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IHitchcock Frustrated As World Steals His PlotsFunny BusinessBy ROBERT C. Rtf ARK *NEW YORK, Feb. 22.—The trouble with the times, according to Mr. Alfred Hitchcock, the big suspense vendor, is over-dramatlzation of the every-day occurrence, to such point that an honest manufacturer of spy thrillers is fresh©ut of McGuffins. Also villains. :--We will t*ke up McGuffins first.RuerkIn Mr. Hitchcock’s argot, a McGuf fin is the hidden booty—atomic formula, key list©f spies, gems,gold, anything —that all the dramatic shooting is •about When you are a director of awiftly paced dire dreadfuls, for which Hitch has become famous, you got to have a McGuffin. The derivation of McGuffin, for a gimmick, is obscure. Hitchcock’s best explanation is also obscure. There is a bloke on a train,” says the English director. “He sees a package, and asked what it is. Man says it’s a McGuffin. Other man asks what is a McGuffin? Other cove says a McGuffin is an apparatus for trapping lions in the Adirondacks.But there are no lions in the Adirondacks.’ other bloke says.”“ ‘Then this thing is no McGuffin,’ second lad says.”My trouble is plots,” Hitchcock Continues, in a rather simple explanation of our fevered fifties. Whom can you use for a villainnow, after the atom stories and this fellow Klaus Fuchs? King George running a Communist cell in Buck-jingham Palace, with a footman hid out in the cellar?hi• #eBE WISE.WHYPAY38 ASPIRIN AT ITS BESTYou get highest quality when you buy St Joseph Aspirin. It’s so fast so dependable. 12 tablets 10c, 100 tablets 45c. Why pay more, why ever accept less than the famous St. Joseph guarantee of “Aspirin at its best.” Always buy—St. Joseph aspirinWORLDS LARGEST SELLER AT lOta Counterspy?’ Harry Truman is really a spyin disguise, maybe? Or is he acounterspy? How about this *Hiss?Maybe he is really no Communist at all, but a counterspy himself, and Secretary Acheson almost tipped the mitt when he stood upfor him.“You’re looking for a good villain today, for movies, and it s got to be either King George of your mother.I guess the Eskimo will be the la’st believable spy, because they all look alike anyhow.My business is getting so tough, in face of the facts, that I will have to make a hero out of a double schizophrenic, just*to top this atom thief, Fuchs. The Hyde-side is the nicf side. I tell you, it’s rough. When they’ve already pinched the atom secrets. I have real McGuffin trouble. What have we got bigger that we can hide for my people to find?”Martians ArriveMr. Hitchcock, in fine mood, went on to say thal if the Martians invaded us today, after the glut of sensation to which we have been subjected, it would cause no stir at all.“The London Times,’’ he said, “would handle it in one paragraph. ‘Arrival of Martians,' the headline would sav. ‘Statement of Martians,FALSE TEETHThat loosen Need Not EmbarrassMany wearers of false teeth have suffered real embarrassment because then* plate dropped, slipped or wobbled at just the wrong time. Do not live in fear of this happening to you. Just sprinkle a little FASTEETH the alkRline (non-acid i powder, on your plates. Holds false teeth more firmly, so they feel more comforta-bble. Does not sour. Checks “plate odor ‘denture breath'. G*et FASTEETH at anydrug store.—Advertisement.*‘He crabs about my hats, sohard it is tofa/ine CHICKSFirst Chicks Bred Like Hybrid Corn!MatureNon BroodinessTORapidlyDOZEN MORE EGGS PER BIRD PER YEAR than standard bred farm flocks!.11 Your Service'*ALAMEDA FUELGRAIN3411 Frutas St.Hyline Headquarters*12-9112the subhead would say, and that would be that.”Mr. Hitchcock has a new movie going n«w, called Stagefright,’’ in which his backlog of villains has so dwindled that he is reduced to employing Jane Wyman to trap Marlene Dietrich, using the drama as the McGuffin. This is the ebb of villainy into which a master of hounds-and-hare like Hitch is now tumbled , by the times.The fat—or rather, once fat— genius of the Who-Shot-Cock-Robin had it pretty easy when all you needed was a Nazi spy with the secret blueprints, but his desperation today is real. As a man who calls actors the cattle,” his career depends on believable, super plot, construction. And the fact is that actuality has topped him.Pale ComparisonThere is not much, today, that you can put on the screen which has not been outdone by our real-life thrillerdillers. t “I should never have thought of hiding my McGuffin in a pumpkin, like this Whittaker Chambers did. I would havethought it too corny for belief,” Hitch says.)The stark melodrama of the Fuchs confession of secret-selling, the Judy Coplon foolishness. The mercy-killings, right and left, the Rosseilini-Bergman doings, the spy trial of our native, Robert Vogeler, in Budapest, have all out-Hitch-cocked Hitchcock. This has mostly been true since the end of the war. where weird weapons, flying discs, and spy sensations have reduced daily living to such a fuzzy un-realitv that nobodv would bat an« k •eve if the Martians docartod some night at La Guardia. We have exhausted villainy, and depleted the bizarre, and if nobody tells me today that the moon is made of green cheese, I will just say “Pass me a slice, and let it go at that. If it j whips Hitchcock it beats me, too.
Newspaper Details
El Paso Herald Post
El Paso, Texas, US
Wed, Feb 22, 1950
Page 12
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
IT 28 Jun 2020
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