By special contributor to the News, Gina Hall

Culver City’s commitment to film history was celebrated at City Hall on Saturday evening with a free outdoor screening of the classic Alfred Hitchcock film, Rebecca. The Culver City Redevelopment Agency sponsored the annual Made in Culver City program, which honors films produced in The Heart of Screenland.

Attendees were treated to free popcorn provided by the Culver City Fire Department and the event kicked off with an introduction by city councilman Micheál O’Leary, who read a message written for the screening by Patricia Hitchcock O’Connell, Hitchcock’s only child. She applauded the continued appreciation for her father’s work and noted Rebecca was one of her personal favorites.

The event, which drew about 500 people to downtown Culver City, marked the 70th anniversary of the film, the only one in the Hitchcock cannon to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Starring Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine and Judith Anderson, Rebecca is based on the haunting Daphne du Maurier novel about a young bride tormented by the lingering presence of her husband’s dead wife, whose memory is kept alive by a spiteful housekeeper.

The film was shot at Selznick International Pictures, which is now The Culver Studios, on West Washington Boulevard. Producer David O. Selznick left MGM and founded the company in 1935 when he leased a portion of what was then the RKO lot. 

Selznick brought Hitchcock from England to Culver City to make his American directorial debut with Rebecca. Dr. Drew Casper, professor at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and holder of the Alma and Alfred Hitchcock Endowed Chair, explains that Hitchcock was “the highest paid and most critically noted director that the British had produced up to this time … many studios wanted to sign him.”

However, once Hitchcock arrived in town, the rapport between the director and producer was anything but harmonious. “Like oil and water,” Casper says of the Hitchcock/Selznick relationship during filming. “It was all about control. Selznick wanted him to stick with the book and its values, and Hitchcock wanted to make his version.” In the end, Selznick’s version won, but Hitchcock was able to exact revenge by using such directorial tricks as editing in-camera so that Selznick couldn’t re-cut the picture.

The collaboration got Hitchcock nominated for Best Director, but he lost to John Ford for The Grapes of Wrath. Although nominated five times, Hitchcock would never win the Oscar for directing.