The legendary Alfred Hitchcock is one of the most revered filmmakers of all time. Hitchcock has designed some of the most emblematic scenes in the history of cinema, including the dramatic Crop Duster Chase in “North by Northwest” and the scary shower murder in “Psycho”. Starting your career at the start of cinema, without a wealth of cinematographic classics to look for inspiration, Hitchcock was a pioneer. He has developed new narrative techniques to tell stories about the film, opening the way to generations of filmmakers to follow.
Hitchcock’s film career took place over half a century. Some of his first roles in the industry were as a title designer or artistic director on other filmmakers’ films, many of whom have since been lost. The first film directed by Hitchcock that the modern public can still appreciate is “The Pleasure Garden” of 1925, a silent drama based on the Pleasure Garden Theater in London. However, “The Pleasure Garden” was actually the second feature film directed by Hitchcock. It was preceded by a Hitchcock film that was lost … or, more precisely, a film that has never been finished.
Hitchcock began working on “Number 13”, its potential directors, in 1922. Gainsborough Pictures, the production company behind the film, had offered Hitchcock this first opportunity to lead a feature film. Despite being the project that would have marked the start of one of the most legendary careers in cinema, “the number 13” has never done a cinema, and a lot about the film remains a mystery to this day.
The reason why the number 13 of Alfred Hitchcock has never been completed
The history of the production of “Number 13” – also called “Ms. Peabody” in studio documents – is always a point of intrigue and uncertainty for modern cinema researchers and Hitchcock enthusiasts. A detail that seems obvious is that production has been closed due to a lack of funds. That this means that Gainsborough Pictures did not have enough confidence in the film and that its new director to set up the money itself is not clear. All that is really known is that “number 13” was funded by two individuals rather than the studio funds.
The first of the financiers of the film to be climbed on board was John Hitchcock, the uncle of Alfred Hitchcock. The second was Clare Greet, an actor who also played one of the main roles in “number 13”. Although the film is never finished, Hitchcock was so grateful to Greet’s contribution that he ended up launching her in six of his other films: “The Ring”, “The Manxman”, “Murder!,” “The man who knew too much”, “Sabotage” and “Jamaica Inn”.
Salvation would have appeared alongside Ernest TheSiger in “number 13”. The two stars had to play a married couple in a story about residents of a building – funded by the real philanthropist George Foster Peabody – intended to provide affordable low -income Londones. The script was written by Anita Ross, member of the staff of the Islington studios who, according to Hitchcock, had a kind of link with Charlie Chaplin (yes, that Charlie Chaplin) when he was interviewed by François Truffaut for his famous book “Hitchcock / Truffaut”. Apart from this comment, however, Hitchcock rarely talked about “number 13”. Leave the master of the suspense to let the rest of us hang forever.
