SPOILER ALERT!
In 1942, Alfred Hitchcock made the movie Saboteur, in which good people appear to be good, and evil people appear to be evil. Perhaps it was in reaction to the simplistic casting of that movie that he decided to make Shadow of a Doubt the next year, in in which appearances, instead of being dependable, turn out to be deceptive. In this movie, Joseph Cotten plays Charles “Charlie” Oakley, a man who murders rich widows. Needless to say, audiences in 1943, watching a movie about a serial killer, would have expected to see someone like Laird Cregar in the role of the killer, not Joseph Cotten.
As we watch the opening credits, the music we hear is “The Merry Widow Waltz,” played with just a hint of discord, while we see good-looking men dancing with older women. The music is from The Merry Widow, an operetta about a woman who has inherited a lot of money from her deceased husband. It was composed in 1905, and it was based on a play first performed in 1861. The idea of a merry widow was the exact opposite of what was expected in those days. In Gone with the Wind, after Scarlett’s first husband has died, she is miserable; not because he died, for she never loved him, but because of what she realizes is now required of her:
She was a widow and her heart was in the grave. At least everyone thought it was in the grave and expected her to act accordingly…. Not for her the pleasures of unmarried girls. She had to be grave and aloof…. The conduct of a widow must be twice as circumspect as that of a matron.
“And God only knows,” thought Scarlett…, “matrons never have any fun at all. So widows might as well be dead.”
… Widows could never chatter vivaciously or laugh aloud. Even when they smiled, it must be a sad, tragic smile. And most dreadful of all, they could in no way indicate an interest in the company of gentlemen. And should a gentleman be so ill bred as to indicate an interest in her, she must freeze him with a dignified but well-chosen reference to her dead husband. Oh, yes, thought Scarlett, drearily, some widows do marry eventually, when they are old and stringy. Though Heaven knows how they manage it, with their neighbors watching.
It must have been a great comfort to men in those days to know that in the event of their death, their wives could never again be truly happy. And it must have been a comfort to married women as well, for they would have fumed at the idea that should some other woman happen to become a widow, she would be free once again to enjoy the pleasures of being single.
And if a merry widow should also be rich, like the one in the operetta, that would only add to the feelings of resentment, for it would bring to mind the idea of a husband who works hard, accumulates a sizable fortune, and then dies at an early age; after which, the wife, having gotten her hands on all that money, foolishly squanders it on some good-looking young man that will flatter her with attention.
Solon said that you should count no man happy until he is dead, for it is only then, in the words of Aristotle, that he is “beyond the reach of evils and misfortune.” But as Aristotle goes on to say, we may even be reluctant to say that a man had a happy life if, after he dies, he is dishonored in some way. Though Aristotle does not give this as an example, yet the idea that a widow might fritter away her deceased husband’s entire fortune on some silly gigolo could be just the sort of thing Aristotle had in mind. In fact, the thoughts a man might have of his wife cavorting in this manner after he is dead might just drive him to an early grave.
I remember my mother telling me that the reason a man might be reluctant to buy life insurance is that he can’t stand the idea that his wife will spend all that money on some boyfriend. And, as a matter of fact, six months after my father died, my mother got herself a facelift. Another woman I knew had for years chafed under her husband’s insistence that they buy used cars only, drive them until they dropped, after which he would buy another used car. But when he died, she put him in the ground, and then went right out and bought herself a brand new luxury automobile. “I earned it,” she said. I’ve always thought of that line as being the divorced woman’s mantra, but I guess it works for widows too.
And then there was the suggestion of sexual license. As they used to say in the days before the sexual revolution, once the pie has been cut, there’s no harm in helping yourself to another piece. Therefore, it was expected that a widow might more readily give in to her passions than would a maiden of younger years. In Horse Feathers (1932), Groucho Marx becomes president of a college, where his son, who has been in that college for twelve years, is “fooling around with the college widow.” Groucho tells him he’s ashamed of him, saying, “I went to three colleges in twelve years and fooled around with three college widows.” Now, a college at that time might have denied admission to a divorced woman, a shameful status in those days. But a widow was more to be pitied than censured. Her innocence had to be presumed by those considering her admission to a college, even if suspicions lurked to the contrary; for her knowledge of the delights of sexual intimacy would no doubt leave her lusting for more.
In a lot of the Marx Brothers movies, Groucho would pursue some rich widow for her money, and more often than not, that widow would be played by Margaret Dumont. She was in her late forties or fifties when these movies were made, and she had a matronly appearance. Moreover, she was little bigger and taller than Groucho. This made them a comic couple. But in Horse Feathers, the college widow was supposed to be a threat to campus morality on account of her being sexually desirable and accessible, for which reason the role was played by Thelma Todd.
These negative attitudes toward widows are harbored by Charles Oakley. Later in the movie, while sitting at the dinner table with his sister and her family, he compares women in a small town with those in the big city:
Women keep busy in towns like this. In the cities it’s different. Middle-aged widows, husbands dead, husbands who’ve spent their lives making fortunes, working and working, and then they die and leave their money to their wives, their silly wives. And what do the wives do, these useless women? You see them in the best hotels every day by the thousands, drinking the money, eating the money, losing the money at bridge, playing all day and all night, smelling of money. Proud of their jewelry, but of nothing else. Horrible, faded, fat, greedy women.
The weakest parts of Shadow of a Doubt are the scenes that involve the detectives, none of which make any sense. They want a picture of Oakley so they can show it to witnesses to see if he is the Merry Widow Killer. All they need to do is bring him in for questioning and take his picture, not to mention putting him in a lineup. Failing that, they could have photographed him when he walked right toward them at the beginning of the movie. Furthermore, they had previously told his landlady that they wanted to talk to him, so why didn’t they talk to him right there on the street? After he walks past them, they follow him. What for? Do they think that by following him, they will catch him in the act of killing another widow? I could go on, but what would be the point? Suffice it to say that everything involving these detectives is not just unrealistic, for every movie is that to some degree, but distractingly so, and to an extent that interferes with our ability to suspend disbelief and immerse ourselves in the story. And it is a shame, because with a few changes in the script, they could have been left out entirely.
It is the rest of the movie, the parts where the detectives play no significant role, that the movie really engages us. When it begins, it is clear that Oakley has just killed another widow, after first getting his hands on her money. But it is not the money he cares about. He hates these women, and it gives him great satisfaction to kill them. But now, thoroughly sated from his recent murder, he is weary, listlessly lying in bed, with some of the money carelessly allowed to fall on the floor. He finally decides to visit his sister and sends her a telegram, ending it with “and a kiss for little Charlie from her Uncle Charlie.”
This “little Charlie,” his niece Charlotte Newton, (Teresa Wright), is first seen lying supine in bed in a way that matches her uncle when we first saw him. At first, she too is listless, as her uncle was, but she suddenly decides to send him a telegram, inviting him to come for a visit, right after he has sent her mother a telegram saying that he is coming. On my own, I would never have thought of these scenes as indicating anything other than an affinity between an uncle and his niece. However, several critics have noted that these matching bed scenes are a suggestion of incest. Young Charlie’s fascination with her uncle is a little unsettling in this regard. She places importance on the fact that they both have the same first name, at least in the diminutive form, and she is convinced that they are alike, that they have a special connection between them, a common fancy of someone in love. And she acts like a girl in love.
When her uncle arrives, Charlie let’s him sleep in her bed. Now, don’t get excited. She moves to the room of her precocious, younger sister Ann, where there is an unused twin bed. But if subliminal desires of incest are being suggested in this movie, her letting Uncle Charlie sleep in her bed is another hint.
That evening, he gives young Charlie a ring, not realizing it has an engraving on the inside, “T.S. from B.M.” Later, she reads in the newspaper that the initials of the deceased husband of a recently murdered widow were “B.M.” Both “T.S.” and “B.M.” are abbreviations for expressions involving feces, “tough shit” and “bowel movement” respectively, which is a way of suggesting something foul associated with the emerald ring. The ugliness hidden underneath beauty is the theme of this movie.
In a similar way, the town where young Charlie lives is one of those warm, wholesome towns, representing the goodness of America. But Uncle Charlie says these appearances are deceiving. Later in the movie, after young Charlie has figured out that her uncle is the Merry Widow Killer, he says the rest of the world, including the town where she lives, is no better than he is:
You're just an ordinary little girl, living in an ordinary little town. You wake up every day and know there's nothing in the world to trouble you. You go through your ordinary little day. At night, you sleep your ordinary sleep, filled with peaceful, stupid dreams. And I brought you nightmares. Or did l? Or was it a silly, inexpert, little lie? You live in a dream. You're a sleepwalker, blind. How do you know what the world is like? Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know if you ripped the fronts off houses, you'd find swine? The world's a hell. What does it matter what happens in it? Wake up, Charlie. Use your wits. Learn something!
And what Uncle Charlie says of the world applies to young Charlie herself. As the movie keeps emphasizing, and as young Charlie keeps insisting, she and her uncle Charlie are very much alike, “like twins” she tells him. The idea that her uncle is her evil twin comes to mind, but she has her dark side too, as becomes clear later in the movie. Because young Charlie is played by Teresa Wright, a wholesome-looking young woman, rather than an actress whom we might see playing a femme fatale in a film noir, the contrast between her innocent appearance and the evil that emerges from within her is stark.
Earlier in the movie, while young Charlie is still blissfully unaware that Uncle Charlie is the Merry Widow Killer, she is so psychically in tune with him that she starts humming “The Merry Widow Waltz,” while setting the table for dinner. But she can’t seem to remember the name of the melody. Ann says, “Sing at the table, you’ll marry a crazy husband.” This may be another incest hint. Young Charlie is pleased when some of her friends think Uncle Charlie is her beau. And as Uncle Charlie is crazy, perhaps he is the man she unconsciously wants for a husband.
Instead of just letting her recall the name of the waltz, Uncle Charlie purposely spills his wine just as she is on the verge of uttering it. Later, when he sees an article in the newspaper about the Merry Widow Killer, he tears that section out. Discovering this, she concludes that there must have been something in the paper he wanted to conceal, though she imagines it to be of minor importance. She tells her uncle she knows a secret about him, referring to something that must have been in the newspaper, and reprising an earlier remark she had made: “I have a feeling that inside you somewhere, there’s something nobody knows about.” She thinks the secret is something wonderful, but he becomes alarmed, charging at her and grabbing her wrists so hard that he hurts her. His guilty behavior arouses young Charlie’s suspicions, causing her to go to the library, where she finds the article mentioned above. This leads to his downfall. Had he not done these things, she might never have suspected anything at all.
Murdering widows for their money appears to be quite remunerative, inasmuch as Uncle Charlie deposits $40,000 in the bank (over $650,000, adjusted for inflation). As he is leaving the bank, he is introduced to another rich widow, a Mrs. Potter. She has come to the bank to get some money so she can go shopping. “There’s one good thing in being a widow, isn’t there?” she says laughing. “You don’t have to ask your husband for money.”
When young Charlie figures out that her uncle is the Merry Widow Killer, she does not turn the ring over to the detectives and tell them what she knows, because she is afraid it will hurt her mother to find this out about her brother. Many of those same critics that noticed the theme of incest have also argued that the relationships in this movie constitute an allegory of sexual abuse within a family, one in which a girl feels she cannot tell her mother that her father is molesting her. Only instead of the daughter not wanting her mother to know the truth, too often it is the mother that does not want to know the truth when her daughter tries to tell her. Here too, on my own, that would never have occurred to me, but it does seem to resonate, now that it has been brought to my attention.
And so, instead of telling the detectives, she tries to get Uncle Charlie to leave town, hinting at first, but then becoming more insistent. He quickly picks up on the fact that she knows. It is then that he makes the remarks about widows quoted above. Young Charlie defends them: “But they’re alive. They’re human beings.” Uncle Charlie replies:
Are they? Are they, Charlie? Are they human, or are they fat, wheezing animals? Hm? And what happens to animals when they get too fat and too old?
While all this has been going on, young Charlie’s father, Joseph (Henry Travers), and a next-door neighbor, Herb (Hume Cronyn), who lives with his mother and is always coming over while the Newton family is having dinner, enjoy discussing the murder mysteries they have read in books. Joseph thinks the best way to kill someone is by hitting him over the head with a lead pipe, but Herb objects to that form of murder because then you don’t have any clues. Joseph says he doesn’t want any clues, of course, but Herb has confused getting away with a murder in real life with committing a murder that would make a good mystery. As a result, he prefers exotic poisons. The fun they have discussing murder mysteries unnerves young Charlie, who is trying to deal with the real murders committed by her uncle.
At the same time, the detectives have confided in young Charlie that her uncle is one of two suspects they have been investigating. They are pretty sure her uncle is their man, but out of consideration for her mother, they agree to arrest her uncle out of town, if Charlie can get him to leave soon. But then, the other suspect ends up being killed when, in the act of fleeing from the police, he runs into the propeller of an airplane. Uncle Charlie and young Charlie overhear Joseph and Herb talking about it. Herb says they had to identify the suspect, who was all chopped up, by his clothes. “His shirts were all initialed,” Herb says, “‘C,’ ‘O,’ apostrophe ‘H’.”
We have already seen that the initials on the ring were abbreviations for feces, so I wondered if these initials were supposed to have significance, especially since the dialogue gives them emphasis. That is, the scriptwriter could simply have had Herb say, “They identified him by the initials on his shirts,” without specifying which initials they were. But other than the fact that “C” and “O” are also Charles Oakley’s initials, and “CO” is the symbol for carbon monoxide, which soon comes into play, not much comes to mind. I suppose the “H” could stand for Hitchcock, another cameo of a sort.
One might also ask why the scriptwriters chose this form of death for the other suspect, one that involves mutilation. The reason is that had he died, say, by being hit by an automobile, the detectives could have photographed him, thereby allowing his picture to be shown to witnesses for identification. And so, this absurd idea that the detectives cannot photograph Charles Oakley against his will, unless they are sneaky about it, is being applied to this other suspect as well.
Once Uncle Charlie hears that the police have called off the investigation because they think the Merry Widow Killer is dead, he is delighted. But then he remembers that he had all but admitted to being the killer when young Charlie confronted him. He sets out to murder her to make sure she doesn’t talk. His first attempt is by loosening part of a step on the stairway she often uses, but she catches herself when it gives way. The second attempt is with carbon monoxide, by trapping her in the garage with the motor of the family car running. Fortunately, Herb hears her screams and alerts her family to her situation.
Notwithstanding young Charlie’s plea that these widows are “human beings,” in the end, she cares more about protecting her mother from any unhappiness than she does the lives of Uncle Charlie’s future victims. She insists that he leave town, with the threat of giving the ring to the police, even when she knows who his next victim will be, the Mrs. Potter mentioned above, the rich widow he met in town. In fact, Mrs. Potter is sitting right there in the living room of young Charlie’s home, and she will be leaving on the same train as Uncle Charlie. This would have made young Charlie an accomplice to his next and subsequent murders had he simply left town as she wanted. We can imagine her reading in the newspaper about his murders of widows in the future, but still remaining silent, her mother’s feelings being more important to her than the women being strangled by Uncle Charlie.
In another scene, she tells him, “Go away, or I’ll kill you myself.” And so she does. The scene in which she pushes him into the path of the oncoming train can be understood as merely the accidental result of her effort to get away from him, and it would have been an act of self-defense in any event. But what happens matches what she says she would do. Of course, there is no way her dark side is anything like that of her uncle, the reason being that her uncle had a head injury when he was young. He skidded on his bicycle and was hit by a streetcar, much in the way he has now been hit by a train. It was this earlier accident that allowed his dark side to flourish, instead of being held in check the way it is for young Charlie. Or the way it is for the rest of us, for that matter.
Still, I wonder what she told her mother when they scraped Uncle Charlie’s body off the railroad tracks.