Free Hitch by John Russell Taylor Page B

Alma Reville.
    The actual shooting of the picture was a succession of nightmares, most of them connected with money, or the chronic lack of it. Though the production was centred on Munich, the film actually started shooting with location scenes in Genoa, San Remo and on Lake Como. Hitch and Alma went out to Munich for some pre-production work with the English male lead, Miles Mander. There they were to separate, Alma heading back to Cherbourg to pick up the American star, Virginia Valli, and her friend Carmelita Geraghty, who was to play the second lead, from the
Aquitania
, while Hitch went on to the Mediterranean locations to get a few incidental sequences in the can. First he, Miles Mander, and the cameraman, Ventimiglia, were going down to Genoa with a newsreel cameraman and a girl playing Mander’s native wife, who had to get drowned in the sea in a sequence they would shoot immediately afterwards at San Remo. The newsreel cameraman was to enable them to cover from all angles the departure of a liner from Genoa, one camera being on the ship and the other on the shore.
    Almost immediately, problems. Shortly before the train is to leave for Genoa Miles Mander suddenly realizes he has left his make-up case in the taxi and goes scooting off to get it, with Hitch shouting instructions after him about how to get to Genoa the next day in time for the filming. But then the train is ten minutes late in leaving and suddenly through a commotion at the end of the platform Hitch sees his leading man sprinting towards the train and managing to leap on just as it picks up speed. So far, so good. But then as they approach the Italian border Ventimiglia gives Hitch a nasty surprise. Because the camera and the unexposed film they are carrying are liable to duty, he says, they must smuggle them through. And where are they to be hidden? Right under Hitch’s berth in theirsleeper, of course. Hitch, with his famous terror of the police and authority, is instantly in a cold sweat, and rightly so, as it turns out, since though the customs do not find the camera they do find the 10,000 feet of film and confiscate it because it has not been declared. The unit arrives in Genoa on a Sunday, prepared to shoot the sequence at noon on Tuesday, with no film.
    All day they search Genoa for some, to no avail. Monday in desperation Hitch dispatches the newsreel cameraman to Kodak in Milan with
£
20, a sizeable sum in relation to their tiny budget, to buy the necessary film. He has just arrived back with it when they are informed that the confiscated film has also arrived and they now have to pay the duty on it. So they have wasted the
£
20 and have, as far as Hitch can judge with all the complicated juggling from pounds to marks to lire, scarcely enough money with them to get through the location scenes. Comes Tuesday, everything seems to be going smoothly: the ship, a Lloyd Triestino liner, will leave for South America at noon, and the unit succeed in hiring a tugboat to pick up the members on board ship just outside the harbour and return them to land. But it’s another
£
10, and when Hitch reaches for his wallet to pay he discovers that he has been robbed during the night at the hotel and has no money left at all. Frantic, he borrows the necessary
£
10 from his cameraman, another
£
15 from his star, and shoots the first scene of his career as a fully fledged director.
    Delight. Euphoria. And then a bumpy return to earth. Whatever are they going to do? Hitch composes two letters, one to London urgently requesting an advance on his salary, the other to Munich tactfully conveying to Emelka that they may need a little more money. On consideration, he posts the first and tears up the second—for what an instant indication it would be of the incompetence he suspects they attribute to him if he must admit, for whatever reasons, to going over budget so early in the shooting of his first film. This decision taken, they have lunch