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

Before the Release: an early published alternate ending to Suspicion

In "But is not this a Scotch marriage?" an alternate ending of The 39 Steps was described, one that had made its way into a short story adaptation for a magazine. Here's another example of that occurring.

A number of Hitchcock books and websites describe an ending of Suspicion which was to have Johnnie (Cary Grant) leave Lina (Joan Fontaine) to better himself, joining the Royal Air Force. The ending can be read in full on the linked website; just a couple excerpts are given here.

INSERT CLOSEUP A NOTE - in Johnnie's handwriting, it reads:

"Lina -- Please tell Melbeck I'll pay him back his money. It may take some time. As for you -- I owe you a greater debt. I'll try to find some way to pay that debt, and if I do, we'll see each other again. Johnnie."

[...]

EXT. AIRFIELD - EVENING

LONG SHOT. Through the glasses she can see Johnnie climbing into a machine. As he closes the glass top with a wave on her direction, she pans her glasses slightly along the plane, until we see painted on the side of the machine - "Monkey-face". The engine roars louder as his plane starts to taxi off, still held in the circle of the field glasses. The plane gets smaller and smaller. The whole scene blurs as though an irregular film were coming over it.

CLOSEUP - Lina lowers the glasses. We see that her eyes are filled with tears, but her face bears a look of tremendous pride.

"The Original Scripted Ending." Writing with Hitchcock.

The above earlier scripted ending (dated January 1940) also showed up in a fictionization. Some kind of relationship apparently existed between the studios and the various magazines that published these short stories that allowed for writers to have access to early versions of film scripts. Parts of the short story are actually verbatim from the script.

Readers of the magazine might have been surprised to find the movie end differently than what they'd read months earlier! (Granted, the movie also diverged from the source novel.) One wonders why the magazine's writer used the earlier script; the RAF ending had been dumped well prior to the publication date on the magazine.

        "You thought of me as your murderer," he repeatedly dully, and suddenly he got up and walked to the door.

        "Don't, don't!" Lina subbed. "Oh, please darling, don't!"

        But Johnnie's only answer was the key turning in the door of his dressing-room.

        In the morning, Ethel brought his note on Lina's breakfast tray. Her heart went cold. Johnnie had left her!

        Darling, there it was scrawled in his bold handwriting. "I'm going to pay back the money I stole. It may take me a long time. But I owe you a greater debt. I'll try to find some way to pay back that debt and if I do, we'll see each other again. Johnnie."

THERE wasn't any trace of him. He might as well have dropped from the face of the earth itself. But Lina never gave up searching, never gave up hoping.

        The world had changed, England had changed, since he had been gone. Counties fell one by one, first the little countries, then the big ones, and now England was standing alone with her back to the wall.

        Then one day Lina picked up an illustrated weekly, the same weekly that had printed so many pictures of the gay, laughing Johnnie of other days. And this time she found his picture, just as she had hoped she would someday. Only it was a different Johnnie she stared down at, a serious, purposeful Johnnie, standing in that group of R.A.F. fliers. But she knew it was Johnnie, even though the name printed in the caption identified him as James Allen.

        Oh, Lina was so proud, reading of his bravery, his unflinching gallantry. And then, almost without realizing what she was doing, she was getting into her coat, putting on her hat, running, running, laughing a little and crying a little, too, as she hailed a taxi.

        It wasn't like the other times seeing Johnnie. All the excitement was gone, only that deep, quiet happiness was left, only his voice saying her name and hers saying his.

"James Allen is the name now," Johnnie said, and though he didn't kiss her, though he only stood there with his arms around her, it was enough. "I like him better. He may seem like a stuffed shirt but I'm getting very fond of him. He was planning to drop in on you—next Tuesday. My leave starts then."

        Then she heard the tramping of feet in the corridor outside of the office and voices calling his name. On the field below, planes were warming up and engines roared as the first bombers zoomed toward the sky. Johnnie was going, too! They had such a little time together. But she was glad he was going, too.

        "Where are you going?" she asked quietly.

        "Well, darling," for a moment a little of the old gayety came back in Johnnie's voice. "Promise you won't tell anybody. It's Berlin. And I'll see you Tuesday."

        There was only time for that quick kiss and he was gone, and as Lina stood at the window, she saw him running to his plane, looking up once and waving to her as he climbed into it. There were a pair of field glasses on the desk and she picked them up, focussing them on the plan, and then she saw the name that had been painted on it, and somehow it meant even more than Johnnie’s kiss had meant.

        “Monkeyface,” she read and then suddenly the glasses were misted with her tears and she couldn’t see, so only the sound of the racing engines told her Johnnie’s plane was flying toward the sky.

"Before the Fact." Movie Story Magazine 16(86). June 1941. 89.

"Memory of the Camps"

“War crimes commission: Alfred Hitchcock went to England last month to make a film about the Nazi horror camps for the archives and for exhibition to civilians of Germany. In preparation for this job Hitchcock had a private screening of all the horror-camp films—a ten-hour showing”

Lyons, Leonard. "The Lyons Den". Galveston News. August 9, 1945. 5 col 1.

"Alfred Hitchcock, Hollywood producer of mystery thrillers, will appear on tonight's broadcast of 'We, the People' over CBS. Hitchcock has just returned from Germany, where he edited all the German horror pictures in such a way as to command the attention of the German people, who had heretofore shown complete indifference to them"

Foote, Grace. "Of Mikes and Men." Port Arthur News. September 9, 1945. 13 col 2.

Macnab, Geoffrey. "Alfred Hitchcock's unseen Holocaust documentary to be screened." The Independent. January 8, 2014. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/alfred-hitchcocks-unseen-holocaust-documentary-to-be-screened-9044945.html

The Independent's headline is hyperbolic, but possibly there’s some new material: “The Imperial War Museum has painstakingly restored it using digital technology and has pieced together the extra material from the missing sixth reel.” It’s unclear what “pieced together the extra material from the missing sixth reel” means. Did they find parts of it, or other things that can stand in for it? Regardless, the version of it available through PBS http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/camp/ titled "Memory of the Camps" is the most devastating movie I've ever seen.

"The End"? Contesting Conclusions

Alfred Hitchcock didn't start in the film industry as a director, of course, but worked his way up to that position. For Director Graham Cutts' film Woman to Woman (1923) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0015508/ Hitchcock performed many duties, including that of screenwriter.

There's several curious articles (ads, really) about a contest that at least one theater ran in which moviegoers were invited to write alternate endings for Woman to Woman. The best three would receive prizes for their submissions, and supposedly their alternate endings would even be provided to the film distributor for consideration.

        Some months ago the powerful motion picture film "Woman to Woman", while in the process of perfection, had several endings submitted. The producers, after studying various endings, decided on the one that appears on the screen. The Selznick Moving Picture Corporation, which has spent years and large amounts in the motion picture world invites the wisdom of every woman in Hartford and vicinity in search of a still better ending.

        "Woman to Woman" will be shown the entire week of March 9. The management, in order that the women of Hartford, may be compensated for writing their views on the picture's ending, announces prizes. The contest is open to every woman, inasmuch as the picture deals principally with their sex. After witnessing the picture and carefully studying the ending an essay should be written and submitted to the manager of the Palace Theater. The essay should say whether the ending now shown in the picture is most suitable, or, if not, what ending would be better.

        The producers realize that no two human minds run in the same channel. The best of the essays will be forwarded to the Selznick Moving Picture Corporation for its approval in the making of other films of this nature. Time and time again public opinion has led producers to make more perfect pictures.

        The following prizes will be awarded for the essays submitted: First prize, a season ticket with a cash value of more than $25 in admission fees; second prize, a six-months' pass, with a cash value of $15 in admission fees; third prize, a three-months' pass, with a value of $7 in admission fees; fourth prize, fifty passes good at any time.

        In the "Sunday Courant" of a later date announcement will be made of the winners of the essay contest. The rules are simple and every woman can enter. The management at the Palace Theater wants to go on record as displaying pictures that will have the approval of the public. When better pictures are made the Palace Theater will be the first to show them.

        Betty Compson, the star, is well known to every motion picturegoer and has a well selected role.

"Woman to Woman." Hartford Courant. March 7, 1924: 10.

In addition to describing the contest the newspaper items claimed that the production company had considered several different endings for the film while making it. A March 11, 1924 follow-up stated "For this picture the scenario writer submitted several endings, each believed to be suitable." That writer could very well have been Alfred Hitchcock, though the truth of the claim can't be taken for granted.

Woman to Woman had been based on a play and novel; the film excluded the third part of the novel. It also appears there had been alternate versions of the film due to different censorship boards' objections in different markets. More on those differences in the future, but for now to return to the idea of a prize contest involving the submission of alternate endings to a film.

A similar contest was run with respect to a film Hitchcock himself directed, The 39 Steps. In the last post here, "But is not this a Scotch marriage?", it was noted that Hitchcock had told Charles Thomas Samuels that he'd shot an alternate ending for that film. A fictionization of the film in Screen Romances used a close variation on that alternate ending. Unlike the Woman to Woman contest, The 39 Steps contest didn't mention that the filmmakers had considered other endings when inviting readers to submit an alternate ending.

Screen Romances. November 1935. 43.

Screen Romances' fictionization of the ending didn't run until the December issue, which indicated the contest winners would be identified in the January 1936 issue. The cost of an issue of the magazine was twenty-five cents, about the same as what movie tickets were at the time. Someone interested in the fictionization and contest would likely have also been motivated to see the movie at least once. Thereby they would have spent at least a dollar rather than just the twenty-five cents of someone who only went to the theater.

It would be interesting to know more about the relationship of fan magazines to the film industry. Did film companies pay magazines to turn their films into short stories, or did magazines pay the film companies for the right to do so? Or was there no deal between the two, the film companies permitting unauthorized adaptions of their films because it served as free advertising for them?

"But is not this a Scotch marriage?"

"But is not this a Scotch marriage?" (Barrie 1891, 92).

What appears to have been a plot point in James M. Barrie's novel The Little Minister, which I confess I have not read, was used in the 1921 film starring Betty Compson:

"The weavers of Thrums are riotous over the reduction in wages. Lady Barbara Rintoul (Babbie) is in the habit of disguising herself as a gypsy and aiding the poor in the village. In her disguise she is able to prevent disastrous results from a riot, and meets and falls in love with the Little Minister of the village, who pretends she is his wife to save her from the soldiers on riot duty. This constitutes a legal marriage in Scotland."

Chapman, Mrs. Woodallen. "Better Films." Moving Picture Age 5(3). March 1922. 30, 32.

Alfred Hitchcock was a great admirer of Barrie's, greatly affected by his play Mary Rose and later owning his "every first edition" (Spoto 1999, 115). The film The Little Minister was produced by Famous Players-Lasky in America, and its star Betty Compson someone with whom Hitchcock would later work on several occasions. Hitchcock was then working for that company's British branch; it too produced a film using the same plot point:

“The plot [of The Bonnie Brier Bush] turns upon the fact, not as widely known as it might be, that acknowledging a woman to be your wife before a witness constitutes a legal marriage in Scotland, a point that exhibitors might do well to exploit when advertising the picture.” ("Bonnie Brier Bush" 1922, 133).

"Crescent Today—Tomorrow." Cornell Daily Sun [Ithaca, NY]. December 6, 1922: 4 col 3.

The idea of a Scottish marriage nearly made it into one of Hitchcock's iconic films, The 39 Steps, as he noted in an interview years later:

“You know, originally, I’d shot another scene [for the end of The 39 Steps]. They drive away from the theater in a cab. [Robert] Donat says, ‘Now that’s all over, and I can start paying attention to my wife.’ ‘Your wife?’ [Madeline Carroll] says. ‘Are you married?’ ‘Yes, I’m married to you.’ ‘How?’—and he tells her that the rule in Scotland is that if you declare yourself man and wife in front of a witness, you are man and wife, so they’d been married while hiding at the inn” (Samuels 1972, 242).

The marriage had not been part of Buchan's original text The Thirty-Nine Steps, though the character Richard Hannay (played by Donat in the film) had been of Scottish heritage therein. "My father had brought me out from Scotland at the age of six, and I had never been home since" (de V. 1915, 33). Hitchcock's film made Hannay a Canadian.

It can be hard, sometimes, to know what to make of a Hitchcock story about a cut scene when he was describing it decades later. One of the strangest, perhaps, involves a film released about four years prior to The 39 Steps:

"In Rich and Strange there was a scene in which the young man is swimming with a girl and she stands with her legs astride, saying to him, 'I bet you can't swim between my legs.'

"I shot it in a tank. The boy dives, and when he's about to pass between her legs, she suddenly locks his head between her legs and you see the bubbles rising from his mouth. Finally, she releases him, and as he comes up, gasping for air, he sputters out, 'You almost killed me that time,' and she answers, 'Wouldn't that have been a beautiful death?'

"I don't think we could show that today because of censorship."

François Truffaut responded to Hitchcock, "I've seen two different prints of that picture, but neither one showed that scene." (Truffaut 1985, 81). Nobody seems to have seen that scene and it's hard to imagine any censor passing it at the time. Perhaps it's just a scene Hitchcock wished he could have done?

Whatever the case, there is some circumstantial evidence for the Scottish marriage ending to The 39 Steps, if not necessarily of it being lensed then at least of it having been an idea in play that might have been in a script. It was used in a magazine fictionization (short novelization) of the film, published the same year as the film's release:

        It was late that night when Richard and Pamela finally left the Paladium and walked, hand in hand, down the avenue.

        “Well, I’ll say this for the English police,” Richard grinned. “When they find they’ve made a mistake, they certainly apologize for it!”

        “Darned decent of them,” Pamela commented sarcastically, “considering that you uncovered one of the biggest spy rings in the world and saved the country’s most vital piece of air defense information from being blabbed all over Europe!” She glanced up at him and asked, “What are you going to do next?”

        “Meet your family, I guess. The next thing, you’ll expect me to marry you!” He stopped suddenly and tilted her face up, looking deep into her eyes. “By Gosh! Know what? We’re married already. Last night . . . Scottish Hotel. ‘Are you man and wife?’ the innkeeper asks, I nod, you nod. That’s marriage by declaration according to Scottish law!”

        “And what are you going to do about it?” Pamela asked flippantly.

        For an answer, Richard took her in his arms and kissed her ("The 39 Steps" 1935, 94).

Fictionizations would sometimes take liberties with the stories of films, no doubt in part because condensing a feature-length film based on a novel down to short story-length could be challenging. Magazine writers might also have been trying to work something creative into the process of authoring something derivative; the fictionization of Rope, for example, is narrated by the character murdered in the opening scene: "Five minutes ago I was murdered" (Webster 1948, 49).

The end of The 39 Steps as it was released shows Richard and Pamela, hand in hand, in the theatre, a handcuff still conspicuously dangling from his right wrist. The shot has the character's rear ends in the vertical center of the screen, and after it fades to black it is followed by a title card with "THE END" in that space. Hitchcock enjoyed puns, and would end one of his later films with a final shot he described as "probably one of the most impudent shots I ever made", that of a train going into a tunnel to suggest sex (Truffaut 1985, 150).

Christopher K. Philippo

Bibliography

Barrie, J.M. The Little Minister. NY: United States Book Company, 1891. 92.

“The Bonnie Brier Bush.” Exhibitor’s Trade Review 11(2). December 10, 1922. 133.

de V., H. [John Buchan]. "The Thirty-Nine Steps." Blackwood's Magazine 198(1197). July 1915. 33.

Samuels, Charles Thomas. Encountering Directors. NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972. 242. Rpt. in Gottlieb, Sidney, ed. Alfred Hitchcock: Interviews. Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississipi, 2003.

Spoto, Donald. The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock." NY: Da Capo Press, 1999. 115.

“The 39 Steps.” Screen Romances. December 1935. 94.

Truffaut, François. Hitchcock. Rev. Ed. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1985.

Webster, Frank. “Rope.” Screen Stories. 39(5). October 1948. 48-49, 77-82.