Alfred Hitchcock (52 page)

Balcon, Hicks, Priestley—they had all had past creative differences with Hitchcock. But Balcon had been a friend, and his widely circulated remarks were an especially low blow, with their shameless dig at Hitchcock’s weight. According to John Russell Taylor, both Hitchcocks felt “deeply upset,” but what could the director say? That he was doing everything he could behind the scenes? That, with
Foreign Correspondent
, he was flouting both the Hays Office and the Neutrality Act? That Selznick had him shackled to his contract and returning to England was inconceivable? That, having gone broke moving to Hollywood, he could hardly afford to move back? That he was overage and, yes, sadly overweight?

That Lord Lothian, Britain’s ambassador to the United States, had publicly declared in July that “all British actors of military age”—up to thirty-one—should return home, but that older Englishmen “should remain at work until new regulations about military age were issued”?

Balcon should have known about Lord Lothian’s statement—as he should have known about a gathering in Hollywood earlier in the summer, when the British consul told Hitchcock and other Britons that it was “not desirable,” in the words of actor Brian Aherne, who attended, “that we should all rush back to England, which had plenty of manpower for the foreseeable future but not equipment.” Members of the British colony were asked, temporarily, to contribute to war charities and to make themselves available for speeches or public events. Only a small number—David Niven, for one—actually did return and don combat uniforms.

Balcon should have known about
Forever and a Day
, the upcoming charity film Hitchcock had signed on for. If he’d been better friends with Hitchcock, he might have known that the director had already volunteered to make war into films for England’s Ministry of Information.

In truth, Hitchcock conducted himself admirably during World War II, doing war work steadily, often secretly, and never grandstanding. In spite of his own financial concerns, he gave time and money in generous amounts to wartime causes. From the very beginning of the war, he was wholeheartedly involved, and to the end of his life the full extent of his involvement was never publicized.

Pressed by the Selznicks—and Mrs. Hitchcock—the director felt obliged to issue an uncharacteristic press statement saying that Balcon’s remarks were inspired by jealousy “colored by his own personal experiences in Hollywood, which have invariably wound up unfortunately for Balcon. He’s a permanent Donald Duck.” Hitchcock added pointedly in the press release, “The manner in which I am helping my country is not Mr. Balcon’s business.”

Yet Balcon did not relent immediately. In fact, he and other prominent Britishers took surprising umbrage at
Foreign Correspondent
when it was released in England. Balcon, Dilys Powell, Paul Rotha, and other prominent
figures signed a letter in the
Documentary News Letter
following the English premiere, denouncing McCrea’s staunch radio speech as the blatherings of “an irresponsible American news-hound” whose call to U.S. arms was “an insult” to the English “army of civilians” who would inevitably turn the tide.

According to John Russell Taylor, only a short time later Balcon was “unofficially informed” of Hitchcock’s various contributions to the war effort, and “soon regretted” his very public remarks. “The harm had been done,” wrote Taylor; the insinuations of Balcon and others have left a lingering impression of Hitchcock as a shirker.

Both Hitchcocks were hurt, and “Alma especially found it hard to forgive a number of the things which had been said about Hitch in Britain during the early days of the war,” wrote Taylor. The controversy hardened her “resolve to stay permanently in their new home.”

The Hitchcocks celebrated the success of
Foreign Correspondent
by putting down a deposit on their first American home, in northern California. They had become friends with Joan Fontaine’s parents, the G. M. Fontaines, who lived in Los Gatos near Santa Cruz. After hearing of their interest in viticulture, the Fontaines recommended a search in the Vine Hill area. The search led to a nine-room Spanish-style house and estate known as the Cornwall Ranch, or “Heart o’ the Mountain,” first built in 1870. At the end of Canham Road near Scots Valley, the two-hundred-acre property overlooking Monterey Bay was shaded by giant redwoods and included tennis courts, stables, and a winery across Highway 17. The purchase price was forty thousand dollars.

The summer of 1940 was crowded with activity. Besides the trip to England and the purchase of a new home, the completion of
Foreign Correspondent
, and the start of his contract with RKO, Hitchcock was endeavoring to launch himself as the host of a national radio series.

The director had been a fan of English radio, but found it easy to transfer his affection to American radio programs, which he listened to whenever he had free time in the evening. He enjoyed the musical presentations but also the dramatic series. American radio was in its golden age, and the nighttime shows were a sort of campfire of the airwaves, around which unseen friends gathered for evocative storytelling. Hitchcock listened to the shows for relaxation, but also to pick up ideas for writers, actors, and stories.

With his capacity for what is nowadays called multitasking, Hitchcock thought he could preside over a radio series practically in his spare time. Radio would mean excellent publicity, not to mention added income.

The idea of putting Hitchcock on the radio had originated in the publicity department of United Artists, which distributed Walter Wanger’s
films, back in January 1940. It was United Artists who first facilitated contacts with New York advertising agencies and producers, who thought Hitchcock might “more or less do a ‘De Mille,’” pointing to Cecil B. De Mille’s regular stint as host of the
Lux Radio Theater.

Wanger endorsed putting Hitchcock on radio mainly for the promotional value—at that point he and Hitchcock were talking about a long-term association—whereas the Selznick Agency was motivated by the financial considerations. Myron’s brother David, as usual, was the chief skeptic. Wasn’t radio déclassé? Wouldn’t a radio series take too much of Hitchcock’s time—time better spent on prestigious Selznick films or better-paying loan-outs? And if Hitchcock did apply himself to radio, wouldn’t DOS be entitled to his usual cut?

Throughout the spring of 1940, the director squeezed in meetings and phone calls and memos, dreaming up an Alfred Hitchcock radio series. Radio producer Joe Graham saw Hitchcock as emcee of a weekly anthology program presenting the favorite detective stories of famous people; the first episode, hypothetically, might be based on a story of President Roosevelt’s choice. But Hitchcock told Graham he wasn’t a fan of detectives per se—he was generally more interested in the victims and criminals—and the concept evolved, after a few meetings, into a series of mystery melodramas of Hitchcock’s choosing, with him introducing and producing. The series would be called
Suspense.

But the meetings and preparatory work were suspended after DOS decided he didn’t want his director wasting valuable energy on a radio program over which Selznick International exerted no control, and for which it was unclear who would receive the payment. Myron tried to budge his brother—this is one instance where the agency aggressively pursued Hitchcock’s wishes—but, as was becoming typical, without effect. DOS was adamant: No radio series. Because the contract with DOS was ambiguous when it came to nonfilm activity, Hitchcock wasn’t convinced it was the producer’s prerogative. But lawyers for the director and the agency warned him repeatedly against skirting the contract.

Shrewdly, then, Hitchcock floated an idea: What if he exercised his newly acquired rights to
The Lodger
for radio? Not only would that help him establish a foothold in the broadcast medium, but a well-done radio show would enhance his prospects of remaking the film.

DOS reluctantly okayed a radio production of
The Lodger
as a onetime experiment. Hitchcock borrowed two of the main actors from
Foreign Correspondent:
Herbert Marshall as Mr. Sleuth (the Lodger) and Edmund Gwenn (whose English currency had helped secure the rights) as the landlord. (This was an in-joke: his brother Arthur Chesney had played the part in Hitchcock’s silent film.)
The Lodger
was broadcast as an audition in the
Forecast
series on July 22, 1940.

The ending of the radio show, like the novel, left open the question of whether the Lodger was the killer stalking London. Before the end of the show, an actor playing Hitchcock interrupted the presentation and asked viewers to write in and vote on the ending—and the Lodger’s true identity. Viewers were also urged to write NBC to request a regular Hitchcock series, but despite an “overwhelming” number of letters, according to Martin Grams Jr. in
Suspense: Twenty Years of Thrills and Chills
, the series didn’t make it on the fall 1940 schedule. DOS had absolutely refused to give his permission. The
Suspense
concept was shelved until 1942, then revived without Hitchcock; it would enjoy an acclaimed twenty-year run on American radio.

From that initial flirtation with radio, however, Hitchcock took away a stubborn yearning to shape a suspense series for national broadcast. Around this time he also made his first contacts with New York publishers and agreed to edit his first book of suspense stories. Last but not least, a New York adman working on the radio series had come up with the idea of dubbing Hitchcock “the Master of Suspense.” That was snappier than “the Master of Melodrama,” as Selznick had promoted him for
Rebecca
, and more accurate.

By late August, the newly christened Master of Suspense was over at RKO, directing a most unsuspenseful screwball comedy. Over the summer Cary Grant had dropped out of the project, and Robert Montgomery, a reasonable facsimile, became Carole Lombard’s costar.

Screenwriter Norman Krasna had written several highly-regarded films, including the Oscar-nominated
The Richest Girl in the World, Hands Across the Table
(another Carole Lombard comedy, and a hit), and a pair of films for Fritz Lang—the antilynching
Fury
and a quasi musical called
You and Me.
Yet Krasna was also a frustrated playwright who sometimes slighted film in favor of periodic assaults on “serious” theater. Famous for his verbal sales pitches, Krasna dazzled in meetings, but didn’t always deliver a script that lived up to his pitch.

“Mr. and Mrs.” concerned a Park Avenue couple who learn their marriage has been voided by a technicality, a discovery that triggers what are intended to be madcap complications. As Hitchcock realized when he finally got around to reading the script in June, it was less than Krasna’s best. But because of the schedule—and because Lombard was so gung ho about it—Hitchcock had to accept the script as it was.

As Hitchcock later told François Truffaut, he undertook
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
, as the film was retitled, as a “friendly gesture” to the leading lady. But it was equally true, as he told Truffaut, that he accepted the assignment at a “weak moment” in his career. “Since I didn’t really understand
the type of people who were portrayed in the film,” Hitchcock explained forthrightly, “all I did was to photograph the scenes as followed [in the script].”

Hitchcock was eager to honor his RKO contract, with its promise of a second film, and so he put on the happiest possible face during the six weeks he spent directing
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
in the early fall of 1940. On the set, he and his leading lady had a kidding relationship that kept spirits high. The director chalked up lines for the “screwball blonde” on an “idiot board,” while the lead actress (and ex officio producer) turned the tables on him, directing the customary Hitchcock walk-on—and gleefully driving him through repeated takes.

One day, Lombard famously twitted Hitchcock by setting up a miniature cattle pen on the set. The pen enclosed three young heifers, adorned by ribbons, that were emblazoned with the names of the three stars: Lombard, Montgomery, and Gene Raymond (playing the husband’s rival). The prank was intended to generate widespread publicity, and it did, helping to make his maxim “Actors are cattle” as well known in Hollywood as it was in England.

But directors sometimes feel like cattle too. One attraction of the RKO contract was its built-in bonus structure, and almost as soon as he started filming, Hitchcock began bombarding Myron Selznick with pleas that he wangle from his brother the fifteen thousand dollars he had been promised for completing two RKO films inside of a year. Dan O’Shea complained that the agency harassed him almost daily on the subject.

Again feeling pinched for cash, Hitchcock even started grumbling in public. On one celebrity radio appearance he thanked the show for compensating him, saying he had suffered “extraordinary relocation expense.” This infuriated David O. Selznick, who seethed in a memo, “Hitchcock had better not make himself ridiculous by such statements.”

After
Gone With the Wind
, Selznick had plunged into a midlife crisis from which he would never quite recover. DOS moved to Connecticut in the summer of 1940, then to New York City, then back to California. Most of the time he was “unreachable,” but when Hitchcock’s pleas for the extra fifteen thousand dollars finally did reach him, DOS declined; no bonus would be paid until after completion of both RKO films. Hitchcock threatened the only Selznick he could find, telling Myron he might be forced to sell his half of
The Lodger.
Myron didn’t blink.

Desperate to supplement his income, Hitchcock asked Sig Marcus in the Selznick Agency’s London office if some kickback scheme might be cooked up, whereby compensation for some nominal service in Hollywood might be channeled back to his older brother, William, in England. William, through Hitchcock’s accountant, could then option stories for filming, independent of Selznick. A flabbergasted Marcus informed the director that
such a conspiracy only spelled legal trouble—and he warned the agency that Hitchcock seemed to be under terrible strain.