HITCHCOCK AND LEHMAN SCREENPLAY TO BE BOUGHT TO LIFE FOR FIRST TIME ON RADIO 4

Radio 4 announced that its Unmade Movies – a series which launched in February this year and brought together a collection of unproduced screenplays from globally celebrated writers – was making a return.

The network announced that one of the plays would be the broadcast premiere of Arthur Miller’s unproduced screenplay The Hook. Today, it is announced that the series will also feature world premieres of Heart Of Darkness by Orson Welles, and The Blind Man by Alfred Hitchcock and Ernest Lehman.

Alfred Hitchcock and Ernest Lehman’s The Blind Man, written shortly after the duo worked on North By Northwest, is set in 1961 and tells the story of a famous blind jazz pianist who agrees to an eye transplant. The operation is a success but the eyes are those of a murdered man and on them is transposed the image of his murderer. The script was discovered by Unmade Movies producer, Laurence Bowen, in a research institute in Texas – along with extensive notes and letters exchanged between the two on the ending. Completed, and directed, by Mark Gatiss, the BBC Radio 4 world premiere has been approved by Hitchcock’s three granddaughters with Hitchcock Co-Producer Laurent Bouzereau, and it stars the inimitable Hugh Laurie.

Speaking about his part in the drama, Hugh Laurie says: “The first time I read Ernest Lehman’s script of The Blind Man, it was like finding a pre-war Bugatti in a barn. We swept off some of the chicken droppings, cranked the handle, and it started first time. It was a thrill and a delight to be involved.”

Laurence Bowen, Producer at Feelgood Fiction, the creator of the series, says: “It’s taken several years to find and secure the rights for these but what a wonderful journey it’s been, bringing to life for the first time lost treasures from the greatest writers of the 20th century. There are many reasons why screenplays don’t happen – politics, funding, creative differences – and they disappear into cupboards, draws or computer files, never seeing the light of day, but these three are absolute gems and can now enter the official canons of their writers.”