Alfred Hitchcock's unrealized projects
During a career that spanned more than half a century, Alfred Hitchcock directed over fifty films, and worked on a number of others which never made it beyond the pre-production stage.
This was to be Hitchcock's directorial debut, after working in the art department on twelve films previously, but budgetary problems canceled the production after only a few scenes were shot.
[citation needed] British thriller writer Dennis Wheatley had been a guest on the set of many of the early Hitchcock movies, and when The Forbidden Territory was published in January 1933, he presented the director with a copy.
Hitchcock so enjoyed the book that he wanted to make a film of it, but he was just in the process of moving to Gaumont-British studios to work for Michael Balcon, he asked Wheatley to hold onto the rights until he could persuade his new employer to purchase them.
Hitchcock then approached Richard Wainwright, a distinguished producer who had been head of UFA films in Germany, and had recently relocated to Britain.
Wainwright, committed to studio space, technicians and actors, had no alternative but to proceed without him, and placed the film into the hands of American director Phil Rosen.
In 1936, at Hitchcock's instigation, Wheatley wrote a screenplay The Bombing of London, but the controversial project could find no backer and was shelved.
[citation needed] Hitchcock very much wanted to direct a follow-up to The 39 Steps, and he felt that Greenmantle by John Buchan was a superior book.
Several problems complicated its genesis, including conflicts with legalities, objections from the British shipping industry, and competing plans from other producers.
[2] Hitchcock desperately wanted to direct Norma Shearer, Robert Taylor, and Conrad Veidt in one of the first World War II dramas, Escape.
However, Hitchcock was shut out of the project when the novel Escape by Ethel Vance (pen name of Grace Zaring Stone) was purchased by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Hitchcock knew he could never work for the notorious MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer, who selected Mervyn LeRoy to produce and direct the film, which indeed starred Shearer and was released in late 1940.
Hitchcock's Shakespearean vision was of a "psychological melodrama" (set in contemporary England, and starring Cary Grant in the title role).
The project was scrapped when Hitchcock's studio caught wind of a potential lawsuit from a professor who had already written a modern-day version of Hamlet.
[7] The Bramble Bush would have been an adaptation of a 1948 novel by David Duncan about a disaffected Communist agitator who, on the run from the police, is forced to adopt the identity of a murder suspect.
[8] Hitchcock did not feel that any of the scripts lifted the movie beyond an ordinary chase story, and Warner Brothers allowed him to kill the project and move on to Dial M for Murder (1954).
[1] The 1960 film The Bramble Bush, starring Richard Burton and Barbara Rush, and released by Warner Bros., was based on a Charles Mergendahl novel, and had no relation to Duncan's book.
James Stewart was expected to take the lead role of an adventurer who discovers a concentration camp for Communist agents; Hitchcock wanted Grace Kelly to play the love interest.
Hitchcock travelled to Livingstone near Victoria Falls and was a guest of Harry Sossen, one of the prominent inhabitants of this pioneer town.
The Hammond Innes novel was optioned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer with the intention of having Hitchcock direct the picture, starring Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster.
However, Hitchcock eventually abandoned the idea of The Wreck of the Mary Deare (which MGM proceeded to make with Cooper and director Michael Anderson) and went ahead with North by Northwest instead.
[15] Following Psycho, Hitchcock re-united with Ernest Lehman for an original screenplay idea: A blind pianist, Jimmy Shearing (a role for James Stewart), regains his sight after receiving the eyes of a dead man.
[17] Hitchcock bought the rights to the 1960 novel Village of Stars by David Beaty (written under the pen name Paul Stanton) after The Blind Man project was canceled.
[20][21] The story, based on the French play Piege Pour un Homme Seul by M. Robert Thomas, follows a young married couple on holiday in the Alps.
Unlike Psycho, these elements would not be hidden behind the respectable veneer of murder mystery and psychological suspense, and the killer would be the main character, the hero, the eyes of the audience.
A British double agent (loosely based on George Blake) escapes from prison and flees to Moscow via Finland, where his wife and children are waiting.
