Hitchcock vs. Radio Part 3: Rebecca

Rebecca

• Campbell Playhouse (December 9, 1938): starring Orson Welles, Margaret Sullvan and Agnes Moorehead.
• Lux Radio Theater (February 3, 1941): starring Ronald Colman, Ida Lupino and Judith Anderson (reprised her film role).
• Screen Guild Theater (May 31, 1943): starring Joan Fontaine (reprised her film role), Brian Aherne and Agnes Moorehead.
• Matinee Theater (January 21, 1945): starring Martin Gabel and Gertrude Warner.
• Hollywood Players (October 1, 1946): starring Joan Fontaine (reprised her film role) and Joseph Cotten.
• Screen Guild Theater (November 18, 1948): starring Loretta Young and John Lund.
• Lux Radio Theater (November 6, 1950): starring Laurence Olivier (reprised his film role) and Vivian Leigh.

Dephne du Maurier's Rebecca was a famous novel before it became an Alfred Hitchcock film, so it's not too surprising to discover that it was adapted to radio prior to his movie. Orson Welles' adaptation is interesting in part because du Maurier appeared at the end of the drama (also, Orson makes a joke about the name of the novel's protagonist). One can see from this production that Hollywood was surely trying to bring Rebecca to the screen.

Hitchcock, of course, wasn't especially found of the movie, even though it brought him the highest accolades of his career. It's certainly a much more conventional film than most of his pictures. The adaptations which followed the movie were a mix of film and novel adaptations - the Lux Radio Theater and Screen Guild Theater versions were clearly drawn from the film, while the Matinee Theater version seems mostly a novel adaptation.

The first appearance of the script on Screen Guild Theater came one week after their adaptation of Shadow of a Doubt, so they were surely fond of Hitchcock on that program! The two Screen Guild adaptations share a script with the Hollywood Players script. Notice also that Joseph Cotten was present in the Hollywood Players version; we'll see his name a lot in these blog posts as he was a very busy man on radio, but it's neat that a genuine Hitchcock star appeared in so many of Hitchcock's adaptations.

The fidelity of the various adaptations waxes and wanes, primarily based on how much time they had to tell the story. Lux Radio Theater fits in all the highlights from the film, but screen Guild had to drop a major character (Rebecca's cousin) in order to make it fit (fortunately, Mrs. Danvers is enough of an antagonist on her own). Interestingly, the Screen Guild did not remove the minor character Frank Crawley - mainly because he provided useful exposition.

Interestingly, Laurence Olivier reprised his role on Lux Radio Theater 12 years after the film's release. Notably, Olivier's lover Vivian Leigh took the lead role in that version - he had campaigned for her back in '38 and been very disappointed when the part went to Joan Fontaine.

The Matinee Theater adaptation is pretty lousy. The novel and film are a decent mix of romance and ambiguity but this simplified version has an absurd happy ending where Mrs. Danvers simply leaves and Manderlay is not destroyed!