It's Only a Movie: Alfred Hitchcock (12 page)

Esmond Knight (1906–1987) was blinded in World War II during the naval battle with the Bismarck. Recovering partial sight, he was eventually able to resume his career. Among other parts, he played a British captain in the film,
Sink the Bismarck.

Waltzes from Vienna
shows the influence of Ernst Lubitsch, whom Hitchcock greatly admired. In the scene of the Prince and the Countess taking their morning baths, they communicate through messages given for delivery to the butler and the maid who are attending them. We see only the servants, as they rush back and forth, at the same time carrying on their own little affair. Soon, their kissing and the conversation become so intense, they forget and start to go to the wrong bathrooms.

The film also follows the vogue of historical musicals, which began at UFA in 1929 in answer to sound. The original approach had been pictures with only a minimum of dialogue, such as Fritz Lang’s
M.
A reaction against this trend was the series of historical musicals, including
Waltzerkrieg,
on which
Waltzes from Vienna
was based, and culminating in
Viktor und Viktoria
and
Amphitryon,
both written and directed by Reinhold Schünzel, who later, as an actor in Hollywood, became one of Claude Raines’s co-conspirators in
Notorious.

Waltzes from Vienna
did respectable business in 1934, even during the depth of the Depression. Hitchcock was still the best known British director, but he needed another success like
The Lodger
and
Blackmail
to reestablish himself as the great British hope. His next film would do that and more.

I
LIKE TO SKI
,” Hitchcock told me, “in my mind.”

Hitchcock was actually agile and graceful until illness limited his physical activities, although he never enjoyed doing anything he couldn’t do well.

“I knew very early I was not a skier, but some of my happiest hours were spent watching people ski.
Watching
is the key word. I enjoyed their passion for play and their lack of fear of consequences. I, myself, have lived a life in which fear of consequences has always played a part. I was not an impulsive sort. I could not imagine myself at the top of a slope rushing down on skis. I’m not really built for it.”

His daughter, Pat, remembered him getting into his ski pants at St. Moritz to sit on their balcony and drink hot chocolate while he watched the skiers and skaters, or read. “He liked reading at St. Moritz. Both my father and my mother liked to read. At home, they would read together while they listened to classical music.”

Writer Charles Bennett and his wife sometimes went to St. Moritz with Hitchcock and Alma and Pat. Bennett recalled Hitchcock working every day in his suite, looking at the view while the others skied.

Bennett played a role in the development of the quintessential Hitchcock romantic thriller, having worked with him on
The Man Who Knew Too Much, The 39 Steps, Secret Agent, Sabotage, Young and Innocent,
and
Foreign Correspondent,
as well as informally on
Blackmail.
All of these films except
Young and Innocent
share the still quite relevant themes of political terrorism and international espionage.

I talked with Charles Bennett in 1993, not long before his death at ninety-six. At the time, Bennett reminded me, more than once, he was interrupting work on a script to speak with me. With great hope and with great enthusiasm, he was working on a new screenplay of his stage play
Blackmail.
He said he was “bringing it up to date.”

Bennett sat at the bar of his just-out-of-Beverly Hills house. “Less expensive,” he said, “because of being in the unfashionable postal zone.” It was late morning, but none too early for Bennett to have a drink. He placed a bottle and one glass in front of him. I had gone to his home with his friend, film archivist Dan Price. We were offered drinks, but declined, which didn’t inhibit Bennett.

As he spoke, he rocked back and forth on a high bar stool. He began by rocking only slightly, but as his words became more animated, he would rock back farther and farther, making it difficult for us to concentrate on what he was saying. Bennett, who appeared much younger than ninety-five, was agile, fit, and filled with energy, both verbal and physical.

We were uneasy, but our warnings about the possibility of his falling went unheeded as he became more engrossed in talking about Hitchcock. Then, just as we weren’t expecting it, he rocked back too far. Price and I rushed forward, trying to cushion his fall. It was probably for the best that we failed, because we might have caused him to injure himself.

He fell straight back, continuing his comments about Hitchcock from the floor, never missing a beat. Then he righted himself and boarded his stool again, all the while never interrupting his reminiscences.

Finally he paused, but only to pour himself a drink, making no mention of his fall. That he had fallen in that way and not been injured seemed miraculous, yet I had a vague feeling that it wasn’t the first time he had suffered that mishap, and perhaps it might not be the last.

Bennett talked with us about
The Man Who Knew Too Much.

“I had been asked to write a picture about Bulldog Drummond by British International Pictures, which owned the rights. I came up with this little idea of Bulldog Drummond’s baby, and to keep his tongue quiet, they snatched his child so an assassination could take place.

“Hitch had had some flops, and they didn’t quite go ahead with the picture, so he went straight to Michael Balcon at Gaumont-British and said there’s a picture I want to make about Bulldog Drummond.

“British International Pictures wouldn’t sell their Bulldog Drummond rights, but let the story go, which was my story,
The Man Who Knew Too Much.
It was the recipe for the blending of melodrama, comedy, and romance. It was my first Hitchcock film and the first real Hitchcock picture.”

“Bennett and I worked backwards at our task,” Hitchcock said. “I thought first of ‘where.’

“St. Moritz was chosen because Alma and I had spent our honeymoon there, and we’ve always loved it. Thus, I have a certain personal feeling for the first
Man Who Knew Too Much
because it exists for me not only as a film, but as that time in my life when I was young.

“It was also in perfect contrast to the bleak streets of East End London, where most of the action was to take place. Then, we got even more contrast with a church and finally a gala concert at the Royal Albert Hall. This is more or less how we worked: choose a colorful location and then people it with believable characters.

“The other rule we stumbled upon was that the comedy-thriller-melodramas would be more effective if they had something to do with important events taking place in the world. At the time, it was obvious that another war was on the horizon. That meant that espionage, assassinations, and all of the intrigues which accompany such times would be good dramatic material for films. My melodramas are relevant to the times, which I mention in defense of the criticism that they are only escapist.”

For the villain, Hitchcock chose Peter Lorre, an outstanding German actor, who didn’t yet speak English.

“Sometimes he was speaking his lines without knowing what he was saying,” Hitchcock said. “But he was one of those actors who, with a hint of an expression or a slight gesture, could enhance his character in a way that was beneficial to the plot. He had left Germany as a Jewish refugee, fleeing for his life after having made
M
in which he played a child murderer. It wasn’t necessary to direct him because he knew what
not
to do. Understatement is priceless, especially in melodrama.

“In person, Lorre was a charming man, very funny. I saw this and cast him in his first comic villain part.” During the shoot, Lorre got married, not having enough time to remove his makeup for the ceremony.

For the child who is kidnapped, Hitchcock chose twelve-year-old Nova Pilbeam, who had just starred in a film called
Little Friend.
“The part I was offering her was smaller,” Hitchcock said, “and she was fully aware of it. She had a lot of ideas of her own for building her part, which she passed on to me gratuitously, not all of them suitable.

“Sometimes I had to ‘persuade’ her to do something she didn’t believe in, like at the end when she’s reunited with her parents. At that age, even a short separation seems a long time, so I wanted her to greet them almost as strangers. It turned out to be one of the most interesting moments.”

The tight budget precluded shooting the Albert Hall sequence with a house full of extras, so the Schüfftan process was used as it had been for the British Museum scenes in
Blackmail.
Some realism was injected by having one or two heads moving in the audience as Edna Best searches for the assassin.

The most controversial part of
The Man Who Knew Too Much
was the final shoot-out, which was based on an actual event. In 1911, a foreign gang of criminals thought to be anarchists were cornered in a building on Sidney Street, where police used rifles to subdue them. The “Sidney Street siege” became a cause célèbre, not just because British police are forbidden to carry guns, but also because Winston Churchill as home secretary had sanctioned it. A policeman’s rifle becomes important when Edna Best saves her daughter with her sharpshooting skills. The script was altered to the censor’s satisfaction by having the policemen’s rifles requisitioned from a local gunsmith’s shop.

Distribution of the film was delayed when Michael Balcon left for a business trip to America and C. M. Woolf was placed in charge of Gaumont-British. Woolf didn’t like
The Man Who Knew Too Much
and limited the film’s distribution. “The name of Woolf wasn’t a favorite in our home,” Pat Hitchcock remembered.

Hitchcock considered
The Man Who Knew Too Much
the turning point in his career. “It was made a second time with Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day, and it wasn’t good,” Bennett told me. “I don’t understand why Hitch remade the picture at all, especially when he not only didn’t do better, he did worse.”

“E
VER SINCE
I
READ
John Buchan’s
The 39 Steps,
” Hitchcock told me, “I thought it would make a great movie. But I didn’t do anything about it until years later when I reread it.

“Then, I was surprised to find that, despite being full of action, it wasn’t a natural screenplay. Many things didn’t carry over to the screen.

“In the novel, the hero is running from a gang of assassins. We changed that to the police chasing him while he’s chasing the spies to prove his innocence. I also added comedy. There isn’t a great deal of humor in Buchan, and there is no romantic interest. That wouldn’t do for the screen since it’s so often the women who decide which movie the men are going to see. They weren’t going to choose one without a heroine, but Buchan wrote his ‘shockers’ for men.”

Buchan said, in fact, that he wrote
The 39 Steps
for himself when he found himself with no “shocker” to read. The novel’s hero, Richard Hannay, resembles Buchan.

“Hitch and I both admired Buchan,” Charles Bennett told me, “with this sudden eruption of terror in the life of an ordinary man. But I didn’t like the novel. I thought it was horrible, but with possibilities. Hitch and I liked the double chase.

“Alma’s credit on
39 Steps
’s continuity was a way Hitchcock got more money. What
is
continuity? Alma was an adorable person, but I don’t remember her making much of a writing contribution to that film. But one advantage of working with Hitchcock was the wonderful food when Alma cooked.”

Again, C. W. Woolf tried to stop
The 39 Steps
from being made, instead assigning Hitchcock and co-producer Ivor Montagu to a biography of Leslie Stuart, the composer of
Floradora,
a turn-of-the-century musical. They placated Woolf until Balcon came back from America and rescued
The 39 Steps.