Jigsaw for October 31, 2026: Arnie and his ray gun, "The Trouble with Harry," 1954
For Halloween, a dead man in the Vermont woods. Alfred Hitchcock shot "The Trouble with Harry" here in the fall of 1954 and released it in 1955. It is a comedy. Harry turns up dead on a hillside, and each person who finds him has some reason to think they killed him. He is buried and dug up more than once before the story ends.
The first to find him is Arnie, played by Jerry Mathers, who was six. He is out in the leaves with a toy ray gun across his chest and a holster on his belt. Three years later he was the Beaver in "Leave It to Beaver." To see him in action, watch the official trailer. His mother, Jennifer, is played by Shirley MacLaine, who was 20 and making her first film.
Hitchcock came for the color. The crew arrived in late September and worked out of the American Legion barracks in Morrisville. The Randolph Herald called it "the first moving picture ever to be made entirely in Vermont." Storms took the leaves early, and the crew glued leaves onto the trees. By mid-October Hitchcock and the cast had gone home to Hollywood, and the rest was shot on a sound stage with Vermont maples shipped west.
The film is usually placed in Craftsbury, Morrisville and Barre, but it opens somewhere else. After Saul Steinberg's drawings under the titles, the first live shot is the Sharon Congregational Church, with the green and the brick Old Town Hall beside it, now the historical society's museum. I recognized it. IMDb and Wikipedia leave Sharon out; the Vermont Archive Movie Project lists it.
A fan photographed the same view in October 2003. The church had not changed, and neither had the three trees in front of it.
Sharon was not the only town left off the list. When the film came out in October 1955, Clifton Miskelly of the Vermont Development Commission told the United Opinion in Bradford that its Vermont scenery included "the much photographed town of East Corinth."
Thirty-two years later Tim Burton brought "Beetlejuice" to East Corinth. The story is set in Winter River, a made-up town in Connecticut, and Burton is said to have found the village on postcards. The house on the hill and the red covered bridge were built for the film and taken down afterward. In 2023 the crew came back for "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice," rebuilt the house and the bridge, and shot the village again. Most of the sequel was made in London.
Vermont was in the movies long before Hitchcock. In June 1916 the Vermont Advance, a Progressive Party paper, made "A Vermont Romance," a 35-minute feature cast by a vote of its readers. It was shot in Burlington, Rutland, St. Johnsbury and Clarendon Gorge, and at the Tip Top building in White River Junction. It is billed as the first feature made entirely in Vermont, thirty-eight years before the Herald gave that title to Hitchcock.
In March 1920 D.W. Griffith brought Lillian Gish to White River Junction for the ice scenes in "Way Down East." For three weeks the crew sawed and blasted the river ice into floes and set her adrift on them. She said the temperature never rose above zero. Trailing her hand and hair in the water was her own idea. Windom Lang's hardware store in Hartford supplied props. I wrote about the film last year, in "Lillian Gish on Ice."
In 1957 Twentieth Century Fox considered Woodstock for "Peyton Place." The town was divided, and Fox went to Maine. Thirty years later came "Baby Boom," then "Funny Farm," which left behind the gazebo it built in Townshend, and then "Beetlejuice."
The Sharon church still stands on the green.
To watch the film yourself, JustWatch lists every service that carries it. It is also on Apple TV.
More from the movies
A word of thanks
To Nandor Bokor, whose 2003 trip to the film's Vermont locations gave me the second half of the then and now, and to the Hartford Historical Society, whose newsletters keep the Gish story and the Windom Lang hardware store on record.
Full-resolution images
Arnie and his ray gun, "The Trouble with Harry," 1954
Thanks for your support, as always,
Cameron Cross
Sources
Film frames: Alfred Hitchcock, "The Trouble with Harry" (Paramount, 1955)
Hitchcock Wiki, Nandor Bokor, "Location trip to Vermont, October 2003"
Randolph Herald, "Movie Makers at Work in Morrisville and Craftsbury Common," October 7, 1954
Randolph Herald, "Weather Drives Film Maker from Vermont," October 21, 1954
Vermont Public, "Film locations in Vermont: Beetlejuice in East Corinth," October 31, 2024
Vermont Public, "100 Years Later, Silent Film Showcases Vermont Scenery"
Hartford Historical Society newsletter, March-April 2015, on Way Down East
Hartford Historical Society newsletter, March-April 2020, on Windom Lang's store
VTDigger, "An icy Vermont interlude for a Hollywood legend," January 29, 2017