The Trouble with Harry (1955)

Picture: The Trouble with Harry (1955)

Stars: Edmund Gwenn, John Forsythe, Shirley MacLaine, Mildred Natwick, Mildred Dunnock, Jerry Mathers

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: The film received a number of what we'd consider today to be "traditional" precursor citations-MacLaine won a Golden Globe & was nominated for a BAFTA, while Hitchcock was cited for the DGA.  But it didn't get any nominations overall at the Academy Awards.

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Shirley MacLaine-click here to learn more about Ms. MacLaine (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

With Shirley MacLaine, we begin with Hitchcock, because with Shirley MacLaine, her cinematic journey began with Hitchcock.  As I'll likely bring up in pretty much every review we do this month, Shirley MacLaine is who I consider my favorite actress of all time, but I'd never seen her debut film, which despite the third-billing up top was very much a lead role (she got the "Introducing Shirley MacLaine" title credit, which made me squeal with delight while watching it).  MacLaine had gotten to Hollywood through an unlikely path.  After spending a couple of years on Broadway doing chorus work (MacLaine's first great love was not acting, but dance, something that would feature prominently throughout her career), MacLaine landed the understudy role in The Pajama Game after star Carol Haney injured her ankle (Haney, who won a Tony Award for this part, had a steep career fall after a promising start following this incident, proving that Hollywood cliche "for one star to rise, another must fall").  This led to Hal Wallis seeing her in the role, and signing her to a contract with Paramount, where her first film was The Trouble with Harry.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Trouble with Harry is a comedy, albeit a macabre one (in a strange coincidence, our Sunday Leftovers piece tomorrow is also going to be a comedy from Hitchcock, which was not a genre he frequented).  The movie takes place in Highwater, Vermont, where several residents find a dead body of a man they learned to be named Harry up on a hill.  The question, of course, is how he died, and several people worry as the film progresses that they are the cause.  They include Captain Wiles (Gwenn), who initially believes he shot the man while rabbit-hunting-in order to cover up the accidental crime, so he & local artist Sam Marlowe (Forsythe) bury the man, but it turns out that he had instead actually shot a rabbit.  Both Jennifer Rogers (MacLaine), Harry's estranged wife, and prim Miss Gravely (Natwick) are worried they killed him, both by hitting him with blunt objects, but as we learn by the end of the picture Harry, despite being buried & unburied throughout the entire film by the guilt-ridden quartet, died of natural causes.  The film ends happily, with both Jennifer & Sam and Captain Wiles & Miss Gravely ending up together.

The Trouble with Harry was something of an experiment for Hitchcock-he wanted to see what a film led by character actors and "non-stars" would do at the box office.  MacLaine was doing her first film, Forsythe was relatively early in his career, and Gwenn/Natwick were hardly newcomers, but were well-known as character actors, not headliners.  This ended up being an experiment that would end in failure-The Trouble with Harry was a commercial flop, and critics weren't entirely won over either.  Certainly compared to Hitchcock's massive recent hits with Grace Kelly, the film did not meet expectations and it doesn't feel like a coincidence that his next movie starred established stars Jimmy Stewart & Doris Day.

This is a pity, because there's not any trouble with Harry-it's a delight.  The cinematography is gorgeous (the bright red-and-orange foliage of autumn in Vermont sings in Technicolor), and the Bernard Herrmann score (his first partnership with Hitchcock) is playful & fun.  I loved the entire cast-everyone is hitting a home run of the four main quartet.  Forsythe plays his rugged hipster with a wink, Gwenn & Natwick are grand as a pair of clumsy, unexperienced lovers, and MacLaine starts out her film career totally captivating.  Jennifer is a hard role to play-she's at once alluring, bold, & needs to be absurd without ever feeling like she isn't real.  This would be a recipe that MacLaine would perfect throughout her career, especially the first decade of it, and honestly I'd struggle to think of any other actor of her generation who wouldn't have overplayed the mysterious elements of Jennifer, ruining the comedy, so well done to Paramount for casting her so well so early in her career.

MacLaine is the first of the stars we've profiled this year who not only worked with Hitchcock, but has gone through the modern circuit of talk shows so she's discussed Hitchcock.  She only worked with him the one time (her leading man Forsythe would partner with him a decade later in Topaz), and her comments about him aren't as problematic as some of the other actresses who would work with him during this era, though it's worth noting that in interviews she's clearly aware of his behavior with some of the blonde actresses who would bookend Harry (in an interview for the Hudson Union, MacLaine would say "I was not blonde & ethereal, so he wasn't going to jump at me").  Instead the most common stories MacLaine talks about are his appetite (starving off of years on Broadway, she gained 15 pounds eating with the director during the film until the studio called & demand she stop), and his bizarre directing style (using Cockney riddles to get her to relax on set).  She would later state that he was "colorfully cruel" and that his actors were "insignificant"...neither of which sounds good even if MacLaine tries to make light of them.  All of this is to say as we try to reconcile Hitchcock the man with the movies that we love so much, MacLaine isn't the most damning of the women he'd work with, but she's also far from complimentary.  We'll move beyond Hitchcock, though, in the coming weeks (as MacLaine did), and get to three major gaps I have in MacLaine's extensive filmography.