He began work with his old scriptwriter, Angus MacPhail, at the beginning of 1955 and two months later, John Michael Hayes joined them on the script. Hayes recalled that “I never saw the original script [of the film released in 1934] and never saw the original picture, except for the Albert Hall sequence at the end, which was pretty much the same as it was in the original. Hitch called me in and said, ‘What I’m going to do is tell you the story, and you take notes and write the story I tell you, your way.’ ” The story was of a middle-class couple with a young son who witness the assassination of an agent in a foreign country; the assassins then kidnap their child to prevent them from revealing what they know and, when the setting changes to London, a series of bizarre confrontations ends with a climactic scene in the Albert Hall and an equally dramatic reunion of parents and child. In the new script the exotic location is changed from Switzerland to Morocco, the couple and child become American rather than English, the young girl becomes a young boy, and part of the action is transposed from a London dentist to a London taxidermist.
Hitchcock had chosen James Stewart and Doris Day for the principal parts. Stewart was an experienced actor who was accustomed to the role of an honest man in testing circumstances; Day was a musical star whose performance in a film about the Ku Klux Klan, Storm Warning, Hitchcock had admired. She was, in life as well as in art, very much the American housewife abroad. She had never travelled out of the United States, and was nervous as the cast and crew flew to Marrakech for the opening sequences of the film. She was predictably dismayed by what she saw of the unsanitary conditions of the city, and horrified by what she considered to be the brutal treatment of animals. Hitchcock ensured that all the animals on set were well fed and properly managed.
But her problems did not end there. In his usual fashion Hitchcock kept his own counsel and did not comment upon her performance in front of the camera. She interpreted this formality and reticence as coldness and dislike. She commented later that “he never said anything to me, before or during or after a scene, and so I thought I was displeasing him, and I was crushed…I was convinced that I must have been the worst actress he had ever had.” Eventually she arranged a meeting with him, in which she offered to resign and be replaced by someone else. Hitchcock was astonished. “He said it was quite the reverse, that he thought I was just doing everything right—and that if I hadn’t been doing everything right he would have told me.” It is an apt example of how he tended to disregard the reaction of his actors to his presence. Yet he had divined fear within her, and comforted her by explaining his own neuroses—how, for example, “he was afraid to walk across the Paramount lot to the commissary because he was so afraid of people.”
Bernard Miles, who played the leader of the assassins, recalled his “very genial experience” with the director but he added that “he certainly did not annoy his cast with excessive attention.” James Stewart had told him that “we’re in the hands of an expert here. You can lean on him. Just do everything he tells you, and the whole thing will be okay.” The filming in Marrakech was difficult, in part because some of it coincided with the observance of Ramadan; some of the extras were weak with hunger, while others were selling their food tickets and not returning to work.
The production report for 21 May records elliptically that it was “Overcast—delay caused by mob.” The mob was in fact the extras, who had been angered by a rumour that they would not be paid if they could not see the camera. Hitchcock remained unmoved, sitting beneath a large umbrella; instead of his customary suit and tie, he had bowed to circumstances and wore a tightly buttoned shortsleeve shirt. He had a habit of blowing the flies off his face with his lower lip distended.
The furore confirmed his dislike of location shooting; it was disordered, uncomfortable and unpredictable. Now he began to enquire “who wrote all these sequences into the picture.” He wanted to get out of Morocco. “Doc” Erickson wrote that “as usual he was ready to go home as soon as he arrived. He’s not even keen about going to London, but he’s committed himself to those damned interiors up there now.” On 23 May the production report summarised, “Milling mobs in marketplace—had to move camera B out.” That was the last day. They moved on to the “damned interiors” of London, and then with the scenes completed, cast and crew returned to the comfort of the Paramount set where Hitchcock felt most at home. The filming was complete by August, but it was thirty-four days over schedule.
Eight or ten pages of the script had been flown in by courier each day as they worked in Marrakech and, when they travelled on to London for the next stage of the film, John Michael Hayes was already at the Savoy hotel with his typewriter, delivering his material directly to the set. Everything was done, as Hayes put it, “on the rush.” Hayes resented the fact that screen credit was given to “John Michael Hayes and Angus MacPhail” when in fact he believed that he had changed MacPhail’s script out of all recognition. It was his script and his only. The complaint went to the official body who arbitrated such matters, and Hayes was given sole credit as writer. Hitchcock never worked with him again.
The Man Who Knew Too Much is very different from its predecessor. Hitchcock himself announced that “the first version is the work of a talented amateur, and the second was made by a professional.” This was not at all fair on the original version, which is preferred by many, but in any case Hitchcock amended his opinion some years later when he said that “I think, actually, the difference would be in the original The Man Who Knew Too Much. I wasn’t audience conscious, whereas in the second one I was.” This is closer to the point, since he had become highly sensitive to the expectations of the American public. At an even later date he changed his opinion again. He now believed that the earlier version “was more spontaneous—it had less logic. Logic is dull: you always lose the bizarre and spontaneous.”
The second version is glossy. It has more elaborate set pieces. It is in colour. It pays regard to the psychological weight of the couple played by James Stewart and Doris Day. It is longer and, in certain respects, more various in atmosphere. It has a softer ending. The first version is not so well constructed but it has an energy and inventiveness that surmount all obstacles. Yet the American edition, if it can so be called, benefits from Hitchcock’s longer experience of film. It is technically more accomplished, and with the technique comes the vision. They are not to be separated. The Man Who Knew Too Much is a fine example of a well-integrated filmic world, solid, brilliantly realised and fully detailed, which is exposed as frail and tissue-thin. Menace and tension flow through the film just as its music does. The clash of cymbals in the Albert Hall will signal an assassination. When Doris Day sings “Que Será Será,” her voice creeps slowly and nervously up the staircase and along the hall of a foreign embassy to verify that her child is still alive. Adventure and melodrama, in the first version, have given way to psychological drama and the interpretation of character.
Hitchcock once summarised the difference between his English and American periods as one between spontaneity or instinct, and calculation. That element of caution is also related to the much larger financial risks involved in the American studio system where $1 million, or more, could be spent on one picture. It is the difference between a studio and a factory. It has also been observed that his English players are more solidly rooted in their social and cultural environment whereas the Americans tend to be more abstract, to float free from social ties and to exist in some large indefinite space. It is the measure of his response to the two nations.
The American reaction to the new film was not in doubt; it was an instant success and, within a week, had become the most profitable film of the year. Hitchcock had also made a decision in another sense. On 20 April 1955, before he set out for Marrakech and London, he had been driven to the federal court building in Los Angeles from which he emerged as an American citizen.
9
GOOD EVENING
At nine thirty on the evening of 2 October 1955, a portly figure a
ppeared as a silhouette on the right edge of the television screen and, accompanied by the music of Gounod’s “Funeral March of a Marionette,” stepped into the shape of what would become a famous profile. “Good evening.” So began a series of half-hour episodes, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, that lasted for seven years, followed by a further three years of extended programmes, guaranteeing the fame and fortune of the director in ways that he could not have imagined. He had always possessed a thirst for self-publicity, adduced by his cameo appearances in most of his films, but the power of television was such that his shape and visage became recognised all over the world.
The timing was propitious. The box-office proceeds from the American cinema had dropped markedly, while in the 1950s the number of American households with television had risen from 4 million to 48 million. He had a constant preoccupation with his audience’s expectations, but now he had to give only himself. His role was suitably ambiguous. Although each episode had the hallmark of Hitchcock stamped upon it, he chose and directed relatively few of them; of the 335 television stories, Hitchcock directed approximately twenty, leaving the decisions to his staff or what he sometimes called “my own little family.”
The television team were already old friends. Joan Harrison had been his assistant and adviser in the past, and she was now called upon to become executive producer. A little later Norman Lloyd, who had worked with him as an actor in Saboteur and Spellbound, became associate producer. They chose the stories and submitted them for Hitchcock’s approval. The rest was up to them. They would develop the screenplay with a writer, they would cast it, choose a director, film it and edit it. Norman Lloyd related that “Hitchcock seldom spoke about how a script should be shot. He had nothing to do with the pictures until he saw a rough-cut. Then he would look at it and say, yes or no, and usually he’d say ‘well maybe you need a close-up or an insert or something.’ That was the extent he played in the actual making of it.” He might say “good” or “very good” and, if he really did not like the material, he said simply “Well, thank you.” His associates knew what to do next.
Hitchcock confirmed this relatively restrained role. “Miss Harrison does the casting, yes,” he said, “and Norman Lloyd. I try to put out fatherly words of advice without trying to usurp their position.” But he appreciated the speed of the procedure, which appealed to his sense of technical challenge. Most of the episodes were filmed and edited within three days, scarcely enough time to dress a set in the film studio. One day was allowed for rehearsal, and two days for filming. He stated in a press release just before the start of the series that “it annoys me, this notion that I cannot move around rapidly when the occasion demands.”
His principal contribution was to lend his presence to the enterprise with what were known as “lead-ins” and “lead-outs.” He introduced each episode, and provided a concluding paragraph to point the moral or adorn the tale with the shocking news that crime does not pay. This was necessary for the sake of the censor, and may have come as a surprise to the audience. It has been said that this was the first television series which adopted the point of view of the criminal rather than the victim.
He had a lugubriously jolly delivery, perfectly in keeping with the manner of an English undertaker, but over the years there were occasions when he changed his appearance. He came on screen sitting in the stocks, or as a baby in a nappy, or with a hatchet in his head. He was once trapped within a bottle. He was found tied to a railway track from which horizontal position he announced to his television audience, “Good evening, fellow tourists. I think this proves that in some ways the airplane can never replace the railway.” In another sequence he explained that the killer had been caught “because his dog Cassandra was really a detective in disguise and turned him in at the next town. It’s getting so a man can’t even trust his best friend.”
Courtesy of CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images
A promotional picture for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 1956.
It was generally assumed that he wrote his own scripts for these short appearances but in fact he had hired a television comedy writer. He had given Jim Allardice a screening of The Trouble with Harry, and asked the writer to provide scripts that could match the macabre humour of that film; he wanted something with an English twist of humour with understatement and menace. Allardice went further than that and provided material that might out-Hitchcock Hitchcock. “Here is the ever popular revolver. It is an excellent means of establishing credit in a strange city. It is equally useful in the removal of unwanted or unsightly persons.” And “I was once arrested for indecent exposure when I removed a Halloween mask.”
He also fought a running on-screen battle with the sponsors of the programme, whose advertisements began and concluded the narrative. “Naturally these remarks have nothing at all to do with tonight’s story. They are only meant to divert your attention so that our sponsor can sneak up on you—and here he is, ready to pounce.” “Now my sponsor would like to bring you an important message. I needn’t tell you to whom it is important.” The advertisers were at first ready to take umbrage at the presenter’s droll or sarcastic remarks but, once they saw the viewing figures, they withdrew their objections.
His role as master of ceremonies was not unfamiliar or unusual. It may not have yet been exploited to the full on American television but for Hitchcock it had all the trappings of the “chairman” in the Edwardian music hall who would introduce each of the acts with a few ribald words. This light comedy routine was an essential part of his nature, spurred by some of his earliest memories of the London stage. His role has also been described as that of a jester or a dandy, with all the irony and distance those parts imply, but the most important duty of the chairman was to rustle up the “wet money” and increase the profits by persuading the audience to drink. He knew that his weekly appearance increased his ratings.
On a certain day each week he was driven to a studio on the lot of Universal Pictures where he filmed ten or more of these segments in sequence. The props were in place, his lines were fed to him, and he realised very soon that he enjoyed his position in front of a television camera. His company was called Shamley Productions, after Shamley Green in Surrey where the Hitchcocks had lived in the 1930s. It was another intimation of England from a new American citizen.
He tended to call the episodes “stories” and said that “I have always wanted to work in the short story. The small simple tale of a single idea building to a turn, a twist at the end.” He had encountered this technique in the stories of Edgar Allan Poe which he had read as a child.
The first episode that he directed, “Breakdown,” was a curious interpretation of Poe’s “The Premature Burial.” A callous and passionless businessman (played by Joseph Cotten) is caught within the wreckage of his car; he is believed to be dead until, as the coroner prepares the instruments of his trade, he sheds a tear in the morgue. It was also the first expression on television of one of Hitchcock’s favoured images, that of a face motionless with rage, anger, fear or death itself. It is the quintessential Hitchcock visage, too traumatised to be able to react, stripped of all cultural referents, a bare blank stare. In his films, from The Wrong Man to Frenzy, that blind gaze is characteristically given to female victims.
He soon became acquainted with his popularity, on and off the set. One of his colleagues, Marshall Schlom, commented that “Mr. Hitchcock was the biggest thing around, especially on TV. To the studio, he was a hands-off client who got anything he wanted.” Hitchcock told a reporter in 1956 that “before TV I’d get about a dozen letters per week. Now it’s several hundred…Thirty years I’ve been directing pictures on the set. Just the other day I overheard a lady guest say ‘There’s Alfred Hitchcock of television.’ ” He was recognised everywhere, and accosted with imitations of his booming “Good evening.” He had the most famous silhouette in America. And he now became engaged in what must have seemed like an everlasting process of self-promotion in which his screen “character” became i
n many respects the character that he projected on to the world. He loved it.
. . .
While he had been working in Marrakech on The Man Who Knew Too Much, he had been asked a question. “Hitch, what are you thinking about?”
“I’m thinking about my next movie.”
He told a reporter in 1956 that “I’ve seen many stories about the arrest of an innocent man from the point of view of his champion—a lawyer, or reporter, and so on. But it is never told from the point of view of the person who underwent the ordeal.” It was the perfect story for a director who had often created films out of the crisis of the innocent being mistaken for the guilty. It was one of the mainstays of Hitchcock’s art.
The Wrong Man sprang out of some of his deepest preoccupations but was in fact based on a contemporary real-life episode. Due to his uncanny resemblance to another man, Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero had been mistaken for a thief. He was duly arrested and tried. In the process his wife suffered a nervous breakdown. The untoward words of a juror resulted in a mistrial, and in the interim the real thief was discovered and apprehended.
Hitchcock had often expressed a wish to film a documentary, and this was the closest he would ever come to it. He willingly parted company from the Technicolor and the scenic range of his most recent films, exchanging them for the black and white “realism” of a New York environment and a carefully subdued plot. This was also the period in which Italian neo-realism had become popular, at least in the art houses, and Hitchcock was always keenly aware of cinematic fashion.
Alfred Hitchcock Page 18
