It was announced Monday that John Michael Hayes had died of natural causes November 19 at a retirement community. He was 89.
He was a screenwriter who wrote four scripts for Alfred Hitchcock: Rear Window (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955), The Trouble with Harry (1955), and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), the latter being a remake of Hitchcock's own 1934 movie of the same title. Among other things, these films were noted for the wordplay, the double entendres, the clever ways through which they worked around censorship at the time.
Rear Window earned Hayes an Oscar nomination, and he got another for Mark Robson's Peyton Place.
His other movies include Butterfield Eight, for which Elizabeth Taylor won her first best actress Oscar. He also worked with directors such as Budd Boetticher, Edward Dmytryk and Anthony Mann.
In an interview with Susan Green (Backstory 3: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 60s, edited by Patrick McGilligan, University of California Press, 1997) a little over a decade ago, he remembers growing up, his marriage and his career.
He was the first in his family to go to college, which he did by maintaining scholarships and by working. He was on police beat covering homicides and suicides, and he wrote mysteries for radio, which may account for his skills in plot, dialogue and character. You could say it was fated that he and Hitch get- well, hitched.
Hayes talks about being on the set with Hitchcock, how he was given the freedom to write, and the locations they had been to. He notes that the movies were Hitch's life, and how the Master of Suspense shot the movies in his head, with specific camera angles and all.
Then he started getting prominent mentions in the reviews and the trade papers. Hitchcock, he says, did not want to share billing with him- he wanted to be the sole creator of his movies. Hayes notes that, when you mention Hitch's titles, what comes to mind is that they are Alfred Hitchcock Films. You would not have guessed the screenwriters who worked on them, including playwrights and Pulitzer Prize winners: Robert Sherwood (Rebecca, 1940), Thornton Wilder (Shadow of a Doubt, 1943), Samson Raphaelson (Suspicion, 1947) and Maxwell Anderson ( The Wrong Man, 1956).
Yet Hayes also says Hitchcock was the easiest to work with. He lets us in on working with William Wyler, whom he calls the most difficult ever. He recalls an argument they had, after which Wyler tours him around, reading the inscriptions on his awards. It all takes about half an hour, then Wyler says: "Now tell me I'm wrong. What does all this mean?" To which Hayes retorts: "Well, those were things you've done in the past. I think you're wrong now. "
Yes, the William Wyler. Who directed Ben-Hur (1959), Roman Holiday (1953), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and others.
Hayes has already secured his place, if only for Rear Window, ranked 83rd in the 2007 poll of screenwriters by the Writers Guild of America on the 101 greatest screenplays of all time.
In 1954 it was nominated best written drama in the Screen Writers Guild of America Awards. The prize went to On the Waterfront.
It was also awarded best motion picture in the Edgar Allan Poe Awards by the Mystery Writers of America.
It competed for an Academy Award as well, which went to George Seaton for The Country Girl, also a Grace Kelly movie, the one for which she won her own Oscar.
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