Alfred Hitchcock (55 page)

If Hitchcock had ever hoped to release
Before the Fact
with an ending that faintly resembled the original, that hope now vanished. Alma Reville and Joan Harrison, who had taken over the script from Raphaelson, wrote and rewrote the ending, and at least two variations were filmed. The one that was shown to preview audiences, in mid-June 1941, had Lina putting Johnny to the test by drinking the glass of milk that she believes is poisoned; then, when she realizes she isn’t dying, she goes into the next room just in time to keep a guilt-ridden Johnny from drinking the poison himself.

It was a disaster. “Trial audiences booed it, and I don’t blame them,” the director told the
New York Herald Tribune.
“They pronounced the girl stupid to willfully drink her possible destruction. With that I don’t agree. But I did agree that the necessary half-reel of explanation following the wife’s survival was deadly.”

In late May, with most of the photography completed, Hitchcock met with Raphaelson in New York to ponder their last-ditch alternatives. On
Cape Cod in June, where his wife was appearing in summer stock, Raphaelson received a phone call from Hitchcock, who told him, “Joanie [Harrison] and I have written a new ending.” Raphaelson’s secretary took the scene down over the phone; he read it, made some notes, and phoned back.

The ending as it stands—indeed the entire film—can’t be understood without this background. As with
The Lodger
, another book about a serial killer, in the end Hitchcock was forced to surrender the very things that had intrigued him most about
Before the Fact.
The script had yielded to many of the censorable issues, but as film scholar Bill Krohn noted, an “unusually large number of scenes” were also filmed that had to be “completely eliminated” during the editing. What remained, alas, was fluff: Cary Grant as more a scamp than a cad.

The ending that Hitchcock and Joan Harrison wrote had a terrified Lina announcing that she’s going away to spend time with her mother. Johnny insists upon driving her to her mother’s house, and they embark on a wild, Hitchcockian car ride on a high coast road. Convinced that Johnny is trying to kill her by deliberately smashing the car on the winding road, Lina desperately tries to leap out of the vehicle—only to be grabbed by her husband at the last instant. Whereupon Johnny confesses that he’s been acting erratically not out of any desire to hurt her, but because he is consumed by guilt and financial woes. In fact, he confesses,
he
is the one who has been contemplating suicide! Sobbing with relief, Lina declares she won’t go to her mother’s after all. Their car circles around on the road to head home, and the film closes with the two driving off, Johnny’s arm around his wife.

“I think,” Hitchcock reflected years later, “it would have been better if I’d shown them both driving and he’s just looking back over his shoulder regretfully—because he didn’t push them over.”

Hitchcock and Cary Grant had to swallow the bitter pill: a vapid ending, and an inexplicable reversal of the main character’s villainy just before the final fade-out.

Yet even that wasn’t enough of a concession for the new bosses. When Hitchcock traveled to New York in late June, a producer named Sol Lesser, who had just been named second-in-command under Breen, stepped in to confiscate the footage and splice together a condensed version of
Before the Fact
that eliminated
all
the homicides and erased
all
suspicion of Johnny’s crimes. The condensed film would offend nobody—and run less than an hour! When Hitchcock returned, his cry of anguish was heard ‘round Hollywood, with the Selznick brothers joining him in a rare display of family unity. After furious protest the director’s cut was restored; and Lesser, whose tenure at the head of RKO (along with Breen’s), set a Hollywood record for brevity, left the studio leadership to return to producing B pictures.

The final indignity was the new title. The preview audiences couldn’t
grasp the meaning of
Before the Fact
, which Hitchcock preferred as a title. He always said he admired the novel, and, rare for him, praised it publicly as “a masterpiece.” Yet he also understood that the ironies of the title had been rendered meaningless by the censorship compromises. As an alternative he proposed “Johnny”—happy to draw attention to his leading man. But the studio settled on
Suspicion
, a word that crops up in the second paragraph of the book. Hitchcock never lost an opportunity to say how much he hated the “cheap and dull” title.

But the title suited the film, which somehow transcended its flaws to become an amazing crowd pleaser—a box-office sensation that drew surprisingly rhapsodic reviews (“This is a far finer film than
Rebecca
,” wrote Howard Barnes in the
New York Herald Telegram
). Today movie fans still love
Suspicion
, and a small group of critics even find depths in its flaws. Mark Crispin Miller has described it as one of Hitchcock’s masterpieces, precisely
because
of “the distortions of subjective vision,” while the abrupt happy ending has been strenuously defended in
Cahiers du Cinéma
on the grounds that its patent absurdity forces audiences to wonder if Johnny will try to murder Lina again
after
the credits.

Joan Fontaine managed to stay friends with Hitchcock, and eventually picked up an Academy Award as the year’s Best Actress. (
Suspicion
was also nominated for—and lost—Best Picture and Best Muscial Score.) Everyone in Hollywood, including Fontaine, suspected her Oscar was really for
Rebecca.
Her performance in
Suspicion
was not as strong, her characterization neither as consistent nor as complicated.

Cary Grant was nominated for Best Actor only twice in his career, for
Penny Serenade
and
None but the Lonely Heart;
like Hitchcock, the consummate actor never won a competitive Oscar. But it was Grant who made a lasting impression on the director:
Suspicion
would be Hitchcock’s final outing with his Oscar-winning blonde, but to his dark, complex leading man he would be drawn again and again, as to a half-open door.

If, thus far, he had not yet matched his best English films, Hitchcock could nevertheless take comfort in the notion that he was building up credit and security for his long-term Hollywood career. Yet the Selznicks continued to cast a shadow over the short term; this time it was older brother Myron who stood in his way, blocking his remake of
The Lodger.

Hitchock had talked Universal producer Jack Skirball into buying the rights for $35,000. But Myron demanded $50,000, along with 10 percent of any eventual profits, “the whole deal subject to approval of all budget elements,” in the words of agent Sig Marcus, who was trying to piece together the deal. Moreover, Myron demanded that he be credited on the eventual film as coproducer.

The stiff terms gave Skirball pause. He had been trying to appease Hitchcock, but he thought the $50,000 price tag was outrageous. It was Hitchcock who was pushing to remake
The Lodger
, after all, not Skirball, and now the director’s own agent was souring the deal with his demands.

Hitchcock implored his agent to take $30,000 of Universal’s $35,000 offer, giving Myron more than his half of the stipulated $50,000; Hitchcock agreed to accept only $5,000 up front—a 50 percent loss on his $10,000 investment (though this was partly a loan from Myron). But
Myron wouldn’t sell his half without coproducer and profit-participant status.

And when the brothers Selznick talked it over, they stood united, finally, on at least one subject: Jack Skirball was a novice producer who would probably ruin a remake of
The Lodger.
Myron and David wondered if perhaps they shouldn’t just coproduce the remake themselves, making it a joint Selznick brothers’ production. Of course, they could afford to muse about it endlessly. Not Hitchcock.

Drawn by
The Lodger
into speculating about what was best for his contract director, DOS spoke almost wistfully about getting back into producing, and supervising the next Hitchcock film. His appetite whetted, DOS told Myron he would be willing to buy Hitchcock’s share of the rights to
The Lodger
if the director would consent to develop the project under his aegis. DOS then could absorb the remake into his program, and produce it as a Selznick-Hitchcock film—or ultimately sell it off to someone like Skirball, multiplying his profit.

Hitchcock had a series of dinners with Selznick to talk things over. Hitchcock liked David—better, as time went on, than he did Myron. Hitchcock and DOS were both talkers and dreamers. One night at dinner they spoke dreamily about the Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman, whom Selznick had brought to Hollywood. Since
Intermezzo
, her first American film, Bergman had become just another high-priced Selznick loan-out. DOS thought Hitchcock should direct Bergman in a Selznick film. Hitchcock thought so too.

Subsequently, Hitchcock spun “a very interesting, if rather erotic story,” according to Selznick, which the director said that he and Joan Harrison had hastily whipped up for Bergman. The scenario would be loosely based on a true account of a couple who were kidnapped and chained together. “The young wife of a military attaché or something of the sort,” Selznick wrote in a memo, “and a close male friend, after being kidnapped, were chained together by Chinese brigands for six months. I can understand the appeal of this to Hitchcock.” Hitchcock had improvised the pitch—and apparently, Selznick didn’t recognize it as a reheated blend of
Rich and Strange
(Chinese pirates) and
The 39 Steps
(handcuffs).

That “rather erotic story” may not have appealed to Selznick, but nevertheless he and Hitchcock were finally finding a kinship, rehearsing ideas aloud to each other. At one dinner Hitchcock rehearsed the notion of remaking
The Man Who Knew Too Much
instead of
The Lodger.
DOS liked that possibility so much that he assigned John Houseman, new to his staff as a producer, to brainstorm with Hitchcock over how to transplant the story to America. When it became clear that Hitchcock didn’t actually own the rights to the original film, though—they were still tangled up with Gaumont back in England—the idea was swiftly dropped.

The Lodger
kept bobbing up, partly because DOS liked hearing Hitchcock talk about it. How would the story be dramatized differently than before? Hitchcock improvised: maybe they could Americanize the story somehow. Hitchcock talked up a storm, until DOS said he’d like to read a solid treatment before making up his mind. Fine, replied the director; Mrs. Hitchcock could craft a scenario for twenty thousand dollars. Too bad, responded DOS, reminding Hitchcock that Alma’s services came free to him with her husband’s Selznick contract.

Strictly speaking, Myron told Hitchcock, David was right. As long as
The Lodger
was developed as a Selznick project, Alma couldn’t be paid. Hitchcock was enraged, claiming he’d never been informed of such niceties before signing his contract. Anxious to smooth everything over, Myron tried to mollify his client over a series of dinners. But Myron wore on Hitchcock: his unctuous hospitality when it suited his mood, his hard-shelled attitude the rest of the time; his drinking and bellicose rants.