The image of Joan Fontaine’s “I” eating a piece of chicken can explained by an early screenplay draft of Rebecca, one that I reviewed at the Ransom Center. The script is originally dated July 29, 1939, and is by Joan Harrison and Michael Hogan, with continuity by Alma Reville, Hitchcock’s wife. The version I reviewed also had pages and pages of handwritten annotations and edits, which were made through August 22, 1939. On the script’s cover page, written in pencil, are the words, “Robert Sherwood Chgs (sic).” Who is Robert Sherwood?

In his biography of Hitchcock, The Dark Side of Genius, Donald Spoto writes that Sherwood, who shares co-screenwriting credits with Harrison (Hogan and Phillip McDonald share credit for adaptation), was the man that Selznick brought in to clean up the “thorny bit of narrative” where Maxim admits to killing his wife — “accidentally” in the novel, on purpose in the film (Spoto, 1983). Spoto notes that Sherwood played a relatively minor role in the script, only making a handful of changes and writing the famous scene in which Maxim confesses. While this may be true, there is one key change that Sherwood made that helps us understand Hitchcock’s auteurship and Rebecca.