The real-life murders that inspired Alfred Hitchcock movie ‘Rear Window’
Even though it was a fictional feature adapted from a short story, Alfred Hitchcock‘s Rear Window looked to the headlines and real-life murders to craft its riveting narrative. This saw the 1954 classic emerge as one of the greatest thrillers in film history.
James Stewart’s L.B. Jeffries is a photographer recuperating from an accident that’s left him confined to a wheelchair, who indulges his voyeuristic side by peering in at his neighbours. However, after he becomes increasingly convinced there’s a killer lurking in his midst, he grows suspicious of a neighbour who he believes has murdered his own wife and has the potential to strike again.
Shot entirely on a soundstage after Hitchcock came up with the idea of crafting a full-size replica of an apartment complex courtyard to streamline production, Rear Window might be small in scope, considering it unfolds almost entirely from a single and relatively confined location, but the film is nonetheless massive in its ambition. Minimalist in scale yet maximalist in style and substance, and gradually ratcheting up the tension, it’s another masterclass from a filmmaker who definitely earned his ‘Master of Suspense’ moniker.
Rear Window was scripted by John Michael Hayes, having been derived from Cornell Woolrich’s short story It Had to Be Murder. Contrary to many claims, neither was blatantly ripped off by D.J. Caruso’s Disturbia as was proven in court twice over. However, Hitchcock told a fellow icon of filmmaking that there were two very real cases that impacted the narrative.
The first was that of Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen, who engaged in an affair with a typist in his employ. In what turned out not to be a coincidence, the cheating doctor’s wife eventually disappeared without a trace, leaving Crippen to believe he’d pulled off the perfect crime. As Hitchcock would tell François Truffaut, though, it wasn’t quite as simple getting away scot-free.
“Crippen made a crucial blunder that turned out to be his undoing,” the Rear Window director said. “He allowed the secretary to wear some of his wife’s jewellery, and this started the neighbours talking.” When the authorities questioned him on why his new lover was wearing the accessories of his missing wife, Crippen ended up running away with his latest flame. Incriminating to a fault, Scotland Yard then discovered his wife’s dismembered torso buried underneath the basement, with the offending parties apprehended when they tried to flee to Canada.
That was reflected in Rear Window killer Lars Thorwald, who claimed his own wife was away on a trip without taking her wedding ring along. Jeffries isn’t quite sure how he disposed of the body, but with Crippen serving as the inspiration for the damning evidence left behind in plain sight, chopping her up into pieces and disposing of them one by one wasn’t out of the question.
Patrick Mahon did exactly that in 1924, which again sparked Hitchcock’s imagination into life. “He cut up the body and threw it, piece by piece, out of a train window,” he explained of unfortunate victim Emily Kaye. “But he didn’t know what to do with the head, and that’s where I got the idea of having them look for the victim’s head in Rear Window.”
Suitably grisly stuff, then, but perfectly fitting for the director’s penchant for the macabre. It might be tame by today’s standards and immune from accusations of being too gory even back in the mid-1950s, but Rear Window took its cues from a pair of truly heinous crimes regardless.
