‘Hollywood, VT’ project spotlights the Green Mountain State’s movie history

Alia Quart Khan can pitch her “Hollywood, VT” project in 25 words: Los Angeles film publicist moves to small-town Vermont during the Covid-19 pandemic, only to strike upon, study and share the state’s movie history.

Ask the 45-year-old for more specifics — take an upcoming Brattleboro screenplay reading and screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 “The Trouble with Harry,” just one of several celluloid classics with Green Mountain roots — and she’ll elaborate with a personal tale worthy of its own script.

The daughter of a Canadian mother and Pakistani father, Khan was born and raised in Switzerland, then earned a bachelor’s degree in cultural studies and political science from McGill University in Montreal and a master’s in film and television studies from the University of Warwick in England.

Moving to Los Angeles, Khan promoted major movies including the 2011 Academy Award-winning best picture “The Artist,” took work trips to film festivals in Cannes, Toronto and Venice, and directed publicity for the nonprofit arts organization Film Independent and its Oscar-eve Spirit Awards.

Then came the 2020 pandemic. After a shelter-in-place order curbed access to California businesses and beaches, Khan’s aunt invited her to join extended family for six weeks in a different Orange County — the one 3,000 miles east in central Vermont.

“I didn’t realize how much my nervous system had internalized being in Los Angeles and a high-level industry,” Khan recalled of her arrival in Randolph, population 4,774. “It turns out that rural is really good for me.”

Six weeks have morphed into six years. Pandemic movie marathoning, in turn, has led to the Hollywood, VT project, which aims to focus attention on works filmed in or featuring the Green Mountain State.

Take Hitchcock’s comic mystery “The Trouble with Harry,” which brought the director and his cameras to the Northeast Kingdom town of Craftsbury in the fall of 1954.

Khan was surprised to learn the movie starred Shirley MacLaine in her screen debut, a 6-year-old Jerry Mathers before his 1957 sitcom start as the title character in “Leave It to Beaver” and John Forsythe in advance of his television roles in the 1970s series “Charlie’s Angels” and 1980s soap “Dynasty.”

Sightings of the cast and crew sparked headlines from Brattleboro to Burlington.

“Hitchcock, who said this is his first visit to Vermont, praised the beauty of our state,” the Caledonian-Record reported on Sept. 21, 1954.

The director hoped to capture the season’s flaming foliage using a new VistaVision widescreen filming process. But after a few sunny days, a series of storms forced everyone onto a makeshift sound stage inside Morrisville’s American Legion. There, the sound crew struggled to muffle rain beating atop the tin roof. By the time an 850-pound camera fell and nearly flattened Hitchcock, he decided to decamp.

“Hollywood’s experiment with making an entire motion picture in Vermont ended,” the local News & Citizen reported on Oct. 14, 1954, “as director-producer Alfred Hitchcock and his cast leave for their home studios after bucking Vermont’s unpredictable weather for more than a month.”

All retreated to the Paramount lot in Los Angeles, but not before raking up enough maple leaves to decorate the set for the remaining scenes. A year later, a crowd of nearly 1,000 people — including Hitchcock, MacLaine and the governors of all six New England states — attended the movie’s world premiere at Barre’s Paramount Theatre on Sept. 30, 1955.

“The film was very well received by Vermonters, who got to see some of their own backyard in the splendor of Technicolor,” film historian Steven DeRosa noted in his 2001 book “Writing with Hitchcock.”

Today, Khan marvels at such memories.

“The fact that a film nerd like me didn’t know about ‘The Trouble with Harry’? I’ve discovered a lot of people haven’t heard of it. I like the idea of shining a light on a piece of history.”

Khan sought grants for a statewide series featuring many Vermont movies, only to receive polite rejections that questioned if she was attempting too much too soon. And so, starting small, she held screenings this past winter at Randolph’s century-old Playhouse Movie Theatre. Locals filled its 150 seats to see Hitchcock’s work as well as 1987’s “Baby Boom” (filmed in Manchester and the nearby town of Peru), 1988’s “Sweet Hearts Dance” (filmed in Hyde Park) and 1996’s “The Spitfire Grill” (filmed in Peacham, St. Johnsbury and Troy).

Khan has since received funding from the Vermont Community Foundation and the John M. Bissell Foundation, a nonprofit supporter of local films, for a two-part “The Trouble with Harry” program at Brattleboro’s Latchis Theatre:

• A screenplay reading on Oct. 23 will feature Tom Bodett — a Dummerston resident who’s the voice of Motel 6’s “we’ll leave the light on for you” ads — and several staffers of Vermont Public performing the script by the late John Michael Hayes, a four-time Hitchcock collaborator and former associate professor of drama at Dartmouth College.

• A subsequent movie screening on Nov. 8 will be capped by a conversation led by Bess O’Brien, a Northeast Kingdom filmmaker who lives 30 miles from the Craftsbury location.

Hitchcock may have fled the state early, but Khan hopes to stick around. She has founded her own cultural consulting firm, On Goldfish Pond Creative, and joined the governing boards of the Vermont Arts Council and Vermont Production Collective, a nonprofit that supports film professionals.

“This has been a wonderful opportunity to talk to other creatives, to collaborate and, given the state of the world right now, to play,” she said. “If I get asked what’s next, I’ve got plenty of ideas.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘Hollywood, VT’ project spotlights the Green Mountain State’s movie history.