In fact, Steinbeck’s contribution to Lifeboat was like that of dozens of other Hitchcock writers over the years, whose official credits simplified a complicated collaborative process. His case has engendered decades of misunderstanding. Articles in the Steinbeck Quarterly have argued that Steinbeck was principally responsible for the “allegory of a world decimated by global warfare,” and that his original story was profoundly ironic and broadly humanitarian, while the eventual Hitchcock film was “suspensefully dramatic but morally empty.” Literature/Film Quarterly has also contributed to the prevailing impression that Steinbeck wrote a “more realistic, meditative” story, compared to the “clichés, stereotypes and simplistics” of the Hitchcock version.
“Actually, Hitchcock’s idea was to do a movie on the merchant marine,” Jackson J. Benson wrote in The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer. “It was Steinbeck, long before he was brought into the project, who had the lifeboat idea, and it was he who wrote the original screenplay. His work was then doctored to make it slicker and less allegorical.”
But incontrovertible evidence buried since the 1940s in studio and legal files proves these claims to be false. It’s true that Steinbeck did augment and amplify Hitchcock’s story in his novelette. But what he wrote, besides having a point of view that was introspective and uncinematic, was hardly up to his own best standards. Even his own agent and editor, Annie Laurie Williams and Pat Covici, regarded the novelette as “very inferior Steinbeck, however good it might be for pictures,” in the words of one Twentieth Century–Fox memo. Indeed, it was Williams and Covici, not the studio, who successfully pressured Steinbeck not to publish the novelette. Chagrined by Steinbeck’s decision, the studio offered a bogus magazine version co-bylined by Hitchcock and a studio publicist.
There was a false start with another writer (who made at least one suggestion Hitchcock incorporated, changing the wealthy woman’s ring into a Cartier diamond bracelet) before Lifeboat was inherited by one of Hollywood’s finest stooges.
Jo Swerling was a cigar-chomping ex-newspaperman and playwright from New York, lured to Hollywood in 1929 to help cope with talkies. He wrote notable films for Frank Borzage, Rouben Mamoulian, William Wyler, and John Ford, and was a regular scenarist—frequently in combination with Robert Riskin—for Frank Capra. (The finishing writer on It’s a Wonderful Life was Swerling.) Although unknown to the general public (especially compared to John Steinbeck), Swerling was regarded inside the industry as the consummate pro, a self-effacing and companionable expert at comedy and drama.
Swerling shook hands with Hitchcock for the first time in the office of Kenneth MacGowan, who had recommended him as the best available man under contract. Swerling never met or spoke with Steinbeck. Later, when there was a lawsuit against the film by a third party alleging plagiarism against Hitchcock and Lifeboat, Swerling recounted in a deposition how little he valued Steinbeck’s novelette.
“I read the [Steinbeck] script,” recollected Swerling, “and decided that I would take the assignment only with the consideration that I would not have to follow the script, the reason being that Steinbeck had written it entirely from the point of view of the mental reaction of an individual, which would be exceedingly difficult to dramatize with a camera. And there were other elements in the lineup that I did not like. Thereupon it was agreed that we would start from scratch, using the basic idea. After the first reading that I gave to the Steinbeck story, I never again referred to it, nor did anybody else working on the picture.”
Asked how a writer of Steinbeck’s stature could have failed to produce a satisfactory script, Swerling explained, “The industry could give you thousands of examples of an original idea being given to first-rate writers, men of national reputation, who thereupon, to use a vulgar term, ‘bitched’ them, and which ideas were subsequently handed to professional screen writers, without national reputations, who thereupon made acceptable screen plays out of them.”
At times, in his deposition, Swerling made deprecating comments about the Steinbeck novelette which, he hastened to add, were “not for publication.” Steinbeck hadn’t really shirked the task, Swerling insisted. He had done precisely what he had been paid to do. His name was an asset to the film, and the studio wanted to preserve it as an asset.
Swerling didn’t claim the final script he turned in was particularly original, or brilliant. “The formula of Lifeboat is a standard formula,” he cheerfully admitted. “Sometimes the people are segregated on a desert island, as in the case of The Admirable Crichton. Sometimes they are in a hotel, as in the case of Grand Hotel. Sometimes they are in a doomed submarine. The locale changes, but the principle is the same. The principle is that you get a group of people in the environment which forces them to be together.
“We claim no originality, and I imagine that Hitchcock would claim no originality in the conception of the idea itself, excepting insofar as it related in this particular example to the War.”
What message, lawyers asked Swerling, was the average moviegoer supposed to derive from Lifeboat?
“He was supposed to say to himself, ‘Beware of the Nazis bearing gifts,’ ” replied Swerling. “After the War, when you meet these people, remember that they are likely to turn right around and do the same thing over again.”
The best thing about Lifeboat, Swerling stated—and the only really original thing about the film—was the Hitchcockian theme of “the world in minuscule—something that Steinbeck completely fell down on.” That was an idea the director had touted, Swerling said, from the first moment they met.
Indeed, the true author of Lifeboat wasn’t Steinbeck, Swerling insisted in his deposition—but neither was it Swerling himself. Every character, every dramatic incident, scene after scene, was largely or “entirely” Hitchcock’s. “Every move in the story basically was Hitchcock’s move,” Swerling said, “In other words, I would say that Hitchcock was entitled to the credit ‘Original Story by Alfred Hitchcock,’ provided he had chosen to make a claim to it.”
Not once in Hollywood did Hitchcock take screen credit for a story or script. Indeed, he bent over backward to exclude himself in favor of all other eligible writers, with the interesting exceptions of Strangers on a Train and the remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much. Any of his scenarists would have understood his taking a cocredit; one way or another, he picked the stories, guided the script meetings, articulated the characters, visualized the key situations, and edited the drafts. When absolutely necessary, he even wrote dialogue. Paradoxically, it was his modesty as a writer, and his generosity with credits, that opened the door for complaints from writers who felt his very silence on the subject was a way of stealing their thunder.
Both Hitchcocks were humble about their writing, and throughout the late spring and early summer of 1943 Alma Reville rejoined the project, attending meetings with Hitchcock, Jo Swerling, and producer Kenneth MacGowan to hash out the final script.
Since Hitchcock wasn’t keen on MacKinlay Kantor’s material, and as Steinbeck’s novelette unfolded entirely in flashback, the team started over on the film’s opening scene. While toying with different openings, Hitchcock made a point of seeing the new Warner Bros. war drama Action in the North Atlantic, and the morning after the preview announced that Lifeboat had to avoid any obvious similarities by starting its story immediately after the explosion, introducing the individual characters as they clamber aboard the lifeboat. “This saved the company $150,000, and made a much better opening,” recalled Swerling.
Steinbeck’s “dramatic narrative” was actually an interior monologue, devoid of real action or conflict—which was surprisingly undramatic. The author himself admitted to lawyers that Hitchcock carried over only one specific dramatic incident of his from the novelette—the plight of the drowned baby and despondent mother, which crops up early in the film.
Revamping the characters, Hitchcock improved on their personalities and relationships, tying them closer to the drama. Steinbeck’s “ordinary seaman” B
ud, who had narrated the novelette in a “dese, dem, and dose” vernacular, now became Kovac, and the script abandoned his point of view, making him a secondary character. Hitchcock returned the film’s focus to the characters who intrigued him the most: the well-to-do Connie Porter, and Willie the German.
Though Kovac became less of a proletarian, he also became, arguably, less cardboard. “Practically a Communist,” in Hitchcock’s words, Kovac in the film becomes a more nuanced symbol of lumpen politique whose conflict with Rittenhouse is depicted as a miniparable of management versus labor. And Steinbeck had presented Rittenhouse, blandly, as the owner of an airplane factory; the film made him a gleeful capitalist with leadership qualities—“more or less a Fascist,” Hitchcock told François Truffaut. It is Rittenhouse who presciently anticipates a boom after the war and forecasts China as an expanding market, and Rittenhouse who is friendliest with Willie.
Steinbeck had woven “very little love interest” into his novelette, as the author himself conceded to lawyers, and no hint of any budding romance between Kovac and Connie Porter. Yet in the film their animal desire for each other is a key component of the tension. (“Dying together’s even more personal than living together,” Kovac declares, grabbing Connie Porter and kissing her when it looks as though the lifeboat is about to sink.)
Porter had been described by Steinbeck as a onetime stage actress (“kind of pretty when she’s fixed up”) who got elected to Congress on an antilabor Republican platform. This was too on the nose for Hitchcock, who had his leading lady in mind before Steinbeck’s name was ever mentioned. So now he, Alma, and Jo Swerling remade Connie Porter into a flamboyant newspaper correspondent, a Dorothy Thompson type, worldly and cynical.
The German in the lifeboat had been Hitchcock’s conception from the first. He wanted Willie to be an über-German, fluent in English, and—the most inspired twist—the smartest, strongest person in the boat. Hitchcock’s Willie conceals a flask of water and a compass (all details that were added by Hitchcock, Steinbeck told lawyers). He’s also a doctor, and saves the seaman Gus’s life by crudely amputating his leg, a Hitchcockian scene that juggled comedy and tragedy. Then the German takes over, rowing the boat toward the enemy as the other passengers lose their strength and wits under the blazing sun. When a dazed Gus spies Willie sipping water, Willie throws overboard the man whose life he has saved, drowning him. This, the most Hitchcockian scene in the film, was absent from the novelette.
There was no such Willie in Steinbeck’s narrative, nor was there any Gus. There was a character who metamorphosed into Gus, but “nobody like him, really,” Steinbeck admitted to lawyers. These were all Hitchcock’s characters, fleshed out by Swerling. Steinbeck told lawyers he detested Hitchcock’s version of Willie.
Later, during his own deposition for the plagiarism lawsuit, Hitchcock was obliged to answer a series of questions to establish the origins of the film’s characters, scenes, main incidents, and ideas. His answers establish how precisely he kept track of the tangled authorship of one of his typically tangled scripts—and how, privately, he viewed his own contribution.
Who, the attorneys asked, thought of the character of the Nazi captain?
“I did.”
“The character of the colored man.”
“John Steinbeck.”
“The incident of the colored man conducting the burial at sea.”
“As far as my recollection goes, it was MacKinlay Kantor.”
“The character of Gus Smith, the sailor.”
“I think Jo Swerling.”
“The incident of the amputation of Gus Smith’s leg and his thirst for drinking salt water.”
“Jo Swerling.”
“The characters of the crazy woman and her baby.”
“I would say Steinbeck.”
“The activities of the crazy woman with her baby in the lifeboat.”
“I would say Steinbeck.”
“The idea of the Nazi captain having a compass concealed on his person.”
“Myself, in conjunction with Swerling.”
“The idea of the Nazi captain being pushed off the lifeboat.”
“To my recollection, Steinbeck and Swerling.”
“The idea of the Nazi captain being beaten to death with the shoe from the foot of the amputated leg.”
“Myself.”
“The character of Connie Porter.”
“Steinbeck and Swerling.”
“The incident of fishing with a diamond bracelet as bait.”
“I do not remember.”*
“The incident of the colored man playing the flute.”
“Steinbeck.”
“The incident of Kovac taking charge of the boat, directing its course and the rejection of the Nazi captain for this job.”
“I do not recall. That was in conference with many people.”
“The idea of constructing a tattered sail for the lifeboat.”
“I do not recall.”
“The character of Rittenhouse, the wealthy man, and his activities in the lifeboat.”
“Steinbeck and Swerling and myself.”
Even in private, fighting a charge that he’d misappropriated another’s work, Hitchcock took few pains to claim authorship; like Swerling, he also made no claims to originality.
“There were [many] survivor stories, and survivor books published in the newspapers and magazines,” Hitchcock told the lawyers matter-of-factly. “In other words, it [the film] wasn’t the most unique idea.”
Fishing with a shiny bracelet for bait? “Read any kind of lifeboat story,” Hitchcock advised the lawyers. “They all try to fish. … no originality in that at all.”*
That business in the film about Gus trying to drink salt water? “That’s in the Bible,” his attorney interjected. “I would say in roughly 3,782 lifeboat narrations,” Hitchcock remarked.
Some writers have contended, absurdly, that Hitchcock fretted about Steinbeck’s “political baggage” (the author sided with progressive causes). If they had any political quarrels, they were over speechifying, which bored the director in private and on-screen. Jo Swerling was as liberal as Steinbeck, if not more so. Under Hitchcock, the film became less pedantic; the labor versus capital motifs were strengthened (Connie Porter sarcastically dubs Kovac “Tovarich,” and reminds him of his responsibility to the Comintern); the references to fascism and the political prisoners were introduced (“Some of my best friends are in concentration camps”); and in the end the film leaned further left politically than Steinbeck’s novelette.
Swerling finished by late July. Then Hitchcock reviewed the shooting script one last time with MacGowan, pushing back the start date as cuts and improvements were made.
From his very first meeting with Kenneth MacGowan, Hitchcock knew whom he wanted for his leading lady. To play the flamboyant reporter, who somehow materializes in the lifeboat looking like she has stepped out of a fashion layout—mink coat, jewel case, portable typewriter, and Brownie 16 mm camera intact—he wanted a living legend. He was only passingly acquainted with Tallulah Bankhead, who had taken London by storm in 1923 when she appeared in The Dancers, a play by Gerald du Maurier and Viola Tree; of course, he had admired her in the stage production of Blackmail, too. (He had even slipped a compliment to her into Murder!, when a character praises another actress as “pure Tallulah.”)
Bankhead was a legend, only on the stage; she was notorious for her lack of success in film. Moreover, by 1943 she was forty years old, hardly a young, glamorous Hollywood leading actress. That was undoubtedly part of her appeal for Hitchcock, who liked contrary casting, and the like-minded MacGowan approved the idea.
The director sent one of the earliest treatments to the actress, who signed on at once, allowing Hitchcock to ensure that her colorful personality could be written into the role. According to Bankhead, “He kept making my part like me and I kept saying: ‘Don’t make me say “dahling,” they’ll think I’m playing myself,’ but I did what he told me.” L
ater, after she came to Hollywood for the filming, Hitchcock told the actress that Connie Porter was the least likely sort of person he could think of plunking into the lifeboat, and Bankhead was “the most oblique, incongruous bit of casting I could think of.”
Burly William Bendix, who specialized in playing good-natured American joes, was cast as Gus, the sailor with a gangrenous leg. Henry Hull, a veteran of films since 1917, was cast as Rittenhouse, while Hitchcock gave English actress Heather Angel the small but memorable part of the mother who drowns herself. (Angel also had portrayed the maid in Suspicion.) A young actress under studio contract, Mary Anderson—who had played a small part in Gone With the Wind—was cast as the Red Cross nurse Alice.
The role of the Negro seaman, Joe, was assigned to Canada Lee, who had played Bigger Thomas in Orson Welles’s vaunted stage production of Native Son. Hitchcock spotted Lee, who had appeared in only one minor film, in a screen test sent over by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. His casting was a subtle indication of how Hitchcock saw the character. Lee, who had only a brief screen career—ending with his blacklisting and premature death in 1952—could be counted on to bring strength and dignity to any performance.
If the part of Connie Porter grew in the script drafts, Kovac—the narrator of Steinbeck’s novelette—lost ground. Yet he remained important as the only man who poses any physical risk to the German, and the post-Steinbeck rewrites would accent his sexual attraction to Connie Porter—although their chemistry is fractious, as much instinctual hate as eventual love. The actor feeding lines to Lee in the MGM test was John Hodiak, a square-jawed ex-radio actor with minor screen experience. By now Hitchcock knew what trouble he’d have coaxing Gary Cooper or Henry Fonda into his lifeboat, and so Hodiak, a relative unknown with a correspondingly affordable salary, was cast as Kovac.
Alfred Hitchcock Page 48