Production notes

Spellbound was made over contract disagreements between Alfred Hitchcock and producer David O. Selznick. Hitchcock's contract with Selznick began in March 1939, but only resulted in three films: Rebecca (1940), Spellbound and The Paradine Case (1947) (he made seven other films during that period under loan-out deals to other studios, including 1946's Notorious which was sold to RKO in mid-production.) Selznick had wanted Hitchcock to make a film based upon Selznick's own positive experience with psychoanalysis; Selznick, at Hitchcock's suggestion, purchased the rights to the 1927 novel The House of Dr. Edwardes by Hilary St. George Saunders and John Palmer (who had co-written it under the pseudonym Francis Beeding), for approximately $40,000. In December 1943, Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville, began working on a treatment of the novel, and consulted prominent British psychologists and psychoanalysts so as to accurately represent the psychological elements of the story. However, the following month, in January 1944, Hitchcock hired Angus MacPhail, with whom he had collaborated on several war-related short films, to co-author the treatment. MacPhail was ultimately given the adaptation credit, and the extent to which Reville was involved in the final product is unknown. Following the completion of the treatment, screenwriter Ben Hecht began writing the screenplay. Between May and July 1944, Selznick submitted numerous drafts of Hecht's screenplay for approval from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which objected to various words and phrases in it, including "sex menace," "frustrations," "libido," and "tomcat." This resulted in some alterations in the screenplay, including the removal of most of a character named Mary Carmichael, a violent nymphomaniac at Green Manors. However, the suicide of Dr. Murchison in the screenplay—which typically violated the MPAA's rules against depicting suicide—was allowed to remain, as it was reasoned by Selznick that the character was clearly "of unsound mind," rendering him an exception.

Selznick originally wanted Joseph Cotten, Dorothy McGuire, and Paul Lukas to play the roles ultimately portrayed by Peck, Bergman, and Chekhov, respectively. Greta Garbo was considered for the role of Dr. Constance Petersen. Hitchcock wanted Joseph Cotten to portray Dr. Murchison. Selznick also wanted Jennifer Jones to portray Dr. Petersen but Hitchcock objected. Five years after her death, Peck revealed to People magazine that he had a brief affair with Bergman during the filming of the movie.

Selznick brought in his own therapist, May Romm, MD, to serve as a technical advisor on the production. Dr. Romm and Hitchcock clashed frequently. Further contention was caused by the hiring of surrealist artist Salvador Dalí to conceive certain scenes in the film's key dream sequence. However, the sequence conceived and designed by Dalí and Hitchcock, once translated to film, proved to be too lengthy and complicated for Selznick, so the vast majority of what had been filmed ultimately was edited out. Two minutes of the dream sequence appear in the final film, but according to Ingrid Bergman, the original had been twenty minutes long. The cut footage is now considered lost, although some production stills have survived in the Selznick archives. Eventually, Selznick hired William Cameron Menzies, who had worked on Gone With the Wind, to oversee the set designs and direct the sequence. Hitchcock himself had very little to do with its actual filming. Both Bergman and Peck were married to others at the time of production—Bergman to Petter Aron Lindström, and Peck to Greta Kukkonen—but they had a brief affair during filming. Their secret relationship became public knowledge when Peck confessed to Brad Darrach of People in an interview in 1987, five years after Bergman's death. "All I can say is that I had a fiery kinda love for her, and I think that's where I ought to stop... I was young. She was young. We were involved for weeks in close and intense work." Parts of the film were shot in Alta, Utah at the Alta Lodge and Wasatch Ranch. The film's picnic sequence between Peck and Bergmans' characters was filmed at the Cooper Ranch in Northridge, Los Angeles, while other sequences—such as the train depot scene—were filmed on the Universal Studios lot. Hitchcock's cameo appearance in the film occurs approximately at the forty-minute mark, when he can be seen exiting an elevator at the Empire State Hotel, carrying a violin case and smoking a cigarette. The trailer for Spellbound's original theatrical release in America highlighted this cameo of Hitchcock's, showing the footage twice and even freeze-framing Hitchcock's brief appearance while a narrator points out that the ordinary-looking man in the footage is the director. Spellbound was shot in black and white, except for two frames of bright red at the conclusion, when Dr. Murchison's gun is fired into the camera. This detail was deleted in most 16mm and video formats but was restored for the film's DVD release and airings on Turner Classic Movies.

The film features an orchestral score by Miklós Rózsa that pioneered the use of the theremin, performed by Dr. Samuel Hoffman. Selznick originally wanted Bernard Herrmann, but when Herrmann became unavailable, Rózsa was hired and eventually won the Oscar for his score. Although Rózsa considered Spellbound to contain some of his best work, he said "Alfred Hitchcock didn't like the music — said it got in the way of his direction. I haven't seen him since." In his autobiography, Rózsa wrote that he was saddened that Hitchcock had not congratulated him, or even attempted to contact him, for winning an Oscar for his film's score. During the film's protracted post-production, considerable disagreement arose about the music, exacerbated by a lack of communication between producer, director, and composer. Rózsa had scored another film, The Lost Weekend, before Spellbound was released and had used the theremin in that score as well. This led to allegations that he had recycled music from Selznick's film in the Paramount production. Meanwhile, Selznick's assistant Audray Granville tampered with the Spellbound scoring by replacing some of Rózsa's material with earlier music by Franz Waxman and Roy Webb. The tangled history of the scoring process has been explored by Jack Sullivan (Hitchcock's Music, 2006) and especially Nathan Platte (Making Music in Selznick's Hollywood, 2018), both of which qualify and sometimes contradict the early accounts of the participants. Rózsa's music achieved great popularity outside the film. Selznick's innovative use of promotional recordings for radio broadcast made the themes familiar and eventually inspired Rózsa to prepare a full-scale Spellbound Concerto for piano, theremin, and orchestra. This work became a popular staple in the movie concerto genre and has received multiple recordings. Intrada Records made the first recording of the film's complete score with the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra. This album also included music not heard in the finished film.

The production credits on the film were as follows:

Director – Alfred Hitchcock Producer – David O. Selznick Writing – Ben Hecht (screenplay), Angus MacPhail (adaptation) Cinematography – George Barnes (director of photography) Music – Miklós Rózsa Art direction – James Basevi (art director), John Ewing (associate art director), Emile Kuri (interior decoration) Film editing – Hal C. Kern (supervising film editor), William H. Ziegler (associate film editor) Production assistant – Barbara Keon Special effects – Jack Cosgrove – special effects Assistant director – Lowell J. Farrell Sound – Richard DeWeese (recorder) Design of dream sequence – Salvador Dalí Psychiatric advisor – May E. Romm, M.D.

Spellbound was performed as a one-hour radio adaptation on Lux Radio Theatre on March 8, 1948. On January 25, 1951 Screen Directors Playhouse also did a one-hour adaptation. Both versions starred Joseph Cotten. Rózsa's score inspired Jerry Goldsmith to become a film composer.