The 39 Steps

Hitchcock is 39 years old.

He spent nearly 14 years directing films in Britain, making a name for himself with pictures like The 39 Steps, Sabotage, The Lady Vanishes.

The New York film critics have just named him the best director of 1938, full stop.

One British critic has called him a national institution.

Time called it one of the neatest melodramas of the year, praising the sharp, increasingly fast sequences that carried the story toward its climax.

After the disappointments at BIP, Hitchcock had his momentum back, and it was international.

In 1935 came The 39 Steps, adapted from a John Buchan novel, but reshaped by Hitchcock and Charles Bennett considerably.

Alma worked on the adaptation too, of course.

[dramatic music] Tonight's Forecast program, ladies and gentlemen, represents the ideal form of collaboration.

Mr. Alfred Hitchcock, brilliant English director of such outstanding motion pictures as The 39 Steps, Rebecca, and Foreign Correspondent, was eager to create a very special type of radio drama, the suspense story.

As narrator and star for his production, he thought at once of the distinguished actor with whom he had been associated in countless British film successes, Herbert Marshall.

Mr. Marshall suggested that they dramatize a certain favorite story of his, and that story happened to be the very one Mr. Hitchcock had had in mind, Mrs. Bella Clawn's classic in Chills, The Lodger.

For his superb characterization of Mr. Sleuth, our thanks to Herbert Marshall.

And our thanks to the outstanding British character actor who tonight portrayed the role of Bunting, Edmund Gwenn.

If you liked tonight's program and want to hear more in the same highly original Hitchcock vein, radio versions of The Lady Vanishes and The 39 Steps, for example, write to CBS and tell us so.

Your interest will help bring Suspense to the air as a weekly feature.

In the 1930s, the thriller isn't about someone choosing to enter the shadows, right? It is about the shadows suddenly engulfing them while they are just standing in broad daylight.

Which brings us to our first deep dive on the list, The 39 Steps.

A classic.

Yes, the 1935 film directed by the Master of Suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock.

It's based on the novel The 39 Steps by John Buchan.

Such a foundational piece of work.

It really is.

And Chesterton Radio has this incredible recording we just have to recommend.

It's the December 13, 1937 Lux Radio Theater production of The 39 Steps.

Oh, this is a classic.

It is so good.

So maybe the antidote to that is to actively enter a story today.

I couldn't agree more.

Well, to help you do just that, we highly invite all of our listeners to stick around or check our archives to hear Robert Montgomery and Ida Lupino in that incredible Lux Radio Theater production of The 39 Steps, right here on Chesterton Radio.

It is absolutely worth your time.

Okay.

Again, just after the Second World War, maybe just before the Second World War, there are elements of things like the 39 Steps that start to give you a more mature and spy.

The Third Man.

Now, some people might argue that's not a spy movie.

right Yeah, yeah.

You've mentioned a few of the movies that we cover.

I mean, we've looked at The 39 Steps, Foreign Correspondents, Saboteur, Notorious.

So you cover, obviously, this is Hitchcock, and you cover from 1898 to 2026, so Hitchcock is in there.

...

if we read, uh, The Thirty-Nine Steps, which I read again recently, there, there's no nuance or complexity about who are the bad guys and who are the good guys.

Exactly.

It's the British Empire is, [laughs] is the good guys.

Yes.

It's actually The Thirty-Nine...

It's as he said at the time, I think he said to Ernest Lehman, "Make me a film which combines elements of The Thirty-Nine Steps." In other words, Hitchcock's greatest hits-

Yes

fakes.

Yeah, the other two, one's called The 39 Steps.

You know, is it time to scrap the Section 115 streaming mechanical formula in favor of a fixed stream penny rate with COLA? And the last one, beware of the opt-in, the hidden right of publicity waivers.

By the way, congratulations to Billy Joel collaborator Freddie Wexler on launching his new indie label Wexler Records with an inaugural roster composed entirely of artists under the age of 20.