Rebecca is just one of those captivating creative entities with a rich history and wide mythology. So we thought we’d put together a list of 10 things you might not know about the lady, the play and the fascinating author-Daphne du Maurier- who created a worldwide phenomenon.
1. Rebecca is one of three Du Maurier stories which Alfred Hitchcock directed on film. The other two are The Birds and Jamaica Inn.
2. Daphne Du Maurier was accused of plagiarism multiple times. Both Carolina Nabuco, author of A Sucessora, and Edwina L. MacDonald, author of Blind Windows, claimed that Rebecca was plagiarized from their own works.
3. Rebecca, the novel, was used as a code source by the German army in WWII. Sentences were formed by referencing page number, line number, and word number.
4. Rebecca won the National Book Award for favorite novel of 1938.
5. The Llewelyn Davies boys, the inspiration for Peter Pan, were Daphne Du Maurier’s cousins.
6. The first name of the narrator in Rebecca is never specified. She is always referred to as “my wife”, “Mrs. De Winter”, “my dear”, etc., but her name is never revealed.
7. In Stephen King’s novel Bag of Bones quotes from Rebecca several times, and uses the character Mrs. Danvers as a “bogeyman” for the main character.
8. There is a musical version of Rebecca. It opened in Vienna in 2006.
9. Rebecca was Alfred Hitchcock’s first American film. It won the Oscar for Best Director in 1940.
10. The stage adaptation of Rebecca debuted in London in 1940 and on Broadway in 1945 with Diana Barrymore as Mrs. DeWinter.
Wanna know more? Come see Rebecca at Spark Theater now through October 6th. Get tickets here!
Choose show dates and times here!
