Downhill / When Boys Leave Home (1927) | Presenting Hitchcock Podcast

Gooooood evening. In this months episode of Presenting Hitchcock, Cory and Aaron should definitely speak up about “Downhill” aka “When Boys Leave Home.”

Picture Title: Downhill aka When Boys Leave Home (1927)

Written by: Ivor Novello & Constance Collier (billed together as David L’Estrange, and based on their stage play “Down Hill”)

Scenario by: Eliot Standard

Starring: Ivor Novello, Ben Webster, Norman McKinnel, Robin Irvine, Jerrold Robertshaw, Sybil Rhoda, Annette Benson, Lillian Braithwaite, Isabel Jeans, Ian Hunter

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

The Picture (available on YouTube):

Our Favourite Trivia:

Second of two films Ivor Novello made with director Alfred Hitchcock. The first one being “The Lodger (1927)” where he plays the title character. Novello was openly gay and was very successful despite homosexuality being a crime in Britain at the time. Also, he is noted for composing the song “Keep the Home Fires Burning”, which became a hit during WWI. 

Included in the Blu-Ray edition of “The Lodger (1927)” from Criterion.

The stage performance had a short run in the West End and longer in the provinces. In the play Novello thrilled his female fans by washing his bare legs after the rugby match. An appreciative James Agate, drama critic for the London Sunday Times, wrote “The scent of good honest soap crosses the footlights”. Hitchcock included a similar scene of Novello for the film in which he is shown naked from the waist up.

The £30,000 Roddy inherited would have equated to about $143,000 at the time (in 1927) and that amount equals over $2,126,000 in 2020.

The fifty French francs the middle-aged woman pays to dance with Roddy equaled about $2 at the time, which is about the same as $30 in 2020.

The Random Draw for Next Picture:

Next up, we’ll be discussing “Rear Window”

Feedback:

Follow the show on Facebook or Twitter @PresentingHitchcock

Subscribe to Presenting Hitchcock