In Memoriam: John M. Hayes (1919–2008)

Veteran screenwriter John Michael Hayes died in his sleep on November 19. Hayes has many notable screenwriting credits including Peyton Place (1957) and Butterfield 8 (1960), but is most well known for several collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock — Rear Window (1954), To Catch A Thief (1955), The Trouble With Harry (1955), and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956). That’s four notable movies with Hitcock in 3 years. Remarkable.

In the L.A. Times obituary, Hayes is quoted in a 1999 interview about Rear Window:

The 1954 suspense drama starred James Stewart as a photographer who is confined to a wheelchair with a broken leg and, while idly spying on his neighbors across the courtyard of his Greenwich Village apartment building, comes to believe that one of his neighbors has committed a murder.

The screenplay, based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich, earned Hayes his first Oscar nomination.

Hayes based the character of Stewart’s elegant fiance, played by Grace Kelly, on his wife, Mildred, who was known as Mel.

“The thing was, in the story of ‘Rear Window,’ there was no woman, and Hitch wanted a woman,” Hayes recalled in a 1999 interview with the Worcester (Mass.) Telegram & Gazette. “He had done ‘Dial M for Murder’ with Grace Kelly and said, ‘We have to have a girl, and I want to use Grace Kelly.’ “

Hitchcock, Hayes recalled, “told me to spend a week or two with her to get to know her, which I did. My wife was a very beautiful girl, a high-style fashion model, so I used the world I knew and I made Grace Kelly a model.”

Here is the Daily Variety memoriam about Hayes.