Hitch (19 page)

In this respect
The Thirty-Nine Steps
is most like the much later, American
North by Northwest
, and usually those who see
North by Northwest
as Hitch's best American film also see
The Thirty-Nine Steps
as his best British film. And both of them certainly are brilliant, beguiling entertainments, with an extraordinary wealth of invention, idea following idea in unbroken succession. But both of them also seem to pay a price in shallowness for what they gain in surface glitter and busyness. In neither do we ever get any clear idea of what the MacGuffin is, even as a MacGuffin—it is just the vaguest us-versus-them plot to be somehow foiled. But what, one might ask, is a MacGuffin anyway? The mysterious term, which has been bandied about a lot by Hitch and by commentators on him, seems to have entered his vocabulary with
The Thirty-Nine Steps
, and his British films of this time contain the classic examples. The word is derived from a shaggy dog story Hitch liked to tell which, briefly summarized, concerns an inquisitive chap in a Scottish train and a taciturn fellow traveller. There is a large, mysteriously shaped parcel on the rack, and the inquisitive passenger asks the other what it is. ‘A MacGuffin' is the reply. ‘What's a MacGuffin?' ‘It's for trapping lions in the Highlands.' ‘But there are no lions in the Highlands.' ‘Well then, there's no MacGuffin.' So a MacGuffin is something totally irrelevant and non-existent which is the subject of conversation and action and which everyone within the drama believes to be very important. In
The Man Who Knew Too Much
the assassination attempt is the MacGuffin, the kidnapping the real subject of the
story—i.e. the spies' plot is what concerns everybody in the film, but the kidnapping is what concerns us, the watchers on the outside. In
The Thirty-Nine Steps
the MacGuffin is again the uncovering and foiling of a spy ring, but we are never told enough about them to know or care who they are and what they want. In an early draft of the script Hitch considered inserting a sequence showing giant underground aircraft hangers in the Highlands, built by the spies in their dastardly plotting against us. But then what would happen? It would all be much too complicated and unproductive to go into, since all we really care about on the outside is our hero on the run, not where he is running from and what, if anything, he is running to. As in
North by Northwest
, the chase itself is the point.

While actually making the film Hitch had an amusing time. It became common gossip (whether true or not) that Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll were having a torrid romance, so no sign of possible wear-and-tear in either was allowed to pass without ribald comment, giving full scope for Hitch's schoolboy-joker side. He was also up to his teacup-throwing best, putting it all down to ‘temperament' and the enervating effect of a strict diet. Even the episode with Hannay, the crofter and his wife (one of the few screen performances by Peggy Ashcroft, whom Hitch had seen and much admired on stage), though it is played in the film for suspense and some emotion, derived in Hitch's mind quite consciously from a joke: a slightly risqué story about a lustful wife, a watchful husband, a traveller and a chicken pie. He took a gleeful delight in devising indignities for Madeleine Carroll to undergo, getting her drenched and dragged about and generally off her super-
soignée
high Hollywood horse. This was nothing personal, since they actually got on very well together, but he found the Hollywood poise she had acquired in her years away from Britain amusing and longed to break it down a bit. Today it seems like the first obvious instance of his normal treatment of cool blondes, into which all sorts of sadistic sexual motives can be read. Ivor Montagu says, though, that involved as they all were at the time in a rather naïve Freudian search for sexual symbolism in everything, it never then occurred to any of them that this was anything more than straightforward knockabout fun, the comic deflation of phoney dignity. And perhaps it was not, but it is difficult not to wonder.

Many different experiences contributed to the final version of
The Thirty-Nine Steps
. Hitch's fascination with music hall and the
scrubbier kind of English theatre comes out vividly in the framing sequences involving ‘Mr. Memory', the stage memory man who is used as the means of communicating whatever it is that the spies want communicated. This character was based on an actual music-hall performer called Datas, whom Hitch had seen many times: his speciality was being able to answer almost any question thrown at him about statistics and records. Hitch's own addition is the touch of obsession, the strong sense of professional duty which drives him to answer a question, any question, if he knows the answer, even if doing so may have fatal consequences for him. And the look and feel of the music hall, the chorines' legs impassively stepping in the background as the memory man dies, the audience's reactions, impressed or dismissive, are rendered with an instant sharpness which must come from loving, unsentimental observation.

When the filming was completed everyone, including Hitch and Michael Balcon, was very pleased with the result—indeed Hitch still says he puts
The Thirty-Nine Steps
among his own favourites. At the last moment Hitch decided to pare the film down even more, by eliminating the final sequence he had shot—one between Donat and Madeleine Carroll in a cab after they leave the theatre, in which he whimsically explains to her that they are in fact married, since by Scottish law you can be married by declaration, stating yourselves, as they had at the inn, to be man and wife in front of witnesses. This idea tickled Hitch, but he felt it muddled the clear lines of the film's end. That removed, the film was ready for showing, and Balcon left for America with a print to finalize American distribution.

At which point, unbelievably, C. M. Woolf struck again. This time he informed Hitch and Ivor Montagu that their contracts were to be terminated after the next film—or before, if they refused the assignment he offered them. And what he offered was, of all things, a musical life of Leslie Stuart, the composer of
Florodora
. By this time Hitch was unable to take the whole matter seriously: if he could not continue at Gaumont-British he could virtually write his own ticket anywhere else, and he was for leaving right away. But Montagu suggested they make a slight show of working on the
Florodora
story until Balcon got back, and sure enough as soon as he returned he quashed the whole thing and matters returned to normal; Woolf did not like Hitch or his films, but given that they were the biggest box office the company had, he just had to lump
them. In any case, once
The Thirty-Nine Steps
was released in 1936, the question was really out of his hands. The film had a sensational success in the States as well as in Britain, and Hitch was truly an international figure. Offers began to come in from Hollywood for Hitch, some which he never even heard of, as they were suppressed or rejected out of hand by Gaumont-British, while others were skilfully parried by Balcon, who felt understandably possessive about his protégé and liked to give the impression that he was in fact Hitchcock's agent as well as producer and friend, all to keep him in Britain.

Not that Hitch was as yet seriously considering uprooting. Professionally, things were going ever better for him in Britain, where he could enjoy the situation of being a big fish in a little pond. And personally he had arranged a very comfortable, agreeable life for himself. He had gathered round him a group of regular collaborators who were also friends. Living in London he could indulge one of his great passions, theatregoing, to his heart's content, while for the other, fine food and drink, the Continent was close at hand. His family also was in easy reach. He had resettled his mother in a flat near his own, in Kensington, and would send his chauffeur-driven car over with fruit and flowers for her. He remained in close touch also with his brother, and Pat used to love going and staying the night over his fish shop in South London, while they continued to see a lot of his two favourite cousins, Mary and Teresa, the artistic ones, in Golders Green. During the week he stayed in London, and at week-ends went down regularly to Shamley Green; at Christmas time he and Alma, and now Pat, made whenever possible the sentimental journey to the Palace Hotel at St. Moritz, and he contrived ingeniously to do most of the serious work of scripting films either amid home comforts, sitting round the table in Cromwell Road with Alma and his writers, or on vacation-like working trips abroad. Pat was now eight, and made the transition from a private school run by nuns in Cavendish Square to Mayfield, a leading Catholic boarding school for girls (there was some talk of sending her to Roedean, but a friend talked Hitch out of that). Curious that he, who had so hated being at boarding school himself, should have sent his only child to one, but in those days it was just what one did, and so he did it, though he and Alma continued to spend as much time with Pat as they possibly could, even in term time. And though she hated many things about the school, at least she took
immediately to the dramatics, playing leading roles in two fairy plays,
Rumpelstiltskin
and
The Little King Who Never Grew Up
, in her first year. From then on Pat never had much doubt on at least one matter: when she grew up, she wanted to be an actress.

In many respects Hitch's life was carefully insulated during these years. Family apart, he hardly knew anybody who was not somehow involved in show business, film or theatre. He carefully avoided getting involved in anything connected with politics—he even refused, much to the left-wing Ivor Montagu's disappointment, to become president of the screen technicians' union, the A.C.T.T., when in 1936 they decided to put their house in order and become a force to reckon with in the industry, and wanted someone of Hitch's eminence to lend his support in a prominent way. Maybe Hitch was afraid to be identified with a faction which was widely regarded as trouble-making; but more likely he simply felt that this was outside his field of interest and a waste of his time and energies, which could more profitably, for him and everyone else, be turned to the business of actually making films.

By now Hitch had worked out a perfect routine for scripting his films. After selecting a property, he and Charles Bennett and Alma would reduce it to a bald half-page outline. Then they would start to ask the necessary questions: what are these people; what is their station in life; what do they work at; how do they act at home? From there they would progress to a 60- or 70-page outline which plotted the action scene by scene, but in terms of visual story-telling, with no dialogue. Then, when that was perfected, one or more other writers would be called in to write the dialogue. So when he was ready to start shooting Hitch would have a complete, detailed script, broken down shot by shot and all drawn out in composition sketches, story-board style, by Hitch himself. After which, further modifications during and after shooting were negligible—sometimes removal of a scene, like the final cut in
The Thirty-Nine Steps
, sometimes the addition of some happy last-minute inspiration. The regular writing associates at this time were Charles Bennett, Alma and Ivor Montagu (Montagu figures in the credits only as co-producer, but did by general consent play an important part at the scenario stage); dialogue writers included novelists like Ian Hay and Helen Simpson and dramatists like Gerald Savory, but they tended to be transients, in accord with Hitch's feeling that the dialogue was relatively unimportant.

There was also, during the preparation of
The Thirty-Nine Steps
, a new addition to the team, who was to become one of Hitch's closest and longest-lasting associates. He advertised for a secretary, and among the applicants came a trim, blondly beautiful Cambridge graduate called Joan Harrison. She was wearing a hat because her mother had told her she should, to be interviewed by an important personage. But after a few moments Hitch asked her very politely if she would mind taking her hat off. She did, they talked, and in half an hour the job was hers. For the time being, her job was mainly to sit in on the script sessions and take notes, as well as take care of Hitch's day-to-day correspondence. But she rapidly got some insight into what working with Hitch could be like when one day he suggested that to clear the cobwebs away they take a boat trip, and she and Charles Bennett turned up to discover that Hitch had hired for the day a 250-place Thames steamer, in which they grandly steamed out to sea and back, just the three of them, while they worked on the script of
The Thirty-Nine Steps
, Being, obviously, a bright girl, she rapidly began to take a more active part in things, encouraged by Hitch to contribute suggestions to the scripts and capably taking over responsibility for making his professional life run smoothly. She and Alma also became close friends, and she was soon very much one of the family, at home, in the studio, and frequently on their holidays abroad. With
Young and Innocent
in 1937 she was promoted to script collaborator, and in 1939 she went along with them to Hollywood, to begin a spectacular career of her own, sometimes with, sometimes without Hitch. Today she is married to the novelist Eric Ambler and they remain among the Hitchcocks' closest friends in the world.

But now it was time to get on with the next assignment and build on the success of
The Thirty-Nine Steps
. Hitch was looking round for a property, when one was wished on him by Michael Balcon. He was not exactly forced to do it, but from every point of view it would be politic, and Hitch, nothing if not realistic, saw definite possibilities in the subject, so he agreed. The thing was, critics then as now have to be propitiated from time to time—not exactly paid off, but made to feel good. Hitch himself had early tumbled to this: when he was by no means highly paid he had devoted a large part of his salary to keeping up his cordial relations with critics and film journalists, feeding them and looking after them and talking over his projects with them, so that they could become excited and feel a
part of the film long before they ever saw it. One or two of the critics he became personally friendly with, notably Caroline Lejeune of the
Observer
, who was an occasional guest in Cromwell Road and was made comfortably aware that her views on his films made no difference to their relationship—on one occasion she rather shamefacedly remarked, ‘I'm afraid I wasn't very kind to you last Sunday,' to which Hitch cheerfully replied, ‘Well, I do my job and you do yours—that's what we're both paid for.' Though he would never have dreamed of paying for a good review—it was not impossible, with some of the less reputable of the critical fraternity, and certainly not unknown—Hitch did believe in keeping on the right side of the press.