This 1954 classic entertains audiences even as it convicts them. Jimmy Stewart plays a world-traveling photographer confined by a broken leg to his own apartment. To entertain himself he watches neighbors in a building across the way, sometimes using binoculars. He imagines stories about them. What some may call people watching, others might call voyeurism. Might we under the same circumstances do much the same thing?
Jefferies, the Stewart character, comes to believes a man across from him has murdered his nagging wife. His girlfriend who wants to marry him, played by Grace Kelly; the woman who comes by to give him a daily massage, played by Thelma Ritter; and a police friend, played by Wendell Corey, all think he is letting his imagination get the better of him. But then they become believers, too.
O'Callaghan tells us in detail how this great movie was made, how the elaborate set was built and why it worked so well and how Hitchcock tricked censors into letting him get away with more than they may have imagined.
Yet only about half the book is actually about the making of the film. The rest tells us much about the careers of Stewart and Kelly, especially Kelly, whom O'Callaghan follows from Hollywood to Monaco. She even has a lot to say about Tom Hanks, the modern actor most like Stewart in his common-man appeal. Kelly, however, she regards as one of a kind.
Along the way, she tells readers some fascinating trivia. Who was the highest paid actor in Rear Window? Would you believe Thelma Ritter? And did you know that Ross Bagdasarian, who plays the composer in one of the windows, later became better known as David Seville, the man behind the Chipmunks?
If you enjoy Rear Window — and who doesn't ? — you will have fun with O'Callaghan's lively book.
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