“He never said it to me, but I’ve always heard that he considered the most boring part of a film was the shooting of it, because he’d story-boarded, written, and done it in his mind, but I personally found that he was deeply interested in everything on the set. Believe me, he didn’t miss a thing.
“Robert Walker was absolutely brilliant. If I were a guy and had the choice of roles, I would have taken his role. Farley did a lovely job, but you know, it’s like a leading lady. If you’re a beautiful leading lady, that’s what you are, a beautiful leading lady, and everyone else gets the good roles.”
Among others in the cast were Marion Lorne, who played Bruno’s demented mother, and Norma Varden, who almost gets strangled by him at Senator Morton’s party, and a few years later is murdered by Tyrone Power in Billy Wilder’s Witness for the Prosecution. Laura Elliott later worked with Marion Lorne on the television show Bewitched.
“I was the boss’s wife, and Marion Lorne was Aunt Clara. She was working in England, and Hitchcock knew her work. Actually, I didn’t know her on Strangers on a Train, because I didn’t have any scenes with her, but we worked together on Bewitched in a few episodes.
“You could see her quality of comedy in Strangers on a Train. She was brilliant as a comedian, absolutely brilliant. In fact, when I taught acting, I would always say to my students, ‘If you want to study comedy, you go study Marion Lorne.’ Her timing is perfect.”
Food frequently appears in Hitchcock films, and even when it seems not to serve a purpose, it helps define the characters.
“Preferences in food characterize people,” Hitchcock said. “I have always given it careful consideration, so that my characters never eat out of character.
“Bruno orders with gusto and an interest in what he is going to eat—lamb chops, French fries, and chocolate ice cream. A very good choice for train food. And the chocolate ice cream is probably what he thought about first. Bruno is rather a child. He is also something of a hedonist.
“Guy, on the other hand, shows little interest in eating the lunch, apparently having given it no advance thought, in contrast to Bruno, and he merely orders what seems his routine choice, a hamburger and coffee.”
When Pat Hitchcock spoke with me, she said, “There’s a story I want to tell you that’s gone around, so would you please tell everyone what really happened. It was at the amusement park.
“My father said how much would I want to go up on the Ferris wheel? I said, ‘I’m not going up. You know how scared I am of heights.’ He said, ‘I’ll give you a hundred dollars,’ and I said, ‘Okay.’ So, I went up with the two young men who were playing Laura’s two boyfriends, and I have a picture of us waving.
“As a joke, some electricians turned off the lights and pretended they were walking away. Obviously, they weren’t. I think we were probably up there two or three minutes at the outside.
“They turned the lights on, brought us down, and that’s the story of the Ferris wheel. They said Daddy left me up there all alone in the dark for two or three hours, and that’s the story that has persisted. They made a lot out of that because they were trying to make it a horror thing and make it fit my father’s character, but my father wasn’t ever sadistic. It just wasn’t true. The only sadistic part was I never got the hundred dollars.”
After Strangers on a Train, on a ship during a European holiday with her parents, Pat Hitchcock met the man she would marry, Joseph O’Connell.
Hitchcock told me that when he realized that she had grown up and was beginning her adult life, he was sorry that they had sent her away to boarding school. “It all went so fast,” he said. “One day I was holding her hand while she learned to walk, and the next, she was getting married.”
While she didn’t like being away from her mother and father for such long periods of time, Pat had come to understand. “It’s what British families do,” she told me.
IN 1947, HITCHCOCK acquired the screen rights to a stage play he had seen in England, Nos deux Consciences (“Our Two Consciences”), written in 1902 by Paul Anthelme. Hitchcock set the project aside until 1952 when, after many revisions, it became I Confess.
When Warner Brothers was hesitant to make the film, Hitchcock offered to do another film for them without salary, working only for a percentage of the profits. The offer persuaded Warners, and that other film would be The Wrong Man, to be made later.
“Quebec was chosen as the location for I Confess,” Hitchcock said, “because it’s the only place in North America where the clergy still wear cassocks, and that is important to the story.”
In Quebec City, Father Michael Logan (Montgomery Clift) is accused of killing a well-known lawyer. The priest knows the murderer, but he can’t reveal his identity because the man confessed the crime to him in the confessional. The guilty person is Otto Keller (O. E. Hasse), the church sexton, who wore a priest’s cassock to commit a robbery that led to murder.
Police Inspector Larrue (Karl Malden) narrows his investigation to Logan, who had a motive for committing the crime. The lawyer was blackmailing Ruth Grandfort (Anne Baxter), wife of a prominent politician. He had threatened to make public a suspected liaison she had with Logan after he became a priest.
Logan is arrested and tried for murder. The jury acquits him, but doubts remain as to his innocence. Following the trial, a crowd in the street threatens Logan and Ruth. When Logan is physically attacked, Keller’s wife, Alma (Dolly Haas), tells the crowd that her husband is the real murderer. Keller shoots her, and then escapes into the Château Frontenac Hotel, where he is trapped by police and shot. As he dies, he confesses again to Father Logan.
In an early draft, Logan was found guilty and hanged before it is determined he is innocent. There was also a draft in which he had fathered an illegitimate child during his affair before he became a priest.
O. E. Hasse had acted on the stage for Max Reinhardt and was an extra for F. W. Murnau. Most of his career was spent in the German cinema. Hitchcock cast him in one of his few English-language roles as Keller, the ungrateful refugee.
Dolly Haas, the wife of artist Al Hirschfeld and a star of pre–Third Reich German cinema, talked with me at her Upper East Side New York City town house about I Confess. Like most actors, she was happy to have had even a small part in a Hitchcock film. Anne Baxter, however, was not happy after filming began.
Hitchcock had originally wanted the Swedish actress Anita Björk for I Confess. Björk had just scored a big success in Alf Sjöberg’s Miss Julie, and seemed perfect for the part of Ruth Grandfort; but when the unwed Swedish actress arrived in America with her lover and her child, Hitchcock was forced by Warners to release her. Baxter, who knew the Hitchcocks socially, replaced her.
“Anne believed that Hitchcock really hadn’t wanted her,” Haas said, “because she wasn’t blond enough, and she wasn’t beautiful enough. I told her it was just her imagination, but she was worried.
“Once, she asked Alma to go for a drive with her, and they got back late for dinner. Hitchcock was silently furious. He hated eating without Alma. He waited. Anne thought he blamed her, and she was more certain Hitchcock didn’t like her.
“Montgomery Clift didn’t go anywhere without his acting coach, a woman named Mira Rostova. After every scene, he didn’t look at Hitchcock for a reaction. He looked at Rostova. Hitchcock just hated that.”
Clift prepared for the part by actually spending a week in a monastery, his friend, publicist John Springer, told me. The actor observed that because of the robes the clerics wore, they had a distinctive walk, pushing the fabric of their habits forward with their hands.
Karl Malden talked with me about his experience in I Confess.
“I got the part of Inspector Larrue by one of those lucky chances in my life. In the early 1950s, I was in New York City and ran into Monty Clift. Everybody knew he was going to be a big star, but it hadn’t quite happened yet. Anyway, he was starting a new picture, being directed by Alfred Hitchcock. ‘You lucky bastard,’ I told
him. Then, he said there might be a part in it that’s just right for me. He didn’t need to say more.
“Well, I got the part of Inspector Larrue, and I got to work with Hitchcock. It was everything I hoped it would be; more, but different from what I expected.
“I would describe Hitchcock as the ideal English gentleman. Every day he came to the set in a suit and a tie. I never once saw him take his jacket off or loosen his tie.
“He was the calmest director I ever saw, never ruffled, never any sign of being worried, never shouted, always in control. There was no unnecessary noise or talking or shouting on his set. It was a quiet set, because that’s the way he wanted it.
“Hitchcock and his wife had dinner every night at the great hotel in Quebec, the Château Frontenac. He had a table for eight, so every night six of us would be invited to have dinner with them. I was pretty nervous at first, but I would have been a hell of a lot more nervous if they hadn’t invited me.
“Hitchcock knew everything there was to know about food and wine, and he made the meal greater than if you ate in the same restaurant on your own. The food and company were great, and there wasn’t any shoptalk. He never talked about I Confess at dinner. It was as if it didn’t exist.
“Hitchcock was the director for the dining room, too. Those six places were rotated every night, and all of us who were lucky enough to be included in the group looked forward to our turn.
“One night I got pretty relaxed. After dessert I felt confident enough to ask him the question I’d been thinking about. I said, ‘You never tell us what you want. I know the blocking and the lines, but what I don’t know is what you expect from me.’
“He never missed a beat. Very evenly, calmly, he said, ‘You’re a professional, and I’m a professional. I simply expect you to do your job.’
“Nothing else was ever said about it.
“I have this image in my mind of Alfred Hitchcock putting together a gigantic jigsaw puzzle and knowing where each piece goes. There wasn’t anything he didn’t understand about making film. His camera was always exactly where it should be. He was an intuitive genius.
“Hitchcock didn’t like Method actors, but even when Monty had to stand and look out of the window while he found his character, Hitchcock didn’t raise his voice or show emotions.
“I remember my own experience one night, taking Monty home when he was really drunk. My car didn’t get over the experience for weeks, but I always remembered it was Monty who let me know about the film.
“I was looking forward to learning something from Alfred Hitchcock, but I really can’t remember anything he said to me. The way I knew Hitchcock liked what I did was when I saw the picture and I saw how much he had favored me with screen time—angles, cutting, everything. And it sure wasn’t because I was more beautiful than Monty.”
“You had to like him,” I Confess publicist Gary Stevens remembered. “He was doing the same thing in life as in those mini-cameos he did in the movies. He injected himself into situations which gave him an opportunity for a mini-cameo in life. He created himself his own way, and he got a big kick out of being Alfred Hitchcock.”
“SOMEDAY,” Hitchcock told me, “there will be three-dimensional wall video screens, and Dial M for Murder will come into its own. But at the time I was making that picture, I worried that 3-D might be a fad that would fade and that Dial M would go out as a ‘flattie.’
“If one is going to make a 3-D movie, the most convenient medium to adapt it from is the stage. A play is seen in 3-D normally, and within the confines of a stage set it’s much easier to control the added complications of shooting in 3-D. When I made Dial M, I was running for cover while waiting for the muse. A play is a safety net picture.”
The actress he chose to star in his new film was the young Grace Kelly before her great fame, to which he would contribute. She was the perfect Hitchcockian heroine, the cool, elegant blonde with, as Hitchcock said, “fire seething within.”
Edith Head told me that of all of the beautiful stars for whom she had designed clothes, Grace Kelly had the most perfect figure. “Grace had nothing to hide. She was perfect in her clothes because what was underneath was perfect.”
Head said that most of her job was “hiding work,” covering figure faults. “Even the beautiful stars who had to look perfect onscreen, they all had something to cover, all but Grace.”
Jack Cardiff had recommended Dial M for Murder to Hitchcock. “I called Hitch to tell him I’d seen a play in London on television that I knew would make a great movie for him. I phoned a friend who was a producer and urged him to switch on his set and watch it. He agreed it would make an excellent film, but when he tried to buy the screen rights, it was too late. Alexander Korda had already bought them. Korda sold them, and Dial M for Murder was made, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.”
The play, introduced on BBC television, had a long stage run in London’s West End, followed by a success in America. Frederick Knott, who wrote the play, also wrote the screenplay.
The 3-D process required a much larger camera, essentially two synchronized cameras with two lenses and two strips of film. The larger camera unit made moving shots more difficult, almost returning to the immobile camera booths of early sound.
Special Polaroid glasses had to be passed out to each member of the audience for every showing of the film, and two projectors were needed to run simultaneously, in synchronization. Since most theaters had only two projectors, they either had to install two more or have intermissions between reels. The other option was to show the film in conventional format, which was usually the fate of Dial M for Murder after it left first-run theaters.
For 3-D, scenes were inserted specifically to exploit the illusion of depth. In the 3-D film Man in the Dark, an eye operation is seen from the viewpoint of the patient who has declined anesthesia, and scalpels seem to be poking the eyes of the screaming, empathetic audience. In House of Wax, a carnival barker bounces an elastic paddleball into the audience, and in Kiss Me Kate, a dancer seems to swing out over the audience.
Hitchcock’s use of 3-D is restrained, with depth effects being reserved for important moments, such as when Margot reaches back for the scissors or when Inspector Hubbard holds out the incriminating key in 3-D close-up.
For the credits, Hitchcock wanted a close-up of a telephone dial. It wasn’t possible to go in close enough on a real telephone dial using the 3-D process, so Hitchcock had an oversized prop telephone dial made. Later, when Ray Milland dials Grace Kelly from the club, the large dial is used with an oversized prop finger.
“3-D wasn’t anything new,” Hitchcock said. “They had it back in the ’20s as a novelty, using red-and-green glasses. Skeletons threw their skulls at the audience, or bats filled the theater.
“Since I couldn’t imagine Ray Milland or Grace Kelly behaving that way, I decided to redo the killing in Blackmail, when Anny Ondra reaches back to grab a bread knife to kill Cyril Ritchard. This time I would have Grace Kelly reaching back toward camera for something to defend herself, grabbing a pair of scissors. In 3-D, the scissors are in the foreground, and her hand seems to come back into the audience to grab them and kill the would-be strangler, who is in the background.”
Former tennis star Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) plans to murder his wealthy wife, Margot (Grace Kelly), so he can inherit her money. He knows Margot is having an affair with mystery writer Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings), and she may leave him for her lover.
He has found a classmate from Cambridge, C. A. Swann (Anthony Dawson), who has a criminal record and needs money. Tony offers to pay Swann for killing Margot; Swann accepts. Swann is to enter the apartment with Margot’s key; hidden for him by Tony under a stair carpet in the entrance hallway, and to strangle her.
Swann opens the door with the key, and before entering puts it back. Tony’s elaborate plan fails when Swann is killed by Margot, who is defending herself. When Tony arrives, he puts the key he finds in Swann’s pocket into Margot’s purse.<
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Margot is accused of murder. Tony makes it appear that Swann was blackmailing her, threatening to expose her affair with Mark. Margot is found guilty and sentenced to hang.
Inspector Hubbard (John Williams) believes Margot is innocent. He discovers that the key in Margot’s purse is Swann’s own key.
Margot is allowed to leave prison temporarily to test whether she knows about the key under the carpet. She does not, but Tony does know where the key is, thus incriminating him.
At the beginning of the film, before a word is spoken, the relationship between the three main characters is clearly established when Grace Kelly dutifully kisses her husband, Ray Milland, and then passionately kisses her lover, Robert Cummings. This is an example of what Hitchcock described as “pure cinema.” This scene was not in the play, nor was the scene in which Ray Milland calls his wife from his club during the attempted murder.
Grace Kelly told me that when she was standing on the set of Dial M for Murder, a visitor was being introduced to Hitchcock by Ray Milland. She heard Hitchcock say to the man, “Call me Hitch, without a cock.”
Milland and his friend laughed. Then, Hitchcock looked over in her direction. “He was obviously embarrassed,” Kelly said, “fearing that I had heard.
“I walked up to him and said, ‘I heard that.’
“Hitch started to apologize, but I stopped him.
“Don’t worry. I went to a Catholic girls school, and by the time I was thirteen, I’d heard everything.” Kelly added, “And most of the information was wrong.”
Hitchcock, many years later, told me, “Grace Kelly had a wonderful sense of humor, if a bit bawdy.”
Hitchcock said that he wanted Miss Kelly to be wearing as little as possible when she is attacked, but he wasn’t quite certain how he should ask her to do this. He made a plan for her to wear a heavy red robe. He hoped that at the last moment he could prevail upon her to come out in “a nightgown that preserved some modesty, but not flannel with a ruffle.”
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