TWO EVENTS THAT would have far-reaching effects on the British film industry occurred in late 1927. The first was the successful introduction of synchronized sound with The Jazz Singer. The second was the Cinematograph Films Act, “The Quota Act,” requiring cinemas to program a certain number of British films each year.
A new film company, British International Pictures, lured Alfred Hitchcock away from Gainsborough. He was promised bigger budgets and greater artistic freedom. His first film for BIP was The Ring. Hitchcock wrote the screenplay for this film in a few weeks.
He had “fallen in love” with the setting of the boxing ring. Though he had never boxed, nor followed boxing, when friends took him to a boxing match, he recognized what a wonderful setting it made. “I observed those people in the best seats, close to the ring, ladies and gentlemen, and some who weren’t, but who could pay the price, wearing formal clothes!” The brutality in the ring, the screaming audience in the cheap seats, and champagne being poured over the boxers to revive them, caught Hitchcock’s fancy, and gave him the inspiration for The Ring.
Amateur boxer Jack Sander (Carl Brisson) works in a carnival side show where he is known as “One Round Jack.” His girlfriend, Mabel (Lillian Hall-Davis), sells tickets to those who hope to last more than one round with Jack, for which they will receive a prize of 2 guineas.
Champion boxer Bob Corby (Ian Hunter), attracted to Mabel, enters the ring with Jack. Unrecognized, Bob knocks Jack out in the second round, but Jack impresses the champion’s manager, who offers him a job as Bob’s sparring partner.
Though engaged to marry Jack, Mabel accepts an arm bracelet from Bob, a gift he bought for her with his prize money.
With Jack’s new job as Bob’s sparring partner, he and Mabel can afford to get married, but Mabel is also attracted to Bob.
As Jack’s career advances, Mabel has an affair with Bob. Jack and Mabel quarrel, and she leaves him. Jack publicly challenges Bob to a fight in the ring.
The fight goes against Jack, until Mabel rushes to his corner. Jack wins both the fight and Mabel, with Bob conceding defeat like a gentleman. The bracelet is left on the floor of the ring.
“Before the big climax in the ring,” Hitchcock said, “I instructed the cameraman to under-crank, so that the action would seem to go faster for the audience. I did that later in the merry-go-round sequence in Strangers on a Train. Then, I told Brisson to go after Hunter just as he would in a real match.
“After about five minutes, Hunter, who was out of shape, just sat down on the mat. On the film, it looks as if he got knocked down. He was complimented for a great performance by everyone.”
In the background of The Ring is a young Tom Helmore, who, thirty years later, would play Gavin Elster in Vertigo.
WHILE HITCHCOCK WAS preparing his next film, The Farmer’s Wife, in late 1927, the Hitchcocks were expecting their first child.
Hitchcock worked with Eliot Stannard on the adaptation of Eden Phillpotts’s play, and he also doubled as lighting cameraman, though without credit, when Jack Cox became ill. The Farmer’s Wife was released in March 1928.
The wife of prosperous Devonshire farmer, Samuel Sweetland (Jameson Thomas), dies, leaving him a widower with a teenage daughter. His wife’s last words, to their servant girl Araminta (Lillian Hall-Davis), are, “Don’t forget to air your master’s pants, Minta.”
Always in good spirits, Minta takes care of Sweetland and his daughter. Minta’s drying of Sweetland’s underwear, by the fire in winter and in the sun in summer, marks the passage of time.
Sweetland’s daughter (Mollie Ellis) marries. Lonely, he faces his wife’s empty rocking chair.
Sweetland decides to remarry. He and Minta make a list of candidates. He imagines each one sitting in his wife’s empty chair.
When all of them reject the confident Sweetland, he returns to his farm, humiliated, and Minta reassures him. As she sits in the chair vacated by his wife, Sweetland suddenly sees the truth.
He proposes to her, and she happily accepts his proposal. Some of the women who had rejected Sweetland reconsider, but they are too late.
Minta appears wearing the party dress his wife had given her, and she is beautiful. It is Minta who will sit in the empty chair.
Director Ronald Neame, at the time beginning his own film career at the Elstree Studios, said that he owed a great deal to a joke played on him while The Farmer’s Wife was being filmed.
“I was just starting out, and I was terribly overeager. Someone sent me to fetch the ‘sky hook,’ which I was told was a terribly valuable piece of equipment. I looked all over until I got to The Farmer’s Wife set. A rather plump twenty-seven-year-old director named Alfred Hitchcock was rehearsing the actors.
“For several minutes, I forgot all about the sky hook and watched the great director at work. Then I approached Hitchcock’s cameraman, Jack Cox.
“This kind man said, ‘You have been given a sort of initiation, because the sky hook is a leg-pull. Why don’t you go back and tell them it was sold last week because it wasn’t being used.’
“Because of that nonexistent sky hook, I was able to watch Hitchcock directing, and I met Jack Cox, with whom I would be working.”
HITCHCOCK AND ALMA liked the area so much where they were filming The Farmer’s Wife that they bought a Tudor cottage with surrounding land, in Shamley Green, near Guildford, about thirty miles out of London. When, in 1955, Hitchcock set up a production company for his television program, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, he called it Shamley Productions.
Patricia Alma Hitchcock was born on July 7, 1928. “I wanted a girl very much,” Hitchcock told me, “but I never told Alma. I said I would be just as happy with a girl or a boy. I didn’t like saying something to her that wasn’t true, but I couldn’t have her think I would be disappointed if our little Patricia had happened to be a Patrick.
“When I asked Pat’s mother which she wanted, a boy or a girl, she always said she had no preference. Afterwards, she told me that she very much had wanted a girl.”
THE HEAD OF PRODUCTION at British International suggested that Hitchcock make a film about champagne, because, Hitchcock told me, “He said, ‘Everybody loves it.’
“I came up with a little fable about a French girl who works in a wine cellar in Rheims. She has a romantic notion about what happens to all those bottles of champagne in Paris, so one day, she decides to follow them. In Paris, instead of finding glamour, she loses her virtue and becomes a sort of fallen woman, tearful and disillusioned. She returns to her old job in Rheims, where she watches the bottles going off and wonders who will be seduced next by their false promise. They thought my story too simple. The only agreement we had on the film was that we all disagreed.”
What eventually evolved was a film that bore little resemblance to Hitchcock’s scenario, although it was titled Champagne.
Forbidden by her wealthy father (Gordon Harker) to marry The Boy (Jean Bradin), The Girl (Betty Balfour) flies one of her father’s planes to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where she crash-lands near an ocean liner carrying The Boy. Rescued, she joins him, but they quarrel, and The Girl meets The Man (Theo von Alten).
In Paris, The Girl lives lavishly, but is glad when The Boy returns. The Father arrives to tell her that they have lost their fortune. The Boy leaves. She continues to know The Man as a friend.
The Father and The Girl have to live more modestly. The Girl finds a job as a hostess in a cabaret. The Boy finds The Girl and offers to rescue both her and The Father, but she refuses, saying they still have their pride.
The Father tells The Girl that he didn’t really lose his money, but was teaching her a lesson. The Man is really a family friend, keeping an eye on her for The Father. The Boy and The Girl are reunited, and the happy couple is seen through a champagne glass.
“I was quite pleased to give the head of production full credit for the story,” Hitchcock said. “This was flat champagne, champagne without bubbles.”
An u
ncredited contribution was made by the young Michael Powell. One of the legendary director’s earliest jobs was as the stills photographer on Champagne.
The Manxman, Hitchcock’s next film, released in early 1929, was based on an 1894 novel by Hall Caine, an Isle of Man writer. The film was adapted by Eliot Stannard, one of Hitchcock’s favorite collaborators, primarily because Alma was not available. Just after their daughter was born, Alma was occupied in writing a screenplay, After the Verdict, for Henrik Galeen. It was the last time she would ever work with someone other than her husband.
For The Manxman, Hitchcock chose as a location the Cornwall coast rather than the Isle of Man. Danish Carl Brisson played the Manx fisherman Pete, and Czechoslovakian Anny Ondra played Kate, the daughter of an Isle of Man innkeeper. “She was a very nice woman,” Hitchcock told me. “Charming. She married the German boxer Max Schmeling.”
Close friends Pete, a fisherman (Carl Brisson), and Phil, a lawyer (Malcolm Keen), are both in love with Kate (Anny Ondra). Kate loves Phil, but he aspires to be a judge, and she is only an innkeeper’s daughter.
Pete is rejected by Kate’s father because he is penniless, so he leaves for South Africa to make his fortune. Kate promises to wait for him. Phil promises to look after her.
Kate, hearing that Pete is dead, seduces Phil. When Pete arrives home alive, Phil convinces Kate that she must keep her promise to Pete.
Pete, now wealthy, marries Kate. Phil insists Pete must never know her child is not his. Soon after, Kate leaves Pete and her child to live with Phil, now a judge. Kate returns for her child, but Pete refuses to give her up. Kate attempts suicide.
Kate is brought before Phil as an attempted suicide. He discharges her into Pete’s custody, but Kate declares she loves another man. Her father shouts out that it is the judge. Phil has to resign, and he leaves with Kate and the baby, his career ruined.
Pete is left alone.
Because British International Pictures head John Maxwell disliked The Manxman, distribution was delayed until after the sound premiere of Blackmail in 1929. The Manxman is sometimes listed as Hitchcock’s last silent film, although a silent version of Blackmail exists that differs from the sound version. As a result, Blackmail really qualifies as both Hitchcock’s last silent film and his first sound film.
Charles Bennett, author of the stage play Blackmail, told me, more than sixty years afterward, that he found the silent Blackmail “infinitely superior.”
“It was Hitchcock who wanted the studio to buy it for him. After they got it, he and I talked immense hours together about what had to be done. I didn’t take any credit because I had plays running at the time in London, so I didn’t care.” Bennett was also acting on the stage.
Bennett and Hitchcock were born in the same year and shared the experience of having grown up with the motion picture. Bennett told me, “I can not only remember when the moving pictures couldn’t talk, I can remember when they couldn’t move.”
While Hitchcock was making Blackmail as a silent feature, he was planning how it could also be shot as “a talker.” He was not intimidated by the introduction of sound.
“Most dialogue in a film is only a borrowing from the theater,” he said, “photographs of people talking. I believed sound should liberate the cinema, not be merely a stepsister of theater.
“I foresaw sound being used in the same imaginative manner as photography had been used in film. In the early days of the cinema, they simply shot exactly what was happening on a set without any camera movement or editing, to achieve a dramatic, emotional effect.”
Scotland Yard Inspector Frank Webber (John Longden) sees his girlfriend, Alice White (Anny Ondra), with another man after they have had an argument.
The man, Crewe (Cyril Ritchard), an artist, invites flirtatious Alice up to his studio. When his advances become physical, she defends herself, stabbing him with a bread knife.
She walks through London in a trancelike state, not returning to her parents’ home behind their tobacco shop until dawn.
Investigating the homicide, Frank finds one of Alice’s gloves, with a hole in a finger, which he recognizes. He conceals it, and later confronts Alice.
A loiterer who had been spying on Crewe, approaches them with the other glove. He is Tracy (Donald Calthrop), who has come to blackmail them.
Frank learns that the blackmailer is the prime suspect. Tracy escapes, falling to his death after a chase through the British Museum.
Not knowing Tracy is dead, Alice goes to Scotland Yard, but is stopped from confessing by Frank. Alice tells him the truth, and he accepts it. They are free to pursue their life together, though Alice looks uncertain, and there are signs that she will not forget easily what has happened.
Ronald Neame, living in California when I spoke with him, described what it was like to work on Blackmail.
“I was Jack Cox’s assistant cameraman shooting Blackmail. We were shooting silent, but there were rumors that BIP was considering the addition of sound. Charles Bennett, who wrote the stage play, and Benn Levy, were brought in to write dialogue, a good hint.
“Hitch kept the sets so they could be quickly put up again. A lot of what we had already shot on Blackmail could be used in the sound version.
“Jack and I were installed, along with our noisy camera, in a sealed soundproof booth with a large glass window. Two men could push the booth backwards and forwards on rails to track, and they could also pivot the booth when we had to pan more than the width of our window. There was just enough room for a hotplate so we could make tea.
“Unless the microphone was practically touching the actor’s head, the sound was unusable. The hum from our arc lights made so much noise we had to switch to incandescent lamps, but they weren’t bright enough for the slow film stock we had in those days.
“Then, the enormous mike cast heavy shadows on the walls of the set, spoiling Jack’s lighting. Jack would request they raise the mike, and they’d refuse because then it wouldn’t record anything. They’d complain about the noise of our booth. Sometimes we’d retreat into our respective booths uttering words I can’t tell you.
“But Hitch wasn’t ever ruffled by anything. He never shouted. He wore a black suit, white shirt, and dark tie, and never seemed to perspire. The rest of us were dripping, sealed up in our booths.”
The most difficult technical problem for the sound version, however, was Anny Ondra’s heavy accent. Since so many of her scenes had already been filmed for the silent version, Hitchcock created his own early form of dubbing.
He engaged Joan Barry to speak for Ondra. Barry stood to the side with her separate microphone, and as she spoke the lines, Ondra mouthed them silently.
One day Hitchcock handed Neame a 16mm camera to shoot a view of the murder the audience never saw. Neame remembered it well.
“In the film, Ritchard drags Anny through some drapes into the alcove where he keeps his cot. The drapes undulate, indicating struggle. You see Alice’s hand come out from behind the drapes. She reaches out for something, coming up with a knife from the table. Shortly afterwards, the artist’s hand drops down from between the drapes. He’s been stabbed. He’s dead. Alice appears with the bloody knife in her hand.
“With that camera Hitchcock gave me, I filmed what really happened. On the other side of the drapes, a prop man ruffled them to seem like a struggle. Alice reached for the knife. Behind the drapes, a second property man smeared some ‘blood’ on the knife. The artist dropped his hand through the drapes to show his death. I only hope someday someone will find that film.
“Hitch liked to work late in those days, never finishing before eleven p.m., and often we were still working at midnight. At about eight o’clock, we broke for supper, and Hitch, the actors, and sometimes Jack Cox would go to a pub called the Plough, where they ate a delicious hot meal. The rest of us got a sandwich and a glass of beer.
“If we worked past the last train, we were driven home. The driver figured out how to deliver home four p
eople who lived in opposite directions. No matter how late I arrived at my flat, I had to be back on the set the next morning by eight o’clock.”
With the success of Blackmail, Alfred Hitchcock became firmly established as the preeminent British director.
“YEARS AGO I made a movie of Sean O’Casey’s play Juno and the Paycock,” Hitchcock told me, “and I could not for the life of me find out what to do except to photograph it in one room, with a few exteriors which aren’t in the play. The film was successful, and I was ashamed to read those laudatory notices I had nothing to do with, except just to photograph the Irish players doing their job.”
Sitting with Eileen O’Casey, the widow of Sean O’Casey, at London’s Savoy Hotel many years after the death of her husband, I was told about his happy reaction to Hitchcock’s Juno and the Paycock. The original play had no greater supporter than O’Casey’s widow, who said the play had been a prime reason she fell in love with Sean.
“Sean was pleased about Hitchcock’s making the film, and he told Hitchcock to feel free. He liked the idea of the record of the play being there for people to see in all the years to come in a great performance.
“For me, any change to the play was sacrilegious, but Sean was very cooperative and even wrote some new material for the opening scene. It was important that Hitchcock was the kind of director he was because there were some who wouldn’t have gone back to Sean to make certain every word was his and to have him approve it.
“I personally preferred Sean’s ending on the stage, though when I saw it some years later, I thought it was a very good film in spite of end tampering.”
The ending Eileen O’Casey would have preferred was the Captain returning home so drunk that he didn’t understand and couldn’t comprehend the death of his son, instead of just having Juno and her daughter leave him.
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