Read Online It's Only a Movie: Alfred Hitchcock by Charlotte Chandler - Free Book Online Page A

wanted. It was a daunting prospect, but Hitchcock was never one to say no to himself.
    He planned his words and pondered scenarios. The end of the voyage, however, drew close, with Alma’s seasickness, which she believed was terminal, showing no sign of abating.
    As Alma, “looking green,” lay in agony on her bunk, Hitchcock remembered paying her a visit and blurting out his proposal. It didn’t come out as he had rehearsed it, but she didn’t say no. She only burped, which Hitchcock took as yes.
    Alma told me, “I was too weak to say yes, or I would have said it.”

    W HEN THE I SLINGTON S TUDIOS were offered for sale, and Balcon bought them for Gainsborough Pictures, it was for a fraction of the asking price, to be paid out over a period of seven years. Balcon was on his way to becoming one of Britain’s most important producers.
    The next Cutts-directed Gainsborough picture to be shot in Germany was The Blackguard, for which Hitchcock was able to incorporate into his set designs some of the ideas of forced perspective he had been observing at UFA. He was also able to save a great deal of money by using suggestion rather than showing everything.
    “One of the important things I learned at UFA was that you are only responsible for what is in the frame. If you want to give the impression of a great European cathedral, all you have to do is show an important detail. The audience will see the whole cathedral in its mind.”
    When Cutts said that he did not want to work with Hitchcock again, Balcon decided it was time to give the younger man a chance to prove himself. In 1925, Hitchcock was assigned to direct another Anglo-German production, The Pleasure Garden, to be shot in Munich and Italy. Alma would be his assistant director.
    “Someone told me,” Hitchcock recalled, “that Cutts said to Balcon, ‘I don’t want to work anymore with that know-it-all son-of-a-bitch, Hitchcock.’
    “Well, Cutts not wanting me could have ruined my career, but instead, it was the making of it. It gave me the opportunity I didn’t even know yet I wanted. I was to be a director.”

II.
The British
Films

Cub Director
The Pleasure Garden to The Lodger
    W HEN I WAS STARTING OUT in films,” Hitchcock told me, “I was a cub director. But I didn’t want anyone to know it.
    “Nita Naldi was my first murder. I’d never killed anyone before—in a picture I directed, that is. In The Pleasure Garden, she’s drowned by the villain, though it was actually her stand-in who was murdered, since Miss Naldi hadn’t arrived in Italy yet.
    “Someone said that I didn’t personally direct that murder, but I am guilty of every one of my screen murders. It’s how I’ve earned my blood money.”
    Balcon preferred that Hitchcock prove himself as a director away from England, so he was sent to Munich, where he and Alma would work with a German company. For the American market, Balcon had contracted Nita Naldi, Virginia Valli, and Carmelita Geraghty, well-known Hollywood actors, as the stars. Naldi had just starred with Rudolph Valentino in Blood and Sand. The actual filming would be done at the Emelka Studios in Munich, as well as on location in Italy.
    After preparations in Munich, Alma went to Cherbourg to meet Valli and Geraghty, while Hitchcock went to Genoa to shoot the departure of a ship. Accompanying him were actor Miles Mander, who was also to be in the film, and the cameraman, the Baron Gaetano di Ventimiglia.
    At the Italian border, their film stock was confiscated. In Genoa, after Hitchcock had sent for more film, the confiscated film arrived with an unexpected duty imposed. As other unexpected expenses accrued, Hitchcock’s money was stolen from his hotel room, and he had to borrow from Mander and Ventimiglia in order to shoot the scene.
    When he returned to Munich already over-budget, Hitchcock found that the Hollywood stars had demanded first-class accommodations from Cherbourg to Munich. At the end of shooting, in late summer