The Trouble with Harry ***** (1955, John Forsythe, Shirley MacLaine, Edmund Gwenn) – Classic Movie Review 427

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 brilliant, sophisticated black comedy thriller shines like a little diamond. It is set in a gorgeously rich-looking rural autumnal Vermont, where three are three gunshots and Arnie Rogers (Jerry Mathers, aged eight), a little lad playing in the woods, finds a corpse. It turns out to be the body of Harry and the trouble with him is that he just won’t lie down and keeps getting dug up and showing up in rigor mortis at awkward moments.

Old ship’s captain Albert Wiles (Edmund Gwenn), spinster Miss Ivy Gravely (Mildred Natwick), an abstract artist Sam Marlowe (John Forsythe) and a near-sighted doctor Dr. Greenbow (Dwight Marfield) all believe in turn that they are at least accidentally responsible for the death. And Harry’s widow, the boy’s young mother Jennifer Rogers (Shirley MacLaine), has a strong motive for killing him too.

Based on a 1950 British novel by Jack Trevor Story (author of Live Now Pay Later) that obviously tickled Hitchcock’s fancy and inspired him to construct this quirky delight, the movie is at heart one long macabre joke that works extremely well. ‘I didn’t change it very much,’ says Hitchcock. The nicely gossipy, relatively faithful screenplay is by John Michael Hayes.

‘The humour is quite rich,’ said Hitchcock. ‘One of the best lines is when old Edmund Gwenn is dragging the body along for the first time and a woman comes up to him on the hill and says. “What seems to be the trouble, captain?” To me that’s terribly funny; that’s the spirit of the whole story. Nothing amuses me so much as understatement.’

The movie’s very droll and funny in its dry, dark way. With Robert Burks’s cinematography, Bernard Herrmann’s score and Hal Pereira’s production designs, it looks and sounds perfect. And it’s extremely wittily performed by a choice, game and knowing cast, especially by Gwenn, Natwick and MacLaine in her fine film début at the age of 21. ‘She was very good in it’, says Hitchcock. But also giving notable turns are Mildred Dunnock as Mrs. Wiggs, Royal Dano as Deputy Sheriff Calvin Wiggs, Jerry Mathers as the boy and John Forsythe as the abstract artist.

The result is a very smart, cynical, ‘modern’-seeming movie that, all these year later, can still shock as much as it amuses.

Bernard Herrmann’s sprightly score is his first for Hitchcock and it helps a talky film along nicely. It started a fruitful relationship, at least till they eventually fell out.

Is it fanciful to see the Gwenn-Natwick relationship as a portrait of Mr Alfred and Mrs Alma Hitchcock?

Hitchcock’s cameo is walking past a parked limousine of an old man who is looking at Sam Marlowe’s outdoor stand/exhibition of artwork and paintings.

Mathers, still acting in 2013, served in Air Force National Guard during Vietnam War.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 427

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