Hitchcock Chronology: Barbara Keon

Entries in the Hitchcock Chronology relating to Barbara Keon...

1946

March

• The Hitchcocks and production assistant Barbara Keon work on the script for The Paradine Case.

1950

August

• Hitchcock begins regular script meetings for Strangers on a Train with Raymond Chandler at the novelist's house in La Jolla in early August. The meetings become increasingly awkward, party due to Chandler's alcoholism. When Chandler breaks into a drunk rant about the script, Hitchcock walks out telling his associate producer Barbara Keon that "he's through" and begins looking for a replacement writer.

October

• Hitchcock hires Czenzi Ormonde to write script for Strangers on a Train. At their first script meeting, Hitchcock pinched his nose, picked up Raymond Chandler's script for the film with his thumb and forefinger and then theatrically dropped it into the nearest waste paper basket. After spending a couple of weeks working with Ormonde, Barbara Keon takes over and the two women work non-stop to complete the script.

November

• Czenzi Ormonde and Barbara Keon complete their rewrite of the Strangers on a Train script.

1952

April

• Warner Bros object to elements of the screenplay for I Confess, including the ending which has the priest being executed, forcing Hitchcock and Barbara Keon to hastily rewrite the scenes.

August

• 21st - I Confess principal photography begins in Quebec. Hitchcock hires Barbara Keon to work on several of the film's more difficult scenes.