The “definitive” movie Alfred Hitchcock never got to make: “I’d have loved to”
At the risk of stating the obvious, Alfred Hitchcock was prone to dark thoughts.
All you have to do is watch Psycho and peruse some basic information on his relationship with actor Tippi Hedren during the production of The Birds, and you’ll realise quite quickly that he was drawn to monstrous people and prone to being one himself. He was also one of the greatest Hollywood directors of all time, and studios tended to let him make whatever stories he wanted.
Psycho was an exception, of course, drawing on the gruesome real-life story of serial killer Ed Gein, and the film was so sexually explicit, structurally daring, and violent that executives at Paramount refused to make it, but determined to do it anyway, Hitchcock slashed the budget and funded the project himself.
Based on this background, you’d think that the Master of Suspense could have gotten any movie made if he wanted it badly enough, but as it turns out, there was one story that he was never able to bring to fruition. On multiple occasions towards the end of his career, Hitchcock talked about the 1910 case of Hawley Harvey Crippen, a doctor in London who was hanged for the disappearance and murder of his wife, music hall singer Cora Turner.
“It is almost the definitive case of murder, trial, and execution,” Hitchcock said in a 1963 interview. “It would be a very long picture, with detailed characterisation, but I’m afraid it’s terribly downbeat.” It would also, he acknowledged, require a sizable budget.
The Crippen does seem tailor-made for the Psycho director. When Turner disappeared in 1910, Crippen and his much younger mistress claimed that she had run off to America with a lover. The police might have bought this story if the couple hadn’t immediately fled the country by ship. Convinced that a deeper search was necessary, the authorities discovered a headless, limbless torso under the floorboards of Crippen’s home and immediately sent someone to apprehend the doctor as soon as he landed ashore.
The trial was complicated by the limits of forensic science at the time. The prosecution produced a piece of preserved skin that it claimed was Turner’s, but pathologists conceded that they were unable to determine whether the specimen was male or female, and a shred of clothing found near the torso was deemed to be part of a pyjama set that Turner had given to Crippen, which further incriminated him, and following a brief deliberation, the jury pronounced the doctor to be guilty of murder, and he was executed.
This is more than enough intrigue for a Hitchcock film, but the plot has only thickened over time. 21st-century scientists have cast doubt on the initial findings, using the DNA of Turner’s nearest surviving relatives to assert that the torso was not, in fact, hers. However, other scientists have rushed to question their methods. Meanwhile, other researchers have suggested that police may have planted the evidence used against Crippen during the trial.
Not surprisingly, there have been numerous books, plays, and television series inspired by the case, including Ernest Raymond’s 1935 novel, We, the Accused. When asked in a different interview if there were any films that the studio had prevented him from making, Hitchcock said, “I’d have loved to make a film of We, the Accused.”
However, he acknowledged that, given the scope of the story, the budget would have to be substantial, which may be why he wasn’t able to simply fund it himself, the way he had with Psycho.
