Skip to main content

Film Friday: «To Catch a Thief» (1955)

This week on «Film Friday,» I am honouring Grace Kelly's 87th birthday, which is tomorrow, by telling you a little about what is arguably one of her most iconic films. This was also the picture that gave her a first glimpse at her future realm.

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, To Catch a Thief (1955) concerns John Robie (Cary Grant), a former world-famous jewel thief known as «The Cat,» who now lives in the French Riviera. Although he insists he is retired, having repented for his crimes during World War II, he nevertheless becomes the chief suspect when a series of robberies take place. Realizing that the only way to prove his innocence is by catching the thief himself, Robie seeks the help of his old friend, restauranteur Bertani (Charles Vanel), asking him for information about his wealthy customers. Spotted by police detectives as he is leaving the restaurant, Robie manages to escape with the assistance of Foussard (Jean Martinelli), one of Bertani's workers, and his flirtatious teenage daughter Danielle (Brigitte Auber).
 
Brigitte Auber and Cary Grant as John Robie and Danielle Foussard in To Catch a Thief.

Later on, Robie receives a telephone call from Bertani instructing him to meet insurance investigator H. H. Hughson (John Williams), who provides him with a list of the most expensive jewellery owners currently on the Riviera. Topping the list are American widow Jessie Stevens (Jessie Royce Landis) and her refined daughter Francie (Grace Kelly). Pretending to be an American industrialist, Robie connives to meet both women while they are gambling at a casino. At first, Francie seems indifferent to his charms, but a romance soon develops between the two.
 
Meanwhile, Jessie discovers that her jewels have been stolen and Robie is once again the prime suspect. To catch the new Cat, Robie stakes out the villa where he expects the burglar will be next. As he waits, he is grabbed by two attackers, one of whom falls from a cliff in the ensuing struggle. The dead man happens to be Foussard, who is identified by the police as being The Cat. Robie, however, knows that Foussard cannot be the burglar because he had a wooden leg and could not climb on rooftops. Continuing with his search for the real thief, Robie asks Francie to arrange his attendance at an upcoming masquerade ball, where he believes The Cat will strike again. Without Francie noticing it, Robie sneaks out to the roof and finally catches the thief, who turns out to be Danielle. She confesses to the police that she and her father were involved in the robberies and that Bertani was the leader of the gang. Back in his hilltop villa, Robie is reunited with Francie, who convinces him that she has a place in his life and home.
 
John Robie: You know as well as I do: this necklace is imitation.
Francie Stevens: Well, I'm not.

A former Certified Public Accountant, David Dodge began his writing career in the mid-1930s as a playwright for an amateur theatre group based in San Francisco, California. After the publication of some of his plays, he made a bet with his wife that he could write a better mystery novel than the ones they had been reading lately. Drawing on his professional experience as an accountant, Dodge developed Death and Taxes, which was published by Macmillan in 1941 and produced three sequels featuring the same protagonist, tax expert and reluctant detective James «Whit» Whitney. Upon being discharged from the U.S. Naval Reserve at the end of World War II, Dodge left San Francisco and set out to Guatemala by car with his wife and five-year-old daughter. Their experiences along the way inspired Dodge to create another series character, Al Colby, an expatriate working as a private detective in Latin America.
 
Following the release of the last of three Colby novels in 1950, Dodge decided to abandon series characters and shifted his focus from detective mysteries to suspense adventures set in exotic locations around the world. His first effort within this new thematic universe was To Catch a Thief, the story of John «Le Chat» Robie, a retired jewel thief living in a luxurious villa on the French Riviera, whose peace and quiet are disrupted by a copycat burglar. To Catch a Thief was initially serialized in Cosmopolitan magazine in December 1951, and became a great success after its publication in book format by Random House in January 1952.
 
Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in publicity stills for To Catch a Thief.

Meanwhile, British director Alfred Hitchcock signed a three-movie deal with Paramount Pictures. His first film under this new contract was Rear Window (1954), starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly, who had previously worked with Hitchcock in Rope (1948) and Dial M For Murder (1954), respectively. Rear Window was a massive critical and commercial success, earning the director his fourth of five Academy Award nominations.
 
For his second project at Paramount, Hitchcock chose To Catch a Thief, which he had purchased from Dodge for $15,000 right after its publication in Cosmopolitan. In adapting the novel to the screen, Hitchcock collaborated with John Michael Hayes, who had penned Rear Window and would go on to write The Trouble with Harry (1955) and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) for the director. Hayes later remarked, «On To Catch a Thief he [Hitchcock] got involved in the script work every day, which had not been true of Rear Window. The work was a pleasure for most of the time. What made us a good team was that he had such brilliant technique and knowledge of the visual, and ego and conviction; and I think I was able to bring him a warmth of characterization
 
Alfred Hitchcock with Grace Kelly and Cary Grant during the making of To Catch a Thief.

When time came for casting, there were two people Hitchcock envisioned for the roles of John Robie and his love interest Francie Stevens: Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. Kelly immediately accepted the offer, but Grant had to be persuaded. Since Dream Wife (1953), Grant had turned down all film offers for the sake of his marriage to actress Betsy Drake, who preferred her husband stay at home with her and explore the adventure of their private life together. However, out of respect and admiration for Hitchcock, who had directed him to great success in Suspicion (1941) and Notorious (1946), Grant agreed to a meeting with the director. Hitchcock outlined the plot for Grant, who agreed to at least read the script, and then he added, «It might help you as you're reading, Grace Kelly has agreed to play the girl and a good part of the picture will be shot on the Riviera.» With that, Grant was fast to accept the offer.
 
Grace Kelly and Cary Grant as Francie and Robie in To Catch a Thief.

In an interview decades later, Grant declared Kelly his favourite leading lady, stating:
«I think the most memorable and honest actress I've ever worked with was Grace Kelly. Don't misunderstand. I appreciated Ingrid Bergman, Audrey Hepburn, Deborah Kerr, Irene Dunne, Kate Hepburn, and all the women I worked with. Grace had a kind of serenity, a calmness, that I hadn't arrived at at that point in my life and perhaps never will for all I know. She was so relaxed in front of the camera that she made it look simple. She made acting look as easy as Frank Sinatra made singing appear. [...] Grace was astonishing. When you played a scene with her, she really listened. She was right there with you. She was Buddha-like in her concentration.»

Grace Kelly and Cary Grant as Francie and Robie in To Catch a Thief.
 
In May 1954, the cast and crew of To Catch a Thief sailed to the French Riviera for location shooting. They filmed in Cannes, including the Carlton Hotel and the Goldman villa, Tourrettes, La Turbie, Eze, Gourdon, Nice, Cagnes-sur-Mer, Speracedes, and Monte Carlo. During shooting in the Riviera, Kelly spied a beautiful, walled garden she wanted to tour, but arrangements with the owner, Prince Rainier III of Monaco, could not be made in time. Within two years, Kelly would marry the Prince and be mistress of that garden. For the high-speed chase scene, she was required to do her own driving, even though she was not a confident driver. In 1982, she would die from injuries sustained in a car crash in a similar winding Riviera road.
 
Cary Grant and Grace Kelly on location in Cannes during the making of To Catch a Thief.

To Catch a Thief did not open for almost a year after shooting was completed, because Hitchcock had to work on his new television series while editing the film. It finally had its «world premiere» at the Paramount Theatre in New York on August 4, 1955.
 
Despite all the fanfare and promotion, the film received mixed reviews from critics. Variety wrote: «While a suspense thread is present, director Alfred Hitchcock doesn't emphasize it, letting the yarn play lightly for comedy more than thrills.» Bosley Crowther of The New York Times was more favorable: «The script and the actors keep things popping, in a fast, slick, sophisticated vein. [...] To Catch a Thief does nothing but give out a good, exciting time.» In defiance of all the doubts, however, the film was massive commercial success, eventually becoming the biggest hit of the first half of the 1950s. The popularity of To Catch a Thief caught the attention of Queen Elizabeth II, who chose the film for screening at the annual royal command performance in September 1955. Shot in Technicolor and the widescreen process VistaVision, the film won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography (Colour) and was nominated for Best Art Direction (Colour) and Best Costume Design (Colour).
 
 
_______________________________________
SOURCES:
Cary Grant: A Biography by Marc Eliot (2009)
Grace: A Biography by Thily Wydra (2014)
Hitchcock's Stars: Alfred Hitchcock and the Hollywood Studio System by Lesley L. Coffin (2014)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Golden Couples: Gary Cooper & Patricia Neal

It was April 1948 when director King Vidor spotted 22-year-old Patricia Neal on the Warner Bros. studio lot. A drama graduate from Northwestern University, she had just arrived in Hollywood following a Tony Award-winning performance in Lillian Hellman's Another Part of the Forest . Impressed by Patricia's looks, Vidor approached the young actress and asked if she would be interested in doing a screen test for the female lead in his newest film, The Fountainhead (1949). Gary Cooper had already signed as the male protagonist, and the studio was then considering Lauren Bacall and Barbara Stanwyck to play his love interest.          Neal liked the script and about two months later, she met with the director for sound and photographic tests. Vidor was enthusiastic about Patricia, but her first audition was a complete disaster. Cooper was apparently watching her from off the set and he was so unimpressed by her performance that he commented, « What's that!? » He tried to con

Golden Couples: Henry Fonda & Barbara Stanwyck

In the mid- and late 1930s, screwball comedy was in vogue and practically every actress in Hollywood tried her hand at it. Barbara Stanwyck never considered herself a naturally funny person or a comedienne per se , but after delivering a heart-wrenching performance in King Vidor's Stella Dallas (1937), she decided she needed a « vacation » from emotional dramas. In her search for a role, she stumbled upon a « champagne comedy » called The Mad Miss Manton (1938), originally intended as a Katharine Hepburn vehicle. Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda as Melsa and Peter in The Mad Miss Manton .   Directed by Leigh Jason from a script by Philip G. Epstein, The Mad Miss Manton begins when vivacious Park Avenue socialite Melsa Manton finds a corpse while walking her dogs in the early hours of the morning. She calls the police, but they dismiss the incident — not only because Melsa is a notorious prankster, but also because the body disappears in the meantime. Sarcastic newspaper editor

Golden Couples: Clark Gable & Jean Harlow

  At the 3rd Academy Awards ceremony, MGM's hugely successful prison drama The Big House (1930) earned writer Frances Marion an Oscar for Best Writing. Hoping that she would be inspired to repeat that accomplishment, Irving Thalberg, head of production at Metro, sent Marion to Chicago, Illinois to research story ideas. While flicking through the pages of The Saturday Evening Post , she found an article revealing that, in a city where people distrusted the police, a small group of leading citizens met in secret to arrange their own justice for criminals. Marion took inspiration from that story and wrote The Secret Six (1931), in which Wallace Beery and Lewis Stone, stars of The Big House , play two mobsters prosecuted by a half a dozen vigilantes. Thalberg was pleased with the leading roles Marion wrote for Beery and Stone, but asked if she could also fill out one of the minor leads for Clark Gable , a tall, dark and handsome 30-year-old actor whom Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had recen

Film Friday: «Who Was That Lady?» (1960)

Theatrical release poster Directed by George Sidney , Who Was That Lady? (19 60 ) begins when che mistry p rofessor David Wilson (Tony Curtis) is caught by his wife Ann (Janet Leigh) kissing one of his female st u de nts. To stop her from divo rcing him , he a sk s for hel p from his good friend, television writer Michael Haney (Dean Mart in), who invents a crazy story that Davi d is working undercover with the FBI and kissed the student — a foreign agent — in the line of du ty. To convince Ann, Mi ke tricks Schult z (William Newel l), a prop man at the T V studio, into fabricating an FBI identification card for David and s up plying him with a g un. Ann is so t hrilled by the idea of being married to a secret agent t hat she forgives David. Meanwhile, Mike sets up a date wi th the Coogle sisters, Gloria (Barbara N ichols) and Florence ( Joi Lan sing), and takes David along , telling Ann that the girls are foreign agents. Just as Ann realizes that her h usband ha s

Christmas in Old Hollywood

The beautiful Elizabeth Taylor with an extremely cute little friend. Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall with their son Stephen (early 1950s). Here they are again. What an adorable picture! Paulette Goddard looking rather uncomfortable next to her Christmas tree. Boris Karloff and Ginger Rogers at a Hollywood Christmas party in 1932. The adorable Shirley Temple chatting with Santa. Here she is again with a dolly friend. Look how cute she looks here, modeling a new Christmas dress (1935). The fur-tastic Joan Crawford. Doris Day asking us to "do not disturb until Christmas." Don't worry, Doris, we shall not. Though it's past Christmas now, so I'm sure Doris won't mind if we disturb just a little bit. Priscilla Lane looking sparkling drapped in her garlands. A VERY young Carole Lombard sitting next to her tree (1920s). Jean Harlow looking stunning as always. Janet Leigh looking extra cute unde

Films I Saw in 2020

For the past four years, I have shared with you a list of all the films I saw throughout 2016 , 2017 , 2018 and 2019 , so I thought I would continue the «tradition» and do it again in 2020. This list includes both classic and «modern» films, which make up a total of 161 titles. About three or four of these were re-watches, but I decided to include them anyway. Let me know how many from these you have seen. As always, films marked with a heart ( ❤ ) are my favorites. Sherlock Jr. (1924) | Starring Buster Keaton, Kathryn McGuire and Joe Keaton The Crowd (1928) | Starring James Murray, Eleanor Boardman and Bert Roach Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) | Starring Henry Fonda, Alice Brady and Marjorie Weaver Brief Encounter (1945) | Starring Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard and Stanley Holloway The Bells of St. Mary's (1945) | Starring Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman The Girl He Left Behind (1956) | Starring Tab Hunter and Natalie Wood Gidget (1959) | Starring Sandra Dee, Cliff Robertson an

Wings of Change: The Story of the First Ever Best Picture Winner

Wings was the first ever film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Since then, it has become one of the most influential war dramas, noted for its technical realism and spectacular air-combat sequences. This is the story of how it came to be made.   A man and his story The concept for Wings originated from a writer trying to sell one of his stories. In September 1924, Byron Morgan approached Jesse L. Lasky, vice-president of Famous Players-Lasky, a component of Paramount Pictures, proposing that the studio do an aviation film. Morgan suggested an «incident and plot» focused on the failure of the American aerial effort in World War I and the effect that the country's «aviation unpreparedness» would have in upcoming conflicts. Lasky liked the idea, and approved the project under the working title «The Menace.»   LEFT: Byron Morgan (1889-1963). RIGHT: Jesse L. Lasky (1880-1958).   During his development of the scenario with William Shepherd, a former war correspondent, Morga

80 Reasons Why I Love Classic Films (Part II)

I started this blog six years ago as a way to share my passion for classic films and Old Hollywood. I used to watch dozens of classic films every month, and every time I discovered a new star I liked I would go and watch their entire filmography. But somewhere along the way, that passion dimmed down. For instance, I watched 73 classic films in 2016, and only 10 in 2020. The other day, I found this film with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. that I had never heard of — the film is Mimi (1935), by the way — and for some reason it made me really excited about Old Hollywood again. It made me really miss the magic of that era and all the wonderful actors and actresses. And it also made me think of all the reasons why I fell in love with classic films in the first place. I came up with 80 reasons, which I thought would be fun to share with you. Most of them are just random little scenes or quirky little quotes, but put them together and they spell Old Hollywood to me. Yesterday I posted part one ; her

Top 10 Favourite Christmas Films

Christmas has always been a source of inspiration to many artists and writers. Over the years, filmmakers have adapted various Christmas stories into both movies and TV specials, which have become staples during the holiday season all around the world. Even though Christmas is my favourite holiday, I haven't watched a lot of Christmas films. Still, I thought it would be fun to rank my top 10 favourites, based on the ones that I have indeed seen. Here they are.  10. Holiday Affair (1949) Directed by Don Hartman, Holiday Affair tells the story of a young widow (Janet Leigh) torn between a boring attorney (Wendell Corey) and a romantic drifter (Robert Mitchum). She's engaged to marry the boring attorney, but her son (Gordon Gebert) likes the romantic drifter better. Who will she choose? Well, we all know who she will choose.   Holiday Affair is not by any means the greatest Christmas film of all time, but it's still a very enjoyable Yule-tide comedy to watch over the holi

The Sinatra Centennial Blogathon: Frank Sinatra & Gene Kelly

  In January 1944, MGM chief Louis B. Mayer happened to see a young crooner by the name of Frank Sinatra perform at a benefit concert for The Jewish Home for the Aged in Los Angeles. According to Nancy Sinatra, Frank's eldest daughter, Mayer was so moved by her father's soulful rendition of « Ol' Man River » that he made the decision right then and there to sign Frank to his studio. Sinatra had been on the MGM payroll once before, singing with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in the Eleanor Powell vehicle Ship Ahoy (1942), although it is very likely that Mayer never bothered to see that film. Now that Frank was «hot,» however, Metro made arrangements to buy half of his contract from RKO, with the final deal being signed in February of that year. Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra in  Anchors Aweigh Being a contract player at the studio that boasted «more stars than there are in the heavens» gave Frank a sudden perspective regarding his own talents as a film performer. The «g