Val Lewton and the Creation of Cat People

Jennifer Sonner

Val Lewton and the Creation of Cat People
            In the year 1939 the film studio RKO-Radio Pictures was the “smallest of the majors” (Vieira 121) and was described as “an odd little studio that had barely survived its first ten years” (121).  In fact, the studio’s reputation was one that was belittled by other studios, like Paramount and their declaration that “In case of an air raid, go directly to RKO.  They haven’t had a hit in years!”  Desperate, the studio decided to make several changes, putting Joseph Breen and Charles Koener in charge of RKO in 1942, and it was Breen who decided to hire an “affable” story editor named Val Lewton to breathe some much needed fresh air into the studio’s motion pictures.   He would take the job, and could have complete artistic freedom and creative control if he followed certain conditions.  These conditions were:
1.      He had to produce “Horror Programmers”
2.      He had to keep the budget of each film under $150,000.
3.      Accepted titles would be arrived at by a system of marketing research
4.      Agree to a salary of $250 a week.

Lewton agreed to these conditions, but later stated that “They may think I am going to do the usual chiller stuff which’ll make a quick profit, be laughed at, and be forgotten, but I’m going to fool them . . . I’m going to do the kind of suspense movie I like” (121).  Lewton came to RKO believing that the typical vampire, werewolf, and man-made monster had been over-exploited in the last few years, but “nobody had done much with cats.”  This, in essence, is how Cat People came to be.

The title for Cat People came from, according to specific sources, an over-excited Hollywood party-goer who confronted Lewton and told him to create a film with the catchy title Cat People.  The name, despite Lewton’s objections that they were “stuck with that title,” became the basis for Lewton’s film.  This, along with a multitude of other personal inspirations, was the beginning of what was to become the film Cat People.

Cat People was written by Val Lewton and DeWitt Bodeen, the latter writer inspired by a magazine layout featuring models wearing cat masks.  According to Ruth Lewton, Val’s wife, he “dredged his own Russian Jewish psyche to write the first film” (121).  When it came to Russian folk legends, the one that effected Lewton the most were the ones about cats.  He was absolutely frightened by cats.  He used this as insight into a film that was to be anchored on the concepts of horror, though Lewton “tossed away the horror formula from the beginning” (122).  Lewton did this because he wanted a film that dramatized the psychology of fear, playing on the thing that all people dread:  the unknown.  By using darkness to highlight what may have been lurking in the shadows, Lewton created a film that used suspense and audience perception to create the big scares in Cat People.   

Another decision that helped create the suspense-filled picture was Lewton’s friend Jacques Tourneur, a man who “had a flair for creating shadowy sequences.”  According to Tourneur, they believed in “suggesting horror rather than showing it” (122).  Horror scholars have consented that “the horror is dependent on the sharply demarcated lines drawn between the animal kingdom and ourselves. If this boundary were lifted, horror might be transformed” (Powell 69).  What one finds through Lewton’s film is a new perspective on the concepts of the horror genre, one that is challenged and questioned by looking to the horror films that came before Cat People.

Another aspect that defines Val Lewton’s work on Cat People is the B-movie qualities of the film.  Lewton often referred to himself as “no artist” but also “Lewton liked to note the trashiness of his work . . . yet as any viewer of these films knows, trash was beauty for Lewton” (Nemerov 8).  The beginning of the film (which I will not describe for those who have not seen it) actually drops a hint to the audiences on Lewton’s beliefs that this work had an air of disposability to it.  This was another motif that spanned through his collection of films, as Lewton meditated on the fickle nature of the film industry while also exalting the “trashiness” of his design.  This mocking tone for film was also a type of motto for the filmmaker, watch Cat People and see if you can spot his belief that “let no one say, and say it to your shame, that all was beauty here, until you came” (Nemerov 8).

Audiences seemed to agree with Lewton and Tourneur, as Cat People became a sleeper hit for RKO, making more than $3 million on the terror of the unknown. According to sources, “Cat People saved RKO when it was practically bankrupt” (Vieira 122) and Lewton went from obscurity to one of RKO’s golden boys. An interesting note to mention is that the creation of his films ended up being partly a result of his contractual conditions, where his budget and title restriction led to both the resulting Cat People and his new approach to horror in general.  Lewton, in only four years, “brought a singular vision to the screen in nine Gothic thrillers before RKO abandoned him and his unit” (Dixon 43).  Though Lewton died early in his life and career, at age 46, in a short amount of time Lewton created a new approach to the horror genre.  In doing so, films like Cat People and his other RKO pictures are now known as genre-bending additions in the annals of horror.   

Works Cited

Dixon, Winston Wheeler.  A History of Horror.  New Brunswick:  Rutgers University Press, 2010.  Print.

Nemerov, Alexander.  Icons of Grief:  Val Lewton’s Home Front Pictures.  Berkeley:  University of California Press, 2005.  Print.
Powell, Anna.  Deleuze and Horror Film.  Edinburgh:  Edinburgh University Press, 2005.  Print.
Vieira, Mark A.  Hollywood Horror:  from Gothic to Cosmic.  New York:  Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2003.  Print.