Alfred Hitchcock

by Patrick McGilligan

  Not only was Hitchcock a founding editor, he also served as business manager, “very much to the despair of the chief accountant,” according to Moore. Not only that, he was the Telegraph’s most prolific contributor.

  Back at St. Ignatius there had been student publications, and Hitchcock may have tried his hand at writing, though the issues of those years are lost. Surely he learned about writing and literature from Father Richard Mangan, the same priest who gave that well-remembered exhortation about dying honorably. Mangan presided over an English curriculum that stressed Platonic and Chaucerian princples of dramatic literature. This included an emphasis on the logic, the structure, the internal symmetry and unity of ideas, what Galsworthy in The Forsyte Saga called the “significant trifle”—a detail which “embodies the whole character of a scene, a place, or a person”—and, when possible, a universality concerned with aspects of human nature and behavior.

  A beloved theatrical instructor, Father Mangan was also known for his superb investigations of Shakespeare, and delighted students with his spellbinding rendition of Macbeth’s famous speech, rendered in a broad Lancashire accent: “Is this a dagger which I see before me?” He encouraged humorous as well as formal essays, contrary to tradition, and didn’t mind if the two were blended.

  Starting with his debut piece in The Henley Telegraph—in the premiere issue, volume 1, number 1, June 1919—Hitchcock also blended drama with dark humor:

  GAS

  She had never been in this part of Paris before, only reading of it in the novels of Duvain; or seeing it at the Grand Guignol. So this was the Montmartre? That horror where danger lurked under cover of night, where innocent souls perished without warning—where doom confronted the unwary—where the Apache reveled.

  She moved cautiously in the shadow of the high wall, looking furtively backward for the hidden menace that might be dogging her steps. Suddenly she darted into an alley way, little heeding where it led—groping her way on in the inky blackness, the one thought of eluding the pursuit firmly fixed in her mind—on she went—Oh! when would it end?—

  Then a doorway from which a light streamed lent itself to her vision—In here—anywhere, she thought.

  The door stood at the head of a flight of stairs—stairs that creaked with age, as she endeavoured to creep down—then she heard the sound of drunken laughter and shuddered—surely this was—No, not that! Anything but that! She reached the foot of the stairs and saw an evil smelling wine bar, with wrecks of what were once men and women indulging in a drunken orgy—then they saw her, a vision of affrighted purity. Half a dozen men rushed towards her amid the encouraging shouts of the rest. She was seized. She screamed with terror—better had she been caught by her pursuer, was her one fleeting thought, as they dragged her roughly across the room. The fiends lost no time in settling her fate. They would share her belongings—and she—

  Why! Was not this the heart of Montmartre? She should go—the rats should feast. Then they bound her and carried her down the dark passage. Up a flight of stairs to the riverside. The water rats should feast, they said. And then—then, swinging her bound body to and fro, dropped her with a splash into the dark, swirling waters. Down, she went, down, down; conscious only of a choking sensation, this was death.

  —then—

  “It’s out Madam,” said the dentist. “Half a crown please.”*

  The Grand Guignol atmosphere and the beautiful woman in peril mark this as distinctly “Hitch,” which is how he signed this first Hitchcock work and the rest of his Telegraph contributions.

  A close-up of a woman’s face swollen with terror became a Hitchcock staple, one of those images he teasingly reprised in film after film. The opening image of The Lodger, his very first popular success, is a woman screaming. (And it didn’t always have to be a woman: in the opening shots of Rope, a man gets the same treatment.)

  “Gas” has been published in other books concerning Hitchcock. Donald Spoto, in The Dark Side of Genius, found the story a sophomoric Poe imitation, plainly evidencing the Hitchcockian “images of sadism” (and of “the woman plunged into water”) that were integral to Spoto’s dark portrait of the director. As he did more than once when analyzing Hitchcock’s career, however, Spoto overlooked the humor: the sadism is undercut by the twist ending, in which the reader’s expectations are turned on their head.

  One of the clichés about the English is their avoidance of dental care, and Hitchcock himself was notorious for stained, crooked teeth and foul breath. His very English trepidation about dentists is deployed to comic effect in “Gas”—and again and again in his films.

  The first published example of one of Hitchcock’s “twist” stories, “Gas” is ultimately more comic than sadistic. The woman isn’t being confronted by any real danger, it turns out, but by a hallucination induced by the anesthetic. In his films Hitchcock was drawn to visualizing all types of what he called “phantasmagoria of the mind”—hypnosis, concussions, dizziness, drunkenness, dreams. But in this instance the particular anesthetic supplies another level of meaning: the standard anesthetic used by dentists at the time was nitrous oxide or “laughing gas,” known to cause hilarity along with its hallucinations.

  While “Gas” alone might suggest “images of sadism,” the array of other pieces that Hitchcock penned for the Telegraph, brought to light for the first time during research for this book, reveals a more humane, playful, faceted sensibility. Hitchcock wrote for every issue of the Telegraph published during his tenure at Henley’s. “His articles were always of the quaint, fantastic type,” said W. A. Moore, and “reflective of his character.”

  His contribution to the second issue, in September 1919, was especially cinematic, and especially remarkable for anticipating the voyeuristic obsessions, the complex narrative architecture, and the psychologically subjective perspective of Hitchcock films:

  THE WOMAN’S PART

  Curse you!—Winnie, you devil—I’ll——

  “Bah!” He shook her off, roughly, and she fell, a crumpled heap at his feet. Roy Fleming saw it all. —Saw his own wife thus treated by a man who was little more than a fiend. — His wife, who, scarcely an hour ago had kissed him, as she lingered caressingly over the dainty cradle cot, where the centre of their universe lay sleeping. Scarcely an hour ago—and now he saw her, the prostrate object of another man’s scorn; the discarded plaything of a villain’s brutish passion.

  She rose to her knees, and stretched her delicate white arms in passionate appeal toward the man who had spurned her.

  “Arnold, don’t you understand? You never really cared for her. It was a moment’s fancy—a madness, and will pass away. It is I you love. Think of those days in Paris. Do you remember when we went away together, Arnold, you and I, and forgot everything? How we went down the river, drifting with the stream as it wound its way like a coil of silver across the peaceful pasture lands. Oh, the scent of the may and lilac blossoms that morning! The songs of the birds, the joy of watching the swallows sweeping across the river before us—Arnold, you have not forgotten? It was the first day you kissed me.—Hidden in that sheltered sweetness where only the rippling sunbeams moved upon the myrtle-tinted stream—Arnold, you have not forgotten!”

  The man crossed the room, and leaned upon a table, not far from where she crouched, gazing down at her with a look from which she shrank away.

  “No,” he said bitterly, “I have never forgotten!”

  Still kneeling, she moved nearer, and laid a trembling hand on his knee:—“Arnold, don’t you understand? I must leave England at once. I must go into hiding somewhere—anywhere—a long way from here. I killed her, Arnold, for your sake. I killed her because she had taken you from me. They will call it murder. But if only you will come with me, I do not care. In a new country we will begin all over again—together, you and I.” Roy Fleming saw and heard it all. This abandoned murderess was the woman who had sworn to love and honour him until death should part them. So this was—yes, and more than that
. But Roy made no movement.

  Was he adamant? Had the horror of the scene stunned him?

  Or was it just that he realised his own impotence?

  The man she called Arnold raised her suddenly, and drew her to him in a passionate embrace.

  “There is something in your eyes,” he said fiercely, “that would scare off most men. It’s there now, and it’s one of the things that make me want you. You are right, Winnie. I am ready. We will go to Ostend by the early morning boat, and seek a hiding place from there.”

  She nestled close to him, and their lips met in a long, sobbing kiss. And still Roy Fleming gave no sign—raised no hand to defend his wife’s honour—uttered no word of denunciation—sought no vengeance against the man who had stolen her affections. Was it that he did not care? No—not that, only—don’t you realise? He was in the second row of the stalls!

  This one was signed “Hitch & Co.,” the first record of Hitchcock teaming up with closet collaborators, a practice that would become standard for his films. Though it may seem a little puzzling on first read, “The Woman’s Part” makes sense once it’s clear that it’s written from the point of view of a husband watching his actress wife perform onstage. The “stalls” were the front stalls of a theater, downstairs, as against the less expensive “circle,” upstairs. The husband is taking “the woman’s part,” thinking about his wife as he watches her emote, as Hitchcock often took “the woman’s part” in his films, adopting her point of view with his camera.

  The husband is remembering his wife at home before the performance, gazing down maternally at their child, even as he finds himself captivated by her transformation onstage, where she is impersonating an adulteress and murderess. Watching his wife as she confesses to the first Hitchcock murder, albeit one that takes place entirely within the frame of a proscenium, the husband finds his emotions strangely divided, and aroused.

  “I’m a believer in the subjective,” Hitchcock said in a later interview, “that is, playing a scene from the point of view of an individual.” Subjectivity helped transfer emotions into the mind of the audience, and “putting the audience through it” was his basic credo, as he told François Truffaut. Hitchcock might have added that he always had to put himself through it first—in the writing, preparation, rehearsal, and, finally, direction. His grip on a film was always stronger, his grip on the audience surer, if he could empathize with a character or an actor. From this early story it is not far, for example, to Hitchcock’s first-person camera entering the danger zone with Aicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman), meeting Sebastian and Mama and the nest of Nazis in Notorious.

  The structure of “The Woman’s Part”—the idea within an idea, story within a story—is quite clever. If anything epitomizes the finest Hitchcock films, it may be that “Hitchcock operates on many levels,” in the words of Andrew Sarris. His films aimed for simplicity and clarity—even clichés—on the surface, but with contrast and counterpoint undermining the clichés, and hidden depths of detail and sophistication. Like “Gas,” “The Woman’s Part” features complex interwoven layers of teasing, surprise, and hidden business. As Sarris wrote of Hitchcock’s films: “The iron is encased in velvet, the irony in simplicity—simplicity, however, on so many levels that the total effect is vertiginously complex.”

  The main theme of “A Woman’s Part” can be seen to relate to future Hitchcock films like Murder!, Stage Fright, and the second The Man Who Knew Too Much, where the director also plays around with truth and lies in stories about actresses. It anticipates The 39 Steps or Sabotage, where the illusions onstage disguise a darker reality, and prefigures Rear Window, where a man with a Leica stares from a distance at a mysterious occurrence.

  The third Telegraph story, from the February 1920 issue, was another twisted jest:

  SORDID

  “It is not for sale, Sir.”

  Through a friend I had heard of a Japanese dealer in Chelsea, who had a remarkable collection of English and Japanese antiques, and, being a keen collector, I had made my way to his shop to look over his curious stock.

  The sword, a fine heavy specimen, with a chased blade and elaborate handle, was not very ancient, perhaps about twenty years old—but it had attracted me.

  “I will give you a good price.”

  “I am sorry, but I do not wish to sell.”

  There must have been something unusual about it, and so I became more fascinated and determined to obtain the sword. After much expostulating and protesting, he agreed to sell on the promise that I would purchase other things in the near future.

  “There is some history connected with this, is there not?” I asked.

  “Yes, there is, and if you have time I will tell it to you.”

  At the time of the Russo-Japanese War, Kiosuma, his son, was an ambitious lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army. It chanced that once Kiosuma was charged with the despatch of documents to a destination back in Japan which took him near his home. On the journey he failed to notice that he was being followed by two men—Russian Agents.

  His home was about an hour’s journey short of his ultimate destination, so he decided he would call there first.

  As he alighted from the train, a feeling of delight enveloped him when he thought of the surprise that he would give his parents. He made his way up the hill of the little village beyond which his parents lived, his path lying through a wood. He quickened his step with the excitement of anticipation, until—almost within sight of his house—he heard a step behind him. Turning, he saw an arm raised, then came oblivion—

  It was night when he regained consciousness, and as he struggled to his feet he endeavoured to collect his dazed thoughts.

  Then he remembered—the papers!

  What should he do? With the papers gone—!

  He staggered towards his house, the lights of which were discernible through the trees, and was met by his father.

  “O son, from whence came thou?”

  Kiosuma proceeded to explain with difficulty.

  The brow of his father darkened, his eyes narrowed, and his face grew to that of a mask.

  “Oh, unworthy one! Thou hast betrayed the trust of the great Nippon. Where now is thy honor?”

  “But my father, they have not the code!”

  “Thou dare to excuse thyself! Take the sword—thou knowest the only course.”

  Slowly, but fearlessly, Kiosuma proceeded to his room. He laid a white sheet on the floor, and placed a candle at each corner, then having robed himself in a white kimono, he knelt down and cast his eyes upwards.

  He raised the sword, with the point to his heart and—

  I took the sword home and in the firelight continued to examine my purchase while I pondered over the strange tale of the afternoon.

  I noticed that the handle was a little loose; perhaps it unscrewed. I tried it with success, and detached the blade.

  Lowering it to the firelight I studied the unpolished surface and read—

  Made in Germany, 1914!

  This composition might be subtitled (to tweak a well-known Hitchcock maxim) “It’s Only a Story.” As in his films, the shocks and the comedy mingle and leaven each other in his Telegraph pieces. Of the seven he wrote, five have turnabout endings, and only two are bereft of any comedy. Hitchcock’s irrepressible sense of humor suffused the company publication, which was generously sprinkled throughout with his puns, witty captions, and play-on-word titles like “Sordid” (or “Sworded,” as it were.)

  Before he entered film, Hitchcock was already well known at Henley’s as a “natural humorist and clown,” in the words of W. A. Moore. “He had a sparkling wit,” said Moore, “but it was not only the things he said but the spontaneous and unexpected things he did which gave us aching sides and streaming eyes. On every outing to which he went he bubbled over with joyous fooling and sent us home stiff with laughter.”

  Not only did Hitchcock help run the Telegraph, but, as improbable as it seems, he also figured in Henley’s re
creational activities. He entered billiards tournaments and organized the Henley’s soccer club. He followed boxing, tennis, racing, and soccer; years later, in Hollywood, he told associates he subscribed to the London newspapers partly to monitor the West Ham club scores.

  Hitchcock supervised Henley’s soccer team for several seasons—quite possibly at a financial loss to himself, given his already established hatred of bookkeeping. “He never did value money and would always rather pay out of his own pocket than be worried with the keeping of records,” remembered Moore.

  Although he professed never to have had a bona fide date with a woman other than his wife (and there’s little evidence to doubt him), at company-sponsored occasions Hitchcock did socialize freely with female employees. This included evenings at the Cripplegate Institute on nearby Golden Lane, a small hall that presented lectures, entertainments, and classes. He took waltz and ballroom dance lessons at Cripplegate, sponsored by Henley’s: then, and later in life, Hitchcock was a surprisingly light-footed dancer, and he larded his films with memorable dance and ballroom sequences.

  The dance lessons were presided over by a man named William Graydon, whose acquaintance with Hitchcock exerted a profound effect on the future filmmaker. At one time the Graydons lived quite near the Hitchcocks in Leytonstone, and the two families, both Catholic and theatrically inclined, may have known each other before Cripplegate. Graydon was the father of one Edith Thompson, who at times, along with her younger sister Avis, helped out with the Cripplegate classes. Edith also appeared in amateur productions in London, which, given Hitchcock’s interest in the stage, he may well have attended. Certainly Hitchcock was acquainted with Edith, although he never admitted as much on the record. He spoke primarily of knowing her father.