Remembering Cary Grant on His 108th Birthday

On this day in 1904, Archibald Leach was born. He left an indelible mark on cinema and our culture as Cary Grant. He was, in the opinion of so many of his fans, the personification of elegance.

Screenwriter John Michael Hayes shared many memories of his experiences with Grant during the making of Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief, as well as another unproduced project that was intended for the actor. Here is one of Hayes’s memories of Cary Grant excepted from Writing with Hitchcock, and followed by an audio excerpt from one of the actor’s one man show appearances, A Conversation with Cary Grant. 

One of screenwriter John Michael Hayes's recollections of Cary Grant included the actor often arriving on the set in the morning with pages of script that he had gone over the night before, saying, “Hitch, I have an idea.”

“Do you,” the director would say. “Talk to John.”

Hayes was then given the task of stalling Grant until it was too late to work in his suggestions. “Well, that’s very interesting. Let me think about it,” the writer would say. Eventually the crew was ready with the next setup, and it was time to shoot the scene.

Later Grant would insist on running through a scene both ways to get Hitchcock’s approval. Hayes remembered the actor being unnaturally awkward when doing the scene as written, then doing his own version to perfection, saying, “What do you think? Which one is best?”

“We had to come up with a gimmick to forestall this,” said Hayes, “because Hitch planned every script very carefully, down to camera angles, way in advance and didn’t like to improvise too much on the set ... so the next time Cary did that, we had everybody on the set primed. When he did the scene as written, everyone, from the grips to the lighting boys, broke out into applause.”

“I guess it’s all right the way it is,” said Grant, who eventually caught on and enjoyed the joke.

To Catch a Thief comes to the radio in new adapation

In case you missed last Saturday's BBC 4 broadcast of To Catch a Thief(which will be online until 1/15/2011), here's my brief review.

Naturally, as I cover the writing and production of To Catch a Thief in great detail in Writing with Hitchcock (in addition to the novel's origins), I listened to the BBC 4 broadcast with a great familiarity to David Dodge’s novel and with a keen ear to pick up any references to the film or to see if the writer of this new adaptation, Jean Buchanan, opted to forget the film entirely.

Choosing the latter, Buchanan was fairly faithful to Dodge, judiciously pruning where necessary—eliminating, as Hitchcock and Hayes did, a second copy-cat thief—while keeping the subplot with Robie’s old friend Paul du Pré…which is oddly reminiscent of certain aspects of Vertigo, based on a French novel Hitchcock would purchase the rights to not long after To Catch a Thief was released.

As pointed out in Elisabeth Mahoney’s review on guardian.co.uk, the slivers of description for the characters highlighted the differences between this version and Hitchcock’s film. Can one imagine Cary Grant padding himself another ten or twenty pounds, shaving back his hairline so that he appears to be balding, and then having to make love to Grace Kelly? In Hitchcock’s cinema, that just wouldn’t fly.

As entertaining as Hitchcock’s film is, its main flaw is the villain. In all three the actual copy-cat thief is Danielle, but Hitchcock and John Michael Hayes opted to make Bellini (Bertani in the final film) the mastermind behind the jewel robberies. The only problem was Hitchcock cast French actor Charles Vanel in the role without knowing he did not speak English at all. Choosing to have Hayes rewrite and rewrite again, rather than recast, the role was severely watered down along with the suspense. In Dodge’s novel and this radio adaptation, Bellini seems to have his hand in every shady business along the Riviera, so one comes away with the sense that he’s somehow profiting from the robberies anyway. In that respect, Bellini (although not the villain) is more richly drawn here than by Hitchcock.

Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief has always been known best for its sophisticated dialogue and double entendres—penned by the radio-trained Hayes. So the one disappointment in this adaptation is that Buchanan stuck too closely to Dodge’s own dialogue, which fell somewhat flat—a shame since a radio drama relies heavily on dialogue. I’m not suggesting that “borrowing” from John Michael Hayes was necessary, but perhaps taking a bit of inspiration from him would have lifted the material and the performances at the same time.

Overall, very entertaining and a nice way to remind audiences that Hitchcock’s films were not solely the result of his creative genius.

Had Hitchcock Heeded Peggy's Advice ...?

It was 45 years ago today—September 9, 1965—that Peggy Robertson, Alfred Hitchcock’s longtime personal assistant, did what might have been considered the unthinkable by her employer. After consulting with Lew Wasserman and trusted agent Ned Brown, Robertson included John Michael Hayes’s name on a list of writers suggested as possible script doctors for the ailing screenplay of Torn Curtain.

The trio Hitchcock relied upon for so long secretly hoped that the decade which passed since the falling out with Hayes might have softened the director’s attitude toward the writer that once helped put him back in the good graces of his audience with a string of box office successes—Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Man Who Knew Too Much. Such was not the case.

Although their reasoning was sound—production was scheduled to begin in less than 6 weeks—it was a matter of ego and principal not easy for Hitchcock to overcome. As it was, Hitchcock was indifferent to the other writers on Robertson’s list—one of which had just had an off-Broadway play produced which left the director unimpressed, and another who refused to fly and would only work in New York. It’s difficult not to imagine Hitchcock asking, “He doesn’t expect I’ll come to him, does he?”

And so in spite of the behind-the-scenes maneuvering, which may have been more compelling than the script Hitchcock was about to direct, the once great team failed to come together. Although Robertson would try to reunite Hitchcock and Hayes at least twice more during the decade, I always come back to this date and wonder what might have been had Hitchcock been amenable to Robertson’s suggestion. It may be that even with Hayes's help Torn Curtain was beyond salvaging. The story had already drifted far from Hitchcock's original concept for the film, and the casting had left Hitchcock cold. But the "what ifs" remain. 

Torn Curtain made money, but by most accounts, it was the first time in a long time that Hitchcock went forward with a movie that he didn’t want to make. When it happened in his mid-30s (Waltzes from Vienna), he was able to bounce back mightily, as the best of his creative energies hadn’t even been tapped yet. When it happened in his late-40s (The Paradine Case), he  was already looking forward to the greener pastures of independence from David Selznick. But on the wrong side of 65 years of age and with his one-time agent (Wasserman) now effectively his boss, bouncing back from Torn Curtain would be another matter entirely.

Of course you can read all about it in Writing with Hitchcock.

Screenwriter John Michael Hayes on TO CATCH A THIEF

Audio excerpts of John Michael Hayes being interviewed for Writing with Hitchcock. Hayes talks about a scene cut from his screenplay for To Catch a Thief, as well as his preferred ending, and a line of dialogue changed by Alfred Hitchcock during production.

Writing with Hitchcock Comes to YouTube

Discussion of the inspiration for the novel upon which Alfred Hitchcock based To Catch a Thief, his 1955 film starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. Recurring motifs and a sequence deleted from John Michael Hayes's original screenplay are also examined.