The Trouble With Harry - Production

Production

Although one of Hitchcock's few true comedies (though most of his films had some element of tongue-in-cheek or macabre humor), the film was a box office disappointment.

The film also contained what was, at the time, frank dialogue. This is seen when John Forsythe's character unabashedly tells MacLaine's character that he would like to paint a nude portrait of her. The statement by Forsythe's character was quite racy for its time.

Other than NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies network television broadcast in the early 1960s, the film was unavailable for nearly 30 years once Hitchcock bought back the rights to the film following its initial release. After protracted negotiations with the Hitchcock estate, Universal finally reissued it in 1984 along with four others, including Rear Window and Vertigo which in turn led to VHS and eventually DVD versions for the home video market.

Primary location shooting took place in Craftsbury, Vermont. Assuming that the town would be in full foliage, the company showed up for outdoor shots on September 27, 1954. To the filmmakers' shock, there was hardly any foliage left; to achieve a full effect, leaves were glued to the trees. Several scenes in the film had to be shot in a rented high school gym because of persistent rain. In the gym, a 500 lb (226 kg) Technicolor camera fell from a great height and barely missed hitting Hitchcock, and the sound of the rain on the roof of the gym necessitated extensive post-production re-recording.

While the movie was a financial failure in the U.S., it played for a year in England and Rome, and a year and a half in France. Full details on the making of the film are in Steven DeRosa's book Writing with Hitchcock.

Alfred Hitchcock's cameo is a signature occurrence in most of his films. In The Trouble With Harry, he can be seen 21 minutes into the film as he walks past a parked limousine while an old man looks at paintings for sale at the roadside stand.