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As a secretary, Joan Harrison says she was terrible, but one important thing she did well. Hitchcock will never read a prospective script or even a synopsis for a script. It became Secretary Harrison's job to give him stories by word of mouth. Soon she began to improve on the originals as she went along. Miss Harrison became more & more useful to Hitchcock as an idea woman. With The Girl Was Young (1937) she did her first screen writing. With Jamaica Inn (1939) she did her first full script, got her first screen credit. By 1941 Secretary Harrison was 1) perhaps the most highly esteemed member of Hitchcock's permanent crew, 2) desperate. Her desperation was simple: she had ideas and an ego, and she was too close to a great man to do what she wanted with either. She left Hitchcock.
During the next two years several of Joan Harrison's scripts were ditched or manhandled by Paramount, Columbia, M.G.M., Warners. She was about ready to toss in the sponge when an agent turned up with a whodunit about a disappearing alibi in a conspicuous hat. Would she do a script? If so, Universalmight be induced to produce it. Miss Harrison saw possibilities in the novel, but two years' freelancing had made her intensely leary of the handling it might receive. So she told the high muckymucks of Universal exactly how the picture was to be made. Few men, far less a woman, far less a woman so neatly made, had ever talked to them like that. But if they were startled they were also impressed. If the lady knew their business so much better than they knew it themselves, how would she like to produce the picture? Miss Harrison said that nothing would give her greater pleasure.
Different Flavor. From the first Joan Harrison's working methods were rather unconventional: they showed foresight and sharp common sense. Miss Harrison lined up her art director (John Goodman) before she did anything else. Then she chose Scripter B. C. Schoenfeld, collaborated with him and, like Hitchcock gave him full screen credit. She also teamed closely with Director Robert Siodmak. She did her own casting, down to the most insignificant bit. She sank $60,000 of her budget in Franchot Tone for the maniac, on the theory that "unusual casting brings a different flavor to your pic ture." She persuaded Alan Curtis to play without makeup, on the equally startling theory that a hero looks more heroic if he looks like a human being. She talked Ella Raines into wearing the simple dresses and coiffures a secretary might reasonably wear. She was better aware than most Hollywoodians of the value of silence —a good half of Phantom Lady is without the doubtful benefit of either talk or music. She was also cagey in her handling of the baser emotions: in Phantom Lady the jam session is quite an orgy, por trayed metaphorically, without a line of dialogue, suggestive or otherwise.
Child Murderers. After she finished Phantom Lady three months ago, Producer Harrison was offered her choice of 1) a Western, 2) a stale-ale melodrama. She refused both: "I am a specialist. I am proud of being a specialist. I don't want to make pictures with the Andrews Sisters." Her current ideas are i) a film to be made entirely by women; 2) "a murder story involving only children."