ME AND HITCH - EVAN HUNTER

“Tell me the story so far” were the words Evan Hunter heard each morning as he sat down to work with Alfred Hitchcock on the screenplay of The Birds. The starting point was Daphne du Maurier’s short story, but all that Hitchcock wanted to retain from the original was the title and the idea of birds attacking humans–the rest emerged in the working sessions in which Hitchcock and Hunter grappled with the ideas and notions that eventually coalesced into the final film.

Me and Hitch provides a rare glimpse of Hitchcock’s very particular working methods, as well as insight into his film-making process. In relating how he worked on The Birds and Marnie, Hunter is as frank as he is illuminating, describing his experience in a manner that is vivid and entertaining.

Evan Hunter is the distinguished author of The Blackboard Jungle, Strangers When We Meet, and Candyland, which he wrote with his other self, Ed McBain, author of the world-renowned 87th Precinct mystery novels.

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Chapter 1

March 26, 1997 marked twenty-one years since the world premiere of Alfred Hitchcock’s last film, Family Plot. My working relationship with him started some forty-one years earlier, when he bought a short story of mine for his then half-hour television show. It ended on May 1, 1963 when I was abruptly replaced as the screenwriter for Marnie, his film then in development. What goes around comes around.

Ironically, the short story was titled Vicious Circle, and it was originally published in Real magazine in March 1953. This was nineteen months before publication of The Blackboard Jungle, and I was still writing a melange of short stories and a handful of paperback mystery novels in an attempt to earn a living for myself and my family. The story was about the rise of a small-time hood, culminating in a gangland murder with a surprise twist — just the sort of clever mystery fare Hitch was offering on his enormously popular weekly show.

In its original half-hour format, Alfred Hitchcock Presents had premiered on October 2, 1955. Most people who watched the show assumed that he directed each and every episode. In fact, many people believed he also wrote the shows’ scripts. Hitch did nothing to disabuse anyone of these notions. Years later, when I told one of my sons’ friends that I had written the screenplay for The Birds, the kid said, “No, you didn’t, Alfred Hitchcock did.” Actually, of the 372 episodes filmed during the lifetime of the television show Hitch directed only twenty. Bernard Schoenfeld wrote the teleplay for Vicious Circle. Paul Henreid directed it.

In both the half-hour format and the hour-long format the show later assumed, Hitch would do a little tongue-in-cheek introduction before the story began, and would then continue with amusing little bits during the commercial breaks. These monologues, coupled with the short cameo appearances he made in all of his films, resulted in him becoming the most highly visible director in the world. I sincerely doubt that many movie-goers today would recognize Steven Spielberg if he walked into a restaurant unannounced. When Hitch walked in, everyone knew who he was.

I did not know him personally when his Shamley Productions bought my story, and I was not asked to adapt it for television. Joan Harrison, the show’s producer, knew my work because by then The Blackboard Jungle had been published and the sensational movie based upon it had been released. At the time, however I’d written only one or two teleplays and no screenplays at all, and I’m sure Joan had no inkling that I was anything but a novelist and short story writer. I’d have been astonished if she’d asked me to write the teleplay of my own story. In fact, the only time I saw the TV version was when it aired for the first time in April of 1957.