Joan Fontaine managed to stay friends with Hitchcock, and eventually picked up an Academy Award as the year’s Best Actress. (Suspicion was also nominated for—and lost—Best Picture and Best Muscial Score.) Everyone in Hollywood, including Fontaine, suspected her Oscar was really for Rebecca. Her performance in Suspicion was not as strong, her characterization neither as consistent nor as complicated.
Cary Grant was nominated for Best Actor only twice in his career, for Penny Serenade and None but the Lonely Heart; like Hitchcock, the consummate actor never won a competitive Oscar. But it was Grant who made a lasting impression on the director: Suspicion would be Hitchcock’s final outing with his Oscar-winning blonde, but to his dark, complex leading man he would be drawn again and again, as to a half-open door.
* MacDonald’s many novels include The List of Adrian Messenger, filmed by John Huston in 1962.
* Ultimately, none of Hitchcock’s “better ideas” was adopted by DOS for this scene; the entire scene was reimagined and reshot, changing drastically from the version Hitchcock saw and critiqued.
* In the quasi-comic opening sequence, his editor, striving for a more distinguished byline, impulsively renames Jones “Huntley Haverstock.”
* Maibaum was later a prolific writer for the James Bond film series.
* Worth recalling is the fact that Herbert Marshall had an artificial leg. Usually he covered up the handicap, but a scene like this posed special difficulties. The ceiling of the plane was paper, and Hitchcock had the water actually rise over the heads of the actors before letting them break through. Marshall’s leg made this problematic, so he stood in a special cylinder while everyone else was inundated.
* Rogue Male was later filmed by Fritz Lang as Man Hunt. “Royal Mail” was never produced.
* When Hollywood Loved Britain author Mark Glancy cited another government leader who recognized the power of Foreign Correspondent. Nazi Germany’s Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels admired the Hitchcock film as “a masterpiece of propaganda.”
* Incidentally, Hitchcock’s Jesuit school classmate Hugh Gray was credited with the original script of Men of Lightship 61.
* The only early Rebecca winner was cameraman George Barnes, whose hiring had been dictated by DOS.
* Ford won four of the five Best Director awards for which he was nominated.
* Before the Fact as a book had been acclaimed by critics for its wealth of nuance about the empty life of the English upper middle class, with the type of barbed satire the director deployed effortlessly in his Gaumont films. Yet in spite of the heavily English casting, the Dorothy Sayers satire and other “authenticity” would be missing from Hitchcock’s adaptation of the Francis Iles novel. And where, in the case of Rebecca, Selznick had striven to preserve an Englishness the director felt to be false, here the director took measures to minimize it. Even so, in later interviews he often complained about RKO’s faux British production design, “the elegant sitting rooms, the grand staircases, the lavish bedrooms and so forth,” as he told Truffaut. “Another weakness is that the photography was too glossy.”
* The housemaid Ethel (Heather Angel) is still in the film, but platonically, even though the mink stole Johnny gives her seems left over from the philandering in an early draft.
NINE
1941–1944
If, thus far, he had not yet matched his best English films, Hitchcock could nevertheless take comfort in the notion that he was building up credit and security for his long-term Hollywood career. Yet the Selznicks continued to cast a shadow over the short term; this time it was older brother Myron who stood in his way, blocking his remake of The Lodger.
Hitchock had talked Universal producer Jack Skirball into buying the rights for $35,000. But Myron demanded $50,000, along with 10 percent of any eventual profits, “the whole deal subject to approval of all budget elements,” in the words of agent Sig Marcus, who was trying to piece together the deal. Moreover, Myron demanded that he be credited on the eventual film as coproducer.
The stiff terms gave Skirball pause. He had been trying to appease Hitchcock, but he thought the $50,000 price tag was outrageous. It was Hitchcock who was pushing to remake The Lodger, after all, not Skirball, and now the director’s own agent was souring the deal with his demands.
Hitchcock implored his agent to take $30,000 of Universal’s $35,000 offer, giving Myron more than his half of the stipulated $50,000; Hitchcock agreed to accept only $5,000 up front—a 50 percent loss on his $10,000 investment (though this was partly a loan from Myron). But Myron wouldn’t sell his half without coproducer and profit-participant status.
And when the brothers Selznick talked it over, they stood united, finally, on at least one subject: Jack Skirball was a novice producer who would probably ruin a remake of The Lodger. Myron and David wondered if perhaps they shouldn’t just coproduce the remake themselves, making it a joint Selznick brothers’ production. Of course, they could afford to muse about it endlessly. Not Hitchcock.
Drawn by The Lodger into speculating about what was best for his contract director, DOS spoke almost wistfully about getting back into producing, and supervising the next Hitchcock film. His appetite whetted, DOS told Myron he would be willing to buy Hitchcock’s share of the rights to The Lodger if the director would consent to develop the project under his aegis. DOS then could absorb the remake into his program, and produce it as a Selznick-Hitchcock film—or ultimately sell it off to someone like Skirball, multiplying his profit.
Hitchcock had a series of dinners with Selznick to talk things over. Hitchcock liked David—better, as time went on, than he did Myron. Hitchcock and DOS were both talkers and dreamers. One night at dinner they spoke dreamily about the Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman, whom Selznick had brought to Hollywood. Since Intermezzo, her first American film, Bergman had become just another high-priced Selznick loan-out. DOS thought Hitchcock should direct Bergman in a Selznick film. Hitchcock thought so too.
Subsequently, Hitchcock spun “a very interesting, if rather erotic story,” according to Selznick, which the director said that he and Joan Harrison had hastily whipped up for Bergman. The scenario would be loosely based on a true account of a couple who were kidnapped and chained together. “The young wife of a military attaché or something of the sort,” Selznick wrote in a memo, “and a close male friend, after being kidnapped, were chained together by Chinese brigands for six months. I can understand the appeal of this to Hitchcock.” Hitchcock had improvised the pitch—and apparently, Selznick didn’t recognize it as a reheated blend of Rich and Strange (Chinese pirates) and The 39 Steps (handcuffs).
That “rather erotic story” may not have appealed to Selznick, but nevertheless he and Hitchcock were finally finding a kinship, rehearsing ideas aloud to each other. At one dinner Hitchcock rehearsed the notion of remaking The Man Who Knew Too Much instead of The Lodger. DOS liked that possibility so much that he assigned John Houseman, new to his staff as a producer, to brainstorm with Hitchcock over how to transplant the story to America. When it became clear that Hitchcock didn’t actually own the rights to the original film, though—they were still tangled up with Gaumont back in England—the idea was swiftly dropped.
The Lodger kept bobbing up, partly because DOS liked hearing Hitchcock talk about it. How would the story be dramatized differently than before? Hitchcock improvised: maybe they could Americanize the story somehow. Hitchcock talked up a storm, until DOS said he’d like to read a solid treatment before making up his mind. Fine, replied the director; Mrs. Hitchcock could craft a scenario for twenty thousand dollars. Too bad, responded DOS, reminding Hitchcock that Alma’s services came free to him with her husband’s Selznick contract.
Strictly speaking, Myron told Hitchcock, David was right. As long as The Lodger was developed as a Selznick project, Alma couldn’t be paid. Hitchcock was enraged, claiming he’d never been informed of such niceties before signing his contract. Anxious to smooth everything over, Myron tried to mollify his client
over a series of dinners. But Myron wore on Hitchcock: his unctuous hospitality when it suited his mood, his hard-shelled attitude the rest of the time; his drinking and bellicose rants.
Finally, in the late spring of 1941, the director decided to set The Lodger aside for the time being and move on. DOS was chimerical, and at the moment neither Selznick seemed serious about producing. Jack Skirball, on the other hand, was eager to let Hitchcock try almost anything.
Skirball had been urging the director to switch gears and turn his attention to what they had always referred to as “Hitchcock #2.” This would be a Hitchcock original: a wrong-man chase, like The 39 Steps, but set in America. The wrong man would be another John Doe American, mistaken for a saboteur. Hearing about this, DOS agreed to let Hitchcock develop “Hitchcock #2” under Houseman; DOS could monitor the script progress, and then decide later whether to produce the film himself or sell it for easy profit.
DOS placated Hitchcock by raising his salary to $3,000 weekly, beginning in July 1941; the director would now be making $120,000 yearly. Myron also tried to placate his client by hiring Alma for $10,000 to write a first treatment for The Lodger remake. But since Hitchcock was a half partner in the rights, he had to vouch for half of Alma’s salary out of any future earnings on the property. (The agreement Hitchcock signed with Myron also obliged him to direct the remake, unless incapacitated.)
The annual raise and script commission were a salve to his pride, but the director balked at Myron’s request to re-sign with the agency for another seven years. His first contract with the Selznick Agency was coming up for renewal—but by now Hitchcock blamed Myron even more than his brother for the maze he was in.
Though DOS was still pretending he might eventually produce the saboteur project, Hitchcock assured Skirball that the film would end up at Universal. Even before the contract details were resolved, then, the Hitchcocks and Joan Harrison went to work on the story, moonlighting at night, on weekends, even on the set of Suspicion. By midsummer, with Suspicion in postproduction, Hitchcock was holding his first meetings with John Houseman.
The war and filmmaking went hand in hand. In August 1941 Hitchcock made a quick trip to New York to consult with Sidney Bernstein, who had flown to the United States aboard a Liberator bomber. On behalf of the Ministry of Information, Bernstein was en route to Hollywood, where he hoped to establish a cooperative relationship with studio executives.
Returning ahead of Bernstein, Hitchcock and Victor Saville helped arrange his appointments. While meeting with studio moguls Harry Warner and Louis B. Mayer, among others, Bernstein stayed with Hitchcock at St. Cloud Road. Bernstein’s goal was to convince the studios to attach various MOI wartime short subjects to their major releases, and incorporate into their future programs features that celebrated British history and heritage.
This activity still ran counter to the Neutrality Act. Pro-British activity in Hollywood was under scrutiny by American intelligence operatives, as well as by pro-German elements in the film industry. Although many U.S. citizens wanted to do everything possible to side with England, the government’s official policy was to do nothing, so America Firsters had law enforcement on their side. Foreign Correspondent—and now the saboteur project—were precisely the type of “message pictures” that isolationist Senators Burton K. Wheeler (D., Montana) and Gerald P. Nye, (R., North Dakota) inveighed against in widely publicized speeches, denouncing “alien” influences in Hollywood.
Indeed, in the fall of 1941, Saville was among those publicly branded a British agent in Senate Interstate Commerce Committee hearings led by Wheeler and Nye, with testimony alleging that in Hollywood, Saville entertained “lavishly and that each of his guests is served a full course of British propaganda.” Foreign Correspondent somehow escaped the list of Hollywood pictures targeted by the committee (Hitchcock’s propaganda was that slippery), and anyway, the hearings were brief—the investigation was cut off by the events of December 7.
Pearl Harbor suddenly freed Hitchcock to be more explicit with his subject matter in the new film—now called Saboteur. Although work on the story had been ongoing since the early summer, a series of crucial revisions would occur after America went to war.
John Houseman had taken DOS’s place supervising Hitchcock, though neither Houseman nor anyone else operated under the illusion that Saboteur would end up a Selznick production. “Early in the proceedings, he [DOS] said, ‘I’m not going to make it anyway,’” wrote David Thomson.
Born Jacques Haussmann in Bucharest to an Alsatian father and an English mother, Houseman was educated in England; transplanted to New York by the early 1930s, he produced the Gertrude Stein-Virgil Thomson avant-garde opera Four Saints in Three Acts before joining forces with Orson Welles in a tempestuous partnership that spawned the Negro Theater Project, the Classical Theater Project, and the stage and radio productions of the Mercury Theater. When Welles moved to Hollywood, Houseman went with him as the unofficial supervisor of Citizen Kane, but endless friction with his partner led him to accept a contract with Selznick.
DOS hoped to leverage Houseman’s British background, “as well as my cultivation and charm,” in Houseman’s words, “to establish good personal relationships with Hitch and to cajole and encourage him into conceiving and preparing an original screenplay.”
“I had heard of him as a fat man given to scabrous jokes,” Houseman wrote later, “a gourmet and an ostentatious connoisseur of fine wines. What I was unprepared for was a man of exaggeratedly delicate sensibilities, marked by a harsh Catholic education and the scars from a social system against which he was in perpetual revolt and which had left him suspicious and vulnerable, alternatively docile and defiant.”
Though they had met before, Houseman got his first close-up of Hitchcock on this project, and according to film historian Leonard Leff, he found himself “mesmerized.”
“His passion was for his work, which he approached with an intelligence and almost scientific clarity to which I was unaccustomed,” Houseman recalled. “Working with Hitch really meant listening to him talk—anecdotes, situations, characters, revelations and reversals, which he would think up at night and try out on us during the day and … the surviving elements were finally strung together into some sort of story in accordance with carefully calculated and elaborately plotted rhythms.”
The first three Hitchcocks did most of the initial scutwork at St. Cloud Road. One day, a visiting reporter observed Mr. and Mrs. Hitchcock and Joan Harrison “rushing into different rooms with typewriters and manuscripts, taking over tables, chairs and lounges and at once starting to work feverishly, paying no attention to anybody but themselves.” The progress was punctuated, the reporter observed, by delivery of “huge goblets of Strawberries Romanoff, a concoction of ice cream, fruit and liqueurs,” upon which Hitchcock gorged, “then dozed off as the frenetic activity continued around him.”
After making crucial contributions to the story, Harrison decided to leave the project to strike out on her own in Hollywood. While Hitchcock had expected her to leave eventually—indeed, in interviews, predicting her eventual success away from him—he panicked at losing Harrison at this juncture, and tried to extract extra money from DOS to entice her to stay. When Selznick refused, Hitchcock stormed out of the office. Houseman the diplomat quelled the emergency; then, after things settled down and Harrison had vacated, a young man named Peter Viertel came to the rescue.
As a junior writer under contract to Selznick, Viertel would keep the first-draft costs down. Barely twenty-one, Viertel had received glowing reviews for his first novel but as yet had no screen credits (nor, for that matter, did Houseman). But as the son of two illustrious figures—the Viennese poet, playwright, and film director Berthold Viertel, and the Polish-born actress Salka Viertel, well known as Greta Garbo’s confidante and scenarist—he came with a pedigree. Hitchcock liked mixing precocious writers with famous ones, and the well-bred Viertel was his sort of eager beaver.
At their first
meeting, Viertel confessed he didn’t really know how to write a script. “I’ll teach you, my dear boy,” Hitchcock cooed, “in about twenty minutes.” The director then launched into an elaborate explanation of the difference between establishing shots and close-ups; using musical terms, he said that long establishing shots were like long overtures (not always necessary) and close-ups were like cymbal crashes used for dramatic effect. He urged Viertel not to worry about writing lengthy descriptions or too much dialogue (“no speeches, please”). “The main thing,” Hitchcock said, “is to get a script together to get the whole project moving.”
The second shift of three Hitchcocks took over—Viertel, Houseman, and the director. Mrs. Hitchcock absented herself, accompanying Pat to New York for rehearsals and performances of the John Van Druten play Solitaire. (Dudley Digges had replaced Auriol Lee as director, after Lee was killed in a car accident heading back east after Suspicion.) Pat would earn unqualified praise from theater critics; but the play opened just a few days after Pearl Harbor, and lasted only three weeks before closing. Immersed in Saboteur, her father never saw her Broadway debut.
The new three Hitchcocks did their best to keep abreast of the headlines throughout that fall of 1941. The saboteur script raced ahead of widespread fears that Nazi-sympathizing fifth columnists might try to sabotage U.S. heavy industry. The hero became a California munitions worker, falsely accused of sabotage, who eludes arrest and flees cross-country, trying to prove his innocence. Dragged along with him on this “double chase” is a blond billboard model (a tweaking of Hitchcock’s friend, the model and beauty consultant Anita Colby). One of Hitchcock’s ideas, which dated from the earliest days of work on the story, was the climax—with the real saboteur, cornered by his pursuers, falling from the upraised torch of the Statue of Liberty.
Alfred Hitchcock Page 42