![]() ![]() I thought it might have been Highsmith on the phone In the book, which is told from David's point of view, Annabelle's husband Gerald is not remotely appealing and Annabelle herself seems a very passive figure, not all that "into" Gerald herself, even though she is committed to the marriage, mostly on account of their new baby, it would seem. ![]() One of the notable things about Highsmith as a crime writer is how she draws readers in to empathize with her troubled protagonists. ![]() In the adaptation, the man, David Kelsey/Robert Neumeister, is completely nuts to start with and is in no way sympathetic.ĭavid, as scripted and played by a young Dean Stockwell, who was coming off his film performance as a neurotic murderer in Compulsion, is just a creepy, scary guy, and nothing more. The novel, as I discussed in my last blog post, is about an obsessed man's mental disintegration and it's filled with pathos. The problem, as I see it, is the adaptation ends up owing a lot more to Robert Bloch and Psycho than it does to Highsmith and her novel. (Highsmith's father-Highsmith was her stepfather-was of German ancestry and she loved throwing German words around.)Īnnabel (Susan Oliver) gets another phone callīut these minor changes aren't the problem. If I'm being too cryptic, watch the episode for yourself and see.Īlso Neumeister is altered to "Newmaster," evidently in order not to confuse people with German. To be sure, there are a lot of little changes in the television version.įor example, altering the character's name from Annabelle to Annabel, presumably to heighten the connection with Edgar Allan Poe's haunting, melancholy poem Annabel Lee, and having David supposedly spending every weekend out-of-town with his father, rather than his mother, this evidently to discourage immediate comparisons with Psycho, Hitchcock's epochal 1961 film about a polite, mother-obsessed young man.īoth the novel Psycho and the Annabel television episode were scripted by Robert Bloch, and Bloch probably did not want to have viewers of the episode immediately "go there"-though ultimately the episode does indeed go there. To recap very briefly, the novel, which I reviewed recently here, is about the growing obsession of a man, David Kelsey (who also leads a double weekend life as Robert Neumeister), for a woman named Annabel, his former girlfriend, who is now married to another man. But, really, the episode leaves a lot to be desired, I think.įrankly as an adaptation of the novel it's something of a travesty. After all, even if Hitch Almighty did not direct the episode, it was still "his" show. ![]() I judge she was just happy with the money and the publicity. The above was Patricia Highsmith's entire comment about " Annabel," the 1962 adaptation of her novel The Sweet Sickness as an hour-long episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (formerly Alfred Hitchcock Presents), the famed anthology series. entry in Patricia Highsmith diary, 1 November 1962 Home in New Hope by 9:30 PM-still missed 1/2 the Hitchcock show.Hitchcock did a rather good job of This Sweet Sickness, according to Pat. ![]()
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