I can now check off yet another Hitchcock flick. Strangers on a Train's one of those Hitchcock classics you hear about now and again. You say to yourself, "I've gotta add that to my Netflix queue." And then you don't. This is yet one more reason I love the L.A. Conservancy and their annual Last Remaining Seats series: They feed me these classics I've been wanting to see since forever but never got around to. This applies especially to Hitchcock. While I certainly knew him by reputation as a youngster, I didn't really sit up and take notice until I got to college and majored in film. In fact, during my freshman year I did a term paper on Hitchcock's Psycho and Frenzy, two films that, while very different on the surface, take the same tack in depicting (or not depicting, as the case may be) violence and killing. Suffice it to say I watched and practically anatomized those two films by semester's end. Yes, it got kind of tedious at times, but I sure learned a lot about Hitchcock and, by extension, how to read scenes to glean the director's vision and intention.
Hitchcock's awesome, easily one of the best filmmakers ever. So you can no doubt see why I was psyched about tonight's event. The screening took place at the Million Dollar Theatre. Built in 1918, it's one of the twelve huge historic movie palaces that line Broadway between Third and Ninth Streets in downtown L.A. The brain behind the Million Dollar was Sid Grauman, legendary movie palace impresario. Even if you've never been to L.A., it's very possible you've heard of the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. That's Sid's baby. And just down the road, a couple blocks east, you've got the Egyptian Theatre, also Sid's. These are easily among the most famous theaters in town. The Chinese still operates today as a first run venue. The Egyptian, on the other hand, has lived the kind of life more aligned with the life of Hollywood. It started strong and glittery in the heady roaring twenties. For decades it was one of the prime spots to see and be seen. Studios hosted premieres there. Ben Hur premiered there, among many, many others. But then, like Hollywood itself, Grauman's Egyptian fell into disrepair and decay. Its status took a full one-eighty. The Egyptian became a place to avoid and otherwise take a sideways glance at in pity. But wait! The plot takes another twist. In 1998, the nonprofit American Cinemateque swooped in to the rescue. Thanks to membership support and philanthropic pledges, the American Cinemateque bought the Egyptian and restored it to its former glory. It became the Cinemateque's first permanent venue. From the time they formed in 1981 until 1998, the Cinemateque had no home base. They showed films wherever they could, such as the DGA Theater and Raleigh Studios, both in Hollywood. Their buying the Egyptian was accordingly a win for both the theater itself and the Cinemateque. Around the time the Egyptian was reborn, the city of L.A. pledged something like half a billion dollars to the revitalization of Hollywood. Talk about awesome timing, huh? I moved here in August of 1998 and so I just caught the last vestiges of ghetto Hollywood. Man, what a difference a decade makes. It's also kind of funny remembering when the city had that much money. Yes, it's true. Before the Great Depression II, L.A. was reaping the rewards of a property tax windfall. Owning a home in L.A. is tough....for the homeowner, that is. It's awesome for the city. In addition to the half a bil for Hollywood, the city coughed up another half a bil for five one-hundred-million-dollar homeless shelters built throughout the city in an effort to clean up the concentrated homelessness on Skid Row.
I've been to the Egyptian several times. In fact, quite a few of my "At the Movies with Governor Tom" posts on this very blog are Cinemateque screenings, although I should be honest. The vast majority of the Cinemateque events I attend tend to be at their second venue, the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica's Montana neighborhood. The Aero's another single-screen movie house that goes way back, although not as far back as the Hollywood and downtown theaters. It opened in the forties and, like the Egyptian, became a blight on the landscape, in this case Montana Avenue's otherwise posh landscape. The Cinemateque swooped in and resurrected it in 2005. I tell you, whoever's in charge of programming at the Aero is right on my wavelength, as this blog attests.
The Chinese and Egyptian were built in the 1920s. The Million Dollar Theatre is where Sid's legend began. Before you ask, yes: The Million Dollar Theatre is so called because that's how much Sid paid to build the sucker. In today's dollars, that'd be about fourteen and a half million. I don't know, is that a lot for a theater? I reckon so. I wonder how much the ArcLight Hollywood cost to build? Part of the Hollywood comeback, the ArcLight opened in 2002, but I haven't a clue how much Pacific Theaters paid to build it. Nor could I hope to guess. Another question, though: If someone paid fourteen and a half mil to build a movie theater today, would it get the kind of press Sid got when he built the Million Dollar? Probably not. Movies aren't the novelty they were back then.
From the outside, the Million Dollar looks anything but. It takes up the first couple stories of an otherwise nondescript building that could either be for offices or apartments. Inside, however, is a completely different story. Once you get past the low-ceilinged lobby (it's a fake ceiling; the original ceiling, hidden above for reasons I've yet to find out, has murals inspired by King of the Golden River, an old Victorian folktale), you're in a downright cavernous auditorium. Seriously, the first time you see it is one of those times when words fail. All you can do is take it in. The sides and proscenium suggest the walls of a castle, carved and ornate. The ceiling features a dome. King of the Golden River inspired all of this as well. Here's one interesting factoid: The balcony is supported by concrete instead of the more ideal steel truss due to a steel shortage during the First World War. To prove to everyone that a concrete girder was just as safe, Sid tested it with something like 1.3 million pounds of weight. How exactly they tested it and with what, I have no clue. At first, the Million Dollar was a venue for both films as well as live stage shows. And then in the fifties it became a venue for Latin American films and theater. That lasted a good thirty years or so, until even a million dollar heritage couldn't counter the dearth of audiences. An entrepreneur named Robert Voskanian is the man who finally saved it. When I became an L.A. Conservancy member and started attending this movie series two years ago, the Million Dollar had literally just reopened.
The guest host for tonight was Leith Adams, head of Warner Brothers archives and, according to the program, co-author of James Dean: Behind the Scene and Graven Images. He gave us some backstory to the movie. For one thing, I had no idea Strangers on a Train was based on the debut novel by Patricia Highsmith. You've heard of her, right? If you've seen The Talented Mr. Ripley with Matt Damon, then you know Patricia Highsmith. That was also one of her novels. In fact, she wrote a whole series of novels, five to be exact, following the trials and tribulations of Tom Ripley. The novels are collectively known as the Ripliad. Well, before she was THE Patricia Highsmith, she was just a struggling writer trying to make ends meet. Part of that meant writing comic books. No, she didn't draw. She helped script the stories so the artists would know what to draw. The funny thing is that, when she applied for the job, she thought it was for a reporter position. Only when she arrived at the office for the interview, fresh from Barnard, did she see the illustrated truth (ba-dump bump). She stuck with it, though. The money wasn't bad, and it only got better when she became a freelance comic scripter. That gave her the free time she needed to write her own fiction. Looking back, that accidental comic book gig ended up being the only job she held down for any length of time before she found success with her novels. Leith told us that it was thanks to her pal Truman Capote that she revised Strangers on a Train enough to attract publisher interest. When she thought it was finished, he told her to give it another stab, but to get away from New York City first. And so Patricia Highsmith wrote the final draft of Strangers on a Train at a writer's colony in Saratoga Springs, NY called Yaddo. She was twenty-nine when it was published in 1950. Hitchcock didn't waste a minute in adapting it. The movie version came out the very next year.
Another thing I didn't know was that Raymond Chandler co-wrote the screenplay. Like Patricia Highsmith, Raymond Chandler hit the big time with his first novel, 1939's The Big Sleep. Here's an interesting factoid: Raymond Chandler taught himself how to write detective fiction by reading, studying, analyzing, and breaking down the Perry Mason stories by Erle Stanley Gardner. When he was working on The Big Sleep, his ritual was to go to Musso and Frank's, the very famous Hollywood restaurant, park himself in a booth with pencil and paper, and write away. The Big Sleep was not only his first novel, it was his first piece of fiction featuring Philip Marlowe as the main character. That name sounds familiar to you, I'm sure, even if you've never read a single word by Chandler. Farewell My Lovely and The Long Goodbye are two more Chandler novels featuring Marlowe. In between novels, Chandler found demand as a screenwriter, most notably for Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity.
And then he got the assignment for Strangers on a Train. In his intro tonight, Leith quoted a letter by Raymond Chandler dated November 1950, wherein he mentions September 26, 1950 as the one day that week he worked on the script but could've worked on it more. Hitchcock loved writers, Leith said. His closest friends included writers, but he and Raymond Chandler never saw eye to eye. While he got along with writers in general, Hitchcock tended to lock horns with writers whose specialty was suspense...which just happened to be Hitchcock's forte. Is that irony? Or is that to be expected? You've got to figure Hitchcock had a bit of an ego at this point in his career. Ditto Raymond Chandler. So while part of me wants to label this an irony beyond precious, a bigger part of me isn't all that surprised. Leith related to us the Hitchcock trait I've known about since college, his penchant for claiming to have a film mapped out in his noodle ahead of time, shot by shot. He claimed no less for Strangers on a Train. Raymond Chandler, upon hearing this, posed the very valid question to the auteur that, if he did indeed have it all figured out, why did he need another writer on the project? Weren't the other two, Czenzi Ormonde and Whitfield Cook, enough? Hitchcock had just worked with Whitfield Cook on Stage Fright and decided to bring him along to Strangers on a Train (Whitfield was one of three screenwriters credited for Stage Fright). Czenzi Ormonde only wound up on the project when Hitchcock's writer of choice, Ben Hecht, who wrote or co-wrote the scripts for several Hitchcock films, wasn't available. Whatever the case, I see Chandler's point. You shouldn't need a screenplay by committee if you've already got the final cut in your noodle.
Leith said Hitchcock's true secret writing weapon wasn't Ben Hecht, but his own wife. In fact, Alma Reville was his secret weapon in many ways on most, perhaps even all, his films. She got into the film biz before he did, as a film cutter (Hitchcock's foot in the door was art and production design). She eventually became a highly regarded film editor in Britain. When she married Hitchcock and his directing career blasted off, she became her man's invaluable right hand. She'd help him with story treatments, scripts, storyboards, everything from pre-production to the final cut. He took full advantage of her great ear for dialogue and her editor's eye for continuity issues. One great example of the latter comes from Psycho. Apparently in the original cut, after Janet Leigh is stabbed to death in the shower, you could just barely see her swallowing during the slow pan out from her eye to her whole face. Hitchcock never saw it, but Alma did. It was too late to shoot the scene again, so Alma tweaked the negative to mask the swallow. As for scripts, apparently Alma was quite adept at poking holes in storylines and spotting inconsistencies and what have you. Alfred and Alma were life partners in every sense. They were almost born in sync. He was born August 13, 1899. She? A day later. They married in their mid twenties and stayed together to the end. Hitchcock died in 1980, Alma in '82.
Whenever Hitchcock made a film that was based on something else, which was often, first he and Alma would hire someone to take a pass at it. His wife was key here because she was much better at getting along with people and finding quality writers. For adaptations, their main decree to the screenwriter would be to write the first draft without any dialogue. Just write the action. The dialogue and other specifics would be filled in later. With Alma's input, of course. Interesting, huh? Sort of makes you wonder what Hitchcock's oeuvre would've looked like if he'd never known Alma. Once again I'm reminded of Clint Eastwood's Oscar acceptance speech: To succeed in the movie business, it takes a little bit of talent, and a lot of luck. The day Hitchcock met Alma should probably be documented as one of the happiest accidents in the history of cinema.
Leith talked about his personal connection to Hitchcock. He was seven in 1954, the year Hitchcock delivered the one-two punch of Dial M for Murder and, one of my personal faves, Rear Window. After those two masterworks, Leith was a fan. From then on, whenever Hitchcock came out with a new film, it was a big event for Leith. He loved the suspenseful plots, but just as much he loved Hitchcock's wry British sense of humor. His fandom even extended to the TV show Alfred Hitchcock Presents that came along in the late fifties and early sixties. Leith is the perfect archivist. To be in a job like that, you've obviously got to be passionate about old movies. When he introduced Strangers on a Train, he said something like, "This was made back in the nineteen fifties, when movies were still movies." Not sure I agree with that sentiment, but you've gotta love the passion.
One more topic Leith covered before the movie started was the leading men of Strangers on a Train: Robert Walker and Farley Granger. Apparently Robert Walker was quite the nutjob, although it may not have been entirely his fault. His folks split when he was still a wee tot, and thereafter his home life went to shit. This translated into poor Robert becoming high strung, prone to anxiety, depressed, all that bad stuff. Sometimes he'd channel all this negativity into negative energy. He could get belligerent and downright combative at the drop of a dime. Not surprisingly, he got expelled from school a whole bunch of times. When some bright spark decided it would be best to find a hobby for Robert to focus all that energy, what do you think they decided on? Of course. Acting. And sure enough, Robert excelled. He landed the lead in a school play. He won top prize in an acting contest at the Pasadena Playhouse. After high school, he got accepted into the American Academy of Dramatic Art, where he met the woman he would marry, actress Jennifer Jones. Ever the committed actors, they decided to honeymoon in Hollywood so they could keep looking for gigs. Mega producer David O. Selznick took a shine to Jennifer during an audition and agreed to be her mentor. He also got Robert a contract at MGM. Sounds awesome, right? Everything was hunky-dory. Or it should've been. That shine Selznick took to Jennifer was more than a mentor's shine. He wanted to jump her bones and no mistake. This was by no means a one-way sentiment. Selznick was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, not to speak of one of the wealthiest. Money and power. Jennifer was hooked. Her divorcing Robert was the beginning of the end for this guy. Remember, he was already volatile in the best of times. After his woman left him, he fell into the bottle and became a cliché. Just as he'd gotten expelled a whole bunch of times as a kid, as an adult he got arrested just as much, for DUI, hit and run, public drunkenness, you name the booze-related crime, he committed it. His career naturally suffered. The work remained steady, but he sucked in it. Perhaps to get back at Jennifer, he made a spur-of-the-moment decision to marry director John Ford's daughter Barbara Ford. Poor Barbara could only tolerate Robert for five months before leaving him. Soon after this, Robert got word that Jennifer and Selznick had officially tied the knot. Cue psychotic break. Robert completely lost it and had to be committed to an asylum.
Amazing, huh? And this was before he did Strangers on a Train. He was barely thirty. Credit the guy with stamina, though. Soon as he was out of the asylum, he went right back to work. He got gigs with the likes of Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster. Strangers on a Train happened when MGM agreed to loan him to Warner Brothers. Even during the days of studio contracts, actors could still find work elsewhere if the studio in question didn't mind. And thank goodness MGM had the flexibility and foresight to do that. Robert Walker as Bruno Anthony in Strangers on a Train is one of the best villain roles ever, certainly one of the best villains in Hitchcock's oeuvre. It was almost like Robert was made for this role since the Bruno character is sort of, you know, nutty. Anyways, the film was a smash and Robert Walker earned kudos. He'd also just married again, but this time it wasn't a whacky kind of thing like with Barbara Ford. And right after Strangers on a Train, he landed a plum movie role opposite Van Heflin. Everything was finally starting to turn around, which makes the next part all the more tragic. Even though he was out of the asylum and working steadily again, he still had to be medicated. In fact, you could say his medication was the reason things were finally under control. But then one night in August 1951, Robert, for whatever reason, started having an episode, getting really agitated and anxious and hot tempered and all that. It must've been pretty bad if the housekeeper felt compelled to call Robert's psychiatrist. So the psychiatrist came over right away and had our man take a barbiturate to calm down. But what I guess the doctor didn't know was that Robert had been drinking a lot that night. And so the medication mixed with the alcohol, Robert passed out....and never woke up. He was thirty-two. And his poor wife was already a widow at twenty-six.
As for the other leading man from Strangers on a Train, it's pretty much the opposite. Farley Granger, who'd worked with Hitchcock once before in Rope, had a very long, steady career. In fact, he's still alive today, in his mid eighties.
Hitchcock's daughter Patricia has a supporting role in Strangers on a Train. She'd been in Stage Fright as well, but it was a bit part. Strangers on a Train was her first fairly prominent role. The fun nearly ended as soon as it began, though. She got married about a year later and didn't act as much as she probably could've. Family first, right? She ended up having three kids. You've seen her if you've seen Psycho. She was Janet Leigh's fellow secretary at that bank in the beginning. She also did a bunch of episodes for Dad's eponymous TV show. She and her hubby are still alive today. They're about the same age as Farley Granger, in fact. What's more, they live up in Solvang, this town in central California that was founded by Danish immigrants and was apparently made to look like a Danish village. It's been on my list of places to visit ever since I drove by it going to and from Heart Castle back in August 2001.
I don't want to go into the plot of Strangers on a Train, but I will say it's Hitchcock at his finest. He's terribly clever with the double imagery. It starts with double protagonists: Bruno Anthony and Farley's character, Guy Haines. Then you've got the double murder Bruno convinces Guy to participate in. You've got people living double lives, double-crossing each other, Bruno ordering a double Scotch, visual cues like the criss-crossing railroad tracks, crossed tennis rackets on a cigarette lighter, all kinds of stuff. Hitchcock even found a way to be "doubly" consistent with his trademark blink-and-you'll-miss-him cameo. When he cameos in Strangers on a Train, he's carrying a....double-bass fiddle!
Hitchcock's awesome, easily one of the best filmmakers ever. So you can no doubt see why I was psyched about tonight's event. The screening took place at the Million Dollar Theatre. Built in 1918, it's one of the twelve huge historic movie palaces that line Broadway between Third and Ninth Streets in downtown L.A. The brain behind the Million Dollar was Sid Grauman, legendary movie palace impresario. Even if you've never been to L.A., it's very possible you've heard of the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. That's Sid's baby. And just down the road, a couple blocks east, you've got the Egyptian Theatre, also Sid's. These are easily among the most famous theaters in town. The Chinese still operates today as a first run venue. The Egyptian, on the other hand, has lived the kind of life more aligned with the life of Hollywood. It started strong and glittery in the heady roaring twenties. For decades it was one of the prime spots to see and be seen. Studios hosted premieres there. Ben Hur premiered there, among many, many others. But then, like Hollywood itself, Grauman's Egyptian fell into disrepair and decay. Its status took a full one-eighty. The Egyptian became a place to avoid and otherwise take a sideways glance at in pity. But wait! The plot takes another twist. In 1998, the nonprofit American Cinemateque swooped in to the rescue. Thanks to membership support and philanthropic pledges, the American Cinemateque bought the Egyptian and restored it to its former glory. It became the Cinemateque's first permanent venue. From the time they formed in 1981 until 1998, the Cinemateque had no home base. They showed films wherever they could, such as the DGA Theater and Raleigh Studios, both in Hollywood. Their buying the Egyptian was accordingly a win for both the theater itself and the Cinemateque. Around the time the Egyptian was reborn, the city of L.A. pledged something like half a billion dollars to the revitalization of Hollywood. Talk about awesome timing, huh? I moved here in August of 1998 and so I just caught the last vestiges of ghetto Hollywood. Man, what a difference a decade makes. It's also kind of funny remembering when the city had that much money. Yes, it's true. Before the Great Depression II, L.A. was reaping the rewards of a property tax windfall. Owning a home in L.A. is tough....for the homeowner, that is. It's awesome for the city. In addition to the half a bil for Hollywood, the city coughed up another half a bil for five one-hundred-million-dollar homeless shelters built throughout the city in an effort to clean up the concentrated homelessness on Skid Row.
I've been to the Egyptian several times. In fact, quite a few of my "At the Movies with Governor Tom" posts on this very blog are Cinemateque screenings, although I should be honest. The vast majority of the Cinemateque events I attend tend to be at their second venue, the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica's Montana neighborhood. The Aero's another single-screen movie house that goes way back, although not as far back as the Hollywood and downtown theaters. It opened in the forties and, like the Egyptian, became a blight on the landscape, in this case Montana Avenue's otherwise posh landscape. The Cinemateque swooped in and resurrected it in 2005. I tell you, whoever's in charge of programming at the Aero is right on my wavelength, as this blog attests.
The Chinese and Egyptian were built in the 1920s. The Million Dollar Theatre is where Sid's legend began. Before you ask, yes: The Million Dollar Theatre is so called because that's how much Sid paid to build the sucker. In today's dollars, that'd be about fourteen and a half million. I don't know, is that a lot for a theater? I reckon so. I wonder how much the ArcLight Hollywood cost to build? Part of the Hollywood comeback, the ArcLight opened in 2002, but I haven't a clue how much Pacific Theaters paid to build it. Nor could I hope to guess. Another question, though: If someone paid fourteen and a half mil to build a movie theater today, would it get the kind of press Sid got when he built the Million Dollar? Probably not. Movies aren't the novelty they were back then.
From the outside, the Million Dollar looks anything but. It takes up the first couple stories of an otherwise nondescript building that could either be for offices or apartments. Inside, however, is a completely different story. Once you get past the low-ceilinged lobby (it's a fake ceiling; the original ceiling, hidden above for reasons I've yet to find out, has murals inspired by King of the Golden River, an old Victorian folktale), you're in a downright cavernous auditorium. Seriously, the first time you see it is one of those times when words fail. All you can do is take it in. The sides and proscenium suggest the walls of a castle, carved and ornate. The ceiling features a dome. King of the Golden River inspired all of this as well. Here's one interesting factoid: The balcony is supported by concrete instead of the more ideal steel truss due to a steel shortage during the First World War. To prove to everyone that a concrete girder was just as safe, Sid tested it with something like 1.3 million pounds of weight. How exactly they tested it and with what, I have no clue. At first, the Million Dollar was a venue for both films as well as live stage shows. And then in the fifties it became a venue for Latin American films and theater. That lasted a good thirty years or so, until even a million dollar heritage couldn't counter the dearth of audiences. An entrepreneur named Robert Voskanian is the man who finally saved it. When I became an L.A. Conservancy member and started attending this movie series two years ago, the Million Dollar had literally just reopened.
The guest host for tonight was Leith Adams, head of Warner Brothers archives and, according to the program, co-author of James Dean: Behind the Scene and Graven Images. He gave us some backstory to the movie. For one thing, I had no idea Strangers on a Train was based on the debut novel by Patricia Highsmith. You've heard of her, right? If you've seen The Talented Mr. Ripley with Matt Damon, then you know Patricia Highsmith. That was also one of her novels. In fact, she wrote a whole series of novels, five to be exact, following the trials and tribulations of Tom Ripley. The novels are collectively known as the Ripliad. Well, before she was THE Patricia Highsmith, she was just a struggling writer trying to make ends meet. Part of that meant writing comic books. No, she didn't draw. She helped script the stories so the artists would know what to draw. The funny thing is that, when she applied for the job, she thought it was for a reporter position. Only when she arrived at the office for the interview, fresh from Barnard, did she see the illustrated truth (ba-dump bump). She stuck with it, though. The money wasn't bad, and it only got better when she became a freelance comic scripter. That gave her the free time she needed to write her own fiction. Looking back, that accidental comic book gig ended up being the only job she held down for any length of time before she found success with her novels. Leith told us that it was thanks to her pal Truman Capote that she revised Strangers on a Train enough to attract publisher interest. When she thought it was finished, he told her to give it another stab, but to get away from New York City first. And so Patricia Highsmith wrote the final draft of Strangers on a Train at a writer's colony in Saratoga Springs, NY called Yaddo. She was twenty-nine when it was published in 1950. Hitchcock didn't waste a minute in adapting it. The movie version came out the very next year.
Another thing I didn't know was that Raymond Chandler co-wrote the screenplay. Like Patricia Highsmith, Raymond Chandler hit the big time with his first novel, 1939's The Big Sleep. Here's an interesting factoid: Raymond Chandler taught himself how to write detective fiction by reading, studying, analyzing, and breaking down the Perry Mason stories by Erle Stanley Gardner. When he was working on The Big Sleep, his ritual was to go to Musso and Frank's, the very famous Hollywood restaurant, park himself in a booth with pencil and paper, and write away. The Big Sleep was not only his first novel, it was his first piece of fiction featuring Philip Marlowe as the main character. That name sounds familiar to you, I'm sure, even if you've never read a single word by Chandler. Farewell My Lovely and The Long Goodbye are two more Chandler novels featuring Marlowe. In between novels, Chandler found demand as a screenwriter, most notably for Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity.
And then he got the assignment for Strangers on a Train. In his intro tonight, Leith quoted a letter by Raymond Chandler dated November 1950, wherein he mentions September 26, 1950 as the one day that week he worked on the script but could've worked on it more. Hitchcock loved writers, Leith said. His closest friends included writers, but he and Raymond Chandler never saw eye to eye. While he got along with writers in general, Hitchcock tended to lock horns with writers whose specialty was suspense...which just happened to be Hitchcock's forte. Is that irony? Or is that to be expected? You've got to figure Hitchcock had a bit of an ego at this point in his career. Ditto Raymond Chandler. So while part of me wants to label this an irony beyond precious, a bigger part of me isn't all that surprised. Leith related to us the Hitchcock trait I've known about since college, his penchant for claiming to have a film mapped out in his noodle ahead of time, shot by shot. He claimed no less for Strangers on a Train. Raymond Chandler, upon hearing this, posed the very valid question to the auteur that, if he did indeed have it all figured out, why did he need another writer on the project? Weren't the other two, Czenzi Ormonde and Whitfield Cook, enough? Hitchcock had just worked with Whitfield Cook on Stage Fright and decided to bring him along to Strangers on a Train (Whitfield was one of three screenwriters credited for Stage Fright). Czenzi Ormonde only wound up on the project when Hitchcock's writer of choice, Ben Hecht, who wrote or co-wrote the scripts for several Hitchcock films, wasn't available. Whatever the case, I see Chandler's point. You shouldn't need a screenplay by committee if you've already got the final cut in your noodle.
Leith said Hitchcock's true secret writing weapon wasn't Ben Hecht, but his own wife. In fact, Alma Reville was his secret weapon in many ways on most, perhaps even all, his films. She got into the film biz before he did, as a film cutter (Hitchcock's foot in the door was art and production design). She eventually became a highly regarded film editor in Britain. When she married Hitchcock and his directing career blasted off, she became her man's invaluable right hand. She'd help him with story treatments, scripts, storyboards, everything from pre-production to the final cut. He took full advantage of her great ear for dialogue and her editor's eye for continuity issues. One great example of the latter comes from Psycho. Apparently in the original cut, after Janet Leigh is stabbed to death in the shower, you could just barely see her swallowing during the slow pan out from her eye to her whole face. Hitchcock never saw it, but Alma did. It was too late to shoot the scene again, so Alma tweaked the negative to mask the swallow. As for scripts, apparently Alma was quite adept at poking holes in storylines and spotting inconsistencies and what have you. Alfred and Alma were life partners in every sense. They were almost born in sync. He was born August 13, 1899. She? A day later. They married in their mid twenties and stayed together to the end. Hitchcock died in 1980, Alma in '82.
Whenever Hitchcock made a film that was based on something else, which was often, first he and Alma would hire someone to take a pass at it. His wife was key here because she was much better at getting along with people and finding quality writers. For adaptations, their main decree to the screenwriter would be to write the first draft without any dialogue. Just write the action. The dialogue and other specifics would be filled in later. With Alma's input, of course. Interesting, huh? Sort of makes you wonder what Hitchcock's oeuvre would've looked like if he'd never known Alma. Once again I'm reminded of Clint Eastwood's Oscar acceptance speech: To succeed in the movie business, it takes a little bit of talent, and a lot of luck. The day Hitchcock met Alma should probably be documented as one of the happiest accidents in the history of cinema.
Leith talked about his personal connection to Hitchcock. He was seven in 1954, the year Hitchcock delivered the one-two punch of Dial M for Murder and, one of my personal faves, Rear Window. After those two masterworks, Leith was a fan. From then on, whenever Hitchcock came out with a new film, it was a big event for Leith. He loved the suspenseful plots, but just as much he loved Hitchcock's wry British sense of humor. His fandom even extended to the TV show Alfred Hitchcock Presents that came along in the late fifties and early sixties. Leith is the perfect archivist. To be in a job like that, you've obviously got to be passionate about old movies. When he introduced Strangers on a Train, he said something like, "This was made back in the nineteen fifties, when movies were still movies." Not sure I agree with that sentiment, but you've gotta love the passion.
One more topic Leith covered before the movie started was the leading men of Strangers on a Train: Robert Walker and Farley Granger. Apparently Robert Walker was quite the nutjob, although it may not have been entirely his fault. His folks split when he was still a wee tot, and thereafter his home life went to shit. This translated into poor Robert becoming high strung, prone to anxiety, depressed, all that bad stuff. Sometimes he'd channel all this negativity into negative energy. He could get belligerent and downright combative at the drop of a dime. Not surprisingly, he got expelled from school a whole bunch of times. When some bright spark decided it would be best to find a hobby for Robert to focus all that energy, what do you think they decided on? Of course. Acting. And sure enough, Robert excelled. He landed the lead in a school play. He won top prize in an acting contest at the Pasadena Playhouse. After high school, he got accepted into the American Academy of Dramatic Art, where he met the woman he would marry, actress Jennifer Jones. Ever the committed actors, they decided to honeymoon in Hollywood so they could keep looking for gigs. Mega producer David O. Selznick took a shine to Jennifer during an audition and agreed to be her mentor. He also got Robert a contract at MGM. Sounds awesome, right? Everything was hunky-dory. Or it should've been. That shine Selznick took to Jennifer was more than a mentor's shine. He wanted to jump her bones and no mistake. This was by no means a one-way sentiment. Selznick was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, not to speak of one of the wealthiest. Money and power. Jennifer was hooked. Her divorcing Robert was the beginning of the end for this guy. Remember, he was already volatile in the best of times. After his woman left him, he fell into the bottle and became a cliché. Just as he'd gotten expelled a whole bunch of times as a kid, as an adult he got arrested just as much, for DUI, hit and run, public drunkenness, you name the booze-related crime, he committed it. His career naturally suffered. The work remained steady, but he sucked in it. Perhaps to get back at Jennifer, he made a spur-of-the-moment decision to marry director John Ford's daughter Barbara Ford. Poor Barbara could only tolerate Robert for five months before leaving him. Soon after this, Robert got word that Jennifer and Selznick had officially tied the knot. Cue psychotic break. Robert completely lost it and had to be committed to an asylum.
Amazing, huh? And this was before he did Strangers on a Train. He was barely thirty. Credit the guy with stamina, though. Soon as he was out of the asylum, he went right back to work. He got gigs with the likes of Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster. Strangers on a Train happened when MGM agreed to loan him to Warner Brothers. Even during the days of studio contracts, actors could still find work elsewhere if the studio in question didn't mind. And thank goodness MGM had the flexibility and foresight to do that. Robert Walker as Bruno Anthony in Strangers on a Train is one of the best villain roles ever, certainly one of the best villains in Hitchcock's oeuvre. It was almost like Robert was made for this role since the Bruno character is sort of, you know, nutty. Anyways, the film was a smash and Robert Walker earned kudos. He'd also just married again, but this time it wasn't a whacky kind of thing like with Barbara Ford. And right after Strangers on a Train, he landed a plum movie role opposite Van Heflin. Everything was finally starting to turn around, which makes the next part all the more tragic. Even though he was out of the asylum and working steadily again, he still had to be medicated. In fact, you could say his medication was the reason things were finally under control. But then one night in August 1951, Robert, for whatever reason, started having an episode, getting really agitated and anxious and hot tempered and all that. It must've been pretty bad if the housekeeper felt compelled to call Robert's psychiatrist. So the psychiatrist came over right away and had our man take a barbiturate to calm down. But what I guess the doctor didn't know was that Robert had been drinking a lot that night. And so the medication mixed with the alcohol, Robert passed out....and never woke up. He was thirty-two. And his poor wife was already a widow at twenty-six.
As for the other leading man from Strangers on a Train, it's pretty much the opposite. Farley Granger, who'd worked with Hitchcock once before in Rope, had a very long, steady career. In fact, he's still alive today, in his mid eighties.
Hitchcock's daughter Patricia has a supporting role in Strangers on a Train. She'd been in Stage Fright as well, but it was a bit part. Strangers on a Train was her first fairly prominent role. The fun nearly ended as soon as it began, though. She got married about a year later and didn't act as much as she probably could've. Family first, right? She ended up having three kids. You've seen her if you've seen Psycho. She was Janet Leigh's fellow secretary at that bank in the beginning. She also did a bunch of episodes for Dad's eponymous TV show. She and her hubby are still alive today. They're about the same age as Farley Granger, in fact. What's more, they live up in Solvang, this town in central California that was founded by Danish immigrants and was apparently made to look like a Danish village. It's been on my list of places to visit ever since I drove by it going to and from Heart Castle back in August 2001.
I don't want to go into the plot of Strangers on a Train, but I will say it's Hitchcock at his finest. He's terribly clever with the double imagery. It starts with double protagonists: Bruno Anthony and Farley's character, Guy Haines. Then you've got the double murder Bruno convinces Guy to participate in. You've got people living double lives, double-crossing each other, Bruno ordering a double Scotch, visual cues like the criss-crossing railroad tracks, crossed tennis rackets on a cigarette lighter, all kinds of stuff. Hitchcock even found a way to be "doubly" consistent with his trademark blink-and-you'll-miss-him cameo. When he cameos in Strangers on a Train, he's carrying a....double-bass fiddle!
