It's Only a Movie
Page 22
Hitchcock had specially requested, insisted, that Paramount send Head to Cannes to work on location with the wardrobe design and fittings, so important did he consider the costumes in this film.
“This was not the regular routine,” Head went on, “but I was in costume designer’s heaven. Can you imagine? Grace Kelly playing one of the richest women in America so she can afford the most elegant clothes and most fabulous jewels. Then, a fancy costume ball with hundreds of extras dressed as if they were in Marie Antoinette’s court. Hitch told me to dress Grace ‘like a princess,’ and I did. Of course, I had no idea I was dressing a real princess-to-be!”
One of Grace Kelly’s favorite anecdotes involved the gold ball gown.
“I was wearing the gold evening dress that was cut really tight, to show everything. Hitch walked up to me and sort of peeked down my dress and said, ‘There’s hills in them thar gold!’
“I found it especially amusing, because Hitch was always so decorous and dignified with me. He treated me like a porcelain doll.”
Hitchcock was concerned that the settings for To Catch a Thief not appear too beautiful, according to assistant director Herbert Coleman. “While the screenplay was still being written, Hitch sent me and a group of us to Cannes to scout for locations along the Côte d’Azur. The last thing he said to me before we left was, ‘I don’t want picture postcard locations. I want people to see the French Riviera the way it really is.’ The trouble is, that’s the way it really is, the way it looks on picture postcards.”
David Dodge’s 1952 novel, To Catch a Thief, had been purchased by Hitchcock on publication. The screenplay was to be written by John Michael Hayes. Cary Grant and Grace Kelly were Hitchcock’s first choices, his only choices, but he had to coax Grant out of a sort of retirement to take the part.
John Robie (Cary Grant), retired cat burglar and ex-member of the French resistance, lives quietly on the Côte d’Azur until a series of jewel robberies focus attention on him. When he visits a fellow resistance member, Bertani (Charles Vanel), in his Monte Carlo restaurant, policemen arrive to arrest Robie. Danielle Foussard (Brigitte Auber), a waiter’s daughter, helps him escape.
Bertani arranges for Robie to work with insurance investigator H. H. Hughson (John Williams) to catch the real thief. Robie meets a likely victim, Mrs. Jessie Stevens (Jessie Royce Landis), an American millionairess, traveling with her beautiful daughter, Francie (Grace Kelly).
Francie teasingly informs Robie that she knows he is the Cat. Her mother’s jewels are stolen, but Mrs. Stevens believes in Robie’s innocence.
Danielle’s father tries to kill Robie, but is himself killed, and the police announce that Foussard was the Cat. Robie knows otherwise, because Foussard had a wooden leg.
During a costume ball, Hughson and Robie wear similar disguises, so that Hughson can take his place in the ballroom, while Robie investigates upstairs.
Robie captures the real cat burglar, Danielle, on a roof top, dangling her over the edge until she confesses to the police below.
Francie wins Robie, but her mother is part of the package.
Dodge’s novel, supposedly based on a series of jewel robberies that took place on the French Riviera after World War II, was more complex than the film, which eliminated subplots, a necessity imposed by the medium. “The motion picture is more related to the short story than to the novel,” Hitchcock said.
For To Catch a Thief, Hitchcock wanted a beautiful thrill-seeker with perfect confidence. “The Kelly character is disappointed that Grant’s cat burglar character really is retired,” Hitchcock explained. “It isn’t as thrilling for her with him being innocent.
“Francie has a ‘don’t-muss-my-hair’ quality,” Hitchcock explained. “Ingrid [Bergman] had a ‘muss-my-hair’ quality. Francie doesn’t have Ingrid’s kind of vulnerability nor her warmth.
“She’s accustomed to getting what she wants. She acts differently at the end when she is getting what she wants. She and her mother are ready to take over our hero’s house and life.”
In an earlier draft, Francie was married, but hopes to be divorced soon so she can return to Monte Carlo and marry Robie.
MANY ACTORS HAVE COMPLAINED that Hitchcock gave them little direction, while others have been grateful to be left alone to develop their own performance, as was Cary Grant. Hitchcock knew that Grant knew how to play Cary Grant better than anyone else. “I didn’t have to direct him,” Hitchcock said. “All I had to do was put him in front of a camera.”
Grant told me he understood that he was sometimes regarded as being self-obsessed about his character’s wardrobe and every detail of his performance. “I’m the only property I have, so I have to watch over it. You might say I have a vested interest.”
Doc Erickson, the unit production manager, talked with me about what it was like working with Cary Grant.
“He could be a little obstreperous. Cary always wanted something, or he didn’t want something, and he would let you know about it and become sort of a nuisance in that regard. Eventually, you just let it roll off your back.
“We’d brought down a new Lincoln limousine from London for him. I said, ‘That’s your car, Mr. Grant.’ The chauffeur who came with the car was holding the rear door open for him.
“He acted like it was a big surprise and said, ‘Now, that’s really thoughtful of you, Doc. But you shouldn’t have gone to all the trouble.’
“‘The studio told me it’s in your contract, Mr. Grant,’ I said.
“‘Please call me Cary, Doc. I want everybody to call me Cary.’
“A couple of weeks later, he came up to me and said, ‘Doc, I don’t like riding around in that limousine. Everybody gawks at me, and I don’t like it. I’d rather have a little open car with a driver who doesn’t look like someone out of a Mae West movie. This one won’t take his cap off.’
“So, I got him a convertible and a younger driver without a chauffeur’s uniform, and shipped the limousine back to London.
“A few weeks passed, then Cary said, ‘Doc, I’m not happy with my car and driver. Why can’t I have the limousine that’s in my contract?’
“I had to bring the Lincoln back by air.
“I wondered what next. But for the rest of the shoot, he was just like the Cary Grant you see on the screen.”
AT THE LONDON OPENING of the film, Alfred and Alma Hitchcock were presented to Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip at the Tenth Royal Film Performance at the Odeon Theatre in Leicester Square, the same day Princess Margaret announced from Clarence House that she had decided not to marry Peter Townsend. Everyone knew this wasn’t what Queen Elizabeth’s younger sister had wanted. The news spread through the theater. By the time To Catch a Thief began, everyone in the audience knew that Princess Margaret had placed duty before love.
Hitchcock and Alma, being romantics, sympathized. They had been hoping Princess Margaret would marry the man she loved, and much of the audience shared their feeling. They wondered how this would affect the audience’s response to the movie. Would they be too distracted?
The audience received the film enthusiastically.
“THE FIRST TROUBLE WE HAD with The Trouble with Harry was autumn 1954 in New England,” production manager Doc Erickson told me. “We went to Vermont to get the fall foliage and so forth, but it was one of those years when the leaves didn’t turn, and we had a lot of rain, so we had to shoot inside. We built our sets in a gymnasium in town, and then came back to Los Angeles to build a huge set on Stages 12 and 14 at Paramount with the backing and trees and foliage.
“So, we did the outdoor scenes on the stage and the indoor scenes on location.”
Another “trouble” was when the huge Technicolor camera fell from its crane in the gymnasium of East Craftsbury, Vermont, grazing Hitchcock, but fortunately not causing any injury.
Yet another “trouble” was the unavailability of the actor who played Harry, Philip Truex, whose body had to be replaced for some scenes with a stunt double.
“I think it was outside of what was expected of me. It was a little comedy of the macabre. I feel it is a true example of British humor, black humor, termed gallows humor. Do you know the old joke about a man being led to the gallows? When he saw it, he was alarmed. His reaction was, ‘I say, is that thing safe?’
“The Trouble with Harry was taken from an English book by Jack Trevor, and for some reason, I moved it to New England. My approach remained typically English, and it didn’t travel well. The English have always had a fascination for crime as such, and this was a story about a dead body. In truth, it didn’t do all that well in England either. I should have paid more attention to Alma, who didn’t find it amusing.
“The exhibitors—those people who distribute films and run the cinemas, my natural enemies—didn’t find it amusing either, and they didn’t think the public would. Then they made it true by not publicizing the picture and opening it in a few small theaters. It’s easy to make the negative come true.”
Young Arnie (Jerry Mathers), walking through the Vermont woods, hears some threats, and then gunshots. Investigating, he finds the body of Harry Worp (Philip Truex), and he thinks Harry has been murdered. He tells his mother, Jennifer Rogers (Shirley MacLaine), who recognizes the man as her ex-husband. She, along with the elderly Captain Wiles (Edmund Gwenn) and the spinster Ivy Gravely (Mildred Natwick), believe they will be prime suspects when Harry’s body is found, so they conspire to bury it, with the help of artist Sam Marlowe (John Forsythe).
As questions arise concerning how Harry died, he is dug up and buried several times, arousing the suspicions of the deputy sheriff, Calvin Wiggs (Royal Dano). While trying to find out who killed Harry, Jennifer and Sam fall in love, as do Ivy and Captain Wiles. Finally, the town doctor, Dr. Greenbow (Dwight Marfield), determines that Harry wasn’t killed at all, but died of natural causes.
In Alma’s presence, Hitchcock had told me that one of the few things they didn’t share was a similar sense of humor. “I had to curb his sense of humor,” she told me, but in The Trouble with Harry she had let her husband go his own way, without her usual restraint.
Shirley MacLaine, who made her screen debut in this film, was discovered for the part of Jennifer by accident, because of an accident, while she was an understudy in Pajama Game.
“We were still looking for someone to play Jennifer, the young mother,” Herbert Coleman, whom Hitchcock had promoted to co-producer, told me. Then, on a Broadway stage, I saw our Jennifer. She was playing the lead. As soon as the curtain came down, I told Doc [Erickson] we’d found our girl, Carol Haney.
“He opened up his program to show me Carol Haney had been replaced by Shirley MacLaine, who was in the chorus, and the understudy. Miss Haney had had an accident and Shirley was playing her part.
“She’d already caught the eye of Hal Wallis, who tested her. Hitch got hold of the test, then signed her.”
In the stage-trained cast were Edmund Gwenn, Mildred Natwick, Mildred Dunnock, Royal Dano, and John Forsythe.
Forsythe’s first meeting with Hitchcock was a tense one for him. Coleman recalled: “Hitch and I met John at ‘21.’ Beforehand, John had explained to me that he would have to leave early because he had an appointment at two o’clock. Hitch took his usual care ordering the wine, then he got around to telling us how he wanted the dead body in Harry dressed. As always, he was pretty specific about how his characters should dress.
“‘I want a dark blue blazer with silver buttons,’ he said, ‘a striped shirt with French cuffs and large silver cuff links, a wide hand-painted silk tie from Sulka, light blue trousers, blue and white plaid wool socks, and black shoes with tassels.’
“As the meal went on, I noticed that John seemed upset. He didn’t leave early. He was still sitting there when Hitch and I left.
“Later, I asked him why, and he said, ‘I couldn’t get up from the table. I was dressed exactly like the dead body Mr. Hitchcock was telling you how to dress.’ John didn’t know that this was a joke, typical of Hitch’s sense of humor.”
When shooting began in Vermont, MacLaine had trouble understanding Hitchcock. Once, she thought she heard him say, “Dog’s feet.”
“I turned to Johnny Forsythe, and whispered, ‘Dog’s feet?’
“Johnny whispered back, ‘He means pause.’” MacLaine was not yet acquainted with Hitchcock’s fondness for cockney rhyming slang. “Dog’s feet” were paws, so “dog’s feet” meant pause. “Don’t come a pig’s tail” translated meant “Don’t come twirly,” which was “Don’t come too early.”
While doing music for To Catch a Thief, composer Lyn Murray recommended his friend, Bernard Herrmann, for Hitchcock’s next film. Herrmann scored The Trouble with Harry and would make an extraordinary contribution to the next eight Hitchcock films as well as to many of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents television programs.
Hitchcock’s own favorite line in The Trouble with Harry occurs when Edmund Gwenn is pulling the body by the legs as though he’s pulling a wheelbarrow, and the spinster lady happens along and says, “What happens to be the trouble, Captain?” Hitchcock liked understatement.
DURING THE FILMING of his next picture, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Hitchcock became an American citizen. Alma had become a citizen in 1950, but Hitchcock waited until 1955.
“I drove Hitch to the federal court building,” Herbert Coleman told me. “He was nervous. He especially hated being in a crowd.
“Alma had often told me how much she wished he would become an American citizen. As we were driving, Hitch explained why he hadn’t done it sooner.
“‘The Hitchcock name is almost as old as the British Empire. It isn’t easy for me to give all that up, so much British history and tradition. But Alma would never forgive me if I didn’t go through with this.’”
During the post-production of The Trouble with Harry, Hitchcock decided to bring The Man Who Knew Too Much up to date. To help John Michael Hayes with the screenplay, he brought in Angus MacPhail, who had contributed, though uncredited, to the first Man Who Knew Too Much, and whom he had known for a long time.
Americans Ben and Jo McKenna (James Stewart and Doris Day) are befriended by Louis Bernard (Daniel Gelin) in Marrakech. Later, Ben sees Bernard, disguised as an Arab, stabbed in a street market. As he dies, he tells Ben that a statesman is to be assassinated. “Tell London to find Ambrose Chappell.”
An English couple, the Draytons (Bernard Miles and Brenda de Banzie), disappear with the McKennas’ eight-year-old son, Hank (Christopher Olsen). Ben is warned not to tell the police what Bernard told him. Hank’s life depends on his silence.
Following the kidnappers to London, the McKennas are greeted by Jo’s fans, who know her as Jo Conway, a famous singer. Scotland Yard Inspector Buchanan (Ralph Truman) also awaits them, but Ben is afraid to say anything.
Investigating on their own, they go to Ambrose Chapel, not a person, but a church used by the kidnappers. Ben is captured after Jo goes to tell Buchanan, who has gone to Albert Hall.
At Albert Hall, Jo is confronted by a man she recognizes from Marrakech. He reminds her that Hank’s life depends on her silence. He is Rien (Reggie Nalder), the hired assassin.
Ben escapes and rushes to Albert Hall where he and Jo search for the assassin as the concert begins.
At the music’s climax, Jo sees Rien’s gun and screams, spoiling his aim. The intended victim, an ambassador, is only wounded.
Jo and Ben are invited to the embassy, where Hank is being held by members of a government faction planning a coup. When Jo is invited to sing, Hank whistles along with her from where he is being held, and Ben rescues him.
Ar
thur Benjamin lengthened his “Storm Cloud Cantata” for the remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much by adding an orchestral prologue. Thus the Albert Hall musical sequence is twice as long as it was in 1934.
The second Man Who Knew Too Much was intended by Hitchcock as a remake by a mature artist of an effort from his youth. “I was an amateur when I did the first Man Who Knew Too Much,” he told me, “but a talented one. I thought as a fully matured professional, I could make a better picture, but the second picture took on a life of its own.”
“Some of it was better the second time, but some of it was better the first time. The only answer is, I suppose I’ll have to make it a third time.”
James Stewart as the hero gave Hitchcock exactly what he wanted, but those who have seen the first version cannot easily forget Peter Lorre’s sinister geniality.
Stewart said, “I remember once I asked some question about my character, even though I knew that kind of question was a no-no for Hitch.
“I was sorry as soon as I said it. He shot me one of those pained, ‘Oh, how-could-you, I-thought-better-of-you’ looks of his. I’d seen others get that look, and I’d promised myself I was never going to put myself in the position of being at the receiving end of it. Enunciating not just the words, but each syllable, the way he did when he felt you’d played the fool and given a pretty good performance of being one, he said simply, only it wasn’t really simple, and nothing Hitch ever said was a waste of words, ‘Just be yourself.’
“Well, that’s the toughest thing anyone could ever ask me to do. No cover. Go out there naked as James Stewart. I mean, what do you do with your hands?