Writing with Hitchcock: The Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and John Michael Hayes

by Steven DeRosa

Overview

An entertaining, in-depth look at the films, including Rear Window, made by Alfred Hitchcock with screenwriter John Michael Hayes.

In spring 1953, the great director Alfred Hitchcock decided to take a chance and work with a young writer, John Michael Hayes. The decision turned out to be a pivotal one, for the four films that Hitchcock made with Hayes over the next several years -- Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Trouble with Harry, and The Man Who Knew Too Much -- represented an extraordinarily successful change of style. Each of the movies was distinguished by a combination of glamorous stars, sophisticated dialogue, and inventive plots -- James Stewart and Grace Kelly trading barbs in the tensely plotted Rear Window, Cary Grant and Grace Kelly engaging in witty repartee in To Catch a Thief -- and resulted in some of Hitchcock's most distinctive and intimate work, based in large part on Hayes's exceptional scripts.

Exploring for the first time the details of this collaboration, Steven DeRosa follows Hitchcock and Hayes through each film from initial discussions to completed picture and presents an analysis of each screenplay. He also reveals the personal story -- filled with inspiration and humor, jealousy and frustration -- of the initial synergy between the two very different men before their relationship fell apart. Writing with Hitchcock not only provides new insight into four films from a master but also sheds light on the process through which classic motion pictures are created.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780983205609
Publisher:	CineScribe Media
Publication date:	02/08/2011
Edition description:	CINESCRIBE MEDIA
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Steven DeRosa is a writer and former film archivist. He previously managed the MGM and Warner Brothers outtake collections for an archival footage library and also worked as an editor of movie theater previews. He lives in Westchester County, New York.

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Introduction

When asked if he found it easy to sustain his enthusiasm while making a film, Alfred Hitchcock replied, "The most enjoyable part of making a picture is in that little office, with the writer, when we are discussing the story-lines and what we're going to put on the screen. The big difference is that I do not let the writer go off on his own and just write a script that I will interpret. I stay involved with him and get him involved in the direction of the picture. So he becomes more than a writer; he becomes part maker of the picture."

This was an unusual acknowledgment for Alfred Hitchcock to make. For decades, with the help of the press — especially the French critics from the film journal Cahiers du Cinéma, who pioneered the auteur theory, which held that the director of a film was its true author — Hitchcock perpetuated the myth that he was the sole creator of his films. While he indeed enjoyed a degree of creative autonomy seldom seen in the Hollywood studio system, he was also a producer-director who knew how to get the best work from his collaborators, particularly his writers.

In the 1950s Alfred Hitchcock reshaped and solidified the characteristic trademarks of the Hitchcock style: the use of glamorous stars, sophisticated dialogue, and inventive plots, on an enormous wide screen, in glorious Technicolor. He achieved this by collaborating with John Michael Hayes, an established writer of suspense drama for radio, who had recently graduated from writing B-pictures such as War Arrow at Universal to creating star vehicle, at MGM such as Torch Song.

The Hitchcock-Hayes collaboration produced four motion pictures in two years — Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Trouble with Harry, and The Man Who Knew Too Much — and proved to be one of the most successful director-screenwriter pairings in Hollywood history. Each of these movies has achieved film-classic status, and the professional relationship of these two creative artists was mutually beneficial. Hayes learned a great deal about the art of cinema from Hitchcock, all the while maintaining his individuality as a writer. As for Hitchcock, the collaboration marked the beginning of his most successful period, critically and commercially.

The teaming of Hitchcock and Hayes could not have come at a more ideal time for both men. Hayes was full of energy and eager to be as successful in film as he had been in radio; Hitchcock was at the beginning of an upswing in his career following a string of flops and the failure of his own production company. As things turned out, Rear Window was the first in a series of seminal works Hitchcock produced over a decade. Whether he cared to admit it or not, Hitchcock needed good writers. But as his popularity grew in the 1950s — the result of a series of upbeat, exciting motion pictures and his enormously popular television series — he began to believe that he could do it alone, that the "Hitchcock" name was enough to sell his movies to the critics and public alike. For a time, he seemed to be right.

Hitchcock was not solely responsible for this view. The politics of the studio system and the widening acceptance of the auteur theory downplayed the significance of the screenwriter's contribution to the art of filmmaking. Frank Capra's most successful films were all scripted by Robert Riskin, yet few people are familiar with Riskin's name. Similarly, Ernst Lubitsch collaborated with Samson Raphaelson on nine films, and John Ford collaborated with Dudley Nichols on eleven. Again, these screenwriters never received the recognition enjoyed by the "auteurs" for whom they wrote. But the director who has been most often canonized as an auteur is Hitchcock.

"A lot of people embrace the auteur theory," said Hitchcock. "But it's difficult to know what someone means by it. I suppose they mean that the responsibility for the film rests solely on the shoulders of the director. But very often the director is no better than his script." From selection of the basic material, to the hiring (and firing) of every writer, to the final revision of the final shooting script, Hitchcock involved himself in nearly every aspect of developing the screenplays for his films. Although he rarely did any actual "writing," especially on his Hollywood productions, Hitchcock supervised and guided his writers through every draft, insisting on a strict attention to detail and a preference for telling the story through visual rather than verbal means. While this exasperated some writers, others admitted the director inspired them to do their very best work. Hitchcock often emphasized that he took no screen credit for the writing of his films. However, over time the work of many of his writers has been attributed solely to Hitchcock's creative genius, a misconception he rarely went out of his way to correct. Notwithstanding his technical brilliance as a director, Hitchcock relied on his writers a great deal.

Many of Hitchcock's writers believed that their contributions were overlooked because of the industry's general dismissal of the writer's importance and because of the disparaging remarks Hitchcock often made about his writers in interviews. No Hitchcock writer felt this injury more than John Michael Hayes. In François Truffaut's celebrated book-length interview, Hitchcock dismissed Hayes as nothing more than a "radio writer who wrote the dialogue." This comment was made after Truffaut praised Rear Window as Hitchcock's "very best screenplay in all respects." Hayes was piqued by Hitchcock's comment, considering the circumstances under which he and Hitchcock parted (which are explained in Chapter 5).

Clearly, theirs was a symbiotic relationship. While Hitchcock needed a writer of Hayes's talent, Hayes also needed Hitchcock. Even though Hayes worked with some of Hollywood's top stars after breaking with Hitchcock — Bette Davis, Clark Gable, Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, and Elizabeth Taylor — all but a handful of the writer's post-Hitchcock films have been forgotten. In spite of a respectable list of credits that includes Peyton Place, The Children's Hour, and The Chalk Carden, Hayes was never able to maintain the level of critical and commercial success that he experienced when writing with Hitchcock. And while Hitchcock's quest for a suitable replacement for Grace Kelly has become part of Hollywood lore, it should also be noted that Hitchcock never found another John Michael Hayes. Following his collaboration with Hayes, Hitchcock never settled on an individual writer with whom he completed more than one consecutive film.

What was Hayes's contribution to this significant partnership? First, richly drawn, sympathetic characters. Prior to working with Hayes, most of Hitchcock's protagonists had been deeply troubled, dark, and complex figures. Hayes also offered Hitchcock an approach to story material that was solid and accessible. In his book Find the Director, Thomas M. Leitch correctly points out that a singular theme is at the heart of each of the Hitchcock-Hayes films: the individual becoming one with his community. Whether that community was a Greenwich Village courtyard, a tiny hamlet in Vermont, or a simple family unit, the individual discovers that he can exist happily within what seems to be the confines of social order.

Although Hitchcock touched upon that theme in some of his previous films — for example, Spellbound and Notorious — it never achieved the kind of accessibility attained by the Hayes-Hitchcock collaboration. Voyeurism, fear of intimacy, fear of death, and the loss of a loved one were never made so palatable as they are in the Hayes scripts. If these films stand out as such, they deserve to be looked upon and studied not only as Hitchcock films — as testaments to his view of the human condition at that time — but also as Hitchcock-Hayes films: documents to their collective view of the human condition.

The films that immediately followed the Hitchcock-Hayes collaboration were a complete reversal: The Wrong Man, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho not only challenged the individual's role within society but put the very identities of these individuals in jeopardy. With the exception of North by Northwest, the absence of Hayes from these films resulted in an uncharacteristic lack of humor in Hitchcock's work.

By comparison, at the center of each Hitchcock-Hayes film is an isolated protagonist — someone who, through fear, choice, happenstance, or convention, finds himself in need of redemption. Through each respective narrative, the protagonist is offered a chance to embrace the redemptive qualities of love and become reintegrated into the world he inhabits. Thus, the Hitchcock-Hayes period emerges as the most affirmative in the director's canon.

A journalist once wrote: "John Michael Hayes looks like a Hollywood scriptwriter as played by a Hollywood film star in a Hollywood film about Hollywood. A thoroughly nice guy. He is dark, good-looking and smokes a pipe with a grace and style that would make Crosby look positively clumsy. His dialogue is friendly but forceful. His humor is as dry and snappy as a dead twig under foot. Not unnaturally, John Michael Hayes is a Hollywood scriptwriter."

One of the great clichés about the movies goes: Film is a director's medium. While this is true, film is not exclusively a director's medium. But it is always about movie directors that one hears of the "touch" — the Lubitsch touch, the Wilder touch, the Capra touch, the Hitchcock touch. Most movie buffs could cite examples that define the particular touch of each of these star directors. And probably anyone who has seen a movie can cite examples of the Hitchcock touch. But what exactly is the Hayes touch?

Copyright © 2001 Steven DeRosa

Table of Contents

	Introduction	ix
	Prologue: Pittsburg, California, May 1943	3
1	A Perfect Treatment	5
2	A Match Made in Hollywood	53
3	You've Never Been to the Riviera?	87
4	An Expensive Self-Indulgence	125
5	Into Thin Air	151
6	Un-Hitched	203
7	The Screenplays--An Analysis	223
Appendix I	Credits for the Hitchcock-Hayes Films	283
Appendix II	Rules and Rigors of a Book-Fed Scenarist by John Michael Hayes	293
	Notes	297
	Selected Bibliography	321
	Acknowledgments	323
	Index	327

What People are Saying About This

Joseph Stefano

"With diamond clarity, Steven DeRosa defines the art, the joy, the rewards - and the hazards - of screenwriting for a cinematic genius like Alfred Hitchcock."
— Joseph Stefano, screenwriter of Psycho

Ed Sikov

"How could a film as great as The Man Who Knew Too Much ever get made? Steven DeRosa shows it wasn't by way of a single thunderbolt of genius, but rather by tweaks and prods, creative nudges and shrewd polishes - two talented men working as a team."
— Ed Sikov, author of On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder

Donald Spoto

"John Michael Hayes wrote the screenplays for a quartet of Alfred Hitchcock's perennially popular film classics. Steven DeRosa skillfully shows just how the works took shape and why Hayes must be ranked as one of Hollywood's great writers."
— Donald Spoto, author of The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock

Editorial Reviews

“The four films that John Michael Hayes wrote for Hitchcock, were made during the richest and most complex period in the director's career. As Steven DeRosa writes, Hitchcock was most comfortable working with younger, untried writers to whom he could be a mentor; the films he made with Hayes are ample testimony to the success of that strategy. DeRosa describes the relationship in meticulous detail, providing fascinating evidence of the extreme care with which Hitchcock chose and worked with his writers.”

New York Times Book Review

"Steven DeRosa's book eloquently reminds us, someone actually had to sit down and write the scripts. Writing With Hitchcock offers not only entertaining biographical sketches of both men, chockful of anecdotes, but a thorough illumination of the Hitchcock/Hayes collaboration: how it worked, who contributed what, and how it ended."
—

Allison Burnett

Deserves an A+ for accuracy - something often lacking in books about our industry.
—executive producer, Windtalkers

C. O. Erickson

A godsend... Combining biography, cinema history and screenplay analysis in one book, DeRosa truly leaves no stone unturned... a fitting tribute to a great filmmaking partnership.

Screentalk

Collaboration is the key word in the subtitle to Steven DeRosa's intriguing book - key because it was never a word for which the master of suspense had any time. John Michael Hayes, the hitherto unsung hero of DeRosa's book, wrote four scripts for Hitchcock - To Catch a Thief, The Trouble With Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much and Rear Window, this last the film that sealed Hitch's highbrow reputation.

Sunday Times (London)

Steven DeRosa serves notice that it's about time we stopped looking at Hitchcock by himself and started thinking of his writers, especially Hayes.

Orlando Sentinel

DeRosa's fascinating book details the highly productive working relationship Hayes had with Hitchcock on four films. But also explains why the Hayes-Hitchcock relationship fell apart.

Joseph McBride

Alfred Hitchcock: The name conjures up incredible suspense, mordant laughs, the surprise ending. But Hitch's unique vision was not his alone. In this detailed analysis of the filmmaker's collaboration with screenwriter Hayes, DeRosa reveals how Hitchcock's basic artistic instincts were often radically reshaped and transformed by Hayes's nimble writing. The Hitchcock-Hayes collaborations--Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Trouble with Harry and The Man Who Knew Too Much--form a transitional period in the director's career, with the writer contributing a kinder vision of the human condition, highly sophisticated dialogue and a sense of humor to Hitchcock's works. DeRosa, a former film archivist, has soundly researched his subject and carefully compares the original versions of each film with its ensuing treatments, scripts and multiple revisions. Relying heavily on interviews with Hayes as well as on studio memos and production notes, DeRosa gives us not only an in-depth portrait of this working relationship but a comprehensive look at the industry in the late 1950s, when it was struggling to reassert itself after the emergence of television. The author also engagingly describes the cultural politics of the time (Joseph Breen and the Production Code were vigilant in attacking Hayes's edgy, urbane representations of sexuality). DeRosa also brings convincing drama to Hayes and Hitchcock's breakup and charts Hayes's later career writing such films as Peyton Place and The Children's Hour. While overly specific for the general reader, this is an important study for film and Hitchcock scholars. (Apr.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Despite Hitchcock's well-known flair for visual filmmaking, the director insisted on employing topnotch writers, including Raymond Chandler and Thornton Wilder. Hitchcock was particularly productive during the 1950s, when he collaborated with the young John Michael Hayes on four films: the innovative (Rear Window), the witty (The Trouble with Harry), the stylish (To Catch a Thief), and the stodgy (the remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much). These films proved popular with audiences. Unfortunately, however, Hitchcock could be egotistical and unforgiving, and a disagreement over the writing credit for Man abruptly ended their personal and professional relationship. Hayes continued to work but eventually grew disenchanted with Hollywood; meanwhile, Hitchcock went on to direct three of his greatest films toward the end of the decade. Here, DeRosa, a writer and film archivist, outlines the careers and creative partnership of Hayes and Hitchcock and analyzes the four screenplays. He notes that Hitchcock envisioned a film as a "mosaic" of set pieces or highlights more than a coherent whole, which led to problems for scriptwriters like Hayes. A supplementary purchase for libraries with large holdings on the film suspense master.--Stephen Rees, Levittown Regional Lib., PA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

The collaboration of director Alfred Hitchcock and writer John Michael Hayes resulted in some of Hitchcock's most distinctive work: , , , and . Screenwriter and film archivist DeRosa follows Hitchcock and Hayes through each film, from initial discussions to completed pictures, and reveals the personal side of the relationship between the two men. Includes b&w publicity shots and candid photos on film sets. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Dial"T" for Tedium. The collaboration between director Alfred Hitchcock and screenwriter John Michael Hayes resulted in one masterpiece, Rear Window, and three lesser films: To Catch a Thief, The Trouble with Harry, and the 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much. From this launching point, former film archivist DeRosa regales the reader with tried-and-true Hollywood tales: the egos, the geniuses, and the hacks all battling to get their movies made while madness runs amok around them. For each of the four films Hitchcock and Hayes created together, DeRosa explores the evolution from story to screenplay, the pre-production hassles, the filming of the movie, and the night of the grand premiere. Some interesting moments are captured in these pages, such as the team's drunken first meeting and their final conflict, which had to be resolved by the Writer's Guild. Many other sections, including the comparative biographies (both had two siblings and an early interest in movies!), fall flat. The final chapter contains four essays—"The Cinematic Language of Rear Window,""Visual and Verbal Motifs in To Catch a Thief,""The Act of Confessing in The Trouble with Harry," and"The Structure of the Unexpected in The Man Who Knew Too Much" —that appear to have fallen accidentally into DeRosa's volume from a graduate seminar on Hitchcock. Two appendices, one listing the credits for each movie, the other a New York Times essay by Hayes on adapting novels into films, conclude the book on a useful and informative note. Strange how an investigation of the Master of Suspense and his world can be so humdrum, but closing with four term paperswillaccomplishjust that. (16 pages b&w photos)

Kirkus Reviews