Shadow of a Doubt - Finding Uncle Charlie
Creating Alfred Hitchcock's Merry Widow Murderer"
Jul 14, 2009
Often cited as Hitchcock's favorite among his own films, Shadow of a Doubt is the story of the murderous Charlie Oakley (Joseph Cotten) who seeks refuge in the small-town life of his sister's innocent family. When his namesake, young Charlie (Teresa Wright), starts to suspect her beloved uncle is hiding something, Uncle Charlie must prevent the unraveling of his true identity before his niece becomes his next victim.
Hitchcock was fascinated with the idea of bringing danger into an idyllic American town, and what became his favorite film is also his most autobiographical. Biographer Donald Spoto points out that the director's qualities are infused into nearly every character in Shadow of a Doubt, from the precocious children to the harmless yet crime-obsessed father (Henry Travers), to innocent doting Charlie to – most fascinatingly – the “Merry Widow Murderer” himself, Uncle Charlie. Hitchcock's innate understanding of the character combined with his insatiable thirst for true crime and bizarre tales formed the basis for his most charming villain.
Uncle Hitch?
Nobody could mistake Hitchcock and Joseph Cotten physically. The director's formidable mass and bloated schoolboy's cheeks are a far cry from the slender physique and deceptively wholesome grin of Cotten's Uncle Charlie. But beneath the exterior beats a similar heart.
In the Making of Shadow of a Doubt documentary, Pat Hitchcock insists that her father created everything in his films wholly from the genius of his imagination without modeling characters or plot lines after people and events in his own life. Yet, this film in particular seems to point to the contrary. After all, experience fuels the imagination and, whether consciously or unconsciously, molds an artist's work. Hitchcock's connection to Uncle Charlie is evident in the murderer's childhood and philisophies.
The World is a Sty
Emma Newton (Patricia Collinge) tearfully remembers when her baby brother was almost killed when his bike collided with a streetcar. Their frantic mother wondered if her child would ever be the same, or if he would even survive at all. Hitchcock also suffered a similar accident in his youth. Despite the tragic note of the near-fatal event, the memory recalled a time when “it was great to be young.”
Both Hitchcock and Uncle Charlie remember their childhoods not just as the golden days gone by, but as a symbol of a simpler time when the world was purer, before it began to rot into a pit of greed and decadence. Uncle Charlie used this as an excuse to dehumanize his victims, the “fat, faded women” who lived and breathed the money earned from their dead husbands.
Just as Uncle Charlie further tries to illuminate the horrors of the world to his niece in a seedy bar, Hitchcock tries to illuminate his viewers through the dark shadows in all of his films. The director does not, however, justify the murderer, but helps the audience to understand the darkness that's in him and that this darkness can consume even the ones we love the most.
The Criminal Element
Like young Charlie's father, Hitchcock had an insatiable thirst for true crime stories and often blended elements of particularly fascinating tales into his films. According to biographer Patrick McGilligan, Hitchcock was initially drawn to Gordon McDonell's story of the murderous uncle returning home because of its similarities to killers Earle Leonard Nelson and Henri Landru.
Serial killer Earle Leonard Nelson was dubbed the “Gorilla Killer” and the “Dark Strangler,” and like Uncle Charlie, his weapon of choice was an iron grip on his victims' throats. Newspapers speculated on Nelson's seemingly superhuman strength and perpetuated the image of a gruesome monster whose reign of terror claimed the lives of more than 20 women throughout the 1920s .
Like Uncle Charlie, Parisian killer Henri Landru would seek out widowers and single women, usually through a convincing newspaper ad in a lonely hearts column or a seemingly casual meeting. Between 1914 and 1918, Landru lured around ten victims to his villa where he seduced them, robbed them, dismembered them, and then burned them in his oven.
Hitchcock was inspired by the media attention swirling around Nelson – Uncle Charlie was also given a lot of press as the “Merry Widow Murderer” – and Landru's suave seduction of his victims.
Spoto called Shadow of a Doubt Hitchcock's “handbook of all the literary and cultural influences on his own life.” Indeed, Hitchcock blended his own understanding of the mind of a serial killer with the real-life horrors splashing the headlines of newspapers around the world. His own brand of genius and depth of imagination gave breath to Uncle Charlie, his most charming villain.
