Hitch (5 page)

The exact circumstances of how this film was made, and how far it was made (it was certainly never completed or released), remain obscure. Even its title presents something of a mystery. In the records of Islington Studios it is called
Mrs. Peabody
; Hitchcock refers to it as
Number Thirteen
—presumably no final title was ever decided upon. The lady who came up with the idea was Anita Ross, at this time a publicity woman for Famous Players-Lasky. She carried a certain weight because back in Hollywood she had worked with Chaplin, and this impressed everyone enormously. It must have been evident
by early 1922 that the writing was on the wall for Famous Players-Lasky British. The company had made eleven films, most of them disappointing critically and commercially. Moreover, defeated for the most part by British weather, they had not been making the most, as promised, of that distinctive British local colour, and the later films had been largely studio-bound—as contemporary critics smartly pointed out. Donald Crisp's
Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush
, nominally set in Scotland, was shot mainly in Devon and might just as well have been made in Hollywood. Consequently, the company was cutting back its own productions and increasingly hiring out its studio facilities elsewhere. Donald Crisp, brought over by Famous Players-Lasky, made one independent production under his own banner,
Tell Your Children
, based on Islington and with Hitchcock still designing the titles. And among the other productions in the works at Islington was the modest two-reeler variously called
Mrs. Peabody
and
Number Thirteen
, written by Anita Ross, and directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

It seems to have been a comedy; it featured the American star Clare Greet, and the English stage actor Ernest Thesiger, later known to film audiences as the creator of humunculi in
Bride of Frankenstein
and one of the grotesque inhabitants of
The Old Dark House
, as well as, more generally, an acidulous and witty gossip and an expert at needlepoint in the days when embroidery was not at all a usual occupation for a male. Why was the young title-designer recruited to direct it? Obviously because there was something about this chubby, poker-faced young man, even then, that inspired confidence in others. Also, it must be remembered, it did not really need that much confidence to be placed in him. It was only a short, and moreover, though film direction was just becoming the prerogative of the specialist in Hollywood, the days were not so far behind when just about anyone could and did try his (or her) hand at directing films. Most of the early stars had directed their own movies from time to time, and it seemed just as likely that this young man could do it as that anyone else around the place could. In any case, even modest as it was, the film was never finished and seems not to exist today (thank heavens, says Hitchcock); it had the misfortune to be in production at just the time Famous Players-Lasky was winding up operations, and the studio was left deserted but for a skeleton staff, including Hitchcock.

During the interregnum which followed, he was given another
very limited chance to direct. One of the independent productions at Islington early in 1923 was
Always Tell Your Wife
, a one-reel comedy starring the distinguished stage actor Seymour Hicks and his wife Ellaline Terriss. It was, it seems, a pet vehicle of Hicks, who had already filmed it once before. The director of this film, Hugh Croise, had fallen ill, or, according to another account, had not seen eye-to-eye with Hicks about how it should be handled. Either way, it had to be finished without him, and Hicks, at this time in his early fifties and at the height of his theatrical fame, recruited Hitchcock to help him do it. Since the young man, unlike most of the people around the studio at the time, was an enthusiastic theatregoer, he had enough knowledge of Hicks's background and experience to make himself specially helpful and sympathetic; Hicks himself, on the other hand, belonged to the generation of actor-managers who were Hitchcock's first idols in show business, being almost exactly of an age with another theatrical knight, Gerald du Maurier, who was to become Hitchcock's closest friend in the theatre and his friendly competitor in many famous practical jokes.

Despite these very modest and rather inconclusive first essays in film direction, Hitchcock must have wondered towards the end of 1922 whether he had made an altogether wise move, leaving a pretty safe, solid job with prospects at Henleys for the ever-uncertain world of film-making. Famous Players-Lasky, after all the bright promises, had ceased production and withdrawn to Hollywood. Nothing much seemed to be happening in British film-making, where all the talk was of crisis: it had been at a ‘crisis' meeting the previous year in the Connaught Rooms that William Friese-Greene, principal British claimant to the invention of cinematography, died, and everything pointed towards the complete cessation of film-making activities in Britain which was to constitute, in November 1924, the third major crisis of the British cinema. But for Hitchcock at least, and a few other continuing employees at Islington, help was at hand.

Curiously enough, an important element of that help had been nearby for a year or two: a film-maker called Graham Cutts. Among the other companies which had hired space at Islington during Famous Players-Lasky's incumbency was a newly formed group called Graham-Wilcox, which consisted principally of the producer and director-to-be Herbert Wilcox and the director Graham Cutts, generally known as Jack. Wilcox came from the English provinces and was experienced primarily in distribution and showmanship;
Cutts had also been in distribution in the North, and had made a film called
Cocaine
as his first venture into film production. This was retitled
While London Sleeps
and put into distribution by Graham-Wilcox, which followed it with
The Wonderful Story
, the first film made specifically for Graham-Wilcox at Islington (1922).
Flames of Passion
and
Paddy the Next Best Thing
followed, both starring the American Mae Marsh, and both successfully shown in America. It did seem, indeed, that Wilcox and Cutts had developed, almost alone of contemporary British film-makers, some real know-how in the film business. Wilcox went on to direct his own films. Cutts looked elsewhere, and very soon joined up with another new group of film producers, also from distribution in the provinces, also eager to get into film-making.

This was the company known as Balcon-Saville-Freedman, after its three principals. Two of them were to become, along with Hitchcock, the best-known and longest-lasting names in British cinema. Michael Balcon (born 1896) was at the beginning of a uniquely distinguished career as a producer and production head of various companies, most famously Gaumont-British in the 1930s and Ealing Films in the 1940s and 1950s. Victor Saville (born 1897) was soon to become a notable director in his own right (of, among other things, the best Jessie Matthews musicals of the 1930s) and to go on to be, like Hitchcock, a leading figure in Hollywood in the 1940s, mainly as a producer. At this time they were both ambitious young men, hardly older than Hitchcock himself but already quite a bit more experienced in the rough-and-tumble of the film business. And Graham Cutts (born in 1885) had not only chronological seniority, but enough successful films to his credit to rate an important role in their production plans, as the star director. Once these three people had combined forces and acquired a property, a hit play by Michael Morton called
Woman to Woman
, all they needed was somewhere to make it.

And so, early in 1923, they came to look around Islington Studios. It was on that day that they first set eyes on Alfred Hitchcock. It seems to have been a memorable experience. They came to look over the premises one Sunday while
Always Tell Your Wife
was shooting, and very rapidly noticed a plump, self-possessed young man, younger-looking anyway than his twenty-three years, despite a Charlie Chaplin moustache he was briefly sporting to make himself look mature. Though some have said, and continue to say, that he is
shy, neither Balcon nor Saville then noticed much sign of it. On the contrary, he appeared quietly self-confident, silent and watchful when he had nothing to say but able to express himself with much ease and good humour when he wished. He seemed to be everywhere at once, volunteering for any odd jobs that came up, but matter-of-factly, and without seeming pushy. Victor Saville says that for all his willingness he never jumped into anything: if something came up, he would think it over, decide whether he was able to handle it, and if he thought so then propose himself with such total nonchalance that somehow he made other people believe he could do it. Already, apparently, he was learning the trick of putting others at ease by seeming to be at ease himself, relaxing other people's anxieties by taking on worrying responsibilities.

When Balcon-Saville-Freeman moved into Islington as tenants they were a small concern, making one picture at a time. And in any case none of the films being made in Britain at that time was on a very large scale: the average crew on a film was about eight or nine, with a lot of doubling-up of jobs, no union problems of demarcation, and everyone lending a hand with everything. So there were a lot of things someone ready and willing to mix himself in all the activities of a film studio could do. And Alfred Hitchcock very rapidly started to do them. To begin with he was still in charge of the title department. But inevitably working on titles all the time gave one ideas about their contents, and Hitchcock had already spent a lot of time around the script department. Moreover, in a spirit of self-improvement and in order to have something to show, he had already tried his hand at script-writing: again, as with his first essay at title-designing, he had found out that a particular novel he had read in a magazine had been acquired by a film company, and written a script outline from it—not in any hope or expectation of selling it as it stood, but just as an exercise.

He was first of all hired by the new company as an assistant director, on the strength of his work on
Always Tell Your Wife
. Then, when they needed someone to write a script for
Woman to Woman
based on the play they had bought, he volunteered to do that too. They asked what evidence he could produce that he was capable of doing such a job, he brought out the practice script, they were impressed and he got that job too, working in collaboration with the director, Graham Cutts. But that was not all. During his earlier time at Islington he had become friendly with an art director who had
originally been slated to work on
Woman to Woman
and who had recommended him to the company. But then it turned out that the art director could not design the film after all, and so Hitchcock, with his background in design and draughtsmanship, volunteered to do that too. All he needed, he said, was a draughtsman, some carpenters and a bit of other practical help. And so, to his great pleasure, he was able to hire back nearly all the people he knew who had been thrown out of work with the closing down of Famous Players-Lasky.

Among them, joining the team that Balcon-Saville-Freedman brought into the studio to work as a closely-knit unit, was one other person who was to have an important bearing on Hitchcock's future. This was a tiny, vibrant, Titian-haired girl just one day younger than himself, called Alma Reville. She was the film's editor, combining the job as was the way then with that of continuity girl on set. It was a natural combination, before the days when the continuity girl was likely to be swamped with bookkeeping and paperwork: on set she would keep careful note of what was shot with what intention, and then afterwards she would have a clearer idea than anyone else (except hopefully the director) of how it all fitted together. Alma had gone into the film industry early, at the age of sixteen, first of all in the very humble capacity of a rewind girl in the editing room at Twickenham Studio—her father already worked at the studio, and it was just round the corner from where she was born—but had already progressed to the point of having herself edited several major British pictures, among them the first version of that old stand-by
The Prisoner of Zenda
. She had even, impressively, been on set with the great D. W. Griffith when he was shooting studio scenes for
Hearts of the World
at Twickenham. She had come to Islington Studios to work as a cutter when she was twenty, and had been aware of Hitchcock, and he, evidently, of her, for some time before the shooting of
Woman to Woman
. She first became conscious of him as a bustling young man in, invariably, a long, dowdy grey coat, carrying large packages of, presumably, title-cards. He appeared very cool and kept his distance until, as assistant director on
Woman to Woman
, he was able to telephone her and ask her if she would edit it. ‘Since it is unthinkable for a British male to admit that a woman has a job more important than his, Hitch had waited to speak to me until he had a higher position.'

Whether or not Hitchcock was behaving at this point like a
male chauvinist, he has given very little evidence of such an attitude in the rest of his life: on the contrary, he has always seemed to have a high regard for the abilities of women as workmates. But undoubtedly the most important of them all, the most profound and long-lasting influence on his life and work that anyone has wielded through the years, is Alma Reville, eventually to become, after a prolonged engagement less unusual in those days than it would be now, Alma Hitchcock.

Corruption of the innocent, Michael Balcon calls it. And innocent Hitch certainly was in 1923. He did not smoke; he did not drink; he had never been out with a girl apart from his own sister. He was overweight—always had been—and was painfully self-conscious about his appearance. He looked younger than he was, like a chubby, overgrown baby, and the carefully cultivated moustache fooled no one. He had become a loner as a child, partly no doubt from shyness and timidity, but also because he was conscious of having few interests in common with the rest of his family or schoolfellows. In any area where he was unsure of himself he would walk away from competition; in a strict, repressed family, where everything—even, it seemed, love—had to be ‘deserved', he got into the habit of avoiding confrontations. If he doubted that he was lovable, or in any way attractive, he avoided situations which would put this to the test. He avoided boring school friends with his cranky interests by having no school friends, following up his interests alone. In his mid-teens, when he was thrown together more with a variety of other people, he quickly developed the protective colouring of the office joker—unfailingly bouncy and cheery, always obliging and ready to lend a hand. Oh, but would they like him if he did not make himself so easy to like? Best not to ask, in case he found out something he would not care to know. So, by the time he joined the Balcon-Saville-Freedman company, he had the act perfected: he almost was what he seemed to be, an uncomplicated, extrovert young man reasonably satisfied with himself and his situation, remarkably unfraid of the dark at the top of the stairs.