Much has been written, correctly and incorrectly, about the difficulties surrounding the ending of Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion(RKO-1941), the director's fourth Hollywood production, based on Francis Iles's Before the Fact. What follows is an examination the shooting script before and after revisions, production correspondence, a careful study of the finished picture, and the director's statements after the fact.
Hitchcock himself told François Truffaut and numerous other interviewers that his original intention was to have Johnnie Aysgarth (Cary Grant) guilty of the crimes for which he is suspected, and that Lina (Joan Fontaine), aware of her husband's guilt writes a letter to her mother (Dame May Witty) indicating that she knows Johnnie is going to murder her and she intends to allow him to do so. Later, Hitchcock said, Johnnie brings Lina a glass of poisoned milk, and she gives him the letter to mail. The last scene would have been Johnnie mailing the incriminating letter.
This ending, reminiscent of the ironic or twist endings of many an Alfred Hitchcock Presents installment, was never actually filmed, nor is there evidence that it was ever scripted that way. While the twist ending would have satisfied the Production Code, Hitchcock and RKO knew that audiences would have difficulty accepting Lina's drinking the milk which she knows to be poisoned, and so, according to Hitchcock biographers John Russell Taylor and Donald Spoto, it was the director's suggestion early on in his involvement with the production, that the story should be about a "neurotically suspicious woman".
Hitchcock himself told François Truffaut and numerous other interviewers that his original intention was to have Johnnie Aysgarth (Cary Grant) guilty of the crimes for which he is suspected, and that Lina (Joan Fontaine), aware of her husband's guilt writes a letter to her mother (Dame May Witty) indicating that she knows Johnnie is going to murder her and she intends to allow him to do so. Later, Hitchcock said, Johnnie brings Lina a glass of poisoned milk, and she gives him the letter to mail. The last scene would have been Johnnie mailing the incriminating letter.
This ending, reminiscent of the ironic or twist endings of many an Alfred Hitchcock Presents installment, was never actually filmed, nor is there evidence that it was ever scripted that way. While the twist ending would have satisfied the Production Code, Hitchcock and RKO knew that audiences would have difficulty accepting Lina's drinking the milk which she knows to be poisoned, and so, according to Hitchcock biographers John Russell Taylor and Donald Spoto, it was the director's suggestion early on in his involvement with the production, that the story should be about a "neurotically suspicious woman".
In spite of the lack of script material for an "incriminating letter" ending, there is much evidence in the finished film to support Hitchcock's statements that this was his preferred ending. Such an ending is consistent with -- and would have completed -- a major theme in the existing picture.
In the opening sequence, it is a postage stamp which Johnnie borrows from Lina that ultimately brings them together. Using the stamp to pay his fare, Johnnie remarks to the annoyance of the conductor, "Write to your mother!" Thus, foreshadowing the ending of Lina's incriminating letter to her mother. At crucial moments in the film letters are sent and received. When Lina elopes with Johnnie, the excuse that she gives her parents when she goes out is that she is going to the post office.
The theme of "letters" is carried forward in the game of anagrams that Lina plays with Beaky. At the moment when Lina decides she will leave Johnnie, she writes a letter to him, ultimately tearing it up (an action that would be repeated by both Judy Barton in Vertigo and Melanie Daniels in The Birds). Johnnie then enters with a telegram containing news of his father-in-law's death. Later, Lina's suspicions mount when Johnnie hides a letter he's received from an insurance company. Finally, Hitchcock makes his cameo appearance dropping a letter into a mailbox.
Also telling are several suggested titles contained in a memo from producer Harry Edington to RKO executive Peter Lieber, dated December 10, 1940, which include: Letter from a Dead Lady, A Letter to Mail, Posthumously Yours, Forever Yours, Yours to Remember, and Your Loving Widow -- all suggestive of the "incriminating letter" ending.
This ending however was foiled for several reasons. One reason is that RKO did not wish to have Cary Grant portray a murderer. A second, and more likely reason is that the Production Code would not allow Lina to allow herself to be murdered. Criminals could commit suicide within the Code, but a heroine could not, in spite of the fact that her actions would help convict a murderer. Despite the indecision over its ending, the film was a tremendous success, and more importantly Hitchcock had enjoyed a measure of creative freedom which he knew that he would not get at Selznick International...
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