Hollywood Tales
“I think the worst fight we [Alfred Hitchcock] ever had was over the ending of To Catch a Thief. We had different ideas. I wrote twenty-seven different endings and still don’t like the one that was used. We had a couple of slam-bang script fights. Still, we got along fine until I got too much press.
When we went to Paris for the premiere of To Catch a Thief, I was getting mentioned everywhere — they value writers in Paris — so I was promptly banned from all public relations events. If I was mentioned in the fourth paragraph of a story, that was okay but not in the first or second. I was becoming known for my dialogue and characterizations. They even talked about “the Hitchcock-Hayes fall schedule” in either Variety or the Hollywood Reporter.
When you show up in the same sentence — Alfred Hitchcock and John Michael Hayes — that was more than he could bear. He wanted to be the total creator: Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Hitch was so unkind about giving credit.
In an interview he did with Francois Truffaut years later for example, Hitch tried to make it seem as if he had written the screenplay for Rear Window. I heard about that too late; I tried to contact Truffaut, but he had died. I did a sixty-five-page treatment of Rear Window that Jimmy Stewart committed to, that Paramount committed to. I had met with Hitch once or twice. He had nothing to do with the writing.
I was nominated for an Oscar. When I won the Edgar Allen Poe Award [for Rear Window ], the first time it was ever given for a movie, I showed Hitch the ceramic statuette, and he said, “You know, they make toilet bowls out of the same material.” Then he almost pushed it off the end of a table.”
— screenwriter John Michael Hayes on his relationship with director Alfred Hitchcock