Somewhere I read that The Trouble with Harry was one of four films that Hitchkock withdrew from circulation after some years and refused to let them be re-issued for many years until they were finally re-released on VHS and then DVD.
Does anyone know what the other three were?
There were actually five. I found this bit of information on the "trivia" section of Vertigo. Hope it helps.
"The film was unavailable for decades because its rights (together with four other pictures of the same period) were bought back by Alfred Hitchcock and left as part of his legacy to his daughter. They've been known for long as the infamous "Five Lost Hitchcocks" amongst film buffs, and were re-released in theatres around 1984 after a 30-year absence. The others are The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Rear Window (1954), Rope (1948), and The Trouble with Harry (1955)."
Believe me, it was tough for about ten years: they never showed those five on TV, you couldn't see them in college screenings or at "revival houses." They showed a clip or two from "Vertigo" and "The Man Who Knew Too Much" at Hitchcock's televised AFI award show in 1979, and it was like a "glimpse of the hostages."
I always thought it was interesting that the five movies consisted of ALL of James Stewart's four Hitchcock movies, plus one that didn't have Stewart (Harry.)
For those ten years, nobody saw four of Stewart's greatest pictures. However, when they were all re-released in 1983 and 1984 (first to art theaters, then to video), James Stewart made the rounds promoting them and found himself with a whole new generation of fans. MILLIONS of them. He was most pleased.
There is some mystery about why those particular five were pulled.
Hitchcock seems to have owned three of them outright: The Trouble With Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo. While he was alive in the seventies, he frankly said that he had personally removed them from distribution, and that they would not come back until after his death, as a legacy to his family.
"Rear Window" was shown on NBC in the 60's and ABC once in 1971 , but seems to have gotten tangled up in a lawsuit on behalf of the estate of Cornell Woolrich, who wrote the original short story. Hitch called this the work of an "ambulance chaser" lawyer. Hitch didn't own "Rear Window," and it disappeared for those ten years too, with Universal settling the case and buying the rights.
"Rope" seems to have been caught up in legal tangles between Warner Brothers and the independent company "Transatlantic Films" which Hitchcock set up with WB backing in the forties, for only two films. "Rope" wasn't even shown on TV in the 60's or 70's, to my knowledge. It was lost the longest.
But now, they're all back and easily bought or rented.
I think that it's interesting that some of the five that were withdrawn were films that Hitchcock considered to be very good and yet were not critically or commercially successful. He always considered The Trouble with Harry one of his favourite of his own pictures but it was not a hit in America. Vertigo was advertised as 'Hitchcock's Maserpiece' but again was not a success. I think it is possible that he was motivated to aquire the rights at least for those two because he was disgruntled at their poor reception. Their poor reception might have motivated Paramount to sell.
As for Rope he'd been one of the founders of Transatlantic Pictures so perhaps after that company went he kept the rights to the film. Though if this were the case he'd probably have got Under Capricorn as well.
I don't know why he owned The Man Who Knew Too Much or Rear Window, though I thought that he owned the rights to Rear window rather than them having been bought by Universal. And was the lawsuit as late as that I thought it was around the time of the film's production?
"There are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth." ~ Robert Evansshare
This is a rather complex legal/business area that I don't think has ever been fully clarified.
For instance, indeed "Rope" and "Under Capricorn" were successive Transatlantic Pictures, and yet it was only "Rope" that disappeared for so long -- though "Under Capricorn" sort of did, too (it got one CBS network showing in the late sixties that I recall and then -- gone, for many years.)
I think maybe the McGilligan bio postulates that Hitchcock's deal with Paramount was PRE-NEGOTIATED so that the rights of some of the Paramount movies he made would revert to Hitchcock, and that the rights of some others would go straight to Paramount.
The result: only "To Catch A Thief" was made on the " rights revert to Paramount" part of the deal. In the 70's when "Vertigo," "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and "The Trouble With Harry" disappeared, "To Catch a Thief" was on local channels all the time. It is also possible that since Cary Grant was in "To Catch a Thief," his participation precluded Hitchocck owning the film (Grant owned some of HIS films, like "Indiscreet.")
Ownership rights also reverted to Hitchocck on Paramount's "Psycho" -- but THAT was evidently because he largely financed that movie himself. In the late sixties, Hitchcock sold the rights to "Psycho" to Universal along with his TV show rights, in exchange for MCA stock.
It seems that Hitchcock not only hoarded his "box office disappointments", he hoarded his ART FILMS ("Vertigo," "The Trouble With Harry") -- perhaps expecting that they would get better critical treatment after he died and was being studied more. Maybe.
I've always said that Alfred Hitchcock's career could be studied by MBA students as well as film students. He seems to have cut special deals from his British years, to Selznick, to early Universal loan-outs ("Saboteur," "Shadow of a Doubt") to Transatlantic, to Warners, to Paramount, to Universal, where he ended his career. And there are some RKO pictures in there, plus whoever made "Foreign Correspondent."
Along the way, Hitch did "one-time-only movies" for United Artists ("Foreign Correspondent") Fox ("Lifeboat," under Darryl F. Zanuck) and, spectacularly, M-G-M ("North by Northwest," with that studio giving Hitchcock almost carte blanche to make his ultimate entertainment -- Hitch had come there ostensibly to make the tepid "Wreck of the Mary Deare" for Leo the Lion.)
I think Hitch only missed working with Columbia among the majors. It would have been fun to see Hitchcock pitted against Columbia boss Harry Cohn (who, btw, loaned out Kim Novak for "Vertigo" saying, "It's a lousy script, but it's Hitchcock. You should do it.")
The McGilligan bio postulates that Hitchcock's deal with Paramount was PRE-NEGOTIATED so that the rights of some of the Paramount movies he made would revert to Hitchcock.
It seems that Hitchcock not only hoarded his "box office disappointments", he hoarded his ART FILMS ("Vertigo," "The Trouble With Harry")
"There are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth." ~ Robert Evansshare
Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't Psycho a Universal picture?
Back to OP: The release of those five movies in the 80s was very antipated by kowledgeable audiences. Especially Rear Window and Vertigo which had many favorable essays written about them. It was very exciting to sit in a theater and get a glimpse of a movie you'd been deprived of for so long.
Seeing Rear Window with an audience is wonderful. Theexperience is communal as laughs roll through the house. Not so much with Vertigo, which remains a very personal experience even with a crowd; Both times I've seen it, audiences become a bit silly, with each new attempt by Stewart to turn Judy into Madeleine.
No. Psycho was made and distributed under the terms I set out before. It was funded and owned by Alfred J. Hitchcock Productions and distributed by Paramount. It is only now distributed by Universal along with the other 'genuine' Universal Hitchcock pictures, the five films that Hitch owned himself and a number of others (i.e. Mr and Mrs Smith, Suspicion, etc.) that Universal have acquired the rights for.
One interesting point - I recently rewatched Vertigo for the first time in a number of years and noticed that the copyright line in the main title sequence is for Alfred J. Hitchcock Productions (not Paramount) which also adds weight to the idea that he owned some of these pictures outright from the start.
onepotato2 - you're pretty lucky. I've never had the oportunity to see any Hitchcock picture in a cinema. I'm too young to have seen any of the original runs or even the 1980s rerelease of the lost pictures, or the cinema run of the restored versions of Vertigo or Rear Window. Plus, the cinemas around me tend only to play new releases and certainly not reruns of classic cinema.
"There are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth." ~ Robert Evansshare
yes, it was pretty cool to see them big.
Universal. The original Psycho house in on the Universal studios tour. Doesn't that pretty much conclusively mean that it was filmed at Universal?
I didn't know that - that's a good point. I suppose that since Hitch privately funded it through his own copmany it could have been shot at the Universal lot but it was not actually a Universal picture. It was definitely distributed by Paramount in order to fulfil his Paramount contract. After that he worked exclusively at Universal. It seems likely to me that he would have started setting up his offices at Universal at around the time that Psycho was going into production so it could have been shot there.
"There are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth." ~ Robert Evansshare
Everything you ever wanted to know about the Psycho house on the Universal lot. It's been moved several times, and will be moved again soon
http://tinyurl.com/kqdkdu
Thanks for the link. I'll certainly check it out.
"There are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth." ~ Robert Evansshare
I didn't know that - that's a good point. I suppose that since Hitch privately funded it through his own copmany it could have been shot at the Universal lot but it was not actually a Universal picture. It was definitely distributed by Paramount in order to fulfil his Paramount contract. After that he worked exclusively at Universal. It seems likely to me that he would have started setting up his offices at Universal at around the time that Psycho was going into production so it could have been shot there.
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There are lots of stories on this, all interesting, some a bit contradictory.
Psycho was released in 1960 as a "Paramount Picture," and if you look at the front of the film (modernly, AFTER the modern Universal logo), you will see the Paramount Mountain "scientifically slashed."
But Psycho was evidently MADE entirely at Universal...on its backlot(where they built the motel and cobbled the house together out of existing sets with some additions); on its soundstages(principally the gigantic "Phantom of the Opera" stage where they built the Bates stairwell and foyer); and just a few blocks away from Universal for the car lot scene(at a real car lot.)
If you LISTEN to "Psycho," you'll hear the same "Universal" sound effects that you can hear one film later in the Universal production "The Birds." Doors opening and closing, horns honking -- the same in both Psycho and The Birds.
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One word is that Paramount didn't even want Psycho to film on its venerable lot so production was moved to Universal where Hitchcock had his TV show offices and agent Lew Wasserman now had an ownership interest.
The other word is that Wasserman himself PUSHED Paramount to move production of Psycho to Universal...so that Wasserman could make money off the use of Universal's production facilities as rented to Paramount.
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"Psycho" seems to have remained in Paramount ownership for a 1965 re-release to theaters; a 1966 sale to CBS that was never broadcast; and several local showings in 1967 and 1968 in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
Universal seems to have finally owned "Psycho" outright in 1969, when it went out to theatrical re-release one more time as "Psycho - -The Version TV Dared Not Show!"
And in 1970, Psycho was shipped by Universal out to local stations that could play these Universal thrillers (including, now, Psycho):
Psycho
The Birds
Charade
Mirage
Agreed on Rear Window with an audience. Friends and I went to see, what must have been, the re-release sometime around 1985 at a rep theatre in Pittsburgh. The shot where Grace Kelley wakes Jimmy up, and just fills the screen with her indescribable beauty, got a collective "ooooh" from a packed theatre. Likewise some gasps during the danger scenes.
I've never seen Vertigo in a theatre, but I had enough problems with that section of the movie myself and don't need a crowd to emote for me. No human being would put themselves through what Novak's character did, for another human being, not matter how much guilt they felt over past actions. I found it odd that AFI picked this film as the best Hitchcock, let alone one of the top ten of all time on its first list in 98.
Hi ecarle,
The mystery: Hitch intended to create an extra inheritance for his daughter Patricia.
Actually it was five movies: Rope, The Man who knew too much, Vertigo, The Trouble with Harry, but I cannot remember the 5th one.
They were released in the movie theaters around 1985/1986, then available on VHS the year after.
I once heard that Hitch did it in order to create an extra inheritance for his daughter Patricia.
Right, the 5th movie was "Rear Window"!
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