Alfred Hitchcock

by Patrick McGilligan

  My research into St. Ignatius College was buoyed by a visit to that institution, examining the school records and memorabilia, and reading old issues of the Ignatian Record (the parish newsletter). The St. Ignatius Silver Jubilee Magazine (1894–1919) contains “Reminiscences, 1909-1915” by Reginald Dunn, and other school background. The Reverend Bernard Parkins’s St. Ignatius College, 1894–1994 (St. Ignatius College, 1994) was a vital resource, which Parkins augmented with other material supplied to the author. John O’Riordan interviewed Hitchcock for the Ignatian (summer 1973). Neil P. Hurley’s Souls in Suspense: Hitchcock’s Fright and Delight (Scarecrow, 1983) goes into depth about Hitchcock’s Jesuit upbringing and related Catholic motifs in his films. Cardinal John C. Heenan is quoted from Not the Whole Truth (Hodder & Stoughton, 1971). Besides an interview with Dr. Ambrose King, I drew on his book Strong Medicine: Brothers at Home and Abroad by A. C. King and A. J. King (Churchman, 1990).

  Robert Goold’s letter to the BBC was shown to me, courtesy of Tim Kirby.

  Robert Boyle is quoted here and elsewhere from his oral history in the Margaret Herrick Library, but also from other published and archival sources.

  Other books: Peter Ackroyd, London: The Biography (Chatto & Windus, 2000); Grace Goakes, My Part of the River (Shepheard-Walwyn, 1974); Harry Grant-Whyte, Between Life and Death (Shuter & Shooter, 1976); George Orwell, “Decline of the English Murder,” in Shooting an Elephant, and Other Essays (Secker & Warburg, 1970); Roy Plomley, Desert Island Discs (William Kimber, 1975); W H. Weston, The Story of Leyton and Leytonstone (Exeter, 1921).

  TWO: 1913-1921

  The Henley’s years were greatly informed by Ernest Slater’s One Hundred Years: The Story of Henley’s (Henley’s, 1937) and by pamphlets and background furnished by David Oliver, a current W. T. Henley’s official. Oliver also retrieved original back issues of the Henley Telegraph, leading to the important discovery of additional Hitchcock stories besides “Gas,” the only one heretofore known. W. A. Moore is quoted from issues of the Henley Telegraph.

  “The worst thing was chemistry …” is from “With Family Plot…” by Penelope Gilliatt in the Observer (Aug. 8, 1976). Andrew Sarris is quoted from The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968 (Dutton, 1968). I am indebted to Charles Higham for the bosun’s chair anecdote.

  THREE: 1921-1925

  My research into Islington and Hitchcock’s earliest silent film work was aided by reading the Bioscope and the Kinematograph Weekly in the microforms room of the Golda Meir Library of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. J. Lary Kuhns supplied many clippings from these and other British screen publications of the early 1920s, from his own private collection.

  “Birds flying, hearts breaking …” and “I was given odd jobs of going out to shoot …” are from Dialogue on Film (American Film Institute publication, no.1, 1972).

  Arthur C. Miller is quoted from One Reel a Week (University of California Press, 1967). Seymour Hicks is quoted from Hail Fellow Well Met (Staples Press, 1949). Michael Balcon is quoted from Michael Balcon Presents … a Lifetime of Films (Hutchinson, 1969), but I also explored his papers at the British Film Institute (BFI), and cite from the Hitchcock-Balcon letters. Victor Saville is quoted from Evergreen: Victor Saville in His Own Words with Roy Moseley (Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), but I also drew from his papers at the BFI.

  My information on Alma Reville’s career is culled from a number of publicity releases, interviews, and bylined articles, some in archives as unsourced clippings. These include “Two New British Production Units” by P. L. Mannock, Kinomatograph Weekly (Oct. 8, 1925); “Alma in Wonderland,” Picturegoer (Dec. 1925); “Hitchcock’s Wife a Bit Player, Too” by Wm. Michelfelder, New York World Telegram (Aug. 9, 1954); “Effects by Hitchcock” by Elaine Lane, New York Post (June 21, 1959); “I Don’t Scare Easily, Says Mrs. Hitchcock” by Rita Grosvenor, Sunday Express (Jan. 30, 1972); “One Woman Who Has Never Been Frightened by Mr. Hitchcock” by Ivor Davis, Daily Express (Aug. 4, 1976); and “Mr. and Mrs. Hitchcock” by Joseph McBride, Sight and Sound (autumn 1976).

  “All I can remember …” is from “My Horrifying Husband” by Alma Hitchcock, parts 1 and 2 (undated clipping, TV Times). “He strolled across the set …” is from “My Husband Alfred Hitchcock Hates Suspense” by Mrs. Alfred Hitchcock as told to Martin Abrams, Coronet (Aug. 1964), which also includes her version of the night Hitchcock proposed marriage. “The Woman Who Knows Too Much” by Alfred Hitchcock in McCall’s (March 1956) contains his alternative account. “I married her because …” is from The Egotists. “If I hadn’t met Alma …” is John Russell Taylor from the E! Hollywood True Story documentary about Hitchcock (first broadcast in 1999). “It didn’t stick …” is from Hitchcock’s February 20, 1975, letter to Michael Balcon.

  Pat Hitchcock O’Connell’s book Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Behind the Man (Berkley Books, 2003), written with Laurent Bouzereau, was a recent addition to Hitchcock literature, shedding important light on her mother’s life and career.

  All material pertaining to Hitchcock’s relationship with the Joyce-Selznick Agency, later the Selznick Agency—including correspondence and business memoranda involving Harry Ham, Noll Gurney, Dan Winkler, Sig Marcus, Carl Laemmle Jr., Sam Goldwyn, David O. Selznick, and Myron Selznick—comes from the Myron Selznick Collection in the archives of the Harry Ransom Research Center of the University of Texas, Austin. This material is heavily utilized in chapters 7-10.

  Other articles and books: Charles Barr, ed., All Our Yesterdays: 90 Years of British Cinema (BFI, 1986); Colin Belfrage (pseudonym for Bernard Lewis), All Is Grist (Parallax Press, 1988); Eighteenth Pordenone Silent Film Festival Catalogue; Clive Brook, The Eighty-four Ages (unpublished manuscript, BFI); M. Danischewsky, ed., Michael Balcon’s Twenty-five Years in Films (World Film Publications, 1947); Joseph Garncarz, “The German Hitchcock,” Hitchcock Annual (2000-2001); Michael Balcon: The Pursuit of British Cinema (Museum of Modern Art, 1984); Peter Noble, “Index to the Work of Alfred Hitchcock,” Special Supplement to Sight and Sound (May 1949); Duncan Petrie, The British Cinematographer (BFI, 1996); John Stuart, Caught in the Act (Silent Picture, 1971); Patricia Warren, British Film Studios: An Illustrated History (B. T. Batsford, 1995); Herbert Wilcox, Twenty-five Thousand Sunsets (Bodley Head, 1967). I am especially indebted to J. Lary Kuhn’s definitive article about The Mountain Eagle, which appeared in the 1998-99 Hitchcock Annual.

  FOUR: 1925-1929

  “Two peas in a pod …” is from “On Suspense and Other Film Matters,” Films in Review (April 1950), and “I more or less base my idea of sexuality …” is from Oui (Feb. 1973).

  June is quoted from The Glass Ladder (Heinemann, 1960). Ivor Montagu is quoted from his papers at the BFI, The Youngest Son: Autobiographical Sketches (Lawrence & Wishart, 1970) and “Working with Hitchcock” in Sight and Sound (summer 1980). Angus MacPhail is quoted here and elsewhere from his correspondence to Sidney Bernstein at the BFI, and to Hitchcock in the Hitchcock Collection. Cedric Belfrage is quoted from his unfinished autobiography and from his New York Herald Tribune columns of the 1920s, among the Belfrage Papers in the Tamiment Library of New York University.

  “Top money …” is from Sidney Gilliat’s BECTU transcript.

  Alfred Roome is quoted from my interview but I also referred to his BECTU transcript.

  Other books: Adrian Brunel, Nice Work (Forbes Robertson, 1949); Pam Cook, Gainsborough Pictures (Cassell, 1997); James Hardin, Ivor Novello (W. H. Allen, 1987); Mark Haworth-Booth, E. McKnight Kauffer: A Designer and His Public (G. Fraser, 1979); Ivor Montagu, Film World (Pelican, 1964); Tom Ryall, Alfred Hitchcock and the British Cinema (Croom Helm, 1986).

  FIVE: 1929-1933

  George Pearson is quoted from Flashback: The Autobiography of a British Film-maker (Allen & Unwin, 1957). The Eliot Stannard anecdote pertaining to The Ring comes from Gavin Lambert’s Mainly About Lindsay Anderson: A Memoir (Knopf, 2000). Michael Powell is quoted from A Life in Movies (Knopf, 1987) an
d Million Dollar Movie (Random House, 1992). Freddie Young is quoted from Seventy Light Years (Faber & Faber, 1999).

  “It was almost a matter of committing …” is from George Angell’s “The Time of My Life” interview with Hitchcock for the BBC Home Service (July 30, 1966).

  Charles Landstone is quoted from I Gate-Crashed (Stainer & Bell, 1976).

  Hitchcock’s reflections on actors, “Actors Aren’t REALLY Cattle,” comes from a typed transcript in a file of ghostwritten publicity articles in the Hitchcock Collection.

  Sean O’Casey is quoted from “A Long Ashwednesday” in Rose and Crown (Macmillan, 1952). Hitchcock is photographed bartending in Juno and the Paycock in the Picturegoer (Jan. 1930).

  Henry Kendall is quoted from I Remember Romano’s (Macdonald, 1960). Esmond Knight is quoted from Seeking the Bubble (Hutchinson, 1943). Rodney Ackland is quoted from The Celluloid Mistress with Elspeth Grant (Allan Wingate, 1954).

  Other articles and books: Charles Barr, “Blackmail: Silent and Sound,” Sight and Sound (spring 1983); Daphne du Maurier, Gerald: A Portrait (Victor Gollancz, 1934); Maud Gill, See the Players (Hutchinson, 1938); James Hardin, Gerald du Maurier: The Last Actor-Manager (Hodder & Stoughton, 1989); David Krause, The Letters of Sean O’Casey, vol. 3, 1955-58 (Catholic University of America Press, 1989); Jessie Matthews, Over My Shoulder (W. H. Allen, 1974); Sheridan Morley, Gertrude Lawrence (McGraw-Hill, 1981); Sean O’Casey, The Green Crow (George Braziller, 1956); Garry O’Connor, Sean O’Casey: A Life (Hodder & Stoughton, 1988); Tom Ryall, Blackmail (BFI Film Classics, 1993); Michael Thornton, Jessie Matthews (Hart-Davis, 1974); Asher Boldon Wilson, John Galsworthy’s Letters to Leon Lion (Mouton, 1968).

  SIX: 1933-1937

  Hitchcock’s “possessory” deposition was reprinted in In Their Own Words: The Battle over the Possessory Credit, 1966-1968 (Directors Guild of America booklet).

  The relationship between Hitchcock and Charles Bennett is reconstructed from Bennett’s unpublished memoirs, as well as several lengthy interviews with Bennett: my own interview with Bennett, published in Backstory: Interviews with Screenwriters of Hollywood’s Golden Age (University of California Press, 1986); Lee Server’s in Screenwriter: Words Become Pictures (Main Street Press, 1987); and Matthew Bernstein’s unpublished interview with Bennett for his book Walter Wanger: Hollywood Independent (University of California Press, 1994).

  My portrait of Joan Harrison was informed by numerous clippings, frequently unsourced or undated, from the BFI, the University of Southern California, and the Margaret Herrick Library files. The more extensive articles included “Joan Harrison Worrying About Butter” by Florabel Muir, “It’s a Woman’s World Too” by Ann Daggett, “Specialty: Murder” (no date or by-line), and “Murder, She Says,” by Jerry D. Lewis in Collier’s (Aug. 14, 1943).

  “He’s a master of well thought out effects …” is from Richard Overstreet’s interview in George Cukor: Interviews, ed. Robert Emmet Long (University Press of Mississippi, 2001).

  Peggy Robertson is quoted here and elsewhere in the book from her oral history in the Margaret Herrick Library.

  Datas is quoted from Datas: The Memory Man (Wright & Brown, 1932).

  Stephen D. Youngkin’s The Lost One: A Biography of Peter Lorre (forthcoming, University of California Press) informed my chronicle of the making of The Man Who Knew Too Much and Secret Agent.

  I read Robert Donat’s correspondence with Hitchcock courtesy of the John Rylands University Library, University of Manchester, and quoted from Kenneth Barrow’s Mr. Chips: The Life of Robert Donat (Methuen, 1985). Sylvia Sidney is quoted from Gregory J. M. Catsos’s interview in FILMFAX (Nov. 1990) and Jeff Laffel’s interview in Films in Review (Sept.-Oct. 1994). Brian McFarlane’s excellent oral history Sixty Voices (BFI Publishing, 1992) was reissued in expanded form as The Autobiography of British Cinema (Methuen, 1997); I have particularly drawn from his interviews with Nova Pilbeam and Desmond Tester.

  Other articles and books: John Belton, “Charles Bennett and the Typical Hitchcock Scenario,” Film History 9, no. 3 (1998); T. E. B. Clarke, This Is Where I Came In (Michael Joseph, 1974); Jonathan Croall, Gielgud: A Theatrical Life, 1902-2000 (Continuum, 2001); John Gielgud (with John Miller and John Powell), An Actor and His Time (Applause, 1979); Graham Greene, The Pleasure Dome: The Collected Film Criticism, 1935–40 (Martin Secker & Warburg, 1972); Val Guest, So You Want to Be in Pictures (Reynolds & Hearn, 2001); James Hardin, Emlyn Williams: A Life (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993); Ronald Hayman, John Gielgud (Heinemann, 1971); Louis Levy, Music for the Movies (Sampson Low, Marston, 1948); Sheridan Morley, John Gielgud: The Authorized Biography (Simon & Schuster, 2002); Garry O’Connor, The Secret Woman: A Life of Peggy Ashcroft (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997); C. T., Penrose Tennyson (A. S. Atkinson, 1943); J. C. Trewin, Robert Donat: A Biography (Heinemann, 1968); Emlyn Williams, Emlyn: An Early Autobiography, 1927-1935 (Bodley Head, 1973).

  SEVEN: 1937-1939

  Hitchcock’s article “Search for the Sun” appeared in the New York Times (Feb. 7, 1937), though it is actually a rewrite of “Why Britain’s Countryside Is Not Filmed,” Film Pictorial (Dec. 5, 1936). “The sky was always gray …” is from part 1 (“It’s Only a Movie …”) of a two-part BBC Omnibus documentary about Hitchcock (broadcast in 1986).

  My account of Hitchcock’s first visit to America is culled from “Falstaff in Manhattan” in the New York Times (Sept. 5, 1937), “The Hitchcock Formula” in the New York Times (Feb. 13, 1938), “39 Steps Jolly Good, Hitchcock Discovers” by William Boehnel in the New York World-Telegram (Sept. 1, 1937), “Hitchcock Likes to Smash Cups” by H. Allen Smith in the New York World-Telegram (undated clipping), “Picture Parade” by Janet White (unsourced clipping, 1937), and “London Talk” in the Hollywood Reporter (Oct. 2, 1937).

  Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder are quoted from Launder and Gilliat by Geoff Brown (BFI, 1977), but also from Gilliat’s unpublished memoirs (a portion of which was provided to the author by Charles Barr), Gilliat’s BECTU interview transcript, and “The Early Life of a Screenwriter II,” Kevin Macdonald’s extensive interview in Projections 2 (Faber, 1997).

  Michael Redgrave is quoted from In My Mind’s I: An Actor’s Autobiography (Viking, 1983). Margaret Lockwood is quoted from Lucky Star (Odhams Press, 1955).

  My account of Hitchcock’s first trip to Hollywood is drawn largely from the Myron Selznick Collection, with other details collected from “Hitchcock for Hollywood and the Experience Will Probably Do Him Good” by Herbert Thompson in Film Weekly (July 16, 1938), “Alfred Hitchcock: England’s Best and Biggest Director Goes to Hollywood” by Geoffrey T. Hellman in Life (Nov. 29, 1940), “Picture Plays and Players: Alfred Hitchcock, English Director, to Take a Look at Hollywood” by Eileen Creelman in the New York Sun (June 15, 1938), and “What Happens After That,” Russell Maloney’s profile of the director in the New Yorker (Sept. 10, 1938). Hitchcock muses about American trains in “Hitchcock Steps Off Deadly Trains” by Art Buchwald in the New York Herald Tribune (Jan. 16, 1955). “A long-felt desire …” and “I once thought of opening a film …” are from the New York Times (Feb. 13, 1938).

  “If I do go to Hollywood …” is from “The Censor and Sydney Street” by Leslie Perkoff, World Film News (March 1938). I am grateful to Charles Barr for his research and insights into “‘A Marvelously Dramatic Subject’: Hitchcock’s Titanic Project” from the Hitchcock Annual (2000-2001). The Charles Laughton anecdotes are from Andy Warhol’s interview with Hitchcock in Interview (Sept. 1974) and the director’s dialogue with Pia Lindstrom, one of two Camera Three episodes known as “The Illustrated Hitchcock” (broadcast in 1972).

  Books: Simon Callow, Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor (Methuen, 1987); Charles Higham, Charles Laughton: An Intimate Biography (W H. Allen, 1976); Paul Macnamara, Those Were the Days, My Friend: My Life in Hollywood with David O. Selznick and Others (Scarecrow Press, 1993); Leo Rosten, Hollywood: The Movie Colony, the Movie Makers (Harcourt, Brace, 1941); Kurt Singer, The Laughton Stor
y (John C. Winston, 1954); Hilton Tims, Once a Wicked Lady: A Biography of Margaret Lockwood (Virgin, 1989).

  EIGHT: 1939-1941

  “My Ten Favorite Pictures” is from the New York Sun (March 15, 1939). “Naturally, Selznick dominated the scene …” is from “Hitchcock: In the Hall of Mogul Kings” in the London Times (June 23, 1969).

  Joan Fontaine is quoted from No Bed of Roses (William Morrow, 1978), but also from her Southern Methodist University oral history and published interviews, including Brian McFarlane’s in Cinema Papers (Australia, June 1982), Robert Kendall’s in Hollywood Studio Magazine, no. 3 (1990), and Gregory Speck’s in Interview (Feb. 1987). Speck’s interview was recycled for Hollywood Royalty: Hepburn, Davis, Stewart and Friends at the Dinner Party of the Century (Birch Lane Press, 1992). “We all could see precisely …” is from the BBC documentary “It’s Only A Movie …”

  H. Mark Glancy’s When Hollywood Loved Britain: The Hollywood ‘British’ Film, 1939–45 (Manchester University Press, 1999) greatly enhanced my understanding of Hitchcock’s wartime filmmaking, and the author also corresponded with me, filling in gaps.

  Matthew Bernstein’s Walter Wanger: Hollywood Independent was my primary source on the film producer. I consulted George Turner’s well-researched “Foreign Correspondent—The Best Spy Thriller of All” from American Cinematographer (Aug. 1995). Joel McCrea is quoted on Hitchcock from my interview with him in Film Crazy (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). Michael Balcon’s attack on Hitchcock was published in the London Sunday Dispatch (Aug. 25, 1940), Hitchcock’s reply came in the New York World-Telegram (Aug. 27, 1940), and the British anti-Foreign Correspondent broadside appeared in the Documentary News Letter (Dec. 1940).