The Hitchcock Project-The Waxwork by Casey Robinson [4.27]

by Jack Seabrook

"The Waxwork" is a shadowy, frightening episode that was adapted for Alfred Hitchcock Presents from a well-known short story of the same title by A. M. Burrage.

The story begins as the manager of London's Marriner's Waxworks interviews Raymond Hewson, a journalist who wants to spend a night in the museum's Murderer's Den in order to write a newspaper story about the experience. The manager agrees and promises to pay Hewson five pounds if the story is printed; he also promises an uncomfortable night among the effigies of notorious killers.

Hewson is taken to the "eerie and uncomfortable chamber," where the wax figures of murderers stand on pedestals. The manager points out some of them, focusing on Dr. Bourdette, "'the only one of the bunch that hasn't been hanged.'" Bourdette was the terror of Paris, practicing mesmerism and cutting throats with a razor. He disappeared and was never found. Hewson remarks that he thought that he saw Bourdette's figure move, and the manager suggests that he will "'have more than one optical illusion before the night's out.'"

"The Waxwork" was first published here

The reporter is left alone in the gloomy, poorly lit room with only an armchair to sit in. He studies the wax figures, turning his back on the unsettling figure of Bourdette. Fighting his fear, Hewson turns to look at the statue, reassuring himself that it's only a waxwork. He soon begins to suspect that the figures are moving when he's not looking at them. Hewson considers leaving early but knows that the watchman would reveal his failure to spend the entire night among the wax murderers.

Thinking that he hears someone breathing, he looks around, but all he sees are still figures. He is compelled to turn around and look at the figure of Bourdette and he sits frozen in his chair as he watches Bourdette step carefully down from his pedestal. The figure explains that he's the real doctor, having fled from a policeman into the museum, where he took the place of his own wax figure to avoid detection. The murderer tells the reporter that he collects throats the way others collect matchboxes, and he advances on Hewson's neck, taking out a small razor.

In the morning, Hewson's dead body is found sitting in the chair, his chin tilted up but untouched, and the wax figure of Bourdette is back on its pedestal. Was Dr. Bourdette real or was he a figment of Hewson's imagination? The writer provides no answer.

Barry Nelson as Hewson

"The Waxwork" is a classic ghost story, written in a way that makes it perfect for filming. A.M. Burrage (1889-1956) was a British author whose father also wrote stories for magazines. After his father died, Burrage began to write for the pulps in 1906 and had a long career writing short stories and novels. He also served in WWI. He is best remembered today for his horror fiction and his ghost stories, as well as for a memoir he wrote about his war experiences. The memoir was published as by "Ex-Private X," as was his 1931 collection of short stories titled Someone in the Room, which was the first place that "The Waxwork" was published. Burrage sent the story to Dorothy L. Sayers, writing that "no editor of a periodical dared to publish" it, and she included it in volume two of her collection, The Second Omnibus of Crime.

The story has been reprinted many times in the ensuing years, including in the 1957 volume, Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do On TV. It was adapted for radio several times, including three times on Suspense (listen to two versions here and here) and, when TV anthology shows begin to air and were looking for material, "The Waxwork" was a natural and was adapted for Lights Out on November 13, 1950, and for Suspense, as "The Return of Dr. Bourdette," on September 16, 1952. Neither show seems to have survived.

Everett Sloane as Marriner

Casey Robinson (1903-1979) adapted "The Waxwork" for Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the episode aired in CBS on Sunday, April 12, 1959. Robinson was called "the master of the art--or craft--of adaptation" by Richard Corliss and counted Casablanca as one of the films he co-wrote, even though he was not credited onscreen. Other screenplays included Captain Blood (1935), Dark Victory (1939), and Fritz Lang's While the City Sleeps (1956). He wrote one other episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, "Poison."

The Hitchcock adaptation of "The Waxwork" is directed by Robert Stevens, and Robinson's teleplay follows the basic outline of the short story while adding new scenes, changing important details, and strengthening the character of the museum manager. For no particular reason that I can see, it opens with a title card setting the place and time as "London 1954," though neither of the two main characters has a British accent and the year seems irrelevant. One might think that it was set then because of a comment by the museum manager in the episode about the impending end of capital punishment in England, which was a topic of discussion throughout the decade, but when the show aired in 1959, capital punishment was still legal, and it was not banned until 1965.

Shai K. Ophir as Bourdette

After the title card, which is superimposed over stock footage of a London street, the scene dissolves to a close up of a ticket clerk's hat identifying the location as "Marriner's Waxworks." Hewson buys an admission ticket and a guidebook and is fooled by the wax figure of a woman sitting behind the table where the guidebooks are sold; this is the first demonstration of how lifelike the wax figures appear to be. A guard is distracted by a quartet of visiting nuns and Hewson slips through a door and into the museum's workroom, where artisans direct him to Marriner. Hewson almost knocks over a wax figure of Bourdette and Marriner catches it; the murderer who will play an important role later in the episode is introduced subtly in this early scene.

Unlike the short story, where Hewson is a freelance writer hoping to get an exclusive, in the TV version he introduces himself as a reporter with "'the illustrated weekly, This World.'" Marriner fusses with various wax appendages while Hewson asks to spend the night; Marriner's role is significantly larger in the TV version than in the short story and he is quite serious about his wax creations, going so far as to destroy a wax head by submerging it in a vat of hot oil. Hewson refers to having lost a good deal of money at cards to an Englishman (one can infer that Hewson is not English) and admits that he paid his debt with a bad check and needs money to cover it.

The wax figure of Bourdette

There are more details of the back rooms of the waxworks, where the figures are cleaned three times a year and hair is applied to wax heads one strand at a time; we again see the wax figure of Bourdette and Marriner remarks that he will be the last new addition to the den of murderers because Parliament will soon outlaw capital punishment. According to Marriner, Bourdette was executed this morning; this is a departure from the story, where the killer's fate and whereabouts are unknown. Bourdette's crimes and skill with hypnosis are described and the wax figure in the episode bears a remarkable resemblance to the actor who plays the character later in the show. In a particularly unpleasant sequence, Marriner removes one of the glass eyes from the figure of Bourdette and rhapsodizes about it. He agrees to consider Hewson's request.

Marriner must have decided to allow the reporter to spend the night, because in the next scene it is nighttime and Hewson is admitted to the closed museum and led into the Murderer's Den, a shadowy dungeon where wax figures of killers are posed. Marriner enters and welcomes Hewson, who resists being locked in due to a case of claustrophobia, another detail that is not in the short story. As a viewer, looking at the figures on display, some appear to be wax while others appear to be actors doing their best to stand still. Hewson is left alone and is visibly uncomfortable.

Charles Davis

The second act opens with a long shot of the entire room and Bourdette's figure is nowhere to be seen. Hewson types lines on his typewriter and grows more agitated as a pounding drum on the soundtrack suggests his heartbeat echoing in his ears. He unwisely reads aloud from the guidebook about methods of torture as he walks around the room; a guillotine suddenly crashes down, beheading a wax figure. After Hewson's hand is briefly caught in the mechanism of a rack, his eyesight begins to get cloudy and his anxiety and stress cause him to imagine that the wax figures are moving. He bangs on the door but gets no reply and is starting to melt down, just like the wax head in the earlier scene.

When Hewson goes back down the stairs into the den, we see for the first time that the figure of Bourdette has joined a group of four other murderers. Hewson notices right away and revises his typed words; he tries to resume typing but each time he looks up, Bourdette's figure has moved closer to the reporter. Hewson is typing and not watching as the figure comes to life and approaches him. Bourdette hypnotizes Hewson and explains that he escaped execution, mingled with the crowd, and entered the museum, where he has been able to avoid capture.

The killer shows the reporter his razor, has Hewson lift his chin, and puts razor to throat as the camera pans down and the scene fades out. When it fades back in it's the next morning, and Mariner and the museum guard examine Hewson, who sits dead in his chair, his throat intact. Marriner pulls the sheet of paper out of the typewriter and reads a line about the figure of Bourdette seeming to move toward the reporter. Marriner credits Hewson with an overactive imagination and the guard points out that Bourdette's figure was not there the night before and is just now being brought in. Two men carry in the wax figure and set it in place, right where Bourdette was standing when Hewson appeared to see him. The camera pulls back to show the group of five murderers and the scene fades out.

"The Waxwork" is a wonderful adaptation of a classic ghost story that expands the narrative and changes some key details, making it more of a psychological study in terror than a ghost story. Having Bourdette already be dead makes it unlikely that he really appeared in the Murderers Den and confronted Hewson; instead, adding the detail about the reporter's claustrophobia helps to explain why his imagination ran wild and resulted in his death, presumably from a heart attack. Adding details of the inner workings of the wax museum helps to demonstrate how an unbalanced mind could be fooled into thinking that the figures are real, but the most effective trick is the wax figure of Bourdette, which bears a remarkable resemblance to the actor playing the killer--or is it a wax figure at all? Director Robert Stevens does a great job of confusing the viewer by mixing lifelike wax figures with real actors standing still. In all, "The Waxwork" is one of the more frightening episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Robert Stevens (1920-1989) directed "The Waxwork," one of the 49 episodes of the Hitchcock series that he directed; he won an Emmy for "The Glass Eye."

Starring as Hewson is Barry Nelson (1917-2007), a busy actor on the large and small screens from 1938 to 1990. He appeared on the Hitchcock show three times, including "Anyone for Murder," and was also seen on The Twilight Zone and in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980). Nelson is convincing in "The Waxwork" as a man whose imagination scares him to death.

Everett Sloane (1909-1965) plays Marriner. He began his career on Broadway in 1935 and was busy on radio, working with Orson Welles's Mercury Theater. This led to his film debut in Citizen Kane (1941); he followed it with many roles, including The Lady From Shanghai (1947). He began TV work in 1951 and was on Alfred Hitchcock Presents three times, including "Place of Shadows." He also made a memorable appearance on The Twilight Zone. Sadly, he committed suicide in 1965. Sloane makes the most of his role as Marriner and is convincing as a man obsessed with making lifelike figures from wax.

Bourdette is played by Shai K. Ophir (1928-1987), an Israeli actor who was on screen from 1956 until his death. He is believable as the dapper French barber who kills people with a straight razor.

Finally, Charles Davis (1925-2009) plays the museum guard who locks Hewson in and then discovers his body with Marriner at the end. Born in Dublin, Ireland, Davis had a long career on stage in Ireland and on Broadway and appeared on large and small screens from 1951 to 1987. He was on Night Gallery twice and appeared in seven episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, including the three-part "I Killed the Count."

Read the short story here. Read the GenreSnaps review here. Watch the Alfred Hitchcock Presents version here or buy the DVD here.

Sources:

Burrage, Alfred. "The Waxwork." Alfred Hitchcock's Ghostly Gallery. NY: Random House, 1984, pp. 214-231.

The FICTIONMAGS Index, www.philsp.com/homeville/FMI/0start.htm.

Grams, Martin, and Patrik Wikstrom. The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. OTR Pub., 2001.

IMDb, www.imdb.com.

Simmers, George. “Who Was A.M. Burrage?” Great War Fiction, 30 Mar. 2014, greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/who-was-amburrage/.

"The Waxwork." Alfred Hitchcock Presents, season 4, episode 27, CBS, 12 April 1959.

Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org.

Listen to Al Sjoerdsma discuss "Vicious Circle" here!

Listen to Annie and Kathryn discuss "The Waxwork" here!

In two weeks: "Appointment at Eleven," starring Clint Kimbrough!