FRIDAY, FERBRUARY 9 - NOVELISTS AS SCREENWRITERS 3 films 8:00 p.m. (ET)/5:00 p.m. (PT) STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951) What could have been a more inspired collaboration than one between the cinematic master of suspense and the hardboiled novelist who made detective fiction a respected literary genre? While it seems like a perfect pairing in retrospect, director Alfred Hitchcock and writer Raymond Chandler clashed continually during the making of Strangers on a Train (1951). In The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock by Donald Spoto, the director admitted, "Our collaboration was not very happy. After a while I had to give up working with him. Sometimes when we were trying to get the idea for a scene, I would offer him a suggestion. Instead of giving it some thought, he would remark to me, very discontentedly, 'If you can go it alone, why the hell do you need me?' He refused to work with me as a director." In the end, Hitchcock threw out Chandler's screenplay and hired Czenzi Ormonde to rewrite it with some additional dialogue supplied by Alma Hitchcock. Even with the last minute change of screenwriters, Strangers on a Train is generally acknowledged as one of Hitchcock's best films and was a remarkable comeback from the director's previous commercial failures of Stage Fright (1950), Under Capricorn (1949), Rope (1948), and The Paradine Case (1948). Of course, Chandler devotees claim they can clearly see the novelist's imprint on the final film but the ironic part is that every trace of the screenwriter's original work was removed by Hitchcock. Based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith, the author of The Talented Mr. Ripley, Strangers on a Train presents us with two men from different worlds who strike up a fateful conversation during a train trip. Guy Haines (Farley Granger) is a professional tennis player with social aspirations. He'd like to marry Anne Morten (Ruth Roman), the daughter of a prominent Washington senator, but Miriam, his spiteful wife, refuses to divorce him. Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker) is an effete and emotionally unstable dilettante with a deep hatred for his wealthy father. In the course of their conversation, Bruno makes the suggestion that they exchange murders. If Guy will murder Bruno's father, Bruno will murder Miriam. Guy dismisses Bruno's comment as a macabre joke but soon comes to realize he is dealing with a psychopath. Originally William Holden was considered for the role of Guy but when he wasn't available, Hitchcock signed his former leading man from Rope, Farley Granger. The director was less pleased with the casting of Ruth Roman as Anne Morten who was forced on him by Warner Brothers. For the role of Anne's spunky sister, Barbara, who witnesses Bruno's dark side at a social gathering, Hitchcock cast his own daughter Patricia in the part after she agreed to a screen test. However, you couldn't really say she was treated with kid gloves. A press release from the set revealed a cruel joke Hitchcock played on her one night. When Pat begged for a ride on the Ferris wheel on the fairground set, he gave his permission and then stopped the ride when she reached the topmost point, extinguishing all the lights. Hitchcock then went off to direct another scene in a far corner of the park, leaving her stranded for more than an hour in the darkness. Of course, the real surprise of Strangers on a Train is Robert Walker as Bruno Anthony. Walker had always been typecast as the All-American boy-next-door in such wholesome MGM fare as See Here, Private Hargrove (1944) and The Clock (1945) but Hitchcock saw another side of Walker which he effectively exploited in his film. Unfortunately, Walker, who had just recovered from a nervous breakdown prior to filming Strangers on a Train, would die just a year later during the filming of My Son John (1952), a rabid anticommunist melodrama that ended up using some outtake footage of Walker in Strangers on a Train to fill in some continuity gaps. Hitchcock later said in an interview with Jay Robert Nash: "I remember one night we had him at a party, God rest his soul....a little party after the picture's showing at our house and my wife gave him brandy. Someone said, 'Oh, you should never do that, never give him brandy, because he'll be gone.' And he was gone, too. He had two or three. Then he took my wife aside and talked about me. He said: 'You know, I love him, but I hate him at the same time!' This was Robert Walker. It's scary, isn't it? In our own home!" Director/Producer: Alfred Hitchcock Screenplay: Raymond Chandler, Czenzi Ormonde, Whitfield Cook (adaptation), Patricia Highsmith (novel) Cinematography: Robert Burks Music: Dimitri Tiomkin Principle Cast: Farley Granger (Guy Haines), Ruth Roman (Anne Morton), Robert Walker (Bruno Antony), Leo G. Carroll (Senator Morton), Patricia Hitchcock (Barbara Morton) BW-104m. By Jeff Stafford 10:00 p.m. (ET)/7:00 p.m. (PT) THE BIG SLEEP (1946) Even before To Have and Have Not was released in 1944, it became clear that Warner Bros. had a huge hit on its hands, a major new star in Lauren Bacall, and a hot romantic team in Bacall and Humphrey Bogart. Naturally, the studio wanted to recapture the magic, so they immediately put The Big Sleep (1946) into production, with Howard Hawks once again directing. Based on a private-eye novel by Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep has a convoluted plot. Bogart is detective Philip Marlowe, hired by a dying rich man to get rid of a blackmailer. The rich man's two beautiful daughters, Bacall and Martha Vickers, are constantly getting into trouble...and getting Marlowe into trouble as well. Even such distinguished writers as William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman couldn't make sense of the story. Chandler claimed that Hawks even sent him a telegram, wanting to know who had committed one of the murders. Chandler had no idea. But it didn't really matter. It's not the plot that makes The Big Sleep crackle, it's the witty dialogue, and the potent chemistry between Bacall and Bogart. The Big Sleep was finished in early 1945, near the end of World War II. The studio wanted to get its war-themed films in theaters as soon as possible, so The Big Sleep sat on the shelf while those films were released. Meanwhile, Bacall's third film, Confidential Agent, had been released, and she'd gotten terrible reviews. Even the fact that Bogart had finally divorced his wife and married Bacall couldn't take the sting out of those reviews. Bacall's agent saw The Big Sleep, and urged studio chief Jack Warner to make changes that would exploit the Bogart-Bacall chemistry, and add more of the "insolence" that had made her a star. Warner and Hawks agreed, and brought in Julius Epstein to write new scenes, most notable was a sexy double-entendre conversation about horse racing. Among the scenes that were dropped was one that clarified plot points. Released in 1946, the new version was as big a hit as To Have and Have Not. In 1997, the earlier version of The Big Sleep was released. Director: Howard Hawks Producer: Howard Hawks, Jack L. Warner (executive) Screenplay: William Faulkner, Leight Brackett, Jules Furthman Cinematography: Sid Hickox Editor: Christian Nyby Art Direction: Carl Jules Weyl Music: Max Steiner Cast: Humphrey Bogart (Philip Marlowe), Lauren Bacall (Vivian Sternwood Rutledge), John Ridgely (Eddie Mars), Martha Vickers (Carmen Sternwood), Dorothy Malone (Book Seller). BW-114m. Close captioning. Descriptive video. By Margarita Landazuri 12:00 a.m. (ET)/9:00 p.m. (PT) THREE COMRADES (1938) Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night) went to Hollywood three times to try to write for the screen Ñ in 1927, in 1931, and finally, from 1937 until his death in 1940. He received screen credit only once: for Three Comrades (1938), based on Erich Maria Remarque's novel about three German World War I veterans facing poverty, disillusionment, and the rising tide of fascism. By 1937, Fitzgerald's fortunes were at low ebb. His wife, Zelda, was in a mental institution. He himself suffered a recurrence of tuberculosis, and was fighting a losing battle with alcohol. His last published novel, Tender is the Night, had not been well received; a series of articles he'd written about his breakdown, "The Crack-Up", had been dismissed as self-pitying. Broke, Fitzgerald had to find a way to pay for Zelda's care, and for his daughter's college tuition. MGM offered him a contract at $1,000 a week, making him one of the highest-paid screenwriters in Hollywood. After a dialogue polish job on A Yank at Oxford (1938), Fitzgerald was given a prestige assignment Ñ the screenplay for Three Comrades. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who had begun his career as a screenwriter (and would later become a director), was the producer. Problems began after Fitzgerald turned in his first draft. Although Mankiewicz told Fitzgerald it was "simply swell," he gave the novelist a collaborator, Edward Paramore, to help with construction. Fitzgerald took offense, but managed to work with Paramore on another draft. Then Mankiewicz himself took over and rewrote the script. Fitzgerald expressed his outrage in a letter: "Oh, Joe, can't producers ever be wrong? I'm a good writer Ñ honest." Later, Mankiewicz commented, "I have personally have been attacked as if I had spat on the flag because...I rewrote some dialogue by F. Scott Fitzgerald. But it needed it! It was very literary dialogue, novelistic dialogue, that lacked all the qualities needed for screen dialogue...Scott Fitzgerald really wrote very bad spoken dialogue." Opinion at the time was divided on the merits of Three Comrades. Some objected to the removal of Remarque's overt political content Ñ even though the Nazi menace was already sweeping Europe, war had not yet broken out, and the studio didn't want to offend Germany. Some critics found the tragic story grim; others found it moving. But about one thing, there was unanimity: Margaret Sullavan's poignant performance as the doomed girl beloved by the three comrades was magnificent. Sullavan received an Oscar¨ nomination, and the New York Film Critics award. F. Scott Fitzgerald contributed to more than a dozen screenplays before his death in 1940. But the greatest accomplishment of his Hollywood sojourn was his unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon, a fictionalized portrait of MGM Production chief Irving Thalberg. Director: Frank Borzage Producer: Joseph L. Mankiewicz Screenplay: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edward E. Paramore, from the novel by Erich Maria Remarque Editor: Frank Sullivan Cinematography: Joseph Ruttenberg Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, Paul Gross; set decoration, Edwin B. Willis Music: Franz Waxman Cast: Robert Taylor (Erich Lohkamp), Margaret Sullavan (Pat Hollmann), Franchot Tone (Otto Koster), Robert Young (Gottfried Lenz), Guy Kibbee (Alfons), Lionel Atwill (Franz Breuer) BW-99m. By Margarita Landazuri