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Hollywood Reporter (2008) - Screenwriter teamed with Hitchcock

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JOHN MICHAEL HAYES 1919-2008

Screenwriter John Michael Hayes, nominated for Academy Awards for the classic 1954 Alfred Hitchcock film "Rear Window" and for 1957's "Peyton Place," has died. He was 89.

Hayes, who was involved in Dartmouth College's film studies program, died Wednesday of natural causes at a retirement community in Hanover, John Wilson of Rand Wilson Funeral Home said Monday.

Hayes also had collaborated with Hitchcock on the 1955 films "To Catch a Thief" and "The Trouble With Harry" and the 1956 remake of Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much." His most recent writing credit is the 1994 film "Iron Will."

Hayes was born in 1919 in Worcester, Mass. He got his start writing for newspapers and radio. After paying his way through school at Massachusetts State College, Hayes moved to Hollywood. There he landed a job writing for Lucille Ball's radio program "My Favorite Husband" and the serial drama "The Adventures of Sam Spade."

His radio work caught the attention of Universal Studios, which hired him as a screenwriter in the early 1950s.

Hayes donated his collection of scripts, photographs, letters and clippings from his Hollywood career to Dartmouth in 1990.