aventure Malgache, 15–16 founding of, 319, 465 Best, Edna, 36, 39, 56, 252, 260 “Back for Christmas,” 17 birds, 12, 31–32, 57, 162, 182, 188, 235, 380 Bagdasarian, Ross, 17–18 The Birds, 32, 33–35, 109, 131, 159, 162–63, Baker, Diane, 18–19, 156, 163, 213, 257, 272–74 182–83, 276, 302, 306 Balcon, Sir Michael, 19–20, 36, 41, 110, 135, 237, Black, Karen, 35, 154; Family Plot, and the mak- 269–81 ing of, 112–14

n 521 522 n INDEX black-and-white cinematography, 6, 36, 68, 71, 305; Psycho, problems on, 339; Rebecca, 90, 185, 254, 338 problems on, 356; Vertigo, problems on, The Blackguard, 36–37 484 Blackmail, 23, 28, 37, 77, 123, 255, 289, 369, Chabrol, Claude, 62–63 407 Champagne, 63–64 The Blind Man, 38 Chandler, Raymond, 1, 64–65, 316; Strangers on Bloch, Robert, 38–39, 68, 70, 137, 171, 176, 275, a Train, and the writing of, 427 376 Chekhov, Michael, 65–66, 271 blondes, 10, 18, 29, 39–40, 116, 161, 173, 204, Ciannelli, Eduardo, 66 216, 236–37, 302, 394 Clift, Montgomery, 26, 66–68, 129, 180, 184, Bogdanovich, Peter, 40, 67, 239, 279, 281, 344 213, 248, 272, 277; I Confess, and the making Boileau, Pierre, 40, 68, 75, 93, 294–95, 482 of, 183–86 bondage, 14, 41, 97–98, 116, 173, 177, 310, 372, Clouzot, Henri-Georges, 68–69, 93–94, 137, 176, 394; The Lodger, as a theme in, 238; Rope, as 187, 294, 344, 482 a theme in, 373–74; The 39 Steps, as a theme Coburn, Charles, 69 in, 446, 448–49 Collier, Constance, 69–70 Bon Voyage, 41–42 Collinge, Patricia, 70 Boyle, Robert F., 42 color, 36, 54, 70–73, 103, 154, 203, 251, 264, 353, The Bramble Bush, 42 469 “Breakdown,” 42–43 Compson, Betty, 72 Brisson, Carl, 43, 56, 255, 367 Connery, Sean, 7, 19, 72–74, 117, 136, 141, 257, Brook, Clive, 43–44 259, 294 Browne, Roscoe Lee, 44 Cook, Whitfield, 73–74, 171, 268, 316, 415, 427 Bruce, Nigel, 44–45, 108 Cooper, Gladys, 74–75 Buchan, John, 45, 146, 147, 336, 398, 446, 451– Coppel, Alec, 74, 203, 442; Vertigo, and the writ- 52 ing of, 483 Bumstead, Henry, 45–46 Corey, Wendell, 75 Burks, Robert, 36–46, 173, 174, 301, 463, 469 Cotten, Joseph, 54, 75–76, 97, 148, 238, 389, 480 Burr, Raymond, 46–47, 180, 220; Rear Window, Cox, Jack, 76–77, 216, 255, 367, 488 and the making of, 351–55 Crippen, H. H., 77–78 Cronyn, Hume, 78, 85, 232, 372, 438 Cady, Frank, 48 “The Crystal Trench,” 79 Cahiers du Cinema, 15, 26, 48–50, 63, 128, 177, Cummings, Bob, 49, 54, 79–80, 161, 219; Dial M 240, 370 for Murder, and the making of, 94–95; Sabo- Calhern, Louis, 50 teur, and the making of, 381–83 Calthrop, Donald, 50–51 Curtis, Billy, 80 cameos, 51–54 Cutts, Graham, 36, 80–81, 237, 282, 323, 332, Cardiff, Jack, 54 499, 504 Carey, MacDonald, 54–55 Carroll, Leo G., 55, 108, 301, 357 Dahl, Roald, 82, 217 Carroll, Madeleine, 29, 39, 55, 79, 99, 439; Secret Dali, Salvador, 82–84, 270, 410 Agent, and the making of, 386–88; The 39 Dall, John, 84–85, 180 Steps, and the making of, 445–49 Dano, Royal, 85 Cartwright, Veronica, 57 The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred “The Case of Mr. Pelham,” 57–58 Hitchcock, 4, 85–86, 163, 164, 268, 412, 435 Catholicism, 58–59; I Confess, as a theme in, Dawson, Anthony, 86–87 184–86; The Wrong Man, as a theme in, Day, Doris, 39, 53, 83, 87–88, 164, 424; The Man 512–13 Who Knew Too Much (1956), and the mak- censorship, 40, 59–62, 71, 171, 194, 223, 287, ing of, 253–55 317, 435, 469; Notorious, problems on, death, 88–89 INDEX n 523

De Banzie, Brenda, 89 Fonda, Henry, 120–21, 422; The Wrong Man, Denny, Reginald, 89–90 and the making of, 510–14 De Palma, Brian, 90–91, 130, 168, 200 Fontaine, Joan, 3, 8, 25, 39, 113, 121–22, 161, Dern, Bruce, 91–92, 419; Family Plot, and the 162, 173, 272, 298, 312; Rebecca, and the making of, 112–14 making of, 355–58; Suspicion, and the mak- Devane, William, 92–93 ing of, 434–37 Les Diaboliques, 93–94 food, 31–32, 122–123, 217, 225, 237, 264 Dial M for Murder, 53, 80, 88, 94–95, 148, 174, Ford, Wallace, 123 203, 275, 279 Foreign Correspondent, 4, 66, 118, 124–25, 149, Dietrich, Marlene, 95–96 186, 234, 269, 296 “A Dip in the Pool,” 96 Forever and a Day, 125–26 dolly shots, 96–97 Forsythe, John, 5, 53, 126, 190; Topaz, and the domination, 32, 97–98, 106, 131, 142, 180, 243, making of, 458–61; The Trouble with Harry, 431; Notorious, as a theme in, 305–6; Psycho, and the making of, 468–70 as a theme in, 341 Foster, Barry, 127 Donat, Robert, 12, 52, 56, 79, 98–99, 139, 236, “Four O’Clock,” 127–28 379, 439; The 39 Steps, and the making of, French New Wave, 26, 48–50, 62–63, 128–29, 445–49 370, 470–71 Dor, Karin, 99–100, 460 Frenzy, 118–19, 127, 128–31, 166, 180, 228, 264, Double Take, 102 271, 284, 395 doubles, 57, 91, 100–102, 128, 135–36, 166, 466, Freud, Sigmund, 131–32 499; Shadow of a Doubt, as a theme in, 398; Fulton, John P., 132 Strangers on a Train, as a theme in, 428–29 Downhill, 70, 102–3, 106, 182, 190, 196, 255, Gabel, Martin, 133 280, 308 Gainsborough Pictures, 133–34 Du Maurier, Daphne, 34, 103–4, 194, 221, 224, Garmes, Lee, 134–35, 320, 479 313 Gaumont-British, 135 Durgnat, Raymond, 104 Gavin, John, 135–36, 339–40 Gein, Ed, 136–37, 171 Easy Virtue, 105–7, 133, 182, 190, 196, 280 Gelin, Daniel, 137–38 Edouart, Farciot, 107 Geraghty, Carmelita, 138 Elstree Calling, 107–8 Gielgud, John, 12, 37, 56, 138–39, 180, 208, 264, Emery, John, 108 313, 349; Secret Agent, and the making of, the English colony, 44, 55, 108–9, 357, 406 386–88 Eroica, 109 Gilliat, Sidney, 139–40, 168, 222, 418 Esmond, Jill, 109 The Girl, 140–41 Evelyn, Judith, 109–10 Graham, Winston, 141 Expressionism, 19, 37, 106, 110, 118, 133, 219, Granger, Farley, 141–43, 180, 223, 238, 419; 237, 280, 289, 404, 432 Rope, and the making of, 371–74; Strangers eye, 23, 38, 82, 106, 111, 130, 237, 290, 335, 456 on a Train, and the making of, 426–30 Grant, Cary, 23, 39, 53, 99, 134, 143–45, 173, Family Plot, 35, 45, 71, 92, 112–14, 145, 154, 180, 213, 226, 272, 293; North by Northwest, 188, 197, 295 and the making of, 299–303; Notorious, and The Farmer’s Wife, 115–16 the making of, 303–7; Suspicion, and the fetishes, 39, 41, 78, 91, 115–17, 131, 258, 394 making of, 434–37; To Catch a Thief, and the The Fighting Generation, 117 making of, 453–55 film noir, 117–18 Greene, Graham, 3, 45, 125, 145–46, 150, 185, Finch, Jon, 118–19, 129, 131 233, 266, 278, 282 Flamingo Feather, 119 Greenmantle, 147, 446 Fleming, Rhonda, 106, 119–20 Greet, Clare, 55, 147, 309 524 n INDEX

Griffith, Melanie, 147,164, 262 life of, 362–65; public persona of, 11, 170–71; Guilt, 11, 58–59, 103, 114, 141, 185, 277, 306, relations with actresses, 29–31, 55–57, 121– 427, 446 22, 161–65, 203–6; relations with writers, Gwenn, Edmund, 125, 149, 404–5 157–58, 160–61, 181–82; timeline of, 172–74 Hitchcock, Patricia, 42, 53, 58, 76, 122, 145, Hall-Davies, Lillian, 115, 150, 367 174–75, 369, 378, 415 Hamilton, Patrick, 150–52 Hitchcock/Truffaut (book), 11, 91, 174, 178, 190, Hamlet, 152 268, 332, 488 Hardwicke, Sir Cedric, 152–53 Hitchcock/Truffaut (film), 179–80 Harker, Gordon, 153 Hitchcock’s Films, 177–78 Harmony Heaven, 153–54 Hodiak, John, 179 Harris, Barbara, 154–55; Family Plot, and the Homolka, Oscar, 179 making of, 112–14 homosexuality, 47, 84, 141–42, 179–80, 223, 290, Harrison, Joan, 6, 124, 155–56, 173, 187, 225, 302, 372, 395 281, 350, 381 “The Horse Player,” 181 Hartley, Mariette, 156–57, 163, 257 Hull, Henry, 181 Hay, Ian, 157 Hunter, Evan, 7, 73, 117, 140, 181–82, 226; The Hayes, John Michael, 157–58, 174, 196, 205, 247, Birds, and the writing of, 34; Marnie, and the 298; The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), writing of, 257 and the writing of, 253; Rear Window, and Hunter, Ian, 182 the writing of, 352; To Catch a Thief, and the writing of, 454–55; The Trouble with Harry, I Confess, 11, 25, 41, 66–67, 148, 184, 183–86, and the writing of, 468–69 197, 207, 269, 272 Head, Edith, 158–59, 161, 400 “I Saw the Whole Thing,” 190 Hecht, Ben, 61, 160–61, 211, 231, 247, 316, 319; identity, 186–87 Notorious, and the writing of, 304–5; Spell- “Incident at a Corner,” 187 bound, and the writing of, 409 insanity, 137, 148, 187–89 Hedren, Tippi, 9, 34, 85, 117, 161–65, 178, 182, interviews, 189–90 246, 296, 441, 457; The Birds, and the making of, 33–35; The Girl, as the subject of, 140–41; Jack the Ripper, 191–93 Hitchcock’s treatment of, 34, 161–64, 257–58; Jamaica Inn, 22, 103, 147, 193–95, 209, 221, 255, Marnie, and the making of, 256–60 297, 311 Helmore, Tom, 165 Jeans, Isabel, 195–96 hero, 165–66 jokes, 22, 97, 103, 196–97, 208, 242, 272, 309, Herrmann, Bernard, 46, 90, 109, 127, 151, 166– 340 68, 174, 266, 346; The Birds, and the sound Jones, Caroline, 197 design of, 34; North by Northwest, and the Jourdan, Louis, 192, 197–98, 297, 319, 391 scoring of, 301–2; Psycho, and the scoring Juno and the Paycock, 198–99 of, 339; Torn Curtain, and arguments over score for, 462–63; The Trouble with Harry, Kael, Pauline, 200–202, 305 and the scoring of, 469; Vertigo, and the Kafka, Franz, 202–3, 512 scoring of, 486; The Wrong Man, and the Kelly, Grace, 29, 39, 117, 141, 157–58, 174, 201, scoring of, 512 203–6, 257, 298; Dial M for Murder, and the Hicks, Seymour, 168–69 making of, 94–95; Rear Window, and the High Anxiety, 169 making of, 351–55; To Catch a Thief, and the Highsmith, Patricia, 2–3, 169–70, 427 making of, 453–55 Hitchcock, Alfred: biographies of, 4–5, 85–86, Kendall, Henry, 206–7 178; cameos by, 51–54; Catholicism of, 58–59; killers, 207–8 fears of, 31–33, 334–35; films about, 140–41, Knight, Esmond, 208 171–72, 178–79; influence of, 175–77; marital Knott, Frederick, 208–9 INDEX n 525

Knowles, Bernard, 209 Lord Camber’s Ladies, 241 Konstam, Phyllis, 209 Lorre, Peter, 241–43, 379; The Man Who Knew Konstantin, Leopoldine, 209–10 Too Much (1934), and the making of, 251– Kosleck, Martin, 210–11 52; Secret Agent, and the making of, 386–88 Krasna, Norman, 211 love scenes, 60–61, 88, 243, 306, 394–95 Kruger, Alma, 211–12 Lukas, Paul, 243–44 Kruger, Otto, 212 Kuleshov Effect, 212–13, 249, 271, 279, 340, 344, Macguffin, 11, 169, 177, 190, 196, 216, 247, 252, 353 287 MacLaine, Shirley, 126, 177, 245–47, 264; The The Lady Vanishes, 60, 116, 154, 196, 214–17, Trouble with Harry, and the making of, 235, 259, 309, 359 468–70 “Lamb to the Slaughter,” 27, 82, 89, 123, 217 MacPhail, Angus, 16, 158, 245, 247–48, 409, Landau, Martin, 217–18, 301 482, 483, 511–12; The Man Who Knew Too Landis, Jessie Royce, 218, 284, 301, 455 Much (1956), and the writing of, 158; The Lane, Priscilla, 218–19, 382–83, 419 Wrong Man, and the writing of, 511–12 Lang, Fritz, 117–18, 219–20 Malden, Karl, 67, 248, 272 Latham, Louise, 220 male gaze, the, 111, 249–50, 354, 428, 485 Laughton, Charles, 56, 69, 195–96, 220–22, 280, Malleson, Miles, 250 311, 312 Mannheim, Lucie, 251 Launder, Frank, 139, 154, 222 The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), 52, 88, Laurents, Arthur, 142, 180, 222–23, 337, 384; 155, 195, 251–52, 260, 283 Rope, and the writing of, 372 The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), 53, 83, Lawrence, Gertrude, 223–24 151, 157–58, 253–54, 283, 298, 301 Lee, Canada, 224–25, 231, 421 The Manxman, 255–56 Lehman, Ernest, 225–26, 298; Family Plot, and Marmont, Percy, 256 the writing of, 112–14; North by Northwest, Marnie, 46, 53, 72–73, 98, 116, 145, 177, 220, and the writing of, 300–301; The Short Night, 246, 256–60, 294, 302 and the writing of, 400–401 Marshall, Herbert, 125, 260–61, 272 Leigh, Janet, 24, 39, 135, 171, 215, 227–28, 272; Mary, 261–62 Psycho, and the making of, 338–42 Mary Rose, 231, 262, 286, 476, 494 Leigh-Hunt, Barbara, 130, 228 Mason, James, 262–63, 301 Leighton, Margaret, 228–29 Massey, Anna, 130, 263–64 Leopold, Nathan, and Richard Loeb, 229–30, Mate, Rudolph, 264 372 Mathers, Jerry, 265 Lifeboat, 1, 21, 52, 173, 230–33, 262, 269, 318, Matthews, Jessie, 265 421–22 Maugham, Somerset, 2, 74, 146, 265–66, 386 Lloyd, Norman, 6, 27, 49, 85, 96, 133, 167, 233– MCA, 266–67, 475–77, 494–95 34, 337, 382 McCowen, Alec, 267 location filming, 6, 115, 185, 234–35, 251, 253, McCrea, Joel, 4, 52, 125, 219, 267–68 285, 463, 511 McGilligan, Patrick, 4–5, 13, 29, 154, 164, 171, Lockwood, Margaret, 235–36; The 39 Steps, and 268, 412 the making of, 445–49 McIntire, John, 268 Loder, John, 236 Memory of the Camps, 31, 240, 269–70, 298–99, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, 27, 51, 320 97–98, 188, 236–39, 277, 289, 308, 395 Menzies, William Cameron, 270, 356, 410 Lombard, Carole, 211, 239–40, 390, 443; Merchant, Vivien, 270–71 Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and the making of, method acting, 66–67, 73, 248, 271–73, 296, 297, 286–87 314, 447 long takes, 14, 26, 228, 240–41, 373 Miles, Bernard, 273 526 n INDEX

Miles, Vera, 6, 34, 161, 174, 187, 273–74, 308, Novak, Kim, 36, 39, 90, 159, 164, 187, 189, 272, 362, 419, 483; Psycho, and the making of, 274, 307, 479; Vertigo, and the making of, 338–42; The Wrong Man, and the making of, 481–86 510–14 Novello, Ivor, 52, 70, 142, 180, 195, 237, 308, Milland, Ray, 53, 86, 95, 204, 275 345; Downhill, and the making of, 102–3; Minicotti, Esther, 275–76 The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, and mistaken identity, 64, 100, 211, 276–77, 287, the making of, 236–39 303, 511–12 Number 13, 147, 308–9 the Moliere Players, 15–16, 41–42, 277 Number 17, 43, 51, 309–10 montage, 11, 48, 97, 114, 163, 212, 240, 278–80, 389 Oakland, Simon, 311, 340 Montagu, Ivor, 81, 135, 238, 241–42, 247, 280, O’Hara, Maureen, 194–95, 311–13 343 Olivier, Laurence, 12, 51, 109, 136, 153, 208, 271, Montgomery, Robert, 281 312, 313–14, 399; Rebecca, and the making Moore, Brian, 281–82, 329, 375; Torn Curtain, of, 355–58 and the writing of, 461–62 Ondra, Anny, 23, 37, 255, 315 Morton, Michael, 282 “One More Mile to Go,” 315–16 mothers, 11, 131, 173, 218, 220, 237, 283–85, Ormonde, Czenzi, 65, 316, 334; Strangers on a 295, 302, 455; The Birds, as a theme in, Train, and the writing of, 428 33–34; Marnie, as a theme in, 258; Noto- rious, as a theme in, 305–6; Psycho, as a The Paradine Case, 23, 69, 135, 192, 195, 221, theme in, 341; Shadow of a Doubt, as a 231, 269, 297, 317–20 theme in, 397 Paramount, 320–321, 339, 352 The Mountain Eagle, 255, 349, 481 Parker, Cecil, 321 Mr. and Mrs. Smith, 52, 72, 173, 231, 239, 276, Parker, Dorothy, 1, 321–22, 382, 487 286–87, 318, 431 The Passionate Adventure, 322–23 “Mr. Blanchard’s Secret,” 288 Peck, Gregory, 23, 30, 144, 177, 213, 319–20, “Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat,” 288 323–24, 391 Murder! 22, 43, 51, 77, 172, 250, 260, 288–90, perfect crime, the, 324–25 343, 407 “The Perfect Crime,” 325–26 Murnau, F. W., 290–91 Perjury, 326 Perkins, Anthony, 101, 136, 145, 148, 171, 180, Nalder, Reggie, 254, 292 238, 318, 326–27; Psycho, and the making of, Naldi, Nita, 285, 292–94, 366, 419 338–42 Napier, Alan, 294 Piccoli, Michel, 327–28 Narcejac, Thomas, 40, 68, 75, 93, 294–95, 482 Pilbeam, Nova, 235, 252, 326, 328–29, 356, 516; Natwick, Mildred, 210, 295 The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), and Nesbitt, Cathleen, 295–96 the making of, 252–53; Young and Innocent, Newman, Alfred, 296 and the making of, 516–18 Newman, Paul, 9, 10, 296–97, 419 the plausibles, 117, 329–30 Newton, Robert, 195, 297–98, 319 plays within plays, 250, 290, 330–31, 380, 382, New York Film Critics Circle, 298 415, 416, 501 Night Will Fall, 298 The Pleasure Garden, 58, 133, 172, 237, 249, 250, No Bail for the Judge, 298–99 331–32, 363, 431 Noiret, Phillippe, 299, 459 Pleshette, Suzanne, 163, 333 North by Northwest, 37, 55, 142, 165, 225–26, “Poison,” 333 249–50, 293, 299–303, 310, 407 police, 10, 172, 200–201, 334–35 Notorious, 18, 26, 52, 123, 134, 143, 173, 210, politics, 9, 15, 60, 119, 231–32, 335–37 240, 283, 303–7, 407 The Prude’s Fall, 337–38 INDEX n 527

Psycho (1960), 14, 32, 59 101–2, 145, 175, 187, Saint, Eva Marie, 9, 39, 217, 301, 383–84 213, 215, 243, 318, 338–42, 420–21 Sanders, George, 52, 125, 384–85 Psycho (1988), 342 Sarris, Andrew, 13–14, 200, 385–86 psychoanalysis, 188, 342–43, 411 Secret Agent, 2, 138–39, 146, 156, 185, 249, 280, publicity, 10, 11, 134, 151, 176, 184, 189–90, 271, 386–88 343–44, 473 Selznick, David O., 76, 84, 103–4, 124, 160, 240, pure cinema, 48, 97, 163, 212, 240, 270, 279, 291, 388–92, 409; Notorious, and the making of, 344–46, 484 304–5; The Paradine Case, and the making of, 317–20; Rebecca, and the making of, Quayle, Anthony, 347 355–58; Shadow of a Doubt, and the making of, 396–97; Spellbound, and the making of, Radford, Basil, 216, 348, 469, 496 408–10 Rains, Claude, 52, 138, 159, 195, 210, 295, 348– sets, 392–94 50; Notorious, and the making of, 303–7 sexuality, 58–59, 95–96, 115–17, 179–81, 257, Raphaelson, Samson, 180, 350–51, 394; Suspi- 394–95, 430, 488–89 cion, and writing of, 434–37 Shadow of a Doubt, 42, 70, 123, 126, 188, 207, Rear Window, 14, 46, 75, 110, 157–58, 196, 201, 243, 396–99, 430, 467, 491 207, 231, 351–55 Shaffer, Anthony, 129, 314, 399 Rebecca, 14, 55, 103–4, 144, 173, 205, 221, 263, Shayne, Konstantin, 399–400 277, 312, 313–14 Sherwood, Robert E., 356, 400 Redgrave, Michael, 99, 180, 196, 216, 235, 358– The Short Night, 42, 62, 117, 159, 174, 226, 400– 60 401 remakes by Hitchcock, 87, 253–54, 360 Sidney, Sylvia, 279, 379, 401–2 remakes of Hitchcock, 361–62 Sim, Alastair, 250, 402–3, 415–16 “Revenge,” 362 Simpson, Helen du Guerry, 403 Reville, Alma, 58, 122, 203, 231, 268, 349, 362– The Skin Game, 43, 109, 149, 173, 209, 360, 65, 394, 483; biographies of, 175; films about, 404–5, 407 140–41, 171–72; marital life of, 74, 180, 252, Skirball, Jack, 405 283, 366; The Paradine Case, work on, 319– Slezak, Walter, 405–6 20; The Pleasure Garden, work on, 331–32; Smith, C. Aubrey, 108, 406–7 Stage Fright, work on, 414–15 sound, 37, 352–353, 407–8 Rich and Strange, 23, 43, 173, 206, 256, 365–66, Spellbound, 3, 30, 55, 84, 123, 160, 257, 304, 388 408–12 The Ring, 43, 77, 103, 150, 153, 165, 172, 255, Spoto, Donald, 4, 85–86, 163, 164, 268, 412–13, 366–68 435 Ritchard, Cyril, 368–69 stabbings, 88–89, 94–95, 191–93, 413 Ritter, Thelma, 157, 369–70 Stafford, Frederick, 413, 460 Rohmer, Eric, 48–50, 184, 370 Stage Fright, 10, 31, 53, 74, 175, 403, 414–16 Roman, Ruth, 371, 419, 428, 494 staircases, 97, 105, 131, 180, 185, 309, 416–17, Rope, 41, 70, 141–42, 222–23, 269, 279, 371–74, 425–26 423–24, 430–31 Stannard, Eliot, 115, 331, 367, 417–18 Rozsa, Miklos, 374–75, 391, 444–45, 452 stars, 114, 125, 161, 274, 382, 418–20, 459, 462 R.R.R.R., 375 Stefano, Joseph, 34, 38, 137, 274, 345, 420–21; Russell, John L., 6, 46, 375–76 Marnie, and the writing of, 257; Psycho, and the writing of, 339 Sabotage, 10, 28, 135, 186, 236, 283, 330, 377–80, Steinbeck, John, 1, 231, 345, 421–22, 437 433 Stewart, James, 40, 47, 87, 119, 157, 201, 223, Saboteur, 14, 41, 49, 116, 165, 218–19, 258, 279, 301, 419, 422–25, 479; The Man Who Knew 381–83 Too Much (1956), and the making of, 253–55; 528 n INDEX

Rear Window, and the making of, 351–55; Travers, Linden, 467 Rope, and the making of, 371–74; Vertigo, and Tremayne, Les, 468 the making of, 481–86 The Trouble with Harry, 36, 78, 126, 149, 157– Story, John Trevor, 425, 468 58, 197, 247, 468–70 Stradling, Harry, 425–26 Truffaut, Francois, 13–15, 48–50, 105, 154, 178– Strangers on a Train, 41, 55, 88–89, 166, 179–80, 79, 189–90, 366, 470–71 238, 283, 316, 378, 426–30 strangulation, 76, 88–89, 94–95, 130, 176, 372– Under Capricorn, 9, 52, 71, 129, 223, 240, 241, 73, 378, 429, 430–31 269, 465, 472–75, 473 Stuart, John, 431 Universal, 262, 339, 396, 382, 459, 462, 475–77, subjective camera, 3, 14, 148, 310, 374, 411, 494–95 431–33, 488 Suspense, 433 Valentine, Joseph, 478 suspense vs. surprise, 11, 186, 379–80, 433–34 Valli, Alida, 142, 197, 319–20, 478–80 Suspicion, 52, 89, 113, 122, 143–44, 196, 277, Valli, Virginia, 138, 480 416, 434–37 Ventimiglia, Gaetano, 331, 480–81 Swerling, Jo, 437 Vernon, John, 481 Vertigo, 36, 53, 93, 120, 158, 197, 220, 307–8, Tandy, Jessica, 78, 163, 179, 438–40 424, 433–34, 479, 481–86 Taylor, John Russell, 4, 85, 140, 412, 440–41, 451 Viertel, Peter, 381–82, 486–87 Taylor, Rod, 57, 162, 163, 165, 182, 441 Village of Stars, 487 Taylor, Samuel A., 75, 203, 225, 298, 400, 442– visual effects, 487–88 43; Topaz, and the writing of, 459–60; Ver- voyeurism, 14, 46, 90, 91, 116, 157, 205, 250, tigo, and the writing of, 483 354, 488–89 Tearle, Godfrey, 443 Tetzlaff, Ted, 306, 443–44 Walker, Robert, 117, 148, 238, 378, 491–92; Tey, Josephine, 444 Strangers on a Train, and the making of, Theremin, 166, 374, 444–45, 453 426–30 The 39 Steps, 14, 28, 79, 98, 165, 186, 209, 250, Waltzes from Vienna, 149, 173, 208, 221, 251, 361, 439, 445–49 264, 492–93 Thomas, Jameson, 449–50 Warner Bros., 94, 493–94 Thompson, Edith, 414, 450–51 Wasserman, Lew, 5, 266–67, 321, 352, 401, 459, Thorndike, Dame Sybil, 415, 451 475–77, 494–95 The Three Hostages, 451–52 Watson, Wylie, 495–96 Tiomkin, Dmitri, 445, 452–53 Waxman, Franz, 320, 352, 496 To Catch a Thief, 26, 53, 116, 144, 157–58, 234, Wayne, Naunton, 216, 348, 469, 496–97 277, 283, 453–55 Webb, Roy, 497 Todd, Ann, 447, 455–56 “Wet Saturday,” 498 Todd, Richard, 416, 456–57 The White Shadow, 44, 172, 282, 498–99 Tomasini, George, 341, 457–58, 463 Whitlock, Albert, 169, 262, 400, 500 Topaz, 44, 99, 126, 174, 223, 327–28, 413, 458–61 Whitty, Dame May, 500–501, 507 Torn Curtain, 9, 35, 129, 174, 281–82, 296–97, Who Killed Cock Robin? 380, 501 413, 461–63 Wilder, Thornton, 70, 345, 396–97, 501–2 trains, 52, 61, 118, 214, 207, 249, 300, 426, 445, Wilding, Michael, 96, 229, 502 463–65 Williams, Emlyn, 195, 502–3 Transatlantic Pictures, 31, 152, 319, 372, 465, 474 Williams, John (actor), 17, 70, 95, 299, 503 transference, 14, 63, 166, 185, 187, 429, 465–66, Williams, John (composer), 114, 503–4 469 Wolfe, Ian, 382, 504 Trap for a Solitary Man, 466–67 Woman to Woman, 43, 72, 282, 492, 504–5 Travers, Henry, 397, 467 Wood, Robin, 177–78, 505 INDEX n 529

Woolf, C(harles) M(oss), 81, 238, 251, 332, 459, The Wrong Man, 59, 100, 118, 121, 220, 274, 506 277, 347, 510–14 Woolrich, Cornell, 155, 157, 352, 361, 506–7 Wyman, Jane, 53, 415–16, 514 World War II, 5, 7, 15, 117, 126, 231–32, 269– Wyndham Lewis, D. B., 514 70, 507–9 The Wreck of the Mary Deare, 509 Young, Robert, 387, 515 Wright, Teresa, 54, 70, 491, 509–10; Shadow of a Young and Innocent, 28, 97, 135, 173, 279, 328, Doubt, and the making of, 396–98 444, 516, 516–18

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen Whitty has a BFA in film from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and has been writing for and about films for more than thirty years. His prize-winning fiction, essays, and reviews have been published in America and Europe, and he has lectured at NYU, Rutgers, and other universities. A two-time chair of the New York Film Critics Circle, he lives in New Jersey.

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