“I don’t know if they realize anything of the sort. For all they know, we’ve been set up as a project by British Intelligence to come over here for a firsthand study of this rise of incipient fascism. It’s an absolutely marvelous idea. Why hasn’t anyone thought of it before?”
“You’re thinking about it now. Do something with it.”
“What an odd-looking man.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“What a magnificently ugly face he has.”
Alma looked at the man. He was over six feet tall, terribly thin and gaunt, and his face looked as though it had once been shattered and then badly reconstructed. It was a frightening face, the chin and cheeks pitted with deep scars. She wondered if his tragedy had befallen him in the war. Surely no one could be unfortunate enough to be born with that face. He was probably younger than he looked, possibly not yet thirty. They knew the person he was chatting with, Fredrick Regner, a scriptwriter. Alma and Hitchcock liked Regner. He was in his mid-twenties and very good-looking, a Viennese by birth. The two men stood near the entrance to the sound stage.
“I must find out if he’s an actor. Someday, when I do my first thriller, I want an actor with a face like that.”
“He’d be a marvelous-looking murderer.”
“Oh, no. Not with a face like that. It would be too obvious he’s the murderer. I would use him as a red herring.”
Alma smiled. “Your MacGuffin.”
“Oh yes, he’s a perfectly delicious MacGuffin.” In Hitchcock’s parlance, a MacGuffin was the device used to fool the audience away from the truth of the story, something he had invented for several original screenplay ideas he’d been nursing but had been unable to sell. Alma had come to love Hitchcock’s MacGuffins. There wasn’t one in The Pleasure Garden. It wasn’t that kind of story. It wasn’t very much of a story. It was just a wonderful opportunity for Hitchcock to get his foot in the door of directing. He was a good director, she knew this from working with him and comparing his early results to those of the hacks with whom she had worked as continuity girl in England. Hitchcock had a magnificent imagination, a wonderfully creative eye, a deliciously sly sense of humor, and she knew that if opportunities continued to open up for him, Hitch would mature into one of the finest directing talents of the cinema. (And God bless Mickey Balcon, Hitch’s senior by only three years, for his faith in Hitch, who was only twenty-six.)
“Where did he go?” Hitch’s voice snapped Alma out of her reverie.
“Where did who go?”
“My MacGuffin. I blinked my eyes and he’s disappeared! Hey, there! Freddy!”
Fredrick Regner recognized Hitchcock and Alma, and his face brightened. “Halloo, Hitch! Alma!”
“Where did he go?” Hitch was annoyed and frustrated.
“Where did who go?” asked Regner, almost managing to look as innocent as a newborn babe.
“The man you were talking to!”
“Oh, that man.”
“That face! That absolutely unique face. Is he an actor?”
“I haven’t the vaguest idea.”
“But you were talking to him!”
“He was looking for Stage Three. I sent him off in the right direction.”
“Well, go reclaim him!” ordered Hitchcock, the others recognizing the irritation in his voice. “I want to know him and file him for future use.”
“Is this a joke?” Regner, along with just about everybody else at the studio, was familiar with Hitchcock’s practical jokes.
“Of course it’s not a joke. It’s a face. A wonderful face. A perfect MacGuffin.”
Regner looked as though he might be contemplating suicide. Alma came to his rescue and explained the MacGuffin. Regner laughed. “I’ll go look for him.”
“You’d better find him,” growled Hitchcock, “or I shall reveal the shame of your birth.”
Alma followed him into the sound stage while Regner reached into his jacket breast pocket for his pipe, placed it in his mouth, his face a deep study.
The Hitchcock stage was a beehive of activity. Carpenters were hammering away at the stage of The Pleasure Garden music hall, reinforcing it for the dance number Hitch was planning to shoot that morning. Electricians were climbing high in the flies like monkeys gone berserk, adjusting the arc lights and replacing burned-out gelatins. The stage manager was barking orders at invisible recipients, and in an isolated corner a three-piece orchestra, hired to provide mood music for the American actresses, was tuning up. There were a pianist and two violinists. The pianist, Rudolf Wagner, was improvising a melody that immediately caught Alma’s fancy. While Hitch went to consult with the camera operator, Alma crossed to the musicians and stood next to the pianist. “That’s so beautiful,” she told Wagner the pianist, “it’s so touching, so elegiac, so…”
“So mournful,” said Wagner.
“No, not really mournful. Not mournful in the sense of death or tragedy.”
“Mournful can mean other things.” His English was remarkably good; in fact, Alma and Hitch and the others who were not German were amazed at the perfect English spoken by so many Germans. Wagner repeated the melody. “Mournful can mean the memory of a happiness in the past that will never again be recaptured; it can allude to a loss of innocence.” Alma was humming along with the pianist. “I am pleased that you like my little melody.”
“It’s your own?”
“My very own. Just these few bars. I have no idea how it will develop, if it will develop. This may be all there is.”
“Well, I think it’s exquisite. Oh, dear. Here’s your daughter frowning in our direction.”
There was a slight trace of a smile on Wagner’s lips. “Rosie is very much her mother’s child. Her mother was always frowning. She frowned when I asked her to marry me. She frowned on our wedding night. She frowned when Rosie was born, and she died with a frown on her face last winter.”
“I’m so sorry to hear she’s dead.”
“I’m not. She was an absolute bore. I only miss her frowns. Rosie’s frowns aren’t as inventive as my wife’s
