Peggy Webber’s part in The Wrong Man (1956) was a brief, but important scene as an insurance company clerk who wrongly identifies Henry Fonda as an armed robber. Her erroneous conclusion provided the impetus that propels an innocent Fonda into the bowels of injustice hell. I had to cajole Miss Webber just a bit to join me at the screening on Saturday night, “It’s such a small part…”, but thankfully she attended and her presence made for a delightful evening.
The Wrong Man was an interesting disappointment. Hitchcock’s solitary voyage into literal docudrama (he had apparently watched The Bicycle Thief and experienced a spasm of neo-realism with an actual miscarriage of justice story featured in Life Magazine) was simply too sterile to elicit rapt interest. For openers, I simply couldn’t buy a 51 year old Hank Fonda as a 38 year old Italian jazz musician thumping a bass fiddle nights at the Stork Club and living in a Jackson Heights walkup with a deliciously fragile Vera Miles and two young sons. Fonda’s abject passivity with the police as the “evidence” piled up struck me as dated and farfetched; he was completely wrong for the part. Much better was Vera Miles, Hitchcock’s first female star that was his very own, locked down under an exclusive contract to Hitch in 1955. I’ve read that Hitchcock was obsessed by Miss Miles and fussed over her as a precursor to his fantasia relationship later on with Tippi Hedren.. Well, what the hey? Given the opportunity, what heterosexual male wouldn’t have hovered over Vera in 1956? She was jaw-droppingly gorgeous and could also act. Miles’ subsequent mental breakdown in the picture along with some wonderful nighttime shots in New York City made The Wrong Man worth hanging in there till the end.
Peggy Webber recalled that Hitchcock was jolly and considerate on the set, iteratively reminding her, “Peggy, now remember, you are scared.” Webber reminisced about a career in show business that began when she was two and a half , landing her own radio show at age eleven. She has worked with darn near everyone who ever stood in front of a radio microphone in the last seventy years including such stalwarts as Charles McGraw, Ed Begley, Raymond Burr, Dick Powell, Orson Welles and countless others. Welles summoned her to Republic Studios to recite her dialogue cold without rehearsal as Lady McDuff in Macbeth (1948) and then had her refine and revise her lines repeatedly over the next two years! She also recalled her long association with the legendary Jack Webb who she knew as a teenager and worked closely with through hundreds of Dragnet radio and television shows. Of less import to Miss Webber than to some fans of her work were appearances in cult movies including The Screaming Skull and The Space Children. Webber recalled a zealous individual who emphatically declared to her that watching The Space Children, “…changed his life forever.” Hmm.
After a delightful conversation, Peggy concluded by reminding the audience about her long association with the California Radio Artists Theatre (Cart) that is carried on NPR and takes place at the Beverly Garland Hotel in North Hollywood. This indefatigable lady is still writing, producing and performing great radio shows into her eighth decade. Bravo!!
