It's Only a Movie: Alfred Hitchcock (15 page)

“I’ll tell you the kind of image I’m proud of,” Hitchcock said. “In
The Lady Vanishes,
there is a lady disguised as a nun. The audience believes she is a nun, and then I cut to the hem of her robe. When you see her high-heeled shoes, that picture tells the story. No nun, this one.

“This kind of image may come out of my early days in silent films, or it may be just the way my mind works.”

Hitchcock was reunited with cinematographer Jack Cox on this film; it was their twelfth picture together. Director Roy Ward Baker, who was an assistant director on the film, told me, “Cox was very tall, a man of very few words, with a complete lack of pretense, and a sardonic wit. He didn’t chatter, you know. He just got on with his lighting.

“If we had to put the camera up on a rostrum, what you call a parallel lift, Hitch wouldn’t climb up, because he always was fat, even in those days. What he did was to make a sort of thumbnail sketch of what he wanted and give it to Jack Cox. And that was it.

“He always claimed that he could see the film in his mind’s eye, complete, as it would be when it was finished. It was a kind of boast, ‘Only a leg-pull, really,’ as he would say.

“At the same time, that was his principle, that you don’t build a great set and call a lot of actors and a crew and everything, and then sit down and wonder what you’re going to do next. The most vital ingredient for the success of any film is that the people who are making it know what they want and know what they’re doing.”

Baker described Hitchcock as “not particularly friendly, but he wasn’t unfriendly. He was professional, you know. He didn’t waste time on pleasantries. He got on with the work, and so did I.

“I think everyone enjoyed working with Hitchcock. He was an eye-opener, a plucky chap. There was no larking about, wasting time, and stupidities. He was quite a disciplinarian, but he didn’t emphasize it at all; he just
was
it. The whole crew’s behavior will derive from the behavior of the director, in any case.

“Hitch called on the art director to build one of the sets for
The Lady Vanishes
in false perspective. It was the platform of a small country railway station, which was made to look much longer than it was by foreshortening each end of the platform to a false vanishing point. Hitchcock had the idea to have some small children dressed as grown-ups and to have them at the rapidly diminishing ends of the platform where there would be normal-sized adult people and buildings in the foreground.

“If it had been anyone but Hitchcock, I would have been dubious about the effect, but he could imagine everything and work it out that way in advance, and when you did it, his technical conception was infallible. And it was always that the technical was only there to carry the story forward in the best possible way, and frequently in the most money-saving way. Hitchcock was able to work within limitations, and when he did, they were no longer limitations.

“I was Hitchcock’s second assistant director, that’s all. But it was a privilege to have worked with him, and it taught me a great deal about the inside, the nuts and bolts, of how you make a film.

“I saw him later when I came to Hollywood to make pictures myself. I visited him at Universal, and he was very genial and amusing, you know, as he always was, at least to me. He gave me tea.

“He was quite a connoisseur of good food, and he fancied the food hampers of Fortnum & Mason. I always remember the image of Hitchcock with his little daughter, of whom he was so proud, having lunch in the train’s make-believe wagon restaurant. We were shooting that day in the dining car. There, in the make-believe restaurant, they had a little make-believe champagne, which had the bubbles, but no alcohol. With a few working lights, the two of them were dining.

“
The Lady Vanishes
showed the varying moods of people towards what everybody knew was an oncoming war. It was shown in late 1938 in London, and of course it was a tremendous success because he got it bang to rights.”

On the subject of Hitchcock’s legendary love of practical jokes, Baker said, “People warned me to beware of his practical joke side, which apparently amused him, jokes which he found hilarious and no one else did, especially the victim. I must say that during the course of the film, I, personally, never saw any instance of any practical jokery on the part of Hitchcock, only serious determination and focus on planning. The methodical planning of everything in advance was what I learned from him, and, I repeat, on a Hitchcock set there was no larking about.

“The nearest I ever got to a firsthand account of a joke was from a production manager who worked for Hitchcock. His name was Dicky Bevill.

“Hitch invited Bevill to drive down to his country house at Shamley Green in Surrey for a Sunday lunch. ‘But, Hitch, my car is being repaired.’

“‘No trouble,’ Hitch said. ‘Come by Green Line bus. It passes by your door.’ Hitch was a student of public transportation and could tell you how to get anywhere by bus or train.

“Still, Bevill was skeptical. ‘Are you sure? I’ve never seen a bus running on Elgin Avenue.’

“‘Take the 11:10 a.m. bus and you’ll be there in good time.’

“‘But, Hitch…’

“‘Don’t argue. Just do as I say.’

“So, on Sunday morning, just as Hitch had said, a Green Line bus appeared at 11:10 going to Shamley Green. Of course, Hitch had hired the bus, complete with driver and conductor.”

Bryan Langley offered an explanation for Hitchcock’s often criticized fondness for practical jokes. “He was a great joke maker, but he wasn’t the only one. In those days, soon after the First World War, people were full of practical jokes. This was the fashion at the time in the studios, and I do believe really it was a reaction from the events of the First World War. Many of these people were either in the war or had grown up as children with it.”

Practical jokes in England came into their own even earlier, at the end of the Victorian period, and were especially popular during the Edwardian era, which lasted from 1901 until 1910. In its heyday, people would spend fortunes and great effort and ingenuity to devise elaborate pranks. Hitchcock’s reputation for practical jokes was exaggerated, but he did grow up during this period and admitted he had a liking for them.

As
The Lady Vanishes
was being completed, Myron Selznick negotiated a seven-year contract with his brother, David, for his client, Alfred Hitchcock. Though other studios had shown interest, the Selznick offer was the only firm one. Seven years seemed a rather long commitment to Hitchcock, but at the same time, it held the promise of security for his family and justified the move to California. Though the Hitchcocks had high hopes for their future in Hollywood, they kept their home in Shamley Green, and paid an exploratory visit to America.

Hitchcock had agreed to do one more film in England, a film he really didn’t want to make,
Jamaica Inn.
After it was completed, he liked it even less, and said, “I would have preferred to have vanished after
The Lady Vanishes.
”

In 1938, before going to America, he had been persuaded by Charles Laughton to direct a costume epic. Laughton had formed a production company with Erich Pommer and Mayflower Pictures, and this was to be their third film. Hitchcock was persuaded by the prospect of doing a Daphne du Maurier novel. Although tentatively scheduled to make a picture about the Titanic with David Selznick, Hitchcock knew that Selznick had recently purchased film rights to du Maurier’s
Rebecca,
and he hoped to direct it.

After he agreed to do
Jamaica Inn,
Hitchcock saw the first script and had second thoughts. He entrusted the revision to his personal assistant, Joan Harrison, and left for a trip to America. On his return to London, he encountered more than script problems.

Laughton had gone from being the hero to being the villain. “It would be like casting Laughton as the butler in a whodunit,” Hitchcock said. “I would have had to change it into a ‘howdunit.’ In the novel the villain is a clergyman, which made the film difficult to distribute in America, so he was changed into a village squire and the local magistrate.”

Maureen O’Hara told me that she did
Jamaica Inn
because she was under contract to Charles Laughton, who had discovered her, and the enthusiasm for the film was all his. She felt that Hitchcock had little interest in the film, and that he didn’t make much of an impression on her, “perhaps because I was so young.”

Emlyn Williams, who appeared in the film as a character named Harry, told me that he took the part as a favor to Charles Laughton, and because he was curious about what he might learn from “the great Alfred Hitchcock. What I learned from Hitchcock was that it was a good time to go to Hollywood.”

After
Jamaica Inn,
Hitchcock, Alma, and Pat returned to America on the
Queen Mary,
taking Hitchcock’s assistant and family friend, Joan Harrison, with them. This time they were going to stay. “It was what I wanted,” Hitchcock said, “though I didn’t think I was going for my whole life. Alma was less certain about the move than I was and then she was more certain about staying. She loved the southern California weather.

“Our daughter, Patricia, adjusted to wherever her parents were. We brought a cook and a maid, who left us. Our dogs—Edward, an English cocker spaniel, and Jenkins, a Sealyham terrier—seemed to have no opinion on the subject. Grass is grass.”

Sitting with Pat Hitchcock in her suite at New York City’s Plaza Hotel, late in 2003, I asked her about her feelings, all those years ago. Did she mind leaving her home, her school friends, England?

“No. I didn’t think about it. We were together. I was an only child, and we were very close. We could weather anything.”

When their cook left, Alma bought some cookbooks. “We both enjoy French food,” Hitchcock said, “and she learned to cook everything just as I like it. Happily, she likes it the same way.

“When we got off the ship in New York, reporters immediately asked me a question which really seemed to me had no special pertinence, but they were wedded to it. ‘What is your favorite food?’ I said, ‘Steak à la mode.’

“No one laughed. No one even smiled. Then, I found myself reading that quote, over and over again. Steak à la mode. Disgusting.

“Alma was over the moon when she saw California,” Hitchcock said. “She loved the flower-scented air, the orange blossoms. It was love at first smell.”

Alma told me she liked what she saw as the absence in America of the class system that prevailed in England.

When Hitchcock left for Hollywood, he was England’s most famous director, both respected and popular. Bryan Langley, cameraman for five of Hitchcock’s earliest English sound films, seventy years later, said to me with great feeling:

“He was a very good bloke.”

I
CAN
’
T BELIEVE
I was ever that thin.”

This was Joan Fontaine’s comment on just having seen herself in
Rebecca,
fifty years after she had starred with Laurence Olivier in the Hitchcock film.

We were having dinner at New York City’s Le Cirque restaurant with ICM’s Milton Goldman, her agent and friend.

“What’s your most striking memory of
Rebecca
?” Goldman asked.

“That’s it,” she said, “I can’t believe I was ever so naive. And so skinny.

“Do you remember when Olivier takes me to the grand hotel? I ate scrambled eggs.” She made a face.

Just at that moment, owner Sirio Maccioni appeared with the menu and a few special suggestions. Fontaine did not order scrambled eggs. She continued talking about
Rebecca
in her life.

“You never know when a chance meeting or a dinner you almost didn’t accept is what changes your career and life forever. I was invited to a dinner party at Charlie Chaplin’s where I was seated next to a heavy man wearing glasses. He was very pleasant, and we began chatting about books. I happened to mention a book I’d just read and enjoyed, Daphne du Maurier’s
Rebecca.
He said, ‘I just bought the book today!’ I assumed he meant he bought a book, as did I. He went on.

“‘My name is David O. Selznick. I bought the film rights to
Rebecca.
’

“He asked me if I would like to test for the part of ‘I.’

“I tested several times. I was encouraged when it was Alfred Hitchcock who directed my test. Then, I heard about all of the others who were testing for the part of the young girl who has no name until she becomes ‘the second Mrs. de Winter.’ It was simply
everyone.
Loretta Young, Susan Hayward, Anne Baxter, Vivien Leigh. I didn’t dare hope.

“I was marrying Brian Aherne, and a week before my wedding, Mr. Selznick called and asked if I’d mind postponing my wedding to test again. I thought, yes, I do mind, but I didn’t say it.

“I’d really wanted my career, but on my honeymoon, I was no longer certain.

“I had the part and Mr. Selznick wanted me to sign a long-term contract. The long-term contract, seven years, was a condition I had to agree to if I wanted the part.

“I found Hitchcock rather distant, but only at first, not after you got to know him. I was shy. He would say disparaging things about people on the set when they couldn’t hear him, so I assumed he did the same about me. Laurence Olivier didn’t want me. He had wanted Vivien Leigh with whom he was having a notorious affair.

“Just after we began filming, Hitchcock confided that Olivier didn’t think I was very good. You can imagine how that made me feel. I was as friendly and cooperative as I could be. But after what I’d been told, if I convinced Olivier of my good feeling towards him, then I
really
deserved an Oscar. I never knew if Hitchcock said it without thinking, or if he had thought it out in order to divide and conquer.

“Later, I wondered if knowing this hurt me or helped me in my part. At the time, I was certain it hurt me, but later I wondered if Hitchcock might have known me better than I knew myself.

“Practically the whole cast was British, and very cliquish. Gladys Cooper told me, ‘You don’t belong here.’ I couldn’t let that pass, not only was I British, too, but I told her that my grandmother was the honorable Mrs. de Havilland of Guernsey, the first lady of Guernsey. That’s like being the first lady of Catalina.

“Alma, Hitch’s wife, was so petite it was possible, if you looked quickly, to overlook her. She was quiet as a mouse. I suppose mice
are
quiet. I never saw her say anything to Hitch on the set, but I bet she saved it all for when they were home alone. Pillow-to-pillow, pretty powerful stuff. They seemed very close.

“He had a great visual sense, and he knew acting. I’ve heard that he wasn’t an actor’s director, but I learned a lot from him.

“I’ll never forget this wonderful drawing he made. It wasn’t of me, it was of ‘I,’ the character I played. He would show me the drawings to help me understand how he wanted me to be. It was a wonderful way.”

The drawing she best remembered was her character shrinking into an oversized chair. Hitchcock showed the light on her face in such a way that the fear in her eyes was highlighted. The rest of the drawing was in darkness. From it she said she was able to grasp her character.

She said she wished she had that drawing, but it wouldn’t have occurred to her to ask for it because she was too much the timid young girl she was playing.

Olivier told me about his first meeting with Hitchcock. He said to the director, “Call me, Larry.”

Hitchcock responded, surprising Olivier, “Call me Hitch, without a cock.”

“I’d certainly heard the word before,” Olivier said, “but I wasn’t expecting it from the seemingly decorous Hitchcock.”

Olivier said that Hitchcock didn’t say to him the much quoted “Actors are cattle,” but rather he said, “Actors are chess figures.”

During a stay at New York’s Wyndham Hotel, Olivier talked with me about
Rebecca.

“At that time, I wasn’t so interested in films. I preferred the stage. Hitchcock saw the part of the young heroine as the important one, and it turned out that way. I saw film as a director’s medium and the stage, an actor’s.

“When they called to say someone named Joan Fontaine had been given the role playing opposite me, I can’t say I was thrilled. I’d certainly never heard of her. Then I met her and what I noticed was how young and skinny she was. I didn’t really understand what my character, Maxim de Winter, could see in her. As I understood Max better, I decided that she was just what he wanted—someone exactly the opposite of Rebecca. He’d had enough of Rebecca, and he was looking for docile, even wilted.

“I admit I was prejudiced from the start. I’d exerted my influence to persuade Selznick that the best possible choice for the part was Vivien. Vivien had her heart set on playing opposite me, and she loved the part, which she had tested for. She was a very good actress, and it was rather mortifying for me not to have been more influential. It affected our personal lives for a while.

“Joan Fontaine gave an amazing performance. I don’t think anyone could have done it better, even though I didn’t realize it while it was happening, which surprises me because I consider myself rather a good judge of performances.

“As for Hitchcock, I rather enjoyed the experience. I don’t remember him giving me a lot of direction. Just simple things, like ‘Don’t mumble.’ He was quite right about that.

“Mr. Hitchcock—I never thought of him as Hitch—he didn’t make me feel that he was overly thrilled with what I was doing. Perhaps because he wasn’t. I thought of myself as a stage actor who was acting in a film. When I saw the finished film, I was not ashamed. I respected Mr. Hitchcock, but I don’t remember liking him much during filming. I came to like him very much afterwards. If he had asked me to do another film with him, I would have said yes. But he never did. I did regret that I hadn’t given the young Miss Fontaine my helping hand. As it turned out, she didn’t need it.

“I felt she didn’t like me. Here, we were supposed to be having a flirtation, a courtship, a love marriage. When the camera wasn’t on, she never said anything hostile to me, but she scarcely spoke to me at all. I wondered if she was aware that I had spoken to Hitchcock on behalf of Vivien.

“I didn’t like having to plead Vivien’s case. But I couldn’t say no to her. Hitch was very decent about it. But the worst part of it was I really didn’t want to have her get the part. There was already so much strain in our personal life, our divorces, leaving a wife and child, and a husband and child in England, the European situation, the war. It was perhaps better for us to have a little vacation from constant togetherness.

“Vivien thought I didn’t try hard enough for her with Hitchcock for the part in
Rebecca.
Well, I didn’t. I hadn’t felt she was right for that part, if the truth be told.

“Vivien was exactly the opposite of Scarlett O’Hara, who said something like, ‘I’ll worry about it tomorrow.’ She worried about everything—yesterday, today, and tomorrow. But she was
so
beautiful.

“All through the filming, my respect for Joan only grew. Then, when I saw the film, it was over the top.”

D
AME
J
UDITH
A
NDERSON
preferred the stage, too. She did not enjoy being in
Rebecca
because she believed she wasn’t allowed to bring anything to her part. “There was only one way to play Mrs. Danvers—Hitchcock’s way,” Anderson observed. She was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actress in
Rebecca
in 1940.

She could never forget Joan Fontaine coming up to her on the set, and saying, “Slap me.”

“I just looked at her,” Anderson told me.

“So she went up to Hitch and said something. Then, he just hauled back and slapped her. She reeled and staggered out in front of the camera, looking fragile, hurt, as though her eyes were just about to well up with tears, in the mood for the next scene she had to play. Hitch and she had their way of working together.”

“It’s important that the house was dying,” Hitchcock told me.

He wanted to show how cold the house was, so he placed an electric fan there to blow Joan Fontaine’s perfect hair and show that she feels a chill. “Whenever possible, you
show
what is happening, not
say
it.”

Hitchcock and Selznick often disagreed. Selznick was passionate about being faithful to the novel, while Hitchcock believed the novel should be changed for the screen. Hitchcock particularly disliked one idea of Selznick’s more than any other. “He wanted the smoke from the burning Manderley to spell out a huge R. Can you imagine! How the audience would have laughed!”

While Selznick was preoccupied by
Gone With the Wind,
Hitchcock was able to replace the smoky R with the burning of a monogrammed lingerie case. He also edited the picture in the camera, a method of filmmaking that didn’t allow Selznick to reedit the picture. Otherwise, Hitchcock considered
Rebecca
more Selznick than Hitchcock.

“Our personalities did not mesh,” Hitchcock said. “For him, I was an obstreperous employee. He did not like to hear the words ‘Yes, but.’ He wanted to be totally involved in a way I have never experienced with any other producer. He wanted to be the director and the writer as well as producer. I was introduced to those letters called memos which he insisted on sending me every day.”

Daniel Selznick, the son of David Selznick, didn’t remember his father talking about Hitchcock, or being involved socially with the Hitchcocks. The only time he met Hitchcock was after his father and mother, Irene Mayer Selznick, had separated, and it was his mother who took him to the Hitchcock home.

Joan Fontaine believed it was Selznick’s idea for her to wear light makeup for
Rebecca,
so it appeared that she wasn’t wearing any at all. He had the same idea for Ingrid Bergman, when she came to Hollywood to remake
Intermezzo
for him.

The changes in Joan Fontaine’s hair as the story develops were even more important. Her hairstyles became sleeker and more sophisticated, making it clear that circumstances were forcing her to grow up, even though her husband had told her that she should never be thirty-six.

“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.”