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"Psycho" and "Giant"(1956)

posted 6 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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I have recently completed reading a book about the making of the movie "Giant" (1956) and then, over a couple of days, I watched the three and one half hour film to boot. It is pretty easy now in the age of streaming episodic TV, to consider a three-hour movie simply to be three "episodes," binged. Ha.

Like "Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho," this book about the making of Giant has lots of interesting anecdotes that show one the difficulties of film production. And "Giant" had a bonus "problem": how to integrate the weird, moody and stubborn James Dean into a production that otherwise had such well-behaved studio talent as Liz Taylor and Rock Hudson, not to mention a respected director in George Stevens. The book makes the point that even as Dean was a strange, difficult presence on the set, he WAS committed to knowing his lines, adding business to his scenes...and interacting with the local Texas populace on location(some girls formed a fan club AND a softball team in honor of Dean, and he attended both). Its as if a "normal James Dean" and an "abnormal James Dean" existed in the same man. A split personality. Sound familiar?

I won't stretch the Psycho/Giant comparisons too far here(though when one uses Psycho as a "centerpiece" for film studies, EVERY movie can connect to it) , but here they are:

THE HOUSE. This above all. Its much bigger than the Psycho house, but the Gothic mansion in Giant strikes me as "second in line" in fame behind the Psycho house, in the memories of filmgoers. Maybe more moviegoers remembered the "Giant" house a few decades ago than do today, but that house is still compelling, and, like the Psycho house, a character. I can get a visual "fix" on the Psycho House and the Giant House that I cannot get on Tara in Gone with the Wind or Manderley in Rebecca(which was a model wasn't it?)

Hitchcock put his house on a hill; George Stevens puts his house "in the middle of nowhere" among acres of flat, dry brushy, yellow Texas land. In BOTH cases, the mansion in question seems "a fish out of water" by being placed in RURAL territory. These should be old mansions in big cities somewhere. They seem forlorn and out of place in the country.

(Bonus, about that "big country": another Hitchcock movie figures in Giant. There's a high angle on the car transporting Rock and Liz to the house for the first time that is from the same angle as the shot in North by Northwest that shows the bus pulling up to drop Roger off by the road. Same camera angle, same size of shot, the car moving towards us on the same diagonal as the bus in NXNW. I'd say between this shot and the Gothic House, "Giant" likely influenced Hitchcock in the making of BOTH NXNW AND Psycho. Only borrow from the best.

JAMES DEAN/ANTHONY PERKINS. Poor Anthony Perkins. When he was "coming up"(before Psycho) he seemed to alternate between being promoted as "the new Jimmy Stewart" and "the new James Dean"(after James Dean's death.) Perkins proved more unique than that: he was his own man, a distinctive movie star. But watching James Dean in Giant(in his scenes as a young man, at least, before the aging make-up goes on), one DOES see and hear traces of Perkins there. For instance, in a couple of scenes, Dean stammers his lines much as Perkins will in Psycho. And there is a "little boy lost" quality to Dean that reminds one of how Norman Bates seems "a man apart" even with good looks and charm.

A scene in which James Dean's impoverished ranch hand Jett Link invites Liz Taylor(newlywed wife of ranch millionaire Rock Hudson) to have tea with him in his shack is a bit of a precursor to Norman and Marion in the parlor. Again, a beautiful woman elects to enage with a handsome but weird young man. She stays polite and caring, HE starts to get weird.

Alas, whereas in Psycho, Norman reveals his madness to Marion in the parlor, in Giant, Dean reveals his bigotry to Taylor. She asks the poor white ranch hand if he interacts much with the poor Mexican Americans nearby and he sharply says "Don't go mixing me up with that bunch of wetbacks out there, I ain't like them." The movie will play this out -- after Jett becomes a zillionaire from oil but maintains a strict anti-Mexican policy at his hotel. I suppose you could say that's another link to Psycho: like Norman, Jett Link starts his movie as a sympathetic character, but finishes it as a villain.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

FAST CUT EDITS....Hitchcock was pretty famous for getting his work done with comparatively few takes, and when it was just a matter of single shots(no dialogue) taking only one or two takes. George Stevens was famous for shooting key scenes FOREVER, from every possible angle, until he had a ton of footage to mold into a scene. (Stanley Kubrick and Warren Beatty would follow Stevens down this dubious directorial road.)

Well, Hitchcock and Stevens may have taken different approaches to the shooting, but they could end up in the same place: the climactic diner fight in "Giant"(between an aged Rock Hudson and a younger, bigoted diner owner) is in the Hitchcock tradition of fast cuts and rising excitement but with an additive: unlike Hitchcock, Stevens isn't above suddenly leaving the main action to show us the fight from "way across the room" or up in the air. Still, the flash cuts to Hudson's daughter screaming, or Hudson's little half-Mexican grandson beaming , during the fight remind us of how Hitchocck worked, too. In the diner fight scene at least, Hitchcock and Stevens are simpatico.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

BEST DIRECTOR? George Stevens won the Oscar for Best Director for Giant in 1956. Hitchcock made two very good movies that year -- The Man Who Knew Too Much and The Wrong Man -- but was nominated for neither of them. Hitchcock WOULD be nominated for Best Director for Psycho, but lose the award to Hollywood favorite Billy Wilder. What's clear in looking at the George Stevens win in 1956 for Giant is that it was a win for doing what Hitchcock refused to do: spending months of time and tons of money corralling an epic bestseller into shape for the screen. Hitchcock usually created great film art(AND great film entertainment) on a smaller scale, on budget and on time, and not always with big stars. Such "modest aims" would seem to have knocked him out of the running. That said...I liked "Giant," but I think its unfair that George Stevens got a Best Director Oscar and Hitchcock did not.

I might add here that the book on Giant gets into reviews it received, and though many were good, one particular French critic -- Francois Truffaut -- HATED the movie. Over-bloated, over-long, dull, etc. I know that Truffaut also hated Bridge on the River Kwai. So you can see Truffaut's gravitation to Hitchcock almost a matter of a "radical critic's honor" -- he so hated Hollywood epics(no matter how erudite or well-made) that the kind of raw emotion and cinematic fireworks that Hitchcock was doling out was a tonic. (In this regard, you can see Hitchcock somewhat as a David Lynch or QT to Truffaut.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago


I guess that's about it. On balance, I liked "Giant." It is certainly a film of today on "the social issues": white versus hispanic, rich versus poor...and Liz Taylor as a East Coast Feminist on the range. But I also like how Rock Hudson(very good, his only Oscar nomination) has to confront all this change and does so with a certain ornery masculinity that plays off quite nicely with Dean's sullen rebellion. When Hudson and Dean go head to head in Giant(in scenes as both young men and old men) , the sparks fly. And the rest of the time, Hudson gives us a believable look at a man set in his ways having to slowly ...change them. Year by year, decade by decade.

Dean is the flash in Giant(he doesn't have all that many scenes, really),and Liz is the star...but its really Rock's movie.

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[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

In this regard, you can see Hitchcock somewhat as a David Lynch or QT to Truffaut.
Energetic young guns like Ray, Aldrich, John Sturges, Fuller were beloved by Truffaut/Godard for the same reason... Hitch and Hawks and Welles stood out for them as older directors who still thought young and, as it were, particularly Hitch, with film as their first language, not transplanted theater, not big-novel transcription. Notwithstanding all its good points, Giant has always struck me as an odd duck. It's always seems positively eager to get indoors and become a drawing-room drama. The outdoor shots vary wildly - some, including the opening titles shot are just terribly muddy and blurred whereas others are pin-sharp. Stevens seems to have left a lot to second unit directors who have not used the right lenses, let alone come up with anything interesting. This is a real falling off in quality control for him from Shane, A Place in The Sun, and so on. Tiomkin's score is criminally dull. And Giant is just too long - you can fit Bad Day at Black Rock, The Killing, and more than half of Sweet Smell of Success inside it.

It sounds shallow to bitch about length, but if something's going to be that long it had better be *shockingly*, Lawrence of Arabia, Hamlet, Angels in America-level extraordinary. Malick's Thin Red Line really annoyed me at the time (I've since relented a little): I was prepared to say it was OK, interesting even, but the fact that it was longer than Badlands and Days of Heaven put together really did queer it for me. I *knew* it wasn't twice as good as either of those films which is what it would need to be to justify a rave of it at that length.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

In this regard, you can see Hitchcock somewhat as a David Lynch or QT to Truffaut.
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Energetic young guns like Ray, Aldrich, John Sturges, Fuller were beloved by Truffaut/Godard for the same reason... Hitch and Hawks and Welles stood out for them as older directors who still thought young and, as it were, particularly Hitch, with film as their first language, not transplanted theater, not big-novel transcription.

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Yes! Truffaut's radical heart was in the right place, but what's funny is that as the fifties gave way to the sixties, there was still a reliance in Hollywood on old time directors like George Stevens and overlong epics. Those other guys were confined to "genre markets."

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Giant is definitely "big novel" transcription. The book about the making of Giant spends some time on how popular the book was -- except in Texas, because author Edna Ferber in her book made a lot more fun of the Texans than Stevens makes in the movie. The Liz Taylor character in the book is evidently more shrill and nasty and insulting of the Texans around her(she's comes from the East Coast with her new Texas husband). The Rock Hudson character stays a bullying patriarchal bigot and never changes. Stevens softened both characters and added a "bang up ending" to the story(the fight in the diner; in the book, Rock Hudson isn't even there, its just the insult part.) And thus converted a big novel into a workable film that Texans liked (worshipped, evidently.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Notwithstanding all its good points, Giant has always struck me as an odd duck. It's always seems positively eager to get indoors and become a drawing-room drama.

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Ha. Well, there was always pressure from Jack Warner to "get off the location" and back to the studio. According to this book, whereas at first the actors felt "abandoned in the middle of nowhere" at the Texas location(holed up in motels and rental houses)...once the production moved back to Warner Brothers, suddenly everybody felt closed in and claustrophobic.

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The outdoor shots vary wildly - some, including the opening titles shot are just terribly muddy and blurred whereas others are pin-sharp. Stevens seems to have left a lot to second unit directors who have not used the right lenses, let alone come up with anything interesting. This is a real falling off in quality control for him from Shane, A Place in The Sun, and so on.

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My ol' weakness rises again -- Hitchcock's movies, I know pretty good. Stevens' stuff: not so much. And it is not as interesting to me as Hitchcock's stuff. And I carry the resentment of knowing that Stevens got a lot of respect in Hollywood that Hitchcock did not, while turning in less exciting movies.

That said, the book "Five Came Back" relates how George Stevens "drew the short straw" among American directors serving in WWII to have to visit the concentration camps as they were being discovered. What he saw scarred him for life, knocked him out of making movies for a year -- he certainly was a brave man on that front, "irregardless" of his movies.

I went ahead and bought myself a copy of Giant and your remarks about its technical deficiencies are interesting. I found the entire print to be rather "brown and muddy" in the interiors.

Of course, Giant was an unwieldy production, with Stevens filming in Virginia(in for Maryland) and Texas on location before returning to Warners, and with filming taking many months.

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[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

Hitchcock put his house on a hill; George Stevens puts his house "in the middle of nowhere" among acres of flat, dry brushy, yellow Texas land. In BOTH cases, the mansion in question seems "a fish out of water" by being placed in RURAL territory. These should be old mansions in big cities somewhere. They seem forlorn and out of place in the country.
And behind them both stand Edward Hopper's houses, e.g.,:
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/78330
and
https://bertc.com/subfive/g78/hopper6.htm
and
https://circa71.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/71_7.jpg
and so on.

We discussed this a few times back at IMDb including where Hooper got *his* visual ideas from (German expressionist films of the 1920s and silent-era movies generally apparently blew his mind - so it's no accident that Hopper is the most cinematic painter ever).

Recall too that back in 2016 we discussed the Hopper/Psycho house that The Met in NYC had up on the roof for a season:
https://hiveminer.com/Tags/09032016/Timeline

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

And behind them both stands Edward Hopper's houses, e.g.,:

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Very much so! And I think what is interesting that some other famous movie houses(Tara, Manderley) did NOT use the Hopper influence. Stevens clearly got the idea before Hitchcock(four years before Psycho) and I suppose that we can figure Hitchcock was intrigued by the images that Stevens got of that big Gothic house on the big open plains...and "filed it away" for homage later.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Tiomkin's score is criminally dull.

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In the fifties, Tiomkin was sort of "Warner Brothers in-house musical composer" and thus we've got movies as disparate as Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, Giant, The High and the Mighty, and Rio Bravo....all sounding pretty much the same, particularly as heard through the trademark "Warner Brother echo chamber" sound system.

Hitchocck used Tiomkin on all of his Warners pictures save one: The Wrong Man, done after Herrmann was brought aboard, done with Herrmann -- and far more memorable than the Tiomkin Hitchcock scores(though I like the opening notes of Strangers on a Train as "the two sets of feet meet" , the strangling sequence in Dial M, and the carousel climax in Strangers, for music.

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And Giant is just too long - you can fit Bad Day at Black Rock, The Killing, and more than half of Sweet Smell of Success inside it.

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Ha...one of the things I've always thought both helped and hurt Psycho is -- its very short. Not even two hours. Compare the tight, quickly told story of Psycho to the hours and hours of storytelling we got in Ben-Hur and Lawerence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. That length "bought" those movies Oscar status, but Psycho remains forevermore one of the fastest and most gripping movies ever.

My parents took me to see Ben-Hur, Lawrence, and Zhviago when I was a kid...and I don't think I ever forgave them. But I remember this: I went to "The Godfather" in youthful trepidation about its length and found it -- easy to watch . LA Times Critic Charles Champlin called "The Godfather" "the fastest three hours in movie history" and that movie proved something simple: load your movie up with action, murders and snappy dialogue sequences and three hours isn't too long at all.



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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I feel that "Giant" edges towards "Godfather" speed more than Doctor Zhivago lethargy, if only because of the all-American clashes that Liz, Rock, and Jimmy are fomenting throughout the movie.

And Stevens is quoted as saying that he wanted "Giant" to "build to a series of quick climaxes in the final half hour" and it does. We get Old James Dean punching out Dennis Hopper(Rock Hudson's son); Old Rock challenging Old Jimmy to a fight that doesn't happen(Jimmy is too drunk) but leads to a bunch of wine racks collapsing under Rock's rage; Old Jimmy's drunken way-after-the-fact speech to an empty ballroom, and the final diner fight for Old Rock. And a coda where Old Liz praises Old Rock for all the changes he has accepted and pledges her eternal love.

My experience with "Giant" over the years -- beginning with a two-part showing of it on NBC in 1972 -- has usually been to watch only that last half hour -- and I liked it, and made a mental note, "I really should see all of that movie some day."

I've seen MORE of it over the decades since, but it is only in the last two weeks that I finally watched the whole thing, start to finish.

And it is too long. And I likely won't watch all of it ever again. But -- there's some good stuff in those first two hours, and James Dean interacting with Rock Hudson and Liz Taylor DOES have a certain mystic chemistry to it -- Dean doesn't belong there, but he claims his place. (The scene where Jett listens to and turns down an offer to buy his land from Rock and his guys is as modern and entertaining as anything I've seen today.)

Its funny: the book about Giant makes the point that Jack Warner kept begging George Stevens to turn in a movie of "a bit over two hours" with Giant, but the case is made that there was no way to adopt Ferber's book at less THAN three hours.

The solution is more obvious than you'd think: don't make a movie out of a long book. Movies don't work well that way, and you STILL can't capture the whole book, even at three hours (The Godfather didn't.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

A sidebar quote from Rock Hudson about working with James Dean on Giant:

"He had his own particular way of working. He wouldn't go your way in a scene. You had to go HIS way in a scene."

I think this is apparent in the scene in which Rock and his cronies try to buy the land from Dean. Dean controls the tempo of the scene, slows it down as he does all his schtick and takes forever to decide on the offer.

Must have driven Rock nuts!

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[–] telegonus (736) 6 years ago

Brief drop-in here, EC: Interesting contrasts between the bigger than life Giant and the small scale Psycho. Both films emphasize these qualities, with Giant playing like an in yer face epic, Psycho, an "intimate" horror picture. Also, both films made a ton of money; and the George Stevens pic was well regarded by the critics and the public, while Psycho was only really a smash success with moviegoers. Giant seemed to be aspiring to be the Great American Movie, the movie of its year. Psycho had no such (outward) ambitions.

Curious things: both films are or border on genre, with Giant further from that in its not being a western (too modern, too soapy); and Psycho rather embracing its being a horror movie, and a modern one at that. Both films are quite modern in sensibility, feel "of their time", and reflect the years in which they were made. Excellent supporting casts in both also. The music in Giant is stirring and All-American, while Psycho's score is far more subtle, more like a "European imposition" on an otherwise very American feeling movie.

Also, Psycho was not a "star vehicle" for any of its players, as the cast served the material, did so with discipline and a firm and often spare modernity; while Giant's main players seem more dominant as personalities. Even those in support, such as Chill Wills, impose their styles on their scenes. There's a flamboyance to many of the actors in the movie, even the low key Rock Hudson comes round to kickin' some serious butt near the end. An exception for Psycho would be Simon Oakland, whose bravura playing of the shrink stands out a "bigger" than the actors in the rest of the film.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Brief drop-in here, EC:

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I'm never sure what might interest you in dropping by, telegonus, but its always a welcome visit for all.

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Interesting contrasts between the bigger than life Giant and the small scale Psycho. Both films emphasize these qualities, with Giant playing like an in yer face epic, Psycho, an "intimate" horror picture.

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I realize that putting the phrase "Psycho" and "BLANK"(movie) can be a bit of a stretch, movie-wise, sometimes. "Psycho" and "Dressed to Kill" are easy. So are "Psycho" and "Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

But "Psycho" and "Giant." Well, I think the main and clear connection I see between the two is: the house that centers each one. The effect is the same in both movies: a overbearing, ominous, Gothic house somehow displaced. The more I saw the shots with the house in Giant, the more I feel Hitchcock was inspired by them (and also inspired for North by Northwest's crop duster sequence with the wide open brown and yellow spaces.)

And yet, the CONTRASTS are there, two. Gigantic in size and long in length versus small in size and short in length, etc. And color versus b/w.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Also, both films made a ton of money; and the George Stevens pic was well regarded by the critics and the public, while Psycho was only really a smash success with moviegoers. Giant seemed to be aspiring to be the Great American Movie, the movie of its year. Psycho had no such (outward) ambitions.

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Well, that's what made Psycho special, and over the years, we had other "surprise" blockbusters like that: Bonnie and Clyde, Rocky, Star Wars(nobody saw big things for it; Logan's Run had been so-so), even maybe "10."

Now our blockbusters are pre-ordained, for the most part. Though "Black Panther" so far outpaced the usual Marvel one-hero movie it was a shock.

Giant, on the other hand, had roots in the GWTW school of work: THE big novel, with THE big cast(James Dean giving himself over to the third lead after Rebel Without a Cause, was really rather interesting of him to do)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Curious things: both films are or border on genre, with Giant further from that in its not being a western (too modern, too soapy);

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Soapy like, maybe a little, "Dallas"? (Nope not really , no adultery here.)

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and Psycho rather embracing its being a horror movie, and a modern one at that.

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I think it was Hitchcock's wanting to MAKE a horror movie while at the same time RESISTING horror elements was key to its success. He wasn't interestedin the supernatural here(and he's only be sort of interested in the supernatural in The Birds.)

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Both films are quite modern in sensibility, feel "of their time", and reflect the years in which they were made.

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They sure do. People remark on the "modern" feminist and racial aspects of Giant...but those things were a brewin' in 1956(and the story was set decades earlier.) Psycho hits all its famous "breaking the envelope" notes while remaining a very 1960 experience(the restrictive clothes on the women and, unavoidably, the cars.)

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Excellent supporting casts in both also.

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Really interesting actors and "looks." You know, its North by Northwest that seems to have all the "usual" character guys and gals of the time, probably 20 more speaking roles than Psycho. And yet Psycho has that INTERESTING group of supporting actors, such a small handful of them, really that you remember each and every one.

----The music in Giant is stirring and All-American, while Psycho's score is far more subtle, more like a "European imposition" on an otherwise very American feeling movie.

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I guess we can thank the movie Gods that Dimitri Tiomkin didn't score Psycho. Dial M for Murder is probably the closest of his scores to that kind of movie. Not good enough. He was good for "other purposes."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Also, Psycho was not a "star vehicle" for any of its players, as the cast served the material, did so with discipline and a firm and often spare modernity; while Giant's main players seem more dominant as personalities

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Yep. Psycho was the first Hitchocck film in quite awhile without a major star in the cast. Since The Trouble With Harry. Hitchcock was the star; but the players he DID choose were very excited to be working for him, gave it their best, I think. By Hitchcock's studio-based standards, he felt he didn't use stars again til Torn Curtain(and he didn't like them.)

What's interesting to me about Giant, having read of its production, is that Rock evidently only had one major movie behind him(was it Magnificent Obsession?) and a bunch of Universal dreck(where his looks stood out) but he was "ready for stardom." And unlike John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and even William Holden at the time(who wanted the role) -- he was YOUNG. Young enough to play young Bick and then do the old guy with makeup. And somehow -- the movie MADE him a star. Right off the top(recall that John Gavin came from the same agent as a bit of a Rock Hudson knockoff.)

Dean his legend before the movie came out, so he was a big star(also a dead star, also not in the movie all THAT much.)

And even Liz Taylor(per this book I read) didn't feel she had enough "adult roles" on her resume. Well, now she was set. No Oscar nomination for this one, but many to come and two wins.



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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Even those in support, such as Chill Wills, impose their styles on their scenes.

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Chill Wills was such a robust, flamboyant character guy -- that big Foghorn Leghorn Texas accent("You shoulda shot that boy when you had the chance, now he's too rich") , those handsome but not handsome enough looks -- that I learned to like him from an early age. Its fun watching HIM age in this movie -- when Rock and Liz have light gray-blue make-up at the end, Chill gets a full white snow "older" look.

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There's a flamboyance to many of the actors in the movie, even the low key Rock Hudson comes round to kickin' some serious butt near the end.

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Well, its a story of rootin' tootin Texas rich folk. I guess.

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An exception for Psycho would be Simon Oakland, whose bravura playing of the shrink stands out a "bigger" than the actors in the rest of the film.

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I suppose that's another reason Oakland annoys some people at the end. He plays BIG.

In 1960, Chill Wills got a Best Supporting Actor nomination, and famously ruined it with bad taste Variety ads("Praying as hard as the soldiers at the Alamo to win that Oscar," "My cousins...)

IN a perfect world , Wills would lose his nomination and it would be given to Martin Balsam for Psycho, I've always thought. (Though maybe Ustinov would still have won for Spartacus.)

But now I'm wondering: was Simon Oakland deserving of an Oscar nom, too?

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[–] telegonus (736) 6 years ago

Always good to hear from you, EC. Some Psycho irony tonight, right on MeTV, which I have on right now: a Hitchcock half-hour (what else?) from guess what year (think Psycho), called Craig's Will. and featuring the not yet famous Dick Van Dyke in the lead, as the heir to an eccentric old man's fortune who must tend to the old boy's dog in order to inherit his estate.

Now here's the rub: the main house is the one that Norman Bates resided in. Dick is soon engaged to gold digger Stella Stevens (and she's no Marion Crane, she's much greedier), with an assist from the butler and faithful retainer to old Mr. Craig, whose name just happens to be Sam Loomis. It's a cheeky, low key episode and quite frankly a bit of a slog, yet it has some notable qualities...

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

a Hitchcock half-hour (what else?)

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A Hitchcock hour? Ha.

Actually, I have to keep reminding myself from time to time that when Psycho came out in 1960, Hitchcock's show was the half hour version, and given that Hitchcock was so disappointed in his rough cut of Psycho, he told Bernard Herrmann he was thinking of cutting it down for the TV show. A HALF HOUR show? No doubt, Psycho would have become a three-part Hitchcock half hour event(he did one of those, can't remember the name.) And it would have been three half hours with no graphic murders and the hotel scene gone; plus mom in the cellar vanishing.

Dwight MacDonald, a critic of the time who hated Psycho, wrote of it later that "its just one of those TV shows, except with padding and more sadism." MacDonald snarked about the hour Hitchcock's, "they are now twice as long and half as good."

I don't think so. I DO think there is a "tonal difference" between the half hours(mainly produced in the musty 50s') and the hours(produced in the swinging sixties.) I think "Psycho" informed those hour shows, which had more horror elements, adultery elements, "Psycho" elements. And of course, the Psycho house(outside) in An Unlocked Window and the Bates Motel(unnamed) in the final Hitchcock hour, "Open Season," starring John Gavin.

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and featuring the not yet famous Dick Van Dyke in the lead,

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It was a year away for him, I think, The Dick Van Dyke Show started in '61. Though appearances like this Hitchcock episode no doubt got TV execs familiar with him.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Now here's the rub: the main house is the one that Norman Bates resided in.

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And in 1960, the year the Psycho house would make its entrance into history.

I wonder if this episode aired BEFORE Psycho came out(1959-1960 season) or AFTER Psycho came out(1960-1961 season.) Easy enough to look up. If before, folks got a "sneak preview" of Psycho; if after, they got a big opportunity to relive Psycho -- at least the house.

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Dick is soon engaged to gold digger Stella Stevens

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Ah, Stella Stevens! In the 60's, right up there with Jill St. John and Claudia Cardinale among the va-va-vooms.

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(and she's no Marion Crane, she's much greedier),

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You know, I suppose Hitchcock could have created a "greedy golddigger" Marion so as to make her shower slaughter "just desserts." (She could be Cassidy's golddigging mistress who doesn't love him, for instance.) Better to have her a decent person tempted by crime and repenting...just in time for a very unfair fate. Hitchcock wasn't big on giving his thrillers "victims you root for to die." THAT's sadistic.

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with an assist from the butler and faithful retainer to old Mr. Craig, whose name just happens to be Sam Loomis. It's a cheeky, low key episode and quite frankly a bit of a slog, yet it has some notable qualities...

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You bet it has some noteable qualities! The Psycho house, Stella Stevens, the always amiable Mr. Van Dyke(except that time he played a killer on Columbo.)

I'm on my way...

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[–] telegonus (736) 6 years ago

Yes, it was the 1959-60 season for the Hitch half-hour, as you've lively already discovered. That house ion the hill was put to good use, and fast, on such shows as Thriller, Hitchcock's and others I can't even remember now. Mostly dramatic series. Whatever was filmed on the Uni back lot, which for all I know could include Wagon Train!

Dwight Macdonald was a hard to please critic. It's difficult to figure his tastes. Some actors and directors he simply didn't like. An old pal of James Agee's from way back, his tastes were further from Agee's than most of his fellow critics. Manny Farber was closer than that in being a "B guy", with his theory of "underground cinema",--no, not Andy Warhol, not "art house" films from Europe and elsewhere--he meant unpretentious B's of the kind Val Lewton produced at RKO during World War II.

Anyhow, the house on the hill and its interior have to constitute among the most used sets in the history of American film. I suppose there are "western streets", some so-called New York streets, hotel lobbies, frontier saloons and modern bars and restaurants that likely qualify, but nothing's more iconic than the Bates house, including the porch, the entry hall, the stairs, that big master bedroom, even the cupolas. One can even seeing it "evolving", as it were, as if it were a species of some kind, during the Fifties, from Harvey to Psycho, with many stops in-between.

It's interesting that as to horrors and mysteries, there seems little left of the Frankenstein (1931) sets or the Dracula ones from the same year. Maybe some of the castle interiors survived from the latter; and of course the little (and much beloved) European village street that lasted into the Sixties (at least). There aren't too many eye catching sets in The Invisible Man or even The Mummy; by which I mean sets that are difficult to disguise; ones one can point to from much later films.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Yes, it was the 1959-60 season for the Hitch half-hour, as you've lively already discovered. That house on the hill was put to good use, and fast, on such shows as Thriller, Hitchcock's and others I can't even remember now. Mostly dramatic series. Whatever was filmed on the Uni back lot, which for all I know could include Wagon Train!

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There are some internet pages, I think, showing all the uses of the house. It was used on The Virginian, I think, and I know in a feature film with Yul Brynner and George Segal called ah, something blank blank Gunfighter. Ha.

It was used on The Hardy Boys TV series.

I found that the funniest use was on Murder She Wrote, where the murder took place on the Universal backlot IN the Psycho house, but the falsity was: they imagined that that false front had a full INTERIOR. Total whimsy. In one scene, Angela Lansbury watches -- with great distaste -- Arbogast getting it on the stairs(Balsam version.)

Of course, "the Psycho house" evidently changed a lot over the years. The one in the 1960 movie only had two sides -- the front and that side we always see from the hill. No back wall, no other side wall (I"ve seen a photo of it from "the other side and it looks like...a skeleton house.)

Other walls were added for the Yul Brynner movie(so they could mainly show it from the other side) and eventually I think the house was re-built, piece by piece for Psycho II and Psycho III -- the 1960 lumber was rotted.

But for those Thrillers and for those Hitchcocks of the early/mid-sixties, it was THE Psycho house, with or without the other walls.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Dwight Macdonald was a hard to please critic. It's difficult to figure his tastes. Some actors and directors he simply didn't like.

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Its funny. In my early days of "Psycho love" -- before I actually SAW the film, I found in a library a book of MacDonald's articles and reviews called, I think "On Movies." It had two pieces on Psycho -- one his original 1960 review(Esquire I think), and then a newer chapter looking back on Psycho a few years out. In both pieces...he really hated the movie.

And I memorized that review, used it for battle on paper.

Here are some of the lines I remember:

"Just one of his TV shows, with padding and additional sadism. We've come to know quite a lot about that girl who is stabbed in the shower."

"No human passion or motives. She just happened to stop at a motel run by a homicidal maniac. Could have happened to any of us."

"Like a strip tease, where you wait for that little thrill at the end. And in both cases, you feel had."

"They won't let you in after Psycho starts. This creates a dilemma that might best be solved by staying home. For this is third-rate Hitchcock" (and he finds it nowhere near as good as The Lady Vanishes and The 39 Steps.)

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An old pal of James Agee's from way back, his tastes were further from Agee's than most of his fellow critics. Manny Farber was closer than that in being a "B guy", with his theory of "underground cinema",--no, not Andy Warhol, not "art house" films from Europe and elsewhere--he meant unpretentious B's of the kind Val Lewton produced at RKO during World War II.

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In reading up on Dwight MacDonald over the years, it seems he was regarded as a particular type of movie critic -- "the snob" for whom NO American studio film held much value and to whom foreign film was "all." Which made some sense given the censorship and silliness of SOME American films -- but hardly all. He thumbs downed movies like Psycho, The Apartment and West Side Story.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Other than Dwight MacDonald's preference for the early British films(don't we ALL compare the new unfavorably to the old? Spielberg, Scorsese and QT get that treatment now) , the review just seemed to miss just about everything. TV production values were used -- but no Hitchocck episode would have had the time, budget or censorship latitude to put those murders on the screen. As for Marion "just happening to stop" at motel a maniac runs -- well, we learn that old couples do fine there, and I'll be men do, too. It seems only that Marion and two "girls" ahead of her died there.

And MacDonald's dislike of a psychopath being much of a villain(they are a "wild card," he said, like an earthquake, no human motives) well -- that was the point OF Psycho, wasn't it? We live it today.

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[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

Don't we ALL compare the new unfavorably to the old? Spielberg, Scorsese and QT get that treatment now

This is starting to remind me of Sickboy's theory of life in Trainspotting (Sickboy is a Sean Connery-worshipping junkie):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a94jraWNG-g

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

It's interesting that as to horrors and mysteries, there seems little left of the Frankenstein (1931) sets or the Dracula ones from the same year. Maybe some of the castle interiors survived from the latter; and of course the little (and much beloved) European village street that lasted into the Sixties (at least). There aren't too many eye catching sets in The Invisible Man or even The Mummy; by which I mean sets that are difficult to disguise; ones one can point to from much later films.

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I either did not know that (at all) or didn't remember it (like with the European Village street.) Funny how the oldtime studios used to have identifiable streets. MGM had a "waterfront street" next to a lake (its in Showboat and plays Scotland in Ice Station Zebra; and it was on like every episode of The Man From UNCLE.) Universal had/has a "city block" that served just a little bitty bit as Fairvale outside Sam's hardware store -- and in tons of movies(The Sting, Dirty Harry) and TV shows.

But this: if the Psycho house decomposed over a mere 30 years -- how'd those Frankenstein/Dracula sets hang in?

BTW , speaking of Giant, in the 1985 comedy drama "Fandango" (one of Kevin Costner's first films), four Texas high school buddies drive across 1973 Texas. In one scene, they seek out the Giant house in Marfa , Texas -- and find only a few nailed boards and a frame. "All gone."

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[–] telegonus (736) 6 years ago

Apropos of all this about Chill Wills, I saw him in a Night Gallery episode last night, which I watched mostly for him, in which he and Burgess Meredith played back alley winos who stumbled up a "little black bag", a doctor's bag, that just happened to have been sent to the present (1971 or thereabouts) from way in the future, that contained instruments and instructions that former practicing physician turned drunk Meredith could have wrought some major medical miracles with but for the interference of Wills.

It wasn't a great episode, but the direction (Jeannot Swarc?), and the performances of the main actors make it a "must see" whenever I see it listed somewhere. Willis is spookier than I've ever seen him. His avuncular qualities diabolically combine with that deep, intimidating western voice to create a monstrous figure; and he looks psycho to begin with. Some of this can be seen foreshadowed in the Hitchcock (what else?) half-hour Don't Interrupt, in which Wills comes across as downright creepy.

None of this has, directly, any correlation to Psycho and Giant, Wills aside. Meredith might have been a good Hitchcock player. I can see him in some of Norman Lloyd's parts, but he was too well known for that, I suppose. I've never seen him on a Hitch TV episode. Considered as a type, Burgess Meredith would have been, but for his short stature, a good candidate for the casting of an actor to play a fully mature, "straightened out" Norman Bates in a benign sequel to Psycho in which Norman actually is wholly cured of his pathology, gets a second chance in life. This need for a Big Break, a turning over of a new leaf, was rather a feature of the actor's career. God knows what became of his unfortunate character of George after his "mercy killing" of Lon Chaney, Jr.'s Lennie in Of Mice And Men. In The Little Black Bag it's like Lennie triumphs!

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Apropos of all this about Chill Wills, I saw him in a Night Gallery episode last night, which I watched mostly for him, in which he and Burgess Meredith played back alley winos who stumbled up a "little black bag",

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I saw a lot of Night Gallerys, but I don't much remember that one. Chill Wills and Burgess Meredith were estimable character men, with very distinctive voices. I must track it down.

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Willis is spookier than I've ever seen him. His avuncular qualities diabolically combine with that deep, intimidating western voice to create a monstrous figure; and he looks psycho to begin with.

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Yes, I can see Wills shifting his good ol' boy qualities -- especially that honey-rich deep voice -- into something creepier.

In "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid"(1973), one of his last films, what he comes off as is...disheveled. And he has one scene where he has to sit there with his shirt pulled up over his head to block his view. The result is that his ample belly is exposed for the entire scene. The stomach is something that men with big ones choose to HIDE; here is Wills with his exposed for a few minutes of screen time. And he curses away in that deep rich voice of his.

In other words, ANOTHER creepy Chill Wills scene...just of a different type.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

None of this has, directly, any correlation to Psycho and Giant, Wills aside.

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Well, Wills is in Giant, and he stole Martin Balsam's Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination slot for Psycho(his lesser work in The Alamo, so horribly promoted.)

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Meredith might have been a good Hitchcock player.

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There's a list that Hitchcock himself composed over the years of "the stars that got away" from working with him: Cooper, Gable, Claudette Colbert, Barbara Stanwyk, William Holden, Audrey Hepburn, Michael Caine, Jack Nicholson...but I'd say there could be an equally rich list of CHARACTER people Hitchcock didn't get to work with.

Burgess Meredith would be near the top of that list. Arthur O'Connell, too.

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I can see him in some of Norman Lloyd's parts, but he was too well known for that, I suppose. I've never seen him on a Hitch TV episode. Considered as a type, Burgess Meredith would have been, but for his short stature, a good candidate for the casting of an actor to play a fully mature, "straightened out" Norman Bates in a benign sequel to Psycho in which Norman actually is wholly cured of his pathology, gets a second chance in life.

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So you join the Psycho sequel folks in believing Norman was a good guy deserving of a second chance. I value your opinions too much to argue, but I always felt that Norman's "niceness" was a facade. At least in the original...

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This need for a Big Break, a turning over of a new leaf, was rather a feature of the actor's career. God knows what became of his unfortunate character of George after his "mercy killing" of Lon Chaney, Jr.'s Lennie in Of Mice And Men. In The Little Black Bag it's like Lennie triumphs!

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Interesting assessments, across the board!

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[–] movieghoul (213) 6 years ago

I think that episode was actually called The Little Black Bag and based on a classic SF short story. I remember thinking the dynamics between Meredith and WIlls was very similar to that between Meredith and Lon Chaney in Of Mice and Men.

One of the best episodes of the series.

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[–] telegonus (736) 6 years ago

Giant was, like so many post-Gone With The Wind pictures, a large scale picture, a bid to be a Great One, and it was certainly a big one. Ethan Mordden goes into depth on this topic in one of his books on old-time Hollywood, maybe the one on the studios. It's big, features more than a couple of major stars, aspires to be an epic (of some sort or another), even comment on human nature generally (fate, romance, etc.). Mordden himself actually listed the same year's (1956) Mike Todd production of Around The World In 80 Days as the Big One for that year, what with its Oscar wins, the four top names in the leads: established player David Niven, hot newcomer Shirley MacLaine, foreign born and not yet known in the States Cantinflas, Brit veteran Robert Newton. It's a stretch IMO but I knw where he's coming from. (I believe Mordden also included DeMille's Reap The Wild Wind in this category as well as Selznick's more obviously GWTW wannabe, Duel In The Sun,--there were a bunch 'em, not all in color. From Here To Eternity might qualify as well, and of course the later, "international" Lawrence Of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago.) The irony of all this is that David Selznick the padrone's own Alfred Hitchcock scored a comparable success with the small scale, black and white and rather short Psycho, with his quartet of star players not even top box-office draws or all that famous: Perkins, Leigh, Miles and Gavin are scarcely in the league of Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland and Leslie Howard.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Giant was, like so many post-Gone With The Wind pictures, a large scale picture, a bid to be a Great One, and it was certainly a big one.

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It occurs to me that Giant, coming out in 1956, was less than 20 years after GWTW -- GWTW was almost "recent" (17 years -- for us now, that's 2001, the year, not the movie; think back to A Beautiful Mind.)

But the pre-television black-and-white 40's didn't quite have the need to produce Technicolor , epic entertainment that the 50's did.

So perhaps the 1939 GWTW became more of an influence on 50's and 60's epics than on 40's films.

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Ethan Mordden goes into depth on this topic in one of his books on old-time Hollywood, maybe the one on the studios. It's big, features more than a couple of major stars, aspires to be an epic (of some sort or another), even comment on human nature generally (fate, romance, etc.). Mordden himself actually listed the same year's (1956) Mike Todd production of Around The World In 80 Days as the Big One for that year, what with its Oscar wins, the four top names in the leads: established player David Niven, hot newcomer Shirley MacLaine, foreign born and not yet known in the States Cantinflas, Brit veteran Robert Newton.

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This new book on Giant takes up How Around the World in 80 Days beat it for Best Picture; the author sums it up thus: "A movie about nothing beat a movie about something." The "something" in Giant being Texas itself. Anglo-Mexican relations, feminism...and power. (And the "immediate" millionaires made by oil -- the film shows how Rock Hudson has to give up on depending upon cattle as his family's main source of income...not once James Dean's Jett Rink gets rich on the stuff. Rock gets into oil, too.)



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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

But of course Around the World in 80 Days was filmed all over the world and had scores of star cameos(Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich.)

I sometimes forget how Shirley MacLaine got THAT biggie after debuting for Hitchcock and then working with the superhot Martin and Lewis. She truly had a blessed career. Great "launches" in the fifties(including Some Came Running with Frank and Dean, and an Oscar nomination.)

Then "The Apartment" launches the sixties and the death of Marilyn Monroe and the unavailability sometimes of Liz Taylor gets Shirley there castoff roles(Irma La Douce, What a Way to Go). She "slumped" in the 70s as a movie star, and flopped with a TV series, but she reinvented herself as a Broadway one-woman dance star, got "The Turning Point" and "Being There" in the late 70's, and steered her career to "Terms of Endearment" and Oscar in '83. Shirley MacLaine has been fine since.

And she's got a helluva career over ALL her decades..including Around the World in 80 Days.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

(I believe Mordden also included DeMille's Reap The Wild Wind in this category as well as Selznick's more obviously GWTW wannabe, Duel In The Sun,--there were a bunch 'em, not all in color. From Here To Eternity might qualify as well, and of course the later, "international" Lawrence Of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago.)

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Yes, interesting how some of the epics were in b/w -- From Here to Eternity for instance, but even in the 40s, a movie like Duel in the Sun -- jokingly called "Lust in the Dust" by some -- was given the color treatment.

Came the fifties and sixties, all the epics were in color, but I have to say Dr. Zhivago sure feels GRAY...all that bleak grim storyline. Only the white snow scenes alleviates the grim grayness of the film.

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The irony of all this is that David Selznick the padrone's own Alfred Hitchcock scored a comparable success with the small scale, black and white and rather short Psycho,

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I found a great 1960 review of Psycho which indicated that it might be "the future of movies" versus "the all-out giganticism of Ben Hur"(which had come out the year before.) I think the critic was onto something. Ordinarily a movie as short as Psycho and as low budget as Psycho and even with the cast of Psycho would have been considered somewhat of a B picture...but Psycho was a B that made blockbuster "epic" money...and turned far bigger a profit than any expensive epic and....this is important ...really CONNECTED with audiences in a big, emotional, you're-never-going-to-forget-THIS way.

I was taken to epics in the 60's. I was too young for them to be sure then, but I made myself watch movies like Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago years later as an adult and I felt: no, movies can be more exciting than this.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Its The Godfather that showed how that could be done. That movie certainly IS an epic...a tale told over years, with a sweeping cast and family/business conflict issues not all that far removed from those in Giant....but with that added dose of violence at almost a "horror movie level"(the beheading of the horse; the knife through the hand AND strangulation of Luca Brasi, and more). Still, the business negotiations were as engrossing as the murders...given that murder is always a possible deal-solver in the Mafia.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

with his quartet of star players not even top box-office draws or all that famous: Perkins, Leigh, Miles and Gavin are scarcely in the league of Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland and Leslie Howard.

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Though I tell you: as a kid, it took a few years for me to figure out that it was NOT Vivien Leigh in that shower, and NOT Janet Leigh in GWTW. Its child development, you're learning stars and their names and their personas. Same with Katherine Hepburn and Audrey Hepburn.

I've always felt that the two closest films Hitchcock made to "epics" were: Foreign Correspondent and NXNW. One travels all over Europe; the other travels all over America. Both films have BIG set-pieces (the plane crash, Rushmore).

But NBNW is MORE epic than Foreign Correspondent for a number of reasons, starting with its cast -- the starriest in Hitchocck, with one major star for hero(Cary Grant), another major star for villain (James Mason) and a third major star for heroine(Eva Marie Saint.) And NXNW has that Bernard Herrmann "epic" score. And a cast of hundreds. And its in Technicolor and VistaVision. And its Hitchcock's longest film(2 hours 15 minutes, though on TV it ran almost 3 hours with commercials.)

A year after his big color "epic" -- NBNW -- Hitch sure scaled down his budget and his star power for Psycho....but the incredible, shocking, scream-a-minute landmark excitement of Psycho rendered everything moot. Psycho brought in bigger grosses the NXNW and proved(that once, at least) that a big budget wasn't required for box office.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

And what of the Psycho cast? Janet Leigh is sometimes called "the big star who gets killed before the movie is over," but I guess in 1960 she wasn't THAT big. She didn't "carry movies." Liz Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Doris Day and Audrey Hepburn did. I understand that Leigh's stardom may have been enhanced by her marriage to Tony Curtis at the time ; they were bigger together as a Photoplay couple than as stars(and he was a bigger star than she was, by the late fifties, at least.) I'd say Janet Leigh was a star, but not a superstar(we had them back then, too.)

Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates seems the "lead" of Psycho. Perkins has top billing(he was fourth-billed in On the Beach the year before) and he would make all those sequels with his famous character. But in the Psycho poster, notice how small his image is versus the huge image of Janet Leigh in bra and slip. And even the image of John Gavin(shirtless) is bigger than Perkins' image. I guess the original "Psycho" poster wanted to sell the cheesecake of Leigh and the beefcake of Gavin before caring about spindly lil' Norman Bates.

Gavin and Miles were "names" by the time Psycho came out, but not stars.

Indeed, there is a clue to what Hitchcock(and Hollywood) thought of the cast of Psycho in the star billing. Compare:

James Stewart
Kim Novak
in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo

to

Cary Grant
Eva Marie Saint
James Mason
in Alfred Hitchcock's
North by Northwest

to

Alfred Hitchcock's
Psycho
starring Anthony Perkins
Vera Miles
John Gavin
and Janet Leigh as Marion Crane

NO star went above the title in Psycho; the first name is Hitchcock's; he is the star.

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[–] telegonus (736) 6 years ago

Yes, EC, although as to top star players Hitchcock seemed less dependent on major name stars than many Hollywood directors of his generation. One only has to look at the casts of his British or American periods to see that he could settle for less than top of the heap players, and did so regularly. In the UK, Robert Donat was highly regarded, headlined many a major film, yet Hitchcock really wanted to get to use Leslie Howard, and he never got the opportunity (Donat's standing was nearer to Meryl Streep's, or, for a male player, maybe the William Hurt of the Eighties). Nor did Hitchcock, despite David Selznick's heroic efforts when casting Rebecca, get Hollywood's super-Brit Ronald Colman.

In the Forties he used journeyman prestige star Joseph Cotten, the up and coming Gregory Peck, the betwixt and between Jimmy Stewart, with whom he apparently "bonded", just as he had several years earlier with Cary Grant, on the cusp of his superstardom. Ingrid Bergman is one one can chalk up to Selznick's influence. A bit later he had to settle for more generic not quite top of the line stars such as Jane Wyman, Richard Todd, Farley Granger, Anne Baxter, Ray Milland and the iconic but past the expiration date Marlene Dietrich. After that, Grace Kelly was a hot up and comer and as a top star at least a semi-Hitchcock "creation", as Joan Fontaine was earlier, but Grace rose much higher in her brief time at the feast.

After his TV show made Hitch a household name it was easier for him to get stars who pleased him: Henry Fonda here, Eva Marie Saint there; James Mason, the young Psycho stars, whom he molded to suit his needs. For many years he enjoyed a Spielberg level name recognition, and no major star in his right mind would turn him down. If he wanted Paul Newman and Julie Andrews, he got them. The fact that they didn't quite click as Hitchcock players was not lost on the director. In his final years he had to accept the players who were willing to work for him.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Yes, EC, although as to top star players Hitchcock seemed less dependent on major name stars than many Hollywood directors of his generation.

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Indeed. It was said that Hitchcock himself was star enough for his own pictures. On the last three (Topaz through Family Plot) he was practically FORCED to be the star. I've listed all the biggies who said no to those three.

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One only has to look at the casts of his British or American periods to see that he could settle for less than top of the heap players, and did so regularly.

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Sometimes, it seems he was forced to: Robert Cummings in Saboteur after Gary Cooper and somebody else(Grant? Gable?) said no. Joel McCrea in FC after...the same(McCrea seems to have risen in estimation.) Ray Milland in Dial M after Cary Grant(who wanted to play this bad guy) was nixed by Jack Warner. Farley Granger in Strangers on a Train when Bill Holden said no(Hitch always wanted Robert Walker as Bruno, though.) John Hodiak in Lifeboat when Henry Fonda said no(but he said yes years later to The Wrong Man.)

And yet, there seem to be "low star" movies sprinkled throughout his American career at least, almost as if planned: Foreign Correspondent, Saboteur, Lifeboat(Bankhead wasn't much of a name); Strangers, The Trouble With Harry....Psycho, The Birds.....Topaz, Frenzy, Family Plot.


Its funny, together Grant and Stewart account for 8 Hitchcock films, 3 of which(Rear Window, Vertigo, NXNW) are considered in AFI's ONLY Hitchcocks in their 100 Greatest Films list. Kelly and Bergman are in three apiece. Cary and Ingrid and Jimmy and Grace are practically "Hitchcock's All-Stars" with about 11 Hitch films among them in one combination or another.



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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

And then there are "the one off stars":

Greg Peck(hired before he really had big star gravitas)

Monty Clift(Hitch goes Method, Part One)

Henry Fonda (FINALLY)

James Mason (Hired as the third-billed villain when he could topline movies on his own.)

Sean Connery(hired before HE really had big star gravitas)

Paul Newman (Hitch goes Method, Part Two --and the biggest Young Hollywood superstar at the time)

Julie Andrews(as hot as hot could be, with megablockbuster classics Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music to her name when Hitch hired her -- his failing her stardom with Torn Curtain must have hurt Hitch a lot in Hollywood.)

Who have I missed "star wise?" I feel I've been light on the ladies:

Kim Novak was a big star when he hired her

Eva Marie Saint was a so-so star(and Oscar winner) when he hired her.

Janet Leigh had many movies behind here when he hired her(but never quite superstardom.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

In the UK, Robert Donat was highly regarded, headlined many a major film, yet Hitchcock really wanted to get to use Leslie Howard, and he never got the opportunity (Donat's standing was nearer to Meryl Streep's, or, for a male player, maybe the William Hurt of the Eighties).

--

I'm weak on star levels of British stars in the 30's and 40's.

In reading the book about Giant, I've learned that Liz Taylor's husband Number Something at the time -- Michael Wilding -- had been Britain's top male star for awhile. So suddenly Under Capricorn and Stage Fright look starrier. But once he followed Liz to Hollywood...his career tanked. And she left.

--- Nor did Hitchcock, despite David Selznick's heroic efforts when casting Rebecca, get Hollywood's super-Brit Ronald Colman.

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I always wondered: Laurence Oliver wasn't quite THE Laurence Olivier when he made Rebecca, or was he? I know he had Wuthering Heights to his name....

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

In the Forties he used journeyman prestige star Joseph Cotten,

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He always ends up spelled Joseph Cotton on my computer. I watch the e flip to an o. Drives me nuts.

Cotton is SECOND BILLED to Teresa Wright in Shadow of a Doubt; I always noticed that.

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the up and coming Gregory Peck,

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Yes, I've always said Hitch got Greg Peck too early. Though evidently teenagers swooned for that young version -- he was sort of the Anthony Perkins of 1945 -- thin, doe-eyed.

By the time Peck had matured into "full top star gravitas" (1957-1966), Hitch didn't want him. Though MGM wanted him over Grant in NXNW.

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the betwixt and between Jimmy Stewart,

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betwixt and between stardom then? Rope was first cast with Cary Grant, when Stewart went in, Hitchcock lost some budget money from his backers.

I guess Jimmy needed to get into the fifties to get "big stardom again." He toughened up for Westerns, crazied up for Hitch, and made big bucks as Glenn Miller, military guys and baseball players on the side. The Fabulous Fifties for Stewart. And James Mason noted that a Hitchcock film with Stewart in the fifties would make 1 million more than with Grant. Proof? Jealous of Grant?

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with whom he apparently "bonded",

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Hitch kept a lot of the same "below the line people around," and I guess he found Stewart wonderfully calm and business like, a "tireless worker." Cary Grant by contrast, could be fussy, neurotic and argumentative with Hitch(and with everybody), I've read.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

with whom he apparently "bonded", just as he had several years earlier with Cary Grant, on the cusp of his superstardom.

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Its hard to think of Cary Grant "pre-superstar," but I guess the Suspicion days are it. I've read that Cary Grant turned down Hitchcock's sole screwball comedy "Mr and Mrs Smith" around the same time because he didn't want to do his USUAL thing with Hitch -- he wanted to do a thriller and play a villain and darken his image. He partially succeeded.

But Notorious, Grant is a superstar. By To Catch a Thief, he's a retired superstar lured out of retirement(to play a retired cat burglar lured out of retirement.) By NXNW, he's THE superstar, and almost accidentally thrown into his "legacy movie of a lifetime."

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Ingrid Bergman is one one can chalk up to Selznick's influence.

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I'll take that. She does one with Peck(not quite well matched); one with Grant(PERFECTLY well matched) and one as a star of her own(but with Top British Guy Michael Wilding and Joe so-so Cotton.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

A bit later he had to settle for more generic not quite top of the line stars such as Jane Wyman, Richard Todd, Farley Granger, Anne Baxter, Ray Milland and the iconic but past the expiration date Marlene Dietrich.

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Hitchcock himself told Truffaut that in his first decades of work, big stars looked down on thrillers. He really only landed Grant and Stewart and Bergman, and rather early on.

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After that, Grace Kelly was a hot up and comer and as a top star at least a semi-Hitchcock "creation", as Joan Fontaine was earlier, but Grace rose much higher in her brief time at the feast.

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Three in a row, a bigger star each time, more luminous with each role.

I like how she turned down On the Waterfront for Rear Window. Hitch made the difference. (And look who replaced her on Waterfront.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

After his TV show made Hitch a household name it was easier for him to get stars who pleased him:

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I guess it was the TV show, wasn't? Suddenly he was super-famous -- and by then he'd made Rear Window and was considered something of an artiste who could make blockbusters. And the French started loving him.

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Henry Fonda here, Eva Marie Saint there; James Mason, the young Psycho stars, whom he molded to suit his needs.

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Perkins took the Psycho role without reading a script, even as I guess he discussed the dangers of his role with Hitch. But he wanted (desperately) to WORK with Hitch. By then, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, Vertigo, and NXNW had secured Hitchcock's rep as "one of the best." Janet Leigh loved watching those Hitchcock pictures...and was stunned to be asked to be in one.

(Though you REALLY want to talk about stunned -- how about all those obscure British actors getting calls from their agents that they got the leads in Frenzy? It must have blown Barry Foster's mind -- horrific gent though he would play.)

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For many years he enjoyed a Spielberg level name recognition, and no major star in his right mind would turn him down. If he wanted Paul Newman and Julie Andrews, he got them.

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Yes, but that was the last time he got them. The Birds had not gotten the best reviews and Marnie got poor ones. To fail with Newman AND Andrews was to be a marked man: "You're only as good as your last movie." Even if you are Hitchcock.

Hitchcock doubled the trouble by coming up from Topaz on with ensemble scripts(no clear lead for a big star) or uncastable star roles(Andre in Topaz could only be Yves Montand, and he said no) or unpalatable roles(a born loser, a rapist-strangler and that killer's main victim in Frenzy.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago


Family Plot was the ensemble picture problem again. He pitched the various roles to Nicholson, Pacino, Redford, Reynolds, Dunaway -- if he'd GOTTEN all of them, who'd be the star? Still, unlike as with the Frenzy cast, at least I knew the cast in Family Plot: Black, Dern, Harris and Devane were all names.

Just not big names. And somehow that stung almost as badly as unknowns.

Hitchcock's castings always fascinate me. Some wag said Hitch was a success because "he always cast big stars." But he didn't. Still, when he did, those stars got some of their best movies(Grant,Stewart, Kelly, Bergman..Fonda.)

And when he didn't cast big stars, he seemed to MAKE some of them stars: Robert Walker, Anthony Perkins, Barry Foster(see the trend.) But not Tippi Hedren or Frederick Stafford.

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[–] telegonus (736) 6 years ago

Interesting about Grant's Hitchcock pictures making a good deal less than Stewart's in the Fifties, EC. They were both top of the line superstars at the time, with Stewart even more so. Grant had been a successful leading man throughout the Thirties; truly, from his first year in films, 1932; and yet it wasn't till he began appearing with Hepburn, even as it was the box-office failure, Sylvia Scarlet, then followed with the non-Hepburn Topper for Hal Roach, Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth (co-starring the top billed Irene Dunne), and then Holiday and Bringing Up Baby, both with Kate in' 38, and key films for Grant and for Hollywood even as few people knew it at the time. The next year saw the rousing Gunga Din, the emotional Made For Each Other, and Grant was a true box-office draw.

By the time Arsenic And Old Lace came along (second half of '41) I believe Grant had just finished Suspicion, with Penny Serenade making big money around that time. The previous year's His Girl Friday and Philadelphia Story were major hits as well. From that point on, till about 1950, Grant was box-office gold for a long time. It's like he couldn't miss. Two from 1947 were quite popular: the gentle, nicely written comedy, The Farmer's Daughter, and the more contemporary and energetic The Bachelor And The Bobby Soxer. Yet Grant was well into his second decade as a star, and while still youthful and sexy his racy screen image, what first drew audiences to him, was gone, as he emerged, considered purely as a superstar, less so as an actor, as a kind of cross between the middle aged Ronald Colman of the Thirties, and a de-Anglicized one, too, and a more charismatic and overall starrier Robert Montgomery, a serious actor who became a master of romantic comedy first, then began to seek better things.

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[–] telegonus (736) 6 years ago

Sad to say, I ran out of space and, quite frankly, given the hour of the night, time. This topic needs going onto, by which I mean Hitchcock and his superstars. His two favorites, Grant and Stewart, were well established before they went to work for Hitchcock, with their "Hitch work" nicely enhancing their middle and later periods, and yet both would still loom large as iconic players of the last century if they'd never worked for Hitch: Grant could still appear in the occasional light comedy, such as the 1952 Monkey Business and Kiss Them For Me, from five years later, in addition to his more ambitious projects (The Pride And The Passion comes to mind),

Similarly, as to Stewart, he'd still have Harvey, Broken Arrow and Winchester 73 on his resume from as early as 1950. The Anthony Mann series of westerns, bios and action fare generally would still be there; and some of those made a ton of money. No Highway In The Sky was a perfectly fine and respectable picture that dealt with, among issues, the primary one of aircraft safety. No middle and late in the decade "saves" like The Man Who Knew Too Much and Vertigo, on the one hand; and yet there's no reason why Stewart could not still have starred in Anatomy Of A Murder and knock it out of the ballpark, as he did. As to the in-between stuff to "fill in" for the absence of Hitchcock projects, why not a British spy thriller. I can see Stewart filling in nicely for Jack Hawkins here, Kenneth More there, maybe even Stewart Granger, in any number of Britflicks. Then there's Europe itself. The continent may well have beckoned, and with some very serious films.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Sad to say, I ran out of space and, quite frankly, given the hour of the night, time.

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Happens to us all. This site is for "fun," anyway. Not a task.

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This topic needs going onto, by which I mean Hitchcock and his superstars.

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Yes, but perhaps also "Hitchocck and his non-superstars." Like the entire cast of The Trouble With Harry for instance. The male lead could have been played by Grant or Stewart, and I think he asked Grant but was turned down. He though of Grace Kelly for the female lead, but she left for princess hood. Then he actually ANNOUCED Bill Holden("the Hitchcock star who got away") for it, but Holden bailed.

So Hitch ended up with little-known John Forsythe(as smooth-voiced as Grant or Stewart) and newcomer Shirley MacLaine(a superstar aborning.) Even MacLaine came in when Hitchcock considered Brigitte Auber(from To Catch a Thief) but decided he needed an American(MacLaine at the time LOOKED like Brigitte Auber. Much as, years later, Barry Foster would like Michael Caine, who turned down Frenzy.)

Interestingly, as superstars go, I think Hitchocck had this group at their superstarriest

Grant
Stewart
Bergman
Fonda
...Paul Newman
...Julie Andrews

Everybody complains about Newman's method acting in Torn Curtain, and Andrews' dullness, but boy were those two BIG when Hitchcock hired them. When they all made a mediocre film, Hitch paid the price.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

His two favorites, Grant and Stewart, were well established before they went to work for Hitchcock, with their "Hitch work" nicely enhancing their middle and later periods, and yet both would still loom large as iconic players of the last century if they'd never worked for Hitch: Grant could still appear in the occasional light comedy, such as the 1952 Monkey Business and Kiss Them For Me, from five years later, in addition to his more ambitious projects (The Pride And The Passion comes to mind),

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Agreed, but in Grant's case particularly, its like he kept lending his considerable star power to projects that just weren't going to be classics: Kiss Them for Me, Indiscreet(with Bergman sadly aged while he remained ageless), The Pride and the Passion(turgid epic, and Sinatra simply walked off the movie for good with weeks left to film.); kinda/sorta Houseboat(though it has its fans.)

Its as if only with To Catch a Thief(which brought Grant out of early retirement) and especially North by Northwest, did Grant's star power REALLY get top level vehicles to work in. In the fifties, at least. Monkey Business excluded.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Similarly, as to Stewart, he'd still have Harvey, Broken Arrow and Winchester 73 on his resume from as early as 1950.

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And he made big money off of Winchester 73 thanks to one of the first "percentage of gross" deals(courtesy of Lew Wasserman, who got a share, too.)

After he came back from WWII, Stewart had floundered for a few years; even Wonderful Life wasn't much of a hit. You might say that Stewart made "Rope" during this "struggling period." He was a much bigger star again when he did Rear Window and the subsequent Hitchcocks.

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The Anthony Mann series of westerns, bios and action fare generally would still be there; and some of those made a ton of money. No Highway In The Sky was a perfectly fine and respectable picture that dealt with, among issues, the primary one of aircraft safety. No middle and late in the decade "saves" like The Man Who Knew Too Much and Vertigo, on the one hand; and yet there's no reason why Stewart could not still have starred in Anatomy Of A Murder and knock it out of the ballpark, as he did.

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I think that it is interesting that Stewart was Hitchocck's choice " every two years" in the fifties: Rear Window (54), Man Who Knew Too Much (56), Vertigo(58). Its like Hitchcock wanted to depend on the easygoing, reliable Stewart as his star every coupla years. And two of those three were big hits.

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As to the in-between stuff to "fill in" for the absence of Hitchcock projects, why not a British spy thriller. I can see Stewart filling in nicely for Jack Hawkins here, Kenneth More there, maybe even Stewart Granger, in any number of Britflicks. Then there's Europe itself. The continent may well have beckoned, and with some very serious films.

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A few stars planted themselves in Europe for a few years in the fifties and sixties. Gregory Peck in the 50's, Tony Perkins in the 60's.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Interesting about Grant's Hitchcock pictures making a good deal less than Stewart's in the Fifties, EC.

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Well, that's a James Mason quote from one of the Hitchcock books. It surprised me -- I felt maybe Mason was jealous of similar type Grant. (ON NXNW, I think Grant made about a million with overtime days; Mason a flat $100,000.)

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They were both top of the line superstars at the time, with Stewart even more so.

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This always surprises me. In the fifties, Grant seemed much more "special" as a superstar than Stewart: more handsome, more tan, better build, more suave, more masculine voice.

And yet, no: Middle America LOVED Jimmy Stewart. He stood in for them; he was OF them. He was handsome enough(though Grant and Holden and Hudson were more so.) And he had a great voice, too.

My issue with James Stewart, as a watcher of male stars in general (we're talking man-crush here) is that I simply enjoy the looks and screen personas of Grant, Holden, and even Hudson more than that of Stewart. He was far more willing to play neurotic, whiny and tempermental, and its hard to get much sympathy for him in Rear Window.

As has been discussed elsewhere, after two romances(one tragic, one happy) in 1958 with too-young Kim Novak in Vertigo and Bell, Book and Candle, Stewart cashed in his romantic credentials and indeed gave us things like his perfect(bachelor) role in Anatomy of a Murder and his onery Civil War widower in Shennadoah. He came through as a star without romance.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Yet Grant was well into his second decade as a star, and while still youthful and sexy his racy screen image, what first drew audiences to him, was gone, as he emerged, considered purely as a superstar, less so as an actor, as a kind of cross between the middle aged Ronald Colman of the Thirties, and a de-Anglicized one, too, and a more charismatic and overall starrier Robert Montgomery, a serious actor who became a master of romantic comedy first, then began to seek better things.

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Great review of the Grant career, telegonus. Remember,I'm weak on the thirties and forties. Grant really did try to retire in the early 50's(he felt outdated by Brando, Clift, Dean and even Holden), but Hitchcock lured him back with a perfect role (Thief) and somehow Grant got "energized" in the age of star's owning their own negatives(sometimes, as Grant did with Indiscreet) and getting huge percentages of their movies(Grant got rich, rich, richer with NXNW, Operation Petticoat, and That Touch of Mink.)

Rather as I'm that rare bird who really likes all the Hitchcock movies after Psycho; I'm also very partial to all the Grant movies after NXNW, save "The Grass is Greener." Its fun to see Grant check off the co-stars: with Tony Curtis as a buddy; and then romances with Doris Day(an odd mix), Audrey Hepburn(a perfect mix) and Leslie Caron(a saucy mix.) Then he cannily chooses a matchmaker role in "Walk Don'r Run," and retires.

I love all those movies because I love watching late-middle aged Cary stay all cool and deadpan and give us a final lesson in suave. (Even in Father Goose with Caron, where Grant purposely played unshaven and slobby and drunken and was STILL Cary Grant.)

As a matter, again, of "serious cinematic quality," it seems that Grant's final movie of that type was NXNW...except one has to give points to the great Charade for its cast(Grant, Hepburn AND Matthau, Coburn, and Kennedy) and its plot, if not quite to its thriller qualities.

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[–] telegonus (736) 6 years ago

Cary Grant had a damn near perfect career in films, EC, I agree. There were ups and downs, some risk taking that didn't pay off (The Howards Of Virginia. None But The Lonely Heart, a good, offbeat movie that lost money; and then Crisis and, from a financial perspective, People Will Talk).

Yet some of the risks Grant took were well worth it: leaving the relative safety of Paramount for what at the time must have seemed like dicey multi-picture deals with RKO and Columbia, and which lasted many years, yielding many classic films. Arsenic And Old Lace was a potentially risky project from Warners that paid off handsomely. Nor was Cary averse to playing a murderer, as he originally was supposed to do in Suspicion, but either his agent or RKO nixed that one, and I'm glad they did.

Later on, even a "just coasting" Cary Grant was still Cary Grant. Some of those decent, mostly journeyman comedies made money, and sometimes very big money (Operation Petticoat, That Touch Of Mind). Why complain about the misfired outings with Jayne Mansfield and Sophia Loren? Grant's professional "down" periods were few and far between; and even the biggest stars have appeared in the occasional bomb, even in otherwise good periods for them when in peak form.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Cary Grant had a damn near perfect career in films, EC, I agree.

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In some ways, I think, THE perfect career. He retired "too soon"(62), on top(a star's top billing in Walk Don't Run), and lived another 20 very luxurious years. Guys like Fonda and Stewart had to fail on TV and do movie cameos; Bogart had a perfect record as an icon, but died too young at 57. But Grant got to walk away and live a long time more, rich and reclusive. And his movie career was very, very strong, less the detours you describe.

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There were ups and downs, some risk taking that didn't pay off (The Howards Of Virginia. None But The Lonely Heart, a good, offbeat movie that lost money; and then Crisis and, from a financial perspective, People Will Talk).

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I've seen all of those except Howards. The downside is he isn't too funny in them. The upside is...they are all good in their special ways.

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. Arsenic And Old Lace was a potentially risky project from Warners that paid off handsomely.

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Just saw that the other day on TCM. Frank Capra goes Hitchcock. Sorta. What a macabre tale...I mean, these people are psycho! And Grant -- on Capra's instructions -- plays it as over the top as he ever would. On the other hand, I love the long take on Grant watching -- just WATCHING -- a big unseen fight between cops and crooks and reacting deadpan to it all.
(Bonus: Priscilla Lane , first-billed star of Saboteur, is in this. I think she's gorgeous in both films. A real crush for me.)
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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Later on, even a "just coasting" Cary Grant was still Cary Grant.

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Absolutely. Perhaps with "NXNW" and "To Catch a Thief" trailing him, I'm always willing to watch some of ANY post 1954 Grant movie just to watch "the compleat movie star." His face. His tan. His voice. His body. His sense of movement. I'll quote that mean line of Anthony Lane's: "Cary Grant would have asked Matt Damon to park his car."

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Some of those decent, mostly journeyman comedies made money, and sometimes very big money (Operation Petticoat, That Touch Of Mind).

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He seemed to pick the money makers. And missed out on Bridge on River Kwai and turned down My Fair Lady. He operated in his own realm -- a Cary Grant picture was whatever he was in.

He had a famous, cryptic complaint to NXNW screenwriter Ernest Lehman halfway through shooting the film. "This isn't a Cary Grant picture...its a David Niven picture," he groused. Huh?

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Why complain about the misfired outings with Jayne Mansfield and Sophia Loren?

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Why indeed. I'm sure he knew he would draw some male filmgoers in. By the way, he signed on to one of the Loren movies("The Pride and the Passion") because he thought Brando was taking the other lead. Oops..Sinatra. Not chopped liver but Grant hoped to work with Brando.

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Grant's professional "down" periods were few and far between; and even the biggest stars have appeared in the occasional bomb, even in otherwise good periods for them when in peak form.

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Absolutely. I like how he simply "retired" from movies for about two years, feeling he didn't fit with Brando(!) and Dean. Hitch lured him back with To Catch a Thief...and Grant seemed to head into moneymaking overdrive after that.

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[–] movieghoul (213) 6 years ago

AAOL was a hit Broadway play in the 50s and a staple for high school drama clubs in the 50s and 60s, not at all what I would call a risky project.

On stage, the Raymond Massey role was actually originated by the real Boris Karloff, whichlikely made the running joke about people trying to place his face all the funnier.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Nor was Cary averse to playing a murderer, as he originally was supposed to do in Suspicion, but either his agent or RKO nixed that one, and I'm glad they did.

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Might I ask why? You know, Grant supposedly wanted the villain role played by Ray Milland in Dial M. THAT guy was really cruel and remote-control murderous. The story is that Jack Warner wouldn't pay Grant's percentage on 3-D(Dial M was supposed to play in 3-D and was expected to be a House of Wax-big hit.) But maybe Grant got cold feet. Tony Wendice is ice cold.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

My replies are landing out of order. Sorry.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

For the record, Cary Grant is one of my favorite movie stars on the basis of three movies alone:

North by Northwest
Charade
To Catch A Thief

That's it...those were all I needed to see to know he was one of the best.

I'm very light on his 30s/40s work, but I do like these other Grant films:

Notorious(No action; but a great tale with two great stars)
Father Goose(hilariously sloppy yet still suave)
Operation Petticoat(Tony Curtis was cool for awhile, too)
Walk Don't Run(how very cool he is in this, in older age)
Arsenic and Old Lace

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[–] telegonus (736) 6 years ago

EC: Grant was also quite charming, even when in second gear, in Monkey Business.

Earlier, I like his disciplined, oftentimes "deferential" performance (to Myna Loy and Melvyn Douglas, el al) in Mr. Blandings Builds Builds His Dream House.

His sub captain in Destination Tokyo is a good, unflashy turn from him.

In Talk Of The Town he plays it straight and is at times quite serious even as the film is a comedy, which is exactly right for his character.

Did Cary Grant ever miss a beat? Seldom, I'd say. He may well have gone over the top in Arsenic And Old Lace but it's a consistent performance and after seeing the film a few times one can marvel at just how in control of HIMSELF Grant actually was as Mortimer Brewster.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

EC: Grant was also quite charming, even when in second gear, in Monkey Business.

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Perhaps the greatest "Cary being Cary" minute or two is the opening credit sequence(and the scene that follows) in Monkey Business, in which Grant's VERY absent-mided professor comes out of his home's front door too soon("Not yet, Cary," intones the narrator...Howard Hawks himself, I've read), mumbles "oh," goes back in and close the door, comes out too soon AGAIN("Not YET , Cary") and then, after the credits over the door has rolled, spends a low-key hilarious stretch of time unable to follow simple orders from his wife, Ginger Rogers(come out, close the door, lock the door), because his mind is focused on his work.

This version of the absent-minded professor is, I believe, what Ryan O'Neal studied to play a version of Grant in What's Up Doc, even though that film was loosely based on Bringing Up Baby.

This credit sequence(used for a documentary ON Cary Grant with the "Not yet Cary" gag opening it) and the first scene are pretty much a separate MOVIE from the Monkey Business that follows(which is a bit too reliant on adults acting like very bratty children under the effects of a youth drug.)


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Earlier, I like his disciplined, oftentimes "deferential" performance (to Myna Loy and Melvyn Douglas, el al) in Mr. Blandings Builds Builds His Dream House.

His sub captain in Destination Tokyo is a good, unflashy turn from him.

In Talk Of The Town he plays it straight and is at times quite serious even as the film is a comedy, which is exactly right for his character.

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You know, though I most love his 1955-1966 period -- with his silver-blue NXNW hair slowly giving way to gray and his looks only improving with age(as Paul Newman's did)....I have seen those movies you list above and he did have a different, perhaps more serious quality in them.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Did Cary Grant ever miss a beat? Seldom, I'd say.

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I cant think of a time.

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He may well have gone over the top in Arsenic And Old Lace but it's a consistent performance and after seeing the film a few times one can marvel at just how in control of HIMSELF Grant actually was as Mortimer Brewster.

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Well, Grant himself says that he agreed to Capra's demand that he go "over the top," but truly Grant doesn't do it too much -- mainly when he first discovers a corpse in the chest. And somewhere in the film, he suddenly screams like Bugs Bunny would scream: massive, sudden, FUNNY.

In some interview, Grant opined that Jimmy Stewart should have done the Arsenic role(funny, how they seemed interchangeable for casting but not all alike as stars.) I'm afraid I ALWAYS prefer Grant to Stewart. Hitchcock used them equally, but I like Cary Grant above all others(Bogart comes next), and I like a few male stars before I reach Stewart (Spencer Tracy, William Holden, John Wayne.)

For what its worth, Clark Gable never much impressed me. I know he was the screen's first "macho guy" and he's compelling in GWTW, but here is the "anti-Cary Grant": as Gable got older, his looks deteriorated fast and you had to imagine the younger Gable to accept the older Gable(in Mogambo or Teachers Pet or Run Silent Run Deep...even in The Misfits, I'm sorry to say.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Cary Grant's "compleat stardom" is one of the reasons I love North by Northwest so much. Grant was always a compelling presence, but here Hitchocck gave him EVERYTHING to do: action hero, deadpan one-liners, broad physical comedy(the drunk drive and aftermath at Glen Cove police station); very sexy patter and very sexy kissing...and a certain amount of "gravitas"("If you have to win the Cold War by (sending Eve to her death), perhaps you should learn to lose a few Cold Wars.") And while he was a bit past his middle aged peak in NXNW(that peak is visible in To Catch a Thief)...he's still the Coolest Guy on the Planet.

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[–] MizhuB (165) 6 years ago

How do you get around these narrowing replies?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I'm afraid to say...I don't.

I'm a total tech amateur.

Maybe someone else can help us?

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[–] MizhuB (165) 6 years ago

OK, I'll say it anyway. As a kid I watched NxNW with my father. At least part of it. When it got to the part in the car when Cary Grant said, 'Well, don't tell me where we're going, SURPRISE me', dad said, 'What a terrible actor' and walked away from the set. My parents thought most actors in Hitch's movies were bad.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Well, that's why there are 31 flavors.

I get lured into little traps around here. telegonus talks up Cary so I go with it...and your dad didn't like him and...I'm OK with that, too.

But honestly, and on the basis of NXNW alone...I think Cary Grant was pretty much the perfect movie star.

As for Hitchcock performances, he didn't really give his actors Oscar emoting material, but quite a few shone through, mainly the great villains: Joseph Cotton, Robert Walker, Ray Milland, James Mason, Anthony Perkins, Barry Foster, William Devane.

And I think Grant, Stewart, Bergman, Kelly, and Fonda(to name five big stars) did good things with Hitch.

Tippi Hedren and Frederick Stafford: not so much.

Great supporting players, too: Martin Balsam, Martin Landau, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter, Barbara Bel Geddes...

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[–] MizhuB (165) 6 years ago

I should have mentioned that they really didn't see many Hitchcock films. They knew Psycho the best. They laughed at Tippi
Hedren, thought The Birds was silly and Marnie was terrible.
Didn't like Kim Novak in Vertigo and thought John Gavin was terrible in Psycho. Let's just say they were very judgmental when it came to acting.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Well, Hitchcock himself didn't much like actors, as we know, and often didn't give them much help. Also, his films without humor(Vertigo, Marnie) come off as a bit too melodramatic in the acting. Reviewers of the time rarely singled out a Hitchcock movie performance; I think Anthony Perkins did the best in that era.

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[–] telegonus (736) 6 years ago

Well, yes, Grant broke free from the "pack", by which I mean male stars of his generation who were aging. aging fast, in some cases, in the years after World War II.

Gary Cooper's box-office probably equaled or exceeded Grant's in 1947, but come 1954 who was the hotter star? (Coop was by no means a has-been by then, either, with Vera Cruz a huge moneymaker, yet even as he was top billed it was Burt Lancaster, or rather Cooper's pairing with Burt, that put the film over.)

Clark Gable was just about out of the zeitgeist by 1950, although 1953's Mogambo was a "save" for him thanks to his much younger female co-stars. Spencer Tracy was always essentially a character star. That he lost what romantic appeal he once had didn't hurt his standing in Hollywood particularly.

Humphrey Bogart was in a class by himself, and while the Bogart "cult" wouldn't kick in till many years after his death there was an incipient cultishness to his appeal to begin with (yes?).

Guys like Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda were somewhat younger than the aforementioned players, began in the mid-Thirties, are really of a different generation than the others, as was Fred MacMurray, and I think it's fair to say, Ray Milland. These guys began in the Thirties, but the Thirties don't "own" them, didn't define their personas. Stewart was maybe the closest, hitting big with Frank Capra, and he was the youngest of them.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Well, yes, Grant broke free from the "pack", by which I mean male stars of his generation who were aging. aging fast, in some cases, in the years after World War II.

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Well, its pretty clear that smoking got Cooper and Bogart; Bogart at 57 and Cooper not much past 60.

I don't recall if Gable was a big smoker, but SOMETHING(drinking a lot after the death of Carole Lombard?) helped deteriorate his looks and he died of a heart attack before 60, too.

Spencer Tracy made it to 67 , but he looked 10 or more years older , and in his early 60's(Mad Mad World, Judgement at Nuremberg, Devil at 4 O'clock)...he looked white haired and old and evidently he could barely complete a working day. A ton of drinking done Tracy in, smoking not so much.

James Stewart lived life in moderation(though I've read he drank heavily through Rope because of the need to know long script pages and not blow takes), but it was said that his WWII experience of sending many young men off to die prematurally aged him. Maybe. And he made it to his late 80's.

Against all this, Cary Grant was evidently a health nut(carrot juice) and an exercise nut early on in life, and railed against "people ingesting poison" into their bodies by drinking and eating poorly. Grant also cited how good it was to " have the right genes."

Grant's health regimen kept him fit and good looking and alive after folks like Bogie, Gable, Cooper and Tracy died. And he worked in movies past everyone of those , except Tracy(Grant retired in '66; Tracy's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was released in '67 after his death.)

A connection between Hitchcock and Bogart: Both men were born in 1899, so both men were, for awhile each year, the age of the movie they released (Hitchcock was 60 when Psycho was released in 1960; 63 when The Birds was released in 1963.)

Bogart died at 57 in 1957.

Imagine if Hitchcock had died at 57 in 1957?

NO: Vertigo, NXNW, Psycho, The Birds -- his whole Big Four would be gone. Along with Marnie and Frenzy for their fans. And the rest.


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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Gary Cooper's box-office probably equaled or exceeded Grant's in 1947, but come 1954 who was the hotter star? (Coop was by no means a has-been by then, either, with Vera Cruz a huge moneymaker, yet even as he was top billed it was Burt Lancaster, or rather Cooper's pairing with Burt, that put the film over.)

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Likely so. An older man and a younger man. Funny: I read that when they wanted to change the script so that bad guy Lancaster didn't get killed by Cooper at the end, Cooper said, "No, I signed on expressly to be able to kill Burt Lancaster!"

Like Gable, Cooper was cast "too old" for his later parts; Bogart seemed to fit his older guy parts better. Recall how much Cooper is in shadow opposite Audrey Hepburn in Love in the Afternoon?

Interesting: Hitchcock always wanted to work with Gary Cooper in the 40s. Came 1959, Hitchcock signed on to do an MGM picture called The Wreck of the Mary Deare, but dropped out. The movie was made, with Charlton Heston and ....Gary Cooper.

Also, Cooper's final film, The Naked Edge, was written by Joe Stefano, and was advertised "only the man who wrote Psycho" could bring you such a thriller(Robert Bloch was not amused.)

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Clark Gable was just about out of the zeitgeist by 1950,

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Well stated!

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although 1953's Mogambo was a "save" for him thanks to his much younger female co-stars.

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Too contrasting hotties after Gable: sultry Ava and Sweet Grace.

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Spencer Tracy was always essentially a character star. That he lost what romantic appeal he once had didn't hurt his standing in Hollywood particularly.

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True. Away from Hepburn, he didn't much take romantic roles at all near the end, did he? Black Rock, The Mountain, most of the ones for Stanley Kramer -- he was just "the man." As I recall, his Mayor in The Last Hurrah was a widower.


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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Humphrey Bogart was in a class by himself,

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Yes, I think so. I think he beats Grant and Stewart for appearing in the most classics(and not a Hitchcock picture among them -- I've mused that perhaps Notorious, Rope and Rear Window would have "fit.")

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and while the Bogart "cult" wouldn't kick in till many years after his death there was an incipient cultishness to his appeal to begin with (yes?).

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Seems to have been. He maintained stardom despite not having the best looks to start with, and losing them as he aged. But he gave everyone a role model to conjure with -- tough, cynical, but with compassion. And able to get the dames. (When he wasn't playing a bad guy in The Desperate Hours.)

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[–] telegonus (736) 6 years ago

Good stuff here, EC. Tracy and Cooper, each a two time best actor Academy Award winner, had interesting, near parallel careers later on; and each was in noticeably declining in his final few years on screen.

It was sadder to see the aging in ex-male beauty Cooper than in the always somewhat rough seeming Tracy. From High Noon on he was nearly a character star, and nearly incapable of playing credible leads with the ladies. He did it, but it didn't look good, pulling off just once with Grace Kelly, and that was the end of it.

Unlike Tracy, Cooper didn't have an actress with whom he had an on screen "history" who could make him look good. Marlene Dietrich paired with Cooper would have made these two look geriatric. Jean Arthur, who looked fine opposite the much younger Alan Ladd in Shane, might have helped, but she retired after that film, and as such went out as much a winner as Cary Grant several years earlier.

Tracy became,--a true rarity in films--an old coot star. He retained his standing in Hollywood, appeared in the occasional flop, and yet remained the go-to guy for lead roles for guys over fifty (or even forty). Of Tracy's final few films, I believe three out of four were hits; after 1960, I mean. Only The Devil At 4 0'Clock seemed a true misfire (so to speak). Inherit The Wind may not have made money but given its modest budget it was scarcely a bomb;and producer-director Stanley Kramer and his two two time Oscar winning male leads walked away from it untarnished.

In a way it's (sort of) too bad that Gary Cooper, a decent film actor, would have been so "all wrong" for the William Jennings Bryan part in ITW. It was way out of Coop's range, and he'd been better suited to the Clarence Darrow part but for his aversion to playing voluble characters, and yet it's tantalizing to think two Silver Screen icons going toe-to-toe in a film without resorting to fisticuffs. Cooper Versus Tracy, on screen together, coming to a theater near you.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Tracy and Cooper, each a two time best actor Academy Award winner, had interesting, near parallel careers later on; and each was in noticeably declining in his final few years on screen.

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Well, so many of their peers were, too. Hollywood was in a pickle as the fifties gave way to the sixties: they had staked their business careers to a group of stars(male, mainly) who were aging fast, but there weren't too many replacements, yet(the picky Brando, the volatile and lazy Sinatra, the up and coming Newman.) Clearly Cooper and Gable and Tracy WANTED to work, and certain execs wanted to cast them, but it was tough going in the romantic roles; Cooper and Gable and Stewart just stopped looking like virile men.

The solution for many actors, in the fifties and sixties, turned out to be Westerns: John Wayne made his career there, but guys like Cooper, Gable and later Holden, Lancaster, Douglas, Mitchum, Glenn Ford...all went to Westerns as a kind of "safe zone" without romantic requirements.

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It was sadder to see the aging in ex-male beauty Cooper than in the always somewhat rough seeming Tracy. From High Noon on he was nearly a character star, and nearly incapable of playing credible leads with the ladies. He did it, but it didn't look good, pulling off just once with Grace Kelly, and that was the end of it.

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Yup.(As Cooper might say.) I can't say I've seen all of his last films, but he "fit" The Wreck of the Mary Deare, where he is a loner and doesn't have a love interest, as I recall(and Chuck Heston has the virility, though Coop still has the charisma.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Tracy became,--a true rarity in films--an old coot star.

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A hilarious but true description!

Truth be told, I rather prefer the "white haired" Tracy of Black Rock, Inherit the Wind, Judgment at Nuremburg, A Mad Mad World and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner more than the younger fellow with dark hair and a less-lined face. Tracy had great CHARACTER when he aged -- a certain resolute toughness and experience that was very charismatic. Probably the most charismatic coot who even graced the screen(and always above the title.)

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He retained his standing in Hollywood, appeared in the occasional flop, and yet remained the go-to guy for lead roles for guys over fifty (or even forty).

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Yes, I read a great bio of him a few years back and he really WAS in demand as "the greatest American actor for a long time."

Until he got sick in the 60s, when he said "they keep saying I'm the greatest American actor, but only Stanley Kramer will hire me."

Which was true: four out of Tracy's final five films were for Kramer. Only the Devil at 4 O'clock was not. (Tracy gave hilarious interviews about his old friend Sinatra often being off-set when scenes were filmed: "Today I filmed a heavy dramatic scene opposite a stick in the ground filling in for Mr. Sinatra. Frankly, I think the stick gave a better performance than Mr. Sinatra has done on this picture."

They remained friends.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Of Tracy's final few films, I believe three out of four were hits; after 1960, I mean. Only The Devil At 4 0'Clock seemed a true misfire (so to speak). Inherit The Wind may not have made money but given its modest budget it was scarcely a bomb;and producer-director Stanley Kramer and his two two time Oscar winning male leads walked away from it untarnished

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Inherit the Wind is from the Psycho year of 1960, and they both filmed on the Universal lot at the same time(with Psycho released by Paramount and Inherit by UA!). Inherit the Wind made far less money, but was very respected,and Tracy got the Oscar nom in 1960 that Anthony Perkins didn't get.

One wag wrote of "Inherit the Wind" that, despite the casting of Gene Kelly and a young romantic couple in the film, it was really "about two old men fighting" and nobody much wanted to see it. But I think it developed an audience on TV and in college classes, etc.

Burt Reynolds wrote in one of his autobios that he watched Inherit the Wind being filmed every day; Tracy noticed him and allowed him to "walk and talk" one day. This exchange:

Burt: Mr. Tracy, I've noticed that in movie eating scenes, you just eat with abandon and shovel it in -- how does the editor get the takes to match?

Tracy: That's not my job. That's somebody else's job.

"Words of wisdom."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

In a way it's (sort of) too bad that Gary Cooper, a decent film actor, would have been so "all wrong" for the William Jennings Bryan part in ITW. It was way out of Coop's range, and he'd been better suited to the Clarence Darrow part but for his aversion to playing voluble characters, and yet it's tantalizing to think two Silver Screen icons going toe-to-toe in a film without resorting to fisticuffs. Cooper Versus Tracy, on screen together, coming to a theater near you.

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Well, Tracy had a few "near misses" of double-star casting near the end.

It was supposed to be "Tracy versus Bogart" in The Desperate Hours, but they fell out over top billing. Fredric March took the Tracy part -- I'm pretty sure some other big star was intended for the Fredric March part in Inherit the Wind, too.

Later, Laurence Oliver accepted a part in Judgement at Nuremburg, but dropped out, so we never got to see the greatest American actor and the greatest British actor together.(Burt Lancaster took the Olivier part.)

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[–] telegonus (736) 6 years ago

I'd love to have seen Tracy and Olivier together on screen; or even just in the same film. Olivier was so much the Great Shakespearean it would have quite the acting contrast to see him working with Common Man Tracy, with his lack of affectation, his refusal (inability?) to do accents. Tracy didn't much sound like what I imagine Clarence sounded like but he used his authority to great advantage. Had it been Olivier as Bryan in Inherit The Wind he'd have mastered the fulsome toned Midwestern voice of the real Bryan (and he was capable of that), although Tracy might still have underacted him (sic) off the screen.

In Judgment At Nuremburg, I dunno.

Olivier was fond of playing European parts, was quite charming at it in The Prince & The Showgirl with Marilyn. My sense is that he wouldn't have been a good fit for the Stanley Kramer film. Too different from all the rest.

Tracy, Widmark, Garland and even Monty all seemed like a good fit for the same movie, but Olivier would have stood out too much. Marlene Dietrich and Maxamillian Schell brought a genuine and necessary German quality to the film, but, right next to them (as it were), Lord Larry in Kraut Mode might have made too much of a meal of it. This was a serious project, after all, not a Mel Brooks movie!

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Guys like Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda were somewhat younger than the aforementioned players, began in the mid-Thirties, are really of a different generation than the others, as was Fred MacMurray, and I think it's fair to say, Ray Milland. These guys began in the Thirties, but the Thirties don't "own" them, didn't define their personas. Stewart was maybe the closest, hitting big with Frank Capra, and he was the youngest of them.

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Stewart and Fonda had weird careers. Stewart's slumped in the 40's but boomed with tough cowboys and weird Hitchcock heroes in the 50s(when he wasn't playing military men, baseball players, and Glenn Miller.)

Fonda seems to have "checked out" of a movie career; he liked Broadway and he de-valued his brand. But as the sixties and seventies came along, Fonda was "valued as a classic" -- and his looks stayed far more handsome than Stewart's in his older age. (He looks great as the bad guy in Once Upon a Time in the West.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

are really of a different generation than the others, as was Fred MacMurray, and I think it's fair to say, Ray Milland.

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Two differents stories of survival.

MacMurray did great, signing on for My Three Sons and working, what? -- two days a week? Plus some Disney hits in the 60's.

But Fred will always have those three great bad guys on his resume, in Double Indemnity, The Caine Mutiny, and above all(in my book), The Apartment, where he is smiling, befuddled, power-tripping swine. (Hoo boy, would MeToo nail THAT guy today.)

Ray Milland watched his looks go and leads go -- and turned to American International movies for his salvation. Everything from the self-directed "Panic in Year Zero" to "Frogs" and one of those two-headed movies(he was a bigoted white head; Rosie Grier was the black head.)

This all kept Milland afloat for quality support roles in Love Story(sans toupee), The Last Tycoon, and Columbo.

And he'll always have that Hitchcock movie!

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[–] telegonus (736) 6 years ago

Of the bunch I listed Milland had the oddest, most idiosyncratic and least prestigious later career, especially by "old Hollywood" standards, of the lot of them. Unlike Fonda (at the time) and MacMurray, he wasn't able to sustain an even modestly successful TV career, by which I mean of a regular series. Fonda' The Deputy, not much talked about now, was a first rate, gritty western, with Fonda the older but not that old lawman, and young Allan Case, who looked like he could be Fonda's son, as his assistant. It had a two year run, which isn't awful, and I believe it was popular.

Also, in his later years, if one considers his 1955 "comeback" as Mr. Roberts as the start of it, Fonda landed some choice roles in choice films. 12 Angry Men was sort of the start of that for him. Then came the "misfire", and not really that bad Stage Struck, a remake of the Kate Hepburn vehicle Morning Glory, and featuring Susan Strasberg, whom I like and who was a babe, in Kate'e ingénue part as a Broadway newbie. It was really too late for that kind of story in 1958.

After that, The Longest Day here, Advise & Consent There, Fail-Safe, then some "fun" movies in the late Sixties, some of which made good money. Ray Milland didn't come close to that. He was for all intents and purposes a has-been. For all that, he seemed unperturbed, soldiered on in lesser films, a few of which were lively, such as Frogs. His occasional return to A level pictures, such as Love Story and The Last Tycoon, seem almost like aberrations. It's like so one told Ray he was finished. Yet in fact he really wasn't, just lower echelon.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Of the bunch I listed Milland had the oddest, most idiosyncratic and least prestigious later career, especially by "old Hollywood" standards, of the lot of them.

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No, it was tough on him. Milland became a true survivor. His unlikely linkage with American International paired him with Vincent Price, who did the Poe movies there; but Milland didn't even have that pedigree to his A-I stuff.

That said, both "Panic in the Year Zero" and "X The Man with the X-Ray Eyes" became cult favorites(Milland is briefly paired with Don Rickles in the latter.

Came the 70's, with Milland reduced to Frogs and the two-headed man and the like, we were reminded how tough a fall can be for an actor.

I don't think that's a big risk anymore. With these 500 cable and streaming movie channels, its like every actor can remain "prestigious" in TV productions -- they just aren't getting paid as well.But the productions LOOK good, and are often well written. Poor Ray Milland didn't work in such a time.

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Unlike Fonda (at the time) and MacMurray, he wasn't able to sustain an even modestly successful TV career, by which I mean of a regular series.

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Well, MacMurray was fatherhood personified on My Three Sons -- Milland looked and sounded too rarefied for that.

And yet: in "Panic in the Year Zero" he plays a "typical American father" with pretty wife, pretty daughter, pretty son -- who, in the wake of a nuke attack on LA, reverts to being a ruthless looter and killer to protect his family from rape and murder. Milland holds both sides of the character firmly -- "regular dad" and "survivor"(it is implied he has military training that kicks in immediately.) A good little movie.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Unlike Fonda (at the time) and MacMurray, he wasn't able to sustain an even modestly successful TV career, by which I mean of a regular series. Fonda' The Deputy, not much talked about now, was a first rate, gritty western, with Fonda the older but not that old lawman, and young Allan Case, who looked like he could be Fonda's son, as his assistant. It had a two year run, which isn't awful, and I believe it was popular.

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You know, I forget about The Deputy. Fonda had a failed family sitcom in the 70's; but he did The Deputy while he was STILL A MAJOR MOVIE STAR. Pretty impressive. (David Niven did one called The Rogues while HE was a star.)

A two season run in the late fifties was pretty good-- the equivalent of four seasons today(more episodes were made.)

I think the Deputy was a spin-off of the movie The Tin Star, with Fonda and Anthony Perkins in the Case role!

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

(Fonda):

After that, The Longest Day here, Advise & Consent There, Fail-Safe, then some "fun" movies in the late Sixties, some of which made good money.

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Fonda definitely "came back" in the 60's, though often he took cameos. Weirdly, he has top billing in Advise and Consent even though it IS a cameo(I guess the marquee lacked other star names.)

1969 saw a Time Magazine cover called "The Incredible Flying Fondas." For in that one year, Peter had Easy Rider, Henry had Once Upon a Time in the West, and Jane had They Shoot Horses Don't They. Ironically, Peter was the biggest success that year.

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Ray Milland didn't come close to that. He was for all intents and purposes a has-been. For all that, he seemed unperturbed, soldiered on in lesser films, a few of which were lively, such as Frogs. His occasional return to A level pictures, such as Love Story and The Last Tycoon, seem almost like aberrations. It's like so one told Ray he was finished. Yet in fact he really wasn't, just lower echelon.

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Well, this is what i discussed "up thread." Back then, the pickin's were slim for working older actors, and they looked like has-beens. But they had to WORK. I'm sure if he were old in 2018, Milland would find quality work on HBO or Showtime or Netflix.

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[–] jay440 (107) 6 years ago

I remember both Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart making forays into TV in the 70s.

Stewart had a scene where he enters a local talent contest to play his accordion, perfect cornball Americana. The audience whoops it up, and Stewart
thinks they're responding to his musical performance, when actually a stripper has gone onstage behind him and is disrobing while he plays. His delight at the audience reaction is hilarious and endearing, as he plays his instrument with more and more enthusiasm. Total obliviousness has hardly ever been funnier. If I remember right, the cops come in and bust the show.

Fonda had a funny scene where he is peacefully camping out on his own, by a crackling campfire, reading a book (a murder mystery, so there's your Hitchcock connection). He is the picture of contentment until a garrulous Tim Conway arrives to pitch camp right next to him. Fonda plays the taciturn but polite straight man to Conway's friendly but obnoxious jabbering, enduring the invasion of his solitude with stoicism. Conway catches a glimpse of the book, and praises it, saying he read it also, and never guessed it was so-and-so who committed the murder. Fonda, after taking a moment to register this spoiler, quietly closes the book and drops it into the campfire.

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[–] movieghoul (213) 6 years ago

East of Eden got around the length problem by dramatizing only the latter part of the book and filling in with exposition what's missing. THat approach might have worked with Giant where I find the first half does drag somewhat. But it wouldn't be the same film.

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[–] jasonbourne (1027) 6 years ago

Ahh. I saw the first painting by Hopper and it reminded me of the Bates house.

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[–] jasonbourne (1027) 6 years ago

Are you saying James Dean was a split personality like Norman Bates in real life? I've read Dean was non-conformist and was difficult to work with at times. Anthony Perkins was gay in real life. He got married and had a child, but was a closeted gay.

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