Mar 09 2009
Screenplay for Mary Rose, Alfred Hitchcock’s unproduced ghost story
Can you believe it? A posting that isn’t about Watchmen!
In fact, I’m going back a good few years, all the way to 1964 to be exact.
That’s when screen scribe Jay Presson Allen, who also wrote such greats as 1964’s twisted Marnie and the 1981 cop classic Prince of the City, turned in her second draft of Mary Rose.
Mary Rose was to be directed by none other than the Master of Suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock, and it is, allegedly, the project that he wanted to make above any other. However, the acclaimed director’s desire was always met by studio disapproval, and the film never got greenlit.
The story was originally a play written by J. M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan. Hitchcock had seen it performed during his youth and never forgot about it, so when Hollywood provided him the opportunity to feed his obsessions, he commissioned Allen to write a feature film adaptation of the play.
What interesting about Mary Rose is that it would’ve been, I think, the only true-blue ghost story to Hitchcock’s name had it ever gotten off the ground. The basic gist of the plot is that the titular Mary Rose returns to the Sussex home of her childhood where she meets her own son. The thing is, Mary’s a ghost, and her son isn’t the 2-year-old that he was when she vanished. He’s now a middle-aged adult, and because he has aged and she has not, there can be no reunion for the two. Mary can only return, alone, to spectral realm from which she emerged.
You can download a pdf of Allen’s Mary Rose screenplay here, courtesy of author/Hitchcock scholar Steven DeRosa’s amazing website, Writing With Hitchcock. Be forewarned: the file is about 21MB, so if you have a slow connection it could take a while.
