Alfred Hitchcock

by Patrick McGilligan

  Hitchcock discusses the possibilities of color in “Cinema Matters” by Virginia Wright, an undated Hollywood Citizen-News article in the Suspicion microfiche at the Margaret Herrick Library.

  Bill Krohn supplied me with his illuminating piece about Suspicion, “Ambivalence,” which appeared in French in Trafic (spring 2002), and in English in the Hitchcock Annual (2003-4).

  Samson Raphaelson’s anecdote about the benzedrine dinner party comes from the Spellbound publicity file in the Margaret Herrick Library.

  Cary Grant gave few substantive interviews in his career, but for this book I have drawn on “Notorious Gentleman” by Ruth Waterbury in Photoplay (Jan. 1947), “Cary Grant—Indestructible Pro” by Richard G. Hubler in Coronet (Aug. 1957), “The Riddle of Cary Grant” by Eleanor Harris in McCall’s (Sept. 1958), “What It Means to Be a Star” by Grant himself in Films and Filming (July 1961), and Kent Schuelke’s interview in Interview (Jan. 1987). I have also cited from Maureen Donaldson and William Royce, An Affair to Remember: My Life with Cary Grant (G. K. Hall, 1990), Charles Higham and Roy Moseley, Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart (Harcourt Brace, 1989), and Nancy Nelson, Evenings with Cary Grant (William Morrow, 1991).

  For details of the Santa Cruz residence, I have relied on two excellent articles: “Hitchcock Had Link to Santa Cruz” by Ross Eric Gibson in the San Jose Mercury News (Nov. 19, 1994) and Catherine Graham’s “Hitch’s Retreat” in the Santa Cruz County Sentinel (Aug. 13, 1999).

  Hitchcock’s tribute to Ford is reprinted in Galyn Studlar and Matthew Bernstein, eds., John Ford Made Westerns: Filming the Legend in the Sound Era (Indiana University Press, 2001).

  My account of Hitchcock’s relationship with the Film Censor in England and the Production Code in Hollywood was aided by Gerald Gardner’s The Censorship Papers: Movie Censorship Letters from the Hays Office, 1934–1968 (Dodd, Mead., 1987); Raymond Moley’s The Hays Office (Bobbs-Merrill, 1945); Jeffrey Richards’s “The British Board of Film Censors and Content Control in the 1930s: Images of Britain,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 1, no. 2 (1981); Murray Schumach’s The Face on the Cutting Room Floor (William Morrow, 1964); Anthony Slide’s ‘Banned in the U.S.A.’: British Films in the United States and Their Censorship, 1933-1960 (I. B. Tauris, 1998); and Frank Walsh’s Sin and Censorship: The Catholic Church and the Motion Picture Industry (Yale University Press, 1996).

  Other articles and books: Billy Altman, Laughter’s Gentle Soul: The Life of Robert Benchley (W W Norton, 1997); Osmond Borradaile (with Anita Borradaile Hadley), Life Through a Lens: Memoirs of a Cinematographer (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001); Roland Flamini, Scarlett, Rhett, and a Cast of Thousands: The Filming of Gone With the Wind (Macmillan, 1975); Susan Lowndes, ed., Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes, 1911-1947 (Chatto & Windus, 1971); Miklós Rózsa, Double Life: The Autobiography of Miklos Rozsa (Midas Books, 1982); Donald Spoto, Laurence Olivier: A Biography (HarperCollins, 1992); Donald Spoto, Notorious: The Life of Ingrid Bergman (HarperCollins, 1997); Bob Thomas, Selznick (Doubleday, 1970).

  NINE: 1941-1944

  John Houseman is quoted from Unfinished Business: Memoirs, 1902-1988: Run-Through, Front and Center, and Final Dress (Applause, 1989). The strawberries Romanoff anecdote is from “‘Hitch’ Tops, Flagg Says” by James Montgomery Flagg in the Hollywood Citizen-News (Nov. 6, 1941). Priscilla Lane is quoted from Doug McClelland’s Forties Film Talk (McFarland, 1992). Norman Lloyd is quoted from my interview with him, but also from Stages of Life in Theatre, Film and Television (Limelight, 1993), and from other published interviews, including “Norman Lloyd: Working with Hitch” by Tom Weaver in Classic Images (April 2000) and “The Man on the Statue of Liberty” by Ira Sandler in FILMFAX (April-May, 2003).

  My account of the making of Shadow of a Doubt is drawn from the Universal Studio Collection and Jack Skirball’s Papers in the USC archives, and from Thornton Wilder’s Papers at Yale. I have cited The Enthusiast: A Life of Thornton Wilder by Gilbert A. Harrison (Ticknor & Fields, 1983), and quoted Wilder from The Letters of Alexander Woollcott, eds. Beatrice Kaufman and Joseph Hennessey (Viking, 1944). Hitchcock recalls Wilder borrowing from Hemingway in “In Charge,” New Yorker (March 30, 1963). The Gordon McDonell background of the original story is related in Hitchcock’s Notebooks. Joseph Cotten is quoted from Vanity Will Get You Somewhere (Mercury House, 1987). Teresa Wright is quoted from “Teresa Wright on Shadow of a Doubt” in Projections 7 (Faber, 1997).

  All the treatments and drafts of Lifeboat, the studio memoranda, legal depositions, and court papers relating to the case of Sidney Easton v. Twentieth Century–Fox Film Corp. were furnished by Twentieth Century–Fox. Kenneth MacGowan’s Papers at the University of California at Los Angeles provided additional documentation.

  Hume Cronyn is quoted from his correspondence with me, his papers at the Library of Congress, “Melodrama Maestro” by Cronyn in Maclean’s (Nov. 1, 1944), and A Terrible Liar (William Morrow, 1991). Walter Slezak is quoted from What Time’s the Next Swan? (Doubleday, 1962).

  Philip Kemp wrote about Aventure Malgache and Bon Voyage in Sight and Sound (Nov. 1993).

  Other articles and books: Jackson J. Benson, The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer (Viking Press, 1984); Dennis Brian, Tallulah, Darling (Macmillan, 1980); MacDonald Carey, The Days of My Life (St. Martin’s Press, 1991); Martin Grams Jr., Suspense: Twenty Years of Thrills and Chills (Morris Publishing, 1993); Robert E. Morseberger, “Adrift in Steinbeck’s Lifeboat,” Literature/Film Quarterly (fall 1976); Roy Simmonds, John Steinbeck: The War Years, 1939-1945 (Bucknell University Press, 1996); George Turner, “Saboteur: Hitchcock Set Free,” American Cinematographer (Nov.-Dec. 1993); George Turner, “Hitchcock’s Mastery Is Beyond Doubt in Shadow,” American Cinematographer (May 1993); Bret Wood, “Foreign Correspondence: The Rediscovered War Films of Alfred Hitchcock,” Film Comment (July-Aug. 1993).

  TEN: 1944-1947

  Alan Osbiston’s anecdote about Hecht and Hitchcock playacting Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman comes from the unpublished version of All Is Grist. I have relied upon “The Unknown Hitchcock: Watchtower over Tomorrow” by Sidney Gottlieb from the Hitchcock Annual (1996-97), but augmented Gottlieb’s research with my delvings into the Edward R. Stettinius Papers. Ben Hecht is quoted from his papers and from A Child of the Century (Simon & Schuster, 1954). Hitchcock refers to “a fascinating day at California Institute of Technology trying to get data on the atomic bomb” in “A Liberated Hitchcock Dreams Gaudy Dreams of Technicolor” by Thornton Delehanty, New York Herald Tribune (April 22, 1945). Frank Nugent mentions the visit to Dr. Millikan in “Assignment in Hollywood,” Good Housekeeping (Nov. 1945).

  Ingrid Bergman is quoted from My Story (Delacorte Press, 1980) and Laurence Leamer’s As Time Goes By (Harper & Row, 1986). Gregory Peck is quoted from Hollywood Royalty, and the Krohn, Spoto, and Taylor books, but I also drew on his Southern Methodist University oral history. Salvador Dalí is quoted from Meredith Etherington-Smith’s The Persistence of Memory: A Biography of Dalí (Random House, 1992). James Bigwood’s definitive “Solving a Spellbound Puzzle,” re-creating the Hitchcock-Salvador Dalí collaboration, appeared in American Cinematographer (June 1991).

  Edith Head is quoted from Edith Head’s Hollywood with Paddy Calistro (E. P. Dutton, 1983) and The Dress Doctor with Jane Kesner Ardmore (Little, Brown, 1959).

  I have drawn extensively from the Sidney Bernstein Papers at the War Museum (which contains material relating to all the wartime information films) as well as Bernstein’s holdings at the BFI (relating to Transatlantic and other projects). I have consulted the extensive Warner Bros. Collection in the USC archives. These archives yielded background, information, financial details, publicity material, and memoranda and correspondence between Bernstein and Hitchcock, and others associated with their mutual endeavors. I have also cited Caroline Moorehead’s excellent Sidney Bernstein (Jonathan Cape, 1984).

  The making of “F3080,” or “Memories of the Camp,” is recount
ed in “Out of the Archives: The Horror Film that Hitchcock Couldn’t Bear to Watch” by Norman Lebrecht in the Sunday Times (Feb. 17, 1984).

  Bess Taffel is quoted from my interview with her in Tender Comrades (St. Martin’s Press, 1997).

  “I even knew what lens I would use …” is from “Hitchcockney from Hollywood” by John Barber, Leader Magazine (May 25, 1946).

  Hitchcock is quoted on the subject of Under Capricorn in Hollywood Talks Turkey. Jack Cardiff is quoted from my interview with him and from Magic Hour (Faber, 1996). Ann Todd is quoted from The Eighth Veil (William Kimber, 1980).

  Other articles and books: Jack Cardiff, “The Problems of Lighting and Photographing Under Capricorn,” American Cinematographer (Oct. 1949); Doug Fetherling, The Five Lives of Ben Hecht (Lester and Orpen, 1977); Leonard Leff, “Cutting Notorious,” Film Comment (Mar-Apr. 1999); Herb A. Lightman, “Cameraman’s Director,” American Cinematographer (April 1947); William MacAdams, Ben Hecht: The Man Behind the Legend (Scribner’s, 1990); Ronald Mavor, Dr. Mavor and Mr. Bridie (Canongate and the National Library of Scotland, 1988).

  ELEVEN: 1947-1950

  Arthur Laurents is quoted from Original Story By (Knopf, 2000). Laurents declined to be interviewed for this book, but I consulted other interviews with him, including my own from Backstory 2 (University of California Press, 1991). Laurents answered a handful of questions by E-mail. Farley Granger is quoted from his BBC transcript, “Out into the World” by Gordon Gow in Films and Filming (Oct. 1973), and “Granger on a Train,” Jessie Lilley’s interview in Scarlet Street (winter 1996).

  I consulted numerous interviews and articles about James “Jimmy” Stewart. These include “The Many Splendored Actor: An Interview With Jimmy Stewart” by Neil P. Hurley in the New Orleans Review (spring 1983), “James Stewart: It’s a Wonderful Life” by Ray Comiskey in Cinema Papers (Jan. 1986), David Denicolo’s interview in Interview (Apr. 1990), “Small-Town Guy” by Mike Wilmington in Film Comment (Mar.-Apr. 1990), and Gregory Solman’s interview in Projections 5 (Faber, 1996). I also referred to the biography Pieces of Time: The Life of James Stewart by Gary Fishgall (Scribner’s, 1997).

  Whitfield Cook is quoted from his journal, from his interview with me, and from his BBC transcript.

  Michael Wilding is quoted from The Wilding Way (St. Martin’s Press, 1982). I have quoted correspondence from the Marlene Dietrich Papers in Berlin, and from the actress’s autobiography, Marlene (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1989), Steven Bach’s biography Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend (Morrow, 1992), and her daughter Maria Riva’s Marlene Dietrich (Knopf, 1993). “The heroine’s mother was like mother …” is from Films in Review (Apr. 1950).

  Other books: Sean French, Patrick Hamilton: A Life (Faber, 1993); Bruce Hamilton, The Light Went Out: The Life of Patrick Hamilton (Constable, 1972); Margaret Case Harriman, Take Them Up Tenderly (Knopf, 1944); Joe Morella and Edward Z. Epstein, Jane Wyman (Delacorte Press, 1985); Graham Payn and Sheridan Morley, The Noel Coward Diaries (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1982); Dimitri Tiomkin and Prosper Buranelli, Please Don’t Hate Me (Doubleday, 1959); Virginia Yates, “Rope Sets a Precedent,” American Cinematographer (July 1948).

  TWELVE: 1950-1953

  Hitchcock’s February 20, 1974, letter rejecting Alma’s participation in a book about “The Women Who Wrote the Movies” is in the Hitchcock Collection. William K. Everson’s interview was one of the “Illustrated Hitchcock” episodes for Camera Three.

  To trace the collaboration between Hitchcock and Raymond Chandler, and the script evolution of Strangers on a Train, I have drawn on my interviews with Whitfield Cook and Czenzi Ormonde, and cited Chandler’s correspondence from Raymond Chandler Speaking, ed. Dorothy Gardiner and Kathrine Sorley Walker (Houghton Mifflin, 1970) and Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler, ed. Frank MacShane (Delta, 1987). Robert C. Carringer’s article about the political subtext of Strangers on a Train, “Collaboration and Concepts of Authorship,” appeared in PMLA (Mar. 2001). I also referred to Al Clark’s Raymond Chandler in Hollywood (Proteus, 1983), Gene D. Phillips’s Creatures of Darkness: Raymond Chandler, Detective Fiction and Film Noir (University Press of Kentucky, 2000), and Jon Tuska’s In Manors and Alleys: A Casebook on the American Detective Film (Greenwood Press, 1988).

  “Afraid of any brush …” is from Alma Reville’s notes in the publicity file of Suspicion in the Hitchcock Collection.

  The Laura Elliott (a.k.a. Kasey Rogers) anecdote is from Tom Weaver’s interview with the actress in Science Fiction Confidential: Interviews with Twenty-three Monster Stars and Filmmakers (McFarland, 2002).

  Brian Aherne is quoted from A Proper Job (Houghton Mifflin, 1969). Karl Malden is quoted from When Do I Start? (Simon & Schuster, 1997). Bill Krohn augmented my account of I Confess with background on “Paul Anthelme,” his own research from the USC files, and insights into the film.

  The anecdote about Hitchcock at the Canadian premiere of I Confess comes from Giles Pelletier’s interview in Le Soleil (Quebec, Aug. 14, 1999), while other background comes from “Hitchcock’s Quebec Shoot” by Jean-Claude Marineau in Cinéma Canada (Mar. 1985).

  Peter Bordanaro’s illuminating article about Dial M for Murder, “A Play by Frederick Knott/A Film by Alfred Hitchcock,” appeared in Sight and Sound (summer 1976).

  Grace Kelly is quoted from the Taylor and Spoto books, as well as from several biographies about her, including Steven England, Grace of Monaco (Doubleday, 1984); Robert Lacey, Grace (G. P. Putnam’s, 1994); Joshua Logan, Movie Stars, Real People and Me (Delacorte Press, 1978); James Spada, Grace: The Secret Lives of a Princess (Doubleday, 1987).

  Other books: Patricia Bosworth, Montgomery Clift (Harcourt, 1978); Merv Griffin, Merv: An Autobiography (Simon & Schuster, 1980).

  THIRTEEN: 1953-1955

  “We can all be millionaires …” is from Hitchcock’s December 7, 1978, letter to Lawrence Read, in the Hitchcock Collection. Bill Krohn wrote about Hitchcock’s art collection in “Le musée secret de M. Hitchcock” in Cahiers du Cinéma, no. 559 (July-Aug. 2001).

  My understanding of Hitchcock’s Paramount period was enhanced by Herbert Coleman’s The Hollywood I Knew, A Memoir: 1916-1988 (Scarecrow Press, 2003), portions of which I read in draft form. I also conducted several interviews with Coleman, and he answered brief queries by mail. Variety is quoted on Don Hartman and Y. Frank Freeman from Hartman’s obituary in the March 26, 1958, issue.

  John Michael Hayes has been extensively interviewed, but I also interviewed him for this biography. Other Hayes interviews I have drawn upon include Susan Green’s in Backstory; “Setting the Record Straight” by Steve Cohen in Columbia Film View (winter/spring 1990); and “The Hayes Office” by Richard Valley in Scarlet Street, nos. 21 and 22 (winter 1996). Steven DeRosa’s Writing with Hitchcock: The Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and John Michael Hayes (Faber, 2001) focuses on the complicated relationship between the two men.

  The making of Rear Window is well reported in “Rear Window” by Arthur E. Gavin in American Cinematographer (Feb. 1954) and “Hitchcock’s Techniques Tell Rear Window Story” by David Atkinson in American Cinematographer (Jan. 1990). I drew from “Rear Window: The Untold Story” by Steve Cohen in Columbia Film View (winter/spring 1990); Michael R. Dilberto’s “Looking Through Rear Window: A Review of the United States Supreme Court Decision in Stewart vs. Abend” in Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Journal 12, no. 2 (1992); and John Belton’s Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (Cambridge University Press, 2000)—especially Scott Curtis’s piece, “The Making of Rear Window.” Francis M. Nevins Jr.’s Cornell Woolrich: First You Dream, Then You Die (Mysterious Press, 1988) supplied vital background on Woolrich and astutely analyzed the adaptation of the novella into the film.

  John M. Woodcock writes about the editing of To Catch a Thief in “The Name Dropper,” American Cinemeditor (summer 1990). Lynn Murray is quoted from Musician: A Hollywood Journal (Lyle Stuart, 1987).

  “It’s important that filmmakers …” is from “Conversati
ons with Hitchcock” by Catherine de la Roche, Sight and Sound (winter 1955).

  Shirley MacLaine is quoted from “Don’t Fall Off the Mountain” (W W Norton, 1970).

  My portrait of the relationship between Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann was greatly informed by Bernard Herrmann: Film Music and Narrative by Graham Bruce (UMI Research Press, 1985) and A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann by Steven C. Smith (University of California Press, 1991). I have cited “Herrmann, Hitchcock, and the Music of the Irrational” by Royal S. Brown, Cinema Journal (spring 1982) and “Herrmann and the Politics of Film Music” by Steven C. Smith in Schwann Opus (summer 1996). I also consulted Royal S. Brown’s interview with Herrmann in High Fidelity (Sept. 1976) and “The Colour of the Music,” Ted Gilling’s interview in Sight and Sound (winter 1971-72).

  André Bazin writes about visiting the To Catch a Thief set in Nice in “Hitchcocks versus Hitchcock” in Cahiers du Cinéma (Oct. 1954), which was translated and reprinted in the Bazin collection The Cinema of Cruelty: From Buñuel to Hitchcock (Seaver Books, 1982).

  Doris Day is quoted from Doris Day, Her Own Story by A. E. Hotchner (William Morrow, 1975) but I also consulted her Southern Methodist University oral history.

  Hitchcock first talked about his television series in “Hitchcock, Master of Suspense, Turns to TV” by Cecil Smith in the Los Angeles Times (Sept. 11, 1955). As well as viewing all the television episodes Hitchcock directed, I have drawn on the research and scholarship of other authors. Key sources include “The Television Films of Alfred Hitchcock” by Steve Mamber in Cinema (fall 1971), “Hitchcock’s TV Films” by Jack Edmund Nolan in Film Fan Monthly (June 1968), “Hitchcock’s Forgotten Films: The Twenty Teleplays” by Gene D. Phillips in the Journal of Popular Film and Television (summer 1982), and, especially, John McCarty and Brian Kelleher’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents (St. Martin’s Press, 1985) and “Hitchcock’s Television Work” by J. L. Kuhns, from The Alfred Hitchcock Story, ed. Ken Mogg (Titan Books, 1999).