Alfred Hitchcock always dismissed his work in Suspicion. There was too much interference from the front office at RKO Studios which demanded a happy ending here. They also demanded an ending in which Cary Grant is not exposed as a calculating murderer.
As it is Cary Grant is poaching on Tyrone Power territory, doing one of those hero/heel roles that Power specialized in over at 20th Century Fox. I would not be surprised if an offer was made to Mr. Zanuck at Fox for Ty's services. But after Marie Antoinette, Ty Power never did a film away from Fox until 1952's Mississippi Gambler.
Grant's Johnny Aysgarth is what could be now described by that antiquated word, wastrel. He doesn't work, lives off his parents and has a bad gambling habit. He meets, woos, and weds the very prim and proper Joan Fontaine, daughter of Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Dame May Witty.
Hitchcock builds this up the way it was built in Night Must Fall for Robert Montgomery to be the murderer. In that film, though Montgomery got an Oscar nomination, the public repudiated the picture. No one wanted to see Montgomery as a murderer.
Seeing that you can't really blame RKO for interfering, but the film was ruined for posterity.
Joan Fontaine won for Best Actress in Suspicion as the wife who gradually comes to suspect Grant has plans to do her in. In many ways her character is similar to the one she played in Rebecca the withdrawn girl who the evil housekeeper wants to harm.
Rebecca was a much better film than Suspicion and it won for Alfred Hitchcock his only Best Picture Award from the Academy. Fontaine got her first really good notices for Rebecca and got overlooked at Oscar time.
As is a tradition in Academy voting, they made it up to her the following year with Suspicion. Fontaine's rivals that year for the Oscar were Bette Davis for The Little Foxes, Barbara Stanwyck for Ball of Fire, Greer Garson for Blossoms in the Dust and Fontaine's sister Olivia DeHavilland for Hold Back the Dawn.
In fact DeHavilland was the Las Vegas oddsmaker's favorite that year and Fontaine's win was one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history. The sisters had a history of feuding and this one really stoked the fires of resentment.
As for Alfred Hitchcock, he was able to cast against type a year later another popular leading man, Joseph Cotten, as a murderer in Shadow of a Doubt. I guess Cotten hadn't been around long enough to typecast at the time.
But you can't argue with success and who was Hitchcock to try.
As it is Cary Grant is poaching on Tyrone Power territory, doing one of those hero/heel roles that Power specialized in over at 20th Century Fox. I would not be surprised if an offer was made to Mr. Zanuck at Fox for Ty's services. But after Marie Antoinette, Ty Power never did a film away from Fox until 1952's Mississippi Gambler.
Grant's Johnny Aysgarth is what could be now described by that antiquated word, wastrel. He doesn't work, lives off his parents and has a bad gambling habit. He meets, woos, and weds the very prim and proper Joan Fontaine, daughter of Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Dame May Witty.
Hitchcock builds this up the way it was built in Night Must Fall for Robert Montgomery to be the murderer. In that film, though Montgomery got an Oscar nomination, the public repudiated the picture. No one wanted to see Montgomery as a murderer.
Seeing that you can't really blame RKO for interfering, but the film was ruined for posterity.
Joan Fontaine won for Best Actress in Suspicion as the wife who gradually comes to suspect Grant has plans to do her in. In many ways her character is similar to the one she played in Rebecca the withdrawn girl who the evil housekeeper wants to harm.
Rebecca was a much better film than Suspicion and it won for Alfred Hitchcock his only Best Picture Award from the Academy. Fontaine got her first really good notices for Rebecca and got overlooked at Oscar time.
As is a tradition in Academy voting, they made it up to her the following year with Suspicion. Fontaine's rivals that year for the Oscar were Bette Davis for The Little Foxes, Barbara Stanwyck for Ball of Fire, Greer Garson for Blossoms in the Dust and Fontaine's sister Olivia DeHavilland for Hold Back the Dawn.
In fact DeHavilland was the Las Vegas oddsmaker's favorite that year and Fontaine's win was one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history. The sisters had a history of feuding and this one really stoked the fires of resentment.
As for Alfred Hitchcock, he was able to cast against type a year later another popular leading man, Joseph Cotten, as a murderer in Shadow of a Doubt. I guess Cotten hadn't been around long enough to typecast at the time.
But you can't argue with success and who was Hitchcock to try.