Today’s ghost story is a project Hitchcock always wanted to make but couldn’t get the funding for. The big question, however, is…has the script itself become supernatural?
Genre: Ghost/Suspense
Premise: A young girl goes missing for three weeks on a secluded island. When she returns, she doesn’t remember being gone.
About: What an interesting little project. This is a film Hitchcock was dying to make. He even had all the lighting figured out for the film. But apparently studios were horrified (no pun intended) by the supernatural elements of the script and refused to make it. Now whether that means supernatural movies didn’t make money back then or these elements were contrary to some widely held religious belief the country had, I don’t know. But here’s the best part. When Hitchcock signed with Universal, his contract stated two things: that he could make any movie he wanted as long as it was under 3 million dollars, and that he could never make Mary Rose. Writer Jay Presson, who adapted the work for Hitchcock, was born Jacqueline Presson, but changed her name to Jay as it was a lot harder to make it as a female writer back then.
Writer: Jay Presson Allen (based on the play by J.M. Barrie)
Details: 1964 draft – 111 pages
Have you ever heard of a GHOST screenplay? A screenplay that doesn’t exist in the realm of reality? Remember when, after Three Men And A Baby had been on video for years, someone spotted a small boy behind one of the curtains during a scene? And how that went 1990s viral? A lot of effort went into explaining the anomaly, with producers selling the idea that one of the crew member’s children simply snuck behind the curtain before the shot. Uh, yeah right. Everyone knows that kid was a ghost.
And then there was that 1920s Charlie Chaplin film outtake where one of the extras is clearly seen talking on his cell phone (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6a4T2tJaSU). Don’t let anyone tell you differently (that the woman was carrying a listening device). Without question, that woman is carrying a cell phone! Time traveller!
Why do I bring this up? Because today’s script has some odd anomalies in it. Remember, it was written in 1964. And what does one of the characters say? Well, in reference to the fact that they want to send a letter to their grandson in the military, someone points out that soon they’ll be able to send things “wireless.” Oh yeah, you heard that right. Somebody used the term “wireless” in 1964! Spooked yet?? It gets better. Later on, Mary Rose’s father uses the phrase, “We have your back.” WHAT!?? We have your back?? That phrase wasn’t invented until 1995! Clearly, something’s going on with this script. Something time or space or science cannot explain. I’ll leave that up to you guys to figure out. Feel free to e-mail me (e-mail is on the side bar) for the script if you didn’t receive it in the newsletter.
Outside that mystery, how does this Hitchcock project stack up? Well, I can tell you this. It’s better than many of his produced movies. It may not have been one of his classics. But it’s definitely a good script. And since it’s horror, someone may even be able to update it today and make it work. Or, just set it in the time period that it’s set, 1964, as it jumps back in time a lot anyway, and is therefore essentially a period piece.
18 year-old Mary Rose is the apple of her parents’, Mr. and Mrs. Morland, eye. She’s beautiful and inquisitive and bursting with optimism – someone you just know is going to have a big future. Unfortunately, back in the 1940s, that still boiled down to what kind of man you were able to snag. And Mr. Morland is not happy when he finds out Mary has the hots for 33 year-old Simon. Sure, Simon’s a nice enough guy, but the disparity in their ages throws him.
So one day, Simon comes over to introduce himself, and makes a good enough impression that the Morlands feel better about the arrangement. However, when Mary Rose is upstairs, they decide to tell Simon a deep secret about Mary Rose’s past. When Mary was but 9 years old, Mr. Morland used to take her to a small island. One day, while fishing on that island, Mary disappeared. For 20 days. Nobody could find her. Then she just showed up. Right in the exact place she disappeared. She didn’t seem to know she was gone. She believed the time was instantaneous. After much debate, they decided not to tell her what happened. The whole thing has been a secret the family has kept from her since that day. And they don’t want Simon to mention it to her. They just wanted him to know.
Cut to a few years later. Simon and Mary Rose have had a child and are happily married. But Mary Rose is itching to go back to that island that she and her father used to have such a good time on. Simon, remembering the story Mary’s father told him, tries to convince her otherwise, but she’s adamant.
So they hire an awkward and slightly strange servant named Cameron to take them there, and the three have dinner together on the island. It’s there where dumb Cameron starts talking about the island’s strange history, saying bizarre things have happened to people here over the years. Oblivious to Mary’s history, he tells the VERY story of what happened to the little 9 year old girl who disappeared on the island then appeared 20 days later. Pissed off, Simon tells Cameron to leave them be, but once he and Mary are alone, he turns around for a second, and she’s gone. Gone gone. Not 20 days gone. Mary Rose has vanished for good.
Cut to 20 years later back at the Morland house, and Mary’s parents live a pretty dismal life. Not only is Mary gone, but Mary’s son has been lost at war! But all that’s about to change. Mr. Morland gets a phone call. It’s Cameron. They’ve found Mary. She was on the island. They’re both flabbergasted and call Simon, who rushes over to the house. An hour later, Mary arrives. And none of them are prepared for what’s happened to her. Or what HASN’T happened……
Mary Rose is yet another old script based on a stage play, and boy is that evident. In many of the scenes, we’re plopped down and stay in that location for 10-20 pages at a time. There’s lots of dialogue here. LOTS. And when you have that much dialogue, your script is dependent on the strength of that dialogue to survive.
Luckily, Mary Rose does survive. And a big reason for that is because Hitchcock is the master of suspense. If you can build suspense into a scene, it’s a lot easier to write dialogue. For example, the script opens with Mary’s grown up son, Kenneth, coming back to the house he grew up in, which is now owned by an old woman. Kenneth is a little too curious about this house of secrets, so the woman hides a knife as she shows him around. Is she going to use it? Will she kill him? The suspense is on. Then there is talk of the ‘hidden room’ – a room in the house that the woman refuses to let Kenneth go into. Ahhh, we NEED to know what’s in that room. The suspense is on.
When we flashback to the Morlands living in the house, we hear the story about Mary and her disappearing time on the island. We’re desperate to find out what happened during that lost time. Again, suspense. We’re even told at the very beginning of the movie in Cameron’s (the servant’s) voice over, that something terrifying happened on this island. The suspense kills us as we must find out what that “thing” was. I finished this script really respecting the fact that Hitchcock IS the king of suspense, as all of his tricks were on display, and they all worked.
The script itself is kind of funny to read in that so much has changed in the screenwriting craft since it was written. Parentheticals would sometimes go 20 lines deep (lots of parentheticals in Mary Rose!) and paragraphs would hit the 20-line mark easily. There’d be lots of camera directions in the writing. It reminded me that screenplays really did used to be more blueprints than movies told on the page. Nowadays, you have to make the reader suspend their disbelief as much as possible. A camera angle or shot description destroys that, so it’s best not to use them. Today’s screenplays are pure stories on the page. Let the director figure out how to shoot them.
As for the story itself, I was riveted pretty much until the end. I’ve never read something quite like Mary Rose before. I wanted to know more about this island. I wanted to know more about what happened to Mary Rose in those missing 20 days. Outside of some long scenes back at the Morland house where the father had, what I’d consider to be, pointless scenes with a guy named Mr. Amy (the only scenes in the movie, coincidentally, that didn’t contain suspense), I was tearing through the pages to see what would happen next.
(Spoiler) Unfortunately, what was aiming to become a double worth-the-read or higher downgraded into a ‘worth the read’ because of an unsatisfying ending. When Mary comes back from her 20 year absence, Hitchcock and Pressman believe they’re building their most suspenseful scene yet, with Mary being shrouded in shadow at all times on her way home. It’s quite obvious to us what’s happened (she hasn’t aged), so when that’s revealed to be “it,” we’re a little disappointed. I wanted more. I wanted to know what happened during that first abduction and I wanted to know where the heck she was for those 20 years. Playing the ambiguous card is an interesting choice, but I think the audience wants answers in a story like this.
However, this script is pretty darn good and definitely worth the read, if only for studying how Hitchcock uses suspense. Check it out. It’s in your newsletter. Now what did you guys think?
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you’re going to write a long scene, integrate some element of suspense into it so we stay invested. Just about the only reason all these long dialogue scenes work is because we’re focused on some unanswered question that we must keep reading to find the answer to.
