In your June 24 Movies of the...

In your June 24 Movies of the Week column, Kevin Thomas wrote “While the 1934 version of ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’ is entertaining in its own right, it is of most interest in revealing how Hitchcock improved upon himself in the 1956 remake.”

As author of the film’s story with my name on both the original and the remake, I have to differ with Thomas. In spite of color and heavy expenditure, I found the remake to be a muddled mishmash of what had once been a good film. Star-studded though it was, it came out as just a pathetic shadow of the original. Hitchcock shared my view. In 1958 he said to me, “Redoing that film was the greatest error of my life, but I learned my lesson--never remake a classic.”

Charles Bennett, Beverly Hills