It's Only a Movie

by Charlotte Chandler

  “Hitchcock could be devastating,” Fontaine said, summing up her Rebecca experience. “He could be sarcastic. He kept us actors in line. He didn’t say let’s try this or let’s try that. Never. He knew exactly what he wanted.

  “I think Mr. Hitchcock felt comfortable with me. I don’t think he felt so comfortable with any of the other actors. I felt alone, and I think he did, too. I wanted his help, and he wanted to help me, but he didn’t give me what I needed most, confidence. I was terrified, but I think he thought it helped my performance.”

  While gathering location footage for Rebecca on the Monterey coast, Hitch and Alma decided that they would like to have their American country home there. Joan Fontaine had grown up in this area, and her parents, who lived nearby, suggested Scotts Valley. In 1940, the Hitchcocks bought a ranch and a vineyard in the Vine Hill area near Scotts Valley. They had some furnishings sent from their London flat and their English country house, which gave the house a slight British air.

  During the shooting of Rebecca, World War II began, and Alma went back to London. She returned with her mother and sister. Hitchcock tried to persuade his mother to come to California, but leaving the world she knew was unimaginable for her.

  Rebecca won the Oscar for best film, which went to Selznick, but Hitchcock, who had been nominated as best director, did not win.

  NEEDING MONEY to finance Gone With the Wind, Selznick loaned out some of his contract stars to other producers and studios at a profit. After Rebecca, Hitchcock became one of Selznick’s most valuable properties and was loaned out to Walter Wanger to direct Foreign Correspondent.

  Initially, Hitchcock wanted Gary Cooper for the role of the unsophisticated but intelligent hero. Cooper turned it down. “He thought that being a thriller, it had to be bad,” Hitchcock told me. “That was the perception Hollywood had of the kind of picture I did. In England, there was a different sensibility. The best actors—Donat, Gielgud, Redgrave, Laughton—all worked with me. Afterwards, Gary Cooper admitted to me he’d made a mistake. It probably was his agent who made the decision.”

  Foreign Correspondent was based on Personal History, a book by news-paperman Vincent Sheean. The screenplay was by Charles Bennett and Joan Harrison.

  In 1939, Johnny Jones (Joel McCrea), an insubordinate city desk reporter, is sent to London as a totally unqualified foreign correspondent. There he interviews Van Meer (Albert Bassermann), leader of a peace movement endorsed by Universal Peace Party head Stephen Fisher (Herbert Marshall). Johnny finds Fisher’s pretty young daughter, Carol (Laraine Day), more interesting.

  In Amsterdam, Van Meer apparently is assassinated. Johnny and journalist Scott ffolliett (George Sanders) follow the assassin into the countryside. Johnny investigates a windmill and finds the real Van Meer, a drugged prisoner. His captors escape with their prisoner, and Johnny’s story is not believed.

  After attempts on Johnny’s life, Carol believes him. Now in love, they return to London, where Johnny realizes that her father is actually the leader of the conspirators.

  Johnny tries to protect Carol, who is totally innocent, but she misinterprets his motives, and they quarrel. He and Scott try without success to convince Scotland Yard of Fisher’s conspiracy to stall peace efforts. Then, war is declared.

  On board a Clipper plane, Fisher explains to his daughter that he was only being loyal to his native country. Johnny, also on the plane, tries to make up with Carol.

  After the plane is shot down, Fisher dies saving the other passengers. Rescued, Johnny and Carol are reunited when he defends her father in his news report.

  Hitchcock in particular liked the character of Stebbins, the veteran correspondent who had never filed a report with his paper, only expense vouchers. Hitchcock considered him unbelievable, however, unless the contributing writer who created him, Robert Benchley, played the part. Benchley accepted the offer. Hitchcock had admired Benchley’s series of comedy short subjects, and said later that they had influenced his personal appearances on his own television series.

  For his performance in the film, Albert Bassermann was nominated for a supporting actor Oscar. He was one of the foremost German stage actors of his generation, holder of the highest acting award that country offered, the Lessing Medal. Fritz Lang told me how Bassermann managed to smuggle his prized medal out of Nazi Germany.

  When Bassermann was forced to leave Germany, he knew the Nazis would never allow him to take the medal with him, so he had another one struck and wore the copy when he left, hiding the genuine medal in his luggage. The counterfeit Lessing Medal was confiscated, as Bassermann had anticipated, and he kept the real one, which he wore to the Oscar ceremonies in 1940.

  Joan Brodel, the actress named in the credits as Joel McCrea’s sister, afterward changed her name to Joan Leslie and became famous for roles in Sergeant York and Yankee Doodle Dandy. Leslie told me that she was not directed in her exceedingly small part by Hitchcock, but by an assistant. Then her bit in Foreign Correspondent was cut out, so she described it as “a nonpart.” She can be seen, however, for a few seconds in the background of the ship’s stateroom scene when Johnny Jones’s family says goodbye to him.

  For the film, several blocks of Amsterdam were rebuilt on a Hollywood soundstage, complete with running streetcars and a sewage system to drain the artificial rainfall.

  When the Clipper plane crashes, it is seen from the viewpoint of the pilot’s cabin, with water pouring in on impact. This effect was achieved with a rear screen transparency made of paper, behind which a water tank was positioned, tearing the screen open when the water was released.

  “The set with the plane in the ocean,” Hitchcock said, “was a huge rubber tank they had built at Goldwyn with back projection screens all around and pieces of the plane’s fuselage mounted on tracks under the water so we could move them around without any cuts.”

  Foreign Correspondent went over-budget and took longer to produce than expected, but it was well received by critics and the public alike. Selznick considered it a return to Hitchcock’s little British comedy-thrillers, but the director’s reputation grew, and he became more in demand on loan-outs. He had become one of Hollywood’s best-known directors, but because of his contract with Selznick, he was earning a fraction of what other famous Hollywood directors received. Hitchcock didn’t feel any debt of gratitude to Selznick for launching his Hollywood career. “I had paid and repaid him,” he said.

  Among the studios bidding for his services was RKO, headed by George J. Schaefer, who had given Orson Welles carte blanche in the making of Citizen Kane. They offered Hitchcock two films, Before the Fact and No for an Answer, both of which would become Hitchcock films under different titles: Suspicion and Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

  Before the Hitchcocks found their own home in California, they rented Carole Lombard’s house, and became good friends with her and with her husband, Clark Gable. Lombard had moved in with Gable at his ranch.

  “I liked her very much,” Hitchcock said. “She had a bawdy sense of humor and used the language men use with each other. I’d never heard a woman speak that way. She was a forceful personality, stronger, I felt, than Gable.

  “Carole wanted me to do Mr. and Mrs. Smith, so I made the picture because it wasn’t easy to say no to her.”

  Hitchcock said that Mr. and Mrs. Smith was one of two times in his life that he made a film on the urging of a beautiful woman. “As a favor to another actress, I made the same mistake again. Ingrid Bergman suggested Under Capricorn. Who could say no to Ingrid?”

  Hitchcock allowed Lombard to direct his cameo in the picture, the only time he permitted such a stunt. He said he really didn’t plan to use her take, but it turned out to be good. “She might have become a director one day. She had the personality for it.

  “When she was killed in a plane crash while working for the war effort, Gable was heartbroken. After her death, he mourned deeply and aged terribly. I don’t think he was ever the same.”

  The original story and
screenplay for Mr. and Mrs. Smith were by Norman Krasna, who also wrote Fritz Lang’s Fury and René Clair’s The Flame of New Orleans.

  One day, Ann and David Smith (Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery) find out that because of a technicality, they aren’t really married. They have an argument about whether they would marry each other again, and David goes to his men’s club for the night, assuming everything will be all right the next day.

  Ann, however, has other ideas. She changes her name and gets a job as a sales clerk. She seeks advice from David’s law partner, Jeff Custer (Gene Raymond), who has always liked her.

  A friend of David’s arranges a blind date for him. Ann becomes jealous and takes Jeff home, where his gentlemanly behavior leads her to believe his intentions toward her must be serious.

  During a misadventure at Lake Placid, Jeff realizes Ann and David were meant for each other. David pleads that he really does love Ann, but he is not believed, and they have another argument.

  Ann asks Jeff to marry her. When he accepts, she has second thoughts. She is worried about David.

  Ann and David have another argument, but this time they quickly make up, glad to be together again.

  Hitchcock wanted Cary Grant to play Mr. Smith, but accepted Robert Montgomery, who was paid more money than the director.

  Betty Compson, who plays a small role in the film, was, in 1923, one of Hollywood’s biggest stars. Victor Saville, looking for a Hollywood name for Gainsborough, had been able sign her for a two-picture deal, the first of which would be Woman to Woman, directed by Graham Cutts, with Hitchcock as the assistant director and art director. Hitchcock remembered her as someone who was considerate and encouraging to him before he became famous. Years later, he reciprocated when he was casting Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and she was no longer remembered.

  JOAN FONTAINE LIKED the character of Lina in Suspicion so much, she sent Hitchcock a note after she read the novel, on which the screenplay was based, offering to play the part for free, if necessary. Cary Grant was equally enthusiastic.

  “Cary had been thrilled to be cast as Johnnie,” Fontaine told me, “because he liked to do serious parts and didn’t want to be typecast for comedy just because he did it so well.

  “I thought I was interested in my career, but it was nothing compared to the way Cary felt. He had focus and took his career very seriously. I was easily distracted by my personal life. His professional and personal life were one. He knew his best camera angles and exactly how the lighting should be to show him at his best. Actually, I don’t think he had any bad angles, and there wasn’t any way you could light him that he wasn’t at his best.

  “As for my own best profile or how I should be lit, I hadn’t the faintest. He watched his rushes with great interest. He encouraged me to watch mine, but when I did, I became too self-conscious after I saw myself. I thought about what I should do in the scene to make what I did come out right on the screen. It confused me, and Cary said I didn’t need to watch rushes anymore.”

  Suspicion was based on a 1932 novel, Before the Fact, by Anthony Berkely Cox, writing under the pseudonym Francis Iles.

  Against her parents’ wishes, wealthy Lina MacLaidlaw (Joan Fontaine) elopes with handsome Johnnie Aysgarth (Cary Grant), and then finds out he is penniless and in debt. He can’t seem to hold a job, and he sells their wedding gift chairs from her father to cover his gambling debts. She is persuaded not to leave by Johnnie.

  Johnnie’s friend Beaky (Nigel Bruce) dies under mysterious circumstances, and Lina fears that Johnnie is responsible. He denies this, but cautions her not to tell the police about his financial dealings with Beaky.

  Lina finds a book on poisons among Johnnie’s things. Then she learns that Johnnie has been unsuccessfully trying to borrow on her life insurance policy. He can collect only on her death.

  Lina discovers that Johnnie has been making inquiries about an undetectable poison. When he brings her a glass of milk, she doesn’t drink it. In the morning, she leaves for her parents’ family home. Johnnie insists on driving her.

  On a winding road, Lina fears Johnnie will kill her. When the car stops, she tries to run away, but he stops her.

  She asks about the poison, and he says he was going to take it himself. He assures her he had nothing to do with Beaky’s death.

  They return home together.

  The glowing glass of milk that Cary Grant carries up the stairs was illuminated by a small flashlight inside.

  “The ending of Suspicion,” Hitchcock said, “was a complete mistake because of making that story with Cary Grant. Unless you have a cynical ending, it makes the story too simple. Suspicion deals with a man whose wife suspects he’s a murderer. When he brings her up that glass of milk at the end of the picture, she knows he’s going to murder her, but in our film, we have to make it a harmless glass of milk. In truth, the ending of the picture should be Joan Fontaine accepting that she is going to be murdered. I had an idea for an ending in which she knows.

  “She writes a letter. ‘Dear Mother, I’m in such terrible straits. I know he’s going to kill me, but I love him so much I don’t want to live anymore, and I do think society should be protected.’ Then, she seals the letter and leaves it by the bed. Johnnie brings up the milk, and she says, ‘Could you mail this for me?’ She drinks the fatal glass of milk, really committing suicide, and you fade out on her death. Next you have a cheerful, whistling Cary Grant popping the letter into the mailbox. That’s how I wanted to end the picture. Black humor, you know.

  “The problem of having the leading man, Cary Grant in this case, be guilty was the same problem we had faced in The Lodger. In those days, the audience wouldn’t have put up with Ivor Novello being guilty, especially women, and a lot of the audience would be women anytime he was in a film.

  “For the sake of their own careers, important stars won’t be villains. The idols that we put up there must do no wrong. If they do, audiences don’t approve of that sort of thing.

  “In Mrs. Belloc Lownde’s book, the Ripper got away with it. Having Cary Grant as the hero meant I had to compromise. The best you could have was a bit of doubt, and not much of that. Once the decision was made to have Grant, it was like Novello, he had to be innocent.

  “There was a new head of RKO who came up to me one day smiling, and said, ‘I’ve solved all the problems of Suspicion. I’ve cut it down to fifty-five minutes.’ What he had done, you see, was to take out every mention, every hint that Cary Grant was a murderer. Well, what do you have left?”

  Grant told me, “I’m sure I didn’t do it. My character wasn’t that sort of chap at all. He couldn’t possibly have murdered her. My character was a rogue, not a rat.”

  HITCHCOCK’S DAUGHTER, Pat, decided shortly after Suspicion that she wanted to be an actress, and she told me how that career began.

  “John Van Druten, a good friend of Auriol Lee, who was in Suspicion, was looking for a thirteen-year-old to do a Broadway play of his called Solitaire. He asked my parents if they would let me read for it. They said only if she doesn’t know what she’s reading for, because they didn’t want me to get all excited about it and be hurt if I didn’t get it. I read, and he decided he wanted me to do it. Unfortunately, it opened right after Pearl Harbor, and that was the end of that, but not the end of my wanting to be an actress.”

  Alma was anxious to move into a home of their own in California. She felt it was important for their daughter not to live in a temporary house, so Alma and Pat looked at many houses. Finally they found one they both immediately loved.

  Hitchcock at first feigned lack of enthusiasm, and they were disappointed. Then he bought the house himself, surprising them. From then on, he and Alma never lived anywhere else except their northern California weekend house, and Pat lived with them until she married.

  “He’d learned to drive,” Pat told me, “but he didn’t drive very much. He had a license, but he didn’t like it. My mother loved it and she did all the driving.”

  “WH
EN HITCHCOCK BEGAN a picture, he glowed,” Robert Boyle told me.

  “In those days, if Alma didn’t drive Hitch to the studio or wherever they were working, he would arrive in a taxi. At the end of the day, she usually drove by for him. Alma was so small, you could barely see her head over the steering wheel. But he would see her, and his eyes would light up. Whenever there was a discussion of some importance to ponder, Hitchcock would say, ‘I’ll discuss this with the Madame.’

  “I became an art director in 1941 on Saboteur. He was really retelling 39 Steps, as he did later with North by Northwest.

  “We would sit on either side of the desk, and he’d make these funny little drawings, and I’d draw, and then we’d compare. After we had made all these roughs, they would be transferred into better sketches. But they never were better, because his originals, these little stick figures and things, always gave you the proper image size. Then, every shot was prepared and outlined, and everything worked out. When all this was finished, he said, ‘Now I will be bored making the picture.’ Actually that wasn’t quite true. He just liked to say it because it was a funny thing for him to say. I think he enjoyed making the picture.

  “No one taught me more than Hitchcock about film language. He thought that each shot should relate to all the other shots, with no such thing as a throwaway shot.

  “No other director could ask for solutions to such difficult problems, because no other director knew what questions to ask. He knew enough about getting difficult shots and the sort of effect he wanted to create, so that you could somehow get it for him, though it might cause you some sleepless nights trying to figure it out.

  “Hitchcock would push the technical aspect of any shot to any length if it would satisfy what he felt is that gut feeling of whatever he was trying to do. And sometimes he’d push it so far that it didn’t quite make it. The shot became a little too strange, a little too far beyond the capabilities of the medium. But he never really was worried about that.