Ernest Lehman
Borrowing from the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures
When I told him that I preferred his first draft of The Short Night to the one published in David Freeman’s The Last Days of Alfred Hitchcock, Ernest Lehman said with a touch of disappointment, “It all seemed so neatly and meticulously worked out”, adding, “but my how times have changed in the East/West.” This was a decade ago, and not long after the fall of the Soviet Empire.
The Short Night was the last screenplay Alfred Hitchcock was preparing before his death in 1980, and Ernest Lehman, who went on to write a second draft before being replaced, was hopeful that his previous script for Hitchcock, Family Plot, would not be the director’s last motion picture. Lehman and Hitchcock first came together in 1957 to do an adaptation of Hammond Innes’s The Wreck of the Mary Deare for MGM. Neither the writer or director could come up with compelling way to bring the novel to the screen, and so they quickly put it aside in favor of an original work, which combined several ideas Hitchcock had long wanted to realize with one given him by journalist Otis Guernsey, Jr.
For a long time, Hitchcock told the press that he would like to use Mount Rushmore in a motion picture, and by 1951 he had even devised a chase sequence across the faces of the presidents, even having his protagonist sliding down the bridge of Lincoln's nose. By the time he had actually gotten to the point of seriously developing the Mount Rushmore sequence for a movie, Hitchcock had revised his idea so that the hero would hide inside Lincoln's nose, and while trying to escape from the villains he would have an uncontrollable sneezing fit. The other notion for the larger design of the film was that it would begin at the United Nations and move across the United States, perhaps as far as Alaska.
Hitchcock had tossed around a number of these ideas earlier with John Michael Hayes, which resulted in one idea that never made its way into the final script. While discussing the project, and its northwesterly movement, Hayes told Hitchcock that at one time his family had lived in Detroit, Michigan and that his father had worked on the assembly line at the Ford Motor Company. Hayes recalled the proposed scene, “The hero would arrive to question a production foreman. As the scene would begin, the foreman would point out a frame coming on the line and talk for a minute about the wonders of the assembly line. Then the questioning would begin and the two men would start walking. In the background, we’d see this frame being built into a car. After a few minutes, the necessary dialogue would be finished. But before the scene ended the foreman would point to this car that the audience has seen assembled from a frame. The hero would go over, admire it, open the back door and a corpse would fall out.” Hitchcock and Hayes ultimately went their separate ways and the job of scripting what eventually became North by Northwest went to Ernest Lehman – it would be the last of the director‘s films to earn an Academy Award Nomination for its screenplay.
In terms of the writing, one of my all-time favorite sequences in any Hitchcock film is the auction in North by Northwest. In the famous sequence, Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) follows Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) to a Chicago auction gallery, where he finds her in the company of Philip Vandam (James Mason) and his right arm, Leonard (Martin Landau). Thornhill can't help but remark, "The three of you together. Now, there's a picture only Charles Addams could draw." Vandam asks if Thornhill has suddenly become interested in art. "The art of survival," he replies. Before long though, Vandam makes a hasty exit with Eve, leaving Thornhill to face Leonard and another Vandam henchman, Valerian. With the pair covering both exits, Thornhill is left to his wits in order to come up with a means of surviving and begins participating in the auction, to hilarious results.
The scene is so perfect that it must have been difficult for Lehman to resist imitating it in his screenplay for Mark Robson's The Prize (1963). In the latter film, based on Irving Wallace's best-selling novel about intrigue surrounding the Nobel Prize ceremony, the hero, Andrew Craig (Paul Newman), is an American and a drunkard, and treats his winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature as a lark. However once in Stockholm to accept his prize and monetary award, he quite accidentally stumbles onto a plot to kidnap a German scientist now working in America. When Craig gets too close to finding out the truth, the persons behind the scientist's abduction attempt to do away with him. Lehman constructed the plot so that Craig, flees his pursuers by slipping into a nudist meeting. A side by side comparison of the two sequences shows how closely Lehman stuck to his original:
The set up:
INT. GYMNASIUM
Craig moves among the nudists, relatively indistinguish- able from the rest, one more body among many, trying to keep his eyes averted, occasionally seeing things that his eyes refuse to be averted from, feeling the eyes of others on him and slightly overdoing the modest uses of his towel, until he reaches a vantage point where he feels the relative security of being surrounded by many other bodies. Now he turns and looks back towards the men's locker- room. Daranyi is standing just inside the gym, eyes searching for Craig. Craig cautiously glances over his other shoulder towards the entrance to the ladies' locker-room on the other side. He SEES with dismay that Ivar has pushed through the doors and stands just inside the gym, guarding that exit. Craig frowns. No escape. He looks up at the SPEAKER, who is droning on in Swedish from the plat- form. Craig raises his hand, interrupts him loudly:
CRAIG
Hold on! Just a minute, please!
(the speaker pauses)
Do you speak English?
SPEAKER
(puzzled)
Why, yes. All of use here do, I'm sure.
CRAIG
I need help...
SPEAKER
(smiling)
Then as a courtesy to our visitor from another land I will continue in English...Chorus of "ja!...ja!" from the others, during which Craig tries to make himself heard:
CRAIG
You don't understand! I'm in trouble..!
Of course, Lehman sets up the situation so that like Roger Thornhill, Andrew Craig finds himself alone, in a crowded room. He tries to explain that two men at the back of the hall are planning to kill him, but nobody believes him. Once he's told that the police will be summoned if he disrupts the meeting again, Craig lets loose, and the sequence truly resembles the auction scene, albeit in a "poor-man's Hitchcock" way:
SPEAKER
"--One has only to observe the different forms which modesty takes in different parts of the world to recognize the essential falsity. If a man came upon a naked Swedish girl or a naked French woman by accident--"
CRAIG
(loudly)
You can be sure it was no accident!
SPEAKER
(persisting)
"--She would quickly cover a certain area of her lower body with her hands. But if she were a naked Arab woman, she would cover her face before all else--"
CRAIG
(calls out)
I've seen some of those Arab women, and it's not a bad idea!
SPEAKER
(to Craig)
I have asked you to stop...
CRAIG
What, and leave some poor Arab woman with her bare face hanging out?
The others stare at Crag, muttering to themselves as the speaker leans over, whispers to his assistant, a teen-age boy, who hurries away and disappears behind the platform. Craig watches this with interest as:
SPEAKER
"If a man were to surprise a naked Chinese woman she would try to hide her feet, a Celebes woman would cover her knees a Samoan girl her navel--"
CRAIG
(very loud)
I once surprised a girl who was part Chinese, part Celebes and part Samoan. She had a terrible time!There are SHOUTS all around Craig, in Swedish and English, of: "Be quiet!"
SPEAKER
(above the noise)
"--Under international nudism every part of the body would be revealed--"
CRAIG
What about elbows?
SPEAKER
(ignoring him)
"--A person would have to cover nothing, for there would be nothing to fear--"
CRAIG
(raising his hand)
Question!
SPEAKER
"--And the consequence would be a generally higher standard of morality all around--"
CRAIG
Mr. Speaker! Mr. Norberg!...
(the SHOUTS of the others grow louder)
I demand to know your position on the question of naked elbows!
MALE NUDIST
(shouts)
Why can't we throw him out?Cries of "Ja! Ja!"
SPEAKER
(trying to make himself heard)
Be patient! He will not be with us for long! Permit me to continue--!(The assistant has already reappeared and nodded to the speaker.)
CRAIG
(pointing at a woman)
Stop peeking at me! What kind of a nasty mind do you have?
(her escort starts at Craig, who backs away crying:)
If anyone touches me I'll scream!
SPEAKER
(sternly)
Olaf! No!
(as "Olaf" stops)
"My friends - what is our goal then? It is to promote physical well-being, and a more relaxed attitude towards the human anatomy--"
Compare to the scene in North by Northwest:
AUCTIONEER
I have two thousand. Do I hear twenty-five? ... Twenty-five hundred please... Twenty-two-fifty. Thank you. Do I hear twenty-five? .... Twenty-two-fifty once. Twenty-two- fifty twice. Last call...
THORNHILL
(shouts)
Fifteen hundred!
AUCTIONEER
(startled)
The bid is already up to twenty- two-fifty, sir.
THORNHILL
I still say fifteen hundred!
Heads turn toward him angrily. But Thornhill is concerned only about escaping the fate Valerian and Leonard have reserved for him.
AUCTIONEER
(recovering)
I have twenty-two-fifty. Do I hear twenty-five hundred?....Twenty- two-fifty once. Twenty-two-fifty twice...
THORNHILL
Twelve hundred!
AUCTIONEER
(quickly)
Sold for twenty-two-fifty. And now --
THORNHILL
(loudly)
Twenty-two-fifty for that chromo?
AUCTIONEER
(ignoring him)
--Number one hundred sixteen in the catalogue...
(as attendants bring out a chaise longue)
"A Louis XIV carved and painted lit de repos." Kindly observe the moulded frame, the carved, free- standing columns at each corner and the fluted, tapering legs. Will somebody start the bidding at seven- hundred-and-fifty dollars please?
THORNHILL
How do we know it's not a fake? It looks like a fake!
An elderly woman seated directly in front of Thornhill turns and glares at him.
WOMAN
One thing we know: you're no fake. You're a genuine idiot.
THORNHILL
Thank you.
AUCTIONEER
I wonder if I could respectfully ask the gentleman to get into the spirit of the proceedings here.
THORNHILL
All right. I'll start it at eight.
AUCTIONEER
Eight hundred dollars. Thank you. Nine hundred...One thousand I have. Go twelve.
THORNHILL
Eleven!
AUCTIONEER
Eleven is bid. Go twelve. Who'll say twelve? Eleven once. Who'll say twelve? Eleven twice. Twelve. Thank you. Twelve is bid. I have twelve. Go thirteen. Who'll say thirteen?
THORNHILL
Thirteen dollars!
AUCTIONEER
You mean thirteen hundred, sir?
THORNHILL
I mean thirteen dollars, which is more than it's worth!
The auctioneer will continue his work, but his assistant will now reach for the phone on his desk and make a hurried call, which will not go un-noticed by Thornhill.
As the two scenes reach their climax, the police arrive and drag both Craig and Thornhill past their would-be assassins.
CRAIG
(shouting)
Hypocrisy! Lies! I wish to be heard! Now listen to me! All of you!...
(out of the corner of his eye, he SEES TWO POLICE OFFICERS hurrying in)
I speak as an American citizen and a non-nudist, temporarily caught with his pants down! Don't listen to your leader! Mr. Norberg is playing the skin game!...
(Craig continues to shout as the police, on a signal from the speaker, grab Craig and drag him towards the door)
While you sit here in the altogether, your clothing lies back there in those locker rooms at the mercy of professional thieves! Mr. Norberg is stealing the shirts off your backs and that's the naked truth!
(to the police)
Easy does it.As they drag him past Daranyi and Ivar who stand watching the "rescue" with angry frustration:
CRAIG
Sorry, boys.
And in North by Northwest:
THORNHILL
What took you so long?
SECOND OFFICER
(pulling him toward the door)
Let's take a little walk...
THORNHILL
Wait a minute...
SECOND OFFICER
Get moving.
THORNHILL
I haven't finished bidding yet...
FIRST OFFICER
(dragging him along)
Yeah, yeah.
THORNHILL
(struggling)
Three thousand! It's mine for three thousand!Nearing the entrance they approach Valerian, standing there completely frustrated. Thornhill flashes him an apologetic smile as he is dragged by.
THORNHILL
Sorry, old man. But keep trying.
Valerian watches without expression as Thornhill is escorted safely past him.
Hitchcock liked to say that self–plagiarism was style. But even Lehman admitted of The Prize that “not all of it came off too well, though some of it was damned good.”
