Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) | Presenting Hitchcock Podcast

Gooooood evening. In this months episode of Presenting Hitchcock, Cory and Aaron have established a lot of rules to make this podcast work, as they discuss “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.”

Picture Title: Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941)

Written by: Norman Krasna

Starring: Carole Lombard, Robert Montgomery, Gene Raymond, Jack Carson, Philip Merivale, and Lucile Watson

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

Trailer:

Our Favourite Trivia:

Director cameo: About halfway through the movie passing David Smith in front of his building. Carole Lombard directed Alfred Hitchcock’s cameo and made him do repeated takes.

This is Alfred Hitchcock’s only screwball comedy. He decided to direct this movie upon Carole Lombard’s request. This was one of the few movies where Hitchcock wasn’t involved in the scripting process. Since he really didn’t understand the type of people who were portrayed in it, all he basically did was photograph the scenes as written. However, RKO files indicate that Hitchcock actually pursued the project.

Carole Lombard, in order to twit Alfred Hitchcock and generate publicity about his comment that “actors are cattle,” set up a miniature cattle pen on the set. The pen held three heifers, each emblazoned with the name of one of the three leads.

Cary Grant wanted to play the leading man character of David Smith, but the RKO Radio Pictures studio was contractually obligated to actor Robert Montgomery.

Of Alfred Hitchcock’s first four American films, this is the only one to take place in the United States; Rebecca, Foreign Correspondent, and Suspicion all take place in Britain.

The film is one of the earliest to show a pizzeria and was supposed to contain sounds of a toilet flushing, which was altered to banging pipes for reasons of censorship.

Betty Compson (who played Gertie, David Smith’s cigarette-smoking blind date) appeared in Woman to Woman (1923) and White Shadows (1924), silent movies on which director Alfred Hitchcock had worked early in his career as writer, art director, and assistant director.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith was the last film released before Lombard’s death. To Be or Not to Be (1942) was her final film, released two months after she died in an aircraft crash while on a War Bond tour.

The Random Draw for Next Picture:

Next up, we’ll be discussing “Vertigo”

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