Hitchcock had some big writers on his films, but you would never know it.
-John Michael Hayes to Pat McGilligan in Backstory:
Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1960s and 70s
A love-hate relationship developed between Alfred Hitchcock and almost everyone of his writers. Few directors were as involved in the writing process as he was; many writers felt he deserved co-writer status on their screenplays. He rarely took screenplay credit, yet his overwhelming control over the final shape of a production sometimes antagonized writers, who felt slighted when critics ignored their contributions--and rather more so when Hitchcock himself failed to point out their contributions in interviews.
Hitchcock made few films that were not based on another source. Early in his career, he co-wrote two screenplays for Graham Cutts, The White Shadow (1923) and The Passionate Adventure (1924), and wrote two others for Cutts, The Black guard and The Prude's Fall (both 1925), himself. As a director, he wrote the scenario for The Ring (1927) and Alma wrote the screenplay. After this film, one of his finest silents, Hitchcock based only one other film on a story of his own devise: Notorious (1946), reworked into a full screenplay by Ben Hecht. For the rest of his oeuvre, he drew on whatever other sources were available to him--and, very often, from previously published fiction.
[THE NOVEL]
Since the publication of Francois Truffaut's historic interviews with Hitchcock in the 1960s, it has been widely accepted that the authors of D'Entre les Morts knew that Hitchcock had bid unsuccessfully for their first novel, and that envy of the resulting Clouzot film's success had left him wanting another story from them.
But according to Thomas Narcejac, one of the book's authors, this was never the case. He admits that Hitchcock and their writing team shared com mon interests, but in an interview conducted for this book, he maintained firmly that he and his collaborator never had any intention of writing a book especially for Hitchcock.
The genesis of the idea for their second novel actually took place, much more provocatively, in a French cinema. As Narcejac was watching a newsreel, he felt he distinctly recognized a friend he had lost touch with during the war; the idea of discovering a lost acquaintance in such a way stayed with him, and it suggested to him the outline of a story. "After the war," he explains, "there were many displaced people and families-it was common to have 'lost' a friend. I began to think about the possibilities of recognizing someone like this. Maybe someone who was thought dead ... and this is where D'Entre les Morts began to take shape."
Thomas Narcejac was born in a small French coastal village in 1908. He would have gone into the family seafaring business had he not lost the use of one eye in a childhood accident; his partial blindness led him instead to a philosophy degree from the French Societe des Lettres and then to a teaching career. As a teacher, Narcejac became fascinated by the form and function of the mystery genre and began to write mystery fiction, most of which he threw away. Enough was kept, though, and published that he was awarded the Prix Roman d'Aventure in 1948. It was a study of the mystery genre that he published in 1948 that caught the attention of his colleague in crime, Pierre Boileau.
Boileau was born in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris in 1906. After working for years at the kinds of jobs that are often quaintly referred to as opportunities to gather experience, Boileau had begun writing in the 1930s. His novel Les Repos de Bacchus had won the Prix Roman d'Aventure ten years before Narcejac's, in 1938. Yet the glory would be short-lived: Considered anti-Nazi, Boileau was immediately arrested in 1939 with the German occupation.
He was sent to work as a member of the French welfare department. The experience proved rewarding, as it required Boileau to spend his time interviewing criminals at various penal colonies--an ideal experience for a mystery writer. When he was released in 1942, he returned to his writing; six years later, while browsing in a Paris bookshop, he came across Narcejac's book about the genre, and he was intrigued enough to contact the author.
Boileau and Narcejac held similar views on the way mysteries should be structured, and soon they had developed a successful working relationship: "I was more the person who developed the character, the internal, emotional logic of the story," Narcejac recalls, "and Boileau was definitely best at the plot, the external logic of the story. We would meet and discuss an idea. Then, from only a few notes, I would have to go away and start the novel, giving Boileau the pages a few at a time. These he would correct-pointing out inconsistencies, contradictions. Some things I would lose track of, as I was following the emotion of the story and not the plot."
Their first novel, The Woman Who Was No More (1952), was successful in France, England, and the United States. Throughout their partnership, the two produced novels that were puzzles requiring close attention, each combining startling twists of plot with characters at their wit's end, grasping at any opportunity to find meaning.
It was Les Diaboliques (1955), the Clouzot film of their first novel, that brought the team to the attention of Paramount and Hitchcock. Les Diaboliques was an outstanding success, and the style and story of the film were certainly Hitchcockian-a fact that could not have been lost on either the director or his studio.
Paramount recorded its first reading of the team's next novel in 1954, before it was even translated into English. The strength of reader Edward Doyle's November 1954 synopsis, and the French writers' reputation, sold Hitchcock on the novel. Paramount purchased the rights to From Among the Dead on April 20, 1955, for $25,275.
A memo from Paramount executive John Mock reveals that Flamingo Feather and From Among the Dead were bought with the agreement that each would be made by Hitchcock for Paramount. Flamingo Feather, it suggests, was not so much a project Hitchcock wanted as one Paramount wanted for him. The French novel appears to have been a trade-the studio would buy Hitchcock that novel if he'd make the adventure story.
The novel begins with the meeting of two old friends:
"Here's what I mean," said Gevigne. "I want you to keep watch on my wife."
"Good God! Is she being unfaithful?"
"No."
"Well?"
"It's not easy to explain. She's queer .... I'm worried about her." "What exactly are you afraid of?"
(from the Denny translation of From Among the Dead-1955)
According to associate producer Herbert Coleman, it was Lew Wasserman who brought the French novelists to the attention of Hitchcock. The evidence suggests that it was Hitchcock himself who requested the coverage on the book from Paramount. This 1955 report by Allida Allen is a straightforward summary:
ROGER FLAVIERES, Paris advocate, is asked by a former school fellow, GEVIGNE, for help in a delicate personal matter. Gevigne, prosperous shipbuilder-particularly now with France and Germany at war-explains he's concerned over the sudden odd behavior of his wife, MADELEINE.
They have been happily married for 4 years, but in the last few months she has been acting strangely--suddenly falling into deep meditations or trance-like withdrawals to a world where he cannot reach her. The doctors can find nothing wrong with her, either physically or mentally.
But Gevigne fears for her and, extremely busy with his wartime contracts, he cannot spend much time with her. That is why he is asking Flavieres to keep watch over Madeleine for him. Flavieres's questions bring out the fact that Madeleine seems obsessed-in some occult way-by the spirit of her great-grandmother, Pauline Lagerlac, whom she resembles.
Pauline was considered queer and died young. Flavieres accepts the unusual assignment and for several weeks follows Madeleine wherever she goes, observing her actions-but taking care she does not see him. They have never met. She possesses a strange beauty that enchants Flavieres so that, before a week is out, he is hopelessly in love with her. Then one day he saves her from the Seine, and from then on they become friends. He does not mention knowing her husband.
They form the habit of rambling about Paris and the countryside together and Madeleine, who on several occasions falls into a trance-like meditation, gradually confides to Flavieres she is certain she has lived before-she can recall scenes-a town which Flavieres later ascertains from Gevigne she's never been to. But Pauline Lagerlac had!
The more he sees of Madeleine the greater grows the mystery and his love, which he confesses to her. Then one day she insists on their driving to a small town some distance from Paris and climbing an old church tower-though Flavieres, who suffers from vertigo, cannot follow her to the top. To his horror, he sees her body come hurtling to the ground. Dazed by grief and shock, he cannot bring himself to go near the body and flees to Paris. He says nothing to Gevigne about being with Madeleine. When her body is found, Gevigne seems distracted with grief. Still in a daze, Flavieres leaves Paris-and a sud den German advance blocks his return. The war is over when Flavieres returns to Paris.
He has been unable to forget his love for Madeleine. Inquiry reveals Gevigne, upset when police questioned him about his wife's death, fled from Paris-only to be killed in a German air raid. War has even obliterated Madeleine's grave. Flavieres however cannot believe she is really dead. He is certain she lives again. Then a newsreel sends him hurrying to Marseilles in search of a woman he saw in it. He knows she is Madeleine-but when he finds her, she denies it.
She is RENEE SOURANGE and is living with ALMARYAN, a black market operator. But Flavieres, having gotten Renee to leave Almaryan for him, stubbornly persists in trying to make her admit that she is Madeleine. She finally does confess she is the Madeleine he knew, but her name is really Renee Sourange. He never saw Gevigne's wife-the real Madeleine! It was a plot of Gevigne's--with the aid of Renee, then his mistress--to rid himself of his wealthy wife without being suspected. It was the real Madeleine who fell from the tower--Gevigne having taken her there before Flavieres and the supposed Madeleine (Renee) arrived.
Flavieres's testimony about Madeleine's strange trances was to mislead the police. But Flavieres's flight upset things-Stunned, Flavieres seizes Renee in his anger-and not realizing what he is doing, strangles her. Then, horrified and remorseful over what he has done he surrenders to the police. Allen's synopsis is complete, with the exception of one remarkable touch she omits: At the end of the novel, as the police take him away, Flavieres kisses the dead Renee.
Some have claimed that Hitchcock's film was so complete a transformation as to render its origins unrecognizable. Anyone familiar with Vertigo will find it easy to perceive the roots of the film in the Boileau-Narcejac original. Many of the basic elements are there, down to the vertigo itself-mentioned only in passing in the synopsis--which would become the center of Hitchcock's psychological drama.
[THE SCREENPLAY]
Hitchcock turned to the distinguished playwright Maxwell Anderson on June 14, 1956, to transform the French novel into a first-draft screenplay for a flat rate of $65,000. The novel and Allen's summary were shipped to Anderson at his home in Stamford, Connecticut, along with airline tickets for Anderson and his wife to visit San Francisco. In the Hitchcock files, there are undated interlinear notes indicating the location change to San Francisco and Mission San Juan Bautista. It is not possible to tell whether these are Hitchcock's annotations, but they indicate that San Francisco and the Spanish mission to its south were selected early in October as the film's locations.
The following month, Hitchcock left for his extensive South African trip, scouting Flamingo Feather locations with his wife and associate producer, Herbert Coleman. Feather was an elaborate story involving a secret concentration camp of South Americans who were being trained for evil purposes--and, as Hitchcock and his traveling team soon found out, if the preposterous story wasn't enough to kill the project, the inevitable difficulties of filming in South Africa would be. While Anderson began work on From Among the Dead, Angus MacPhail tried in vain to make some sense of Feather for Hitchcock. But by the end of the summer, the South African project was scrapped, placing a great deal more importance on whatever Anderson had managed to accomplish in the interim.
Fellow playwright Samuel Taylor remembered Maxwell Anderson as "bluff and hardy, a perfectly nice man" known principally for his great plays What Price Glory? and Winterset. He had worked sporadically as a screenwriter since 1930, when he co-wrote the screenplay for Lewis Milestone's film adaptation of the Erich Maria Remarque novel All Quiet on the Western Front (1930); for Milestone he also wrote Rain (1932), then co-wrote Death Takes a Holiday (1934) for director Mitchell Leisen-a short but exemplary list of films. His collaboration with Hitchcock on this film would be his last film work: he died in February 1959.
A writer of great prestige, Anderson was known and trusted to work quickly on his own. After his weekend in San Francisco, Anderson toiled away at the screenplay for From Among the Dead at his Stamford home. His agent, Irving 'Swifty" Lazar, wired Herbert Coleman in Nairobi that Anderson would have fifty pages for Hitchcock to see when he stopped in New York City on his way back from the American tour.
The two lunched and spoke at length at the St. Regis Hotel in New York upon the director's return to the States, but it would be their last optimistic meeting. It's unclear whether Hitchcock could have done more than glance at Anderson's work before the two met-more likely, he read the pages on his flight back to California-and in any event, it would have been unlike Hitchcock to say anything negative to Anderson about the work he'd done. But whatever the case, the collaboration was doomed: He wouldn't fire Anderson immediately but upon his arrival home, Alfred Hitchcock immediately began looking at other screenwriters.
"Darkling, I Listen," the September 1956 draft Anderson submitted to Hitchcock, is a standard B detective picture that would have seemed creaky during the late forties. The feel of the Anderson script is similar to The Wrong Man, sacrificing the atmosphere and imagination of the original novel by staying too close to its plot points and detective-story details. Anderson was interpreting the French novel using the same realistic vocabulary of The Wrong Man-and for the vertiginous nightmare vision the novelists (and, no doubt, Hitchcock) had in mind, this style would not do.
The Anderson script opens, like the novel, with the meeting between Flavieres and Gevigne (whom he renames Kilrain and Elder). Kilrain reluctantly agrees to follow Elder's wife; his first opportunity to see her is at an opera that evening. There are fellow detectives in this first version who serve to provide the needed exposition on Kilrain's acrophobia-caused somewhat implausibly by an unfortunate accident atop the Golden Gate Bridge.
Madeleine sings and paints in this first draft; her character is haunting, but in a cliched way. The romantic side of the story line develops rather quickly: Kilrain has an affair with Madeleine; he confronts Elder, and is fired by him, before Madeleine leaps from the top of Pigeon Lighthouse, near San Mateo.
The second half of the screenplay concerns Kilrain's obsession with the dead Madeleine. The denouement is not at the lighthouse or a tower, but, once again, atop Golden Gate Bridge. Renee turns to Kilrain--"Dying is easy" before leaping into San Francisco Bay. There is one nice touch: Kilrain had a cigarette lighter inscribed Eurydice, after the ill-fated wife of Orpheus.
Anderson's dialogue is awful, his set pieces overworked. The sequence on the Golden Gate is a good example of how not to write a Hitchcock scene. And yet, buried among the overwhelming inadequacies, Anderson contributed important elements to the story that would remain through the final film: The Mission Dolores sequence is in this first draft, as well as a scene that would evolve into the first encounter between Scottie Ferguson and Madeleine Elster.
Dissatisfied with Anderson's work, Hitchcock turned next to his old comrade Angus MacPhail. MacPhail had been a fellow editor with Alma at Gaumont-British; he was responsible for coining the term MacGuffin in Hitchcock's work-the item in so many Hitchcock screenplays that drives the action but actually has little to do with the film's characters and the creation of suspense.(The secret airplane plans in The 39 Steps and the uranium ore in Notorious are among Hitchcock's famous MacGuffins.)
As a team in the thirties, MacPhail and Hitchcock worked on The Man Who Knew Too Much (MacPhail co-wrote the 1950s remake), and during the war MacPhail worked with Hitchcock on two films about the French Resistance. Throughout, MacPhail battled alcoholism; by the 1950s, Hitchcock had sent a letter to MacPhail's friends in an effort to create a monetary fund to help support him during his "illnesses."
After Flamingo Feather collapsed, MacPhail was depending on Hitchcock to come through with another assignment. In early August, while working on the African script, MacPhail had written Coleman: "How is Hitch? How is the San Francisco story? I have a new idea about the story, that it should be told from the start, from the lady's own angle. Indeed, I keep having crazy ideas." Hitchcock must have been glad to hear that someone was having new ideas about the story, since Anderson's work hadn't been panning out.
But in late August of 1956, MacPhail wrote to Coleman from the Westwood Manor Hotel that his planned start on From Among the Dead the following Tuesday would have to be canceled. "It's no use my trying to kid either you or myself," he wrote: The drinking had been getting to him, and he had decided his only course of action was to take the open-air cure. "You can imagine what I feel like, missing this splendid assignment. But it's better to miss it than to fall down on it."
But the MacPhail story wasn't over. On the morning of September fourth, Coleman would sign MacPhail after all-only to have another note arrive later the same day:
Herbie:
Terribly sorry to let you down like this, but I'm in bed again. Over did my attempt to get well quick.
It's a fascinating story of course [From Among the Dead--but it needs a real big imaginative contribution-which I simply couldn't provide just now.
Incidentally, it ought to be a woman working on this subject.
Signed Angus.
Coleman canceled the note signing MacPhail.
Before his departure from the project, MacPhail did complete fifteen pages of an opening scene for the story: the long conversation between Flavieres and Gevigne (or Roger Dane and Carl Garron, as MacPhail calls them). His version plays much longer than Anderson's, with constant inexplicable interruptions by Garron's secretary. But he provided no more, and he may not have been paid for his work; his name does not appear in the film's final budget.
During this time, MacPhail wrote the director an amusing note, the message of which might have been seconded by many of Hitchcock's writers. "The chap at Jurgensens [a grocery store] said to me yesterday, 'I saw The Man Who Knew Too Much. Swell picture. Does Mr. Hitchcock write a lot of his films himself?' I replied, 'More than somewhat--but don't report my word to the writer's guild or I shall be extradited.'"
His flirtation with work on From Among the Dead and the work he completed on Flamingo Feather would be the last film work MacPhail would attempt. He died, at age fifty-six, in 1961.
Hitchcock signed the virtually unknown Alec Coppel to the San Francisco project on September twenty-first, at a salary of fifteen hundred dollars per week. There's no compelling evidence to suggest why Hitchcock chose Coppel. According to Coleman, he was under contract to Paramount; perhaps the studio offered Coppel.
Perhaps it was a recommendation from Alec Guinness, who had starred in Coppers only previous film work--The Captain’s Paradise (1953-Anthony Kimmins, director), based on his original story of a sea captain who changes his personality for a different girl in every port. Coppel had written three books of light fiction--A Man About a Dog (1947), Mr. Denning Drives North (1950), and The Last Parade (1953)-as well as one stage play, 1953's I Killed the Count. But his work on Vertigo would be of a different order altogether.
From September twenty-first until the end of 1956, Hitchcock would work intensively with Alec Coppel on the script. Hitchcock's usual manner was to meet daily. His greatest concerns in crafting any film had to do with structure-with the shape and order of the sequences that would become the film's skeleton, providing a sound structure on which to build dialogue and characterization.
Charles Bennett, who worked with Hitchcock on his first run of great films in Britain (from Blackmail to Young and Innocent), recalled that Hitchcock preferred to talk over lunch or dinner, often at a favorite club or restaurant: "Sometimes the conversation appeared to have nothing to do with the film until Hitchcock would suddenly say, 'That reminds me, in the scene .. .' That's how he preferred to work-often an indirect approach."
Hitchcock admitted to this penchant for taking breaks. "Certain writers want to work every hour of the day-they're very facile. I'm not that way. I want to say, 'Let's layoff for several hours-let's play.' And then, we get down to it again."
In his first meeting with Coppel, Hitchcock outlined the picture in nine teen scenes--Coppels handwritten notes, among the Vertigo files give each scene's basic action. Many of the essential moments from the film are present in these notes, dated "9/27/56," including an intriguing character study of Renee, the character who would become Judy in the final film. In a portrait quite different from what we'd expect, she is described in these notes as being "from a wealthy family back East-and ultimately very disturbed by the murder." Renee met Gavin Elster (a slight twist on Anderson's Elder), he notes, on a cruise to Europe.
The description of Gavin Elster, on the other hand, is consistent with the character' in the final film, and in these notes a few details about his life are established for the first time-among them his impressive office and his profession as a shipbuilder. Also included in these notes are ideas for another beginning for the film. The book and Anderson's screenplay had begun with the meeting between Gevigne (Elster) and Flavieres (Kilrain). Hitchcock and Coppel create a new scene--a police chase on the rooftops of San Francisco.
NEW OPENING
Picture to open with chase over San Francisco rooftops with 2 policemen chasing a suspect. They are armed and one of them is in uniform. The climax of the chase comes when the uniformed man slips and the plain clothes detective fails to rescue him from a perilous hanging position.
Would like to discuss with Henry Bumstead in order that he can figure out some sketches showing how this could work.
Also, we should work out how we can put over in a pictorial way the effect of a man suffering from vertigo. (Herbie Coleman has some preliminary sketches on this idea which must be done optically.)
There is one difference here from the scene that made it to the screen. Here it is the uniformed policeman who slips first, and the plain clothes detective who fails to help him; in the film, it is the opposite way around. But ultimately more important is this early mention of the need to translate the effects of vertigo to the screen.
Hitchcock's desire to convey the condition visually was one of the major technical challenges of the motion picture.
Anderson's draft had included a number of plot turns Hitchcock and Coppel disliked. In Anderson's script, for example, the Elster character is shot; but Hitchcock pointed out that this was not necessary-in fact, it was important that "the husband should stay alive so that when our detective returns a year later he finds a distraught man who has lost his wife and who refuses to accept the detective's confession of guilt for allowing his wife to throw herself from the tower.
"This scene could take place at a time when the husband, now a broken man over his wife's death, is leaving San Francisco for good. He will go to Europe and will probably live there for good-where he is not sure, he will let his old friend know when he has settled down.
"The reason for the husband being alone now and that Renee is no longer with him is because the witnessing of the murder was such a shock to her and the brutality and clumsiness of it sent her away from him."
The September 27th notes also contain the first extensive discussion of the tower scene at San Juan Bautista--not the lighthouse, as Anderson had envisioned it in his first draft, but a far more picturesque and old-world setting. In later production notes, it's pointed out that the actual lighthouse would not be available for filming--and, in any case, was normally locked to the public, making it implausible that Kilrain and Madeleine could enter.
Yet this must have been the production crew just doing their duty: Hitchcock had settled on the church at San Juan Bautista after the first location trip.
According to the notes, it was important to Hitchcock and Coppel's vision that San Juan Bautista be fairly deserted in the film. The Spanish mission is slightly off the tourist's path; the charm of the period buildings and the peacefulness of the beautiful mission attract tourists nonetheless, but it was that charm--not the tourists who craved it--that the filmmakers wanted to capture on camera.
Hitchcock noted that at the top of the tower when Madeleine continues to the very highest landing, she should not lock the door on Kilrain because this would indicate that they are not using his acrophobia at all. After all, if she was going up to a tower she could even elude a normal man and lock the door.
When he looks out and sees the body falling, we should create again the same effect as at the beginning of the picture. In fact, we should show it twice in the tower-once when he is deterred from following Madeleine and again when the body falls.
After the body has fallen and he is staring down we should quickly lap dissolve to a reprise of the shot when the policeman fell at the beginning so that we are able to photograph his terrible guilt and his reason for hiding and running away.
In notes dated October 17th through October 23rd, further details emerge--typical of the continual evolution that occurred as Hitchcock worked with his screenwriters. In a gesture that later proved unnecessary, Hitchcock noted that a NO PARKING sign should be added outside of Mission Dolores to give Madeleine a reason to enter at the rear of the mission.
Other locations were changed altogether in the course of this week of meetings-from Golden Gate Park to Lincoln Park; from the DeYoung Museum to the Palace of the Legion of Honor.
By the end of October, the script had begun to take on a recognizable shape. Much of what Hitchcock and Coppel had come up with together would remain in the final draft. There are exceptions, among them a persistent sequence that takes place in the moments after Madeleine's suicide attempt. Adding detail--and a modicum of suspense--Hitchcock and Coppel had a fisherman rush to Kilrain's aid. Kilrain puts him off and takes Madeleine to his apartment, where the scene progresses much as it does in the final version.
A more notable scene lost in subsequent drafts takes place at Coit Tower, where Madeleine tries to cure Kilrain's acrophobia--an episode apparently intended to demonstrate that Gavin Elster is testing the severity of Kilrain's fear of heights. As Madeleine goes to the top of Coit, Kilrain waits anxiously at the base, watching for her to emerge from the elevator at the top. She does, but then she disappears. He circles the base, terrified that she has plunged to her death. Madeleine emerges from the elevator at the base and says, "What were you afraid of-that I was going to fall? That's only because you have the fear."
Early in November, Coppel and Hitchcock penned an interesting initial version of the first kiss--the first draft of a remarkable moment of passion in the film:
Inside the car, Madeleine is in the middle of describing a dream to Jimmy. She says that it is a recurrent dream and this bothers her in some way. She feels there is something very important about this dream but the importance eludes and mystifies her. Jimmy tries to laugh this off telling her that we all have our own recurrent dreams--they are quite common and one shouldn't worry about them.
Madeleine continues telling him of the substance of the dream. She sees very distinctly and in great detail a scene which seems to be set in Spain. There is an old Spanish church with cloisters. There is a monastery with a square outside and buildings surrounding it.
As Jimmy listens he watches her with growing concern at her intensity, because she seems to be slipping back into one of her odd moods again. He then very gently asks her about the possibility of her ever trying to commit suicide again. She replies that she doesn't think he really understands her. He presses her but she tries to avoid continuing the discussion. She opens the door of the car and moves away to the rocks at the edge of the sea. Jimmy follows her, concerned and alert.
Surprisingly she turns and stretches out a hand to him--she asks him to hold onto her, as though she is fighting against some compulsion. Jimmy moves closer to her.
Suddenly she flings herself into his arms pressing herself close to him holding him tightly as though for support. She is on the borderline of hysteria apparently from fear. With her head turned away from him she begs him to hold her--not to let her go.
We can see from Jimmy's face that not only is he moved by this, but that he is desperately in love with her. He quietly reassures her and lifts her face to him and kisses her.
Still in a wild mood and with the wind whirling around them, she passionately returns his kiss.
FADE OUT.
Among the intriguing details this passage reveals, one is paramount: Hitchcock and Coppel are no longer referring to their protagonist as Kilrain or Flavieres, but with the unmistakable name of their leading actor: Jimmy.
In the following days (through November thirteenth), another major sequence was solidified; Hitchcock's interlinear comments are written on Coppel’s typed notes. Describing Madeleine's dream, Hitchcock wrote that Jimmy says, "It is preserved just in the way she describes, the old hotel, the livery stables-all kept intact as a sort of museum." Coppel wanted Jimmy to sign in at San Juan Bautista's visitor's book. Hitchcock struck this and wrote "Why?" in the margin.
A new sequence that would survive to the final draft is Scottie's dream sequence after Madeleine's suicide attempt.
INT. JIMMY'S BEDROOM-NIGHT-FADE IN.
We see a restless figure lying asleep. A BIG HEAD [extreme closeup] of him fills the screen as he turns from side to side. There is a SLOW DISSOLVE-but the head of the restless Jimmy is still on screen. Coming into focus and superimposed as it gets closer is the head and shoulders of painted Pauline [Carlotta in the final film].
The camera pans down until it comes to the posey held by a skeletal hand. The picture clears from the screen and a new image superimposes itself. It is the final scene at the inquest when Madeleine's husband is reassuring Jimmy. But this time though it is not too well lit, a woman's head can be seen buried in his shoulder. The husband says, "Tell him it wasn't his fault. Tell him."
The woman moves her head and turns with an enigmatic smile to Jimmy. It is the face of Pauline Lagerlac dressed in the costume she wore in the painting and wearing the ruby necklace. This picture
FADES AWAY
... and a new image comes over the scene. It is the graveyard at Mission Dolores.
The camera is moving nearer to the grave of Pauline Lagerlac.
We see a CU of Jimmy approaching it.
Then we reverse and show the camera approaching the grave--it is open and there is a black abyss but the headstone is still there.
CU of Jimmy coming to a stop as he stares down. Now we show the black depths of the grave filling the screen. Suddenly we are falling, in the same spot that Jimmy saw his policeman colleague fall.
BIG HEAD CU of Jimmy--hair windswept--staring down in horror as he falls.
Reverse angle--he is still falling but this time he is falling into the roof of the Mission and when he reaches spot where Madeleine fell, the picture clears and Jimmy sits up in bed in alarm staring up into camera.
FADE OUT.
Noted painter John Ferren, who had worked with Hitchcock on The Trouble with Harry, would provide a detailed description and storyboard for the dream sequence. The final sequence would remain true to almost every detail to this earliest draft.
By late November, the script was nearly complete. In the second half of the Coppel screenplay, "Jimmy" searches madly for a Madeleine look-alike he has spotted outside of the McKittrick Hotel. Tracing her through the Department of Motor Vehicles, he learns that the car is rented to a Mr. Howard Joslin at the Clift Hotel--a boorish businessman who is "keeping" the girl, Renee. After Jimmy picks Renee up in the hotel's bar, there is a confrontation between Joslin and Jimmy, with Joslin ultimately abandoning Renee. She ultimately moves to Jimmy's apartment and the screenplay begins the sequence we recognize, the makeover of Renee (Judy in the final version) into Madeleine.
The script dated November fifteenth describes the second famous kiss:
Quite silently, she turns and takes a step towards him. Jimmy moves over and takes her in his arms.
BIG HEADS of the two of them together.
At Last.
The camera moves around the big heads. We see Jimmy holding her tighter and tighter. He looks past her shoulder and we see that his eyes are closed, because he now has Madeleine in his arms. He opens his eyes--the camera swims around the room.
We are now in the livery stables at San Juan Bautista.
We see it only for the briefest moment and it
DISSOLVES
Jimmy kisses her once more as he did then. The camera PULLS BACK slowly and their two figures are held in the center of the room-one of the beds is brought into foreground of picture.
DISSOLVE.
The notes from this period produce countless examples of Hitchcock and Coppel trying out solutions to little story problems--devices often later discarded for more elegant solutions. Renee's involvement with Gavin Elster is discovered, for example, when the hotel receptionist produces a necklace belonging to Pauline Lagerlac, Madeleine's doomed antecedent. Renee denies that it is hers, but the receptionist is insistent-producing the signed envelope in which Renee had enclosed the necklace when she gave it to the receptionist. The revelation leads directly to their confrontation in San Juan Bautista's tower--where, in Coppel's draft, Renee jumps to her death unprompted by any sudden fright.
Coppel completed his first draft of From Among the Dead at the end of November. The script is recognizable as a nascent Vertigo, with several of its major sequences in place. But Hitchcock was still unhappy--enough that he wrote to Maxwell Anderson on December fourth to discuss the problems.
Hoping that Anderson would be able to solve these problems by tackling a new draft of the screenplay, the director offered an excellent demonstration--perhaps the only one that survives in writing--of the extent of his involvement in the construction of a Hitchcock screenplay:
My dear Max,
A voice from Nether regions. In the words of the Duke of Windsor, "At last I am able to lay down my burden." In other words, Max the new story outline is complete ....
Before I go on to tell you what has been done, I think I should admit to you that after all this time it might have been better for me to have followed your original suggestion to have completed the structural layout even as far as a temporary script before you did the dialogue. I can only apologize for putting you to "double trouble." (Wouldn't this be a good title for this picture?) ...
First of all, I should make it clear that the structure has been organized on the basis of telling two stories. First the "front" story, which is the one that the audience is looking at and second the big story which, in other words, is the conspiracy and which is only revealed to the audience in the final scene.
The element that has given constant trouble throughout the telling of the front story is the fact that we seemed to be coasting along until we reach a specific climax. For example: once the central character of the ex-detective meets up with the strange behaving woman we actually had nothing specific to develop until she threw herself from the height and "apparently" committed suicide. Now, of course, we knew what we were leading to, but the audience did not. So the question arose what apparent story was being told on the surface after the man and woman met.
As you will see when you read the suggested storyline, the only thing we have to tell is a love story between a man who is being entrusted by a husband to take care of his wife, but by falling in love with her betrays that trust. Naturally, this is a situation that he cannot help. Nevertheless, it was important to develop this man's infatuation for the woman, which up to the suicide was never consummated. The value of this I am sure you will see, would show how justified his obsession was of her even after death. So that the con summation finally occurs when he has completed the reconstruction of her in the person of Renee as she is called in the book.
So you see, Max, an audience sitting there looking at this picture has no idea at all that this is a murder story. In fact, this film, up until the final scene, should be a strange mood love story with perhaps the same feeling of Daphne Du Maurier's REBECCA, which as you know, I made many years ago.
Now let me tell you about some very important changes concerning the characters.
One. Our central character's emotions and purposes throughout the story are pretty clear except for one important change, and that is this: in order to avoid his appearing a com pletely and utter foolish victim of a conspiracy, we have made a change at the end whereby he discovers a flaw in their scheme and this will come after he has reached the climax of his emotional binge with the reconstructed Madeleine. This flaw which I won't go into here because you will be able to read it in the bare outline which I am enclosing in this letter. It enables him to behave like a smart detective again, and solve a good part of the mystery without a full confession by the character Renee.
You will also note that the effect of the woman's "suicide" upon him is extremely devastating. He has a nervous breakdown as a result of it, and when he seems to be recovered from it, he continues to wander around the city and apparently "seeing" Madeleine in every woman who is more like her than any of the others. This one he pursues.
Now, Max, the reason for this change is this. We had a feeling that, for example in the book, he sees a woman who looks like the dead Madeleine and goes on a journey to another city in search of her. This gave one a very strong feeling from the audience's point of view that something very definite was going to emerge from this and I had the feeling that would almost be tipping off the audience ahead of time. Whereas, with the present idea of drifting into the situation, the audience would not be aware of what was to come. One final thing about the man's character. I don't know how far it is necessary to account for his phobia, but you will read in a suggested scene a little idea concerning his going through a parachute jump experience. However, we have been doing a bit of psychiatric research on this, which we will send to you.
Now concerning the girl. The major change suggested here, that she fall in love with our central male character. The emotional climax is reached just prior to the suicide. Although we do not learn of this until the end of the story it does provide us with one very vital behavior pattern on her part in the second half of the story. You have to realize one very important fact. Here is a woman who has been an accessory to a murder, she has let herself revert back physically to her original color and style.
And yet, she allows a man to recreate her in the image of the dead woman. Here, as you will see, she is taking a terrible risk. After all, she is a woman virtually in hiding. When she renews her association with the ex-detective she would love to pursue their old relationship in her current physical appearance, but naturally, he will have none of this. It is only as Madeleine he wants her.
So you see, Max, the woman must be desperately in love with him to allow him to do this. And this she tells him at the end of the story.
You can see what a chance she is taking because as Renee, she is safe both within her identification and being able to stand up to any probe into her background. Because remember, that she was Renee before she was turned into a blonde, and was dressed as nearly as possible like Gavin's wife. So again, Max, you see the woman falling in love with him is of the utmost importance to justify her behavior in section two.
It is this section that you will also notice that we have only used the one man with Renee who gets rid of her because, I think, we get a better mood with her alone rather than a lot of extraneous characters who, I feel, destroy this emotional line we are trying to draw ...
Now, Max, one final thing. I am really anxious to get mood, but not necessarily somber mood, into this love story.
I don't want us to get heavy handed with it. After all, Barrie's MARY ROSE had some of the elements of the first part of this story and, as you know, this quality was quite a fey one.Also, while I think of it, I don't want to make Renee--Judy, as we are going to call her, too cheap a character. Because the contrast will become too stagey.
It is my intention in directing the picture to have the voice of Madeleine be quite a soft one, and the voice of Renee a sharper more nasal one. The first voice can be justified by the fact that Renee is assuming the characteristics of a mysterious person in the story. (I don't know if we have to justify her as having been an actress.) ...
Incidentally, you will notice in this batch of material that there is no reference made by the husband in the first office scene of the mystery of the character of Pauline. This was deliberately omitted because following this springboard scene we proceed to show the visit to the churchyard and the old ancestral home of the Lagerlacs.
This would have come out as anti-climactic, for we would have been telling something, and then showing it. Now, of course, with the husband simply telling him to follow her, it naturally works out that when the ex-detective reports to him, that the husband explains the character of Pauline Lagerlac. As you will see, the ex-detective then says, "Well, that's understandable if she is living in the past." Where upon, the husband can tell him that there is no possible reason for his wife having knowledge of Pauline Lagerlac, and then proceed to explain why.
Please, Max, forgive me for being so long-winded about this, but this construction has taken many weeks of work between Mr. Coppel and myself, and I still wonder that after all the years of one's experience why construction is such a hard job ....
Besides revealing some of Hitchcock's touchstones--including his long standing love for Mary Rose--this remarkable letter throws into relief Hitchcock's abiding concern with character and motivation, and the importance of structure in creating suspense. It was his hope that Anderson would bring his talents to bear on such issues in a new draft.
But it wasn't to be. Coppel's involvement, and the major changes to the story, may have led to some consternation on Anderson's part; he never returned a new draft, and he negotiated to complete his contract in February 1957 for a reduced fee of fifty thousand dollars--an eye-opening sum, considering how little of his version would end up on the screen. Herbert Coleman hints that the relationship's end wasn't amicable, but there are no letters or notes in either Anderson's or Hitchcock's papers to substantiate this--only a complete silence after December 1956.
At the end of the year, Hitchcock was distracted by publicity demands for The Wrong Man, which Warner Bros. had rushed into a New York theater in late December, according to Spoto, in vain hopes of an Academy Award nomi nation. In a much-publicized incident, the film did attract a "mad bomber." A pipe bomb was planted at the theater. No one was hurt, and the incident even elicited some amusing remarks from Hitchcock. But in the end, nothing would help attract audiences to this detailed, thoughtful, but bleak film.
After spending the holidays at his Bellagio Road home, Hitchcock returned to work in January, to find Wasserman and Stewart as unhappy with the Coppel script as he was.
Another writer was needed, and into the hat was thrown a new name: Samuel Taylor. Taylor's agent, Kay Brown, had recommended him to Hitchcock because of his native knowledge of San Francisco. After directing the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "One More Mile to Go," Hitchcock decided on January twelfth to give Taylor a try. He was signed on January sixteenth at a fee of twenty thousand dollars for six weeks' work. Taylor was given the Coppel script and notes. But fate would keep the new screenwriter from working directly with Hitchcock.
After a long and successful career on both coasts, Taylor now lives outside of Bangor, Maine. [Taylor died in 200?] He recalls how he became involved with Vertigo: "Hitchcock called my agent one day and said, 'I'm having a bad time. I can't use my screen play. Who do you suggest?' And she probably said, 'Sam Taylor can do any thing.' So he sent me the script and I read it and I said to Kay Brown, 'This is an awful screenplay.'" Taylor cannot recall the exact timeline, but he probably received the Coppel screenplay just before the end of the year.
Certain that the script was beyond repair, Taylor at first was leery of taking the assignment. "She said to have a go at it because she'd like me to know Hitchcock. So I said all right and I studied the screenplay on the train going out, because in those days you almost always traveled by train. By the time I got there I had a pretty good idea what I could do with it."
In their first meeting at Hitchcock's Paramount office, Taylor recalls, he told the director how he felt about the screenplay. Hitchcock told Taylor, "Well, to be honest, it's unshootable and that's why I asked you to come. Jimmy Stewart won't do it."
"We had a talk and I said the first thing we have to do is make these people real. He said, 'That's what Jimmy Stewart said.' The whole story is so unreal and so fantasized and you never touch reality at all. Therefore I have to create somebody who is completely in the real world who can test you, the man, so that you can come back to reality and say to the audience, 'Is this a real world?'"
He described what he wanted to do and Hitchcock said, "Fine, go ahead and do it."
"It's hard to remember if I went to work on the script right there or if he sent me to San Francisco with my wife. Because I'm a San Franciscan--I think he sent us there first, together, to look at the locations that he had already picked. Some of the locations were not picked and he said, 'You go and see what you can find,' and we did."
It was just as well. Just after signing him, Hitchcock had taken ill. After five days of intense pain, the director was diagnosed by doctors at Cedars-Sinai (then Cedars of Lebanon) with a hernia and colitus. After minor surgery, Hitchcock recovered at home until the end of the month.
The illness--and a second one that would follow some weeks later--marked a watershed in Hitchcock's career and life. The hernia episode brought him his very first trip to the hospital, and the operation and recovery took a toll on his energy.
And that made for a significant difference between Alec Coppers experience and Samuel Taylor's: though at first they worked together closely, Taylor's efforts would get much less of the day-to-day attention than Coppel had received.
Taylor worked out of his office at Paramount, in the famous row of two story offices that appear in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard. Before the onset of his illness, Taylor and Hitchcock followed a routine that was familiar to any writer who had worked with Hitchcock.
"Hitchcock and I would sit and talk, sometimes at his office, quite often at his home in Bel Air. We would just sit and talk about scenes, and I would say what I thought I could do, and he would join in with me and we would discuss things."
Taylor never remembered Hitchcock losing his calm or being concerned during his first illness. "He was in good form and we were having a very happy time writing. We really were."
"It was pure serendipity. We discovered as soon as we met that our minds worked alike and that we had a rapport. It seemed to be a rapport that didn't have to be announced. So, when we worked, especially at his house, we would sit and talk. We would talk about all sorts of things-talk about food, talk about wives, talk about travel."
"We'd talk about the picture and there would be a long silence and we'd just sit and contemplate each other and Hitchcock would say, 'Well, the motor is still running.' And then all of a sudden we would pick up again and talk some more."
It was not always work. "We'd have lunch and sometimes, especially in those days, he would retire and take a nap and rest, because naturally he needed it. I would return to the studio and work. There was a complete rapport."
The first Taylor draft, dated February twenty-first, carried the whimsical title From the Dead or There'll Never Be Another You, by Samuel Taylor and Ambrose Bierce.
"All the titles were Hitch's," Taylor recalls. "The Ambrose Bierce was just a joke. The only title I can remember suggesting was To Lay a Ghost."
In this first Taylor installment, the Coppel-Hitchcock structure remains intact. But the lightness of Taylor's dialogue, and the depth of his characterization, demonstrate the real talent he brought to the project.
The character's names now appeared in their final form: Kilrain had become John "Scottie" Ferguson; Gevigne was now Gavin Elster; Renee, the girl who becomes Madeleine, was renamed Judy; and the ghost, Pauline Lagerlac, was now Carlotta Valdes.
Taylor didn't yet add a death plunge to the opening rooftop sequence, but what he did add may have been far more important to making the people real: a brand-new character, Midge. The exposition scene among Scottie's fellow detectives remains, but all of the previous establishing work is now accomplished in conversation between Scottie and Midge in her apartment.
The writer admitted that he had the young actress Barbara Bel Geddes--a friend and a Broadway actress he admired--in mind when he created Midge. Bel Geddes has had a fascinating, eclectic career. Her father was the famed stage designer Norman Bel Geddes; her first stage appearance, at the age of ten, was in her father's production of Dead End. Her debut on Broadway in Out of the Frying Pan and her Academy Award nomination for I Remember Mama warranted the attention they garnered: She was a self-described perfectionist and was a member of Elia Kazan's Actors Studio in New York. Great fanfare marked her debuts on Broadway and in Hollywood-like Kim Novak, she was also featured on the cover of Time magazine, in 1951--but she never played along with the publicity machinery.
When Bel Geddes signed on to the picture in 1957, Hedda Hopper marked the event in her column:
After almost seven years Barbara Bel Geddes is coming back to Hollywood October 10 for one of the top roles in Amongst the Dead for Paramount. She will play Kim Novak's rival and that will put Kim on the mettle because Barbara never gives a bad performance.
Barbara has been living in Ireland with Windsor Lewis, her husband, and has been refusing all offers for stage and screen. Her last big stage play was Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955!) on Broadway and before that The Moon is Blue.
Barbara Bel Geddes took a very different tack in her life from that of Kim Novak, and the difference extended to their work on Vertigo: Throughout the production of the film, the two never met.
The first half of Samuel Taylor's screenplay also introduced several notes of San Francisco color to the script, including the famed restaurant Ernie's (Hitchcock's choice), as well as the character of Pop Liebel and the darkening bookstore. Taylor recalls the genesis of the Argosy Book Shop: "People are al ways amazed because there was a thing in some magazine about trying to find all the locations and they couldn't find the bookshop. Finally fans decided that we had made it up and it was right in the middle of Union Square.
"They were very close, because when I was growing up, there was a sort of a new-and-used bookshop, mostly used, right on the corner of Stockton Street and Maiden Lane. I was in college. I used to work at the City of Paris Book shop, which was right down the street. I used to wander up at lunchtime to this shop up on the corner of Maiden Lane and browse around and talk to people."
Of the bookstore owner, he recalls: "The character was not a bookshop character. Pop Liebel was a man who ran the corner candy store when I was a little boy. And Hitchcock cast him just right."
When the first fifty-nine pages of Taylor's list were distributed for review, the circulation list included all of the key production staff, along with Jimmy Stewart and Vera Miles. Everyone was relieved that the picture was coming to life.
But medical disaster struck again. In the early hours of March 9, 1957, Hitchcock was again rushed to the hospital with severe abdominal pains. He was diagnosed with a diseased gallbladder and obstructing gallstones. An operation--the second and most serious of Hitchcock's life--took place two days later. The director would be forced to stay in the hospital and then at home, recuperating, through March and April. While Hitch recovered, Taylor worked in New York, corresponding with Herbert Coleman. He completed his first full draft on April third. It would be a month before Hitchcock would be well enough to meet to discuss it.
Hitchcock and Taylor did not correspond during his recuperation. Taylor continued to send pages to Coleman, who would then relay them on to Hitchcock. Little serious work was completed until their next meeting in early May, when Hitchcock returned to work. Before that May meeting, Taylor and Coleman discussed various plot points: the pros and cons of having Midge helping Scottie with the investigation; whether Judy should stay at the McKittrick Hotel, as Madeleine had. When Taylor doubted the wisdom of having Judy stay there, Coleman wrote in reply, "I don't agree. She might very well have tried [it] on the manageress to see if she could get away with it."
During Hitchcock's convalescence Coleman had enlisted other production staff, along with Jimmy Stewart, to evaluate Taylor's script. Hitchcock's own involvement was minimal. An April letter from Coleman to Taylor says that Hitchcock was again showing interest in the project. On May sixth, Hitchcock was well enough to meet again with Taylor.
During the May sixth meeting several issues were addressed. Most important was Taylor's desire to reveal Judy's secret to the audience two-thirds of the way through the film, rather than at the conclusion. His argument rested on the assumption that the audience's suspense would be doubled if they knew Judy was in on the crime, leading them to wonder when Scottie would learn.
"That's a matter of my expertise as a playwright," Taylor recalled,"and I had kept saying to Hitchcock that there's something missing. Then one day I said to him, 'I know exactly what's missing--It's really a Hitchcockian thing.' I was naturally being Hitchcock with him. I said, 'This is not pure Hitchcock unless the audience knows what has happened,' and he agreed.
"The trouble was, I didn't know exactly how to write it because I thought originally of [having a] scene between Judy and Elster, in which he is preparing to go east and she is saying, 'What will become of me?'
"That would've revealed it to the audience, but I came to the conclusion--not I alone, but Hitch and I talking about it-we came to the conclusion that would strangely rob Scottie. It was just an instinct with us both.
''We finally fastened on what we did, which is the writing of the letter and the flashback. I always felt that it was a weakness that we had to do it that way, but there was no other way to do it."
With that final element agreed upon--at least for the moment--Taylor began making his final script revisions late in May, while Hitchcock and his production team finalized the film's locations.
By the end of May, Hitchcock's full-time involvement in the writing of From Among the Dead was more or less completed, and he began a daily involvement with writer Ernest Lehman in preparation for his next film, North by Northwest. In June, the director provided Taylor with a new set of notes, suggesting various fine-tunings.
By July, Taylor had tightened the script, added the Judy revelation, and dropped all of the expositional, early detective scenes. But Hitchcock still had concerns: He felt that playing the acrophobia test in Midge's apartment "straight" might get a laugh. "Suggest," he advised, "that he is just doing it for fun."
Such revisions suggest an early awareness of a delicate issue of concern to both Vertigo filmmakers and its latter-day fans: its modulations between high tragedy and light comedy. Asked about another moment in the film that can elicit uneasy laughter today-the scene where Scottie implores Judy to dye her hair ("It can't matter to you")--Taylor maintains that humor was hardly what the filmmakers had in mind. "No, that was Hitchcock's passion, you see. I guess Jimmy caught the fever. No, it was not meant to get a chuckle."
The calibrations continued, a parade of minor but significant adjustments of detail. Hitchcock was worried about the moment when Scottie sees Madeleine's necklace on Judy's neck. In his notes, he used Scottie's own voice to outline what would be going through his mind in this pivotal instant:
A. The necklace from the portrait definitely connects Judy with the past. Therefore I haven't created another Madeleine, Judy is Madeleine!
B. If I were to confront her now, she would deny everything, because I have already seen her identification as Judy.
C. If Judy is Madeleine, who was the woman who fell from the tower, dressed the same as Madeleine, with the same color hair?
D. Judy could not have been Elster's wife at the time because Elster's wife's maiden name was Valdes.
E. Elster's wife had money therefore she must have been the dead woman-murdered for her money.
F. Why was I brought into this thing? Madeleine pretended to have suicidal tendencies. I was fooled by her throwing herself into the water. I was fooled by the Carlotta Valdes nonsense. But why me? Be cause I was to be a witness of the suicide--a witness who could not climb to the top of the tower.
There is an additional note from Hitchcock, in his own hand: "She [Carlotta] could not be buried in a Catholic Mission after committing suicide unless found to be insane. If Protestant--can receive Christian burial under any circumstance."
The July revisions included changing Judy's hometown from Santa Rosa to Salina, Kansas. Although Salinas, California, is the city closest to San Juan Bautista, the parallel with Salina was never in the mind of the filmmakers. A note from Taylor to Hitchcock comments on another intended joke:
You will note, in the lower depths of the pages, that I have made Judy a native of Salina, Kansas, this because I have a dear friend who is an Episcopal minister in Salina. Salina is pronounced as though it were saliva with an "n." Do I make myself clear?
I anticipate that, because of the way I have constructed the scene, the words "Salina, Kansas" will get a laugh. I do not believe this is wrong. I hope you agree with me.
The final shooting script is dated September 12, 1957. It contains a final scene reminiscent of Rear Window: At Midge's apartment, a broken Scottie lis tens to a radio report on Gavin Elster's arrest. (Donald Spoto writes that there is an annotation to the final page of the script concerning the 360-degree kiss--yet the kiss scene was originally written with Coppel nearly a year earlier; and the scripts contained in the Hitchcock Vertigo archives contain no such note.)
The final script follows the story that we are familiar with as the film Ver tigo. It begins with a rooftop chase that introduces Scottie as the very opposite of a hero: Clinging desperately to a gutter, he watches as a fellow officer falls to his death. The story then leaps in time to the day before he is to have his brace removed--a brace he wears as a result of injuries sustained during the initial chase.
As he visits with his only close friend in the film, his old flame Midge, we learn that Scottie has resigned from the police force because of his fear of heights. We also learn that he plans to meet with an old college acquaintance, Gavin Elster, the next day. At the end of this scene, Scottie attempts a make shift cure for his vertigo by climbing the rungs of a stepladder-a plan that fails when he looks out the apartment window from the top of the ladder and collapses into Midge's arms.
Scottie meets with Elster in his elegant office, which overlooks his ship building business. Appealing to their old college ties, he asks Scottie to follow his wife, Madeleine, who he fears has become possessed by the spirit of her dead great-grandmother, Carlotta Valdes. He describes strange trances and mysterious wanderings. Scottie at first refuses the case but then agrees at least to consider helping Elster after he is encouraged to see her when the cou ple goes to dine at Ernie's. There Scottie sees Madeleine, and he is immediately attracted to her. He takes the case.
Scottie then spends a day trailing the entranced, mysterious Madeleine around the city; she drives her green Jaguar from her home at the Brocklebank Apartments to Podesta Baldocchi, a florist, to purchase a bouquet, and then to the Palace of the Legion of Honor, where she sits for some time before the por trait of Carlotta as if in a trance. In this portrait, Scottie finds the reason for the visit to the florist: Carlotta holds a bouquet exactly like the one Madeleine had purchased there. He also notices that Madeleine's hair is done in the same swirling pattern as Carlotta's.
She leaves the Palace and drives to an old hotel, the McKittrick, on Eddy and Gough streets. She enters, and Scottie sees her raise the shade in a second floor apartment. When he questions the manager about Madeleine (whom she knows as Carlotta Valdes), she denies that she has been there that day. When Scottie insists that she check, he is surprised to find the room empty and her Jaguar missing from the front curb. He returns to the Brocklebank Apartments and sees the Jaguar has returned, the bouquet visible on the dash.
That afternoon, he returns to Midge's studio apartment and asks if she knows someone who is an expert on San Francisco history. Caught up in the promise of adventure, she dashes out the door to take him to Pop Liebel's book store before he can even finish his drink.
At the Argosy Book Shop, Liebel tells the sad Carlotta's story in the dark ening twilight: She was a music-hall dancer who had become the lover of a rich and powerful man. He built her a mansion to live in-the house that became the McKittrick Hotel. She bore him a child, after which he abandoned her, keeping the child to raise himself. This broke Carlotta's spirit and she took her own life.
The next day, Scottie returns to Elster at his club to tell him the story; Elster acknowledges its details, then hits Scottie with an unsettling revelation: Madeleine has never heard of Carlotta Valdes, he claims. Her mother had kept the truth from her in an effort to protect her. Scottie is clearly affected by the news, which seems to defy rational explanation.
The next day, he follows her again. After returning to the Palace, she drives to Fort Point at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge. She stands by the water's edge, dropping petals from her bouquet into the surf. Then, unexpectedly, Madeleine jumps into the bay. Casting off his hat and coat, Scottie quickly dives in after her; he carries her to the Jaguar and takes her to his apartment.
The next scene opens there; Scottie has undressed Madeleine and put her to bed. We can hear her mumbling something about "my child." The phone rings-it is Elster, to whom Scottie utters a few quick words of reassurance before hanging up-and the sound wakes Madeleine, obviously somewhat taken aback to find herself awakening undressed in a stranger's bed. After donning Scottie's robe, she sits with him by the fireplace, drinking coffee and answering Scottie's questions. She has no recollection of her suicide attempt or how she got to Fort Point. She does not recall having ever entered the Palace of the Legion of Honor. Their hands brush accidentally as they reach for a coffee cup. El ster phones again, and Scottie takes the call in his bedroom, but when he hears the door close, he hurries back, just in time to see Madeleine driving away. Meanwhile, Midge, who has just driven up to his apartment, has also seen Madeleine drive off in the Jaguar. Assuming there was more to the visit than coffee by the fire, she drives away.
Scottie follows Madeleine again the next morning. They seem to be going nowhere-until he realizes that they are returning to his apartment. She has come back to drop off a thank-you note. Scottie suggests that they wander together. She agrees.
They drive out to Big Basin Redwoods State Park. Wandering through the ancient sequoia stands, they stop at a tree circle with dates on it. Madeleine, slipping into a trance, points to one of the rings, indicating where she was born and where she died-dates that clearly refer to Carlotta's life, not her own. She walks away from Scottie and seems to disappear. Scottie hurries after her and finds Madeleine pressed against a redwood, agitated, anxious to get some where in the light.
He takes her to Cypress Point. When she runs to the edge, Scottie hurries after her, telling her it's his job to protect her now. In a strange, almost catatonic tone, she tells him of a nightmare that has beleaguered her; she breaks from him, and when he catches her farther down the rocky oceanside, he embraces her and they kiss.
That evening, he goes to Midge's apartment (at her request). She's waiting for him with a private joke: She has duplicated the painting of Carlotta but has superimposed her own face over the original. Scottie is not amused, and he leaves. We see him wandering in the early-morning hours on Union Square; later, Madeleine rings his bell as he slumbers on his couch. Panicked she's had the nightmare again-she begins another trance-like recitation of its details: The dream takes place in a Spanish town with a mission that has a tower. Scottie recognizes the location as San Juan Bautista--"It's all there" he says--and promises to take her there later in the day.
At the mission, Scottie shows her the originals of the various images from her dream, but Madeleine is unsettled, and she seems unconvinced. They kiss, this time in the stable across from the mission. She again breaks from him and runs toward the church. He catches her, but after telling him that she loves him, she's able to break his grasp a final time. She runs into the church, and Scottie follows. She starts up the bell tower, but though Scottie continues his pursuit, he is soon overcome by his vertigo and cannot continue the climb: Then he hears a scream from above; from a window, he sees her fall. In shock, Scottie staggers out of the mission as some bystanders climb to the mission's roof to retrieve Madeleine's body.
Scottie's inability to stop Madeleine's suicide, and his confusing behavior after her death, are recited in pregnant tones by a coroner in the following scene, but he restricts his accusations to a withering parade of insinuations. The jury rules the death a suicide, and the still-dazed Scottie meets one last time with Gavin Elster, who tells him, ''You and I know who killed Madeleine."
An unspecified period of time elapses. Again, we see the San Francisco skyline in the twilight. Scottie is sleeping restlessly; he's dreaming, and the nightmare opens before us-spinning flowers, images from the Carlotta painting, the Mission Dolores cemetery, all coalesce in a visual representation of a psychotic breakdown.
With Midge's help, Scottie is placed in a sanitarium. Midge leaves him there, knowing that even though he may someday be free of the hospital, he will never be free of Madeleine.
More time passes. Scottie returns to the city streets, but his obsession colors everything around him. He sees the likeness of Madeleine in all of their old places-the Brocklebank, Ernie's, the Palace of the Legion of Honor. Then, one afternoon in front of Podesta Baldocchi, he sees a woman who looks remark ably like Madeleine. He follows her home to the Empire Hotel, then upstairs to her room. He gets her to tell him her name--Judy--and after some uneasy conversation, Scottie asks her out on a date. Though suspicious, she agrees to go out with him. When he leaves, we can tell she's troubled. And then comes the revelation: We see in a flashback that Judy was Madeleine-that it was she who had gone up the tower, then hid in the shadows with Elster as he threw the real Madeleine from the window. She begins to write a note to Scottie explaining her complicity and her love for him, then decides to see him after all and tears up the note. Scottie asks to see Judy often, and soon he is occupying all of her time.
Within days it is clear to the audience that he intends to remake her into the Madeleine he longs for. He buys her outfits and shoes to duplicate those Madeleine wore. He has her dye her hair and style it in Madeleine's fashion. She's reluctant, but she ultimately consents in her desperate bid to regain Scottie's love. When she emerges from her bathroom, dressed and coiffed as the Madeleine he had known, the two kiss with passion; as the room seems to spin around them, Scottie is transported back to his final kiss with Madeleine.
In the next scene--there's an implication that they've made love. Madeleine has dressed again. Scottie waits patiently as she adds the finishing touches to her costume. She asks him to help with a necklace. Then, as he fas tens it, he recognizes it as the necklace Carlotta wore in the painting--and suddenly the truth tumbles before him. Abruptly, instead of Ernie's, Scottie suggests going somewhere out of town for dinner.
They drive to San Juan Bautista, Judy growing more apprehensive with each mile. When they arrive at the mission, she struggles, but Scottie becomes forceful. He drags her up the tower stairs, conquering his vertigo; near the top, he confronts her with the truth, to which she confesses. He insists they return to the scene of the crime.
They enter the tower. Scottie knows now that the Madeleine he loved never existed. Judy, embracing him, trying once more to convince him that it's not too late, is frightened by a rising dark image. She backs away and falls to her death as a nun enters the bell tower.
This script's coda finds Midge in her apartment, listening to the radio. The announcer describes the search for Elster in Europe and his imminent arrest for murdering his wife. Scottie enters and crosses to her window. She goes to make him a drink.
Fade out.
In such a collaboration as Taylor had with Hitchcock, who contributed the depth of emotion in Scottie Ferguson's story?
"I don't know. I honestly don't know," Taylor says. "You see, in working together, naturally I didn't write it. Sitting alone and writing a scene, I would naturally write the way I did. I think that the scenes indicate that Hitchcock felt pretty strongly about this terribly frustrated love, just the way that he thought out the scenes and how he shot them.
"I think you could say that Hitchcock had that kind of influence over the screenplay, without ever talking about it--we never talked about it."
After Vertigo, Hitchcock and Taylor would team up to write an unproduced film, No Bail for the Judge; Taylor was brought back in-this time, too late-to save Topaz (1969). To the end, the Taylors and Hitchcocks shared a special relationship.
We never lacked for conversation; we never lacked for quiet interludes, because they were so natural and normal. We were so comfortable with one another. This goes for wives, too. Never lacked for conversation, and very witty and humorous conversation and very sharply clashing conversation-very intellectual conversation.
"In public he made jokes and in private he made jokes, but in private, you know, we would talk about anything. We used to talk about everything. I think that people who were intelligent enough and talented enough to recognize that knew it. You know, he had a collection of George Bernard Shaw's short plays and the inscription on the title page was 'For Alma Hitchcock's husband.' There you are. He was marvelous. Marvelous."
Taylor considered From Among the Dead (as it was still called) his script, and he made a bid to have Alec Coppers name removed from the screen credit. This brought a terse response from Coppel, who added a telling bit of criticism:
Sept. 16, 1957
Dear Hitch:
Because of the publicity given to the fact that I was writing the screenplay of "From Among the Dead" with you, I must very reluctantly fight for my right to a credit on the final script-and in fairness to me it must be agreed that a great deal of my construction remains. I am conscious of the new dialogue and the new character Midge (who doesn't amount to anything)--but if Sam Taylor had started with only the book as his guide he couldn't possibly have arrived with this latest script.
Next time we meet I would like very much to know why you jettisoned the entire mystery of the novel, and our script when I left you, by telling the audience on page 112 the truth about Judy? I'm sure you had reasons--but it seems to me that after that expose you can reach for your hat.
Things are very busy here ....
Alec
At the time, Hitchcock still seemed confident about revealing Judy's identity to the audience before the film's ending; yet Coppels reservations proved prescient-the issue would raise its head again, dramatically, before the film's opening.
As required in a credit dispute, the Hitchcock office turned over the script files on From Among the Dead to the Writers Guild. The letter Hitchcock office humorously explains that "this material consists of bits and pieces without any continuity or completion, which is pretty generally the method of work that Mr. Hitchcock enjoys with his writers until such time as a screen play is actually launched."
The Writers Guild came back with the only response possible, considering the evidence: Samuel Taylor and Alec Coppel would receive shared credit on the screenplay.
A little more than a week after the completion of Taylor's final draft, shooting began on Paramount production 10344: From Among the Dead.