In this episode, I discuss with author Stephen Rebello his book "Criss-Cross: The Making of Hitchcock’s Dazzling, Subversive Masterpiece Strangers on a Train". Take a deep dive into the shadows and light of one of the most subversive, corrosively funny, and beloved suspense thriller masterworks as author Stephen Rebello unravels for the very first time the tense and drama-filled story of the making Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Let's go Bye Forgotten Holid.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Hello everyone, and welcome back to another edition of Forgotten Hollywood.
I'm your host Doug has Now. If you're tuning in
Forgotten Hollywood for the first time, what I do on
this podcast is take you on a trip down memory
lane and share with you pieces of Hollywood that you
may or may not know about. And today we have
a very special guest with us today, Stephen Rabello, and
(00:28):
he is here to talk about his book Criss Cross,
the making of Hitchcock's dazzling subversive masterpiece Strangers on a Train. Stephen,
Welcome to Forgotten Hollywood. Thank you, it's great to be
here with you. Well, thank you, and thank you for
spending just a few minutes with us to talk about
your book, Chris Cross. And as we do with our authors,
(00:51):
we like to hear in the author's own words, if
you will, a little bit about what this book's about.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Well, I'd like to write books about people under the gun,
so to speak, people in crisis, people who have something
to live up to or live down. And this is
a story of a group of people led by Alfred Hitchcock,
the movie director, making a film of a very controversial
(01:19):
first novel by Patricia Highsmith called Strangers on a Train
and they were making it during the American period known
as the Blacklist in the McCarthy era. And so everyone
in this book has a secret, everyone has something to hide,
everyone has something to be very proud of, and they're
all trying to make a good film, and some of
(01:41):
them very badly need to make a good film.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, And it's my understanding, and I may have my
numbers off here a little bit, but Hitchcock had made
about fifty five fifty three different films, and most of
them have been pretty well analyzed and written about out
but this is Strangers on a Train is one that
has been kind of I'm going to use the word overlooked.
(02:08):
Is that correct?
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yeah, And that's why I love the idea of forgotten Hollywood,
because lots of people talk about Hitchcock, but they always
talk about the same films. It's like Birds north by
Northwest Rear Window, and they're all fantastic. I love all
of those films. But I'm just going to remind people
that when I wrote a book years ago on the
making of Psycho, most of the publishers in New York
(02:31):
turned it down because they didn't think it was an
important Hitchcock movie. That has changed. But when people talk
about the great Hitchcock movies, they rarely bring up Strangers
on a Train. And I thought it's time to look
at this film because it's brilliant. I think it's really
one of his finest movies. But it's not in technicolor.
(02:53):
Kerry Grant isn't in it, and Grace Kelly isn't in it,
and doesn't have a Bernard Harriman score. So some of
the many things that people associate so much now with Hitchcock.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yeah, because yeah, absolutely, and because they don't have a
couple of those quote unquote ingredients. Unfortunately, the film gets
overlooked and kind of brushed off to the side. Yes, yes, yes,
which is too bad in terms of this. Now, it's
my understanding that this was not an easy film to make.
(03:26):
There was all kinds of controversy from actors to the
plot to everything. This wasn't just a Okay, we're ready
to go and start filming. There was a little bit
of a and like I said, I'm going to use
the word controversy along the way.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
There was so much controversy, controversy, and so much trouble
for Hitchcock. Hitchcock himself was in a slump. He had
done a number of movies that were not connecting with
the critics or with audiences, and he was always really
more interested in audiences than critics, and so he was
desperately looking for a piece of material that would excite
(04:06):
him again and in the adaptation excite Hollywood and in
turn excite audiences. Unfortunately, when he brought this first novel
by Patricia high Smith, he brought he always wanted to
work with the very best writers, so he went to
people like Thornton Wilder. He went to who had worked
(04:29):
with him years before on another great on some movie
called Shadow of a Doubt. He you know, he thought
of all the best. He thought of Dashll Hammett. Dashll
Hammett wasn't really in the best shape to work, and
so he had a treatment of the novel, a treatment
(04:50):
in this case was almost a blueprint for a screenplay,
and he thought he would entice some of the best
writers in the business, and none of them liked it.
They all turned it down, and he knew he needed
a kind of a marquee named writer to work with
him on this movie. To announce it as something important.
And so Jack Warner, who was the head of Warner
(05:12):
Brothers Studio, who wasn't especially enthused about making this movie,
said well, let's let's why don't we go for Raymond Chandler.
Billy Wilder had good luck with him on Double Indemnity.
In fact, he did not have good luck with him,
because they argued and hated each other through the whole process,
but so be it. So they Hitchcock and Chandler worked
(05:35):
together and it just didn't go well at all. In fact,
Hitchcock one day finally went to the studio, brought Chandler's
script and threw it in the waste basket, you know,
with great as Hitchcock could do with great drama.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
And so.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
He wanted to bring Ben Hecht, who was called the
Shakespeare Hollywood screenwriters. HECT was busy, and Hect suggested his
very brilliant assistant, a beautiful blonde named Chenzie Ormond, and
she had worked with it. See, the thing is that
people don't realize that in those days, being an assistant
(06:17):
to a top screenwriter often meant that those people were
also writing scenes, if not waiting, sometimes entire screenplays and
so Hitchcock took a chance. He really trusted Ben Heckt,
who had worked on at least six or seven of
Hitchcock's movies, and she came on and she used the
original treatment and came up with very quickly, actually came
(06:43):
up with a screenplay that Jack Warner said, Okay, we
will make this movie, because he told Hitchcock, look, if
you don't come up with a screenplay that I like,
I'm just pulling the plug. You're not going to do
this movie. But they actually went into production and without
a completed screenplay because Hitchcock wasn't satisfied. So his wife
(07:05):
Alma Revel worked on it. Another writer at Barbara Keon.
You knows, all women worked on the movie, and they're
the ones that saved the movie. Frankly, those three women
gen Zi Ormond, Alma and Barbara Keon.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Wow fascinating in his mouth. So my understanding that Jack
Warner at one point wanted to replace Hitchcock as the director.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Yes, well, Hitchcock had had a reputation of being very,
very budget minded and always understandable. On this movie, he
was about four days, how shocking over schedule, which is
really not very much, but Jack Warner was threatening to
get rid of him and have someone else finish the movie,
(07:51):
so Hitchcock had to farm out some of the shooting
of one of the most famous sequences in the film,
which is a merry go round carousel gone crazy, gone wild,
and you know, people are being hurled off the carousel,
people are being shot. It's a spectacular sequence. But he
(08:12):
trusted his and he loved his production designer and who
had his director's certification but hadn't kept up his credits.
And Hitchcock's I'll pay for that, and I'll be on
the set and I'll say cut and I'll say action,
(08:34):
and so the director's guild won't get angry, but I
can go finish my scenes with the actors that I
need to reshoot. Is a very common thing. But this
is a revelation for a lot of people who are
reading this book that Hitchcock didn't actually direct some of
one of the most famous sequences in the whole film.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah, it's one of those inside baseball if you will moments. Yes, yeah.
Well so during this time period as well, there was
a challenging political landscape that was going on as well
during this time with suspensions are suspicious of anti communism
(09:19):
and censorship with McCarthyism, et cetera. How did that affect
this film?
Speaker 1 (09:27):
What effected the film quite a lot, because, for one thing,
they were going to shoot in Washington, so they were
going to be they were going to be right at
the epicenter, right And you know, one of the things
that people talk about less often about the McCarthy era
is that the people who were non white and people
(09:50):
who weren't who were gay or lesbian were also being prosecuted, persecuted, fired.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
From their jobs.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
And you on this film, he had one leading man
who was bisexual. He had several screenwriters who who were
not straight or you know, and Hitchcock, you know, he
just he just he cared because it mattered. They could
(10:20):
shut down the movie. They could have done lots of
things to make it difficult for the movie. But he
believed in hiring people who were talented and he didn't
care about the sexual orientation. He just wanted people who
would He also liked people, by the way, who would
tweak the sensors and.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Fool him.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
So, I mean, this film, you know, many consider it
one of the one of the more bold films in Hollywood.
History for its time to imply that one of the
main characters might be sexually interested in the other male character,
and and that informs some of the things that happen.
(11:03):
His obsession with following him, his obsession with who he's
going to marry, the way he looks at him. Robert
Walker a brilliant, brilliant actor who plays I guess we'd
call him the villain of the piece, but he actually
walks away with a movie, as villains often do. But
he told his co star Farley Granger, who was bisexual
(11:26):
and very much out in the world, he told him,
I'm going to play Bruno Anthony my character as gay
as homosexual. You can do with your character what you
want to, but that's how I see him. That's how
I'm going to play him. But those things weren't you know,
those things weren't really talked about that much on this set.
But everybody just made the movie. And as it turns out,
(11:49):
turns out some of the critics didn't see any of that,
and some of the Hollywood sensors didn't see that at all.
And in fact, Chenzie Ormond when the screenwriters said there's
no homosexuality in the movie and there's no homosexuality in
the book. I don't know what people are talking about,
and yet people have seen it, they talk about it,
(12:10):
they say it's so obvious, and others don't. And the
thing is, you know, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter
what you see or what you don't see. What matters
is that they wanted to make an entertaining movie, right,
and they made one. And you can come to it
with any kind of preconceived or not preconceived notion and
just enjoy the heck out of it because it's so
(12:30):
beautifully made, and.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Just take it for what it is at face value,
or you can really dive deep into it, and that's
the beauty of a film. You can look at it
for just pure entertainment value, or you can really dive
deep into a film and see if there's another message
that's coming to you exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
And you know, when a movie is really good, you
can see it at different times in your life and
experience it in a very different way because your experience
has changed, your view of life has changed, and that
to me is the mark of great art. Whether it's
a painting, a piece of music, of musical whatever it is,
you can revisit it and see learn, hear something new.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah, as you grow, that movie or that piece of art,
whatever it may be, grows with you. And like you said,
you can see it through a different lens and it
kind of makes it look like you're watching the film
for the first time.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yeah, that's what's wonderful. One of the great compliments I'm
getting from people who've read my book, Chris Cross, is
that they couldn't wait to watch the movie again because
they don't think they could ever see it in the
same way. Not as a spoiler, but but they're going
to They're going to experience it in a richer way
because they know things.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
You know.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
For example, they know they're going to know now anyone
who reads the book that this cast, as good as
it is in most of the worlds, is not the
cast that Hitchcock wanted at all. He wanted Montgomery, Cliff,
William Holden and Grace Kelly, and for various reasons, he
didn't get them. And it doesn't, you know, again, doesn't
(14:06):
change your experience. But it is interesting because if you
think of the you know, kind of the screen persona
I of those three actors, they're very different from the
people who made the film, and you can imagine kind
of a different kind of film that Hitchcock had in mind.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Absolutely, and it could have been better or it could
have been worse. That's the beauty.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
We don't know, But we just know one thing that
would have been different.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yes, absolutely, I think we can all agree on that
it would have been different. But how different, Well, we'll
never know.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Yeah, I mean, would we still be talking about it
today if you know a million variables can happen?
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yeah? Absolutely? Well, Stephen, what surprised you during the writing
and the research of this book?
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Aside from the fact that no one had written about
this book before? This is such a great story. Sorry,
And these people are so immense in terms of their egos,
for one thing, and their talent and how they clashed.
That's the thing.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
I mean.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
I read all books on all kinds of subjects, and
I love when people do a deep dive into the
making of a film. But I'm not one of those
people who thinks that every film needs a book about
it's making. Some movies, the story isn't just that interesting
this one. I knew my nose told me that this
was going to be an interesting story because of the
(15:31):
time in which the movie was shot, the fact that
you had major characters and have to call them characters
like Hitchcock, like Raymond Chandler, like Jack Warner, like Farley Granger.
I mean these people, and of course Patricia high Smith,
who has so much fascination for so many people. Now,
so I knew, I knew egos were going to clash,
(15:54):
and I knew that there was going to be a
battle to make this movie. I guess what surprised me
was really how difficult the relationship was with Hitchcock and
the writer Raymond Chandler, because it literally got to the
point where Chandraer was watching Hitchcock. And by the way,
(16:16):
we have to realize that Hitchcock every day to do
a story conference with Raymond Chandler, agreed to go from Burbank,
California to Lahoya. That's a long distance for a major
filmmaker to come to me. It really was mohammed going
to the mountain. And once Hitchcock got there, Raymond Chandler
(16:38):
was irritable, irascible, unhappy, dismissive of Hollywood, thought the novel
was terrible, wondered why Hitchcock was bothering to make this movie,
and then it descended into personal insults. And you would
see Hitchcock getting under his limousine and he would say
(17:00):
to his secretary, look at that fat sob trying to
get out of his car, and Hitchcock could hear him.
So you know, it's you want, you want to think
someone as talented as as Raymond Chandra would be, you know,
beyond that kind of school school bully kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
But it wasn't so.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
And and Hitchcock, for his part, told his the screenwriters
who came after Chandler, We're not going to use a
word of his work because it's not good. None of
it's good. And I don't want him to have credit
on the movie. But Jack Moore, but Jack Warner, the
studio boss, always thinking of the box office, that this
movie needs all the help it can get, and we
need to have a marquee name in the credits. And
(17:45):
you know, and and Raymond Chandra was not flattering in
the press about Hitchcock, nor was he flattering about Billy Wilder,
whom he called the Nazi. So so it was, you know,
I knew that I knew that the two men of
that Titanic kind of ego and talent would get down
there in the mud. But I didn't realize how thick
(18:06):
and dirty the mud was, I guess, so that was
a surprise. Sure, yeah, wow, And people have read the
book have really seemed to really gotten into how much
conflict and how much animosity there was between Hitchcock and Chandler.
And it was started with the best of intentions. I mean,
(18:26):
Hitchcock really wanted this to work, and Chandler wanted it
to work. And Chili said, well, the problem with Hitchcock
is that he'll want you to write a scene and
he'll tell you that he's going to shoot it in
the upside down champagne glass, and you're supposed to.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Make it work. So you can imagine, yes, yeah, just that,
just that dynamics that was there. Well, Steve, and I
know we're getting closer on time, But one last question
I have for you is, once the movie was done,
and we know that Hitchcock had, you know, three flops
(19:06):
prior to this, did he feel good about the film?
Did he think he had a hit? Did he go,
oh my gosh, I made now my fourth consecutive flop.
What was he thinking when things were getting wrapped up.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Well, he was thinking that it was the best premise
that he'd had for a film in many, many years.
And he knew that Robert Walker's performance was, you know,
on a whole other level. Sure, so he loved that,
and he loved Marion Lauren as villain's mother. So he
loved certain aspects of it. He didn't like the title
(19:39):
of the movie. I'm never happy with that, but he
thought he thought he thought he'd done a good job.
He called it the first time he'd really made an
American movie. But the preview audiences really liked it, and
it did very well at the box office, and it
(20:00):
launched him. It got him his confidence back, and it
launched him on this astonishing series of movies that he
made in the fifties, you know, Dial In for Murder
and Rear Window and you know North By Northwest and
Vertigo and you know, right to the end with starting
into the sixties with Psycho. So it was it was
(20:21):
a pick me up, let's move it that way for him.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Sure, sure well. And it's hard to believe that we're
kind of talking about this on Forgotten Hollywood, But like
you said at the beginning, even though it's a great
film because it didn't have the right cast and this
and that. Sometimes great films still get overlooked by the
(20:45):
public and forgotten. And I think this is a book
that kind of brings it back into focus for a
lot of people. Well, I hope.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
So. I mean, I think it's a great film, and
I've never seen the movie with an audience with the
audience wasn't really impressed and cheering and laughing and applauding
at the end. I mean, once people are exposed to it,
they know this is the real thing, this is the
real Hitchcock, right.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
But the thing is they have to be exposed to
it to be able to truly appreciate it as well.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
That's right, Well it doesn't it doesn't you know, it
doesn't show up on Turner. Yeah, so people need to
see it, they need to demand yes, well, well.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
And if it doesn't show up on something like Turner
Classic Movie TCM, people unfortunately aren't going to go look
for it because it's outside out.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Of mind, right, very very true. Yeah, I tell you
it's worth your while. If you like dark comedy, this
is your film.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Well, I think that's a great way to end and
also really encourage our listeners to do two things. First,
go out and pick up a copy of the book
Chris Cross and making enough Hitchcocks, dazzling subversive masterpieces. Strangers
on a Train. It is out you can get on Amazon,
your favorite local bookstore, or wherever you purchase your books.
(22:08):
And then once you purchase a book and you've read it,
go out and rewatch Strangers on the Train. And as
Steve and I talked about, I think you're going to
see it through a whole new lens and enjoy it
at a different level after you read this book. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
That's a great way to put it.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yes, that wish. Yes, well, Steven, thank you so much
for coming on spending some time with us today, and
again to our listeners, go out and get a copy
of Crisscross. It's out now and you can pick it
up and start reading it, and then finish it off
by watching the movie again and really enjoy Strangers on
(22:47):
a Train. Steven, again, thank you so much for coming
on and spending some time with us today.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
My pleasure, Doug, I enjoyed it very much, all right,
Thank you, thank you,
Let's go Bye Forgotten Holid.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Hello everyone, and welcome back to another edition of Forgotten Hollywood.
I'm your host Doug has Now. If you're tuning in
Forgotten Hollywood for the first time, what I do on
this podcast is take you on a trip down memory
lane and share with you pieces of Hollywood that you
may or may not know about. And today we have
a very special guest with us today, Stephen Rabello, and
(00:28):
he is here to talk about his book Criss Cross,
the making of Hitchcock's dazzling subversive masterpiece Strangers on a Train. Stephen,
Welcome to Forgotten Hollywood. Thank you, it's great to be
here with you. Well, thank you, and thank you for
spending just a few minutes with us to talk about
your book, Chris Cross. And as we do with our authors,
(00:51):
we like to hear in the author's own words, if
you will, a little bit about what this book's about.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Well, I'd like to write books about people under the gun,
so to speak, people in crisis, people who have something
to live up to or live down. And this is
a story of a group of people led by Alfred Hitchcock,
the movie director, making a film of a very controversial
(01:19):
first novel by Patricia Highsmith called Strangers on a Train
and they were making it during the American period known
as the Blacklist in the McCarthy era. And so everyone
in this book has a secret, everyone has something to hide,
everyone has something to be very proud of, and they're
all trying to make a good film, and some of
(01:41):
them very badly need to make a good film.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, And it's my understanding, and I may have my
numbers off here a little bit, but Hitchcock had made
about fifty five fifty three different films, and most of
them have been pretty well analyzed and written about out
but this is Strangers on a Train is one that
has been kind of I'm going to use the word overlooked.
(02:08):
Is that correct?
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yeah, And that's why I love the idea of forgotten Hollywood,
because lots of people talk about Hitchcock, but they always
talk about the same films. It's like Birds north by
Northwest Rear Window, and they're all fantastic. I love all
of those films. But I'm just going to remind people
that when I wrote a book years ago on the
making of Psycho, most of the publishers in New York
(02:31):
turned it down because they didn't think it was an
important Hitchcock movie. That has changed. But when people talk
about the great Hitchcock movies, they rarely bring up Strangers
on a Train. And I thought it's time to look
at this film because it's brilliant. I think it's really
one of his finest movies. But it's not in technicolor.
(02:53):
Kerry Grant isn't in it, and Grace Kelly isn't in it,
and doesn't have a Bernard Harriman score. So some of
the many things that people associate so much now with Hitchcock.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yeah, because yeah, absolutely, and because they don't have a
couple of those quote unquote ingredients. Unfortunately, the film gets
overlooked and kind of brushed off to the side. Yes, yes, yes,
which is too bad in terms of this. Now, it's
my understanding that this was not an easy film to make.
(03:26):
There was all kinds of controversy from actors to the
plot to everything. This wasn't just a Okay, we're ready
to go and start filming. There was a little bit
of a and like I said, I'm going to use
the word controversy along the way.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
There was so much controversy, controversy, and so much trouble
for Hitchcock. Hitchcock himself was in a slump. He had
done a number of movies that were not connecting with
the critics or with audiences, and he was always really
more interested in audiences than critics, and so he was
desperately looking for a piece of material that would excite
(04:06):
him again and in the adaptation excite Hollywood and in
turn excite audiences. Unfortunately, when he brought this first novel
by Patricia high Smith, he brought he always wanted to
work with the very best writers, so he went to
people like Thornton Wilder. He went to who had worked
(04:29):
with him years before on another great on some movie
called Shadow of a Doubt. He you know, he thought
of all the best. He thought of Dashll Hammett. Dashll
Hammett wasn't really in the best shape to work, and
so he had a treatment of the novel, a treatment
(04:50):
in this case was almost a blueprint for a screenplay,
and he thought he would entice some of the best
writers in the business, and none of them liked it.
They all turned it down, and he knew he needed
a kind of a marquee named writer to work with
him on this movie. To announce it as something important.
And so Jack Warner, who was the head of Warner
(05:12):
Brothers Studio, who wasn't especially enthused about making this movie,
said well, let's let's why don't we go for Raymond Chandler.
Billy Wilder had good luck with him on Double Indemnity.
In fact, he did not have good luck with him,
because they argued and hated each other through the whole process,
but so be it. So they Hitchcock and Chandler worked
(05:35):
together and it just didn't go well at all. In fact,
Hitchcock one day finally went to the studio, brought Chandler's
script and threw it in the waste basket, you know,
with great as Hitchcock could do with great drama.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
And so.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
He wanted to bring Ben Hecht, who was called the
Shakespeare Hollywood screenwriters. HECT was busy, and Hect suggested his
very brilliant assistant, a beautiful blonde named Chenzie Ormond, and
she had worked with it. See, the thing is that
people don't realize that in those days, being an assistant
(06:17):
to a top screenwriter often meant that those people were
also writing scenes, if not waiting, sometimes entire screenplays and
so Hitchcock took a chance. He really trusted Ben Heckt,
who had worked on at least six or seven of
Hitchcock's movies, and she came on and she used the
original treatment and came up with very quickly, actually came
(06:43):
up with a screenplay that Jack Warner said, Okay, we
will make this movie, because he told Hitchcock, look, if
you don't come up with a screenplay that I like,
I'm just pulling the plug. You're not going to do
this movie. But they actually went into production and without
a completed screenplay because Hitchcock wasn't satisfied. So his wife
(07:05):
Alma Revel worked on it. Another writer at Barbara Keon.
You knows, all women worked on the movie, and they're
the ones that saved the movie. Frankly, those three women
gen Zi Ormond, Alma and Barbara Keon.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Wow fascinating in his mouth. So my understanding that Jack
Warner at one point wanted to replace Hitchcock as the director.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Yes, well, Hitchcock had had a reputation of being very,
very budget minded and always understandable. On this movie, he
was about four days, how shocking over schedule, which is
really not very much, but Jack Warner was threatening to
get rid of him and have someone else finish the movie,
(07:51):
so Hitchcock had to farm out some of the shooting
of one of the most famous sequences in the film,
which is a merry go round carousel gone crazy, gone wild,
and you know, people are being hurled off the carousel,
people are being shot. It's a spectacular sequence. But he
(08:12):
trusted his and he loved his production designer and who
had his director's certification but hadn't kept up his credits.
And Hitchcock's I'll pay for that, and I'll be on
the set and I'll say cut and I'll say action,
(08:34):
and so the director's guild won't get angry, but I
can go finish my scenes with the actors that I
need to reshoot. Is a very common thing. But this
is a revelation for a lot of people who are
reading this book that Hitchcock didn't actually direct some of
one of the most famous sequences in the whole film.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah, it's one of those inside baseball if you will moments. Yes, yeah.
Well so during this time period as well, there was
a challenging political landscape that was going on as well
during this time with suspensions are suspicious of anti communism
(09:19):
and censorship with McCarthyism, et cetera. How did that affect
this film?
Speaker 1 (09:27):
What effected the film quite a lot, because, for one thing,
they were going to shoot in Washington, so they were
going to be they were going to be right at
the epicenter, right And you know, one of the things
that people talk about less often about the McCarthy era
is that the people who were non white and people
(09:50):
who weren't who were gay or lesbian were also being prosecuted, persecuted, fired.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
From their jobs.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
And you on this film, he had one leading man
who was bisexual. He had several screenwriters who who were
not straight or you know, and Hitchcock, you know, he
just he just he cared because it mattered. They could
(10:20):
shut down the movie. They could have done lots of
things to make it difficult for the movie. But he
believed in hiring people who were talented and he didn't
care about the sexual orientation. He just wanted people who
would He also liked people, by the way, who would
tweak the sensors and.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Fool him.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
So, I mean, this film, you know, many consider it
one of the one of the more bold films in Hollywood.
History for its time to imply that one of the
main characters might be sexually interested in the other male character,
and and that informs some of the things that happen.
(11:03):
His obsession with following him, his obsession with who he's
going to marry, the way he looks at him. Robert
Walker a brilliant, brilliant actor who plays I guess we'd
call him the villain of the piece, but he actually
walks away with a movie, as villains often do. But
he told his co star Farley Granger, who was bisexual
(11:26):
and very much out in the world, he told him,
I'm going to play Bruno Anthony my character as gay
as homosexual. You can do with your character what you
want to, but that's how I see him. That's how
I'm going to play him. But those things weren't you know,
those things weren't really talked about that much on this set.
But everybody just made the movie. And as it turns out,
(11:49):
turns out some of the critics didn't see any of that,
and some of the Hollywood sensors didn't see that at all.
And in fact, Chenzie Ormond when the screenwriters said there's
no homosexuality in the movie and there's no homosexuality in
the book. I don't know what people are talking about,
and yet people have seen it, they talk about it,
(12:10):
they say it's so obvious, and others don't. And the
thing is, you know, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter
what you see or what you don't see. What matters
is that they wanted to make an entertaining movie, right,
and they made one. And you can come to it
with any kind of preconceived or not preconceived notion and
just enjoy the heck out of it because it's so
(12:30):
beautifully made, and.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Just take it for what it is at face value,
or you can really dive deep into it, and that's
the beauty of a film. You can look at it
for just pure entertainment value, or you can really dive
deep into a film and see if there's another message
that's coming to you exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
And you know, when a movie is really good, you
can see it at different times in your life and
experience it in a very different way because your experience
has changed, your view of life has changed, and that
to me is the mark of great art. Whether it's
a painting, a piece of music, of musical whatever it is,
you can revisit it and see learn, hear something new.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah, as you grow, that movie or that piece of art,
whatever it may be, grows with you. And like you said,
you can see it through a different lens and it
kind of makes it look like you're watching the film
for the first time.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yeah, that's what's wonderful. One of the great compliments I'm
getting from people who've read my book, Chris Cross, is
that they couldn't wait to watch the movie again because
they don't think they could ever see it in the
same way. Not as a spoiler, but but they're going
to They're going to experience it in a richer way
because they know things.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
You know.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
For example, they know they're going to know now anyone
who reads the book that this cast, as good as
it is in most of the worlds, is not the
cast that Hitchcock wanted at all. He wanted Montgomery, Cliff,
William Holden and Grace Kelly, and for various reasons, he
didn't get them. And it doesn't, you know, again, doesn't
(14:06):
change your experience. But it is interesting because if you
think of the you know, kind of the screen persona
I of those three actors, they're very different from the
people who made the film, and you can imagine kind
of a different kind of film that Hitchcock had in mind.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Absolutely, and it could have been better or it could
have been worse. That's the beauty.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
We don't know, But we just know one thing that
would have been different.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yes, absolutely, I think we can all agree on that
it would have been different. But how different, Well, we'll
never know.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Yeah, I mean, would we still be talking about it
today if you know a million variables can happen?
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yeah? Absolutely? Well, Stephen, what surprised you during the writing
and the research of this book?
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Aside from the fact that no one had written about
this book before? This is such a great story. Sorry,
And these people are so immense in terms of their egos,
for one thing, and their talent and how they clashed.
That's the thing.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
I mean.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
I read all books on all kinds of subjects, and
I love when people do a deep dive into the
making of a film. But I'm not one of those
people who thinks that every film needs a book about
it's making. Some movies, the story isn't just that interesting
this one. I knew my nose told me that this
was going to be an interesting story because of the
(15:31):
time in which the movie was shot, the fact that
you had major characters and have to call them characters
like Hitchcock, like Raymond Chandler, like Jack Warner, like Farley Granger.
I mean these people, and of course Patricia high Smith,
who has so much fascination for so many people. Now,
so I knew, I knew egos were going to clash,
(15:54):
and I knew that there was going to be a
battle to make this movie. I guess what surprised me
was really how difficult the relationship was with Hitchcock and
the writer Raymond Chandler, because it literally got to the
point where Chandraer was watching Hitchcock. And by the way,
(16:16):
we have to realize that Hitchcock every day to do
a story conference with Raymond Chandler, agreed to go from Burbank,
California to Lahoya. That's a long distance for a major
filmmaker to come to me. It really was mohammed going
to the mountain. And once Hitchcock got there, Raymond Chandler
(16:38):
was irritable, irascible, unhappy, dismissive of Hollywood, thought the novel
was terrible, wondered why Hitchcock was bothering to make this movie,
and then it descended into personal insults. And you would
see Hitchcock getting under his limousine and he would say
(17:00):
to his secretary, look at that fat sob trying to
get out of his car, and Hitchcock could hear him.
So you know, it's you want, you want to think
someone as talented as as Raymond Chandra would be, you know,
beyond that kind of school school bully kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
But it wasn't so.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
And and Hitchcock, for his part, told his the screenwriters
who came after Chandler, We're not going to use a
word of his work because it's not good. None of
it's good. And I don't want him to have credit
on the movie. But Jack Moore, but Jack Warner, the
studio boss, always thinking of the box office, that this
movie needs all the help it can get, and we
need to have a marquee name in the credits. And
(17:45):
you know, and and Raymond Chandra was not flattering in
the press about Hitchcock, nor was he flattering about Billy Wilder,
whom he called the Nazi. So so it was, you know,
I knew that I knew that the two men of
that Titanic kind of ego and talent would get down
there in the mud. But I didn't realize how thick
(18:06):
and dirty the mud was, I guess, so that was
a surprise. Sure, yeah, wow, And people have read the
book have really seemed to really gotten into how much
conflict and how much animosity there was between Hitchcock and Chandler.
And it was started with the best of intentions. I mean,
(18:26):
Hitchcock really wanted this to work, and Chandler wanted it
to work. And Chili said, well, the problem with Hitchcock
is that he'll want you to write a scene and
he'll tell you that he's going to shoot it in
the upside down champagne glass, and you're supposed to.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Make it work. So you can imagine, yes, yeah, just that,
just that dynamics that was there. Well, Steve, and I
know we're getting closer on time, But one last question
I have for you is, once the movie was done,
and we know that Hitchcock had, you know, three flops
(19:06):
prior to this, did he feel good about the film?
Did he think he had a hit? Did he go,
oh my gosh, I made now my fourth consecutive flop.
What was he thinking when things were getting wrapped up.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Well, he was thinking that it was the best premise
that he'd had for a film in many, many years.
And he knew that Robert Walker's performance was, you know,
on a whole other level. Sure, so he loved that,
and he loved Marion Lauren as villain's mother. So he
loved certain aspects of it. He didn't like the title
(19:39):
of the movie. I'm never happy with that, but he
thought he thought he thought he'd done a good job.
He called it the first time he'd really made an
American movie. But the preview audiences really liked it, and
it did very well at the box office, and it
(20:00):
launched him. It got him his confidence back, and it
launched him on this astonishing series of movies that he
made in the fifties, you know, Dial In for Murder
and Rear Window and you know North By Northwest and
Vertigo and you know, right to the end with starting
into the sixties with Psycho. So it was it was
(20:21):
a pick me up, let's move it that way for him.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Sure, sure well. And it's hard to believe that we're
kind of talking about this on Forgotten Hollywood, But like
you said at the beginning, even though it's a great
film because it didn't have the right cast and this
and that. Sometimes great films still get overlooked by the
(20:45):
public and forgotten. And I think this is a book
that kind of brings it back into focus for a
lot of people. Well, I hope.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
So. I mean, I think it's a great film, and
I've never seen the movie with an audience with the
audience wasn't really impressed and cheering and laughing and applauding
at the end. I mean, once people are exposed to it,
they know this is the real thing, this is the
real Hitchcock, right.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
But the thing is they have to be exposed to
it to be able to truly appreciate it as well.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
That's right, Well it doesn't it doesn't you know, it
doesn't show up on Turner. Yeah, so people need to
see it, they need to demand yes, well, well.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
And if it doesn't show up on something like Turner
Classic Movie TCM, people unfortunately aren't going to go look
for it because it's outside out.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Of mind, right, very very true. Yeah, I tell you
it's worth your while. If you like dark comedy, this
is your film.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Well, I think that's a great way to end and
also really encourage our listeners to do two things. First,
go out and pick up a copy of the book
Chris Cross and making enough Hitchcocks, dazzling subversive masterpieces. Strangers
on a Train. It is out you can get on Amazon,
your favorite local bookstore, or wherever you purchase your books.
(22:08):
And then once you purchase a book and you've read it,
go out and rewatch Strangers on the Train. And as
Steve and I talked about, I think you're going to
see it through a whole new lens and enjoy it
at a different level after you read this book. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
That's a great way to put it.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yes, that wish. Yes, well, Steven, thank you so much
for coming on spending some time with us today, and
again to our listeners, go out and get a copy
of Crisscross. It's out now and you can pick it
up and start reading it, and then finish it off
by watching the movie again and really enjoy Strangers on
(22:47):
a Train. Steven, again, thank you so much for coming
on and spending some time with us today.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
My pleasure, Doug, I enjoyed it very much, all right,
Thank you, thank you,
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