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The Hitch-Hiker (1953 film)
Encyclopedia
The Hitch-Hiker is a film noir
directed by Ida Lupino
about two fishing buddies who pick up a mysterious hitchhiker
during a trip to Mexico.
The movie was written by Robert L. Joseph
, Lupino, and her husband Collier Young
, based on a story by Out of the Past
screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring
, who was blacklisted at the time and did not receive screen credit. The film is based on the true story of Billy Cook
, a psychopathic murderer.
It has been called the first film noir
directed by a woman, despite Norwegian director Edith Carlmar having made a noir already back in 1949 ("Døden er et kjærtegn
"). The director of photography was RKO Pictures
regular Nicholas Musuraca.
In 1998, The Hitch-Hiker was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry
as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."
and Frank Lovejoy
) on a fishing trip pick up a hitchhiker named Emmett Myers (William Talman), who turns out to be a psychopath who has committed multiple murders.
Cast notes:
murdered a family of five and a traveling salesman, then kidnapped Deputy Sheriff Homer Waldrip from Blythe, California and ordered him to drive into the desert where he tied Deputy Waldrip up with blanket strips and took his police cruiser, leaving Waldrip to die.
Waldrip got loose, however, walked to the main road and was picked up and taken back to Blythe. Cook was tried, convicted and sentenced to the gas chamber. On December 12, 1952, Cook was executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin Prison in California.
The Hitch-Hiker went into production on 24 June 1952 and wrapped in late July. Location shooting took place in the Alabama Hills
near Lone Pine
and Big Pine
, California. Working titles for the film were "The Difference" and "The Persuader".
Director Ida Lupino
was a noted actress who began directing when Elmer Clifton
got sick and couldn't finish the film he was directing for Filmways, the company started by Lupino and her husband Collier Young
to make low-budget issue-oriented movies. Lupino stepped in to finish the film, and went on to direct her own projects. The Hitch-Hiker was her first hard-paced fast-moving picture after four "woman's" films about social issues.
Lupino interviewed the two prospectors that Billy Cook had held hostage, and got releases from them and from Cook as well, so that she could integrate parts of Cook's life into the script. To appease the censors at the Hays Office, however, she reduced the number of deaths to three.
The Hitch-Hiker premiered in Boston on 20 March 1953 and immediately went into general release. It was marketed with the tagline: When was the last time you invited death into your car?
The New York Times
gave The Hitch-Hiker a mixed review on its initial release. The acting, direction, and use of locations were praised, but the plot was deemed to be predictable.
Film critic Dennis Schwartz wrote of the film, "It's a pleasure to watch the action unfold without resorting to clichés. Talman's performance as a sadistic sleaze was powerful. His random crime spree strikes at the heart of middle-class America's insecurity about there being no place free of crime."
Critic John Krewson lauded the work of Ida Lupino, and wrote, "As a screenwriter and director, Lupino had an eye for the emotional truth hidden within the taboo or mundane, making a series of B-styled pictures which featured sympathetic, honest portrayals of such controversial subjects as unmarried mothers, bigamy, and rape...in The Hitch-Hiker, arguably Lupino's best film and the only true noir directed by a woman, two utterly average middle-class American men are held at gunpoint and slowly psychologically broken by a serial killer. In addition to her critical but compassionate sensibility, Lupino had a great filmmaker's eye, using the starkly beautiful street scenes in Not Wanted and the gorgeous, ever-present loneliness of empty highways in The Hitch-Hiker to set her characters apart.
Time Out Film Guide wrote of the film, "Absolutely assured in her creation of the bleak, noir atmosphere - whether in the claustrophobic confines of the car, or lost in the arid expanses of the desert - Lupino never relaxes the tension for one moment. Yet her emotional sensitivity is also upfront: charting the changes in the menaced men's relationship as they bicker about how to deal with their captor, stressing that only through friendship can they survive. Taut, tough, and entirely without macho-glorification, it's a gem, with first-class performances from its three protagonists, deftly characterised without resort to cliché."
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
directed by Ida Lupino
Ida Lupino
Ida Lupino was an English-born film actress and director, and a pioneer among women filmmakers. In her 48-year career, she appeared in 59 films and directed seven others, mostly in the United States. She appeared in serial television programmes 58 times and directed 50 other episodes...
about two fishing buddies who pick up a mysterious hitchhiker
Hitchhiking
Hitchhiking is a means of transportation that is gained by asking people, usually strangers, for a ride in their automobile or other road vehicle to travel a distance that may either be short or long...
during a trip to Mexico.
The movie was written by Robert L. Joseph
Robert L. Joseph
Robert L. Joseph was an American theatre producer, playwright, and screenwriter.Joseph's Broadway credits included revivals of King Lear, Major Barbara, and Heartbreak Hotel...
, Lupino, and her husband Collier Young
Collier Young
Film producer and writer Collier Young worked on many films in the 1950s before becoming a television producer for such shows as NBC's Ironside and CBS's The Wild, Wild West as well as the supernatural series One Step Beyond .Young was married to actress and director Ida Lupino from 1948 to 1951,...
, based on a story by Out of the Past
Out of the Past
Out of the Past is a 1947 film noir directed by Jacques Tourneur and starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Kirk Douglas. The film was adapted by Daniel Mainwaring , with uncredited revisions by Frank Fenton and James M...
screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring
Daniel Mainwaring
Daniel Mainwaring was a novelist and screenwriter. A native of Oakland, California, he began his professional career as a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle and enjoyed a successful career as a mystery novelist...
, who was blacklisted at the time and did not receive screen credit. The film is based on the true story of Billy Cook
Billy Cook (criminal)
William Edward "Billy" Cook was an American spree killer who murdered six people on a 22-day rampage between Missouri and California in 1950–51.-Early life:...
, a psychopathic murderer.
It has been called the first film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
directed by a woman, despite Norwegian director Edith Carlmar having made a noir already back in 1949 ("Døden er et kjærtegn
Døden er et kjærtegn
Døden er et kjærtegn is a 1950 Norwegian drama film starring Claus Wiese, Bjørg Riiser-Larsen and Ingolf Rogde. Based on a 1948 novel by Arne Moen, it was Edith Carlmar's directorial début. The film depicts the passionate and tempestuous liaison between mechanic Erik and society woman Sonja . The...
"). The director of photography was RKO Pictures
RKO Pictures
RKO Pictures is an American film production and distribution company. As RKO Radio Pictures Inc., it was one of the Big Five studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chains and Joseph P...
regular Nicholas Musuraca.
In 1998, The Hitch-Hiker was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."
Plot
Two men (Edmond O'BrienEdmond O'Brien
Edmond O'Brien was an American actor who is perhaps best remembered for his role in D.O.A. and his Oscar winning role in The Barefoot Contessa...
and Frank Lovejoy
Frank Lovejoy
Frank Lovejoy was an American actor in radio, film, and television. He was born Frank Lovejoy Jr. in Bronx, New York, but grew up in New Jersey. His father, Frank Lovejoy Sr., was a furniture salesman from Maine...
) on a fishing trip pick up a hitchhiker named Emmett Myers (William Talman), who turns out to be a psychopath who has committed multiple murders.
Cast
- Edmond O'BrienEdmond O'BrienEdmond O'Brien was an American actor who is perhaps best remembered for his role in D.O.A. and his Oscar winning role in The Barefoot Contessa...
as Roy Collins - Frank LovejoyFrank LovejoyFrank Lovejoy was an American actor in radio, film, and television. He was born Frank Lovejoy Jr. in Bronx, New York, but grew up in New Jersey. His father, Frank Lovejoy Sr., was a furniture salesman from Maine...
as Gilbert Bowen - William Talman as Emmett Myers
- José Torvay as Captain Alvarado
- Wendell NilesWendell NilesWendell Niles was one of the great announcers of the American golden age of radio. He was an announcer on such shows as The Bob Hope Show, The Burns & Allen Show, The Milton Berle Show and The Chase and Sanborn Hour ...
as Himself - Jean Del Val as Inspector General
- Clark Howat as Government Agent
- Natividad VacíoNatividad VacíoNatividad Vacío was an American character actor in films and television from the 1950s through the 1980s. Born in Texas, he was of Hispanic ancestry and nearly always played a Hispanic character in his 65 film and television appearances....
as Jose - Rodney Bell as William Johnson
- Nacho Galindo as Proprietor
Cast notes:
- Collier YoungCollier YoungFilm producer and writer Collier Young worked on many films in the 1950s before becoming a television producer for such shows as NBC's Ironside and CBS's The Wild, Wild West as well as the supernatural series One Step Beyond .Young was married to actress and director Ida Lupino from 1948 to 1951,...
, husband of director Ida LupinoIda LupinoIda Lupino was an English-born film actress and director, and a pioneer among women filmmakers. In her 48-year career, she appeared in 59 films and directed seven others, mostly in the United States. She appeared in serial television programmes 58 times and directed 50 other episodes...
and the co-writer of the screenplay, makes an uncredited appearance in the film as a Mexican peasant.
Background
In California in 1950, Billy CookBilly Cook (criminal)
William Edward "Billy" Cook was an American spree killer who murdered six people on a 22-day rampage between Missouri and California in 1950–51.-Early life:...
murdered a family of five and a traveling salesman, then kidnapped Deputy Sheriff Homer Waldrip from Blythe, California and ordered him to drive into the desert where he tied Deputy Waldrip up with blanket strips and took his police cruiser, leaving Waldrip to die.
Waldrip got loose, however, walked to the main road and was picked up and taken back to Blythe. Cook was tried, convicted and sentenced to the gas chamber. On December 12, 1952, Cook was executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin Prison in California.
Production
Alabama Hills
Alabama Hills are a "range of hills" and rock formations near the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the Owens Valley, west of Lone Pine in Inyo County, California....
near Lone Pine
Lone Pine, California
Lone Pine is a census-designated place in Inyo County, California, United States. Lone Pine is located south-southeast of Independence, at an elevation of 3727 feet . The population was 2,035 at the 2010 census, up from 1,655 at the 2000 census. The town is located in the Owens Valley, near the...
and Big Pine
Big Pine, California
Big Pine is a census-designated place in Inyo County, California, United States. Big Pine is located south-southeast of Bishop, at an elevation of 3990 feet . The population was 1,756 at the 2010 census, up from 1,350 at the 2000 census...
, California. Working titles for the film were "The Difference" and "The Persuader".
Director Ida Lupino
Ida Lupino
Ida Lupino was an English-born film actress and director, and a pioneer among women filmmakers. In her 48-year career, she appeared in 59 films and directed seven others, mostly in the United States. She appeared in serial television programmes 58 times and directed 50 other episodes...
was a noted actress who began directing when Elmer Clifton
Elmer Clifton
Elmer Clifton, was an American writer, director, and actor from the early silent days. A collaborator of D. W. Griffith, he appeared in The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance before giving up acting in 1919 to concentrate on work behind the camera...
got sick and couldn't finish the film he was directing for Filmways, the company started by Lupino and her husband Collier Young
Collier Young
Film producer and writer Collier Young worked on many films in the 1950s before becoming a television producer for such shows as NBC's Ironside and CBS's The Wild, Wild West as well as the supernatural series One Step Beyond .Young was married to actress and director Ida Lupino from 1948 to 1951,...
to make low-budget issue-oriented movies. Lupino stepped in to finish the film, and went on to direct her own projects. The Hitch-Hiker was her first hard-paced fast-moving picture after four "woman's" films about social issues.
Lupino interviewed the two prospectors that Billy Cook had held hostage, and got releases from them and from Cook as well, so that she could integrate parts of Cook's life into the script. To appease the censors at the Hays Office, however, she reduced the number of deaths to three.
The Hitch-Hiker premiered in Boston on 20 March 1953 and immediately went into general release. It was marketed with the tagline: When was the last time you invited death into your car?
Critical reception
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
gave The Hitch-Hiker a mixed review on its initial release. The acting, direction, and use of locations were praised, but the plot was deemed to be predictable.
Film critic Dennis Schwartz wrote of the film, "It's a pleasure to watch the action unfold without resorting to clichés. Talman's performance as a sadistic sleaze was powerful. His random crime spree strikes at the heart of middle-class America's insecurity about there being no place free of crime."
Critic John Krewson lauded the work of Ida Lupino, and wrote, "As a screenwriter and director, Lupino had an eye for the emotional truth hidden within the taboo or mundane, making a series of B-styled pictures which featured sympathetic, honest portrayals of such controversial subjects as unmarried mothers, bigamy, and rape...in The Hitch-Hiker, arguably Lupino's best film and the only true noir directed by a woman, two utterly average middle-class American men are held at gunpoint and slowly psychologically broken by a serial killer. In addition to her critical but compassionate sensibility, Lupino had a great filmmaker's eye, using the starkly beautiful street scenes in Not Wanted and the gorgeous, ever-present loneliness of empty highways in The Hitch-Hiker to set her characters apart.
Time Out Film Guide wrote of the film, "Absolutely assured in her creation of the bleak, noir atmosphere - whether in the claustrophobic confines of the car, or lost in the arid expanses of the desert - Lupino never relaxes the tension for one moment. Yet her emotional sensitivity is also upfront: charting the changes in the menaced men's relationship as they bicker about how to deal with their captor, stressing that only through friendship can they survive. Taut, tough, and entirely without macho-glorification, it's a gem, with first-class performances from its three protagonists, deftly characterised without resort to cliché."
Noir analysis
Critics Bob Porfiero and Alain Silver, in a review and analysis of the film, praised Lupino's use of shooting locations. They wrote, "The Hitch-Hikers desert locale, although not so graphically dark as a cityscape at night, isolates the protagonists in a milieu as uninviting and potentially deadly as any in film noir."External links
- The Hitch-Hiker at Prairie Ghosts
- The Hitch-Hiker film at You Tube