Elstree Colonial
Any guide or explorer will tell you that. When they realize they're lost, or they've taken the wrong road, they won't take a short cut through the forest, nor do they rely on their instincts to set them back in the right direction. What they do is to carefully go back over the whole road until they've found their starting point, or the point at which they took the wrong turn.
-Alfred Hitchcock on the film he made
at MGM, Elstree in the summer of 1948.
One evening in 1941, the Hichcocks invited the Gables to Saint Cloud... Gable said he owned a shrunken head [which Carole Lombard had buried in a tiny coffin] in what was now Hitchcock's garden!... Hitchcock's eyes widened at the news... and they planned a midnight exhumation party... [But] the only graveyard activity that winter was Carole's burial. At once Hitchcock decided to look for a new home.
-Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius,
Under the Capricorn she speaks her confession in one take.
I shot my brother dead—he looked surprised
as he crumpled up. Image by image
the reel is unstoried: from Galway to Gretna Green,
jewels or a lady's name and the blast
of a horse pistol. To my groom in chains
half a world away. I came as he said dear Diamond
do this, there's more to go down.
Touching her throat, never so much the star,
in aching colour.
The flaw's in the man
whose accent doesn't hold. He's truer
than you'd think and it's bad manners
to ask questions. The rope-trick in Sidney
needs grit. Sam Flusky, emancipist.
The eye rooted pushes all aside,
walls, doors, chairs. Cranes along
a year's supply of carpet, past faces that turn
at dinner—the only cut to her bare feet
halting the show. A ghost from upstairs
she binds and is bound, "notorious"
They can't touch you now. It's a big country
but not big enough. I have no mirrors.
I put them away years ago.
Bottles fall out of the cupboard
when the housekeeper calls the tune:
in Minyago Ugilla a bunch of keys
jangles to destroy her smile.
Such trouble with a woman's frills.
Driving through the night to music.
They don't have the same rules as us.
She had half her clothes off as if
she didn't notice. Suspicion takes
what can't be restored
like the ruby collar behind his back.
Now, Lady Henrietta, you mustn't give way.
The mansion glows, weeping indigo.
Every day she drinks the stuff she's given and
sees a shrunken head. There on the bed
it's always grinning—make it go away.
Teeth protruding, the thrill of the outback
a hundred minutes in, service smirks
beneath the linen, victim to victim.
You'd work to the death for me.
A twist to the box in a Hollywood garden.
Flashbulbs for the woman who'll desert
to Italy and another maker.
(From Days of 49)
Page(s) 68-70
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The