Shadow of a Doubt

Charlotte "Charlie" Newton is a bored teenage girl living in the idyllic town of Santa Rosa, California. She receives wonderful news: Her mother's younger brother (her eponym), Charles Oakley, is arriving for a visit. Her uncle arrives, and at first, everyone is delighted with his visit, especially young Charlie. Uncle Charlie gives his niece an emerald ring that has someone else's initials engraved inside.

Two men appear at the Newton home, trying to take Uncle Charlie's picture. Young Charlie guesses they are undercover police detectives. One of them explains her uncle is one of two suspects who may be the "Merry Widow Murderer". Charlie refuses to believe it at first but then observes Uncle Charlie acting strangely. The initials engraved inside the ring he gave her match those of one of the murdered women, and during a family dinner, he reveals his hatred of rich widows.

One night Uncle Charlie lets his guard down and describes elderly widows as "fat, wheezing animals"; horrified, Charlie runs out. Uncle Charlie follows and takes her into a seedy bar. He admits he is one of the two suspects. He begs her for help; she reluctantly agrees not to say anything, as long as he leaves soon to avoid a horrible confrontation that would destroy her mother, who idolizes her younger brother.

Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) confronts his niece (Teresa Wright) in a seedy bar about what she knows.

News breaks that an alternative suspect was chased by police and killed by an airplane propeller; it is assumed that he was the murderer. Uncle Charlie is delighted to be exonerated, but young Charlie knows all his secrets. Soon, she falls down dangerously steep stairs, which she later notices were cut through. Uncle Charlie says he wants to settle down, and young Charlie says she will kill him if he stays. Later that night, Uncle Charlie lures young Charlie into the garage, jamming the door and filling the garage with exhaust fumes. A friend comes by and hears Charlie banging on the garage door and gets her out in time.

Uncle Charlie announces he is leaving for San Francisco, along with a rich widow, Mrs. Potter. At the train station, young Charlie boards the train claiming to want to see Uncle Charlie's compartment. Uncle Charlie hopes to kill her by shoving her out after it picks up speed. However, in the ensuing struggle, he falls in front of an oncoming train. At his funeral, Uncle Charlie is honored by the townspeople. The detective returns, and Charlie confesses that she withheld crucial information. They resolve to keep Uncle Charlie's crimes a secret.

Promotional portrait of Teresa Wright for Shadow of a Doubt, the film for which she received her first top billing.

• Teresa Wright as Charlotte "Charlie" Newton, a precocious teenager[6] who initially idolizes her loving uncle.
• Joseph Cotten as Charles "Uncle Charlie" Oakley
• Macdonald Carey as Detective Jack Graham
• Henry Travers as Joseph Newton, Young Charlie's father, who loves to read crime stories.
• Patricia Collinge as Emma Newton, Young Charlie's mother and Uncle Charlie's sister.
• Wallace Ford as Detective Fred Saunders
• Hume Cronyn as Herbie Hawkins, a neighbor and crime fiction buff. He discusses ideas for the perfect murder with Charlie's father.
• Edna May Wonacott as Ann Newton
• Charles Bates as Roger Newton
• Irving Bacon as Station Master
• Clarence Muse as Pullman Porter
• Janet Shaw as Louise Finch
• Estelle Jewell as Catherine

Shadow of a Doubt is cited as Hitchcock’s first American film. During location scouting, Hitchcock went to Santa Rosa personally. Those who were close to the director say that he was a connoisseur of good food and wine, so he had past experiences at lush locations such as Napa Valley. At the time, Santa Rosa was described as the, “kind of town that didn’t say where it was. It was an old fashioned town. It was American. It could have been in the midwest. It could’ve even been in the east” (Unknown[8]). It was this quietness and simplicity that drove Hitchcock and the crew to select Santa Rosa for the movie. Furthermore, Santa Rosa could be seen as any American town no matter its location. This information is crucial to Hitchcock's intention of highlighting the American aesthetic.

In the start of the film, it opens with Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) resting in his New York City apartment. Hitchcock wanted to establish a dreary, depressing atmosphere for when the audience first meets the character of Uncle Charlie. However, when the film transitions to Santa Rosa, the film spares no expense of highlighting the happy and quaint little community it is. Once that mood is established the audience is introduced to Charlie (Teresa Wright). All scenes in New York were filmed on location in order to avoid further costs of set construction.

Santa Rosa railroad depot in 2010

1905 postcard of the Santa Rosa library

The project began when the head of David Selznick's story department, Margaret McDonell, told Hitchcock that her husband Gordon had an interesting idea for a novel that she thought would make a good movie. His idea, called "Uncle Charlie", was based on the true story of Earle Nelson, a serial killer of the late 1920s known as "the Gorilla Man". The movie makes note of Nelson’s murders when it references that Uncle Charlie’s sister claims that he had suffered a bad bicycle crash as a child. Nelson had suffered a near-fatal crash when he was younger, leading him to the mental illness that pushed him to complete his brutal murders.

During the film’s production, the United States was in the midst of the Second World War. Due to the war effort, the War Productions Board had placed a price ceiling (a legally determined maximum price that sellers may charge) on film set productions. In order to cut back production costs, the film’s director, Alfred Hitchcock, decided it would be best to film Shadow of a Doubt in a real town rather than spend a lot of money on recreating one.

All together, the film spent less than $3,000 on constructing sets. The most expensive being a recreation of the front of the 904 McDonald Avenue, which cost $1,200[10]. Other sets that had to be recreated, whether for reshoots or other purposes, were the back exterior of the house ($217)[10], inside interiors of both floors in the house ($430)[10], garage ($101)[10], interior of the library ($38.50)[10], and cafe and Bar ($211)[10]. The additional cost of materials such as paint, drapes, and wallpapers was $781.50[10]

Other sets used, including the interior of the train and the interior of the restaurant, were old sets that were recycled for Shadow of a Doubt.

Initially, Hitchcock had trouble getting permission to film on location in Santa Rosa, due to an incident involving an unknown film producer who was embezzling money from the city. The city was convinced by the local secretary of the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce, Charles Dunwoody, who told the citizens that Hitchcock and his production had no ill intentions to their community. After the wrapping of Shadow of a Doubt, the city of Santa Rosa received $100,000 for their cooperation. Furthermore, Edna May Wonacott, a resident of Santa Rosa, was cast as Ann Newton in Hitchcock’s production[11].

Filming began on August 3rd, 1942, in Santa Rosa California and wrapped less than a month later on August 26, 1942. Production fully wrapped around September 16th, 1942, after additional weeks filming interior scenes at Universal Studios.

Shadow of a Doubt was both filmed and set in Santa Rosa, California, which was portrayed as a paragon of a supposedly peaceful, small, pre-War American city. Since Thornton Wilder wrote the original script, the story is set in a small American town, a popular setting of Wilder's, but with an added Hitchcock touch to it. In Patrick McGilligan's biography of Hitchcock, he said the film was perhaps the most American film that Hitchcock had made up to that time.

Scouts were sent out to Santa Rosa to look at homes. The house they decided on looked worn down, achieving Hitchcock’s hope of a home that could represent any American home. However, when they arrived at the home to begin filming, they found that the owners had renovated the home and cleaned up the lawn. The effects team had to artificially age the home for the film, and it was restored to its newly renovated status after filming ceased.

When the film was made in 1943, Santa Rosa, California, was a small town with less than 20,000 residents (12,605 in 1940 and 17,902 in 1950); since then it has grown to a fairly large city with 178,127 residents in 2020.

The opening scenes take place in the East Ward (aka the "Ironbound"/"Down Neck" section of Newark, New Jersey). The city skyline and landmarks such as the Pulaski Skyway are featured in the opening shot. The location shots were used to comply with the wartime War Production Board restrictions of a maximum cost of $5,000 for set construction.[12]

The Newton family home is located at 904 McDonald Avenue in Santa Rosa, which is still standing. The stone railway station in the film was built in 1904 for the Northwestern Pacific Railroad and is one of the few commercial buildings in central Santa Rosa to survive the earthquake of April 18, 1906. The station is currently a visitor center. The library was a Carnegie Library which was demolished in 1964 due to seismic concerns.[13] Some of the buildings in the center of Santa Rosa that are seen in the film were damaged or destroyed by earthquakes in 1969; much of the area was cleared of debris and largely rebuilt.

"Shadow of a Doubt” was created as a temporary name for the film until a more apt one could be chosen. However, after filming wrapped, Hitchcock decided that it should stay.

The film was scored by Dimitri Tiomkin, his first collaboration with Hitchcock (the others being Strangers on a Train, I Confess and Dial M for Murder). In his score, Tiomkin quotes the Merry Widow Waltz of Franz Lehár, often in somewhat distorted forms, as a leitmotif for Uncle Charlie and his serial murders. During the opening credits, the waltz theme is heard along with a prolonged shot of couples dancing. Later, Charlie recognizes this song when her mother is humming it, which Hitchcock said is supposed to be an indication of the telepathy between Charlie and her uncle.

The film was produced by Universal Pictures Company, Inc. Shadow of a Doubt was Hitchcock’s 29th movie, and he had already amassed some level of popularity among the film-viewing population of the United States. A trailer was produced and released prior to the film. Several posters were created and printed to spread word about the new film. Some of the taglines used in print ads across the US include:

• “A blast of dramatic dynamite exploded right before your eyes!”
• Terror warning her to kill… or be killed.”
• “Why do I fear the man I love? He torments me! Am I going mad?”
• “Alfred Hitchcock’s powerful dramatic love story!”
• Back again! The masterpiece of suspense.”
• “Is a woman's intuition always right-could he possibly think of murdering me?”

• Marketing was mainly limited to the US with the first release of the film. Since the debut, many fan-made trailers and posters have been created and spread globally as the film amassed popularity.

Alternate "Style D" theatrical release poster

Upon release, the film received unanimously positive reviews. Bosley Crowther, critic for The New York Times, loved the film, stating that "Hitchcock could raise more goose pimples to the square inch of a customer's flesh than any other director in Hollywood".[14] Time Magazine called the film "superb",[14] while Variety stated that "Hitchcock deftly etches his small-town characters and homey surroundings".[14] The entertainment trade paper The Film Daily was yet another reviewer in 1943 that praised every aspect of the production. The publication predicted big “box office” for theaters presenting Hitchcock's latest work, although in its detailed review of Shadow of a Doubt the paper does mistakenly refer to the director's 1941 film Suspicion as "'Suspense'":

Of all the startling feature films directed by Alfred Hitchcock—superman of suspense and wizard of mystery—this one is geared most highly to thrill American audiences and to pour coin into the coffers of U.S. theaters....There are no red herrings yanked across the trail in this attraction, as was the case in his recent hit, "Suspense". The story moves inflexibly toward an ending which the onlooker more or less clearly expects, but which elicits the periodic hope that the worst fears of Teresa Wright will not be realized. ...Production values under Jack H. Skirball are first-rate, as is Joseph Valentine’s photography. There isn’t a shadow of a doubt about this picture’s success.[15]

In a 1964 interview on Telescope with host Fletcher Markle, Markle noted, "Mr. Hitchcock, most critics have always considered Shadow of a Doubt, which you made in 1943, as your finest film." Hitchcock replied immediately, "Me too." Markle then asked, "That is your opinion of it still?" Hitchcock replied, "Oh, no question." At the time, Hitchcock's most recent work was Marnie. When later interviewed by François Truffaut, Hitchcock denied the suggestion that Shadow of a Doubt was his "favourite".[16] But in the audio interview with Truffaut, Hitchcock confirmed it was his favourite film, and later reiterated that Shadow of a Doubt was his favorite film in his interview with Mike Douglas in 1969 and in his interview with Dick Cavett in 1972. Alfred Hitchcock's daughter Pat Hitchcock also said that her father's favorite film was Shadow of a Doubt in Laurent Bouzereau’s 2000 documentary Beyond Doubt: The Making of Hitchcock's Favorite Film.

Today, the film is still regarded as a major work of Hitchcock's. Contemporary critic Dave Kehr called it Hitchcock's "first indisputable masterpiece."[17] In 2005 film critic David Denby of The New Yorker called it Hitchcock's most "intimate and heart-wrenching" film.[18] Based on 48 reviews on the website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has received a 100% approval rating, with a weighted average of 9.20/10. The site's consensus reads: "Alfred Hitchcock's earliest classic — and his own personal favorite — deals its flesh-crawling thrills as deftly as its finely shaded characters".[14] On Metacritic it has a score of 94 out of 100, based on reviews from 15 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[19] When asked by critics as to an overarching theme for the film Hitchcock responded: "Love and good order is no defense against evil". In his book Bambi vs. Godzilla, David Mamet calls it Hitchcock's finest film.[20] In his 2011 review of the film, film critic Roger Ebert gave the film four stars out of four and included it in his Great Movies list.[21] In 2022, Time Out magazine ranked the film at No. 41 on their list of "The 100 best thriller films of all time".[22]

• Shadow of a Doubt was released as WWII came to a close. The impact of the war mindset and war propaganda was heavily on the mind of Hitchcock as well as the actors and producers. The film’s main theme is the idea that dark is always lurking behind the peaceful facade. The film explores ideas of repressed emotions and familial guilt. Young Charlie, struggles to cope with the knowledge that her treasured Uncle Charlie is a killer. She justifies both in her head and with Uncle Charlie, prompting her to make a questionable promise to Uncle Charlie. WWII lasted for over a decade, and even as the war came to a close, the Cold War and USSR weighed heavily on American's minds. This film expresses that even if someone is comfortable, they should never forget that something bad could be impending.
• It is not shocking to see this theme as this film is a prime example of film noir. Noir films investigate what dark worlds are, and how one’s personal thoughts and feelings can create severe morality issues. Another message conveyed through the film is the commentary on a “normal” American life. This is the life that many Americans were living before the war. This film shows them a version of what they lived through, as they watched their perfect suburban life crumple as WWII raged. This film is a reaction to the dark messages sent by WWII and the impending nervosity of the Cold War and the “Red Scare.” Hitchcock made his themes clear, likely leading to the enduring popularity of this film as it applies to more modern issues still faced in the US and around the world.
• Alfred Hitchcock used the idea of "you destroy the thing you love" in this movie. In an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, Hitchcock mentioned the idea of "you destroy the thing you love" through Oscar Wilde. Young Charlie loved Uncle Charlie. But she ended up destroying him at the end of the movie. In an Interview with François Truffaut, Hitchcock mentioned that it is implied at the ending (Young Charlie with Jack Graham in front of church) that Young Charlie will be in love with her Uncle Charlie for the rest of her life.
• There are recurring themes and references to vampires throughout the film as well as references to Dracula. Uncle Charlie avoids being in direct sunlight and grabs Charlie by the chin to twist her face, showing her neck. Uncle Charlie gifts the family sparkling wine Uncle Charlie gives the family at dinner is specified to be red ('the red bottle,' 'brandy') suggests blood. Near the end of the film, when Uncle Charlie and Young Charlie are fighting on the train, Uncle Charlie almost appears to be trying to bite Charlie’s neck. He wears an emerald ring, similar to a crucifix for protection, and the carbon-monoxide trap he sets up for Young Charlie emulates Dracula’s ability to turn to mist or fog. Uncle Charlie has an aversion to having his picture taken.

• Hand of cards played on the train
  • In the scene where Uncle Charlie is on the train going to visit his family, there are three people on the train playing a card game. There is a shot of one of the train passengers (played by Alfred Hitchcock - his cameo in the film) holding a full house of all spades. This is the best hand you can get. This is symbolic of how Uncle Charlie has “the best hand” right now, in that no one in his family knows of his criminal history. Also, this hand of cards means the end of the game, which could be symbolic of how this trip home is his end, in that he dies.
• Smoke from the train
  • As Uncle Charlie’s train approaches the station in Santa Rosa, there is black smoke ascending into the sky and causing a shadow to fall over the scene. This is symbolic of the darkness and evil that has just entered the town.
• The ring Uncle Charlie gives Charlie
  • The ring in this film represents death to who wears it. Uncle Charlie took it off one of his victims after he murdered her. The act of giving it to Charlie symbolizes that she is his next victim.

• List of films with a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a film review aggregator website

Wikiquote has quotations related to Shadow of a Doubt.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Shadow of a Doubt (film).

• Shadow of a Doubt essay by Thomas Leitch at National Film Registry
• Shadow of a Doubt at IMDb 
• Shadow of a Doubt at AllMovie
• Shadow of a Doubt at the TCM Movie Database
• Shadow of a Doubt at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Shadow of a Doubt at Rotten Tomatoes
• Shadow of a Doubt at Box Office Mojo
• Shadow of a Doubt essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010 ISBN 0826429777, pages 360-361
  • https://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Life_(1943)_-_Shadow_of_a_Doubt:_$5,000_Production
  • https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1144&dat=19421007&id=rHcbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=9kwEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1699,2385537
  • https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/657#:~:text=Production%20on%20Shadow%20of%20a%20Doubt%20began%20in%20Apr%201942,picture%20Saboteur%20(See%20Entry).
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wq7FU3mC2o
  • https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0036342/fullcredits/cast/?ref_=tt_cl_sm
    • https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036342/taglines/?ref_=tt_stry_tg
    • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vCr888JxIo
    • https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0036342/trivia/?ref_=tt_ql_3
    • https://userpages.umbc.edu/~landon/Film%20Summaries/Summary_Shadow%20of%20a%20Doubt.htm#:~:text=Shadow%20of%20a%20Doubt%20was,mass%20strangler%20of%20the%201920s.
    • https://cinephiliabeyond.org/shadow-of-a-doubt-hitchcocks-disquieting-little-subversive-masterpiece/

Streaming audio

• Shadow of a Doubt on Screen Guild Theater: May 24, 1943
• Shadow of a Doubt on Lux Radio Theater: January 3, 1944