Episode 98: Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich

SPEAKERS
Sarah Harrison, Carolyn Daughters

Sarah Harrison  00:12

Welcome to Tea, Tonic and Toxin, the only book club and podcast dedicated to exploring mysteries chronologically from Edgar Allan Poe to the present, we’re discussing the best mysteries and thrillers ever written, as well as interviewing some of the world’s most talented contemporary mystery and thriller writers. I’m your host, Sarah Harrison.

Carolyn Daughters  00:33

And I’m your host, Carolyn Daughters. We aim to educate, entertain, and reignite interest in exceptional and often overlooked authors who shaped the genre. Check us out at teatonicandtoxin.com and on our socials to find tons of great content and take part in the conversation. We love hearing from listeners, and we’re excited you’re joining us on our journey through the history of mystery.

Carolyn Daughters  00:57

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Sarah Harrison  01:29

Good afternoon. Carolyn.

Carolyn Daughters  01:30

Hey, Sarah.

Sarah Harrison  01:34

How’s your Saturday going?

Carolyn Daughters  01:37

It is going all right. It is gorgeous here. It’s a good day. You and I had a chance to catch up.

Sarah Harrison  01:43

We’ve been very busy. And if you didn’t know, we typically record on Saturdays, folks.

Carolyn Daughters  01:50

We do, and so we’ve been a little bit ships passing in the night of late. But we had a chance to chat a little bit.

Sarah Harrison  01:58

Yes, well, I’m excited to be talking about our two stories today. We have two short stories, one based on the other.

Carolyn Daughters  02:08

I think that is so cool. I had no idea that Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich was the inspiration for this amazing Alfred Hitchcock movie.

Sarah Harrison  02:21

I saw Rear Window as a kid. My aunt had AMC on her cable TV. She wanted to terrify you, and she was, she was actually pretty sick. I would just go over to our house on the weekends and watch AMC and Cartoon Network as a college student. That’s cool.

Carolyn Daughters  02:45

And I didn’t know that until we built out our reading list, where the history we focus on the history of mystery, and we’re really focused on the 1940s this year. And I didn’t know Rear Window, the Alfred Hitchcock film, is based on a short story called It Had to Be Murder – also known as Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich. I didn’t know a thing about him. And then, we started doing a deeper dive into him, and realized, oh my gosh, he actually had source material. He was inspired by a story.

Sarah Harrison  03:16

That was wild. I hope we talk a little bit more about that in a second. But before we do we should probably highlight our listener of the episode.

Carolyn Daughters  03:26

Our listener of the episode is Fleur Bradley. I love her name, by the way.

Sarah Harrison  03:31

And I love her as a person, and she’s a lovely person.

Carolyn Daughters  03:34

Amazing. So she’s the author of Midnight at the Barclay Hotel. She writes these mysteries for children. They’re super engaging. They’re really fun.

Sarah Harrison  03:45

It was middle grades. Is that the right? I thought everything was YA until we interviewed her.

Carolyn Daughters  03:51

I would say upper grade school to middle grades.

Sarah Harrison  03:57

Okay, there you have it. Things are a lot more granular then I can.

Carolyn Daughters  04:01

If I had to say, I would say third to sixth grade, actually.

Sarah Harrison  04:06

Okay, but we enjoyed it.

Carolyn Daughters  04:09

And for adults, because we got a kick out of it. We thought it was so much fun. Fleur Bradley was a wonderful guest. She joined us in studio. If you’ve not caught that episode, we strongly encourage that you listen to it, and she does this really cool thing, she’s constantly talking to schools and libraries, and children are in her audience, and they ask her questions, and she tells them, hey, if you write me, I will write you back.

Sarah Harrison  04:37

If you didn’t listen to her episode before, go back and listen to it. After you finish this episode on Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich. It’s a lot of fun. And one thing I like about it is she’s local here in Colorado, and so we get to see her live in person at fun events like the Mystery Writers of America Christmas party and things like that.

Carolyn Daughters  04:55

If you write her, or your children write her, she will write you back. And so I thought it’d be fun for us to send her a sticker.

Sarah Harrison  05:05

Yes, maybe she’ll write us back.

Carolyn Daughters  05:08

Oh, I hope so. And so right now, right now, while you’re listening, take a second to follow us or subscribe. It just takes a second to do. Just click that button while you’re listening. Get it done. It helps us expand our reach, and it makes sure you never miss an episode. And also tell your friends about Tea, Tonic and Toxin. This is the year that we are looking to really, like expand the boundaries of Tea Tonic and Toxin.

Sarah Harrison  05:36

It’s funny. I listen to a lot of podcasts, and they’ll be like, I know 80% of you listening have not subscribed. I’m always wondering if they made that up, or maybe I need to dig in our statistics a little bit find out what percentage of you. I don’t think I can. I don’t I think that’s like more math than it’s worth, actually, across all platforms.

Carolyn Daughters  06:00

I’m not very mathy that way.

Sarah Harrison  06:02

I’m pretty mathy, but I’m not sure it’s physically possible across all platforms. Anyway, a lot of you have not subscribed, and it’s a free, easy way to get the word out to people about our little podcast here. So please, if you wouldn’t mind, like, subscribe, follow, give us a five star review.

Carolyn Daughters  06:23

Oh my gosh. If you also want to give us a review, shoot us a message through our platform. Through the website, has tons of contact forms. Let us know you gave us a five star review. And I think the chances are really good, you’ll be a listener of the episode, and we’re gonna send you some swag.

Sarah Harrison  06:44

Because I can actually, I can’t actually see that most of our reviews unless you’re sending me. So there’s always a send me a text thing in all of our show notes, and that does actually go to my phone. So if you want to send us a text, it is anonymous, though, so you have to say who you are. I just get a little bleep, bleep of a text with like, four digits me, like, what a text?

Carolyn Daughters  07:09

There’s a lot of anonymity here.

Sarah Harrison  07:11

It lets people do what they want, but don’t think that I can necessarily seek you out and give you a sticker without a little more information.

Carolyn Daughters  07:21

Sarah, what are we reading?

Sarah Harrison  07:24

Well, as you mentioned, there’s Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich and by H.G. Wells Through a Window after breaking his leg, Hal Jeffries has nothing better to do than sit at the window and observe his neighbors in the apartment building across the way. Soon, he realizes that something isn’t quite right in one of the apartments and wonders if a murder has taken place. Wonder turns into obsession, leading him to try to gather evidence and alert the police, while grappling with his own powerlessness and isolation and the doubt cast on his suspicions by those around him. Cornell Woolrich, the short story, It Had to Be Murder, was published in 1942 and was adapted into the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock movie Rear Window, with this Rear Window film cast starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly. It was made as a television film starring Christopher Reeve in 1998 I didn’t know that part really. Oh, I remember seeing it right after it came out. It’s, it’s Christopher Reeve and Darryl Hannah. Oh, that’s cool. We got to add that to our movie list. Christopher Reeve was already paralyzed at the time, so he’s in a wheelchair. Oh, well, that’s perfect. But also, who’s more perfect than Jimmy Stewart, the greatest actor of a generation.

Carolyn Daughters  08:47

I agree, Jimmy Stewart, but I have to say Christopher Reeve is wonderful in the role, or was wonderful in the role, and just did a phenomenal job.

Sarah Harrison  08:59

Check these out. Cornell Woolrich is one of America’s best crime and noir writers. He attended Columbia University but left without graduating when his first novel, cover charge, was published. He soon turned to pulp in detective fiction and sometimes wrote under the pseudonyms William Irish and George Hopley. Interesting. He’s often compared with other celebrated crime writers of his day, including Dashiell Hammett, Earl Stanley Gardner, and Raymond Chandler. He died in 1968. Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich was inspired by an H.G. Wells story, Through a Window, published in 1894. The story follows a better in man who spends his days watching the world through his window and fixating on a boat moored near the water. His voyeurism takes a dark turn when he witnesses a violent struggle aboard the boat, but is powerless to intervene. H.G. Wells is best remembered for writing groundbreaking science fiction, including The Time Machine, War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man and The Island of Dr. Moreau. All of these became crazy movies. He also wrote extensively on politics and social matters, and was one of the foremost public intellectuals of his day. He died in 1946. So I guess he was alive to see his story turn into another story.

Carolyn Daughters  10:28

I had not thought about that, because this story was published in 1942 and so H.G. Wells would have potentially read this story.

Sarah Harrison  10:37

You’re gonna do a little reading, and then I want to ask, are you allowed to do that?

Carolyn Daughters  10:52

Now we can talk about that. I have some thoughts about how that works. Okay, but first Carolyn’s gonna read to us a snippet from Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich (It Had to Be Murder). It’s a short story, it’s a fast read, and it’s, I think, a glorious read. You can do it in one quick sitting, and it’s a page turner.

Carolyn Daughters  11:13

This is about three quarters of the way through. I’m going to just read a little bit here. Suddenly a light went on over there again, just momentarily to go right out again. Afterward. He must have needed it for something, to locate something that he had already been looking for. And found he wasn’t able to put his hand on readily without it. He found it, whatever it was, almost immediately, and moved back at once to put the lights out again. As he turned to do so I saw him glance out the window. He didn’t come to the window to do it. He just shot it out in passing. Something about it struck me as different from any of the others. I’d seen him give in all the time I’d been watching him, if you can qualify as such an elusive thing as a glance, I would have termed it and termed it a glance with a purpose. It was certainly anything but vacant or random. It had a bright spark of fixity in it. It wasn’t one of those precautionary sweeps I’d seen him give either. It hadn’t started over on the other side and worked its way over to my side the right. It had hit dead center at my bay window for just a second while it lasted, and then it was gone again, and then the lights were gone, and he was gone.

Carolyn Daughters  12:25

Sometimes your senses take things in without your mind translating them into their proper meaning. My eyes saw that look. My mind refused to smelter it properly. It was meaningless, I thought an unintentional bull’s eye that just happened to hit square over here as he went toward the lights on his way out, delayed action, a wordless ring of the phone to test a voice, a period of baited darkness following that in which two could have played at the same game, stalking one another’s window squares unseen, a last moment flicker of the lights That was bad strategy, but unavoidable, a parting glance, radioactive with malignant intention. All these things sank in without fusing my eyes to the job. It was my mind that didn’t, or at least took its time about it.

Carolyn Daughters  13:13

Seconds went by in packages of 60. It was very still around the familiar quadrangle formed by the back of the houses, a breathless stillness, and then a sound came into it, starting up from nowhere, nothing.

Sarah Harrison  13:29

Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich is a super great story. And as we mentioned, you see that so you see this happen in movies all of the time, right? People are always remaking successful movies. Oh, even once you’re like, should you really do that? I remember when the remake of Psycho was coming out years ago, and I was like, hmm, just leave that. Just leave it. It’s a masterpiece. You’re only going to look inferior no matter what you do. But I just hadn’t thought about. I don’t know. Just hypothesizing here, but in my mind, you remake a movie because it originally made a lot of money. And you think you can put your own twist on it that could be interesting?

Carolyn Daughters  14:26

I think those are, are two things that can be connected, but are not necessarily connected, right?

Sarah Harrison  14:31

Right. Would a book be the same way, like Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich? I guess we haven’t run into a lot of stories retelling an older story.

Carolyn Daughters  14:47

So there’s that idea, right, that there’s nothing new under the sun. If you’re just looking for story, for plot, it’s very hard to tell a story with a brand new plot that has never been told before. It’s very difficult to do. Even Shakespeare borrowed almost all of his plots. I think it’s possible the only original plot he had was the Merry Wives of Windsor all of his plays. And so it depends whether your story is plot oriented, character driven a combination of a number of things. It’s based on ideas and how do you want to express those ideas? But plot itself is a weak baseline. Just taking a plot and saying, Oh, I just redid the plot. If you don’t have something new to say, if you don’t have beautiful language, if you don’t have characters who stand the test of time, then you’re essentially just trying to cash in on something or check the box on something.

Sarah Harrison  15:59

There’s a lot of similarities, a lot of differences. I think the concept is an idea you could probably play with a few different ways. Somebody’s been injured, they cannot move. They have to stare out the window, like you could do that today, but it’d be a lot different, because they’d have their smartphone next to them. They probably wouldn’t be staring out the window. That’s one thing that I do love, the idea of I’m required to stare out the window, and then there’s like, murderousness. I’ll say murderousness in both books, but they’re not the same.

Carolyn Daughters  16:40

But you’re noticing something. That was one of the questions I had, is, how might the story change? Okay, if, if we have smartphones, if we have a phone in our pocket?

Sarah Harrison  16:54

Even TV. When did TV become prevalent? After 1942, I’m imagining.

Carolyn Daughters  17:00

That is a great question. I don’t know the answer to that.

Sarah Harrison  17:04

Okay, I don’t have my phone. I don’t have my phone with me, folks because they buzz, and I try and keep them away from the microphone. So I’m gonna look up on Carolyn’s phone.

Carolyn Daughters  17:21

One thing that’s interesting to me is in It Had to Be Murder, later called Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich, based on the movie by Alfred Hitchcock, Rear Window, and Through the Window, which is the H.G. Wells version that inspired it. There are these protagonists who cannot get up off the couch. They have an infirmity. They’re a physical frailty that prevents them. So I thought it was interesting that the voyeurism had to be predicated on physical frailty or injury. It wasn’t simply Hey, I’m bored and I’m looking out the window, or, Hey, I’m independently, well off, or I am, whatever the thing and look out the window? No, it’s a physical incapacity that enables it. And almost excuses it in my mind, which I think is really interesting. Does that make sense?

Sarah Harrison  18:20

Yes. And I actually like that. There was a comment in the H.G. Wells one, oh, wait, oh my goodness, let me I just looked this up. In 1947, Meet the Press debuted. There was TV at the time, but clearly it’s like not a situation where he would have just sat and watched it in his bedroom, but so in the H.G. Wells one I’m wondering if I can find it, but he’s thinking about that very concept of … he almost had a negative outlook on just sitting and staring, like he thought that was for like children, like infants, sit and stare and do nothing, and they’re just delighted. And as he finds himself easing into that, he’s like, Oh, I am actually,

Carolyn Daughters  19:11

It’s at the beginning. See if you can find that quote. His name is Bailey, and he tells his friend Wilderspin something like, I never thought I’d be so interested in things that didn’t concern me.

Sarah Harrison  19:25

Yeah, okay, “I should never have thought I could take such an interest in things that did not concern me,” said Bailey to Wilderspin, who used to come in his nervous, friendly way to try and comfort the sufferer by being talked to. I thought this idle capacity was distinctive of little children and old maids – got to throw that in there – and old maids who were infantile in their minds, I guess. But it’s just circumstances. I simply can’t work, and things have to drift. It’s no good to fret and struggle. And so I lie here. In the H.G. Wells story (unlike Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich), he’s as amused as a baby with the rat on this river and its affairs. He doesn’t have an alley. He’s not looking into other people’s apartments. He’s looking at what’s going on in the river. Behind him, but he thought.

Carolyn Daughters  20:12

It’s what his particular view is. So if it had been an apartment complex, I’m making up a scenario, then it would have been like the rear window of the apartment.

Sarah Harrison  20:20

He’s looking out his rear window into a river, which is probably cooler.

Carolyn Daughters  20:28

Sarah, one of my favorite things when I travel, for example, but even when I’m not traveling, is people watching. I love this voyeuristic thing. Whether I’m in a coffee house or I’m here in Denver, or I’m in Paris, sitting on a patio watching the world go by. It’s amazing, and I love it.

Sarah Harrison  20:50

I’m gonna say medium to that. Lots of times as an icebreaker. Question has been coming up a lot like, what would your superpower be, if you had one. Then in that case, I think of, what would my superpower be? In reality, if you just say, what is your power, I have this really freakish Professor X thing going on in my life, where I hear everyone. I hear everything. I have no foreground and background. If someone’s talking, I’m hearing them.

Carolyn Daughters  21:25

Oh, wow. How do you meet someone at a coffee shop? And like, hey, let’s catch up, and you’re sitting at a table with all of these other voices.

Sarah Harrison  21:31

It’s really hard. It’s really hard, actually, to tell you the truth, and it’s been difficult. And now we go out, and sometimes I’ll be out with my husband, and I’ll just like, shake my head or laugh, and he’ll be like, Professor X, and he’s like, What did they say? Relate the conversation to him? But I remember distinctly on this topic when we I went to Russia when I was 18 for the first time. And so this was back. This isn’t modern Russia. This is 90s Russia, frankly, is a lot different. And everyone spoke Russian, and it was my first time being immersed in something I could not understand at all. And this, it was so peaceful, like this peacefulness was just there, and I could just enjoy so you heard it. Couldn’t interpret all the sounds. No, it was just like a noise, and you could watch the people. And I remember exactly like coming back. It might have been when we were on the plane or back somewhere where people spoke English. And I was like the jarring feeling of hearing them speak English. And I was just like, God, why do I have to why am I oppressed. But other than that, I feel you. But it’s with that caveat of my Professor X derangement. Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich made me think of all this.

Sarah Harrison  22:47

What’s the name Professor X? Where did that come from?

Sarah Harrison  22:54

What? Podcast world, please give Carolyn a hard time on this one. Professor X is the leader of the X-Men.

Carolyn Daughters  23:05

Oh, I don’t know X-Men.

Sarah Harrison  23:10

Do you not know X-Men?

Carolyn Daughters  23:12

Yes, I don’t know X-Men.

Sarah Harrison  23:15

The X-Men are mutants with super powers. I was introduced to them back in comic books. Then in the 90s, there was a cartoon, and now they are part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is a little bit popular. But anyway, Professor X leads the X-Men. He’s full of peace, but he can hear everyone’s thoughts, right? So he can hear your thoughts on the other side of the world. But what it sounds like when you’re in his head is just like, really noisy. He’s always trying to home in on the thought he’s after. That’s what it sounds like to me. I’m hearing like, all that literal sounds, though not the thoughts. I’m hearing, all of the sounds happening at the same time, and it’s hard to home in, on the one I’m after.

Carolyn Daughters  24:10

I was thinking about this while reading Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich. So it’s like when I was three weeks in India and even in the middle of a forest, in the middle of a non-urban area, and it was loud every minute of the day and night, as was every area that I was in, including Delhi and Mumbai, and there was never a moment of quiet or peace. And I thought to myself, I don’t know how anybody can live like this. Because the noise,  I tend to shut down. If there’s too much auditory stimuli, I shut down. And I’m in a corner, huddled into a shadow of myself. I’m slightly exaggerating, but you. Now that I’ve said that, Sarah, you can look for me next time there’s too much auditory stimuli.

Sarah Harrison  25:05

I’ll try, but I’ll probably have earmuffs on my head.

Carolyn Daughters  25:08

You’ll have ear muffs. You’ll be like, I have no idea what she’s doing, and I see her over there in the corner. I don’t know what’s going on. I felt like I never had a thought to myself. I never had a deep breath and silence. There was no silence. There was never, ever silence. And I would wake up even every night in the middle of this commune in the forest or in Mumbai, and I would wake up with noise. And so I realized I was falling asleep to noise, waking up with noise, surrounded by noise, nonstop. I know you were in India recently. Was that your experience? Or is that simply my experience?

Sarah Harrison  25:54

No, but I was not in Mumbai at all. I was in one of the more country regions, and there was plenty of time. So there’s the concept of noise, which, as I recall, Russia was very noisy, but in my mind, it faded out into almost a white noise. What’s intrusive for me is the understanding of the words they’re saying. And I’ll be honest, typically the dislike. Like, why are you saying such stupid stuff?

Carolyn Daughters  26:26

Oh, so you’re listening and you’re hearing and judging.

Sarah Harrison  26:31

Oh yeah, my goodness, they’re on a first date. Please stop bragging. That’s what’s going through my mind.

Carolyn Daughters  26:38

So when I overhear someone’s first date or something like that in a coffee shop, I’m always fascinated by it, and I like to listen, and I like to hear how that exchange goes. And any awkwardness I completely identify with because I, myself, have been slightly awkward two or three times in my life. So I identify with it, and then I’m like, Oh, okay. And I can process. I tend to, like, dip in and out, and I’m super empathetic to all the stuff happening. I loved seeing the stories play out in Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich and in the Alfred Hitchcock film.

Sarah Harrison  27:05

How can you be empathetic to both sides of a stupid story?

Carolyn Daughters  27:13

I can be empathetic. I’m a Libra. I’m empathetic to almost everything.

Sarah Harrison  27:16

Well, folks, if you’ve actually been curious about which one of us is the gentler soul, I can tell you that it is not Sarah.

Carolyn Daughters  27:29

Well, I don’t know that it’s a competition, but I will say …

Sarah Harrison  27:33

Of course, it is!

Carolyn Daughters  27:34

Okay. But I will say, I love overhearing conversations, not because I feel necessarily better about myself or like holier than though, but more because it helps me understand. I mean, I’m a writer, so it helps me understand the world and the way people talk and the way our brains work, and how imperfect we are in our communications. And I try to sense like, is the person trying and they’re just putting on a front, or they’re trying and they’re failing miserably, and I’ve done all the things. I’ve tried and put on a front, and I’ve tried and failed miserably, and I’ve tried and succeeded, and I’ve done all the things, so I’m able to dip in and out and see all of that and watch it playing out. But I will say with my experience in India, we were in north, south, east, west, and I could not find it. Even in Kerala, in the middle of a forest.

Sarah Harrison  28:33

Yeah, that’s where I was. I was in Kerala.

Carolyn Daughters  28:35

I could not find a moment of silence or peace. I had no moments of silence like Jeff in Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich, who just sat quietly and looked out his window.

Sarah Harrison  28:39

That’s interesting. And I will say that just because someone’s having a stupid conversation, it’s not that I feel better than that, okay, because I’m just as hard on my own stupid conversation. It’s where I’m like, Sarah, you just talked about yourself for half an hour. Shut up.

Carolyn Daughters  29:01

I get what you’re saying. So you’re as hard on yourself as you would be on anyone else.

Sarah Harrison  29:11

I am. It’s just however my ears and brain are set up. It always feels intrusive, like if you’re trying to have a conversation, and I’m also forced to have this third party in the conversation, and they’re not talking to me, but I hear them just as loudly, like they don’t fade into the background. For me, there’s still a foreground conversation, and so it’s really, really difficult.

Carolyn Daughters  29:34

I think a lot of people have some issues with that, but maybe you can’t separate it out. Like for me, I am able to separate it out. I’m able to say like, focus here, and I shift my focus here to wherever I am. But if you can’t do that, I could see how that that would be like, how do I maintain this one-on-one conversation with all, all of these other things. So parties must be challenging.

Sarah Harrison  30:01

Parties are very challenging. Group situations are challenging. I’m also extremely soft spoken, so if I have to also speak loudly, and I can’t isolate a conversation in my mind very well, like in my ears. It’s hard.

Carolyn Daughters  30:20

When I was younger, my running joke was, I’m not comfortable alone or with others. Which is not true. I’m actually generally speaking, comfortable with both. But that was my shtick, where I’d be like, Well, I’m slightly awkward, and I would just own the awkwardness. And now I don’t, except on this podcast where we’re discussing it right now. But I’m like, I don’t have to publicly own my awkwardness. I just am whatever I am, and people seem okay with it.

Sarah Harrison  31:00

I’m 100% awkward.

Carolyn Daughters  31:03

I don’t think you are.

Sarah Harrison  31:04

That’s the thing. I developed a strategy.

Carolyn Daughters  31:07

Before we return to Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich, tell me, Professor X, what is the strategy?

Sarah Harrison  31:12

My strategy? So this started, actually, when I started dating Nate, my now husband. So I’m gonna say it was a winning strategy. The strategy was, don’t say how you feel about yourself. Like you don’t have to comment on who you are and what you’ll like. They’ll form their own opinions. Who cares. Just talk about other stuff, talk about them, talk about the world. You don’t have to say, I’m like this, and I think like this. And this is how I know I just stopped. And I realized when I stopped that people left to their own devices, had really different opinions about me than I had about myself. And so it didn’t no good for me to put mine out there. They had their own anyway, and I liked theirs better. I just went with that.

Carolyn Daughters  32:08

I like that because I see you as generally comfortable in most settings.

Sarah Harrison  32:16

It’s so wild, folks, I just can’t even tell you. But people think that. Come to a party with us, and you judge for yourself.

Carolyn Daughters  32:28

You’ll see me as the hostess with the mostest, though in my mind, I’m certainly nothing of the sort. And you’ll see Sarah schmoozing with the best of them, and she would say she’s nothing of this.

Sarah Harrison  32:39

I’ll chat it up and have a panic attack inside of my mind, and you’ll never know.

Carolyn Daughters  32:45

Well, back to voyeurism. So voyeurism, okay. One of my favorite things is looking out on the world, but not necessarily overhearing what people are saying. Though I’m happy to overhear it, but if I am even at a table at the cafe, and people are walking by, I just want to see their body language? How are they engaging with each other? Are they near each other? Are they far? Are they fighting? Are they enjoying the day? Are their faces lit up are what’s going on. And I could, I could do that for a solid hour, longer, and just be thrilled.

Sarah Harrison  33:29

For sure, definitely, I always, I’m like this guy too. I’ll make up their stories. I’m not just a passive observer. I’m gonna think to myself, what’s going on with these people? Why is this the thing that’s happening? And so then I’ll try and I’ll create the stories that I think are happening right now, like they’re in a fight, they’re getting divorced, they’re on a first date, they’ve been married for 20 years, whatever.

Carolyn Daughters  34:01

One question that I have for you. Hal Jeffries in Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich. He goes by Jeff. That’s his nickname. Jeff is looking at the out his rear window at these other apartments, and he has created stories for all of these people, which Sarah, you might do. And a lot of the time he’s actually spot on. So I want to talk a little bit about this. How is he able to do this? As an example, when the guy Thorvald across the way walks in but doesn’t go into the back room bedroom to see his wife, alarm bells go off for our hero, Jeff. Or if Thorvald comes in and tips his head his hat back, but doesn’t wipe his brow with his hat left to right but instead pushes it back, it suggests he’s worried about something contemplative, not wiping his brow from perspiration. Jeff in Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich is able to draw these really interesting conclusions that blew my mind, and I thought, my God, I’ve got up my game. Tell me what you think about his ability to read a room?

Sarah Harrison  35:23

Totally. I think it makes perfect sense. I have met some people that can’t do it.

Carolyn Daughters  35:31

Cannot or can?

Sarah Harrison  35:32

Cannot, I would say, when I’m creating my stories, whenever I get to find out, and it’s not even just visual. Sometimes it’s just a story of knowledge. Someone explains the situation to me, and I’ll say, This is what’s going on. I’m almost always correct. Whenever I’ve gotten to find out the outcome, it’s almost always correct. It just happened today again.

Carolyn Daughters  35:58

What happened today?

Sarah Harrison  36:00

It’s a rough story, but without naming any people involved, a dear, darling, wonderful friend of mine is in the hospital. The details have been vague. I think she tried to commit suicide.

Carolyn Daughters  36:19

I’m very sorry to hear this.

Sarah Harrison  36:20

And not from anything that I particularly would know or suspect. It would be very out of character. I was bugging other people in the situation. I was very concerned, like, what’s going on? And they wouldn’t say. They said, Is this what’s going on? You gather enough information to draw a conclusion, but I think ultimately, there’s the ultimate logic of a conclusion that you’re drawing, that the situation lays out, and then I think it’s honestly part of our human development. And the way we communicate with each other is through viewing eyes, mirroring facial expressions, mirroring behavior. And when we do that, we can feel and experience what the other person is feeling and experiencing, a little like Jeff does in Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich. I think that at a fundamental level.

Carolyn Daughters  37:13

If we’re intentional and conscious or we can just do it regardless?

Sarah Harrison  37:15

It is how we function for the most part, as humans like when we’re with somebody. I’ll do this a lot unintentionally or sometimes intentionally, I’ll smile and laugh in a conversation that might be uncomfortable, because the other person is going to then smile, and it will put them at ease oftentimes, right? So we just do that as humans, and how we communicate, we mirror each other and our expressions and our behavior, and so I think with watching closely and letting yourself be carried by that intuition, and not when you overthink, it is when you start coming up with alternate explanations on how you could be wrong.

Carolyn Daughters  37:56

And why are we coming up with those explanations? Do we want to prove that it were wrong, or are we trying to prove we’re right? What’s going on?

Sarah Harrison  38:03

Lots of reasons. I mean, I know when I’ve done it, so I’ve definitely engaged in let’s come up with some alternate explanations of why I’m wrong. Okay, and it’s a lot of times been with I’m dating a person, and I want it to work out, but I’m seeing some stuff I don’t like. So let me come up with some explanations on why my gut feelings are wrong.

Carolyn Daughters  38:23

The person’s not calling me because he’s so busy, right?

Sarah Harrison  38:27

Or they’re acting like this. Well, they really had a good reason. They had a good excuse for this behavior, you know? And you’re justifying why what your gut is telling you through your normal human interaction is wrong. Because I think one level is more inarticulate and sensed, and one level is your conscious brain arguing with that level. And if you can’t be articulate about the sensory level, a lot of times, that intellectual argument will win out. If that makes sense. That may sound more convoluted, but it is what I think is going on.

Carolyn Daughters  39:04

I could see that. And also, so one thing that’s happening with Jeff in It Had to Be Murder, which is the basis of Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich (and Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock). In looking out this window every day, he’s noticing these habits that these people do every single day. This woman puts her head in her hands every single night, and maybe she has cocktail in front of her. The guy comes home and he puts his hat on the hook. Like, they do the same things every night. They play loud music. And then, a couple in one of the apartments, they head out for the evening. They do the same stuff. So when they don’t do something, he’s like, okay, what’s going on there? So then he starts coming up with the alternate solutions. Maybe this person’s not feeling well today, or this person had to work late. Or he comes out, he comes up with these reasons. And then when the reasons start falling flat, or when his gut is telling him, like, no something else is happening, then he’s like, okay, I’m going to spend some extra time looking at and it ends up being the Thorvalds’ window. Do you have that sense, Sarah, where you’re like, you’re talking to people, or you interact with them, and you know what that interaction looks like, or how they respond to things, or what their facial expressions, body language, or just verbal language is like, and something’s off, and you’re like, something’s going on. Did you get those sorts of alarm bells?

Sarah Harrison  40:44

Oh, sure, definitely. And I think within the stakes are high, and we think that goes along with what I was saying before. Is like, when do you start talking yourself out of what your body is sensing, and it’s when there’s some consequences you don’t like. If the alternate explanation is he murdered his wife, and you’re having to call the police and look like an idiot because you’re explaining what’s almost feels unexplainable. I saw him walk in this weird way and looked in a strange way, and these daily habits were out of sync, ergo, he murdered his wife. That just doesn’t land as you might like it. And so you might try and talk yourself out of it. Well, there’s some other explanations I should explore right before I go down the murder accusation route.

Carolyn Daughters  41:39

So to foreshadow without giving anything away. In Graham Greene’s The Ministry of Fear …

Sarah Harrison  41:46

I haven’t read that yet. Don’t give it away.

Carolyn Daughters  41:49

No, nothing is being given away. We’re only giving away the details of Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich. What I will say is that convention, what we do normally or every day, or what is considered a normal response, plays so strong a role in that book that the character posits that maybe one would die before one would raise one’s hand and say, like, hey, this situation is really crazy or weird. You would allow almost anything to happen, rather than to be embarrassed by calling attention to something that is not the big deal you think it might be. And I think that is so interesting. So, okay, right after 9/11, we go to an airport, you have your bag next to you. Say somebody calls you up to the counter at the gate. And if you left your bag behind, that bag right after 9/11 would be confiscated. Three people, 10 people would have called someone’s attention to it. It was a big deal right to leave your bag abandoned in an airport, whereas nowadays, if somebody calls you up to the counter, you can leave all your bags there and nobody blinks. Well once, coming back to Paris, where I love the cafe culture, but I was once few years back, probably about four years back on a train to the airport, and I am sitting across from two guys who come on with two paper bag packages. And they’re heavy paper bag packages, so they have a hand underneath the bag and a second hand on the top, which the rolled over part of the paper bag. They set them each under their seats, and they’re both leaning forward as if in anticipation or expectation. And something inside me was like, This is not right. I just I in my gut, I was like, This is not right. This is weird. This is wrong. And on this train ride, I spoke up not one time, but I was in a deep sweat and never so happy to get off the train when it was my time to get off the train. But I kept thinking to myself, like, at what point do we know that we should raise our hand and be like, Hey, I’m going to be the crazy lady. Or do we do like I did? Convention kept my mouth shut. I was like, surely, this is nothing, and I never read it or heard anything. So it was nothing. But in Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich, he determines, I think this guy murdered his wife, and he gets police involved. He gets Sam, the man who helps around his house, to help. He puts people in risk, at risk, in danger. He’s like, No, this guy murdered his wife. And for me, would I have to witness the murder to be able to raise my hand? I’ve asked myself this question. What would it take for me to be like, Okay, this is a problem, and I don’t know the answer.

Sarah Harrison  45:27

I like the approach of the book. So it was Jeff in Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich, and this is where it does deviate from the H.G. Wells version. It’s pretty merely an observer, and it’s an observer of some sort, and you’re evaluating the observer, and he does seem flippant and self-centered and all this stuff, very passive. Whereas Jeff is conducting experiments, and unfortunately they do risk the life of his housekeeper.

Sarah Harrison  45:59

But he’s conducting experiments and I think that that is the clincher. I think you’ve got to find the experiments, and I will. It reminds me of a weird story. It happened about a year ago outside my house. My bathroom window is higher up than my neighbors, so I look out my bathroom window and can see down into their yard. But as it happened, the elderly gentleman that lives there was living out in a trailer in the backyard, and I was watching him because I’ve lived there a number of years, and he was growing more and more emaciated, and he would have a harder and harder time coming into the house to use the bathroom or get a snack or whatever. Come from his trailer, go into the house, and after a while, I didn’t see him at all. Have you seen him? Have you seen him come into the yard? Because he was so emaciated at one point. And I was like, Okay, I know this guy’s gotta have cancer. He’s back in his trailer dying. There’s something in his house he doesn’t like. I was making the whole story in my head, which did turn out to be correct.

Carolyn Daughters  47:11

Really?

Sarah Harrison  47:12

At one point, I hadn’t seen him come in so long, and I was like, hmm, is he dead? Did he die? Did he die in the trailer? And nobody is anyone checking on him? Okay, do I need to call the police? And so I started my experiments. I would try and walk down the alley, and I would try and smell around the trailer, and I’d start peeking in there. He actually hadn’t passed at that point, but about a week later, there was an ambulance back there, and he had passed away. But I did these experiments, and for me, in my experiments, there was no further alarm that was coming up, so I just kept observing. Whereas Jeff in Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich and his experiments were validating his take on things.

Carolyn Daughters  48:04

He kept putting it to the test, whereas, so, and you were able to put it to the test, whereas me on a train, it’s very immediate. And so at one point, I thought to myself, I’m going to get off the train and just catch the next train. It’ll be five minutes later, but then I thought I felt really guilty. I was like, Well, what if I actually am on to something, and instead of warning people or getting everybody off the train, I’m just bringing myself to safety. We’ve discussed this, either personally or on the podcast before, but I am not an “only about my four walls” kind of person. I’m outside my four walls. I’m not about like, hey, how do I make myself safe and secure? I literally did not get off the train, because I was afraid that I would just be saving myself to everyone else’s potential peril, and I thought my own peace of mind was not worth that, and so I stayed on the train in silence.

Sarah Harrison  49:09

That’s kind of crazy. Like, you didn’t save yourself, but you also didn’t raise an alarm.

Carolyn Daughters  49:14

Nothing.

Sarah Harrison  49:15

Neither good would have come out of that.

Carolyn Daughters  49:18

In my mind, I was like, it’s nothing, it’s nothing, it’s nothing. But I knew I would be able to give myself some peace of mind if I had gotten off the train and gotten on the very next one, five minutes later, because I would have said, I know it was nothing, but now I thank goodness I’m not on that train. But then I thought to myself, What if there is? The two guys sat like, like they were almost ready to leap. They were so leaned forward and so, like, prepared.

Sarah Harrison  49:51

Did you have a conversation that would have been where I maybe started the experiments?

Carolyn Daughters  49:57

I ran zero experiments. I do remember breaking out into a sweat and then talking myself into just staying on the train in silence. It’s nothing, it’s nothing, there’s nothing to save yourself from. But even if there were, you’re not going to save yourself without saving everyone else. You’re just going to stay on the train.

Sarah Harrison  50:21

That is a very interesting compromise.

Carolyn Daughters  50:24

I don’t know. It’s very odd, but I will say in the story It Had to Be Murder, the basis of Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich, I was very upset with how he put Sam at risk.

Sarah Harrison  50:39

He really did he really put he like he sent him basically to trespass, to break and enter the potential murderer’s house. And it was tight at times.

Carolyn Daughters  50:53

In Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich, Jeff writes on this card or this paper, six words: what have you done with her? And he has Sam bring this to the house and just ruffle the house up just enough that it looks the same, but it’s obvious someone has been inside it. And Jeff says to Sam, “Do something for me that’s a little risky. In fact, damn risky. You might break a leg, or you might get shot. Hey, you might even get pinched. We’ve been together 10 years, and I wouldn’t ask you to do anything like that if I could do it myself, but I can’t, and it’s got to be done.” And Sam ends the conversation saying, “I’m just an easy mark for you.” And Sam went. He says this, it’s got to be done. Is that true?

Sarah Harrison  51:49

I mean, it depends on your depends on your brain. You talk a little bit about your brain, and you’re like, Well, I’m not the person that could leave a train full people and just save myself, and I think,

Carolyn Daughters  52:02

But I wouldn’t put somebody else on the train in my stead and say, oh, hey, why don’t you?

Sarah Harrison  52:09

You wouldn’t, but you probably also wouldn’t be the one to catch the murderer.

Carolyn Daughters  52:13

No, I don’t think so, no.

Sarah Harrison  52:17

So if you have the mindset of, if this guy murdered his wife, he’s got to be caught, and I’m the only one that can do it. And he was pretty much, as far as we can tell, like the police were just like, no wrong. Stop embarrassing us. So he was.

Carolyn Daughters  52:39

But would you put Sam’s life at risk in order to capture this murderer?

Sarah Harrison  52:44

The issue with Jeff in Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich is, I do believe him. He would have done it himself. Okay? The issue was Sam that I don’t like is the power dynamic, where Sam works for him. And I do believe Sam is a black guy. I can’t remember if it overtly said it or if it was just implied.

Carolyn Daughters  53:05

I can’t remember either. But I agree.

Sarah Harrison  53:07

But I do believe he was and so there’s a power dynamic that I don’t like, although I also I do believe Jeff that he would have done it himself if he could have, of course, if he was physically capable, he would have never been staring out his window.

Carolyn Daughters  53:21

He would never have noticed all of the things he noticed.

Sarah Harrison  53:23

And this guy would have gotten away with it, for, as far as we can tell in the story. He would have gotten away with murdering his wife. So I don’t love that he put Sam at risk. I mean, I don’t completely exculpate Sam either. He could have said no, he would not have been fired for it, right? He could have said no, but there was a power dynamic at play that makes the asking uncomfortable. “We’ve been together 10 years. You know? It felt a little bit heavy handed to me, a little pressure filled.

Carolyn Daughters  53:57

Like, we’ve been together through thick and thin.

Sarah Harrison  54:01

He asked him to do something totally illegal and dangerous. That doesn’t take away Sam’s agency, but he’s not in a place of necessarily having equal agency either. That’s my take on it. I don’t love it. I do understand it. I don’t necessarily disagree with it, and Sam went grumbling, but he did go.

Carolyn Daughters  54:27

Sam had some agency in your mind, like he didn’t. He could have said, I’m not going. That’s crazy.\

Sarah Harrison  54:33

I don’t think there would have been negative repercussions on Sam. I just think he felt more obligated than he would have liked, which, frankly, does happen at work a lot, even like non-racially charged situations. So, you feel obligated to do something you don’t really want to do. Somebody’s twisting your arm about it. I don’t love it.

Carolyn Daughters  54:57

Some part of you is saying, Don’t do this thing. But you end up doing it anyhow?

Sarah Harrison  55:01

Like, I don’t want to do it. They’re asking me for it. I’ll do it this time. Granted, it hasn’t risked my life. If somebody was trying to risk my life, especially having family and having the kids, I would be like, Nah. You figure out something else. Or let’s come up with a new plan. But Sam did do it, and it was different times too. It’s not like the police were getting warrants or anything like that. It was a little wild west seeming.

Carolyn Daughters  55:33

One tie between both stories. H.G. Wells’ Through a Window and Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich (It Had to Be Murder) is this cinematic entertainment of being able to sit on the sofa, look out at the world and see these stories emerging, seeing life happening outside your four walls. And in both stories, reality encroaches on the sanctity or security of this home life, which I think is a really interesting thing. Anytime people are involved and we’re looking out at other people, we’re building stories about people, we’re starting to care about what happens to people, or in some cases, maybe not caring, I don’t know. And Through a Window, I think there’s less ostensible caring, yes, but the real world ends up encroaching, which I think is super interesting, and it does it in both stories. So it’s like it’s not a movie screen in this sense, right? It feels like cinematic entertainment, but there are actual human beings doing real, in-the-moment things, and it’s so unpredictable. It’s very human in that sense, right? You can’t, you can’t fully predict what’s going to happen. And in both instances, the danger happening outside the window enters the sanctity of the home in, I think, an interesting way. And that’s really, I think, where the physical frailness. Or if you’re an invalid and you can’t get up off the sofa. Both of your legs are broken, for example, as is the case with Bailey in Through a Window, that’s where the alarm bells come in. The danger enters the sanctity and you can’t run from the danger.

Sarah Harrison  57:39

That’s, I think, extremely the case in the H.G. Wells version, where through basically no interference, the gentleman climbs up and the watcher is just throwing prescription pill bottles at him. Whereas Bailey, or Jeff in Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich, causes the trouble. It’s interesting because he’s, he’s so enamored of his observation.

Carolyn Daughters  58:11

How do you think he causes it?

Sarah Harrison  58:13

Because he’s playing all his tricks. Two can play at that game, basically, is how I would summarize it. He’s out there watching, but he alerts the murderer that he’s being watched. And so he surreptitiously gathers who’s watching him, and he figures it out, and he goes to his apartment and he tries to kill him. But he had what this plaster bust stuck in his head, faking out his head. So he just tricks him and the moments gone and in. In It Had to Be Murder (Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich).

Sarah Harrison  58:48

Yes, Rear Window is what I’m calling it. In Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich. Through all of his, sending Sam over there and leaving notes and ruffling things up, Jeff lets Thorvald know he knows he’s being watched. And so then he moves to like, Okay, now I’m going to do some watching. And he does figure out who’s watching him.

Carolyn Daughters  59:10

It happens really fast, and it’s terrifying, where Thorvald across the way, through lights on, lights off, through a phone call to identify voice. And then, the phone line is cut. And Jeff is saying, Well, hey, is Sam here or Sam not here? And those of us who have seen Rear Window, we’re like, okay, we know the tension amped up here. We know a bit better about what’s going on.

Sarah Harrison  59:42

So that’s very interesting. And I did like the transfer there of the watcher, or the watched becoming the counter watcher, and it’s almost like the person looking out the window thinks they’ve discovered some new capacity. Like, hey, watching people is really great. You can notice a lot if you just are noticing. But everyone can notice a lot all of the time. It’s not like your special gift. And so they become the watched.

Carolyn Daughters  1:00:14

Although, I will say Jeff in Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich has a really great attention to detail and an understanding of simple things like how a person wears a hat or takes it off, and he draws various conclusions from these sorts of things, and then he notices something is off with what he calls it a freak synchronization. He doesn’t know what’s off, but it turns out there’s construction happening, and one side of the house is higher than the other. And so he sees people talking in one room, the kitchen. He sees them in, I think, the bedroom, and something is off. And later he determines one side is higher than the other. Aha, that’s the construction. That’s where the body must be. He realizes that all of this information has been lodged in his brain. And he has this epiphany where he realizes this is actually what’s happening.

Sarah Harrison  1:01:08

And that’s what I think about, about noticing things like, I feel like, as humans, we notice things at the sensory level, and we argue against it because we can’t always articulate it, but once you start being able to articulate it. Like, he can’t quite place, like you’re saying, what he has absorbed, but he hasn’t put two and two together. He’s just absorbed it. But when you can reach into those depths and begin to actually say, Oh, it’s this and this and this, I think it can give us more confidence in the things that we are sensing and why it’s leading us down certain paths?

Carolyn Daughters  1:02:03

I really enjoyed reading these stories. I enjoyed, like, understanding where Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich came from. Like so much Alfred Hitchcock, it’s based on amazing books and short stories. I think we’re gonna do a future episode on Rear Window.

Sarah Harrison  1:02:25

I think we got to do a movie night now. I really want to see the Christopher Reeve version, and check it out. But thank you, listener for listening to us even through our divergences from the plot into our personal plot lines.

Carolyn Daughters  1:02:43

We have a few personal plot lines very once in a while.

Sarah Harrison  1:02:48

In my mind, it adds a little bit of flavor, but you tell us, listener.

Carolyn Daughters  1:02:56

You always say singular, listener. So you’re talking to one person.

Sarah Harrison  1:03:01

I’m talking to you, listener, you.

Carolyn Daughters  1:03:04

Every once in a while, my brain goes she thinks one person’s listening like that, one rando is like, Yep, I’m your listener.

Sarah Harrison  1:03:12

It’s me, here in my basement watching out the window. No, no. I believe in talking to the singular person, not the group.

Carolyn Daughters  1:03:23

I like it.

Sarah Harrison  1:03:27

All right, well, what’s our next book, Carolyn?

Carolyn Daughters  1:03:30

That is an incredible question. I think it is The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene, which I’m not spoiling, but I read and loved. I love Graham Greene. I love Graham Greene. I’m very excited to talk about this political wartime thriller.

Sarah Harrison  1:03:49

I’m also excited. And I’m excited about an upcoming guest who is doing a really cool thing with Margery Allingham.

Carolyn Daughters  1:03:58

Mike Ripley. He has continued the Albert Campion stories, which is amazing. And so we get more Albert Campion. If you haven’t read Albert Campion yet, listen to our recent episodes on Margery Allingham, and then he’s going to fill in a whole lot of gaps for us. He’s going to talk about wartime mysteries. He’s going to talk about Margery Allingham. He’s going to talk about the Albert Campion novels and about picking up the mantle and continuing the stories. And he’s going to tell us about his book Mr. Campion’s Christmas.

Sarah Harrison  1:04:30

I love talking to guests who put new twists on these classic works. Lot of good stuff coming your way. Thanks so much for listening to our episode on Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich. Please help other mystery lovers find our show with a like, subscribe, share, or rating. It’s totally free, and it means the world to us. If the spirit of mystery so moves you, we have a few ways you can financially support our labor of love. Click the link in the show notes to support this podcast. Buy your books through our Amazon store or join our Patreon, where subscribers have access to additional episodes that include bonus content and discussions of the movies inspired by some of the greatest mysteries ever written. Thanks for joining us in our journey through the history of mystery. Until next time, stay mysterious.