Strangers on a Film

'By 1950 I had almost pulled myself free from this primordial swamp that is Hollywood.' Raymond Chandler.

Chandler was no fan of the Hollywood machine and the way it chewed up writers in order to churn out scripts to keep the cogs turning and deliver product to the silver screen.


'If actors are cattle then writers are thoroughbred horses,' Alfred Hitchcock

Chandler and Hitchcock would work together on the movie, Strangers on a Train based on the book by Patricia Highsmith. The result was a disaster with Chandler's script being tossed aside, but the writer still received a writers credit. The BBC Radio play, quite excellent it is too, embedded below tells the whole story. Star Trek's Patrick Stewert plays Chandler, while Clive Swift is Hitchcock. The play was First broadcast at 14.15 on 29/09/2011 for Afternoon Drama

Free full Hitchcock Ripper movie

Hitchcock's silent classic

Hitchcock - he was a motherf***er!!!

The Birds is coming, ran the advertising blurb and the rest as they say is history.

‘Just the four of us, around the kitchen table.’

Alfred Hitchcock told Evan Hunter as he invited he and his then wife to dinner with the director and his own wife, Alma. The purpose of the dinner was to discuss the progress on the script of The Birds, which Hunter was writing for Hitchcock.

Hunter’s memory of the dinner, as told in his autobiography, was that the Hitchcock’s were wonderful easy going people, though Hitch did get grumpy with the writer’s wife, Anita when she turned a bottle of wine to the side, risking its sediment tainting the wine.

“Hitch had bought a bizarre novella about plain people attacked by the gentlest of creatures,” Hunter said, “And hired a realistic novelist from New York City to write the screenplay.”

Director and writer clashed several times during the production of the screenplay, though Hunter, while initially feeling that the screenplay never really worked, later came to appreciate the movie which is now regarded as a classic.

It wasn’t only Hunter who clashed with Hitchcock and the actress Tippi Hedren felt he was a monster.

Indeed Hitch later sent  a gift to Hedren’s daughter Melanie (the actress Melanie Griffith) – a doll dressed in the same green suit her mother wore in The Birds. The doll also had the same elaborate hairstyle her mother sported in the movie. There was no way to mistake whom the doll represented. The problem was the box the doll came in was a coffin.

“He was a motherfucker,’ the adult Melanie Griffith told a friend. ‘And you can quote me on that.”

“Hiitchcock was more concerned about how the bird were treated than me,” Hedren said. “I was just there to be pecked.”

Indeed conflict with the actress and the director became even worse on the later film, Marnie. The writer Evan Hunter also fell out with Hitch on Marnie and he was fired from the production.

At the start, filming The Birds was “wonderful”. Hedren says she “became quite fond of the birds. One was so nice Hitch couldn’t put him in the movie because he wasn’t aggressive. He’d come hopping up the steps of my dressing room, play with my make-up and sit on my shoulder.”

But near the end of filming, Hedren shot the final attack scene where Melanie is brutally attacked by the birds. “An assistant producer came in and couldn’t look at me. He told me they were going to use real birds, not mechanical ones. Those birds pecked – I’d seen what had happened to the trainers. They tied the birds to me with elastic bands. They hurled birds at me. One of the birds tied on my shoulder only just missed scraping its claw into my eye. I shouted, ‘Get these birds off me’ and I sat in the middle of the sound-stage and cried. At the end I was so exhausted I was out cold. I don’t remember anyone driving me home. I realised that Hitch had chosen an unknown actress because no famous actress in their right mind would have done this movie.”
Hitch had already told her, with some relish, about tying up Madeleine Carroll (the original Hitchcock blonde, star of The 39 Steps and Secret Agent) to a post and leaving her there all afternoon.

 Indeed it is a well known Hitchcock quote that, 'actors are like cattle.' But all the same he made some mighty fine movies....

Lifeboat 1944

One set - on a lifeboat. Who but Hitchcock could make a film like this?

During the second world war a diverse group of people survive a U-boat attack and have to make to to Bermuda without a compass. In the attack the U-Boat also blew up and they have one of the survivors on board the lifeboat. After much bickering between themselves the German takes control of the lifeboat during a story and them wins everyone's confidence when he amputates the leg of a character thus saving his life.


The suspense is created by the question of whether the German is leading them to the safety of Bermuda or actually into enemy controlled waters. Hitchock was known for making a cameo in his films and he even manages to do it here. Although there is only the boat set and no place for Hitch to do his usual camera wipe and so a clever way of him appearing had to be invented. At first the idea was that Hitch would be one of the dead in the sea after the attack but that idea was dropped and the director was cleverly seen on an obesity advert in a newspaper. It's a great bit of self mockery and the newspaper is seen twice - once being read by a character and then again floating in the sea after the shipwreck.

Lifeboat is brilliantly acted and the master of suspense manages to keep the viewer glued to the screen. The Cinemareserve DVD, which comes housed in a classy metal box, is brilliant - the print of the film is perfect with crisp colours and no digital artefacts even in the darkest scenes. The audio is presented in a punchy stereo mix. And there are some great extra features - a commentary with Dr Drew Casper, an hour long talk with Hithcock and a new documentary that looks at the making of the film.

A fistful of magazines

It's that time of the month again when the best of the American imports can be found in UK stores.

WILD WEST, my own particular favourite, features a lead article on Obama's favourite US president. AS well as the usual mix of historic articles and photographs. Of particular interest is a great article on the history of the Chuck Wagon which was originally invented in 1866 by Charles Goodnight. I also found an article in The search for the Captives of Elm Creek to be compulsive reading. It was this true life event that inspired the John Ford classic, The Searchers.


True West magazine leads with an article looking at Pancho Villa and the Mexican Revolution and in particular the El Paso connection. The rest of the magazine is made up the usual mixture of true life articles and film and book reviews.

And now onto the still surviving pulps:

Ellery Queen, May 2009, cover date contains the usual mixture of quality crime writing, book reviews, features and Bill Crider's always interesting Blog Bytes section. The lead story is by Patricia McFall and the cover art comes from 1936 and is by W. F. Soare.

The May 2009 Alfred Hitchcock contains many goodies within another dull cover image - what is it with the AHM covers of late? They all look like a first attempt at Photoshop. Never judge a book by its cover thought and I very much enjoyed this issue which has a humorous angle to all the stories. The Death of Condo Commando will intice both shivers and giggles in equal measure.

Browsing the pages

It's that time of month again when I get my beloved American imports from my local Borders.There really are no UK magazine/books that come close to Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchie.

Ellery Queen cover dated Jan 2009 comes with the usual high quality pulp era style cover illustration. The image is by H.J. Ward and comes from 1938 - it is credited to the collection of Robert Lesser.

The fiction inside is led by The Killer Christian by Andrew Klaven, an author hailed by Stephen King as the most original American author of crime fiction since Cornell Woolrich. The story here is perfect for the festive season. Several other stories also use a festive setting and although I've not read them all yet I'm not expecting any turkeys. Seldom does Ellery Queen offer poor stories.

There are the usual book reviews and of course Bill Crider's look at the interweb. I do wish this part of the feature was extended and I hold my breath for Tainted Archive to be featured.

Alfred Hitchcock is a double issue dated Jan/Feb and comes with an American Gothic style cover from Jorge Mascarenhas. The lead story is Nothing is Easy by Jas. R. Petrin and this is supported by 13 other pieces of fiction. The book and film reviews are upto the high standard expected and there's an interesting feature looking at the US version of Life On Mars.

Fantasy and Science Fiction is cover dated Oct/Nov and features cover art by Max Bertolini. I don't usually pick this magazine up as I would consider myself only casually interested in the SF genre, but the inclusion of a Stephen King story tempted me.

The book features three short novels as well as nine short stories and a poem. Add to that book, film reviews and genre articles and you have great bang for the buck. I've actually enjoyed several of the stories in this issue and think I'll pick it up again next issue.