April 30, 2010
‘Me and Hitch’: Evan Hunter remembers Alfred Hitchcock
As I'm doing research on "Hollywood Gone Wild," the sequel (I hope) to "Writers Gone Wild
," I thought I'd share with you my impressions of the books I run across in my work.Fans of Ed McBain’s 87th Precient novels might know that he also wrote books under his real name, Evan Hunter, but not that he worked on two scripts for director Alfred Hitchcock: “The Birds
” and “Marnie
.” In "Me and Hitch,"
Hunter/McBain describes his collaboration in the cool, even-handed prose that is a mix of restrained affection, much admiration for Hitchcock's genius, and sometimes unsettling details.Hitchcock came across Hunter after his novel of juvenile delinquency in New York schools, "The Blackboard Jungle"
became a best-seller and later a good movie. He had also bought one of Hunter’s short-stories for his TV show. What Hitchcock didn’t tell Hunter was that he was looking for a writer who also had some literary credentials (which “Jungle” gave Hunter). It seems that, despite a long, successful career and several Oscar nominations, Hitchcock wanted more. He wanted respectability. He wanted an Oscar. His previous movie, “Psycho
,” was successful, but it was also sort of a pot-boiler. Hitch ─ I can’t resist using his nickname, although no doubt he would insist on me using “Mr. Hitchcock,” if he wasn’t ignoring me completely ─ wanted to be recognized as an artist, at least not the kind who made movies like “Psycho.”If this sounds like a recipe for disaster, it was. “The Birds” was intended for Cary Grant and Grace Kelly; instead, it got Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedron. Hunter’s idea to write what he called “screwball comedy becomes terror” was, even he admitted later, a terrible idea. There would be no music. And they never did figure out why the birds were attacking in the first place (Hunter thinks that Hitch didn’t want to. Makes it more artistic, doncha see).
As for “Marnie,” Hunter’s objection to the notorious scene in which husband Sean Connery rapes his frigid wife (Hedron, again) on their honeymoon signalled the beginning of the end of their partnership (a friend later told Hunter “you just got bothered by the scene that was his reason for making the movie. You just wrote your ticket back to New York.”)
The end was anti-climatic. After Hunter turned in his version of the script, Hitch fired him through a phone call from his assistant. Later, they met with their wives for a convivial dinner, and that was it. If Hunter suffered for his art, he didn’t reveal it.
But “Me and Hitch” is a worthwhile book. Fictioneers and scriptwriters will appreciate the insights into Hitchcock’s method of building a script, his fans will eat up the glimpses of the man’s private life ─ he gives autographed books to Hunter’s kids; he visits children who want to talk to him; when he’s not saying that “The Birds” would be the best movie of his career, he drunkenly confesses he’s nothing but a “big fat slob” ─ and film fans wonder what the hell “The Birds” and “Marnie” were all about will get a few ideas.
Best of all, Hunter/McBain fans get a lovely bit of biography, told in the same laconic, direct style found in his novels. And at 90 pages, it can be read about as fast as a Hitchcock movie.
Excerpts from "Me and Hitch": Why "The Birds" Failed
When I first suggested "Screwball Comedy Becomes Terror," Hitch should have said, "That is the worst idea I have ever heard in my life. Let’s move on." Instead, we marched ahead confidently, blithely trying to graft upon Du Maurier’s simple tale of apocalyptic terror a slick story about two improbably lovers confronted with an even more improbably situation ─ birds attacking humans.
The trouble with our story was that nothing in it was real. In real life, birds don’t attack people and girls don’t buy lovebirds to schlep sixty miles upstate for a practical joke. Hitch had bought a bizarre novella about plain people attacked by the gentlest of creatures. He had then hired a realistic novelist from New York to change these people into the sort of beautiful, sleek, sophisticated characters Hitch himself enjoyed seeing on the screen, the Cary Grants and Grace Kellys of the world. Even if the script had worked ─ which it didn’t ─ Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor were no Grace Kelly or Cary Grant.
But Hitch never gave it an honest shot.
Hunter On the Rape Scene in "Marnie"
I told him that I did not want to write that scene as he had outlined it. I told him we would lose all sympathy for the male lead if he rapes his own wife on their honeymoon. I told him we can see the girl isn’t being coy or modest, she’s terrified, she’s trembling, and the reasons for this all come out in the later psychiatric sessions. I told him if the man really loved her he would take her in his arms and comfort her gently and tell her they’d work it out, don’t be frightened, everything will be all right. I told him that’s how I thought the scene should go.
Hitch held up his hands the way directors do when they’re framing a shot. Palms out, fingers together, thumbs extended and touching to form a perfect square. Moving his hands toward my face, like a camera coming in for a close shot, he said, ‘Evan, when he sticks it in her, I want that camera right on her face.”
Many years later, when I told Jay Presson Allen how much his description of that scene had bothered me, she said, ‘You just got bothered by the scene that was his reason for making the movie. You just wrote your ticket back to New York.”
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