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.