Deep Cuts

Casual Hitchcock fans are probably familiar with some extent of the publicity done for Psycho: the movie trailer in which Hitchcock gave a tour of the Psycho sets, certainly; perhaps The Care and Handling of Psycho booklet; maybe even the "press book on film," given how readily such things sometimes become available online: Different pressings of Psycho lobby spots (for playing in theatre lobbies) and radio spots found various places online:

There's a longer history to that sort of thing with respect to Hitchcock's filmography than probably most realize.

For Woman to Woman (1923), directed by Graham Cutts, Alfred Hitchcock was an art director, assistant director, and screenwriter; he also invited his future wife Alma Reveille to be editor. Of all the films he worked on prior to becoming a director, Woman to Woman seems to have done the best, and to have been the most highly-regarded, making the fact that it'a a lost film all the more unfortunate.

PHONOGRAPH RECORDS FOR FILM EXPLOITATION

     Selznick have conceived the happy idea of using phonograph records for exploitation purposes. This is how it is done. The records which are being sent broadcast to all exhibitors, are virtually selling talks on “Woman to Woman” and “Roulette,” the two latest releases. Each is a separate record and can be played on any standard make of machine.

    The miniature discs are mounted, for mailing, on heavy cardboard cards which are illustrated in colored pictures taken from the film. However, no printing appears on the card, all the ad copy being contained in the record. If for no other reason, the exhibitor is sure to play the record out of curiosity and the message will in this manner be sure to reach him whereas, if the same information were printed, it might go unread by him.

Exhibitor’s Trade Review. January 19, 1924. 32.

Here the matter online video sharing comes back into the picture...even for the lost film Woman to Woman!

As ephemeral as a cardboard publicity record for a lost silent film must be, a partial recording of the Selznick publicity department's Woman to Woman record had been made available. It could be seen to featured attractive color pictures of Betty Compson in various poses in her Moulin Rouge outfits.

Note the tense above: had been. The video disappeared for a while when the uploader's account was abruptly suspended (in error?), then reappeared when the suspension was lifted.

It's often said that once something is on the Internet it's there forever. Good advice, maybe, in counseling young people not to sext, or to discourage people from posting inflammatory content that may come back to bite them when they apply for a job or run for office, etc. There's certainly some truth to how things posted online may get copied to other sites or otherwise republished in unexpected ways and places, how things might survive on servers even when they're deleted from websites and so forth.

However, unless you're a hacker or a digital forensic investigator (and sometimes even then), once something posted to the Internet is deleted it is for all practical purposes gone - unless you've made a backup, which is something you should do if it's something important to you! Back it up in multiple ways, for that matter.

Library of Congress "Why Digital Preservation is Important for Everyone" Youtube, uploaded by Library of Congress 1 April 1 2010. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEmmeFFafUs

I had saved both a screenshot and a video copy of the Woman to Woman publicity record to my own computer (and backed up to a cloud drive) before it disappeared from the Internet, but as mentioned it has since reappeared:

“Rare 1924 promotional cardboard record movie title Woman to Woman Alfred Hitchcock” YouTube, uploaded by vwxvw Disney, 31 January 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNEFnxr0TO8 It doesn't seem to feature the whole recording; possibly the uploader didn't want to include the whole thing, or maybe the record was no longer capable of playing the whole way through.

The recording had been made in conjunction with an eBay auction; the listing was archived by Worthpoint, from which this image of the record has been cropped:

The same uploader also published a recording of the Roulette cardboard record!

"Rare 1924 promotional cardboard record movie title Roulette" YouTube, uploaded by vwxvw Disney, 31 January 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLj29KMkc6U

That record had not begun playing from a standstill, so a good screen capture of it is not possible, but the same image—albeit in b&w—had been used in magazine advertising:

Also cropped from Worthpoint's archive of the eBay listing:

Christopher K. Philippo

"I Want Some Money (Gimme Some, Gimme Some, Gimme Some)" in Alfred Hitchcock's Downhill (1927)

The video clip shows the opening credits of Alfred Hitchcock's Downhill (1927) and then I've cut it to a later scene that features a closeup of the record "I Want Some Money (Gimme Some, Gimme Some, Gimme Some)" (music by L. Silberman, words by Herbert Rule & Fred Holt) by the Bohemian Band on the Winner label and a closeup of the needle drop.

Organists or orchestras in film theaters could well have used the needle drop as a cue to perform the song. Possibly some may have even tried playing the record in theaters if they had a copy of it (it *is* a real record) and if they had adequate amplification for the gramophone.

I made a digital recording of the song from the record and synced it to the first needle drop, and stopped it where Ivor Novello's character removes the needle, stopping the song before it ends. I still need to add it in a second where Novello's character starts the song over after winding the gramophone, though.

The Bohemian Band's recording is an instrumental, but they were not the only ones to record the song at the time. Some other versions of it can be found on YouTube, and the sheet music at the University of Maine's Digital Commons.

I Want Some Money, sung by The Two Gilberts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChwRe3QOmIY

radio dance orch - I want some money (columbia3173) (1923) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8R46Bx0ht0

78 RPM - Primo Scala & Banjo Accordion Band - I Want Some Money (1948) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NgliuOrN1U

Silberman, L; Holt, Fred; and Rule, "I Want Some Money" (1922). Vocal Popular Sheet Music Collection. Score 3113. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/3113

it was real hard as nails poverty and a gesture of musical desperation on the piano that gave Fred Holt, my collaborator, and myself the idea for "I want some money—gimme some do!"

Rule, Herbert. "£50 a Minute: Secrets of the Song-Writing Profession." Derby Daily Telegram. February 3, 1925: 5 col 2.

The title and lyrics, with which audiences may have been familiar, intersect what's happening in the film's scene and action that later follows it, to some extent. Tim Wakely (Robin Irvine), seated, has met up with the girl Mabel (Annette Benson) whom he's sweet on where she works, "Ye Olde Bunne Shoppe," a sweet shop featuring "cakes, confectionary, pastry." He has been accompanied by his schoolmate Roddy Berwick (Ivor Novello), who dances with Mabel.

A doorbell rings to announce a little boy who wants to buy some chocolate with a single half penny. Roddy Berwick sells him an entire box, one that had been on special display on top of the register, at far below cost. He then creates further trouble for himself (and for Mabel) by ringing up £1 (240 pence, at the time) rather than the ha'penny he put in the register from the boy.

Mabel later hits Roddy Berwick up for money, claiming (falsely) that he's gotten her pregnant and she's going to have his baby as he seems a better prospect than Tim Wakely. Roddy Berwick protects his friend by taking the blame and must leave school, making for the "downhill" story that follows.

Downhill is included as a supplemental feature on Criterion's blu-ray release of The Lodger (also starring Novello) and looks much better than the video used for the above clip. Criterion's blu-ray has a score by Neil Brand, and accompanies the above scene with a peppy instrumental piano rendition of "I Want Some Money" wherein he added a nice bit of musical suspense to the part where Tim Wakely waits for the dancers to reappear from the beaded curtain behind which they'd danced away.

What is it that ev-’ry bo-dy craves for?

What is it that ev-’ry bo-dy raves for?

You know and I know and ev-’ry one knows

What’s so hard to get as you know

ve-ry soon goes,—

What is it that ev-’ry bo-dy wants to-day,

Can’t do with-out it, this is what we say.

I want some mon-ey,

gim-me some, gim-me some, gim-me some, gim-me some, do,—

Oh, ain’t it fun-ny

the dif-fer-ence that mon-ey makes to you,—

Wheth-er you’re rich,

wheth-er you’re poor,

Some-bo-dy comes knocking at your door

and they say:

I want some mon-ey,

gim-me some, gim-me some, gim-me some, gim-me some, do,—

Some get tired of drink-ing and of eat-ing,

Sweethearts sometimes they get tired of meet-ing

Some get so tired of work night and day,

People ev-en get so wea-ry, too tired to play—

Some get tired of ask-ing some-one for a kiss,

No-bo-dy yet got tired of ask-ing this.

(Chorus)

Friends of mine they had a lit-tle ba-by,

And he was a reg-’lar won-der ba-by,

They watched him grow and they taught him to walk,

Mo-ther was so pleased and when he starte-d to talk—

Dad-dy brought him toys and sweets to chew, but oh,

That bright young-ster cried ‘I don’t want ’em, oh no’.

(Chorus)

Christopher K. Philippo

The Man from Home (as are we all currently encouraged to be)

Early Hitchcock research has been slowly proceeding these several years since last post, but moving off the back burner now as other projects have largely wrapped!

On occasion there were columns or articles with Hitchcock's name in the byline, and sometimes they'd touch upon his earliest film work as in the following:

The Lyons Den

     (Leonard Lyons is on vacation. His guest columnist today is the noted film director, Alfred Hitchcock.) —

     I’m going to use this opportunity to take a vacation myself. I am going to take a vacation from being a steak-and-ice-cream-eating legend and try to tell your readers, if they don’t mind, what sort of a chap I really am—I want to dispel the legendary Hitchcock and introduce the man. [...]

[A Hitchcock story] which at first glance seems to be mythical, is the one that I draw pictures of my food for the waiters and cooks in restaurants. Well, I do now and then, if I order a cut of meat and there seems to be some misunderstanding about it.

* * * *

     I am something of a graphic artist (one of my first screen jobs was drawing illustrated titles for silent films) so I take a pencil and sketch a picture of the steer, or whatever the game may be, for the waiter and indicate the section I want cut and cooked. It may seem a bit fabulous, but it’s just in the interest of exactness. But the other story about my timing my scenes with a stop watch as I shoot them, as though they were a track meet or something…. My word!

(Distributed by McNaught Syndicate, Inc.)

Montgomery Advertiser [AL]. August 25, 1943: 4 cols 4-5.

It seems a fairly trivial item, and to say little that is new to anyone studying Hitchcock. His love of certain foods, his ability to sketch, his having designed art titles for Famous Players-Lasky British Producers (FPLBP), his desire to carefully plan things prior to their execution: there's no surprises there. The way they all come together, however, is of note in relation to a scene in one of those early films on which he worked.

Charles Barr and Alain Kerzoncuf for their 2015 book Hitchcock Lost and Found: The Forgotten Films had been able to view the then-only known surviving FPLBP film, a print of The Man from Home (1922) with Dutch intertitles (thus, sadly, lacking Hitchcock's illustrated ones). In one scene, the title character while abroad in Italy sketches for a waiter the food he desired to eat: "Ham - en - eieren!" ("Ham - and - eggs!"). When even the drawing caused some misunderstanding, he went into the kitchen to prepare the food himself.

Barr and Kerzoncuf had reasonably speculated that Hitchcock might have been responsible for overseeing the closeup shot of hands, the drawing of the hen and the egg, because he’d “later spoke of having graduated quickly to this sort of work, directing a variety of inserts and pick-up shots—and this film is one of the final pair of FPLB productions." In 2018 the Eye Filmmuseum had digitized and published the film on YouTube, from which the below screen capture and clip have been made:

via ytCropper https://youtu.be/ONw6_jFQAuo?t=2029

Barr and Kerzoncuf noted that the hands were not those of the actor, since the left little finger in closeup bore a pinky ring that the character in medium shot did not. By the time of The Man from Home, Hitchcock had people working under his direction; it could have been any one of them.

     Two special rooms in the laboratory have been set apart for the titling department and equipped with the latest title outfit. The titles used in the Famous Players Lasky British Productions are prepared by a special staff of artists working under the supervision of A. J. Hitchcock, studio title designer. Sixteen film vaults are located about twenty yards from the main building.

"Famous Opens Laboratory; London Plant, Costing £50,000, Is Built on Modern American Lines." Motion Picture News. July 23, 1921. 564.

The scene of the food ordering is rooted in the Booth Tarkington & Harry Leon Wilson play and the Wilson novel, though the act of drawing is not to be found there:

     VASILI [apparently oblivious to her remark, to Mariano). My American friend wishes his own national dish.

     MARIANO [deferentially, and serving VASILI to caviar). Yes, Herr von Gröllerhagen, he will have the eggs on but one of both sides and the hams fried. So he go to cook it himself.

[Loud shouts and wild laughter from the street. HORACE, ALMERIC, and Lady CREECH set their papers down in their laps and turn toward the door.]

     MARIANO. Ha! He return from the kitchen with those national dish.

     ETHEL (glancing in the doorway]. How horrid!

Tarkington, Booth, and Harry L. Wilson. The Man from Home. NY: Harper & Bros., 1908. 47.

     “My American friend, it seems, desired his own national dish,” he affably confided to Mariano. “Ah, yes, Herr von Grollerhagen.” The atrocious tale had been borne to Mariano. “He greatly criticize that national dish as it have been prepared for him in the hotel at Napoli. He say the Italians know not the true American method. He himself go to the kitchen to make sure. But he have confuse us—he have confuse everyone with that national dish of his. He will have the hams fried and the eggs cooked but on one of two sides, as if an egg shall have sides like another object more square—yet that is how he say it. Ha! He have done it. He come, Herr von Grollerhagen.”

Wilson, Harry L. The Man from Home: A Novel. NY: D. Appleton & Co, 1915. 102-103.

The drawing of the hen and the egg would thus seem to have been an invention in the script for the FPLBP film. It's at least possible, though, that it could have originated as a bit in Cecil B. Demille's 1914 film The Man From Home. The Library of Congress has a print of that earlier film, so one would need to check it to compare the ham & eggs scene (if the film had one) and see if it may have featured the drawing. For that matter, comparing the two films from beginning to end could be enlightening in any number of ways.

Supposing, however, that it was a unique bit in the FPLBP film. It had been scripted by Ouida Bergère, the wife of the director George Fitzmaurice. What, then, can one make of the 1943 article in which Hitchcock described himself doing in his own life the same sort of thing that was done in the 1922 film?

Was it already something Hitchcock did by 1922 such that he might have contributed the idea to Bergère at the script stage? I've yet to see any mention of him claiming to have had a hand in the synopses or scenarios of films prior to director Graham Cutts' Woman to Woman (1923), though it seems reasonable that he might have done so on occasion. If, instead, it was Bergère's own idea, was the drawing of food something Hitchcock himself began doing in a sort of imitation of the bit from the film? Or was the 1943 item an invention, something he never did but just a bit of self-mythologizing - but again, still borrowing the idea from the bit in the film?

Christopher K. Philippo