Sight and Sound (Jun/1997) - Me and Hitch, by Ed McBain - part 4
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(c) Ed McBain, Sight and Sound (June 1997)
Me and Hitch - part 4
by Evan Hunter (Ed McBain)
Last big attack
I must have delivered the first draft of Marnie sometime around the middle of June. My records show that I was paid for the week of 11 June, 1962 and that there was not another weekly salary check until 10 December, 1962. I feel certain I went to the Coast shortly after Hitch read the script. He was still wrapping up The Birds and had yet to film what turned out to be the last big attack, the famous (or infamous, depending on one's point of view) attic scene, during which he hurled live bird after bird at his inexperienced, bewildered, and ultimately terrified actress.
Alone together
One morning, Rod Taylor came to me.
"Did you write this scene?" he asked, and handed me some pages...
I read the scene.
It takes place on a hill above the Brenner house, just prior to the bird attack on the children's birthday party. Melanie and Mitch are alone. Miraculously, he has a martini pitcher and long-stemmed martini glasses with him. He pours, they drink. Then Melanie pours out her heart.
Mitch: You need a mother's care, my child!
Melanie: Not my mother's!
Mitch: Oh - I'm sorry.
Melanie: What have you got to be sorry about? My mother? Don't waste your time. She ditched us when I was 11 and went off with some hotel man in the east. You know what a mother's love is?
Mitch: Yes, I do.
Melanie: You mean it's better to be ditched?
Mitch: No, I think it's better to be loved. Don't you ever see her?
Melanie: (turning away to hide the tears) I don't know where she is. (recovering her composure) Well! Maybe I ought to go join the other children.
Trust me
I was happy to tell Rod I had definitely not written that scene, and had not in fact seen those pages until the moment he'd handed them to me.
"Well, we're shooting it this morning," he said.
Over my dead body, I thought, and went to find Hitch.
He was in the production trailer with Peggy. I asked if I might talk to him privately, and then showed him the scene Rod had given me. I said I didn't know who'd written it but that it was totally inept and devoid of any craftsmanship, that no single speech in it logically followed the speech preceding it, that a first-year film student at UCLA could write a better scene, and that I would be thoroughly embarrassed if it were to appear in a movie with my name on it as screenwriter.
Hitch did his straight-faced little take.
Then he said, "Are you going to trust me or a two-bit actor?"
They shot the scene that morning.
It is in the picture.
I later learned that Hitch himself had written it.
A darkened screening room
I remember sitting with him in a darkened screening room and watching the unassembled dailies of the attic attack. "Hurry up, hurry up," he yelled between each frantic take. "Hurry up," he yelled, while make-up people bloodied Tippi's face and hands, and wardrobe people tore her clothes, and The Girl genuinely cowered in fear of each new assault.
Postponement
A letter to my then agent, Scott Meredith, explains my mood later that summer:
Dear Scott,
I guess this postponement of Marnie has affected me harder than I realised at first.
I had planned to have the final screenplay completed by August, as you know, take the trip to Europe for a month (which I think I sorely need after what amounts to a full year of working on screenplays and mysteries) and then begin work on the law novel in September. Frankly, I was looking forward to the luxury of turning off everything but the telephone and beginning work on a book that is certainly long overdue from everyone's standpoint, including my own. The postponement of Marnie presents a dilemma, and I frankly don't know what to do about it.
I know very well that I can fill the time before leaving for Europe by doing another McBain novelette, or even by writing a television play for one of those cockamamie outfits that have been bugging us, or I can sit and pick lint from my navel, but none of these projects will change the simple facts. Those facts are: Hitchcock will be back sooner or later, ready to work on the script, and I will have to postpone or interrupt work on a novel in progress.
I think we both agreed a long time ago that the surest way to get sandtrapped into all this Hollywood crap was to undertake one screenplay immediately after another. I don't buy the Hollywood Corruption idea except as a corruption of reality, and somehow or other we have slipped into screenplay, screenplay, screenplay - and this, Scott, is a corruption of reality. I am a novelist. If one more columnist calls me 'screenwriter Evan Hunter' I think I'll climb the wall.
We will see what happens. After all this ranting and raving, we always get down to that: we will see what happens. I am not being petulant about the interruption of a work schedule that seemed important to me. I am simply expressing the heartfelt desire that once, just once, I can plan my own time and fill it exactly as I want to. I once had the mistaken childish notion that this was what made writing attractive.
7 November, 1962
Dear Hitch:
I have been informed by the Meredith office that you'll be ready to resume work on Marnie on the twenty-sixth of this month. That should give me enough time to clear up some odds and ends, and I'll be looking forward to seeing you.
Eager to get home
Christmas was fast approaching, and I was in California.
I had not yet bought gifts for any of my family; my daily conferences on Marnie left me exhausted and hardly in the mood for shopping in a climate where Santa Claus and Christmas trees seemed anomalous. I wanted to go back to New York.
One afternoon, Hitch was telling me a long story about Charles Laughton and the shooting of Jamaica Inn, an anecdote I might have otherwise found fascinating - but I was getting impatient. I interrupted him mid-sentence.
"Excuse me, Hitch," I said, "but do you know what my salary is?"
"I know it's exorbitant," he said.
Our private joke.
"Then shouldn't we get back to discussing Marnie?"
He looked at me blankly. Somehow it wasn't quite his usual classic take.
"Of course," he said.
Later that afternoon, Lew Wasserman, Universal's chief executive and Hitch's former agent and longtime friend, stopped by the office to chat. He'd been with us for about five minutes when Hitch interrupted him mid-sentence.
"Excuse me, Lew," he said, "but we'll have to cut this short. Mr Hunter is eager to get home for Christmas."
Hitch's recitation
I know I was home again for Christmas, and I know I was back in Los Angeles again on 4 February, 1963 because that was when Hitch and I sat down with a tape recorder and Bob Boyle.
Bit by bit, scene by scene, just as I had done for him every morning while we were shaping the screenplay for The Birds, just as I had done for Peggy Robertson every afternoon of the working process, Hitch himself now told the complete story of Marnie, explaining what we would be doing in every scene. I interrupted occasionally - to clarify a point, to add something that may have slipped his mind - but for the most part, this was Hitch's recitation, and his grasp of the movie was encyclopaedic. For the most part, Bob and I merely listened.
"The cabin of the ship has to be a bedroom and a sitting room, a suite," he said into the recorder's microphone. "And she's in a negligee. He's in shirt and pants. And he comes over to embrace her now. Now is the moment. And she turns on him and walks away and sits in a far corner of the sitting room...
"And then you get the second night in the cabin. He comes to her and she tries to resist - and then she turns her head away and you follow her head as he forces her down onto the bed, and you know..."
He turned off the machine.
And described Marnie's rape in detail.
I was the new kid on the block, and still learning the ways of the world. But I knew better than to contradict the boss in the presence of a man with whom he'd begun working 20 years earlier.
Losing all sympathy
I took Hitch aside later.
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."
The master at work
It was on that same trip that Hitch revealed the advertising slogan he wanted to use on The Birds.
For the unveiling of it, he assembled in his office all of Universal's marketing people. I hadn't heard the slogan before. It was to be a surprise to me as well.
"Gentlemen," he said, "here's how we'll announce the movie. Are you ready?"
There was a moment of suspenseful silence, the master at work. Spreading his hands wide on the air, Hitch said, "The Birds is coming!"
It was pure genius, a seemingly ungrammatical catchphrase that combined humour and suspense.
One of Universal's young advertising Turks said, "Excuse me, Mr Hitchcock, sir?"
Hitch turned to him.
"Don't you mean 'The birds are coming,' sir?"
What women want
"The Girl wants the mink," Hitch said.
The Girl was Tippi Hedren. The mink was the one Melanie Daniels, The Girl in the picture, wore throughout the filming.
"So give it to her," I said.
"Do you know how much that coat costs!" he asked.
"You can afford it," I said.
No music
We sat alone in the screening room, side by side, Hitch and I, watching the opening credits of the film. He had decided by then that there would be no score for The Birds. Unmindful of his artistic pre tensions for the film, I told him I thought that would be a mistake, that music could subtly fore shadow dire events to come or stridently accompany bird attacks until we had the audience screaming. He said no. No music.
The titles had no music behind them.
The screen was filled with fuzzy images of flying birds. There was the sound of wings whirring. There was the sound of birds squeaking and eeking. It was all very scary and portentous. Maybe he was right.
By various agreements among writers, directors and production companies, the last three credits to appear before any movie actually begins are Producer, Writer, Director, in that order. Which writer or writers will get screen credit is determined by the Writers Guild. If a writer is entitled to sole screenplay credit, he will receive it on a separate card with no other name appearing on it. The size of the credit is related to the main title. 50 per cent of the title, 60 per cent, whatever.
I was the sole writer on The Birds and entitled to credit on a separate card. Following my credit was du Maurier's 'Based on' credit. Then came Hitch's 'Directed by' credit. It was 100 per cent of the title.
He waited until all the credits had run out.
In the dark, he called, "How big is Evan's name?"
A voice from the projection booth called, "25 per cent, sir."
"Raise it to 50," he said.
Guilt-stricken, I hoped.
All cornflakes
"I sometimes wonder what the point of it is," he once told me. "A hundred years from now, it'll all be cornflakes in the can."
25 February, 1963
Dear Peggy:
Thank you for the material on the glassworks, which was exactly what I needed for the Marnie factory background. I am now lacking the technical information for the conversation between the exhibitor and the projectionist. I hope you will be sending that along soon.
I am very pleased with the way the script is going, and my only modest desire is that the movie will become another testimonial to the greatness of the man who wrote the novel. Please give my warmest regards to Hitch.
Best wishes...
27 February, 1963
Dear Peggy:
A friend of mine at Revue sent me two yellow car stickers proclaiming "The birds is coming." I have promptly stuck one on my car and one on Anita's, but since my friends in New York are legion, can you send me a dozen more so that I can have them plastered onto additional cars?
When is the birds coming?
Best wishes...
1 March, 1963
Dear Evan:
In accordance with our customary prompt and efficient method, we are - at this very moment - air-mailing to you one dozen 'the birds is coming' stickers to be plastered on your personal fleet of automobiles.
Also, at this very moment, Hitch is telephoning you with the details of when the birds is coming.
Enclosed please find copy of a letter written to our research department from Steuben Glass (for your personal information) together with a copy of notes from another source on the duties of an assistant cashier during her first day at work.
Was very touched by your adulation and concern for Mr Winston Graham.
Best wishes, Peggy
7 March, 1963
Dear Evan:
This is just a little note to confirm that you and Anita will be my guests at the first special showing of The Birds at the Museum of Modern Art Theater on Wednesday, 27 March at 8.30.
Before this, Alma would very much like you to join us for a libation and a modest repast, in the Library on the mezzanine floor at the St Regis Hotel at 6.00.
Love, Hitch
Signed personally
He had closed his letter with the word 'Love' and had personally signed it 'Hitch'.
8 March, 1963
Dear Evan:
Herewith the information on the stock transfer.
Incidentally, it will be definitely 'black tie' at the Museum of Modern Art's screening of The Birds.
Best wishes, Peggy
Opposed directions
Peggy's letter to me crossed mine of the same date:
8 March, 1963
Dear Peggy:
Thank you for the transcript of the dialogue between the erudite manager of the La Reina Theater and his garrulous projectionist. Does the manager always have a tiny microphone concealed on him, or was he fitted especially for the job? All I have to say is that even with a super cinephor lens, it was difficult to flatten out this marathon discourse.
Thank you, too, for the information on an assistant cashier's duties. I see no mention here of what her attitude toward partners of the company should be and I am at a total loss trying to reconcile these facts with the behaviour of Marnie/Terry, Marnie/Mark. Would you please contact Steuben Glass (who seem so very co-operative) and ask them what an assistant cashier does when the boss begins chasing her around the desk?
I have also received the yellow and black stickers, and have put one on my chauffeur-driven Cadillac, another on my Alfa Romeo, a third on my yacht, a fourth on my Piper Cub, and one on each of my skis. The other night, while taking a shower, Anita suggested that I stick one on my... but I digress.
As you can tell from my jovial mood, I am delighted with the way the script is going, and I am looking forward to the black-tie preview of The Birds. My garbage man has promised to lend me his tuxedo, and I will be buying a new pair of saddle shoes especially for the occasion.
If you need me, darling, I will fly to your side immediately.
Passionately...
12 March, 1963
Dear Evan:
It was with deep regret that I learned that you are not completely satisfied with the dialogue between the manager of La Reina Theater and his projectionist. I hereby promise that I will divulge nothing when I find this dialogue, in its entirety, inserted in the script.
Now, while I am on this subject, it is timorously and with great hesitation that I feel it obligatory to draw to your attention yet another of those errors with which I am constantly being tormented! i.e. in the first sentence of your letter when you refer to "the manager of the La Reina Theater". The translation of the words "La Reina" is "The Queen". Now let me put this in a way that you will understand.
When you say "the manager of the La Reina Theater", you are actually saying "the manager of the the Queen Theater". No, please do not thank me for this lesson. The fact that I am able to rectify even one small mark of illiteracy is reward enough.
With regard to my research on secretaries being chased around desks by their bosses - may I suggest that you contact your own secretary. I have checked Sue and Joan but they are too shy to report on their volitations from you.
Have something to eat before you start (for The Birds preview). I'd feel a lot better."
With devotion from the President of the Le Evan Hunter Fan Club, I am
Yours Truly...
What she meant
Peggy's reference to having something to eat was from the scene following the bird attack on the children's birthday party.
Melanie: Mitch... what's happening?
Mitch: (concerned) I don't know, Melanie. (pause) Look, do you have to go back to Annie's?
Melanie: No, I have my things in that car.
Mitch: (gently) Then stay and have something to eat before you start back. I'd feel a lot better.
The wink of an eye
I myself wrote these memorable lines for that unfortunate actor to say, transforming him in the wink of an eye from a heroic leading man to a concerned Jewish mother. Aside from the scene on the hill, which Hitch himself wrote, these are the worst lines in the movie. He was unable to edit them out because they were spoken in a close shot and he had no covering footage. Of course they became the butt of a continuing dialogue between Peggy and me. This jovial banter was the tenor of the correspondence between us before I delivered the final draft of Marnie. It was then that dear Peggy was elected to become Hitch's hatchetman.
Hatchetwoman.
OK, hatchetperson.
2 April, 1962
Like a fool rushing in, I delivered what I hoped would be the final draft of Marnie on the day after April Fool's Day. Coincidentally, I had delivered the final draft of The Birds on that same date a year earlier. What goes around comes around. My letter accompanying Marnie read:
Dear Hitch:
Here is Marnie, which I believe has shaped up very well. There are a few things I would like to call to your attention, however, since they are deviations from the story as we discussed it. I found that some of our storyline simply would not work in the writing, and I adjusted the screenplay accordingly.
The major change I have made concerns the honeymoon night. You will notice that there are two versions of this sequence in the script, one in white, one in yellow. The yellow version is the sequence as we discussed it, complete with the poolside scene and the rape. I wrote and rewrote and polished and repolished this sequence, but something about it continued to disturb me. I finally wrote the white version - which is the version I would like to see in the film.
I know you are fond of the entire honeymoon sequence as we discussed it, Hitch, but let me tell you what I felt was wrong with it, and how I attempted to bring it into a truer perspective.
To begin with, Marnie's attitude was misleading. We were asking an audience to believe that putting off Mark was on her mind from the top of the scene. This makes her frigidity a coldblooded thing (no pun intended) rather than something she cannot help. She can respond to warmth and gentleness, she can accept love-making - until it gets serious. Which brings us to a further examination. WHY DOES MARNIE MARRY HIM? The answer is simple: she loves him. She may think she is marrying him to avoid the police, but she really does love him (as we bring out at the picture's end). It is only her deep emotional disturbance that makes it impossible for her to accept his love.
I have, therefore, written a rather playful honeymoon night scene, showing Marnie in a gay and likeable mood, a bit giggly (we have never seen her this way in the picture before), playing our entire Garrod's exposition as a warm love scene, which I think works. It is only when Mark's intentions get serious, only when his love-making reminds her of that night long ago, that she panics and pulls away. Her retreat is a curious thing and the audience - for the first time - realises that something is seriously wrong with this girl. The scene is frightening, and it also provides a springboard for the later scene in which Mark suggests psychiatric help. To me, it is believable and sound. The way we discussed it was implausi-bility bordering on burlesque.
Which brings us to the second major change.
In the yellow version, I have done the rape sequence as we discussed it. In the white version, I have eliminated it entirely. I firmly believe it is out of place in this story. Mark is not that kind of a person; Marnie is obviously troubled, and he realises it. Stanley Kowalski might rape her, but not Mark Rutland. Mark would do exactly what we see him do later on - he would seek the help of a psychiatrist. And, without an out-of-character rape, there was no need for a poolside discussion. The entire honeymoon sequence now takes place on a single night. Marnie's panic is followed immediately by her suicide attempt. There is no long stage wait. I am convinced that the rape has no place in this sequence, Hitch, and I hope you will agree and throw away the yellow pages.
I will be waiting to hear from you, and expecting to come West whenever you say.
The whole reason
You just got bothered by the scene that was his reason for making the movie. You just wrote your ticket back to New York.
Getting back to me
There were no fax machines or express mail systems in those days. I had sent off the script by air mail special delivery. Even assuming Hitch received it on the Coast only two days later - an optimistic assumption for 1963 - it did not take long for him to get back to me. His return letter was dated 10 April, 1963. It read:
Unfortunately...
Dear Evan,
I have been through the script and feel there is still a lot of work to be done on it.
Unfortunately, I feel that I have gone stale on it and think it will have to be put aside for a little while until I can decide what to do about it. It may be it needs a fresh mind altogether, and this probably will have to be the next procedure.
I'm sorry I couldn't give you any better news than this, but there it is; and as I said above, it is going to need still a lot of work to get it into condition that will satisfy me.
Kindest regards, Alfred J. Hitchcock
Kindest regards
His signature was rubber-stamped.
Put on one side
I knew very well what he meant by "a fresh mind altogether" but I chose to be deliberately obtuse in my return letter, which was dated 15 April.
Since Marnie has been virtually the sole interest of my creative life since February of last year, I am understandably surprised and disappointed by your reaction to the screenplay. This is particularly true in view of the fact that I feel the script is a faithful and honestly realised rendering of all we discussed on the Coast.
Certainly any problems which may exist in the script can be remedied after discussion. And perhaps some of these will be found to be less grave than they now appear once the situation you mention, your temporary feeling of staleness toward the project, has been overcome.
I do agree completely that it would be a good idea to put the project aside until we can both return to it with fresh minds. I imagine this will be when you've completed the remaining promotional work on The Birds. But whenever you're ready, I'll do my utmost, as always, to stop work at once on other projects so that we may complete Marnie to our mutual satisfaction. It goes without saying that this project, in addition to any business considerations, has come to mean a great deal to me personally.
My very best wishes...
Your ticket home
Evan, when he sticks it in her, I want that camera right on her face!
A fresh mind
On the first day of May, Peggy Robertson called my agent to say that I was being replaced on the picture by another writer.
His usual self
I felt no joy when Marnie opened to dreadful reviews.
Sometime after that, I was on the Coast again with Anita, and I called Hitch's office to ask if he and Alma would care to join us for dinner. Peggy called back an hour or so later to say they would be delighted.
We were staying at the Beverly Wilshire; we asked them to meet us in the dining-room there.
It was as if nothing uncomfortable had ever passed between us.
Hitch was his usual entertaining, anecdotal, expansive, droll, mischievous, witty self. At one point, he told me that someday he wanted to shoot an entire film behind the scenes in New York. If we played a scene at Le Circe, it would not be in the dining-room, but in the kitchen. If we played a scene at the Eugene O'Neill Theater, it would not be in the audience or on the stage, but in the wings. If we played a scene at the Empire State Building, it would not be on the observation tower but in the basement.
"Maybe you'll write it for me, hmm?" he said.
Anita was telling Alma that our room was some what cheerless, and that she was thinking of ordering some flowers for it.
Hitch beckoned to Hernando Courtwright, who then owned the hotel. Patting Anita's hand, Hitch asked, "Don't you think it would be nice if Mrs Hunter had some flowers in her room?"
When Anita and I went back upstairs later that evening, the room was blooming everywhere.
That was a long time ago.
Never again
It is sad to think there will never again be another Hitchcock film. Every time I publish a new novel, I wonder if it is something Hitch might care to film, something I myself might adapt for him.
Screenplay by Evan Hunter, based on his novel.
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
I would settle for 25 per cent of the title.
The End