The Gutter’s own Carol Borden is behind the scenes, working hard on Gutterthon 2025. She’ll be back in December. In the meantime, enjoy this piece on the women who wrote Hitchcock!

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This year for Switcheroo Month I thought I would doubly switch things up by writing about something reputable–the films of Alfred Hitchcock–and something I would not usually write about–the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock is a filmmaker I struggle with. I recognize the quality of his work. I enjoy many of his films. I appreciate his gallows wit, his masterly construction and his good eye. But I am put off by the way he treated some of his actors–particularly Tippi Hedren–how he treated Anthony Perkins, as revealed by Perkins’ son, filmmaker Oz Perkins in Shudder’s Queer for Fear: The History of Queer Horror (2022); and the often misogynistic aftertaste of some of his films. (For instance, Marnie).  Hitchcock gets a lot of credit for his mystery and suspense films, rightfully so, but sometimes that credit goes as far as erasing the writers who came up with the mysteries, twists, dark jokes, thrills and stories Hitchcock built his films on. Hitchcock himself gave credit where it was due. He put writers’ names on screen for everyone to see. But if film history has taught us anything, it’s that credits, dedications and acknowledgments are not enough to keep women both trans and cis, genderqueer and nonbinary people from disappearing from memory and history. So let’s talk about some of the women and one possible nonbinary/trans person who, whether as screenwriters, novelists or short story writers, made the mysteries and suspense Hitchcock became known for. I am going to stick with the writers and films I am personally more familiar with, so please don’t think I am slighting, say, Elizabeth MacKintosh / Josephine Tey and Young And Innocent (1937). 

In his acceptance speech for the 1979 American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award, Hitchcock determined to

mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement and constant collaboration. The first is a film editor, the second is a script writer, the third is the mother of my daughter, Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen. And their names are Alma Reville. 

One of Hitchcock’s earliest, possibly his longest and definitely most enduring collaborations was with Alma Reville. Reville is probably best known for her credited work on The 39 Steps (1935), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Suspicion (1941), and, Shadow Of A Doubt (1943). Reville’s last on screen credit appears to be Stage Fright in 1949. Reville started her work on films at the London Film Company in 1915, where she worked as a film and script editor and screenwriter and where Reville revealed a notable eye for continuity. At the London Film Company, Reville also had the first of several small roles with Maurice Elvey’s The Life Story Of David Lloyd George. Most of her work, though, was behind the camera. She also worked as a second assistant director at Lasky’s Famous Players Islington before starting work for independent producer Michael Balcon in Europe. Reville was already making her mark in the film industry when she and the much less experienced Hitchcock met in Berlin. They finally worked together when she worked as his assistant director for The Pleasure Garden (1927). Hitchcock reportedly turned to Reville after every take asking, “Was that alright?”  She also handled many of the editing, financial and practical aspects of the production, which honestly sounds like producing to me. 

Reville and Hitchcock married in 1926. Reville continued to write for Hitchcock and other directors. She also rewrote and edited scripts as well as offered opinions on every aspect of filmmaking craft from casting to cuts for Hitchcock’s films. Reville is also apparently the one who insisted on Bernard Herrmann’s score playing during the shower scene in Psycho (1960). It’s possible that in another time, Reveille would have been a director in her own right, but as it is, she made a tremendous contribution to film.

Hitchcock hired Joan Harrison as an assistant in 1933. She went on to become a screenwriter and eventually a producer. Harrison was the first woman to be nominated for—the first ever—Best Original Screenplay Academy Award for Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent (1940). And that same year at that same Academy Award ceremony, she was nominated for Best Screenplay for her work with Robert E. Sherwood on Hitchcock’s first American film, Rebecca (1940). That’s right, two nominations on two different screenplays for two Hitchcock films in one Academy Award season. Aside from adapting Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca for film, Harrison also adapted du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn for Hitchcock’s 1939 film of the same name. She went on to work as a producer and screenwriter for other directors including Robert Siodmak’s Phantom Lady (1944) and Robert Montgomery’s Ride The Pink Horse (1947), based on the eponymous novel by one of my favorite underappreciated authors, Dorothy B. Hughes. Harrison went on to become the first female producer at Universal studios.

Harrison, along with Hitchcock and actor/producer/bon vivant Norman Lloyd—also produced Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-62) and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962-5), which you can still watch online in various places. And I recommend doing so! Each week presented a new story in the vein of Hitchcock’s by then established brand of dark humor and sympathetic criminality. Every episode,  Hitchcock introduced a story and was introduced himself with what would become his iconic theme, “The Funeral March of a Marionette.”  Hitchcock only directed 18 episodes, but the series provided a showcase for writers and directors, including Charlotte Armstrong. I wrote about Armstrong’s 1951 novel Mischief, Roy Ward Baker’s adaptation, Don’t Bother To Knock (1952) and Marilyn Monroe’s remarkable performance here at the Gutter. (You can read it here). For Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Armstrong wrote the screenplay for “Sybilla” (1960) from a story by Margaret Manners and directed by writer/director/actor/producer Ida Lupino. In the episode, Sybilla (Barbara Bel Geddes) reads her husband’s (Alexander Scourby) diary and discovers that he means to kill her. Then, as they do, things go awry. Armstrong also wrote the screenplays for “Across the Threshold” and “The Five-Forty-Eight” (1960). But getting into the women who wrote and directed for these series is a whole essay in itself, so let’s get back to business. 

Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989) never provided screenplays for Alfred Hitchcock, but two of her novels and one of her short stories were adapted for his films. Harrison worked on adaptations of du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn (1936) and Rebecca (1938). Evan Hunter adapted her short story, “The Birds” from du Maurier’s The Apple Tree: A Short Novel and Several Long Stories (London: Gollancz, 1952). Her work has been widely adapted into film, but Hitchcock aside,  probably the best known film adaptation is Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973), based on the short story, “Don’t Look Now” from du Maurier’s Don’t Look Now and Other Stories (New York: Doubleday, 1971).

Du Maurier, aka, Lady Browning, aka Dame Daphne, DBE, was a prolific and popular writer who gained one title by marriage and the other from her work. Though apparently she never used “Dame.”  Her best known and most popular work, even now, is probably the Gothic novel, Rebecca (1938), about a young woman who marries a widowed and I would say neglectful man, Maxim de Winter. She moves to his estate in Cornwall, Manderley, and becomes perhaps jealous, perhaps envious, and ultimately perhaps desirous of Rebecca, the first Mrs. De Winter. She is pushed along in all these feelings by the family housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, played magnificently by Judith Anderson in the film, who herself seems pretty desirous of the first Mrs. de Winter.

There has been much speculation about du Maurier’s relationship to Rebecca. Du Maurier’s relationship to her gender and her sexual orientation were complicated and possibly even conflicted. She was probably attracted to both women and men. But her understanding of her sexuality and her gender seems very much of its time. She spent at least part of her childhood as a boy and seemed to prefer being a boy, Eric Avon. As an adult, she saw herself as “a disembodied spirit” divided into male and female halves, which was fairly typical of people we would now consider bisexual, trans, genderqeer/nonbinary, or possibly all three in the early and mid-Twentieth Century English-speaking world. (Thinking about Virginia Woolf’s self-understanding here). Du Maurier’s sisters Angela and Jeanne were both lesbians and fairly open about it. They didn’t have her struggle or discomfort with their identities. So I use “she” here, but not comfortably, maybe Daphne du Maurier was a trans man or nonbinary. But du Maurier was certainly queer.

And it remains intriguing to me that Hitchcock would have such queerness in the source work for his films. In 1951, he released Strangers on a Train, with a screenplay by Raymond Chandler and adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s 1950 novel. In both the novel and the film, Bruno (Robert Walker) approaches Guy (Farley Granger–a gay man Hitchcock cast as a murderous gay man in Rope (1948)) to pass the time during a long train trip. In the novel, Guy is an architect. In the film he is a tennis star. The film might reverse Bruno’s first and last names, but in both, Bruno has ulterior motives. He has a scheme he’s been waiting to share: an idea for the perfect murder. Bruno thinks they have a problem in common and the exact same desires. Other people are obstacles to their happiness and he has a solution. He suggests the idea of two strangers exchanging murders. No one would be able to catch them, because no one could connect them to the victims. Guy politely entertains it as a thought experiment. Or so he thinks, but it is… interesting… that he joins Bruno in a private car. Bruno, however, believes or chooses to believe that they have come to an agreement and murders Guy’s current wife Miriam (Kasey Rogers) who will not grant Guy a divorce to marry another woman, Anne (Ruth Roman). Afterwards, Guy receives instructions on how to kill Bruno’s father, freeing Bruno from his tyranny and freeing up a lot of money for Bruno.

In the film and even more so in the book, Bruno appears smitten with Guy and has many of the hallmarks of the time indicating his homosexuality. He is very attached to his mother. He is angry at his father.He is single in his adulthood and a “playboy.” And in the film, there is a fantastic sequence introducing both characters that takes in Bruno’s flashy outfit, two-toned shoes, lobster-patterned tie and all, that implies Bruno is not entirely straight. It’s possible that Bruno takes Guy’s brushing of his shoe with his own as a coded down lo indication of interest. When he tries to blackmail Guy into keeping his side of the murder bargain, Bruno’s hurt feelings and sense of rejection are well on display. It is possible that he wants to eliminate the rivals for his affection and is fine with forcing Guy into accepting a relationship with him. He certainly hounds Guy. It’s not like entitled men don’t do that, but it is rare in fiction about men’s relationships with other men in 1950 and 1951.

Strangers On A Train wasn’t the only Highsmith work adapted for a Hitchcock project. Without getting too deep into Hitchcock and television, Highsmith’s novel This Sweet Sickness (1960), was adapted as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “Annabel,” adapted by Robert Bloch and directed by Paul Henreid. It stars Dean Stockwell as a chemist so obsessed with a woman named Annabel (Susan Oliver) that he ignores her marriage to another man as he plans their future together and spends imaginary weekends with her in a house he has built for them.

Highsmith specialized in unpleasant, aggrieved, entitled men in her writing. Her best known work is probably the Ripliad, a series of novels about a status seeker and serial killer who feels essentially empty at his core, Tom Ripley. Beyond the Ripley novels, especially The Talented Mr. Ripley (New York: Coward-McCann, 1955), just re-adapted as a series on Netflix, Highsmith’s works have been made into many chilling film thrillers and form the bases of so many questionably likable antihero killers today. But while she wrote very unpleasant men in very criminal contexts, Highsmith also wrote the first novel about a lesbian love story with a conventional happy ending, at least in the modern era, The Price Of Salt / Carol (New York: Coward-McCann, 1952). It was published the year after Strangers On A Train, and under a pseudonym, in part to protect Highsmith’s identity as a writer of thrillers. The book was adapted by Phyllis Nagy into Carol (2015), directed by Todd Haynes

This relatively happy book is unusual for Highsmith. In a way, I can see the happy ending as a result of Highsmith’s orneriness and contrariness. If other people wrote pulp fiction that included titillating scenes of lesbianism but end assuring us that lesbianism doesn’t pay, then, dammit, Highsmith will write a lesbian romance. Like du Maurier, Highsmith was queer but conflicted in different ways. She periodically tried to become heterosexual, using the tools of the time. She lived in a time when people believed that “inversion” in women was a sexual dysfunction like “frigidity,” and that all that was necessary to correct it was sex with a sufficiently masculine heterosexual man. (As in, for instance, Marnie). Highsmith tried several times and it didn’t take. She also tried psychoanalysis. She wasn’t “cured” of her sexual orientation, but did end up dating a female psychoanalyst. Highsmith herself was complicated, difficult and an amazing writer. And no one could get into the head of a terrible man like she could, creating strangely gripping books and scenarios that still harrow me. It is interesting that Hitchcock would be attracted to Patricia Highsmith’s work, but I don’t want to get into anything too trite or dismissive here about Highsmith’s entitled men and Hitchcock. But it is, again, something to ponder. As I said, I struggle with Hitchcock. His art is admirable. His taste in choosing these writers and collaborators is admirable. And their work is worthy of remembering.

Learn more about Alma Reville / Alma Hitchcock:

Patricia Hitchcock, Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Behind The Man (New York: Berkley Books, 2003)

https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/will-real-mrs-hitchcock-please-stand-up

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Carol Borden includes a cameo in every essay. Can you find them all?

This essay was originally published by The Cultural Gutter on April 11, 2024.