The Saboteur project began under David O. Selznick, who had Hitchcock under contract. According to John Houseman, assigned by Selznick to supervise the production, the director's first film under his new American contract, Rebecca (1940), had not been a thoroughly pleasant experience, thanks in part to constant meddling from the notoriously hands-on Selznick. Hitchcock also wanted to do something far removed from the stately mansions of England and came up with a sabotage thriller story. It was virtually a reworking of his British film The 39 Steps (1935) that pitted a blue collar worker with various societal misfits as allies against a cabal of wealthy Americans working for the Nazis. Despite the success of Hitchcock's previous film, Foreign Correspondent (1940), another political thriller with anti-fascist sentiments, Selznick did not like the idea, and after making a few suggestions, sold the script and Hitchcock's services to producer-director Frank Lloyd and Universal Studios. Lloyd's partner, Jack Skirball, was assigned the day-to-day supervisory details.

While the Universal deal was pending, Hitchcock initially worked on the script with English writer Joan Harrison, with whom he had collaborated since 1935, with the assistance, as usual, of his insightful and capable wife, Alma Reville. A reporter visiting the Hitchcock home during this phase of the work wrote about the three scripters rushing into different rooms with typewriters and manuscripts, working feverishly without notice of anyone else. He also observed Hitchcock gorging himself on "huge goblets of Strawberries Romanoff, a concoction of ice cream, fruit and liqueurs," then dozing off while the frenetic activity continued around him.

Harrison made crucial contributions to the story, but she was eager to get out and make it on her own in Hollywood and took a producing job at Universal. Hitchcock had been expecting her to leave, in fact had given interviews in which he predicted her eventual success apart from him, but at this point in the process he panicked at losing her and tried to get Selznick to come up with the money to entice her to stay. Instead, he got European-born Peter Viertel, a junior writer under contract to Selznick with no screen work to his credit but glowing reviews for his first novel. He also had a commendable pedigree: son of film director Berthold Viertel and the actress-writer Salka Viertel, who had been Greta Garbo's confidante and collaborator. So Hitchcock was appeased.

At their first meeting, Hitchcock referred to Viertel as "Dear Boy" and said he would teach him in 20 minutes how to write a script, launching into an elaborate explanation of the difference between types of shots, using musical terms to contrast establishing long shots (overtures) with close-ups (cymbal crashes). He insisted Viertel avoid lengthy passages and too much dialogue ("no speeches, please") and to focus on getting a script together "to get the whole project moving." Even after the dynamics changed with Pearl Harbor, Hitchcock tried to stay away from creating a message picture with dialogue he considered "too on the nose." He did, however, keep one instance of Viertel's breaking the rules, a rather explicit fascist speech by the fifth-column leader in which he sneeringly refers to "the great masses...the moron millions."

The character of the blonde billboard model who is dragged along by the hero in his cross-country pursuit of the truth was reportedly based on Hitchcock's friend, the model and beauty consultant Anita Colby.

Early on in the process, Hitchcock came up with the idea of setting the story's climax perilously atop the Statue of Liberty.

Viertel said he sometimes had to keep Hitchcock from repeating himself too much, such as the director's idea to give the fifth-column leader a physical flaw (an eye twitch or missing finger) and have it revealed at the end of a long dolly shot through the charity ball in the society mansion. When Viertel pointed out how Hitchcock had used a missing finger in The 39 Steps (1935) and the long dolly shot in Young and Innocent (1937), the director decided against his own initial idea.

Although the Universal deal was still in the works, Hitchcock and Houseman were obliged to trot the project around to other studios, part of Selznick's scheme to tout his own position and to drive up the price that Universal would eventually pay. As such, the sooner the director had a draft, the sooner he'd be out of Selznick's clutches. So when Viertel noted with chagrin that his first pass at the story on paper was not very good, Hitchcock replied, "It's no worse than a lot of others and it'll get me away from Selznick!"

The deal with Universal finally went through as the first of a two-picture contract with Selznick for the sabotage project and for Hitchcock's services on this and one future production. For this script alone, Selznick got the high figure of $120,000 ($70,000 on signing and another $50,000 after the picture grossed half a million). Selznick was also to get ten percent of the gross, and Hitchcock was confined to a $750,000 budget. Furthermore, the contract stipulated the second film in the deal had to be completed by June 1942, just over half a year away.

Although the budget of Saboteur was restrictive, Skirball decided to hire one of the country's top writers, Dorothy Parker, for additional script work and to hone what had already been done. Parker tweaked the scene with the truck driver, turning it into a mini-satire on the kind of blue-collar melodramas turned out by Warner Brothers in the 1930s. She also contributed the scenes with the billboard model's kindly, cultured blind uncle and the rescue by the troupe of circus freaks, which became in her hands a comic political debate between totalitarianism and democracy. Parker and Hitchcock also added more shots of the model's billboards (a device initiated by Viertel) for comic-ironic counterpoint.

Some of Parker's script additions caught the eye of the Production Code office, particularly her zingers aimed at the American upper class and capitalism in general. "There is a disturbing element which appears from time to time throughout this script and that is the great number of seemingly anti-social speeches and references," the censor noted. "It is essential that these speeches be rewritten to avoid giving this flavor." Some of the lines were filmed anyway, such as the blind uncle's remark that the police think that "frightening people is the first step toward protecting them" (a line the famously police-phobic Hitchcock must have relished), but it was cut from Saboteur before release. Another of Parker's quips - the observation that the fire department arrived at the upper class home much faster than it would for an ordinary dwelling-was also cut. A couple of others flagged by the censor remained: the uncle's statement that his duties as a citizen "sometimes involve disregarding the law" and Kane's warning to Pat not to trust the suspicious rich man Tobin "just because he's got a ranch and a lovely pool."

Hitchcock plucked Associate Art Director Robert Boyle from the Universal ranks to work closely with him on drawing the extensive and detailed storyboards for which the director was known, a move that greatly enhanced Boyle's reputation and future career. Boyle called him "a wonderful communicator" and remarked that of all the directors he had worked with to that point, "he was the first who not only told me what he wanted, he showed me."

by Rob Nixon