by Thilo Wydra
This prison anecdote is legendary; Alfred Hitchcock told it repeatedly throughout his life, with almost notorious obsession, at every possible opportunity. There were slight variations, such as the length of his time in the cell, and the story was always accompanied by an appraising grin focused on his listener. In his next-to-last public appearance ever, to accept a Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute on March 7, 1979, in Beverly Hills, under painful physical stress and pumped full of medication, he told his best version of the police anecdote. French director and Hitchcock expert Claude Chabrol once reflected on the story: “He repeatedly told this prison story. At the beginning, [he was locked up for a whole] night, then it was three hours. He changed it markedly in order to show that it was a game.”132 Whether or not Hitchcock had fabricated the story, something about it had to be true because he spent his entire life painfully afraid of the police. Policemen, as well as prisoners and prison cells, appear over and over again in his films as a recognizable motif.
The life of Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980), arguably the most important film director of his generation, was a life lived in and among fears, defined by neuroses and obsessions. There is no doubt that he was a genius. He was shy and withdrawn, fearful and uncertain, some say. Gentle and kind, affable and eloquent, well-read and educated, polite and always humorous. A British gentleman. Others say he was a monster, that he took diabolical pleasure in terrifying others or at least in frightening them in macabre, twisted ways. He supposedly felt no empathy for others and had no friends; the only person he truly trusted was his wife Alma Reville. Even his relationship with his only daughter Patricia was allegedly not a simple one. He was a multifaceted, complex man—difficult to understand and analyze, whether in terms of his ambiguity or in terms of his cinematic thrills and nightmares. He once commented on himself, playfully smug and self-deprecating: “People think I’m a monster—they really do! I’ve been told that!”133
On June 8, 1972, during one of his US television appearances on the legendary 1970s program The Dick Cavett Show, the master corrected the moderator Dick Cavett, who interviewed him in depth on his life’s work. The correction came in reference to his famous, rumored statement that “actors are cattle.” Sitting stoically in his chair, the man known by the entire world as “Hitch” had the following to say: “Well, I think at the time I was accused of calling actors cattle, and I said that I would never say such an unfeeling rude thing about actors at all. What I probably said was that all actors should be treated like cattle . . . In a nice way, of course.”134 He then smiled slyly, almost imperceptibly, quite pleased with himself. Nothing seemed to worry him—even exposing his industry to ridicule on live television. The amused public laughed and applauded, loud and long. Hitchcock was, at his core, an entertainer.
Alfred Hitchcock made fifty-three movies in about fifty years—an extensive and influential body of cinematic work that continues to influence generations of directors and other artists. His films are famous and familiar worldwide. They live in the collective consciousness of popular culture and are honored members of the global canon; these include Rebecca (1940), Notorious (1946), Strangers on a Train (1951), Vertigo (1950), Psycho (1960), and The Birds (1963). At some point, Hitchcock became a universally recognized brand for both himself as a person and his creative work.
During the first half of the 1950s, Alfred Hitchcock made three films with Grace Kelly: Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, and To Catch a Thief. This period was one of his most radiantly productive periods, one that he considered a high point: “At the time . . . I was in top form.”135
Hitchcock once said that before he even started filming, he had finished a movie in his mind. In contrast, the filming was a necessity that he would have gladly spared himself. These are films of fear. Nightmarish cinematic imagery. “Mental pictures,” is how French philosopher Gilles Deleuze described the admirable brilliance of Alfred Hitchcock’s films.
Not inconsequential are also two television series of the late 1950s and early 1960s. He always delivered both the prologue and epilogue of the thirty- to sixty-minute episodes himself. His extremely bizarre, absurd manner, as well as his cult-status cameos in his own projects, contributed to his enormous popularity and clout. The public waited anxiously for each of his regular cameos, so he had to place these early in his films so that the viewers would pay attention to the plot and stop watching for his appearance. This is a singular phenomenon in all film history; no other director is as publically recognizable as Hitchcock. Everyone thinks that they know something about Alfred Hitchcock, about the man in a proper black suit with a white shirt and black tie. This Victorian facade helped him maintain an appearance of the sense of control and security that eluded him internally, despite his incredible fame and his immense worldwide success.
In his wonderful seventy-five-minute interview on The Dick Cavett Show, Hitchcock told a humorous story about his deep-seated obsession with fear (his humor always held a kernel of truth): “I think my mother scared me when I was three months old. You see, she said BOO! It gave me the hiccups. And she apparently was very satisfied. All mothers do it, you know. That’s how fear starts in everyone.”136
Alfred Hitchcock, the inventor of suspense and the MacGuffin (a driving element in a plot that is ultimately revealed as arbitrary and irrelevant), was a deeply lonely person, an outsider everywhere he went. He was a man who trusted few, who entrenched himself behind his wit and macabre taste. He was an extremely sensitive person on the inside; a calm and stoic Buddha on the outside. He spent his entire life afraid of the world and of people, and, not least of all, afraid of himself. In contrast, he had also once said, “People like the feeling of fear, when they know that they need not fear for themselves.” This is precisely what his films are built on as they subtly manipulate the viewers.
The following two anecdotes reveal Hitchcock’s unique sense of humor. In the early 1950s, the Hitchcocks had been living in Hollywood for a decade. Although he was not the most sociable of people, occasionally Hitchcock would host a small, elegant party. Two such parties remain legendary examples of his quirky sense of humor: “I once gave a dinner-party where all the food was blue. Everything was blue . . . It was a full meal, blue chicken soup, blue trout, blue chicken, blue ice cream, and when you broke open your roll the bread was blue inside. And I did not comment on that at all.” “I also gave a dinner-party for my wife, at Chasen’s Restaurant, where they had a back garden in those days. And we had a table for 14 people. And I got central casting to give me an aristocratic old lady. We had her hair done beautifully, dressed her well, and sat her at the head of the table. And the guests arrived and said, ‘Who is the old lady?’ And I said ‘I don’t know, I never met her before.’”137
When Alfred Hitchcock died on April 29, 1980, at his home in Bel Air of kidney failure and heart disease—after years of depression, alcoholism, illness, feelings of being misunderstood, and existential weariness—the world lost a cinematic visionary.138
Dial M for Murder
(1954)
The collaboration with Hitchcock was a fantastic experience . . . As an actress I learned an incredible amount about the development of motion pictures. Hitchcock gave me a whole lot of confidence.
—Grace Kelly139
My mother was both influenced and touched by Hitchcock. They were very close.
—Prince Albert II of Monaco140
Dial M for Murder introduced Grace Kelly to Alfred Hitchcock. It would become the most important collaboration of both their careers. A longtime, stable, and respectful friendship grew from this project, one that lasted through to the end of their lives.
Hitchcock made three films with Grace: Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), and To Catch a Thief (1955).
Of the eleven films that Grace Kelly made during her unfortunately short acting career (1950 and 1956), the three Hitchcock films are without a doubt her finest, most important works. Each film received great acclaim. As an actre
ss, Grace Kelly was never more captivating or beguiling than she was in To Catch a Thief. This intimate picture, filmed on Hollywood’s largest film set, could be considered the epitome of their collaboration. It marked the artistic, creative pinnacle of Hitchcock’s directorial career, although other significant works would follow: Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds, Marnie (1964), and Frenzy (1972). For Grace, working under Hitchcock on To Catch a Thief resulted in her finally coming fully into her own as an actress. She projected complete self-assurance, composure, and a distinct elegance that completely discarded all immaturity and naïveté.
Alfred Hitchcock and Grace Kelly first met during the second week of June 1953 in Burbank, Los Angeles. The appointment was set up by MCA Agent Jay Kanter. It must have been a very special moment, full of expectations. On that June morning, Grace Kelly, in any case, was extremely nervous.141 She was timid, perhaps even a little afraid. “I could not think of anything to say to him. In a horrible way it seemed funny to have my brain turn to stone.”142
She had just turned twenty-three, and now she was being introduced to a world famous director, who only a few weeks after this introduction turned fifty-four, on August 13, 1953. Hitchcock called himself Hitch. He had done this since June 1919, when at the young age of twenty he published a Kafkaesque, nightmarish short story titled “Gas” in The Henley magazine under this name. Already in his youth, he had adamantly rejected his other nickname, “Cocky.” This reveals the extreme ambivalence that he had his entire life to the two syllables of his last name. “Hitch” means to hook or knot onto something. As an adjective, “cocky” implies arrogance. In later years, he gleefully instructed new coworkers, even actresses, when they hesitated at what to call him: “Call me Hitch—hold the Cock!” This was one of his classic, ambiguous jokes, which masked his longtime sexual abstinence and asceticism.
Even in Grace Kelly’s presence, while working together for the first time on the filming of Dial M for Murder in the Warner Studios in Burbank, he would make the occasional innuendo or tell a naughty story. Once, when he was standing with Ray Milland, he turned to Grace after telling Milland an off-color joke and said, gleefully, “Are you shocked, Miss Kelly?” She responded: “Oh no, Mr. Hitchcock. I attended Catholic girls’ school. I’ve been hearing such things since I was thirteen.”143 That tickled the humorous master very much.
“Hitch was wonderful. He was very secretive and mysterious. He was very shy,” Grace recalled.144 The ties between the two of them quickly became tighter, although boundaries were never crossed, despite the avid claims made to the contrary. The rotund, relatively unattractive director making untoward advances on his extremely attractive, seemingly delicate, thirty-year-younger main actress, would have fit the stereotype that many assumed Hitchcock fulfilled. He was seen by some as an obsessive misogynist, who futilely and with growing despair tried to become involved with his string of blonde actresses.
However, he did not do this. To the contrary, for him, Grace Kelly was a protégé. Unlike Fred Zinnemann and John Ford who did not pay much attention to her on their sets, Hitchcock contributed much to her career. She valued and applied his guidance over the coming years through to the making of her final film, High Society. “With Hitch, everything was different. He had endless patience with me.”145
The Master of Suspence had seen Grace previously in her screen test for the black-and-white film Taxi (1953) made by Gregory Ratoff. Some stories claim that Hitchcock also saw her in John Ford’s African adventure-love story Mogambo (1953) and in Fred Zinnemann’s black-and-white western High Noon. High Noon had been filmed in the fall of 1951 and had opened in the summer of 1952, so it is possible that Hitchcock saw it. However, Mogambo did not finish filming until late March 1953 and did not open until September of that year. By this point, Hitchcock was well into filming Dial M for Murder, which had begun on August 5. Hitchcock could have only seen some of the early raw cuts of Ford’s Mogambo, and this would have only been the case if the studio had let him view the color film internally. There was no way that he could have seen the completed film before he had decided to cast Grace Kelly. Anyhow, Hitchcock was not a director who spent much time watching the works of his colleagues. In recorded interviews with the director, it was very clear that he was rarely acquainted with the films that were produced at the same time as his own, even years later.
Brigitte Auber, who acted in To Catch a Thief beside Grace Kelly and Cary Grant, recalled the following story: “One time we were eating on set, and I asked Hitch if he also enjoyed dining with other directors. He said, ‘No.’ The other directors simply did not interest him. It was an almost charming commentary.”146 Brigitte’s was an unconventional attitude, just like Hitchcock.
Regardless of which Grace films Hitchcock may have seen, he did not simply find a main actress for his next film. He discovered Grace Kelly—the blonde, delicate, cool Hitchcock heroine par excellence. He became her mentor, and she, his muse.
During August and September 1953, Alfred Hitchcock filmed his thirty-ninth film. Dial M for Murder was based on an identically titled stage play written by British author Frederick Knott. This was his first published play, and he wrote the screenplay as well. During his long life, Knott only wrote three plays. The other two were Wait Until Dark (1966), which was filmed in 1967 by Terence Young with Audrey Hepburn playing the lead role of a blind young woman targeted by conmen, and Write Me a Murder (1961). All three of these plays were highly successful on Broadway. With 552 performances, Dial M for Murder was by far the most successful of the three.147 The play was first aired in 1952 as a BBC television movie, and after seeing the program, London producer James P. Sherwood, who was looking for a new play, brought it to the stage. Under director John Fernald, Knott’s play premiered on June 19, 1952, in London’s Westminster Theatre. On October 29, 1952, the play opened in America at the Plymouth Theater, New York, under the direction of Reginald Denham. The New York cast included John Williams as Chief Inspector Hubbard and Anthony Dawson as the potential murderer, Captain Lesgate. Both actors reprised their roles in Hitchcock’s film. Hitchcock saw one of the productions of the three-act play and decided to bring Knott’s play to the screen. The film rights were sold to Warner Bros. for a modest $2,800.
Even as a film, Dial M for Murder retains its theatrical feel. The enclosed chamber-play-styled film was Hitchcock’s final production for Warner Bros. Studio. Reluctantly, MGM loaned the contracted Grace to Warner, the news of which the Hollywood press announced in late July. At the urgent wish of Jack Warner, the studio boss, the film was made using new 3-D technology, which was very popular at this time; it was seen as a means to distinguish movies from television (which was rising in popularity). Another 3-D film made at this time was Andre De Toth’s horror film House of Wax (1953) with Vincent Price, also produced by Warner Bros. Like Dial M for Murder, House of Wax was filmed in Warnercolor, and when it premiered in April 1953, it was the first large-scale, 3-D production of its kind. Another 3-D film was MGM’s Cole Porter musical Kiss Me, Kate, directed by George Sidney. Its worldwide premiere was in New York in November of that same year.
Hitchcock resisted Warner’s efforts, but was eventually forced to accept them. His argument was that 3-D would be a passing fad, and he labeled the new technique, which did not interest him in the least, as “anti-cinematographic.” In the end, his prediction was right. When Dial M for Murder finally premiered in May 1954 in New York, the 3-D hype was noticeably fading. In the cinemas, the film was ultimately shown in the usual “flat” two-dimensional format.
For the otherwise experimental Hitchcock, the heavy equipment with its monstrously large, clunky cameras was, in the context of the small studio stages, more hindering than it was helpful. After all, the movie, which was made in a span of thirty-six days, took place in a single room. Only a very few scenes were shot in other locations. Due to his skepticism of the new 3-D technology and its tricks, Hitchcock utilized hardly any visual effects. The new medium is only evident, almost in
cidentally, in the small details. For example, in the foreground one can see vases or a table seemingly enlarged and closer to the viewer. In two scenes, an arm stretches out toward the audience, out of the picture to a certain extent. Hitchcock happily denigrated the movie and ironically commented that, “I would also like to shoot an entire film in a phone booth.”148 Nonetheless, Dial M for Murder is among the director’s better works, and was the first of several films of his that were set entirely in claustrophobically small spaces.
In the completely enclosed, spatially limited atmosphere of the chamber play and its minimalistic style, Dial M for Murder resembles two of Hitchcock’s earlier films. The first is the anti-war drama Lifeboat (1944). It was a similar experiment, filmed exclusively in a studio in a large water tank with no exterior shots. Based on a novella by John Steinbeck, this unusual film was made for Twentieth Century-Fox and was one of Hitchcock’s few political movies—“a microcosm of the war.” Nine people with vastly different backgrounds and natures are stuck together on a lifeboat, “like a pack of dogs.”149 They are survivors of a shipwreck caused by a German attack. The other film is the philosophical work Rope (1948), which in some ways marks a break and a new start on Hitchcock’s part. It was Alfred Hitchcock’s first Technicolor film and the first of two movies that he himself produced. Furthermore, Rope was the first of four films made with James Stewart. It was also a stylistic and technical experiment, something that Hitchcock always loved. Thus, in 1948, he took Patrick Hamilton’s 1929 play, which had been adapted as a screenplay by Arthur Laurents, and filmed it in practically one take. He did this by filming continuously and chronologically, using one 10-minute roll of film after the other. The eighty-minute film takes place in New York, and the fictional plot takes place in real time. Besides an establishing shot, that shows the viewer the wide fenestrated facade of the penthouse apartment, the plot moves forward with little to no cuts. When a roll ended, Hitchcock would let the camera either pan out or zoom in closer to one of the actors in frame.
