- War effort: the Master of Suspense fights the fascists
- Another Hitchcock Wrong Man in a double chase
- Falsely accused goes on run to find real criminal
- North by Northeast: crossing famous landmarks
- Not Dorothy Parker: Famous writer isn’t in film
- First project with lifelong friend Norman Lloyd
- Long-lived actor fell foul of McCarthy blacklist
- Helped back into industry with Hitch’s support
Note: this is part of an ongoing series of 150-odd Hitchcock articles; any dead links are to those not yet published. Subscribe to the email list to be notified when new ones appear.
Saboteur: Writing on a Classic | Collectors Guide, Pt 2: Soundtrack and home video
Contents
Production
VHS trailer | TCM intros, Robert Osborne
Alfred Hitchcock’s exciting 1942 wartime thriller stars Robert Cummings as Barry Kane, a Los Angeles aircraft factory worker who witnesses his plant’s firebombing by an evil Nazi agent (Norman Lloyd). During the deadly explosion, Kane’s best friend is killed and he himself becomes wrongly accused of sabotage. To avenge his friend and clear his own name, Kane, aided by a not-altogether-trusting woman (Priscilla Lane) begins a relentless cross-country chase that ends in a harrowing confrontation with the real saboteur high atop the Statue of Liberty.
Hitchcock’s first film with all-American actors moves with breakneck speed from Boulder Dam to New York’s Radio City Music Hall, to its dramatic finale in New York Harbor. Praised by critics who often compare it to The 39 Steps, Saboteur has a witty screenplay along with dazzling camera work and an outstanding supporting cast. It’s vintage Hitchcock at his suspenseful best. – US MCA VHS and Betamax (1985), and LD (1986) LDDb
As with many Hitch trailers, the one above features unique footage; Cummings narrates in character wearing similar but different clothes to those he wore in the film, indicating it wasn’t shot during production. The opening few minutes’ spectacular burning scene is an alternate, slightly less convincing take, demonstrating it was staged and shot at least twice.
Priscilla Lane cosies up to Robert Cummings, the Wrong Man
Hitch’s cameo is perfunctory, with the director merely standing in front of a shop. But he originally shot a more elaborate one in which he and his then secretary, Carol Stevens, play a deaf couple walking down the street. Hitch being Hitch, he signed something offensive to her, at which she turned and slapped him. According to actor Norman Lloyd in the film’s making-of featurette, it was vetoed by the “higher-ups” for portraying disabled people in a negative light. Another cameo was purportedly intended, as described in Marion Meade’s supposedly “authoritative” 1988 biography of the Jazz Age’s iconoclastic writer and satirist, Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?
“Not too long afterward, Alfred Hitchcock engaged her to add choice material to a script already written by Peter Viertel and Joan Harrison [based on an idea by Hitch]. Saboteur is about an aircraft factory worker who is wrongfully accused of sabotage and includes a cross-country chase to apprehend the true criminal. Dorothy wrote the dialogue for a troupe of circus freaks—a bearded woman and Siamese twins. She and Hitchcock appear in the film together, as a couple driving along the highway in a car just as Robert Cummings is manhandling Priscilla Lane. “My,” Dorothy remarks, “they must be terribly in love.”
Trouble is that the scene, 40 minutes in, was actually shot with two much older, uncredited actors; leave a comment if you recognise them! But Meade, who clearly either didn’t bother to watch the film or had no idea what Hitch and her own biographical subject looked like, presented it as unvarnished truth with no factual basis whatsoever. At the time of filming from December 1941–February 1942, Hitch was 42 and Parker 48; here she is in November 1941, and her voice from 1956. Further, the lady in the car is already very grey-haired and showing no sign of the pronounced eyebags which afflicted a still-barely greying Parker in later life. Confirmation bias has led some acolytes to embellish it further by claiming Hitch himself first related in Hitchcock/Truffaut how he shot their cameo, was dissatisfied and redid it with his replacement; he didn’t. Hitch’s only mention of the satirist is:
“The famous Dorothy Parker collaborated on the screenplay. Some of her touches, I’m afraid, were missed altogether; they were too subtle.”
Ergo, ever since the publication of Meade’s biography, Saboteur has been repeatedly cited as having the only known footage of Parker – her three credited TV appearances, all from 1959 talk shows, appear to be lost – giving rise to yet another Hitchcock myth. Meade was a renowned author with over a dozen books to her name, including a handful on Parker. But how much else of her oeuvre is tainted with such unsubstantiated statements?
Robert Cummings cosies up to Gray Shadow, the German shepherd. Good boy.
Like the cinema in Sabotage, which showed a separate film within a film, in Saboteur’s Radio City Music Hall shootout the audience are watching a comedy-drama onscreen. Abbott and Costello’s latest, Ride ‘Em Cowboy, was originally announced for inclusion but in the end was replaced by a fascinatingly realistic but specially shot sequence. Pity: I’d have loved to have seen the ‘whole’ thing!
This was Hitch’s first film with an all-American cast and it closely follows the template set by the likes of The 39 Steps and Young and Innocent, whereby our falsely accused hero goes on the run, picking up an attractive and unwilling female companion along the way. But it’s complicated by the necessity for him to both evade the authorities and find the real culprit, climaxing in a grand, thrilling set-piece. Of course, this theme of the double chase reached its apotheosis in North by Northwest.
But Saboteur’s not as smooth and effortlessly unselfconscious as those three, and not helped by some bafflingly blatant plot holes. Several in particular are quite jarring, somewhat giving the impression the current film’s been edited after the fact, which of course it hasn’t. Though it possesses plenty of charm, acquits itself well on its own merits and fits nicely within Hitch’s filmography, ultimately Saboteur sees the Master doing nothing new and is a little less accomplished and essential than its thematic brethren.
Norman Lloyd
Interviews: Television Academy | Oscars | On Saboteur+ | 2011, pt 2 | SAG-AFTRA Foundation
Said antagonist in this case is played by Norman Lloyd (1914–2021) in his film début. He pulls off menacing psychopath very well; it helps that he was then blessed with suitably vampiric canines. In real life though, he was a wonderfully amiable gentleman who was still animatedly regaling us with fascinating tales of his long, distinguished acting career right up until his death at the age of 106. In an acting CV almost unmatched in its length and scope, another direct Hitch connection is his notable appearance in Spellbound.
Even more significantly, Lloyd co-produced, mostly with Saboteur co-writer Joan Harrison, all but the first season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, also directing 22 episodes and acting in five. After appearing with his friends John Garfield in the thinly veiled McCarthy allegory He Ran All the Way, whose tragic star, writers and director were all blacklisted, and Charlie Chaplin in Limelight, who was about to be, Lloyd too found himself persona non grata. His career foundered and he didn’t make another film for 25 years. Instead, he moved into television but still didn’t work regularly until Hitch hired him for Presents.
Norman Lloyd Turns 106: ‘He Is the History of Our Industry’ – Tim Gray, Variety
Rounding up, Lloyd also assisted co-producers Harrison and Hitch on the “Heartbeat” (1957) episode of the Suspicion TV series. He directed “The Jail” (1962) episode of the Alcoa Premiere series, also co-producing alongside Harrison and Hitch; and co-produced, with Harrison again, the Hitch-directed Startime series episode “Incident at a Corner” (1960). Lastly, Lloyd was a guest in both the AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute to Alfred Hitchcock TV special (1979) and the “A Talk with Hitchcock” (1964) episode of the Telescope documentary series.
He Ran All the Way (1951)
Belgian poster
Nick Robey (John Garfield, The Postman Always Rings Twice) is a dim-witted thug who lives with his mother and scrapes by on petty crime. He and his slick accomplice plot a big-time payroll robbery, but their plan goes horribly awry when they’re discovered by a uniformed policeman, a shootout ensues leaving Al and the cop wounded and Nick on the run. While seeking cover, Nick meets Peggy Dobbs (Shelley Winters, Lolita), a lonely young girl who takes Nick to her family’s apartment, while there the paranoid thief decides to take the family hostage until he can escape.
This was the great John Garfield’s final film, he died less than a year later at age thirty-nine from heart complications as accusations of his involvement with the Communist Party and his refusal to name names before the HUAC led to his blacklisting in Hollywood. During the film’s initial run, director John Berry (Tension) and screenwriters Dalton Trumbo (Lonely are the Brave) and Hugo Butler (The Southerner) were uncredited due to Hollywood blacklisting during the Red Scare. Stunning black-and-white cinematography by the legendary James Wong Howe (Hud). – US Kino BD and DVD
- Kino BD and DVD (2015), also in 4-DVD and 5-BD Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema
“A highly affecting thriller” – Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
Nick Robey (John Garfield) panics during a robbery, and kills a cop. As he escapes the scene, he finds himself at a public swimming pool. He needs very badly to get off the streets, and he meets a lonely young girl, Peg (Shelley Winters), at the pool. She invites him home to meet her family. Once in the house, Robey reveals his true identity The family are horrified, but Peg feels the pull of the savage!
The getaway is made possible when Peg agrees to buy a car. Upon the arrival of the car, Robey begins to sense a double cross, and he forces Peg outside for the finale. Garfield and Winters are acting here at the peak of their considerable powers. Garfield died shortly afterwards, aged 39. Seeing him in this role, one can only dream about what greatness lay ahead of him. The film’s writer, Dalton Trumbo (fronted by Guy Endore), and director, John Berry, were both subsequently hounded out of Hollywood by the Blacklist. – Australian MGM DVD
- UK: Optimum DVD (2009)
- Simply DVD (2015)
- France: Wild Side Digibook DVD (2010, reissued 2012)
- Australia: MGM DVD (2009)
Bootlegs: Italy (Sinister Film), Spain (Bang Bang Movies/reissue, Jigsaw Movies, Llamentol BD-R, Regia).
Saboteur: Writing on a Classic | Collectors Guide, Pt 2: Soundtrack and home video
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This is part of a unique, in-depth series of 150-odd Hitchcock articles.
