It is entirely possible that Cat People would never have been made if it hadn't been for Orson Welles' magnum opus Citizen Kane (1941). Although Citizen Kane received great critical acclaim and went on to be considered the best American film of all time by many, it had been an expensive and troubled production that left Welles' studio, RKO, financially strapped. They needed to make money -- fast.

RKO had noticed how rival studio, Universal Pictures, had been turning a profit for years by making horror films. Their latest release, The Wolf Man (1941) was the most recent in a long line of Universal hits that included Dracula, Frankenstein (both 1931), and The Mummy (1932). Universal's horror films generally featured elaborate monster makeup and/or transformations, and the public lined up to buy tickets again and again.

Using Universal as a model, RKO studio chief Charles Koerner decided that there was no reason why RKO couldn't make horror films too -- and with less money. Koerner decided to form a new B-movie unit at RKO that would be strictly dedicated to making low budget horror films. He needed someone to make films for the unit who could emulate the glossy formula of a Universal chiller, but also be able to do it on a shoestring budget. That person was Val Lewton.

Val Lewton had been working as a story editor to famed producer David O. Selznick, but had grown restless with his job. He needed a new challenge, and when the opportunity to produce films at RKO came along, Lewton jumped at the chance.

Lewton wasted no time in bringing his friend, writer DeWitt Bodeen, over to RKO and getting him put on salary as a contract writer. "When I reported for work," said Bodeen according to the 1973 book Val Lewton: The Reality of Terror by Joel E. Siegel, "[Lewton] ran off for me some U.S. and British horror and suspense movies which were typical of what he did not want to do. We spent several days talking about possible subjects for the first script. Mr. Koerner...was of the opinion that vampires, werewolves and man-made monsters had been over-exploited and that 'nobody has done much with cats'. He added that he had successfully audience-tested a title he considered highly exploitable--Cat People. 'Let's see what you two can do with that,' he ordered. When we were back in his office, Val looked at me glumly and said: 'There's no helping it - we're stuck with that title. If you want to get out now, I won't hold it against you.'"

Bodeen had no intention of backing out, and he and Lewton set about trying to come up with a suitable story idea to fit the title of Cat People. They researched the theme of cats present in literature, which turned out to be more than they had expected. Lewton came close to using a short story by Algernon Blackwood called Ancient Sorceries as the basis for the story, but suddenly changed his mind. "[Lewton] arrived at his office unusually early and called me in at once," said Bodeen. "He had spent a sleepless night, he confessed, and had decided that instead of a picture with a foreign setting, he would do an original story laid in contemporary New York. It was to deal with a triangle - a normal young man falls in love with a strange foreign girl who is obsessed by abnormal fears, and when her obsession destroys his love and he turns for consolation to a very normal girl, his office co-worker, the discarded one, beset by jealousy, attempts to destroy the young man's new love."

Val Lewton's sister recalled later that the storyline was in part influenced by a time when he once saw a series of French fashion sketches that depicted female models with the heads of cats. It was a striking image that had always stayed with him. Cats were also a source of anxiety for Lewton, according to his wife Ruth. In a 1993 interview she explained, "Val hated cats...I remember once I was in bed and he was writing -- he used to like to write late into the night -- there was a cat fight outside, and the next thing I knew he was up at the foot of my bed nervous and frightened. He was very unhappy about cats. I think it stemmed from an old folk tale remembered from Russia that cats were peculiar creatures that you couldn't trust."

All along Lewton knew that he wanted his old friend Jacques Tourneur to direct Cat People and asked him to join the project. Lewton and Tourneur had met while they were both working on the second unit of MGM's A Tale of Two Cities in 1935 and become friends. They had a shared sensibility that would help establish their respective careers as they worked in collaboration at RKO.

Once DeWitt Bodeen completed a rough draft of the Cat People screenplay, he and Lewton set about polishing it up for maximum effect. "Our formula is simple," Lewton told the Los Angeles Times. "A love story, three scenes of suggested horror and one of actual violence. Fadeout. It's all over in less than 70 minutes. We tossed away the horror formula right from the beginning. No grisly stuff for us. No masklike faces hardly human, with gnashing teeth and hair standing on end. No creaking physical manifestations. No horror piled on horror. You can't keep up horror that's long sustained. It becomes something to laugh at. But take a sweet love story, or a story of sexual antagonisms, about people like the rest of us, not freaks, and cut in your horror here and there by suggestion, and you've got something."

Lewton's idea of trusting that the most effective kind of horror was the kind that existed in the mind was as much a product of necessity as it was creativity, since RKO's budget constraints would prevent him from being able to do any elaborate special effects. Nevertheless, the forced limitations helped generate the script's most unnerving sequences -- all using nothing more than the power of suggestion. The famous swimming pool scene in which Irena's rival Alice is stalked by an unseen -- presumably animal -- presence was inspired, according to the 1998 book The Cinema of Nightfall: Jacques Tourneur by Chris Fujiwara, by incidents that happened to both DeWitt Bodeen and Jacques Tourneur. Bodeen had once nearly drowned while swimming in a pool alone at night, and Tourneur said that he had once been alone in a friend's swimming pool when the friend's pet cheetah got out of his cage and began roaming the area nearby.

To play the central role of Irena, Val Lewton chose kitten-faced French actress Simone Simon. Simon was already an established star in France when she signed on to do Cat People, but had yet to make her mark in America. Simon had initially come to Hollywood to make the 1936 film Girls' Dormitory for 20th Century Fox and later returned to play the role of Belle in RKO's The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941). Lewton found Simon to be an intriguing presence onscreen and thought her European mystique would bring a unique quality to the enigmatic character of Irena. With Simon's innocent beauty, it would keep audiences guessing as to whether or not the sweet Irena was even capable of turning into a murderous cat. Simon was signed to do the film at a bargain price, and the character of Irena would go on to become the defining role of her American film career.

For Irena's husband, Oliver, Val Lewton chose an RKO contract player named Kent Smith. The actor had been under contract for 9 months at the time without having appeared in a single picture at RKO. Cat People would be his first leading role.

Val Lewton chose another RKO contract player, Jane Randolph, to play Oliver's co-worker and Irena's rival Alice. Randolph was a relative newcomer to film and was being tested out by RKO in their B-movie unit to see if she had the makings of a real movie star.

Actor Tom Conway, brother of George Sanders, was also added to the cast, playing Irena's lecherous psychiatrist Dr. Judd, along with slinky feline-looking actress Elizabeth Russell in the uncredited but memorable role of "The Cat Woman" -- the woman who recognizes Irena at her wedding dinner as her "sister."

With Cat People as Lewton's first effort at producing, he was determined to lift the potentially lurid material to a higher artistic level and exceed all expectations. RKO just hoped it would be a hit.

by Andrea Passafiume