“Women”, writer-producer Joan Harrison (1907-1994) told the New York Times in 1943, “must have something to pull for, you know, whether it’s a dog, a horse, an old beggar–or even another woman!”

If pioneering writer and producer Harrison is remembered today at all, it is often likely for her contributions, along with those of the key figure of Alfred Hitchcock‘s wife, Alma Reville, to helping to shape and present to the world the talent and the image of the great director of suspense and anxiety. An educated Englishwoman, becoming his secretary while in her ’20s, Harrison, who claimed that she was pretty hopeless when it came to normal secretarial duties such as typing and shorthand, helped to shaped six of Hitchcock‘s films in the 1930s and 1940s.

As she explained, “I was probably the worst secretary Hitchcock has ever had. I was too curious about all the departments with which, as a director, Hitch must deal.”  She became an invaluable help to the director as he moved from English movies to American-themed stories and was very close to his family as well. Responding when she was 26 to a London Times advertisement for a “director’s assistant”, the Oxford and Sorbonne educated Ms. Harrison was hired to help with the production of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). Harrison, who would mention in interviews that she felt “stifled” by the prospect of the upper middle class existence, had, she admitted, “wanted to write. I used to attend court sessions at the Old Bailey in London to learn about life. I wrote some short stories. I was eager to get into the cinema.”

The future secretary-amaneunsis and possible inspiration for the director’s decades long interest in “cool blondes”,  Harrison responded to Hitchcock‘s off-color humor and demanding work ethic with considerable aplomb. At first contributing bits of dialogue and to script continuity, the girl was one of those who soon became a vital part of the director’s brainstorming sessions with all his writing staff while preparing a film. Beginning with The Lady Vanishes (1938), the combination of Alma Reville‘s experienced cinematic sense and Joan‘s more naive yet intelligent approach to the creation of the Hitchcock heroine found their way into several key scripts. The heroine of The Lady Vanishes, the ambivalent young woman hurtling toward her future on a train that she cannot control, is significant for the determination with which she approaches her life, especially after the appearance (and disappearance) of Miss Froy, (a spinster character whose very existence is regarded as unimportant). While contending with a series of domineering male figures who appear certain of their assertions, Margaret Lockwood‘s character plants the seed of doubt in at least one male, Michael Redgrave, becoming an ally of the investigative female figure, whose existence threatens the patriarchal world she inhabits. This inquiring female would become a more clearly defined figure in several of the director’s next movies. While the collaborative nature of screenwriting in the studio era, (and Hitchcock’s own yen for the spotlight), might undermine the argument for Harrison significant contributions to the scripts, Donald Spoto, in his rather heavily psychologically oriented biography of the director, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock, feels that the director’s depiction of young, often blonde women in his films may have stemmed from his own unrequited feelings toward Harrison, perhaps on an unconscious level. Perhaps the author had a valid point, but, the fact remains that Joan Harrison maintained “an elegant, reserved patience and devoted herself to the family’s needs and to daily work on the script” at hand. 

The young, naive heroine’s coping with life and death issues in a series of films, including Jamaica Inn (1939), Rebecca (1940), Suspicion (1941) and Shadow of a Doubt (1943), may have been influenced strongly by Harrison‘s perspective, as well as that of the more widely acknowledged authors such as Sidney Gilliat, Robert E. Sherwood, Samson Raphaelson, and Charles Bennett, among others. In addition to her contributions to the scripts, Joan Harrison also became a close friend of the entire Hitchcock family, accompanying them when they moved to the United States, and remaining a lifelong unofficial member of the clan, even accompanying the Hitchcock’s on their anniversary trips on occasion. As her skills and condidence grew, Joan Harrison, who grew to be a respected figure in Hollywood on her own, separate from Hitchcock, even dating someone as dazzling as Clark Gable at one point.

While the working relationship with Hitchcock developed into a symbiotic one, Harrison never posed a conscious threat to the director’s deep personal and professional relationship wiht his wife Alma. Alma Reville, whose film experience as an editor and production manager predated her husband’s by several years, remained his closest confidante and sharpest critic. Alma, who came to regard Harrison “as a member of the family”, provided continuity and detailed critiques of all of her husband’s projects. The ultimate compliment that Hitchcock could deliver about someone’s work was “Alma loved it.” While Alma‘s eye, her cinematic savvy, and her skills as a story editor would continue throughout their married life, it may have been to Joan Harrison‘s advantage that she arrived in the director’s offices as his daughter, Patricia Hitchcock, born in 1928, required more of her mother’s time. The director, along with his wife, and eventually Harrison, understood that in marketing terms, no matter what the contributions of others behind the scenes, it was to their mutual advantage to promote the Hitchcock “persona as a product” that was  a brand of quality easily identifiable by the general public. Many writers, particularly Charles Bennett, Sydney Gilliat, and Frank Launder chafed under this “umbrella” of Hitchcock press. Harrison, fortunately, thrived under the aegis of her employer–at least for a time.

Harrison‘s postwar productions, including the fascinating Robert Young film, They Won’t Believe Me (1947), directed by Irving Pichel and Robert Montgomery‘s Ride the Pink Horse (1947), directed by the actor. While featuring male protagonists at the center of the stories, each of these films continued to address “the woman’s angle”, courting the mystery market composed of women readers and viewers, as well as playing on her happy professional association with Hitchcock. The movies also display great compassion for the plight of the male characters, who are pinioned by their conventional strandards of behavior even more than the female characters, particularly in Robert Young’s morally trapped stockbroker in They Won’t Believe Me and in George Sanders‘ put-upon brother and lover in The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry, a film that was subject to enormous scrutiny from the Breen office, due to some implication of emotionally incestuous themes as well as murder, repression, suicide and the Production Code office’s need for a restoration of moral order.