At the start of their picnic, Anthony Edwardes asks Constance Petersen about sandwiches. “Ham or liverwurst,” he asks. “Liverwurst,” Petersen silently replies with a knowing smile.
Because Hitchcock cut the actual picnic from Spellbound, some say that this ploy is Hitchcock and his screenwriter Ben Hecht at their wurst. But it’s good visually. Bergman’s Mona Lisa smile adds great charm to her beauty.
“Liverwurst,” yes!
The Spellbound picnic is original to Ben Hecht and Angus McPhail’s screenplay. There isn’t a picnic episode in Francis Beeding’s novel The House of Dr. Edwardes. Hitchcock approved the episode and later used added a sexy picnic (without sandwiches) in To Catch a Thief (1955).
See Alfred Hitchcock. Spellbound (1945). The screenplay is by Ben Hecht, adapted by Angus McPhail, and based on Francis Beeding’s The House of Dr. Edwardes (1927). Beeding is a pseudonym used by Hillary A. Saunders and John Palmer.
The cast: Gregory Peck as Anthony Edwardes and Ingrid Bergman as Constance Petersen