Production
The Hitch-Hiker went into production on 24 June 1952 and wrapped in late July. Location shooting took place in the Alabama Hills near Lone Pine and Big Pine, California. Working titles for the film were "The Difference" and "The Persuader".
Director Ida Lupino was a noted actress who began directing when Elmer Clifton got sick and couldn't finish the film he was directing for Filmways, the company started by Lupino and her husband Collier Young to make low-budget issue-oriented movies. Lupino stepped in to finish the film, and went on to direct her own projects. The Hitch-Hiker was her first hard-paced fast-moving picture after four "woman's" films about social issues.
Lupino interviewed the two prospectors that Billy Cook had held hostage, and got releases from them and from Cook as well, so that she could integrate parts of Cook's life into the script. To appease the censors at the Hays Office, however, she reduced the number of deaths to three.
The Hitch-Hiker premiered in Boston on 20 March 1953 and immediately went into general release. It was marketed with the tagline: When was the last time you invited death into your car?
Read more about this topic: The Hitch-Hiker
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“To expect to increase prices and then to maintain them at a higher level by means of a plan which must of necessity increase production while decreasing consumption is to fly in the face of an economic law as well established as any law of nature.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
“The production of obscurity in Paris compares to the production of motor cars in Detroit in the great period of American industry.”
—Ernest Gellner (b. 1925)