“Notorious resumes the general visual key of Suspicion with Cary Grant common to both films, like the theme of domestic poisoning …To [the former's] single-minded study in undeserved paranoia, Notorious counterpoints an undeserved contempt.”
—RAYMOND DURGNAT
This time forever lasted all of two weeks, before Grant eagerly agreed to appear in Notorious, the film that would reunite him with Alfred Hitchcock. The director had to wait in line for another chance to use Grant, having wanted him for Shadow of a Doubt(1943) to play the murderous Charlie, a role that went instead to Joseph Cotten, and for Spellbound (1945) as the psychotic John Ballantine, whom Gregory Peck eventually played, neither of which role would have met with the audience's approval.
Hitchcock first began to think about Notorious as early as 1943, when he had a notion to make a movie about a woman “carefully trained and coached into a gigantic confidence trick which might involve her marrying some man…the training of such a woman would be as elaborate as the training of a Mata Hari.” It would become a movie about a man whose control over a woman also makes him her victim, to the point of testing her loyalty by forcing her to marry his rival and then inconsolably suffering over it when she does—cinematic manna to both Hitchcock and Grant.
By early 1945 Hitchcock had developed and clarified the theme of the film. During lunch at Chasen's, he told William Dozier, a producer at RKO, that the film was going to be about sexual enslavement. After listening to a breakdown of the plot, Dozier took it directly to Selznick, who was eager to get the play-or-pay Hitchcock back into production, even if he, Selznick, was too busy to supervise the making of the film itself. At the time Selznick was in preproduction on Duel in the Sun, a postwar western eroto-epic (“Lust in the Dust!”) that starred Gregory Peck (whose spectacular performance in Hitchock's Spellbound had resulted in his being hailed as the “new” Cary Grant). Selznick was also more than a little preoccupied with Duel's female lead, the comely Jennifer Jones, who happened to be his paramour and eventually the second Mrs. Selznick. (Grant was relieved that Selznick wasn't going to be around very much: he didn't want to be caught between his professional obligations to Selznick and his personal friendship with his wife, who was, at the time, suffering from Selznick's public romancing of the much younger and far more beautiful Jones.)
Selznick's involvement with Duel stalled the commencement of production on Notorious, something that did not bother Hitchcock all that much. He was happy to collect his $7,000-a-week paycheck while he waited for Notorious to get the green light, and he used the time to work on the script, whose first draft, written by Spellbound screenwriter Ben Hecht, had fallen far short of what Hitchcock envisioned. At Grant's suggestion, the director called in Clifford Odets to rewrite the script, but he soon quit when Hitchcock insisted he add additional “love scene” dialogue between Devlin and Alicia while she is lying in bed, about to die from poison.
To solve the problem of his split loyalties (to his two films, not his two women), Selznick sold off Notorious as a completely self-contained package to RKO for $800,000 plus 50 percent of the eventual net, leaving him, after all preproduction expenses (including salaries), with an instant profit of $500,000. It wasn't that difficult a choice; Duel in the Sun was his obsessive love letter to Jones, while his difficulties with Hitchcock had made him reluctant to work again with the director. To ensure that Hitchcock would not be offended by the deal or try to do anything that might kill it, Selznick offered him guaranteed star billing—“An Alfred Hitchcock Production, Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.”* In the parlance and value system of Hollywood, that meant creative control, something the director craved. But true to form, Selznick managed to keep an active hand in virtually every step of the production of Notorious, particularly with the still-unfinished script, constantly pushing Hitchcock to build up Grant's part. In the early versions of the screenplay, in a pivotal scene, Alicia goes to the wine cellar alone and discovers her husband's “secret”; Devlin is thus absent from one of the most important scenes in the film. At the end of several early versions, Alicia dies in Devlin's arms, even as her husband, Sebastian, is planning, with his Nazi cronies, to expand their sphere of evil. Selznick's stubborn insistence that the film must have a “happy ending” forced Hitchcock to restructure the entire story.†
Selznick also dictated that the role of Sebastian's mother, Madame Sebastian, become more central to the sexual aspect of the doppelgänger struggle between Devlin and Sebastian, as Devlin's bitter rage at Alicia gradually turns to love, even as Sebastian's love for her turns to murderous rage. In this sense, thanks to Selznick, the Devlin-Alicia-Sebastian triangle becomes infinitely more complex by the increased presence of the fourth member of this bizarre couple-swap, Madame Sebastian. Selznick's story instincts apparently triggered Hitchcock's wealth of Oedipal fantasies, which run rampant through the film, as Madame's fierce jealousy of Alicia inspires her sadistic plan to kill her while forcing her guilt-ridden son to help her do it.
Notorious opens in Miami during the last months of World War II. The night following the conviction of her father as a Nazi spy, we discover Alicia (Ingrid Bergman) at a party, where she is celebrating by getting drunk. Also at the party is undercover agent T. R. Devlin (Cary Grant), who has been assigned to simultaneously seduce and recruit her. The self-absorbed Devlin soon becomes conflicted about his attraction to Alicia, aware of her family background and reputation as a hard-drinking, “fast-living” (sexually loose) woman.
In each of the four films Hitchcock made with Cary Grant, there is a dangerous car ride that serves to cleverly thrust the plot forward. In Notorious it takes place when, early on, even though Alicia is drunk, Devlin lets her take the wheel. She drives fast and recklessly—life is cheap and expendable to the both of them. She starts to speed. He warns her she is going sixty. She pushes hard on the pedal and takes them to eighty, looking to go even faster when she is pulled over by a motorcycle cop. Just as she is about to be arrested, Devlin takes control of the situation, pulls rank, and the policeman backs off. Having barely escaped a bad situation, Alicia wants to remain in the driver's seat. In response, Devlin slaps her into submission, then shoves her over to the passenger side and takes the wheel. For the rest of the film, they will struggle over which of them is really in the driver's seat.
On orders from the Bureau, Devlin assigns her the job of spying on Alex Sebastian (Claude Rains), the head of a Nazi Party cell located in Brazil, to find out what secret weapon the group is harboring. Alicia does her job a little too well; against the advice of his sadistic, possessive, and jealous mother (Leopoldine Konstantin), Sebastian proposes marriage, and in a move that surprises, infuriates, and embitters Devlin (in that order) but one that he is not in a position to oppose, she accepts. At a postwedding reception to which Devlin has been invited by Alicia, they find their way down to Sebastian's wine cellar, where they discover a secret stash of uranium ore (or something) hidden in specially marked champagne bottles. When Devlin realizes that Sebastian is spying on them, he suddenly grabs Alicia and kisses her to throw Sebastian off. It doesn't work. To his horror, Sebastian realizes he is married to an American agent. Totally humiliated, he listens to his mother, and together they begin to slowly poison Alicia to death. Just before she succumbs, Devlin, sensing she is in great danger, boldly goes to Sebastian's house, where he rescues her and in so doing sends Sebastian and his mother to their certain death at the hands of their vicious fellow Nazis.
Although filled with intrigue, espionage, murder, sex, and betrayal, to Hitchcock the film was essentially a love story. Devlin's Mephistophelean character is enraged at Alicia for being a drunk and a slut, and at himself for being attracted to her. To punish her and protect himself, he becomes her pimp by turning her into a prostitute, all in the name of duty to country. She chooses to marry Sebastian partly out of her own fury—she wants Devlin to prevent it, and he doesn't. She then taunts Devlin by showing him the power of her own sadistic tendencies: the ability to seduce powerful, if damaged, men and enjoy it. The sexual merry-go-round then shifts into high gear: Devlin loves Alicia but gives her to Sebastian; Alicia loves Devlin but gives herself to Sebastian; Sebastian is hopelessly slave-locked in forbidden boy-love with his mother while at the same time jealous of Devlin.
This crazy carousel apparently carried over to real life. Those close to the action believed that during production Hitchcock had fallen deeply and hopelessly in love with Ingrid Bergman; what Hitchcock dared not try in real life, he could act out and control vicariously through the actions of his characters. As Hitchcock directed Grant, so did Devlin direct Alicia.
At times, it is difficult to tell if Grant is playing Devlin, or Devlin is playing Grant, especially when so much of Devlin's behavior to this point in the film mirrors Grant's in real life, at least some of which Hitchcock must have been aware of and that he may have used as a way, for the sake of the character, to try to connect Grant to his own darker side. Devlin works for a national security bureau; Grant had been involved with the FBI. Devlin slaps the woman he loves; Grant had been accused by Virginia Cherrill of slapping her. Devlin falls in love with a woman who has strong emotional and family ties to Nazis; Grant's second wife was suspected of being friendly with several Nazis.
Notorious is filled with scenes that rank among the most famous set pieces of both Grant's and Hitchcock's careers, including the famous kissing scene between Devlin and Alicia, interrupted and therefore extended by incidental dialogue and even a phone call (critic Andrew Sarris described it as “a kissing sequence that made 1946 Radio City Music Hall audiences gasp”); cinematographer Ted Tetzlaff's beautifully paced and razor-blade precision shot that begins at the top of the stairs and steadily zooms in to a close-up of Alicia's fist, offering a glimpse of the all-important key to the wine cellar that she has stolen from her husband; the quick-zooms into the faces of Sebastian and his mother at the moment of Alicia's realization that they are in the process of killing her; the fantastic wine cellar lipless kiss that she and Devlin “fake” to try to mislead Sebastian.
Finally, the entire film is held together onscreen by what must be ranked among the best performances of the decade—Claude Rains's tortured mama's boy, Leopoldine Konstantin's dragon mother murderess, Ingrid Bergman's lusty leggy nymphomaniac, and Cary Grant's matineeidol hero/Satan.
Notorious was not only a huge commercial success, it provided Grant with a crucial career leap. His performance as Devlin proved once and for all that he could successfully portray charming, heroic, romantic characters that had both darkness and depth, even while dressed in his requisite tux (which he donned for the reception scene). Prior to this film, his comic turns in The Awful Truth, Bringing Up Baby, and The Philadelphia Story had heightened his reputation as a fine comic actor, even as critics tended to dismiss his more serious roles as too offbeat, such as Ernie Mott in None But the Lonely Heart, or as mere personality poses, like Captain Cassidy in Destination Tokyo. Ironically, by allowing Hitchcock to cast him in a role that was emotionally truer to any that he had played in the past, he was newly hailed for his ability to “act” by playing against type. As he had done in Suspicion, Hitchcock understood that the best way to “direct” Grant was to shine the spotlight precisely on the dark side.
Shortly after completing the film, Grant decided to take a week off and travel to England. With the war over, he was at last able to reunite with Elsie, who seemed to have regained some of her mental faculties. Shortly after his arrival, she took him on a shopping spree through Bristol (where he was all but mobbed), then back at the house bawled him out for divorcing Hutton. Meanwhile, Grant once more tried to persuade her to return to Los Angeles with him. Once more she refused.
Back in the States, he filled his calendar with social activities, one of which was a Fourth of July party where he ran into Jimmy Stewart, who had recently returned from nearly four years of active wartime duty. Stewart had been the first major American movie star to enlist, joining the Air Force eight months before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Grant congratulated him for his heroic exploits and wished him well in his new “comeback” picture, Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (a film originally conceived by Capra and purchased by RKO as a vehicle for Grant). The following day he was off to New York with Ingrid Bergman and Alfred Hitchcock on a publicity junket for the highly anticipated Radio City Music Hall world premiere of Notorious on July 22, 1946. RKO had chosen to kick off its summer season with the film's glittering black-tie opening, where Grant and Bergman fairly shimmered in the spotlighted night.
The film broke the opening-week box office record at Radio City (previously broken the year before by Night and Day). Audiences gasped and critics raved at Hitchcock's newest sex-and-spy thriller. The New York Times declared the film “just about as thrilling as they come, with an intensity of warm emotional appeal.” Herman Rich Isaacs, writing in Theater Arts magazine, lauded Grant for “bringing glamour and sultry vitality to the lead.” But it was James Agee, film critic for The Nation, who most accurately caught the pitch of Hitchcock's moody meditation, singling out Grant's “precisely cultivated, clipped puzzled-idealist brutality.”
Notorious grossed more than a million dollars for RKO in its initial domestic theatrical release, placing it among the biggest hits of the year. Grant's second consecutive multimillion-dollar-grossing film decisively returned him to the position in Hollywood he most enjoyed.
Being on top.
The day after the opening Grant received a call in his studio-provided suite at the Warwick Hotel from Howard Hughes, who was in town and preparing to fly back to Los Angeles. Hughes asked Grant if he, Hitchcock, and of course Ingrid Bergman would all like to make the trip home with him in his private plane. Bergman accepted, Hitchcock said no. The director was well aware of Hughes's daredevil flights and was too afraid to fly with him. Always cautious and highly superstitious, once Grant and Bergman canceled their commercial reservations, Hitchcock, who had been booked on the same flight, canceled his as well and instead booked himself, his wife Alma, and their daughter Pat on a cross-country excursion by rail.
Mechanical problems caused Hughes to postpone his takeoff several times, and for the next two nights, while technicians worked on the plane's engines, Grant and Hughes drank themselves into pleasant stupors at the Warwick's dimly lit bar. When they finally did take off, Hughes decided to change his flight pattern and made several unscheduled “pit stops” along the way. The flight took two days to complete, with the result that the tortoiselike Hitchcock arrived in Los Angeles before the airborne Hughes, Grant, and Bergman.
A few days later, while testing his experimental XF-11 military plane, engine trouble forced Hughes to crash-land over Beverly Hills, barely missing a neighborhood of upscale Beverly Hills residences. Hughes was rushed to the hospital, where doctors fought to keep him alive. The only person he let into his room who wasn't on staff was Grant, who sat with him in silent support for days at a time.
Not long after Hughes recovered, Grant began work on his next film, a light comedy for Selznick called The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, directed by Irving Reis, produced by Dore Schary, and written by thenunknown screenwriter Sidney Sheldon. As if to accentuate his approaching middle age, he let himself be cast opposite the suddenly voluptuous Shirley Temple, who had set off a generation of middle-aged men into cold sweats while still a toddler and now came on like gangbusters, thrusting her ample bosom at Grant's bespectacled high school teacher every chance she got. In the film, her emerging teenage hormones are fueled by the (mostly imagined) competition for Grant from her older sister (Myrna Loy). Although Grant was more than twice Temple's age, he looked better next to her than to Loy, who was only one year younger than Grant but looked to be at least five years his senior.
The film reflected Hollywood's recognition of the emerging teenage market that was changing the demographic makeup of the postwar moviegoing audience. The new faces in the audience were attracted to a different style of acting onscreen, a blend of bravado over having won World War II and the gnawing paranoia about the emergence of superpower Communism, reflected in the tender but twisted new faces of Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift. Brando had shaken up Broadway with his incendiary performance as Stanley Kowalski in Elia Kazan's 1947 stage production of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, Fred Zinnemann's 1950 film The Men, and Kazan's 1951 cinematic reprise of Streetcar. Clift, another stage-trained actor, made his motion picture debut in Zinnemann's The Search (1948) but made his neurotic presence felt a year later in Hawks's Red River as John Wayne's surrogate son, one more symbolic passing of Hollywood's postwar torch.
As for “old Cary Grant,” who thought the country needed some comic post-war relief with movies like The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, he couldn't quite understand what this new style of acting was all about. To him, the up-and-coming breed of movie stars seemed generally unkempt, indistinguishable from one another, and awfully hard to hear. As if on cue, Hitchcock proposed to Grant that they make a new film of Shakespeare's Hamlet, a project Grant had considered for a long time before rejecting it, fearing he wouldn't be able to master the proper British accent. Besides, he told Hitchcock, in the current youth-oriented atmosphere of Hollywood, he was far too old to play the Danish prince.
And then real-life tragedy suddenly interrupted everything in Grant's life when Frank Vincent, having just turned sixty-one, dropped dead of a heart attack. Grant was shocked when he heard the news, disappeared from sight for a week, and went on a bender that showed no signs of letting up. Worried friends tried to intervene, but the only person he would see was Hughes, who suggested the two of them get out of Hollywood for a while. Having just finished modifying his latest airship, the Constellation, a World War II B-23 bomber, into a passenger prototype for his new airline, TWA, he was about to fly it to New York and convinced Grant to come along for the ride.
They arrived in the city on January 8, and after two days of making the rounds, they were ready to fly back to L.A. Sometime during the night of January 11, 1947, while flying over the Rocky Mountains, the plane lost radio contact and disappeared from radar screens. When it failed to arrive at an appointed stopover in Amarillo, Texas, word quickly spread that the plane had gone down somewhere over the Rockies, and that both Hughes and Grant had been killed in the crash.
* Hitchcock was the producer of Suspicion, although onscreen credit went to Harry E. Edington.
†Everyone, it seemed, wanted in on the making of this film, even Grant's former “associate,” J. Edgar Hoover, from whom permission was needed to officially incorporate the FBI into the story. Hoover, Hollywood wannabe that he was, in response to Selznick's request, wrote him the following memo: “The film might subject the FBI and you [Selznick] to criticism on the grounds of morality,” referring to the sexual nature of Alicia's character. “Why not make [her] an impersonator of the real Alicia Huberman? Since the ersatz Alicia would presumably not be an American citizen, the real Alicia would emerge from the scheme with her patriotism—and her virginity—intact.”