The Bearded Lady!!!!!
yuck!
shareYeah, I had weird flashbacks to "Freaks" and "Bride of Frankenstein" while watching this movie.
sharewell I was eating toast while I was watching this movie, and everything was fine until I saw the bearded lady and I was like woa! is that real? it sure looked real.
Toast will never taste the same way to me again.
If you look at her credits, she was in quite a few movies. She wasn't an actual bearded lady. I don't think the "siamese" twins were actually conjoined twins either.
I don't know why they didn't cast some of the people from "Freaks" unless they were all soured on movies from their experience with "Freaks".
Hitchcock always liked Tod Browning's films. So he always put some references in his films.
I believe that the "freak show" sequence was specially written for "Saboteur" by Dorothy Parker, of the writer's cabal of that time of which Robert Benchley (who helped write and is in "Foreign Correspondent") was a part. The Alonquin--how do you spell that -- Circle?
Thus you've got the Siamese twin saying something like "She's got insomnia and I do nothing but toss and turn all night!"
Plus: the midget looks like Hitler.
It was Robert E. Sherwood who suggested Hitchcock to work with Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker.
In Shadow of A Doubt, we see vampire references. Wallace Ford played Saunders in Shadow of A Doubt (1943). He worked with Tod Browning in Freaks. Tod Browning also directed Dracula.
Good points, all.
Hitchcock always seemed to "take in the movie culture around" him. Here, Frankenstein and Dracula. Later, "Marty" (The Wrong Man), "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit" (North by Northwest), "House on Haunted Hill" (Psycho), Truffaut/Godard/Bergman (Topaz)...and so on.
Hitchcock certainly did what he could to draw some great American writers into his screenplays: Benchley and Parker, Thornton Wilder, John Steinbeck, Raymond Chandler...not to mention some of the greatest SCREENwriters: Ben Hecht, John Michael Hayes, Ernest Lehman, Joseph Stefano...and two fine British playwrights in Frederick Knott and Anthony Shaffer.
Sherlock Holmes is mentioned in some of the scenes of Stage Fright (1950). One of the Scenes when Michael Wilding plays the piano, Commodore Gill's wife mentions about Sherlock Holmes and his fiddle. In an other scene, Commodore Gills tells Eve Gill " I don't quite follow, my dear Holmes."
All of the writers you listed are great writers. But I also think James Bridie is also brilliant. Its brilliant how he and Hitchcock put symbolisms in Under Capricorn (1949).
Hitchcock threw Raymond Chandler's work to into trash. He didn't even look at it after Raymond Chandler insulted Hitchcock.
That's true about Chandler. It is said that not a word of Chandler's script made it into "Strangers on a Train," but Warners still wanted his name in the credits for promotional purposes.
That worked with...critic Pauline Kael, who wrote "Raymond Chandler...or somebody...gave 'Strangers on a Train' some of the finest dialogue ever to grace a thriller." Kael was suspicious of Chandler's full involvement, but STILL reviewed the movie (in a revivial) as being connected to Chandler some how.
James Bridie was another good one.
As I've noted elsewhere, one reason that so many Hitchcock movies are so good is that he found other fine people to write them (for him, and WITH him, he participated in structure.) M. Night Shaymalian demands to write his own work, and it is going downhill. Brian DePalma's self-written scripts lack wit or creativity. Hitchcock "knew his limitations."
Czenzi Ormonde wrote the script with Hitchcock and Barbara Keon. Barbara Keon also worked with Hitchcock in Rebecca, Spellbound, and Notorious.
Did you know that Original Hitchcock Script of The Paradine Case is still available at IUCAT Library? David O. Selznick had to write another script, because of the change in the characters due to casting changes.
Original Hitchcock Script was written by James Bridie. And Ben Hecht contributed some additional dialogue.
I forgot to mention about Suspicion. If Suspicion was ended the way Hitchcock wanted, then I don't think there would have been Shadow of A Doubt (1943). And Suspicion (1941) would have been a flawed film. Hitchcock originally wanted Joan Fontaine for Young Charlie. But She was unavailable. So Thornton Wilder suggested Teresa Wright. I thought Teresa Wright was perfect for the role.