Hitchcock loved trains. The corridors invoke panic, and urgency, and speed; the compartments offer only the illusion of safety and privacy. All is in suspense as the train hurtles through an unfamiliar landscape. It soon becomes clear that a conspiracy is under way, in which the English and the foreigners are on different sides. The Lady Vanishes, as it was eventually entitled, could only have been made in the fraught and fragile years before the outbreak of war.
It was filmed at Islington Studios where Hitchcock was reunited with his favourite cameraman, Jack Cox. Islington was a charmed place; he had first started in the film industry there, and had met his wife there. He had begun work with Michael Balcon there. So everything was coming together. Dame May Whitty was chosen as the vanishing lady, with an accompanying cast of Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave as the romantic leads. Lockwood revealed later that Hitchcock “didn’t seem to direct us at all. He was a dozing, nodding Buddha with an enigmatic smile on his face.” She did notice one idiosyncrasy, however. After morning or afternoon tea, Hitchcock would throw his cup over his shoulder and wait for it to crash and splinter. It was a habit he continued for much of his life, saying that it was “good for the nerves. Relieves the tension. Much better than scolding the players.” Or it may have been a small way of showing the symbolic order of the world to be as brittle as porcelain.
He may have had some cause to “scold” his male lead, however, since Michael Redgrave shared the common assumption of fellow actors that film was somehow inferior to theatre. The attitude infuriated Hitchcock, who took every opportunity of removing it or, as Redgrave put it, “he decided to cut me down to size.” Redgrave had said of one scene that in the theatre he would have three weeks to prepare for it. Hitchcock told him that, in front of the camera, he had precisely three minutes. It was in Redgrave’s presence that Hitchcock is supposed to have said that “actors are cattle”; Hitchcock never wholly disowned the remark, adding only that he said that “actors should be treated like cattle.” It is therefore understandable that Redgrave also said of him that “he wasn’t really an actor’s director.” He added that “he knew where he wanted to put his camera, he knew which mood he wanted to effect. He had the whole thing visualised ahead of time and, once we got to the set, it could all be done very quickly and painlessly.” He seemed bored, perhaps, so that he might relax them. Ted Black recalled that there was “no larking about, wasting time and stupidities. He was quite a disciplinarian, but he didn’t emphasise it at all; he just was it.” The Lady Vanishes was completed within the cramped studio at Islington within five weeks.
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The film poster for The Lady Vanishes, Hitchcock’s last major motion picture with Gainsborough Pictures, 1937.
The film has long been described as one of Hitchcock’s finest. It shares some of the qualities of its immediate predecessors, with its emphasis on a couple who become united through a series of trials. This is in fact the great theme of Hitchcock’s last British films. But The Lady Vanishes transcends its boundaries as a mild British thriller, complete with happy ending, by the simple expedient of the mysterious vanishing lady. She is the hole around which the whole is constructed. The film compounds the realism of the setting with the vertiginous mystery of disappearance; the theatricality of the plot has mystical implications, also, with the sudden erasure of a name outlined in steam on a train window and with a stray tea label blown against a corridor window.
The world is not ruled by chance, however, but by fatality. The characters of The Lady Vanishes come together by ones and twos, converging from widely different quarters, drawing slowly together in a sphere of suspicion where they are all eventually assembled. The surprises, the reversals, the disassociation from routine during the journey, the psychic claustrophobia of the train ride, the near hysteria of the heroine looking for the lady, the malign presence of enemy agents amongst ordinary English people, the threat of murderous violence towards the end, all contribute to the unique Hitchcock effect.
While making The Lady Vanishes Hitchcock received a telegram from Myron Selznick intimating that the first picture he would make in Hollywood might be based on the fate of the Titanic. This was an opportunity which Hitchcock eagerly grasped. The possibilities were tremendous. He already had several scenes in mind. The whisky in a tumbler might begin to tremble. As his pilgrimage to America grew ever closer, his ambitions increased. He had visions of building an entire ocean-going vessel for the climactic scenes. He and Alma returned to Hollywood at the end of May 1938, having just completed filming The Lady Vanishes.
By the middle of July, Hitchcock and David Selznick had signed a contract that guaranteed him one film with four one-picture-a-year options; he would earn $50,000 for the first production, with incremental increases over the next three years. It was not gold dust by Hollywood standards but it was a substantial rise after his period in England. The contract was modified and rewritten, with two pictures instead of one in the first year, but in the end it satisfied both parties.
But he had to return to England for one last film. For reasons known only to himself—perhaps for money or for fear of nothing to do—he had signed a contract to direct a film entitled Jamaica Inn, based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier. He had agreed to the project with the Mayflower Company, which existed primarily for the making and distribution of films starring Charles Laughton. In effect Hitchcock was working for, and with, the celebrated actor. It was to be an everyday story of wreckers enticing ships on to the shore, together with a sinister landlord who is more or less than he appears to be. Laughton played the landlord with a braggadocio that swept the other players from the screen. To say that he was difficult would be an understatement; Hitchcock joked that he was hired not to be a director but to be a referee, judging the bouts in which Laughton wrestled with himself. Hitchcock was used to actors being on time and in command of their lines; Laughton would hesitate, and delay, and improvise where he deemed it necessary. It took him days to perform the right walk for a certain sequence. It was to be Laughton’s picture, not Hitchcock’s. It was wall-to-wall ham, and Graham Greene commented that “the whole set of the sinister inn creaks like its own signboard.”
. . .
It was at last time to leave England. He sublet the flat on Cromwell Road, and locked the door on the cottage at Shamley Green. On 1 March 1939, the Hitchcock family sailed from Southampton on the Queen Mary. The party included a cook, a maid, Hitchcock’s secretary Joan Harrison, and two dogs; they were arriving en masse. In England he had made twenty-four films in thirteen years, and he was in a sense eager to leave. One of his later screenwriters, Samuel Taylor, reported that “he felt that he was not really respected in England” and that “British critics regarded him as the house-clown.” Alma was happy to leave, and for their daughter it was one big adventure.
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Hitchcock, Alma and Patricia on their way to the United States, 1939.
And so, too, for her father. Hitchcock said that he anticipated “working under new conditions with an entirely fresh crowd of people,” but he was not unnerved by the challenge. “There is scarcely a star in Hollywood,” he said, “whose appeal I would not try to alter or develop.” He put it more plainly in the same interview with a reporter, J. Danvers Williams, when he remarked that “I am itching to get my hands on these American stars.” For him Hollywood was one vast laboratory, with all the latest equipment available. He had also been buoyed by the news that he had just been named Best Director of 1938 by the New York critics.
He would be introduced to a film system that had developed on unfamiliar lines. Hollywood was dominated by its producers rather than its directors, and was reliant on its star system in ways which were not customary in England. He would now be part of a much larger and more elaborate world, where he could not expect to be a dominant player as he had at Elstree.
He had agreed with Selznick to direct Rebecca, the novel by Daphne du Maur
ier which introduced the naïve Mrs. de Winter and the calculating Mrs. Danvers to the world; Hitchcock did not need much persuasion since he had previously expressed great interest in filming the book. Daphne du Maurier might have had some misgivings, however, since she profoundly disliked his version of Jamaica Inn. Hitchcock never had a high opinion of du Maurier’s fiction, despite filming these two novels and a short story (The Birds); she in turn had no great admiration for his work and was concerned only with the financial rewards it gave her. Theirs was a thoroughly practical arrangement.
As soon as Hitchcock and Alma arrived in New York they were in the hands of the publicity department. Hitchcock gave a lecture on English theatre at Yale and on film at Columbia; he was asked to preside over a newspaper dinner. Then, on 16 March, the Hitchcock entourage decamped for a vacation in Florida and the Caribbean. At the end of the month, on their return to New York, they took the train to Pasadena. Their new home was in view. They were met on 5 April at the train station by Myron Selznick, and were at once driven to a newly leased apartment in the Wilshire Palms on Wilshire Boulevard. Joan Harrison, now seen as indispensable, was given an apartment close by.
Everything in the apartment was white, as bright as the sun and the air, while the complex included a pool and a tennis court. Alma was delighted by her new surroundings, and the atmosphere of freedom that they conveyed; she came to love America almost at once, as the perfect antidote to the stuffiness and mustiness of England. Hitchcock hardly seemed to notice the change. He said that he was not at all interested in Hollywood except as a place to work. One of the maids left soon after; she may not have objected to the American way of life as such, since she stayed and became a chiropractor. She was in any case replaced by a German cook who specialised in pastries. Within five days Hitchcock had reported to the studio in order to begin, with Joan Harrison, the script of Rebecca. Their standard of comfort at this studio was considerably higher than that at Islington; they were given a suite with a kitchen and bathroom.
Hitchcock and his team produced an outline of Rebecca. He knew it would have to be reworked by the studio, but was nevertheless disconcerted when at the beginning of June he despatched a draft of the screenplay to David Selznick. The producer professed himself to be “shocked and disappointed beyond words”; he did not enjoy Hitchcock’s attempts to inject humour into what was essentially a sober melodrama. The lightness of touch that had characterised The Lady Vanishes was not considered suitable for Rebecca. “We bought Rebecca, and we intend to make Rebecca,” Selznick wrote, “not a distorted and vulgarised version of a provenly successful work.” He may have had a point, as the more faithful final version suggests, but it must have come as a serious setback in the relationship between the two men. It would not be unrealistic to believe that they both now questioned the contract they had agreed between them.
Hitchcock said later that “David insisted that we followed the book exactly. He decided that with so many readers who had their own favourite scenes, they’d be disappointed if they weren’t included in the film.” What Selznick also wanted was lushness on the screen, that thick velvety quality lavished on romances and melodramas of the period. The stars should be sparkling in their places, the photography should be all gloss and shimmer, while the music should sweep up the audience and leave it breathless. In this same period Selznick was also producing Gone With the Wind, which had that quality in excelsis. He had the reputation for creating “women’s pictures.”
Hitchcock, nothing if not professional, bowed to the inevitable and with Harrison and assorted American writers completed a composite script by the end of July which closely followed the original novel. Selznick responded with detailed comments, making it plain that this was to be his film, with his editing, his characters and his treatment. A reporter from the New York Times noted that in an interview Hitchcock “smiled a little cynically when he discussed producers”; the director, however, refused to be quoted.
The script was finally completed at the beginning of September, by which time shooting was about to begin. This was the story of a nervous young girl suddenly married to a rich man; she is soon plagued by the delusion that he still loves his dead wife, Rebecca, a fatal error which is reinforced by the serpentine suggestions and actions of the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers.
The casting had been completed with some difficulties. Laurence Olivier played the male lead, as Maxim de Winter, and had wanted his partner, Vivien Leigh, to play the second Mrs. de Winter. Vivien Leigh was brave and beautiful; the unnamed heroine of Rebecca is mousy and full of terrors. Eventually Joan Fontaine gained the part. Olivier took against her from the start, and broadcast his aversion; he also seemed, while filming, to take every opportunity of whispering obscenities into her ear.
Fontaine herself was experiencing moments of severe anxiety. Hitchcock had decided that she should become as fearful and as uneasy as her screen persona; he constantly told her that the rest of the cast did not like or appreciate her, and that only he would be able to give her the security she required. “He wanted total control over me,” she recalled, “and seemed to relish the cast not liking one another, actor for actor, by the end of the film.” The trick worked. The apprehension on her face, as she walks around Manderley as an under-appreciated second wife, is real. There was one of many weeping scenes when Fontaine confessed that she had run out of tears. “I asked her what it would take to make her resume crying,” Hitchcock said later. “She said, ‘Well, maybe if you slapped me.’ I did, and she instantly started bawling.”
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A still from Rebecca, Hitchcock’s first film with Selznick, during which they grappled for control of the picture.
The atmosphere on the set was strained for international reasons. In the first week of filming in September 1939, war was declared against Germany, leaving the largely English cast and Hitchcock himself in disarray. Olivier stated that “we felt blighted right through, careers, lives, hopes.” Hitchcock sent constant cables to London enquiring about his mother and the rest of his family, but a continent and ocean divided them.
. . .
He had no thought of returning to England, however, since in the following month he moved out of Wilshire Palms into what he might have called his first proper home in America. They rented 609 St. Cloud Road in Bel Air from Carole Lombard, a large and comfortable house on what still looks like a well-manicured country road. It is in what estate agents describe as a French–Norman style, and it is suitably gated and secluded. They immediately began to anglicise it with furniture from Cromwell Road and Shamley Green. They removed the ubiquitous white paint of California, and replaced the tile floors with parquet. The place was known as “The Farm” but it might as easily have been called “The Cottage.” He had said that “what I want is a home, not a movie set with a heating plant added. All I need is a snug little house with a good kitchen, and the devil with a swimming pool.” The census of 1940 shows them living with an English maid, Gladys Faulkner, and the German cook, Erna Graff.
Hitchcock slipped into his role as an Englishman abroad. He had soon enough created a routine in which he could hide himself. He wore his dark blue suit and kept his hours like any office manager; he imported English bacon and Dover sole, and tried to keep up with the London papers. On Sundays he or Alma drove with Patricia to the local Catholic church, the Good Shepherd, otherwise known as “Our Lady of the Cadillacs” due to the number of rich parishioners; the other fixed event of the week was the drive of three miles for dinner at a restaurant on Beverly Boulevard, Chasen’s, on Thursday evening. Here he ordered steak, together with a champagne cocktail of his own devising. Their daughter was enrolled at a private school, Marymount, supervised by nuns. Everything became orderly; everything became familiar.
There was one thing, however, which some people considered to be odd. He would close his eyes, or fall asleep, at inopportune moments. If he was not the centre of conversation or attent
ion at a dinner table, he would often doze off. In his own home, the moment he fell asleep was the signal for guests to depart. At a private party for a recent arrival, the author Thomas Mann, Hitchcock began to talk to him about fiction and film before closing his eyes. He invited Carole Lombard and her husband Clark Gable to dinner at Chasen’s; Alma recalled that “before the salad was served, Hitch slept.” When his wife woke him after a prolonged slumber at another dinner party he asked her, “Wouldn’t it be rude to leave so soon?”
This may in part have been the consequence of his growing size, but there may have been another reason. He was a man filled with constant dread of the world, and it is reasonable and plausible to assume that he took medication to alleviate the anxiety he suffered. Before the arrival of antidepressant drugs in the 1950s, opioids or opiates were readily available to treat depression and high anxiety. In a culture of drugs such as that of Hollywood it would not have been difficult for Hitchcock to obtain them; David Selznick, for example, was addicted to Benzedrine. If Hitchcock were indeed prescribed an opiate, its reaction with alcohol, which he drank in larger and larger quantities, would induce slumber. This is mere speculation, without evidence, but it is a natural and indeed likely circumstance to account for his somnolent interludes.
Alfred Hitchcock Page 9