WEBVTT

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(Man) Back in the 30s,
| used to go to the movies.

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And after trial and error
of going to various theatres,

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| discovered
that there were certain writers,

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certain directors, certain producers

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who always gave you a good
product in the theatre.

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And Hitchcock was on my list.

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So | was conscious of Hitch very early.

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Hitchcock combined
humour and suspense.

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And | have a feeling

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that that's why Hitchcock
selected me to do Rear Window.

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Because he had listened
to my radio plays

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which | did prior to writing movies.

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And a lot of them were tongue-in-cheek
detective stories,

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The Adventures Of Sam Spade,

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in which we had a mixture
of humour and suspense.

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And when | went to do Rear Window,

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it was appropriate
that 1 used humour and natural

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because | had been
doing it for a long time.

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(Stewart) Since when do flowers
grow shorter in two weeks?

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- There's something buried there.
- Mrs Thorwald.

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You haven't spent much time
around cemeteries, have you?

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Mr Thorwald could scarcely
put his wife's body

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in a plot of ground about one foot square.

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Unless, of course,
he put her in standing on end.

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And then
he wouldn't need a knife and saw.

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No, my idea is
she's scattered all over town.

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- A leg in the East River -
- Oh, Stella, please.

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(Hayes) Hitchcock's agents
sent me the story, Rear Window,

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And | was to read it and
meet Hitch for dinner on Friday.

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1 got it on Monday, late, | would say.

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And, you know, [| was apprehensive
about meeting Hitch,

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because he was
the great Alfred Hitchcock

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and | didn't know what in the world he
was going to ask me at this dinner.

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And so | virtually memorised the
story of Rear Window , page by page.

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| think it was a
35-page short story in a small book.

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And | went to dinner with him

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which was awash with wine and liguor,

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Martinis and brandy and everything else.

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And food - fish, steak, hors d'oeuvres.

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Hitch prefaced the dinner
by asking me if I'd like a Martini

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and I said, "Well, I guess so.”

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And he said, Il like a man who drinks.”

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So | figured if that's what Hitch liked,
that's what | was gonna do.

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And the incredible thing was,

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the whole dinner, he never
mentioned Rear Window once.

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He never brought it up.

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He asked me instead if | was familiar
with his pictures,

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and to give him one in particular
with which I was familiar.

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So I mentioned Shadow Of A Doubt,

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not knowing that Hitch had always
regarded it as his favourite picture.

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I had been in the army and temporarily
| would handle theatre projects

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And they needed a projectionist
when | went in.

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Temporarily , | acted as a projectionist ,

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and the only film we had
was Shadow Of A Doubt.

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And | showed it
three times a day for 30 days.

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I gather | saw it
more times than Hitch did.

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So when he said, "Name a picture,”
1 named Shadow Of A Doubt

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And the whole dinner was taken up
with Shadow Of A Doubt,

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wherein | told him the mistakes
| thought he had made in it.

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You know,
that was the wine and the Martinis.

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And of course it almost got out of hand.

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But we had a wonderful dinner.

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| volunteered to drive him home.

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And, shrewdly, he decided to take a taxi.

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And | went home to my house in Encino
and told my wife,

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"| had a great dinner,
but I'll never work for Hitchcock again.

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| might never work for anybody.”

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Monday, the phone rang,
the following Monday.

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It was a Friday when we had dinner

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and | still had a hangover.

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| jumped three feet in the air.

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And it was Hitch's agents,

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Arthur Park and George Chasen
and Herman Citron, who said,

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"Hitch loved you.

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You start tomorrow.”

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When | went to work for Alfred
Hitchcock, 1 didn't know what to expect.

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No one had told me how he worked or
what his sentiments were on anything.

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The only thing | knew about him
was what | read in the press.

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And | found out from my standpoint,
from a writer's standpoint,

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he was an absolute delight.

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Hitch was filming Dial M For Murder.

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And | was told to meet him
on the set at Warner Bros.

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And | sat down next to him
in his director's chair

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while he was directing
a scene with Grace Kelly.

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And he said to me,
"What do you know about Grace Kelly?”

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| said, "Very little."

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He said, "Well, | want you to spend
some time with her and get to know her,

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because I'm gonna use her
as the girl in the picture.”

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And there wasn't any in the short story.

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So | spent some time with her,
a week and a half or so,

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and got to know her and her style
and liked it very much,

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and thought it would be
pleasant to write for.

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So | went back to my house in Encino
and wrote a treatment.

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| had given him some
inkling of the ideas | had.

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But he was so busy with
Dial M, he hadn't worked it out yet.

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He hadn't worked out Rear Window yet.

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And | wrote a treatment,
about 35 pages double-spaced, | think,

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And | brought it to him
and he liked it very much.

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He sent it to Paramount,

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who had said if he could get a good
screenplay out of Rear Window,

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they would make
a commitment to the project.

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Well, they committed on the treatment.

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And he sent it to Jimmy Stewart
who committed on the treatment.

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So Hitch said, "Go back home and write
the first draft of the screenplay.”

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Now, he made some
suggestions on the treatment.

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| can't recall them all.

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But | went home, and | wrote the whole
first treatment by myself.

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Now, that's why | say it was a delight
to work with Hitchcock,

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simply because he let me alone.

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He unleashed me and let me work
without hovering over me.

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And nothing is better for a writer.

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Well, anyway, 1 finished
the first draft. Hitch liked it.

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He made some suggestions and | went
home and wrote the second draft .

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The criticisms of the first draft
were mostly cutting,

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because | have
the tendency to write long.

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I put all the fulsome emotion | can into a
first draft script.

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And then we sat down
with the second draft

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and broke the script up into actual shots.

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| had two to three hundred
numbered scenes.

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When Hitch and | finished, we had 600.

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He would break it up

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and sketch the camera angle
from his director's viewpoint,

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which was Hitchcock's contribution to
the pictures on which I worked with him.

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Hitch thought intensely
about each scene.

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On the way to the studio, he'd pick one
scene and think about it all the way,

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on how many different
ways he could do it.

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And mechanically he had such
an expertise with suspense.

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He inserted it where you least
suspected it was going to be.

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(Woman Screams, Glass Breaks)

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And that's, of course,
what made the films good.

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- | wish | could be creative.
- Aw, sweetie, you are.

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You have a great talent
for creating difficult situations.

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- | do?
- Sure.

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When | spent the week and a half
or so with Grace Kelly,

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1 discovered that
she was full of good humour.

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She was bright. She was snappy.

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She had all the characteristics

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of being able to be an actress.

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But in Dial M For Murder,

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| thought she was rather stiff and cool,

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but she was new to the business.

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And she acted like a...

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a student or so, learning her craft.

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And Hitch alluded to that.

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He said, "She's stiff and we have to...

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You have to open her up somehow.

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"l don't know how you're gonna do it.

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But if you create a character,
it's got to have life to it”

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So | gave her a lot of sprightly life
and enjoyed doing it,

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and she enjoyed playing it.

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Oh!

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What would you think of
starting off with dinner at '21'?

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You have perhaps
an ambulance downstairs?

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Better than that, '21'.

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(Hayes)
| saw her naturally, uninhibited at home,

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and 1 gave her the kind
of dialogue and things

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that | hoped would make it easy for her
to let this creative energy out.

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| was all morning in a sales meeting.

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Then | had to dash to the Waldorf
for a quick drink with Madam Dufrene

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who's just over from Paris
with some spy reports.

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Grace Kelly's performance in Rear
Window was a reflection of two things:

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one, of her natural temperament
and her natural style,

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and what | borrowed from my wife,

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on whom | based
the Grace Kelly character.

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My wife had been a professional model
and | knew the world and the jargon.

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And then | added my own humour.

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As a matter of fact, there were
some things in the film

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that my wife, on seeing the preview,
would turn to me and say,

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"Now, where do you
suppose that came from?”

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Tell me,
what was Mrs Hayward wearing?

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Oh, she looked wonderfully cool.

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She had on the most divine
Italian hand-print -

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- Italian, imagine that.
- Oh, you.

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It was fun to write for Grace Kelly,
fun to write for Jimmy Stewart.

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I had worked with him in a prior film
called Thunder Bay.

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I got to know him
and he was great to write for.

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So the two of them
made my task immensely easier.

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In Rear Window, it was the audience

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watching Jimmy Stewart
watch other people.

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But that was the essence of the story.

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Cornell Woolrich, the original author,
lived in an apartment,

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and there were days on end
when he was bored.

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But he searched his surroundings
for clues of stories,

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and that's how he came up with it.

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Now, we didn't have a lot of action,

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being that, after all, a man's in a cast

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sitting in his wheelchair
looking out the window.

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But you just couldn't keep him

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looking at the killer
all the time with his binoculars

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and expect the film to develop,
to go this way or that way.

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So we used the people
in the apartments for relief.

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How's your wife?

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Oh, she's fine.

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And then we'd come back to the story
for action, and it stretched out the film,

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and it gave it several
aspects that were interesting.

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Now, a couple of the stories in the
apartments had effects on our story,

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the story with the dog
and one thing and another.

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So they were created because
you just could not sustain our story

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without going to other things.

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And you couldn't just black out
all the apartments around.

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You're naturally attracted to
movement here, or colour there,

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or a puppy barking or something.

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So we blended it all together.

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And, | might say, that was a great part
of Hitch's contribution,

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the development of those sidebar stories.

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Oh, Lisa!

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We began to realise
what a good picture we'd made

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as we watched the dailies and
the first cut and everything.

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And after the picture came out,

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the reviews were uniformly laudatory

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and we got a lot of attention.

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It was an instance in film making where
everything seemed to work right.

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just well, with a minimum of conflict
and a wonderful blending of talent.