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Syracuse Herald Journal (10/Jul/1941) - Filmdom's Only Feminine Writing Team Specializes in Thrillers

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Filmdom's Only Feminine Writing Team Specializes in Thrillers

Alfred Hitchcock's Wife and Secretary Click as Scenarists

Hollywood (Special). — There must be something about writing that does not bring out the best in the girls. There is only one feminine writing team in Hollywood!

Male writing teams are as common as raisins in fruit cake. Those pairing a man and a woman are rare. Usually, the girls who write movies write alone—and like it better.

Many, many women writers have put on double harness, but if they got through one picture they were lucky. Women writers just don't get along together.

"That isn't true of Joan and me," Alma Reville denied.

Alma (Mrs. Alfred Hitchcock) and Joan Harrison (formerly "Hitch's" secretary) have collaborated on most of the thrillers Hitchcock has directed in the last three years.

Alma has been writing screenplays for about 12 years. Before that she was a cutter. She laughed and covered her face with her hands when she confessed she started as a script clerk in 1916 with the London film company.

Joan became Hitchcock's secretary six years ago and has been a writer for three.

In concocting their latest picture, "Before the Fact," Alma said that Joan first boiled the novel to its "plot bones" in a one-page synopsis, then made a rough treatment or story line. Next, both women batted ideas back and forth with Hitchcock, and in about two months completed the screenplay.

This was turned over to a dialog writer. Alma and Joan doctored and tightened the script for the final version.

"Arguments?" said Alma. "Of course! But no bad feeling. I'd just as soon work with a woman as a man, just so she's good."

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