Dial M for Murder (1954)

What the trade press printed

The Digest of Trade Press Reviews in the 3 Jul 1954 Canadian Moving Picture Digest gathered favorable lines from five trade papers. Film Daily found “a solid emotional impact,” Exhibitor called it “top grade,” and Boxoffice predicted audiences “on the edges of their seats.” Showmen’s Trade Review expected “exceptional returns,” and Motion Picture Herald offered “Tight, Taut, Tingling.”

The same paper followed the Toronto engagement through the summer. Its 3 Jul 1954 issue reported a sneak preview at the Village Theatre and a coming run at Shea’s, with a stunt arranged by Irving Herman of Warner Bros., Len Bishop and Station CHUM. Three names were to be picked for telephone calls each evening, and anyone who answered by giving the title of the picture could collect $25. The 24 Jul 1954 issue described a second promotion under Bishop, in which young women in “somewhat startling attire” walked the downtown streets, and onlookers who kept staring found a plug for the picture on the rear.

The paper’s listings put the film at the Orpheum in Vancouver and the Paramount in Saint John on 3 Jul 1954, in its second week at Shea’s on 17 Jul, and in its third week there on 24 Jul. Its 17 Jul issue also reported that the Ontario Board of Moving Picture Censors had classified the picture as Adult Entertainment, together with The Long Wait and Indiscretion of an American Wife.

The reviews

John McCarten of The New Yorker wished the script had allowed one of Hitchcock’s “spectacular chases,” though he wrote that after a talky first 30 minutes the piece became “grimly diverting.” Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post called it “completely choice” and described the camerawork as that of “a master enjoying his script.” The Monthly Film Bulletin was less impressed, calling the result “a neat piece of filmed theatre” and the work of Milland, Kelly and Cummings “rather drab.”

Harrison’s Reports rated it “a mild entertainment” and blamed slow action on a story told mainly through dialogue. Variety saw “basic weaknesses” in the setup that kept it from working as a suspense show for “any but the most gullible,” and said the performances and Hitchcock’s tricks covered them only in part. Neither of those two notices, which raised objections, is quoted in the Digest’s 3 Jul 1954 entry.

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called the picture a “technical triumph” in a favorable review. Three of these notices singled out the stage veterans. Coe found Williams and Dawson “smooth as silk,” the Bulletin granted Williams’s inspector “a touch of individuality,” and Crowther named Williams “the best of the lot.”

Later versions and rankings

Richard Weill’s study, Frederick Knott and Dial M for Murder, is dated 2026 and published by McFarland. Jeffrey Hatcher’s stage adaptation opened at the Old Globe in San Diego in 2022 and turned Max Halliday into Maxine Hadley, which made the affair a lesbian one. Viggo Mortensen plays the wife’s lover in A Perfect Murder (1998), Andrew Davis’s remake with Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow, which merges Halliday and Swann into one character.

On television, Diane Cilento played Margot and Laurence Harvey played Tony in the color version that ABC made in 1967, with Hugh O’Brian as Max. Broadway parts were repeated by Williams, Dawson and Maurice Evans (as Tony) in the television film that NBC aired in 1956. The American Film Institute placed the picture ninth among mysteries in its 2008 10 Top 10 and 48th on its 2001 thrills list. The Guardian called it “a taut, acidly funny thriller” in 2012.

The 3-D record

The film played in 3-D in some UK cinemas in the summer of 2013. The Detroit Institute of Arts had a sold-out engagement during the limited national re-release of February 1982, which Warner Bros. mounted with Chris Condon’s single-strip StereoVision system. That re-release was prompted by the strong showing of a dual-strip revival in San Francisco, at the York Theater, in February 1980.

The first 3-D showings had a different result. The Philadelphia Inquirer of 23 May 1954 recorded how the 3-D version fared at the Randolph in that city. After one preview on 18 May and four showings on 19 May, the theater’s customers thinned and many complained, and a manager telephoned the studio for permission to show the film flat. The Inquirer wrote that in exhibitors’ terms the picture “literally died,” and that business improved once the glasses were dropped and the 2-D version went on. Hitchcock’s own verdict on the process was that it was “a nine-day wonder” and that he had arrived on the ninth day.

Later accounts of the production

Donald Spoto, Hitchcock’s biographer and also the author of a Kelly biography, High Society, reports that the director had little enthusiasm for the assignment. Spoto quotes Kelly as saying Hitchcock stayed calm because he was “already preparing his next picture,” Rear Window. Kelly’s own recollection supports that account. She said Hitchcock talked to her about Rear Window all through the making of this film, before her being in it had been discussed.

The picture itself replaced another plan. Later accounts say Warner Bros. let Hitchcock drop The Bramble Bush, from David Duncan’s 1948 novel, which he had planned as a Transatlantic Pictures film with his partner Sidney Bernstein. The script and budget gave trouble, and the two men decided to end the partnership.

Kelly won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress for her 1954 work in this film, Rear Window and The Country Girl. Rumors of an affair between Kelly and Milland circulated at the time, fed by the columnist Hedda Hopper, but neither of them ever admitted it, so the story cannot be confirmed.

Cummings had already worked for Hitchcock in Saboteur. The play’s lover, Max Halliday, was renamed Mark for the film. Hitchcock’s cameo comes about 13 minutes in, in a black-and-white reunion photograph, where he is seated among former students and faculty at a banquet table. The estimated North American box-office figure for 1954 is $2.7 million.