Daily Dialogue — May 5, 2020

“The cities are full of women, middle-aged widows, husbands, dead, husbands who’ve spent their lives making fortunes, working and working. And then they die and leave their money to their wives, their silly wives. And what do the wives do, these useless women? You see them in the hotels, the best hotels, every day by the thousands, drinking the money, eating the money, losing the money at bridge, playing all day and all night, smelling of money, proud of their jewelry but of nothing else, horrible, faded, fat, greedy women… Are they human or are they fat, wheezing animals, hmm? And what happens to animals when they get too fat and too old?”

— Shadow of a Doubt (1943), screenplay by Thornton Wilder & Sally Benson & Alma Reville, original story by Gordon McDonell

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Alfred Hitchcock. Today’s suggestion by Lois Bernard.

Trivia: The project began when the head of David O. Selznick’s story department, Margaret McDonell, told Sir Alfred Hitchcock that her husband Gordon McDonell had an interesting idea for a novel that she thought would make a good movie. His idea, called “Uncle Charlie”, was based on the true story of Earle Leonard Nelson, a mass murderer of the 1920s known as “The Gorilla Man”.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Here we get some insight into Uncle Charlie’s ‘shadow’ (per Carl Jung).