By Millicent Borges Accardi
When we last interviewed* Portuguese-American writer Stephen Rebello, the movie Hitchcock, adapted for film from Rebello’s wonderful book, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of ‘Psycho’, had recently debuted. The 2012 biographical drama, starring Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren and Scarlet Johansen, was receiving rave reviews as well as nominations for best original score and best actor.
Now, Rebello has a new book about another extraordinary Hitchcock film, detailing the backstory, the secrets and the behind-the-scene gossip stories of a dazzling subversive masterpiece entitled Criss-Cross: The Making of Hitchcock’s Dazzling, Subversive Masterpiece Strangers on a Train.
Born in Fall River and raised in Somerset, MA, Rebello, a third generation Portuguese-American, always has had the movie business in his blood. His father, Arthur, was among those who created construction materials for the mechanical whale in director John Huston’s film version of Moby Dick starring Gregory Peck. So it probably came as no shock when Rebello followed his own creative path to an illustrious career, writing for a variety of magazines and newspapers, including Esquire, GQ, and Playboy, working for almost twenty years as a Playboy magazine contributing writer, responsible for dozens of the magazine’s interviews and features, including film criticism.
His own masterful interviews are with an A List of Hollywood stars: directors, James Cameron and Alfred Hitchcock, Matt Damon, Tom Cruise, Robert Downey, Jr., Sigourney Weaver, Nicole Kidman, Scarlett Johansson, Sandra Bullock, Joaquin Phoenix, Michelle Pfeiffer, Heath Ledger, Kate Winslet, Drew Barrymore, Keanu Reeves, Matthew McConaughey, and Denzel Washington, to name a few.
Rebello’s books include Reel Art – Great Posters from the Golden Age of the Silver Screen (with Richard C. Allen), Bad Movies We Love, co-written with Edward Margulies, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, and Dolls! Dolls! Dolls! (the history of Jacqueline Susann’s novel and Hollywood’s movie adaptation), A City Full of Hawks: On the Waterfront Seventy Years Later – Still the Great American Contender, and the latest, Criss-Cross: The Making of Hitchcock’s Dazzling, Subversive Masterpiece Strangers on a Train (2025).
In this interview, for the Portuguese American Journal, Stephen Rebello kindly agreed to answer questions about his new book, Criss-Cross: The Making of Hitchcock’s Dazzling, Subversive Masterpiece Strangers on a Train (2025). He reveals secrets and anecdotes about what he learned from working with filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock. Rebello also shares stories about his Portuguese heritage, with roots in São Miguel, Azores, and how he still enjoys cooking his favorite family dishes.
Stephen Rebello: Millicent, I just want to say thank you so much for the opportunity to talk with you about my new book and, as always, my Portuguese heritage.
Q: I am honored. It is our pleasure to feature you here! I have to ask, first, what inspired you to write about the making of Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train?
A. Several things. To your question, my inspiration was very similar to the one that excited me about writing Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho decades ago: I thought Psycho was an unsung masterpiece, as is Strangers on a Train. Yet, in 1990, most of the major New York publishers who turned down that Psycho book proposal said, “Psycho is a lesser movie. Come back when you want to write about a great Hitchcock thriller.”
I persisted even when I learned that many of the people who made Psycho did not consider it an outstanding or “important” movie. How times change. Thirty-five years later, that “lesser Hitchcock movie” is widely considered one of the greatest, most influential films ever made.
As for my ‘little book that could,’ it is still in print since 1990, is now considered a classic, and has been published and republished all around the world, including – I am so gratified to say — in Portuguese. It was optioned by Hollywood multiple times by different studios and eventually became the basis for a feature film starring Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren and Scarlett Johansson.
Q: And now, why write about another under-praised masterwork that I love, Strangers on a Train?
A. I’m a storyteller. I knew there had to be a good story behind the making of Psycho – it’s filled with larger-than-life egos, titanic characters, feuds, intrigue, secrets, risk and big suspense. I felt that there was an even more worthwhile and historical backdrop behind the making of Strangers on a Train. As I was ending my second week of deep research and re-reading a few of my interview transcripts, I was encouraged that I was – pardon the pun – on the right track.
Q. Why was the movie subversive?
A. On the occasion of the 1950 publication of the Strangers on a Train, the first published novel by the then twenty-nine-year-old Patricia Highsmith, who happened to be lesbian, many critics expressed outrage that an author – especially a female author – had touched on such dark, troubling aspects human nature, marriage, sexuality, the shadow self, violence, and the central idea of two complete strangers who meet apparently by chance and discuss ‘swapping murders’ of troublesome people in each other’s lives.
She’d also written it with scalpel-like, sardonic wit – no moralizing or handwringing. Shocking stuff for its day.
As I dramatize in my book, Criss-Cross, Hitchcock’s 1951 movie version, like Highsmith’s novel, was created in the shadow of the politically motivated hysteria of the McCarthy congressional hearings, an era of witch-hunts that saw the demonizing and blacklisting of suspected communists and so-called “fellow travelers” who, of course, included political progressives, Jews, immigrants, and racial minorities. Some of them had done nothing more than sign petitions.
At the same time, there was also ‘The Lavender Scare’ that led to the government’s mass firings of men and women, even suspected of being gay. The fearmongering, paranoia, false accusations, innuendo, and finger-pointing of that time destroyed lives and careers.
With all this as a backdrop, Hitchcock hired at least one Strangers on a Train screenwriter whom he knew was probably bisexual, as also was one of Hitchcock’s two main stars of the film, who was told, by his heterosexual co-star before filming began, that he planned on playing his own character as a gay man. From the time of the film’s opening, critics and others detected homosexual and other “unacceptable” undercurrents in it.
State by state, the film underwent considerable cutting of dialogue and entire scenes by local censors. It’s fascinating and, I think, important to talk about Strangers on a Train in the context of the fear-based climate in which it was made. All that said, the movie is an entertainment, a terrific suspense thriller, and a wild ride. It has no message, no agenda, but its makers slyly and subtly slipped things past the censors. Some audiences got it. Others didn’t. Either way, Strangers on a Train was a great night at the movies.
Q. It seems more than other directors, there is a mystique behind Alfred Hitchcock’s films and his life. What do you think has attracted such fan interest for all these years?
A. To start with, Hitchcock was one of world cinema’s all-time greatest entertainers, stylists, innovators, and technicians. He was a moviemaker who was often decades ahead of his time; today’s directors are still learning from him, let alone imitating him.
He also possessed a unique, enigmatic public persona and was a canny self-publicist and myth-builder. As an artist, instead of letting his fears, obsessions and anxieties cripple him, he made them accessible to the world through his films. His movies are not only extraordinarily beautiful to look at – filled with gorgeous people, settings, and mysterious images – but they also access emotions that may be uncomfortable and contradictory, but are universal. Some pretend to know what made him tick. But, like the films he made, he was too mysterious, opaque and elusive to let himself be easily pigeon-holed or “understood.” For better or worse, he left that to biographers, some of whom had major agendas.
Q. Do you agree with Hitchcock that what makes a great movie is “The script, the script, the script”?
A. 100%. He spent months, sometimes years, developing material with the playwrights and screenwriters he chose. When that long process resulted in a great script like, say, Notorious, Shadow of a Doubt, Rear Window or North by Northwest, his work soared. Like many other classic Hollywood directors, Hitchcock got very few outstanding scripts to work with after the mid-1960s. Despite his tremendous resources and talent, so-so screenplays were a difficult obstacle to overcome.
That’s why in Criss-Cross, I put readers ringside with Hitchcock in his battle to drag a great script out of volatile, irascible novelist Raymond Chandler, best known for his brilliant thrillers The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, and more. Things went south between Hitchcock and Chandler and because Hitchcock used next to nothing of the novelist’s work in the film, he thought Chandler should receive no screenplay credit for Strangers on a Train. But the studio boss, Jack Warner, insisted on using Chandler’s name for publicity purposes. Criss-Cross shows how the work of Hitchcock and three female writers rescued Strangers on a Train from the studio, shutting down the production entirely.
Q. What was one particular challenge facing actors on the set of Strangers on a Train?
A: Playing a wealthy mama’s boy and dangerous psychotic, Robert Walker gives one of the all-time greatest villainous performances in any Hitchcock movie. But he was in torment throughout the filming. Despite his screen image as the boy next door and young American soldier, Walker suffered crippling psychological pain, alcohol addiction, self-destructive impulses, and outbreaks of violence, triggered by losing his wife and emotional lifeline, actress Jennifer Jones, to producer David O. Selznick. Walker appreciated Hitchcock’s casting him in an offbeat role and had high hopes that his rave reviews would translate into wider career opportunities. Tragically, he died (due allegedly to medical malpractice) shortly after Strangers of a Train hit theaters. He was only 32.
Q. Why do you think personally that Strangers on a Train has endured? People seem to want to keep making this timeless story over and over again (where strangers commit each other’s crime)…
A. Seventy-five years ago, Hitchcock, who voraciously read thrillers, in search of potential movie material, thought the central premise of Patricia Highsmith’s novel – two complete strangers agreeing to commit each other’s ‘perfect murder’ and never see each other again – was one of the most ingenious he had ever encountered. He wasn’t wrong. It’s gold. In moments of weakness or desperation, who hasn’t fantasized about getting away with the perfect crime? Highsmith’s story has been remade for movies and television in the U.S. and Europe, it’s been satirized as Throw Mama from the Train, it inspired a play on the London stage, but no one since Hitchcock has been able to do it half as well. But that’s one of the reasons why, when it comes to movie thrillers, there was Hitchcock – and then there’s the rest.
Q. After a string of flops, Alfred Hitchcock gambled on adapting Patricia Highsmith’s debut novel into a movie. What made him stake his career and reputation on this story?
A. That central premise and his belief that such great writers as Thornton Wilder, Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett, or “the Shakespeare of screenwriters,” Ben Hecht, would be attracted to working with him on the movie version, and that charismatic talent of the caliber of William Holden, Montgomery Clift, and Grace Kelly would want to star in it. None of that happened for Hitchcock, of course, and he was perplexed that no one else saw the potential of the material the way he did. Although the movie was successful, he always believed that it fell short of its potential because of how few people understood his vision for the film.
Q. What challenges did Hitchcock face in dealing with the 1930s-50s era Hays Code? What was a particular code breaker that the film got away with?
A. The stalwart guardians of morality who administered the Hays Code came down hard on Hitchcock for such things as what they saw as a casual attitude toward discussions of murder, the depiction of the hero’s man-crazy estranged wife and an irreverent attitude toward the hypocrisy of Washington politicians. But as for codebreaking, watch the way Robert Walker looks at the handsome, weak-willed tennis player by Farley Granger. Note the way Walker sashays across a room in his parental home while wearing that flamboyant silk dressing gown. Study the scene where Marion Lorne, playing Bruno’s loony, deluded mother, gives her son a manicure (because he likes his hands and nails “just so”) and he kisses her hands. Listen to the way Walker speaks whisperingly and conspiratorially to Guy as he keeps invading his private life.
Most of that innuendo sailed right over the heads of the Hollywood censors. They were more preoccupied with how Washington politicians (and foreign governments) might interpret dialogue uttered by Patricia Hitchcock (Hitchcock’s actress daughter playing the heroine’s younger sister), referring to her politician father as not minding a little scandal – “after all, he’s a senator.”
Q. How do you think Strangers on a Train set the stage for Hitchcock’s future movie classics like Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho?
A. Strangers on a Train restored Hitchcock’s self-confidence. It paired him for the first time with Robert Burks, the great cinematographer who helped create the ‘look’ of Hitchcock movies in each of those successive films. It strengthened his intention to cast major movie stars whenever he could, but it also taught him that, even without major box-office stars, if he had an intriguing subject and theme, he could still have box-office success as he did with Strangers on a Train and, even more, Psycho. Strangers on a Train also reaffirmed his theory that the stronger the villain, the stronger the movie.
Q. What elements do you think make for a great suspense movie?
1. One or more compelling, relatable characters who want something desperately – whether it’s a material goal, an emotional one or both; these characters must do whatever it takes to achieve their desire.
2. Versus. another equally or even more compelling character or force intent on doing whatever it takes to try and stop that other character from getting what they want.
3. Six or eight pulse-pounding suspense sequences of rising intensity that exploit universal fears, anxieties, and insecurities.
Strangers on a Train has all these elements.
Q. On IMDB trivia, I read that some of the posters showed Hitchcock inserting the letter “L” into the word “Strangers” in the title to make “Stranglers.” Was Hitchcock playful that way?
A. Those posters were used in England, where Hitchcock’s droll, understated sense of humor was better understood and appreciated than in the U.S. He was extremely playful, as his famous introductions and closing remarks he filmed for his long-running TV show “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” One of the first things Hitchcock liked to do when considering hiring someone – say, an actor or screenwriter – was to find out whether that person possessed a sense of humor.
He loved puns and liked to direct his actors using his own version of Cockney rhyming slang from the East End of London, where he was raised. (i.e., saying to a young actress “dog’s feet” instead of “After your first line, pause” [paws]. Or “genuine chopper” [real axe] instead of [relax.] He enjoyed practical jokes; he once gave a formal dinner party where all the food was dyed blue just to see how his fancy guests would react. If an actor was nervous and tense before a difficult scene, he’d tell a naughty story to help loosen them up. Secure, intelligent, sophisticated collaborators appreciated his humor. Uptight, humor-challenged, self-important ones did not.
Q. There is a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train currently in development (David Fincher as director and starring Ben Affleck, tentatively titled Strangers on a Plane). With Affleck playing a movie star during Oscar season. Some say Throw Mama from the Train is a campy remake. How do you feel about remakes?
A. With no news on that project for a decade now, it seems decreasingly likely to happen. It’s a risky game – look at the remakes of Rebecca, The Lady Vanishes, Dial M for Murder, Psycho and more. That said, if David Fincher – who has made several Hitchcockian movies, including Se7en and Gone Girl –reimagines a Hitchcock movie. I’ll happily be among the first in line to see it.
Q. Is there any truth to the rumor that Hitchcock made two versions of Strangers on a Train?
A. Not exactly. It’s just that Warner Bros. previewed a slightly longer version to the public before the movie’s release in theaters. Running just over two minutes longer than the version released to theaters, that “preview version” contains additional dialogue and alternate takes that preview versions present the character played by Robert Walker as slightly more flamboyant, aggressive, and crazier in his scenes with Farley Granger. The preview version is also paced slightly differently and ends differently than the final version released to theaters. The Blu-ray from Warner Home Video offers the option of viewing a cut of the film, so people can judge for themselves.
Q. How do you think the Hays Code impacted cinema?
A. I am neither an advocate of censorship nor production codes. Adult viewers should be able to decide for themselves what content they want to see. Having said that, though, I also think that some of the restrictions of the Hays Code forced filmmakers to be more creative and resourceful in implying rather than showing, in suggesting rather than spelling out. At his best, Hitchcock was a very restrained and discreet filmmaker who left many things unseen and unspoken, the better to engage the audience’s imagination and make them fill in the blanks themselves.
Do you know how many times a film fan has insisted to me that when they saw blood in Psycho – a film in black and white – the blood was in full color? Or that they winced every time the knife stabbed Janet Leigh’s flesh in Psycho? None of that happens, of course. It’s Hitchcock letting the viewer exercise – or exorcise? – his own imagination. For instance, in Notorious, watching and following in closeup for over 2 minutes, as a fully dressed Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant move together across a room while constantly kissing, making small talk, and nuzzling, is far more intimate and romantic than any graphic bedroom scene could possibly be.
Q. What is your favorite Hitchcock movie and why?
A. Notorious, his romantic espionage thriller from 1946, scripted by Ben Hecht and starring Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant at the height of their world class charisma and physical beauty. It was one of Hitchcock’s favorite films and is an elegant blend of nail-biting suspense and spy games wrapped around a complex emotional relationship. No explosions, chases, or crashes. It’s extraordinary, and no wonder so many directors have tried to recapture its qualities.
Q. What part of writing this book brought you the most pleasure? Was it research? Edits? Personal interviews?
A. This project was a longtime dream, as was Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho. There was nothing about the creative process that I didn’t enjoy. When I interviewed longtime Hitchcock associates about Psycho, I also asked lots of questions about Strangers on a Train and his other films. Because Psycho became such a success, I met many other Hitchcock actors and other collaborators over the years, and I always kept notes or recordings. So, I especially loved the personal interview process. In my deep research of private university archives, I also enjoyed unearthing interviews and quotes given at the time the film was in production. Again, for me, it is always about characters and storytelling.
Q. What was the most astonishing fact you discovered about the behind the scenes making of the film?
A. Because I’ve been on film sets so often, very little of what goes on behind the scenes astonishes me anymore. But something that apparently astonished many readers of Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho is that Anthony Perkins, who played motel keeper and mother’s boy Norman Bates in the film, was rehearsing for a Broadway play in New York the whole time that, back in Los Angeles, Alfred Hitchcock, Janet Leigh and a stand-in for Perkins spent a week filming of the shower murder scene. Similarly, readers of Criss-Cross may be astonished to learn that Alfred Hitchcock, under pressure and behind schedule, handpicked someone else to direct and shoot a major portion of one of the greatest and most remembered sequences in Strangers on a Train.
Q. What was your favorite Hitchcock advice?
A. Hitchcock was a born teacher who gave me everything from men’s fashion advice to writing advice. I love how he advised his writers to find the pathos in the comic scenes and find the comedy in the dramatic, sad scenes. He urged writers to trust in the power of the image – Show, don’t tell! – for instance, when writing a scene in a script, don’t ask filmmakers to spend money or to waste precious minutes of screen time by, let’s say, showing throngs of people on a dock blowing kisses to honeymooners and other travelers as an ocean liner pushes out of a dock. Show instead the corner of a boat’s honeymoon stateroom covered in congratulatory sprays of flowers and the water levels tilting in vases of flowers as the boat hits choppy waters. Hitchcock walked it like he talked it.
After all, he begins Strangers on a Train with the camera at a low level following two contrasting pairs of men’s shoes and suit pants – conservative vs. flashy – as the hero and villain climb from their taxis at the train station, rush through the terminal, make their way toward the loading platform, find seats opposite each other in a train car and one’s shoe accidentally brushes the other man’s shoe. We’re off to the races!
Q. For our PAJ readers, is there any Portuguese sensibility that you brought to writing this book?
A. I hope that I’ve brought my sense of joy, curiosity, kindness, humor, and a sensitivity to the struggles of others. To me, these are some of the best qualities I saw in my family growing up and in Portuguese people in general.
Q. What’s your favorite Portuguese dish?
A. It’s a tie between Sopa de Pedra, which I made today. Literally. And Arroz de Marisco. Of course, my avó made the very best of both. You know, Millicent, I’m now in the final stage of gathering documentation to apply for Portuguese citizenship by descent through my grandparents, three of whom were born in the Azores on São Miguel. Anytime I’ve been able to locate another important document from a parish – or I’m just missing my Portuguese family, many of whom are gone now – I celebrate their memory by making another Portuguese meal. Let’s just say I’ve been getting lots of practice lately.
Q. Do you have upcoming readings and events you would like to promote here?
A. Look for “Vroman’s on Screen: Stephen Rebello in conversation with Alonso Duralde”, discusses & signs Criss-Cross: The Making of Hitchcock’s Dazzling, Subversive Masterpiece Strangers on a Train. September 27 @ 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm at Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd. Pasadena, CA.
It’s an in-person, free public event. You may find more details here.
*Related Post
Stephen Rebello: In Hollywood with Alfred Hitchcock – Interview
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Millicent Borges Accardi, a Portuguese-American writer, is the author of four poetry books, including Through Grainy Landscape, (inspired by Portuguese writings) and the recent, Quarantine Highway. Her awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Fulbright, CantoMundo, California Arts Council, Foundation for Contemporary Arts (Covid grant), and Fundação Luso-Americana (Portugal). She serves as a mentor in the AWP Writer 2 Writer and Adroit writing programs. She also curates the popular Kale Soup for the Soul reading series.
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Book Details
Title: Criss-Cross: The Making of Hitchcock’s Dazzling, Subversive Masterpiece Strangers on a Train
Author: Stephen Rebello
Publisher: Running Press Adult
Language: English
Publication Date: September 16, 2025
Hardcover: 320 pp
Available @ Amazon. com
