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Jack Skirball: Hollywood Renegade

SIMPP Producer Gives Alfred Hitchcock the Freedom to Create a Masterpiece.


Hitchcock celebrates his 43rd birthday with Jack Skirball, while shooting Shadow of a Doubt.

When Alfred Hitchcock came to America on contract to direct for David O. Selznick, the British director soon found himself loaned out to other producers as Selznick took a long break from filmmaking after undertaking the epic Gone With the Wind (1939). Selznick made films for independent producers Walter Wanger and Frank Lloyd, as well as Twentieth Century-Fox's Darryl Zanuck.

In 1942, Alfred Hitchcock was loaned out to producer Jack Skirball, who gave Hitchcock freedom to originate his own idea, develop his own script, and essentially allowed final cut priviledge. The result was Shadow of a Doubt, one of the most highly regarded of Hitchcock's early classics, and one of the movies the director repeatedly cited among his favorite creations.

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