Hitchcock Chronology: Angus MacPhail

Entries in the Hitchcock Chronology relating to Angus MacPhail...

1934

April

• Script sessions for The Man Who Knew Too Much, are held at 153 Cromwell Road throughout April and May 1934. Contributing are Charles Bennett, Angus MacPhail, Ivor Montagu, Alma and Alfred

1943

August

• Writer Angus MacPhail leaves Ealing Studios to work at the Ministry of Information and begins planning for Hitchcock's two British wartime films: Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache.

1953

February

• Angus MacPhail writes to Hitchcock from Nice, France, asking for help paying his hotel bills. Hitchcock immediately wires him some money. The director then becomes one of a group of MacPhail's friends who help clear the writer's debts so that he can return to England.

1955

January

• The Hitchcocks return to Bel-Air from Paris, where work commences on the script for The Man Who Knew Too Much with Angus MacPhail.

February

• It now seems highly likely that Doris Day will play a lead role in The Man Who Knew Too Much. Hitchcock and Angus MacPhail work on developing the character of Jo McKenna to make her a retired singer.
• John Michael Hayes, now free from other work commitments, joins Hitchcock to work on The Man Who Knew Too Much. The director apparently neglects to tell Hayes that Angus MacPhail had already been working on the film's plot line for the last two months which ultimately leads to Hayes formally objecting to MacPhail receiving a screen credit.

August

• Hitchcock meets with Angus MacPhail in late August to discuss the The Wrong Man script.

1956

January

• Hitchcock meets with Maxwell Anderson to discuss The Wrong Man screenplay. Hitchcock is increasinly unhappy with the dialogue and hires Angus MacPhail to work on the script.
• Angus MacPhail and Herbert Coleman travel to New York to research locations for The Wrong Man.

June

• 19th - The Hitchcocks meet up in London with Robert Burks, Herbert Coleman and Angus MacPhail in order to talk with staff from the British Colonial Office to discuss plans for the director's next project, Flamingo Feather. From there, they travel on to Europe and then South Africa to scout locations and to visit Hitch's aunt Emma Mary Rhodes (who dies in September). It soon becomes obvious that the logistics of shooting a film in southern Africa will be too much and Hitchcock decides to abandon the project.

1962

April

• 22nd - Screenwriter Angus MacPhail, who worked with Hitchcock on Bon Voyage, Aventure Malgache, Spellbound, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Wrong Man and briefly on Vertigo, dies aged 59.