Alfred Hitchcock (7 page)

Was he adamant? Had the horror of the scene stunned him?

Or was it just that he realised his own impotence?

The man she called Arnold raised her suddenly, and drew her to him in a passionate embrace.

“There is something in your eyes,” he said fiercely, “that would scare off most men. It’s there now, and it’s one of the things that make me want you. You are right, Winnie. I am ready. We will go to Ostend by the early morning boat, and seek a hiding place from there.”

She nestled close to him, and their lips met in a long, sobbing kiss. And still
Roy Fleming gave no sign—raised no hand to defend his wife’s honour—uttered no word of denunciation—sought no vengeance against the man who had stolen her affections. Was it that he did not care? No—not that, only—don’t you realise? He was in the second row of the stalls!

This one was signed “Hitch & Co.,” the first record of Hitchcock teaming up with closet collaborators, a practice that would become standard for his films. Though it may seem a little puzzling on first read, “The Woman’s Part” makes sense once it’s clear that it’s written from the point of view of a husband watching his actress wife perform onstage. The “stalls” were the front stalls of a theater, downstairs, as against the less expensive “circle,” upstairs. The husband is taking “the woman’s part,” thinking about his wife as he watches her emote, as Hitchcock often took “the woman’s part” in his films, adopting her point of view with his camera.

The husband is remembering his wife at home before the performance, gazing down maternally at their child, even as he finds himself captivated by her transformation onstage, where she is impersonating an adulteress and murderess. Watching his wife as she confesses to the first Hitchcock murder, albeit one that takes place entirely within the frame of a proscenium, the husband finds his emotions strangely divided, and aroused.

“I’m a believer in the subjective,” Hitchcock said in a later interview, “that is, playing a scene from the point of view of an individual.” Subjectivity helped transfer emotions into the mind of the audience, and “putting the audience through it” was his basic credo, as he told François Truffaut. Hitchcock might have added that he always had to put
himself
through it first—in the writing, preparation, rehearsal, and, finally, direction. His grip on a film was always stronger, his grip on the audience surer, if he could empathize with a character or an actor. From this early story it is not far, for example, to Hitchcock’s first-person camera entering the danger zone with Aicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman), meeting Sebastian and Mama and the nest of Nazis in
Notorious.

The structure of “The Woman’s Part”—the idea within an idea, story within a story—is quite clever. If anything epitomizes the finest Hitchcock films, it may be that “Hitchcock operates on many levels,” in the words of Andrew Sarris. His films aimed for simplicity and clarity—even clichés—on the surface, but with contrast and counterpoint undermining the clichés, and hidden depths of detail and sophistication. Like “Gas,” “The Woman’s Part” features complex interwoven layers of teasing, surprise, and hidden business. As Sarris wrote of Hitchcock’s films: “The iron is encased in velvet, the irony in simplicity—simplicity, however, on so many levels that the total effect is vertiginously complex.”

The main theme of “A Woman’s Part” can be seen to relate to future
Hitchcock films like
Murder!, Stage Fright
, and the second
The Man Who Knew Too Much
, where the director also plays around with truth and lies in stories about actresses. It anticipates
The 39 Steps
or
Sabotage
, where the illusions onstage disguise a darker reality, and prefigures
Rear Window
, where a man with a Leica stares from a distance at a mysterious occurrence.

The third
Telegraph
story, from the February 1920 issue, was another twisted jest:

“It is not for sale, Sir.”

Through a friend I had heard of a Japanese dealer in Chelsea, who had a remarkable collection of English and Japanese antiques, and, being a keen collector, I had made my way to his shop to look over his curious stock.

The sword, a fine heavy specimen, with a chased blade and elaborate handle, was not very ancient, perhaps about twenty years old—but it had attracted me.

“I will give you a good price.”

“I am sorry, but I do not wish to sell.”

There must have been something unusual about it, and so I became more fascinated and determined to obtain the sword. After much expostulating and protesting, he agreed to sell on the promise that I would purchase other things in the near future.

“There is some history connected with this, is there not?” I asked.

“Yes, there is, and if you have time I will tell it to you.”

At the time of the Russo-Japanese War, Kiosuma, his son, was an ambitious lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army. It chanced that once Kiosuma was charged with the despatch of documents to a destination back in Japan which took him near his home. On the journey he failed to notice that he was being followed by two men—Russian Agents.

His home was about an hour’s journey short of his ultimate destination, so he decided he would call there first.

As he alighted from the train, a feeling of delight enveloped him when he thought of the surprise that he would give his parents. He made his way up the hill of the little village beyond which his parents lived, his path lying through a wood. He quickened his step with the excitement of anticipation, until—almost within sight of his house—he heard a step behind him. Turning, he saw an arm raised, then came oblivion—

It was night when he regained consciousness, and as he struggled to his feet he endeavoured to collect his dazed thoughts.

Then he remembered—the papers!

What should he do? With the papers gone—!

He staggered towards his house, the lights of which were discernible through the trees, and was met by his father.

“O son, from whence came thou?”

Kiosuma proceeded to explain with difficulty.

The brow of his father darkened, his eyes narrowed, and his face grew to that of a mask.

“Oh, unworthy one! Thou hast betrayed the trust of the great Nippon. Where now is thy honor?”

“But my father, they have not the code!”

“Thou dare to excuse thyself! Take the sword—thou knowest the only course.”

Slowly, but fearlessly, Kiosuma proceeded to his room. He laid a white sheet on the floor, and placed a candle at each corner, then having robed himself in a white kimono, he knelt down and cast his eyes upwards.

He raised the sword, with the point to his heart and—

I took the sword home and in the firelight continued to examine my purchase while I pondered over the strange tale of the afternoon.

I noticed that the handle was a little loose; perhaps it unscrewed. I tried it with success, and detached the blade.

Lowering it to the firelight I studied the unpolished surface and read—

Made in Germany, 1914!

This composition might be subtitled (to tweak a well-known Hitchcock maxim) “It’s Only a Story.” As in his films, the shocks and the comedy mingle and leaven each other in his
Telegraph
pieces. Of the seven he wrote, five have turnabout endings, and only two are bereft of any comedy. Hitchcock’s irrepressible sense of humor suffused the company publication, which was generously sprinkled throughout with his puns, witty captions, and play-on-word titles like “Sordid” (or “Sworded,” as it were.)

Before he entered film, Hitchcock was already well known at Henley’s as a “natural humorist and clown,” in the words of W. A. Moore. “He had a sparkling wit,” said Moore, “but it was not only the things he said but the spontaneous and unexpected things he
did
which gave us aching sides and streaming eyes. On every outing to which he went he bubbled over with joyous fooling and sent us home stiff with laughter.”

Not only did Hitchcock help run the
Telegraph
, but, as improbable as it seems, he also figured in Henley’s recreational activities. He entered billiards tournaments and organized the Henley’s soccer club. He followed boxing, tennis, racing, and soccer; years later, in Hollywood, he told associates
he subscribed to the London newspapers partly to monitor the West Ham club scores.

Hitchcock supervised Henley’s soccer team for several seasons—quite possibly at a financial loss to himself, given his already established hatred of bookkeeping. “He never did value money and would always rather pay out of his own pocket than be worried with the keeping of records,” remembered Moore.

Although he professed never to have had a bona fide date with a woman other than his wife (and there’s little evidence to doubt him), at company-sponsored occasions Hitchcock did socialize freely with female employees. This included evenings at the Cripplegate Institute on nearby Golden Lane, a small hall that presented lectures, entertainments, and classes. He took waltz and ballroom dance lessons at Cripplegate, sponsored by Henley’s: then, and later in life, Hitchcock was a surprisingly light-footed dancer, and he larded his films with memorable dance and ballroom sequences.

The dance lessons were presided over by a man named William Graydon, whose acquaintance with Hitchcock exerted a profound effect on the future filmmaker. At one time the Graydons lived quite near the Hitchcocks in Leytonstone, and the two families, both Catholic and theatrically inclined, may have known each other before Cripplegate. Graydon was the father of one Edith Thompson, who at times, along with her younger sister Avis, helped out with the Cripplegate classes. Edith also appeared in amateur productions in London, which, given Hitchcock’s interest in the stage, he may well have attended. Certainly Hitchcock was acquainted with Edith, although he never admitted as much on the record. He spoke primarily of knowing her father.

In 1923, Edith Thompson was hanged along with her lover, Frederick Bywaters, after being found guilty of complicity in the murder of her husband. Though Bywaters did the actual killing, Thompson was alleged to have incited the crime. The controversial trial and execution made the case one of England’s most sensational in the 1920s, dominating headlines and public debate for months. To have had such a close tie to this young woman, whom many believed to be falsely convicted, surely affected Hitchcock. Surely it influenced his view of crime and punishment, and the many Hitchcock plotlines in which women, if often murder victims, are rarely clear-cut killers.

In the 1960s Hitchcock discussed the Edith Thompson case with a British journalist who also prided himself on being a crime buff. Each boasted of having devoured all the sources. Hitchcock had read
A Pin to See the Peepshow
, the 1934 roman à clef about the celebrated crime, and attended
People Like Us
, a stage play based on the incident. (He knew the playwright, Frank Vosper, who acted in
Waltzes from Vienna
and
The
Man Who Knew Too Much.
) Both Hitchcock and the journalist professed to have inside knowledge of the execution; the journalist claimed that Thompson had grown so hysterical as doom approached that guards had to tie her to a small wooden chair before drawing the noose around her neck.

“Oh no, my boy,” Hitchcock interjected, his eyes glinting. “That’s not the way it was at all. She was hanged in a bosun’s chair.”

“What’s that, Mr. Hitchcock?” asked the journalist, though he had some idea. (The dictionary describes it as a wooden board slung by a rope, to be used by sailors for sitting on while at work, aloft, or over the side of a ship.)

Demonstrating, Hitchcock took his right arm and crossed it to the inside of his left elbow, clasping it there. Then he leaned across to where the other man was sitting, grabbed the man’s right arm, and crossed it likewise, pulling him closer to create a makeshift “chair” of connected limbs. The director had staged the action, making the journalist part of it. “That, my boy,” said Hitchcock dryly, “is a bosun’s chair.” The director never mentioned, however, whether he had known Thompson personally.

Such was his sensitivity to the subject, however, that when Hitchcock read John Russell Taylor’s draft of his authorized biography fifty years later, he requested only two minor deletions. One was Taylor’s mention of the Graydon acquaintance. Hitchcock explained that his sister, Nellie, living in England, was still on friendly terms with Avis, Edith Thompson’s sister. Hitchcock said he exchanged cards with Avis, and occasionally encountered her, when in England. The dark past never came up between them as an issue, he explained, and it was part of their bond that he pretended not to remember. The director didn’t want the book to embarrass Avis.

In September 1920 another
Telegraph
was published, featuring a particularly elaborate Hitchcock short story that showed his propensity for subject matter that (given the venue) might have flirted with censorship: