Editing Shadow of a Doubt (section)

==Production==
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The project began when the head of David Selznick's story department, Margaret McDonell, told Hitchcock that her husband Gordon had an interesting idea for a novel that she thought would make a good movie. His idea, called "Uncle Charlie", was based on the true story of [[Earle Nelson]], a serial killer of the late 1920s known as "the Gorilla Man".

''Shadow of a Doubt'' was both filmed and set in [[Santa Rosa, California]], which was portrayed as a paragon of a supposedly peaceful, small, pre-[[World War II|War]] American city. Since Thornton Wilder wrote the original script, the story is set in a small American town, a popular setting of Wilder's, but with an added Hitchcock touch to it. The director specifically wanted Wilder to work on McDonell's nine-page treatment because he admired ''[[Our Town]]''.<ref name=FT>[[François Truffaut|Truffaut, François]]. ''[https://archive.org/details/alfredhitchcockd0000fran/page/109/mode/1up?view=theater Alfred Hitchcock - A Definitive Study]''. Simon & Schuster, 1967.</ref>{{rp|109}} In Patrick McGilligan's biography of Hitchcock, he said the film was perhaps the most American film that Hitchcock had made up to that time.

The opening scenes take place in the [[List of neighborhoods in Newark, New Jersey|East Ward]] (aka the "Ironbound"/"Down Neck" section of [[Newark, New Jersey]]). The city skyline and landmarks such as the [[Pulaski Skyway]] are featured in the opening shot. The location shots were used to comply with the wartime [[War Production Board]] restrictions of a maximum cost of $5,000 for set construction.<ref name="life19430125">{{cite magazine |date=1943-01-25 |title=$5,000 Production |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=P1EEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA70 |magazine=Life |pages=70–78}}</ref>

An [[Italianate]]-style house, built in 1872, was used for exterior shots of the Newton family home. As of 2024, it is still standing, located at 904 McDonald Avenue in Santa Rosa.

The stone [[Santa Rosa Downtown station|railway station]] in the film was built in 1904 for the [[Northwestern Pacific Railroad]] and is one of the few commercial buildings in central Santa Rosa to survive the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|earthquake of April 18, 1906]]. The station is currently a visitor center and passenger service is provided by the [[Sonoma–Marin Area Rail Transit]] system. The library was a [[Carnegie Library]] which was demolished in 1964 due to seismic concerns.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://sonomalibrary.org/about/history |title=Santa Rosa's Carnegie Library|website=sonomalibrary.org|access-date=2024-08-15}}</ref> Some of the buildings in the center of Santa Rosa that are seen in the film were damaged or destroyed by [[1969 Santa Rosa earthquakes|earthquakes in 1969]]; much of the area was cleared of debris and largely rebuilt.

The film was scored by Dimitri Tiomkin, his first collaboration with Hitchcock (the others being ''[[Strangers on a Train (film)|Strangers on a Train]]'', ''[[I Confess (film)|I Confess]]'' and ''[[Dial M for Murder]]''). In his score, Tiomkin quotes the ''[[The Merry Widow|Merry Widow Waltz]]'' of [[Franz Lehár]], often in somewhat distorted forms, as a [[leitmotif]] for Uncle Charlie and his serial murders. During the opening credits, the waltz theme is heard along with a prolonged shot of couples dancing. The image recurs frequently throughout the film, and Lehár's melody is an [[earworm]] for several characters. When Young Charlie is on the verge of identifying it at the dinner table, Uncle Charlie distracts her.<ref name=FT/>{{rp|110–1}}