November 24, 2008
John Michael Hayes dead at 89.
A frequent collaborator with Hitch, he wrote a fair number of classics, like Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, and Butterfield 8.
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I must say, I've enjoyed a lot of the works on which he collaborated. Sorry to hear, but he had quite a life...
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Rear window is my favorite movie. It was based on another writer's short story (Cornell Woolrich), and brought to fabulous life by fabulous actors (my favorite is Thelma Ritter as the insurance company nurse) and of course by Hitchcock, but here's to John Michael Hayes, who I'd never heard of before DESPITE watching the film dozens of times. I'll cheer when his name comes up from now on.
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Rear Window is indeed fantastic, though I'm a Vertigo man myself... But it amazes me that the same guy who wrote Rear Window also did To Catch a Thief -- they're just miles apart, though both terrific. Sort of like when Homer derided Lisa for claiming that ham, bacon and pork all came from some "magical animal". John Michael Hayes was that magical animal, it seems.