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203 16 curtain call Retirement is to me a dirty word. If I’m not writing a picture, I’m writing something else, at least five hours every day well into my nineties. But I am interested in writing only what I really like, no matter what the payback. I get too many ideas, and like to work. I wish I could live to be 120 and get all the ideas down on paper. But I’m not likely to do that—not unless the devil is willing to strike another deal. I wish to live so long as I can hold a pencil—no longer. During these years I have completed a considerable number of scripts, novels, and the like. But nothing has sold. I looked for excuses—in the early 1970s the studios were cutting back, or my agent wasn’t performing (which he wasn’t), or there was illness. But slowly the horrible truth began to dawn. One morning while I was shaving—I was ninety-one—my appearance in the bathroom mirror caught me by surprise. I realized I was getting old. My mind was young, sometimes razor sharp, but the face had aged. That’s when I finally understood the problem—ageism! No one should endure the frustrations I have endured—to have authored the seminal stories, and created the plot elements of the enduring thriller genre, then not to have sold a script for over twenty-five years— and to have to put up with the idiotic belief that young writers must be geniuses because they are young. In 1937 Hollywood writers were forty, fifty, sixty, and we didn’t have this dilemma of younger writers taking over the industry. I hate the talk of this being a young man’s industry. I hate it! Not because I am an old man, but because I hate the notion you must be young to be hot. In many ways I feel my writing has improved. While many young writers have good ideas, they lack the technical experience of the older writer. Experience is terribly important, a tremendous help in writing. I have recently appealed to the Writers Guild to find ways to end this hor- HitcHcock’s Partner in susPense 204 rible ageism and to facilitate collaboration among its older and younger members. There continues to be a willing audience for my ruminations. Friends pop over, bless their hearts; and since Betty died, a companionable practical nurse, Ruth Gross, looks after me. I go to parties—some very enjoyable, particularly the garden parties of our delightful British consul general, Merrick Baker-Bates and his wife, Chrystal. Merrick is a great addition to what’s left of the famous British colony out here, and I’m glad to say he’s a frequent guest at my home. At one of the consulate parties I met British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She was simply charming. She talked to me for about eight minutes, and she knew all about me, what I’d done in the past and things like that. I knew damned well she’d been told—but what the hell! Shortly after, I met Britain’s Princess Alexandra, first cousin to the queen, and her husband. Sweet, sweet people. Also I give nice dinner parties now and then—Ronald Neame and Roddy MacDowall and Anna Lee Nathan are comparative regulars. I try to pretend I’m fiftyfour —not ninety-four. But most rewarding, in 1990, as I was at work on the autobiography, there suddenly came an unexpected knock at my front door. It seems that 20th Century Fox had decided to remake my old play and Hitchcock’s classic Blackmail. The coproducers came around looking for the film rights, believing I was dead. But I wasn’t dead. Fortunately, the film rights had reverted to me from BIP, so 20th entered into a contract. Nobody thought of inviting this experienced but ancient character with one and a half feet in the grave to write his own screenplay. Not a bit of it. As I’ve said, Hollywood is now a young man’s industry, so a couple of young geniuses were called in, highly paid at that, to write a script. They immediately decided that my Blackmail, with its drama and twists—which many years ago had made better than a minor fortune for me—was old hat. So they threw away the story and wrote their own. It was ghastly, the worst script...

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