Psycho was released on Thursday, June 16 1960, on one very big screen (the DeMille theater's) in NYC. Openings on the biggest screens in Boston, Philly, & Chicago followed on Wednesday, June 22.
So, P. is as old now as Hitchcock was when he made it and unleashed it on the world.
Happy Birthday, Psycho!
Speakin' of feeling good, where's that bottle you said you had in your desk?
Released in '60. Now 60 itself. Hitchcock 60 when he made it. And Perkins 60 when he died. And I wouldn't be surprised if 60 may be the number of times ecarle, you or I have seen it.
But who's counting?
Time to cut the cake. C'mon into the kitchen. It's awful homey, and it's where we keep the knives (even if they don't always stay there).
Released in '60. Now 60 itself. Hitchcock 60 when he made it. And Perkins 60 when he died. And I wouldn't be surprised if 60 may be the number of times ecarle, you or I have seen it.
But who's counting?
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Ah, Doghouse...now THERE's some analysis for the 60th that sports insights I never considered...what a great gift on one of your "stop ins."
60. 60. 60. 60....the world is filled(as Hitchcock himself knew) with patterns and coincidences and profundities beneath the surface.
Each of the "60's" gave me food for thought:
HITCHCOCK:
With an August 1899 birthday, Hitchcock was 60 when he made Psycho(November 1959 through February 1960) and still 60 when it was released on June 16. Its always been nifty how usually, the last two digits of the year in which a Hitchcock film was made(OR released) are...his AGE at the time. Rebecca in '40(he's forty.) Psycho in '60 (he's 60.) Frenzy in '72 (he's 72.) And Family Plot in '76 (he's 76.) Indeed, he died in 1980...AT 80.
At issue in 1960 when Hitchcock was 60: 60 was considered "the start of old age." And Hitchcock seemed to prove it. The Birds (made in '63 when Hitch was '63) belied some age and tiredness(though counterbalanced with spectacular technical prowess) and Marnie, Torn Curtain and Topaz seemed to reflect a slowdown that was at least somewhat age related(indeed, one book had a note from Hitchcock to someone asking the other person to take over direction of Marnie, "because I'm sick and I can't finish the picture.")
Did Hitchcock's great career pretty much END when he was 60? Is Psycho the "old man's peak?" The Birds says no...but maybe.
And then there is Frenzy, made when Hitch was 72...and a critical success and a small hit. But alas, it looks like an old man's movie...a lot of talk, set-pieces "indoors" (an office, a stairwell, a truck bed). Still, several critics called it "the work of a YOUNG man" so...maybe 60 wasn't that final for Hitch after all.
HITCHCOCK: (CONT) Tarantino was likely thinking of Hitchcock and other directors "after 60"(like Billy Wilder) when he suggested that directdors(like Tarantino) should quit early. And yet, Spielberg and Scorsese and Scott are all working towards or into their 80's..times and health regimens change.
Personal note: 60 is behind me , now. I remember it well. I feel SOME of the fatigue that Hitch may have felt, but certainly not all. I won't be as rich as them, but I think I'll use Scorsese and Scott (and Clint Eastwood at 90) as role models. Remember: "old" is always 15 years older than you are now.
PERKINS: If 60 seemed "old" for Hitchcock to be making movies, 60 seemed "too young" for Anthony Perkins to pass away. Back in 1992 when it happened, I remember thinking "well, 60 is pretty old," but now that I'm THIS age...no, 60 isn't very old at all. Tony Perkins -- always a very "young" star -- and certainly such when he first made Psycho (age 27-28) died young, after all. Not as young as Steve McQueen(50) or James Dean(20-something) but...too young. 80 seems about expected these days, I think (COVID-19 has some of us worried about that, but not THAT much.)
And of course, Perkins died of AIDS, which made him newsworthy. He wrote some thoughtful and kindly words about how he'd found more compassion in the world of AIDS treatment than in "cutthroat Hollywood." Perkins was, director Mike Nichols said, "the only intelligent actor I ever worked with." (Date of quote: unknown.) That intelligence shone through in Perkins' final words. But -- he'll always be Norman Bates too. And that's an enormous achievement. Done by 60.
1960: Tony Perkins said when he was offered Psycho and Norman Bates in 1959, he thought "Am I ready to enter the 1960s?" A lot of moviefolk -- Hitchcock included - - felt that the 60's were going to be important. "Eurofilms" were showing the "uncensored way" and Hitchcock, Wilder, and Preminger were out to usher in a new era. "The 60's" seemed the time to do it. America wouldn't have the R and X rating until 1968, but the movies of the 60's marched forward towards that ultimate breakthrough: there was cussing and sex and nudity and ultra-violence all through the decade. Psycho got there first -- with some of it. (Along with Peeping Tom and Eyes Without a Face, sure -- but EVERYBODY saw Psycho.)
And this: a few critics of the 70s, 80s and beyond wondered how Psycho could have so nicely "foreseen the violence and turbulence of the 60's" (JFK blown away, the other assassinations, Vietnam, the riots.)
We've learned, decades later, that the 60's hardly had a lock on THAT....
CONT:
And...
PSYCHO AT 60. As Alfred Hitchcock and Tony Perkins found out(in different ways), 60 years IS a lot of life. And now Psycho has lived it. Its interesting to realize that when Psycho had its infamous TV debuts in 1967 and 1970...it was only 7 to 10 years old. A mere "child." Now, its a full grown adult looking back over the years. I found a few "Psycho at 60" articles on the Internet(including some posted here). One of them is at Newsweek..which, I remember, did a "Psycho at 50" article 10 years ago. A lot has happened in those 10 years. In my life. In YOUR life. In the life of the world and the nations in which we live. But Psycho lives on, the 10 years were nothing to it. (I'm reminded of Madeline's finger tracing the tree rings in Vertigo...)
Personally, I DO hope to read the retrospectives on Psycho at 70. And 80. Beyond that? Who knows....
"Personal note: 60 is behind me , now. I remember it well. I feel SOME of the fatigue that Hitch may have felt, but certainly not all. I won't be as rich as them, but I think I'll use Scorsese and Scott (and Clint Eastwood at 90) as role models. Remember: "old" is always 15 years older than you are now.
PERKINS: If 60 seemed "old" for Hitchcock to be making movies, 60 seemed "too young" for Anthony Perkins to pass away. Back in 1992 when it happened, I remember thinking "well, 60 is pretty old," but now that I'm THIS age...no, 60 isn't very old at all."
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I've seen so many people in their 60s, 70s or beyond tap their noggins with an index finger and say, "In here, I'm still 25." Well, more power to 'em. And my remarks on another thread about never fully growing up notwithstanding, I can't quite get there. The things that interested my 25-year-old brain still do, but most now seem not worth the trouble. Closest I can get is to say my inner 25-year-old is weighed down by dragging around an additional 40-odd years of physical and mental baggage.
To paraphrase Dudley Moore, are the 60s a dangerous age, Cynthia? Moore himself made it to only 66; his erstwhile partner Peter Cook, 57. There were a number of notables who got only as far as 60 (give or take 1 - 3 years): directors Victor Fleming, Preston Sturges, Greg LaCava & Bob Fosse; producer and thorn in Hitch's side David Selznick; John Barrymore; Bogart; Gable; two-time Hitchcock player Peter Lorre; Perkins costar Audrey Hepburn; Gary Cooper; Lee Marvin; Anne Baxter; Williams Holden & Bendix; Peter Finch; Carrie Fisher, for instance.
But safe to say about most if not all is that they packed a whole lotta livin' into those give-or-take 60 years.
Ashby 59, Peckinpah 59, Truffaut 52, Lubitsch 55, Fassbinder 36, Murnau 42, Hamer (Kind Hearts and Coronets) 52, Eisenstein 50, Ophuls 55. Probably many more - these are just the famous 'die young' directors I could quickly think of.
Booze & cigs. lifestyle (+ internalised homophobia in a bunch of cases) shortened numerous mid-20C lives and careers. The rich and famous take much better care of themselves (and society's quite a bit more supportive of sexual minorities) these days.
It occurs to me I probably shouldn't have included William Holden in my lineup, as his death came as the result of accident (which would constitute a whole other collection). He may already have been on the way to burnout, but who knows?
One day in Nov of '81, a coworker mentioned that he'd been behind Holden in the checkout line at a West Los Angeles Liquor Barn the night before, and described the cart full of bottles he had. When the news came of his death after the weekend, and the details of his drunken accident were revealed, my friend observed ruefully, "I must have watched him buying the fatal bottle."
It occurs to me I probably shouldn't have included William Holden in my lineup, as his death came as the result of accident (which would constitute a whole other collection). He may already have been on the way to burnout, but who knows?
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I always forget that, too. Staying alone at an apartment he kept at the beach in Santa Monica, he got drunk, hit his head on the night table and bled out. Wasn't found for a couple of days.
My rueful thought: Holden died at 63. Without that fall, he might have made it to 65.
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One day in Nov of '81, a coworker mentioned that he'd been behind Holden in the checkout line at a West Los Angeles Liquor Barn the night before, and described the cart full of bottles he had. When the news came of his death after the weekend, and the details of his drunken accident were revealed, my friend observed ruefully, "I must have watched him buying the fatal bottle."
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Wow. Its like Nick Cage as the guy "drinking himself to death" in Leaving Las Vegas.
Both Billy Wilder and Sam Peckinpah had rueful comments on how Holden -- who starred in great films for them, died.
Wilder: "I could understand it if he'd been gored by a rhino on his African ranch, or killed in a plane crash flying to the Orient. But a bottle of booze and a night table? Sad."
Peckinpah(a bad drunk himself): "Its not the drinking that kills us. Its those damn night tables. They should be banned!"
A couple of recent, fairly young directorial deaths:
John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood) 51
Lynn Shelton (Mad Men, Your Sister's Sister, Little Fires Everywhere) 54
A couple of recent, fairly young directorial deaths:
John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood) 51
Lynn Shelton (Mad Men, Your Sister's Sister, Little Fires Everywhere) 54
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True, and very sad. These are the losses that come from certain health conditions which may have been hard to spot(Shelton) or control(Singleton.) And it is shocking to lose known artists that young.
I suppose that is different from the artists (actors like Marvin, Bogart, Tracy and Boone; directors like Peckinpah) who elected to punish their bodies to a premature aging and death.
I seem to recall that hard-drinking, hard-living Errol Flynn died fairly young and the examining physician said "his internal organs were 20 years older than his real age."
The corollary to these movie people deaths , of course, is rock stars. Though even they have gotten healthier. We sure lost of lot of them in their 20s in the 70s. Modernly, neither Michael Jackson nor Prince "went the distance." Drugs. But a lot of them live on and on. Keith Richard! Mick Jagger. Rod Stewart.
Hitchcock heroes Cary Grant and James Stewart lived into their 80's(Stewart longer than Grant.) I recall Grant saying "I've lived longer because I didn't put poisons into my body like others do." And yet -- it got him to 82. That's just two years more than sedentary heavy drinker Hitchcock.
Its all a crapshoot.
"And then there is Frenzy, made when Hitch was 72...and a critical success and a small hit. But alas, it looks like an old man's movie...a lot of talk, set-pieces "indoors" (an office, a stairwell, a truck bed). Still, several critics called it "the work of a YOUNG man" so...maybe 60 wasn't that final for Hitch after all."
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I'm probably repeating myself from some long-ago post on this or, y'know, that other board, but Frenzy and the period leading up to it have always seemed to me to have a parallel in Stage Fright: after three disappointments, a return to native territory at the start of a new decade for a modest little murder story featuring a surly protagonist, colorful secondary characters and eccentric domestic scenes; to be followed by a thriller emphasizing duality and the accidental convergence of separate lives.
'Course, at his age and state of health, another golden era was too much to hope for. But it's hard for me to get a fix on Hitchcock's work relative to his age. Notorious, one of his very best of the '40s (and his 40s) is a largely interior and internalized affair concentrating seriously on minute details of perverse psychology, avoiding bravura visual set pieces and devoid of the impish (if gallows) humor that permeates Frenzy.
The other night, purely by chance, I watched The Yakuza for the first time, which Sidney Pollack directed at the age of 39. With the exceptions of a couple instances of sword-and-gun play, it's a thoughtful, stately and elegiac examination of codes of honor, cultural traditions, old debts and regrets. If I'd known nothing about either director, I'd have guessed Frenzy to have been the work of a younger one, and The Yakuza that of an elder. Go figure.
Hi EC! Long time, no see (on the page anyway). Happy (belated) 60th birthday, Psycho!
To respond more formally to your post: it does, sadly, seem that Mr. Hitchcock began his professional decline shortly thereafter, with health issues (obesity was surely a factor; and a sedentary lifestyle). The Birds is a fast ride, yet its story unfolds differently from Psycho's. The earlier film was more tense; literally "arresting" at times. There was a coiled energy at work, and not just in the writing and acting but in the way Hitchcock had the story unfold. He was a master craftsman at the top of his game when he made it. Is there another film of his that came afterward that shows the same mastery? (Frenzy has shocking moments, yet I don't get the urgency of the earlier Hitch in it, though it does show that the director was, mentally and emotionally, still highly capable).
Hi EC! Long time, no see (on the page anyway). Happy (belated) 60th birthday, Psycho!
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Another welcome "blast from the past." Hi, telegonus! I suppose this "hallowed occasion"(Psycho's 60th) has brought you to us for some celebration. Thank you!
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To respond more formally to your post: it does, sadly, seem that Mr. Hitchcock began his professional decline shortly thereafter, with health issues (obesity was surely a factor; and a sedentary lifestyle).
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Seems to be the case. There's often an "internal" debate in Hitchcock circles along the lines of "Hitchcock should have stopped with Psycho." Not only was it a huge hit and a big personal earner for him, it rather "climaxed an era" including some great 50's films right before it -- and the 30s and 40s before then.
Still, Hitch sure "pulled out all the stops" on The Birds, set-piece wise. Its a major film, a classic with flaws.
And then there are those who feel Marnie was "the last masterpiece."
Frenzy was massively well-reviewed, but partially that was because a new generation of critics wanted to celebrate Hitch, I think. Frenzy was "good enough."
Still, begs the question: was 60 "old enough to stop"?
Note in passing: from my readings, I learned that Hitchocck , after the flops from Marnie through Topaz, KNEW he could do better, and he embarked on a plan. PART ONE: Almost a year off to "rest and travel"(including Hawaii.) PART TWO: Scour his "incoming coverage memos" of 1500 properties(books, stories, plays) until he "found the right one." Turned out to be "Goodbye Picadilly, Farewell Leiceister Square" which had (1) a psycho killer and (2) a wrong man AND for "the 70's sake" was about a SEX killer (Hello, R rating.); Frenzy(a title left over from an unmade 1967 project rejected by Universal) became the movie's title.
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The Birds is a fast ride, yet its story unfolds differently from Psycho's. The earlier film was more tense; literally "arresting" at times. There was a coiled energy at work, and not just in the writing and acting but in the way Hitchcock had the story unfold. He was a master craftsman at the top of his game when he made it.
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Its odd: Psycho and The Birds both have the same "weirdness" a first 30 minutes in which very little thriller plot or action takes place. Psycho has a "theft," but thats about it. The Birds has...nothing. Psycho also has that opening "sex scene" for 1960, so it was simply a more absorbing film in its first half hour than The Birds. And whereas the "boredom" of Psycho ends with that SHOWER SCENE,...with The Birds its just...a seagull pecks Tippi on the forehead. And 20 more minutes of "little things" take place before the action finally gets going(and never stops, really.)
But the misshapen and overlong start of The Birds could very well represent a man who was aging, tired -- not fully up to besting not only Psycho...but NXNW and Vertigo before it.
---Is there another film of his that came afterward that shows the same mastery? (Frenzy has shocking moments, yet I don't get the urgency of the earlier Hitch in it, though it does show that the director was, mentally and emotionally, still highly capable).
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Well, it seems that 3 after Psycho had SOME power: The Birds(most of all); Marnie(in some quarters; and Frenzy(rather as a comeback to be heralded beyond the movie itself.) Meanwhile, Torn Curtain, Topaz and Family Plot never really got enough good reviews to "matter" (less the Killing of Gromek in Torn Curtain which seems to be hallowed.)
Frenzy "kicks in" whenever Rusk is on screen --whether in the beginning(when's a good friend and funny guy) or thereafter(when he is revealed as a terrifying sex killer.) The "Blaney scenes" are like "the Sam and Lila scenes" in Psycho -- and more boring. In between, we have the Oxford dinners. (That Frenzy is built around three men -- the wrong man, the right man, and the cop who must figure it out, is its structure -- even as women rule the piece, overall.)
i will say this -- and I'll save it for a different post. I have found three -- and only three -- critics who actually found Frenzy to be BETTER than Psycho. In all three cases, they said "Frenzy is the best Hitchcock movie since North by Northwest" -- thereby moving Marnie and The Birds off the list.
So somebody thought that. But I don't.
One "critic looking back" had an interesting take on Frenzy. It drew crowds because of a bunch of good reviews AND a new surge of young Hitchcock fans from all his movies on sixties TV. But Frenzy was too creepy to enjoy. The REAL return to Psycho-like thrills would not come from Hitchcock, wrote this critic -- it would come from Jaws.
I tend to agree -- and I agree that The Exorcist could be skipped over because Psycho and Jaws ARE peas in a pod -- based on the monster killing you in "the zone of danger."
CONT
Hitchcock's health problems probably also stemmed from being born in 1899...but Winston Churchill was born earlier and lived to 90. Some great men didn't need modern health technology to live a long time -- and 80 for Hitchcock was pretty good(even if he was out of it for the last two years.)
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Yo, Gubbio! Thank you!
"There we are...in New York City, on Broadway....June 16, 1960....when Psycho was something NEW and something HUGE." An event. Sold out shows. Lines for blocks. Faintings in the theater. SCREAMING.
So many of us wish we could have been there, in person and experienced THAT movie with those first crowds.
Alas.
Oh, well, I got Jaws and Star Wars at least.
I've seen so many people in their 60s, 70s or beyond tap their noggins with an index finger and say, "In here, I'm still 25." Well, more power to 'em. And my remarks on another thread about never fully growing up notwithstanding, I can't quite get there.
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Its an interesting conundrum. The good news is that if one does some "exercises for the brain" on the one hand, and accommodates certain losses on the other(write things down to deal with short term memory loss, etc), you CAN stay pretty young mentally and thus maintain a certain connection with younger days that the body can't match.
I don't think it is so much that I feel 25 in my head as much as I feel that I'm "still the same." A lot of feelings and pleasures and life stances did NOT go away with age.
I've noted before that in electing to talk about Psycho on a regular basis (though not SOLELY about Psycho, I've tended to that), I've kept alive a period which was most "burning" in my childhood/teen years -- I can't think of Psycho WITHOUT that period attached, and I think everybody in the world has a movie like that, dependent on their youth decade: Jaws, Star Wars(early years), Animal House, Caddyshack, Indiana Jones, Ghostbusters...The Breakfast Club, Home Alone, Jurassic Park, The Matrix....Batman....Iron Man...The Avengers.
Indeed, I'm sure that there is a legion of young people now for whom the first assemblage of The Avengers will likely be THEIR Psycho...the childhood memory of something that lasts their whole life.
Except Psycho was so dark, scary , forbidden in its time. The people who remember The Exorcist and Texas Chainsaw and Halloween and Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream get THAT type of memory.
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I've mainly found this: Several Hollywood wags have said "everybody's second business is the movie business" -- which is why we can spend very productive and relaxing hours thinking and talking about director careers, actor careers, how movies "came together" (there are so many stories of movies almost NOT getting made -- and that includes Psycho and American Graffiti and Back to the Future -- that we realize what a "hit or miss" Hollywood can be.)
And as a matter of age...I personally was doing that "Hollywood business thinking" at least from my teens on. That I still do it today begs the question: should I have left such trivial thinking back in my youth? Do I really know that much MORE about how the movie business works? I dunno, but it is still fun to play the mental game.
CONT: I'll give you an example from my youth: having read Hitchcock/Truffaut and the Robin Wood book in my early teens, I had a sense of Hitchcock "being over" -- of recent films like Torn Curtain and Topaz being failures. I was a little sad -- even though it was clear that Hitchcock through The Birds was greatness personified(with the TV show, too!)
And then one day, I read a newspaper interview with Hitchcock(generic, he wasn't promoting a film) around early 1971. And in that interview, he said, "I will soon start work on my next film. It is called Frenzy. Its about a series of psychopathic murders and how the wrong man is picked up."
From that one sentence, "hope grew." A movie called Frenzy. About psychopathic murders. Hitchcock was FINALLY going to try to match Psycho!(And then a deflated feeling -- "but he's too old and his last movies have been flops....I bet he can't match Psycho."_
But I also noted that Frenzy was about BOTH psychopathic murders AND a wrong man. And that's when I remembered Hitchcock telling Truffaut that when his career hit downturns, Hitchcock would always "run for cover" and pick a surefire project. The examples were Strangers on a Train after a run of non-hits; and North by Northwest after The Wrong Man and Vertigo. Surely(thought my teenage self)...Frenzy was a "run for cover movie."
Less than two years later, I saw Frenzy and it all came true. It was a hit -- BECAUSE it ran for cover(in an R-rated, disturbing way.) But no , it wasn't a blockbuster on the order of Psycho. And yet, the critics warmly embraced it because they UNDERSTOOD it (as a run for cover.)
And those were teenage thoughts for me. They've continued on for my whole life as new directors(Spielberg, Scorsese...QT)...writers(Aaron Sorkin, QT) and stars have come along. Watching major stars develop is always a fun pursuit. Watching which ones survive and which ones fall is something, too.
Example: Kevin Costner. He had a history of "getting cut out of The Big Chill" that led to that film's writer-director, Lawrence Kasdan, putting him in Silverado, and recommending him to Spielberg(for a TV episode of Spielberg's Amazing Stories) and to DePalma(for The Untouchables.) From Silverado on, Kevin Costner had an incredible run and became a superstar: No Way Out(sex), The Untouchables(violence), Bull Durham , Field of Dreams, Robin Hood(!?) JFK, The Bodyguard...and Dances With Wolves(Best Picture and Director for star Costner.)
Costner was huge and unassailable and -- said Hollywood insiders -- a jerk with a big head. So when he put a long, lumbering "Wyatt Earp" into production -- some other folks greenlighted Tombstone for release ahead of "Earp" and raided Western costumes and sets that Costner wanted. "Tombstone"(with Val Kilmer's great Doc Holliday) was a hit, "Wyatt Earp" was not...and Kevin Costner's star career started a rapid fire collapse. It took the overexpensive "WaterWorld" and the long, dull "The Postman" to finish Costner off. But he came back as a character star (and streaming TV star on "Yellowstone") and he's with us today.
See? One can make a lifetime avoiding the pains of "the real world" by studying how these Hollywood careers rise and fall and rise. (For Hitchcock, the comebacks of Strangers on a Train, North by Northwest and...luckily at the near end, Frenzy, are studies in proper career management.)
doghouse wrote:
The things that interested my 25-year-old brain still do, but most now seem not worth the trouble. Closest I can get is to say my inner 25-year-old is weighed down by dragging around an additional 40-odd years of physical and mental baggage.
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Yeah, that baggage does manifest over time. With the physical comes the realization that those push-ups just aren't so easy anymore, so why try so many? With the mental, well -- in my personal case, I'm very pleased with the life I turned out to have lived(while "making other plans" as John Lennon said). But I've got some valleys to go with the peaks.
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doghouse wrote:
To paraphrase Dudley Moore, are the 60s a dangerous age, Cynthia? Moore himself made it to only 66; his erstwhile partner Peter Cook, 57. There were a number of notables who got only as far as 60 (give or take 1 - 3 years): directors Victor Fleming, Preston Sturges, Greg LaCava & Bob Fosse; producer and thorn in Hitch's side David Selznick; John Barrymore; Bogart; Gable; two-time Hitchcock player Peter Lorre; Perkins costar Audrey Hepburn; Gary Cooper; Lee Marvin; Anne Baxter; Williams Holden & Bendix; Peter Finch; Carrie Fisher, for instance.
But safe to say about most if not all is that they packed a whole lotta livin' into those give-or-take 60 years.
swanstep wrote:
Ashby 59, Peckinpah 59, Truffaut 52, Lubitsch 55, Fassbinder 36, Murnau 42, Hamer (Kind Hearts and Coronets) 52, Eisenstein 50, Ophuls 55. Probably many more - these are just the famous 'die young' directors I could quickly think of.
Booze & cigs. lifestyle (+ internalised homophobia in a bunch of cases) shortened numerous mid-20C lives and careers. The rich and famous take much better care of themselves (and society's quite a bit more supportive of sexual minorities) these days.
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That's quite a collection of "died too young celebrities," but many of them are from the mid-20th Century(at the end.) Cigarettes got Bogart at 57(he was born the same year as Hitchcock; had Hitchcock died at 57 -- the movies from Vertigo to Family Plot would not have been made!). Cigarettes, booze and red meat seemed to have killed Cooper and Gable barely 60. Hard drinking Spencer Tracy made it to 67, but he LOOKED 87(in his last decade) and could barely walk or breathe on set.
Heart disease has always been with us, but the "age 50+ can be dangerous" in that regard. Tyrone Power died of a heart attack while filming a swordfight scene with George Sanders(Yul Brynner replaced him.) Lubitsch reportedly had a heart attack with a call girl at his mansion(lucky him?) Generally, people are more healthy these days, but we lost James Gandolfini to a heart attack at 51, so the risk is still there. (Good news: if you make it past your 50's without a heart attack, you've dodged a real bullet.)
I always put a big circle around "63" because three tough guys went at that age: Lee Marvin, William Holden, and Richard Boone. Smokers and hard drinkers, all. "They would have wanted it that way." I did read an interview with Richard Boone's only child son, who noted, "My dad was only 63 when he died. He could have been a great character actor for at least ten more years." True.
Indeed, thanks to healthier lifestyles we have a lot of 70-something (or older?) guys and gals still working these days. DeNiro and Pacino at the top(Jack seems retired.) Morgan Freeman and Tommy Lee Jones. A pack of 60-somethings are going strong(if for lower pay, sometimes): Bruce Willis, Kevin Costner, Mel Gibson, John Travolta, Tom Hanks, Arnold(hmm. guess who's actually STILL a star in that group? I count one.) Jeff Bridges seems to have broken out to near superstardom as 70 approaches, and Kurt Russell is not far behind. (OK that was all guys -- I know there are some female counterparts, starting with Streep and Sarandon. )
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Meanwhile, directors. Compared to "old man Hitchcock," I find old man Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street to be as superfast a movie as GoodFellas -- its as if he hasn't aged a bit(The Irishman ran slower...but on purpose, it seemed, and its not THAT slow.) Ridley Scott goes on and on(QT had to sit next to him on some show and watch his "stop directing at 60" mantra collapse.) And then there's Eastwood, whose direction in his 70's and 80's looks as "young" as in his 40s(when he started directing.) Richard Jewell last year seemed like a 30 year old could have directed it. Maybe its not that hard.
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I would like here to point out that I have a small group of same-age friends and I've already told them: don't think Lee Marvin at 63...think Ernest Borgnine at 95. I like to use Borgnine as a role model for aging and death because, unlike Clint, Ernie packed on a few pounds from an early age and yet worked in movies til 93 and died at 95. There's hope yet.
But safe to say about most if not all is that they packed a whole lotta livin' into those give-or-take 60 years.
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I think that's a very true statement -- particulary true about "movie people" with their globe-trotting and wealth and fame...and sex...and(for those who could handle it) drinking and drugging.
From swanstep's list , sam peckinpah stands out. I've read a few bios on "Bloody Sam"(who made some great movies over a short period of time), and there's really nothing to admire about his substance abuse(he went from booze to cocaine and could handle neither) but...if there's a guy who simply "burned himself out," that's the man. I think Peckinpah getting all that adulation for The Wild Bunch was something he literally couldn't handle. He was dead drunk making "Straw Dogs" and "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid," but they are fine films. You can actually see Sam's substance abuse on screen during incoherent passages in those two films AND Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and The Killer Elite(which starred cokehead James Caan whose hangers-on helped bring Sam all the way down; Caan's recovered now.)
Hal Ashby's is a "cautionary tale." There was drug use in his story, but eventually it was friend Warren Beatty who insisted that Ashby get medical care for a condition. That care led to surgery, amputation and death. In the last year of his life, Ashby never spoke to Beatty again once the cure proved worse than the disease.
..or so I've read. Its all reading for me -- except Peckinpah's incoherence in The Killer Elite is there for all to see on the screen.
"And then there is Frenzy, made when Hitch was 72...and a critical success and a small hit. But alas, it looks like an old man's movie...a lot of talk, set-pieces "indoors" (an office, a stairwell, a truck bed). Still, several critics called it "the work of a YOUNG man" so...maybe 60 wasn't that final for Hitch after all."
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I'm probably repeating myself from some long-ago post on this or, y'know, that other board,
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"At'sa OK." When the time is right for a "circle back," its right.
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but Frenzy and the period leading up to it have always seemed to me to have a parallel in Stage Fright: after three disappointments, a return to native territory at the start of a new decade for a modest little murder story featuring a surly protagonist, colorful secondary characters and eccentric domestic scenes; to be followed by a thriller emphasizing duality and the accidental convergence of separate lives.
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Very interesting to me, this analysis. I've always seen Strangers on a Train as the "comeback" from a string of FOUR disappointments that INCLUDES Stage Fright. Truth be told, while I've seen SOAT perhaps 20 times over the years; I've only seen Stage Fright, twice, I think(once on TV way back when, then once on VHS.)
SOAT -- like NXNW later, I think -- is Hitchcock rather grudgingly saying, "OK...you want a fast thriller with lots of action and a clear good guy and a clear bad guy and a BIG CLIMAX? Here you go..." And I'm not quite sure that Hitchcock's heart was IN those big entertainments. He always seemed to like to veer into darker, more sedate films like I Confess, The Wrong Man, Vertigo and Marnie.
But we can/should back up to Stage Fright as its own "comeback" attempt -- and with what I see now as clear ties to Frenzy(which would make sense -- Hitchcock may have instructed writer Anthony Shaffer to LOOK at Stage Fright in preparing Frenzy; or maybe Hitch felt "Stage Fright vibes" in the source novel.
I recall reading somewhere that Stage Fright did make money(most Hitchcock movies did), and it certainly had two major stars(female) in Marlene Dietrich and recently Oscar-ed Jane Wyman. Plus then popular Alastair Sim. To the extent I have "discounted" Stage Fright as a noteable Hitchcock film, the problems with me. I really have to go back and re-watch some Hitchcocks I've left dormant over the years.
(Funny sidebar: Marlene Dietrich, in some interview, said she could never tell Stage Fright apart from Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution. She was in both films, and felt they had the same plot and she played the same character and she simply forgot which was which.)
AND: I don't know in which month Stage Fright was released, but its from 1950 so..."Stage Fright is 70!"
a return to native territory at the start of a new decade for a modest little murder story featuring a surly protagonist, colorful secondary characters and eccentric domestic scenes; to be followed by a thriller emphasizing duality and the accidental convergence of separate lives.
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An interesting match-up of Stage Fright/Strangers on a Train to Frenzy/Family Plot -- and certainly Frenzy was seen as the first "true Hitchcock British film" SINCE Stage Fright(though Man Who Knew Too Much '56 spends about half its time in London.)
One can see plot patterns and structures recurring in Hitchcock all the time. I've noticed, for instance, that I Confess, following Strangers on a Train -- has the same essential premise: our hero knows who the killer is, and is blamed for his crimes -- but Strangers did the plot big and flashy and action-packed, and I Confess does the story slow and sedate and profound(also, the killer in I Confess is nowhere near as fun as Bruno Anthony.)
Frenzy is Strangers on a Train/I Confess with a key change: Blaney does NOT know that Rusk is the real killer, which is very suspenseful on the one hand, but rather "anti-dramatic" on the other -- there is none of the conflict of Guy/Bruno and Father Logan/Otto -- Blaney only gets to confront Rusk AS a killer at the very end, and barely so.
CONT
As I've noted before, Frenzy and Family Plot are EACH a "structural remake of Psycho" -- but in different ways. Which means that Psycho has TWO concurrent structures:
ONE: Psycho/Frenzy : First surprise murder(Marion, Brenda), second suspense murder(Arbogast, Babs -- with a staircase both times), final capture of the killer(in the fruit cellar; in Rusk's flat.)
TWO: Psycho/Family Plot: Investigators(Arbogast/Lila/Sam; Madame Blanche, Lumley) following one character(Marion, Eddie Shoebridge) and one "non-violent" story are heading straight into a second, much more dangerous story(Mrs. Bates is a killer; Arthur Adamson is a kidnapper/killer.) The closer the investigators get to "solving the mystery," the closer they get to their deaths(as Arbogast finds out, and the others NEARLY find out.)
I would like to believe that Hitchcock -- "a voracious reader of possible movie material" read the source novels of Frenzy and of Family Plot -- and saw EXACTLY those "Psycho-like" structures in both cases.
I would like to interject here that this thread, in contemplating "Psycho at 60" has gone on to take up the topic of "everyone at 60," of aging...and of the prospect of death which lies before all of us, and which, we have seen, took a lot of Hollywood folk "way too soon."
The good news as far as I'm concerned is that I've found aging to be a pleasant experience; looking back over a life well lived is very satisfying. As Louis CK(now verboten) once said when he was respected: "There is something to be said for the benefits of an ordinary life without wealth or fame -- work, love, sex, kids, food...." And its true . Even when some of those elements go wrong or require struggle to get or keep.
Part of our study of celebrity is to see "how they ended." From biographies of Bogart(died young) and Paul Newman(died old enough), one reads of great lives which, on one particular day...changed. Bogart had a bad cough, saw a doctor and....Newman felt very tired one day, saw a doctor and...
But that's at the very end of the story. Whenever it comes. The real story is in the life lived.
I write this at a time when COVID-19 has been put on the agenda to make us ALL think about "the end." But there are enough caveats to THAT story that I'm not all that concerned.
Best to just keep on living in the present. And warmly remembering movies like Psycho from the past...(and THAT one is certainly about "how life ends.")
"(Funny sidebar: Marlene Dietrich, in some interview, said she could never tell Stage Fright apart from Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution. She was in both films, and felt they had the same plot and she played the same character and she simply forgot which was which.)"
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Sidebars to your sidebar:
Dietrich's always been difficult for me to assess as an actress. She was just...Dietrich. In the first half of the '30s, Paramount had five "properties" whose popularity was based entirely on personality: Mae West, W.C. Fields, The Marx Brothers, Burns & Allen and Dietrich (and following closely after was Bob Hope). They were who they were (onscreen) and audiences knew exactly what they were going to get, regardless of story or setting. Their success depended on image and schtick rather than acting chops. Not meant to demean, as they all proved remarkably durable.
Reminiscent of Dietrich's remarks are these from Bill Maher in a recent podcast interview, describing the Stewart/Day The Man Who Knew Too Much:
"The innocent guy who's being chased by somebody and he doesn't know why they're chasing him, and the police are after him but he's gotta find the bad guy before the police find him."
That very loosely describes a dozen Hitchcock films, but not that one. Maher went on to say he prefers more recent fare like the Salt and Bourne thrillers, which he says "Took what Hitchcock was doing and...revved it up, and I'm glad they did. Hitchcock's hard to get through."
Well, yeah, anything would be when paying such scant attention. But regardless of how vague and offhand he was being, it does speak to those patterns you mention. Stage Fright. like Frenzy, was a "run for cover" project with the comfortable "wrong man" premise.
But your comparisons of SOAT/I Confess/Frenzy - and Psycho/Frenzy, Psycho/Family Plot, - point up how he always kept it fresh by shaking up the ingredients, along with some mixing and matching. Indeed, Stage Fright provides a Psycho antecedent in its final-reel revelation of the man we were led to believe was only an accessory as the actual killer.
True, Doghouse. Paramount was known for its "vehicles" going way back. I believe David Selznick mentioned this in some of his early memos. In this case it could be a vehicle (or property, if you will) that's especially good for a top director. At Paramount that could be DeMille, Lubitsch, Mamoulian or, later on, a Sturges or a Wilder; thus, Union Pacific was more of a DeMille pic than a McCrea or Stanwyck one. Billy Wilder pretty much owned The Major And The Minor, Double Indemnity and The Lost Weekend. Even in the latter's case the star Ray Milland having his acting chops finally recognized band winning an AA for his work in this major film. Milland's career got a boost for a couple of years but it still didn't make him a star at Cary Grant's level. Nor did Double Indemnity put Fred MacMurray into Bogart's league. Alan Ladd in Shane some years later is another case of a perfect blend of star and what turned out to be (and wasn't initially planned as) an Alan Ladd showcase, and his best film and best "vehicle"
ever, with all due respect to brilliant director George Stevens, fine co-stars Jean Arthur and Van Heflin).
I think we'll give credit to AH again, but it was:
Anthony Perkins - Really didn't get ANY credit he deserved for Best Actor
Janet Leigh - Best Supporting Actress
Alfred Hitchcock - Didn't get the credit he deserved for Best Film, Best Director, Best Producer
Reminiscent of Dietrich's remarks are these from Bill Maher in a recent podcast interview, describing the Stewart/Day The Man Who Knew Too Much:
"The innocent guy who's being chased by somebody and he doesn't know why they're chasing him, and the police are after him but he's gotta find the bad guy before the police find him."
That very loosely describes a dozen Hitchcock films, but not that one.
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I'm not an "expert" on John Ford films or Lubitsch films, but I've seen enough Hitchcock (over and over again) to be at least a little bit of one on him and -- folks like Bill Maher just amuse me. All those REAL Hitchcock "wrong man films" he could have quoted and he picked the ONE(twice) that wasn't.
I'll "peep out of my hole a bit" to note that a lot of these political show people seem pretty shallow about much else. Political shows are pretty easy to do.
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Maher went on to say he prefers more recent fare like the Salt and Bourne thrillers, which he says "Took what Hitchcock was doing and...revved it up, and I'm glad they did. Hitchcock's hard to get through."
Well, yeah, anything would be when paying such scant attention.
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Well, in general: sure. Hitchcock was from a different era(several, in fact) when movies were slower, more narrative heavy, less reliant on action sequences(to have too many back then meant you were making a B movie or worse, a serial.)
Time marches on. North by Northwest will NEVER match the action of a Bourne movie -- but it sure is a better, more overall exciting experience to me.
Indeed, with Bourne "brought up," I'll say that I finally felt "old and out of it" when the Bourne movies became big hits. I dutifully saw all three -- and it FELT like a duty. First of all, they all seemed to be the same story, just with new and different CIA villains trying to stop Bourne. I can't really tell the films apart in memory; and the car chases in -- one? two? three? of them were shaky cam messes in my memory. Bourne having to fight mano-y-mano to the death with various assassins became repetitive -- less stylish than James Bond's various such fights.
I recall in one Bourne movie(the first?) Matt Damon(another problem of mine) had one scene with Clive Owen and then Owen left the movie and I felt like: "Oops...they just lost the real movie star. We're stuck with Damon." History made Damon a bigger star than Owen, but really pretty much only because of Bourne -- Damon's "franchise"(see also Pirates, Mission Impossible and Hunger Games for some other stars.)
.But this: Hitchcock's movies may seem "slower" to a Bill Maher, but we know that Hitchcock rather "pioneered" the kind of fast cutting montage excitement currently available in a Bourne movie, just BETTER: the plane crash in Foreign Correspondent, the carousel in Strangers, the concert in Man Who Knew Too Much, all the action in NXNW, the shower murder in Psycho, all the action in The Birds, the death of Gromek in Torn Curtain, the murder of Brenda Blaney and the potato truck scene in Frenzy and even -- says I -- the runaway car scene in Family Plot(process screens yes, but more fun construction and clarity than Bourne.)
shareBut your comparisons of SOAT/I Confess/Frenzy - and Psycho/Frenzy, Psycho/Family Plot, - point up how he always kept it fresh by shaking up the ingredients, along with some mixing and matching.
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It is sort of a "gift" of Hitchcock's that, with enough study of the films, one can see these "repetitions" and variations and kind of "get it." They say (who's they) that there are only 7 stories to be told, and Hitchcock had a different set all his own. So you are the wrong man? Well if the right man confessed to you -- and you are a PRIEST -- you've got deep agony. If the right man killed somebody you WANTED dead...and you know it...you're Guy Haines. And if you are Richard Blaney, you spend the whole movie thinking that a man is your best friend...and he raped and killed your ex-wife(and you didn't want that) and your current girlfriend -- boy are you mad when you find out. Or how about Roger Thornhill? He's the wrong man...but the right man DOESN'T EXIST.
Psycho has the Frenzy structure(two murders and capture) AND the Family Plot "investigators in danger" structure, and combines both to create both irony AND suspense.
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Indeed, Stage Fright provides a Psycho antecedent in its final-reel revelation of the man we were led to believe was only an accessory as the actual killer.
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Ha. Never thought of that one! Thus, when Hitchcock read Psycho (written 9 years later), he likedy REMEMBERED that particular irony...what a great new vehicle to use it again! (Indeed, "Norman Bates as accessory to murder" is one of that film's great cross currents -- he's NEVER a hero...but we sympathize, nonetheless...)
"Hitchcock's movies may seem "slower" to a Bill Maher, but we know that Hitchcock rather "pioneered" the kind of fast cutting montage excitement currently available in a Bourne movie, just BETTER"
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And better, I'd submit, for the build-up to them achieved only through effective pacing and rhythm, which is what those latter-day examples of Maher's omit.
One of the best "movies about movies," Vincente Minnelli's The Bad and the Beautiful, does something most others don't bother with: it dispenses pearls of wisdom along the way about film making craft and philosophies.
One scene has flamboyant and mercurial producer Kirk Douglas taking a director to task for not getting everything he could from a scene he's just ordered printed. The director tells him, "I could make this scene a climax. I could make every scene a climax. But then, I would be a bad director. A film all climaxes is like a necklace without string: it falls apart."
Or becomes indistinguishable from its assembly-line predecessors and successors.
For good measure, it also features Leo G. Carroll and Kathleen Freeman as another director and his laconic assistant that Minnelli said were modeled upon Hitch and Alma.
And another scene I think Hitchcock must have appreciated stresses the importance of suggestion using only visuals not only in big sequences, but in quiet, intimate ones. Douglas is coaching novice screenwriter Dick Powell through his first script, and Powell protests when Douglas blue-pencils a character's long speech.
Powell pleads, "Look, you don't understand. He's going off to battle, probably to be killed. When his mother opens her mouth to speak..."
Douglas interrupts, "She DOESN'T speak. She wants to, but she's too overcome. What she's feeling, we'll leave the audience to imagine. Believe me, they'll imagine it better than any words you or I could write."
WOW
shareSo you are the wrong man? Well if the right man confessed to you -- and you are a PRIEST -- you've got deep agony. If the right man killed somebody you WANTED dead...and you know it...you're Guy Haines. And if you are Richard Blaney, you spend the whole movie thinking that a man is your best friend...and he raped and killed your ex-wife(and you didn't want that) and your current girlfriend -- boy are you mad when you find out. Or how about Roger Thornhill? He's the wrong man...but the right man DOESN'T EXIST.
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I wrote the above last week and then thought about another Wrong Man: The Wrong Man. Fonda in the fact-based 1956 Hitchcock film. Yet ANOTHER variant -- the right man is totally unknown to Fonda, and to the audience, until the very end and proves a "needle in a haystack" for Fonda to find(prayer and a miracle seem to deliver him.) And it turns out ,he LOOKS a great deal like Fonda...the theme here being "all of us look like somebody else, any of us could pay for that double's crimes."
And thus, it occurred to me: Hitchcock, even as he went to the "wrong man" well time and time again(being unfairly accused of a crime is nightmarish suspense) seemed to find "variations on that theme" each time. He was known to be a voracious reader of material and precise in his preparation -- HE knew, better than WE knew -- when he was chaning the "wrong man template" a bit. Film to film.
And in To Catch a Thief...the Right Man is...a woman. And a copycat.
"Hitchcock's movies may seem "slower" to a Bill Maher, but we know that Hitchcock rather "pioneered" the kind of fast cutting montage excitement currently available in a Bourne movie, just BETTER"
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And better, I'd submit, for the build-up to them achieved only through effective pacing and rhythm, which is what those latter-day examples of Maher's omit.
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Absolutely. Perhaps this started with Raiders of the Lost Ark(1981) , which , based on old movie serials, paced action scenes at 7 minute intervals. This in turn, became what was known as "action beats"(7 minute intervals to action) as overseen by producers like Joel Silver(Lethal Weapon, Die Hard) and Jerry Bruckheimer.
The screenwriter of Lethal Weapon 2(1989) put it this way: "In old movies, we used to wait forever for 'the good parts.' In our movies, we put the good parts every 7 minutes."
Which brings me to North by Northwest. Three -- and only three, but an INCREDIBLE(for the time) three action sequences: the drunk drive at the beginning, the crop duster in the middle, Rushmore at the end. And the way we watched THAT film for action was to feel a building excitement over each half hour or so of (good) plot en route TO the big action sequences. I doubt we will ever see "action beats every 45 minutes" ever again...but it worked once. Very well. And we didn't feel oversaturated with action (see: Lethal Weapon II.)
Like North by Northwest, Psycho has only three major set-pieces: the shower murder, the staircase murder and the fruit cellar climax. But we sure spend a lot of time in suspense between them. (Its a long, long, LONG wait following Arbogast around until Mother FINALLY pops out of her lair like a trap door spider on him. The screams were massive.)
And like modern action movies with ACTION every seven minutes, modern slasher movies give us MURDERS every seven minutes...to diminishing returns.
One of the best "movies about movies," Vincente Minnelli's The Bad and the Beautiful, does something most others don't bother with: it dispenses pearls of wisdom along the way about film making craft and philosophies.
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Yes...I've only seen the film twice, years ago, but it evidently has/had quite the reputation for being "real" about what both the art and craft of old-time Hollywood cinema is about.
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One scene has flamboyant and mercurial producer Kirk Douglas taking a director to task for not getting everything he could from a scene he's just ordered printed. The director tells him, "I could make this scene a climax. I could make every scene a climax. But then, I would be a bad director. A film all climaxes is like a necklace without string: it falls apart."
Or becomes indistinguishable from its assembly-line predecessors and successors.
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A variation on this is an anecdote about director Otto Preminger discussing the Exodus script (before production) with screenwriter Dalton Trumbo:
Trumbo: It wouldn't be good form for me to give you a script with nothing but great scenes. That gets monotonous.
Otto: I tell you what , you write every scene brilliantly...and I will direct unevenly.
This anecdote from a book on Preminger became a movie scene in the film "Trumbo" of a few years ago.
For good measure, it also features Leo G. Carroll and Kathleen Freeman as another director and his laconic assistant that Minnelli said were modeled upon Hitch and Alma.
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I never caught that THEN. Thanks to posters here...I understand that now. Using Leo G. Carroll - Hitchcock's favorite actor(6 Hitchcock films, though only 5 by then) was likely part of the in-joke.
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And another scene I think Hitchcock must have appreciated stresses the importance of suggestion using only visuals not only in big sequences, but in quiet, intimate ones. Douglas is coaching novice screenwriter Dick Powell through his first script, and Powell protests when Douglas blue-pencils a character's long speech.
Powell pleads, "Look, you don't understand. He's going off to battle, probably to be killed. When his mother opens her mouth to speak..."
Douglas interrupts, "She DOESN'T speak. She wants to, but she's too overcome. What she's feeling, we'll leave the audience to imagine. Believe me, they'll imagine it better than any words you or I could write.
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The "Hitchcock connection" here is Hitchcock famously deciding not to record Stewart's dialogue during the Albert Hall sequence in Man 2. You can SEE Stewart talking desperately to cops and to Doris Day, but you never hear him(you only hear the symphony)...and you know exactly what's going on.
That said...sometimes in Hitchocck, the dialogue IS great and necessary(Marion/Norman and Arbogast/Norman in Psycho) and Psycho itself rather put a big dent in the "suggest, don't show" theory of terror. (The slash down Arbo's face, the sheer lingering length of the shower stabbing.)
True, Doghouse. Paramount was known for its "vehicles" going way back. I believe David Selznick mentioned this in some of his early memos. In this case it could be a vehicle (or property, if you will) that's especially good for a top director. At Paramount that could be DeMille, Lubitsch, Mamoulian or, later on, a Sturges or a Wilder; thus, Union Pacific was more of a DeMille pic than a McCrea or Stanwyck one.
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I've read of some 40's studio mogul having upon his oversized desk a group of index cards. Actors. Actresses. Directors. And when properties were bought for filming, that mogul would look at the cards and move them around until he "found his combination": Director, Actor, Actress.
Outside of his work with Selznick, Hitchcock seems to have avoided being subject to "assignment." Even his early forties loanouts to Universal seemed to be to make HIS choice of movies(Saboteur and Shadow of a Doubt.)
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Billy Wilder pretty much owned The Major And The Minor, Double Indemnity and The Lost Weekend. Even in the latter's case the star Ray Milland having his acting chops finally recognized band winning an AA for his work in this major film. Milland's career got a boost for a couple of years but it still didn't make him a star at Cary Grant's level.
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Indeed, some years later, when Jack Warner nixed Cary Grant for the villain in Dial M(or perhaps Grant backed out; it WAS a villain) -- Ray Milland got the part at far less cost than Grant.
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Nor did Double Indemnity put Fred MacMurray into Bogart's league.
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Perhaps too "against type" for Fred -- he went back to heroes in the main. And yet, his three greatest roles are as villains -- Double Indemnity, The Caine Mutiny, and (above all) The Apartment. Double Indemnity and The Apartment were both for Wilder(Fred got The Apartment when first choice Paul Douglas died of a heart attack right before filming.) Interestingly, for Wilder, MacMurray is more sympathetic for Wilder as a killer(Indemnity) than as a rich heel of a corporate boss.
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Alan Ladd in Shane some years later is another case of a perfect blend of star and what turned out to be (and wasn't initially planned as) an Alan Ladd showcase, and his best film and best "vehicle"
ever, with all due respect to brilliant director George Stevens, fine co-stars Jean Arthur and Van Heflin).
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I'm not sure who was considered for Shane before Alan Ladd, but he certainly made it his signature role and created this particular "Tarnished White Knight Gunman" into a very special Western character, unique.
Something about Ladd's celebrated shortness made his character a bit vulnerable in the final gunfight, I felt -- and indeed, Shane is wounded.
A part Alan Ladd ALMOST got: Spencer Tracy's in Bad Day at Black Rock. Tracy was asked first, but he stalled for so long that MGM told Tracy, "Forget it, we're casting Ladd." Tracy said "OK, I'll do it." Decades later, Jack Nicholson as the Joker was the same deal. Nicholson stalled. "Forget it, we're casting Robin Williams." Nicholson said "OK, I'll do it."