Why Disney banned Alfred Hitchcock from Disneyland
Having to maintain a reputation as a staunchly family-friendly brand often comes at a cost, and in the case of Disney, it resulted in the company banning Alfred Hitchcock from Disneyland after he’d decided it was the perfect location to shoot a feature film.
The ‘Master of Suspense’ and the Mouse House hardly had a lot in common on any level, but the director had been toying with an idea for a new movie, one that would have been perfectly suited to being shot within the confines of Disneyland. Of course, for a place that bills itself as ‘The Happiest Place On Earth’, allowing somebody with a penchant for the macabre to set up shop was decidedly off-brand.
Six-time Academy Award nominee and North by Northwest writer Ernest Lehman was the one who first set plans in motion, concocting a story that would have seen a blind pianist – a part earmarked for James Stewart – regain the gift of sight after receiving a dead man’s eyes via transplant. While visiting a theme park with his family, the character discovers the former owner of his peepers has been murdered, leaving the image of the killer imprinted in his freshly installed retinas, igniting a mystery that demands to be solved.
In John Russell Tyler’s biography Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock, it’s noted the legendary filmmaker began flirting with the project after word of the concept reached his ears. “Hitch was at this time in Copenhagen with Alma on their post-Psycho holiday,” he wrote. “But Lehman told Peggy Robertson, she was excited enough to tell Hitch about it on the phone, and Hitch was sufficiently excited to talk to Lehman himself”.
Determining that Disneyland would be a perfect location, Hitchcock and Lehman began collaborating on the screenplay, which eventually hit the skids when Walt Disney found out about it. Having the director of the violent and controversial Psycho touching down on his turf was something the figurehead absolutely couldn’t sanction, which ultimately served as the downfall of The Blind Man.
According to Russell Tyler, “Walt Disney read it, and promptly made a statement that in no circumstances would Hitchcock, maker of that disgusting movie Psycho, be allowed to shoot a foot of film in Disneyland”. The two key creatives then tried to refit the narrative into one that could potentially unfold on a cruise ship instead, but removing Disneyland from the equation left Hitchcock unable to come up with a replacement tale that lived up to what he had in mind.
More than 50 years later, though, and The Blind Man did eventually see the light of day. Mark Gatiss would end up finishing the uncompleted script and mounting the production as a BBC radio drama, with Hugh Laurie in the role envisioned for Stewart.
