No Bail for the Judge
From Alfred Hitchcock Wiki
Introduction
An adaptation of the thriller novel by former judge Henry Cecil about a barrister who, with the assistance of a gentleman thief, has to defend her father, a High Court judge, when he is accused of murdering a prostitute. In a change of pace from his usual blondes, Audrey Hepburn would have played the barrister, with Laurence Harvey as the thief and John Williams as the Hepburn's father.
Samuel A Taylor ("Vertigo", "Topaz") wrote the screenplay - after Ernest Lehman passed on it - which included a scene not in the book where the heroine disguises herself as a prostitute and has to fend off a rapist. Hepburn left the film, partly because of the near-rape scene but mostly due to her pregnancy. Without Hepburn the project didn't have the same appeal for Hitchcock, who told Paramount Pictures it was better to write off $200,000 than spend another $3 million for a film he no longer cared for. A brochure sent by Paramount to theater exhibitors to promote Paramount releases for 1961 includes this film, says it would star Hepburn and Harvey, and be filmed in Technicolor and VistaVision.
Links
- Writing with Hitchcock - "No Bail for the Judge: Hitchcock's Lost Masterpiece"
- Senses of Cinema - "The Sixties, the Thriller and the Judge", by Richard Franklin