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New 2021 Book : "The 12 Lives of Alfred Hitchcock"

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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So I was in a bookstore and I saw ol' Alfred on the cover of a new book, and I had to smile.

It is called "The 12 Lives of Alfred Hitchcock." Its new: 2021. The edginess of an addict came upon me: Would I be buying this book? Would I be able to stop myself from buying this book?

The truth of the matter is, I've bookstore browsed about three "new" books on Alfred Hitchcock in recent years, and I did NOT buy them. By in large, these were "opinion books" that took the usual existing stuff about Hitchcock and re-hashed it. And these books never had any "new" quotes(no matter how old they might be, I find that if somebody finds a great quote from or about Hitchcock say from 1954 that I've never read -- well, that's a new quote to me.)

I found some GOOD new quotes in The 12 Lives of Alfred Hitchcock.

Here is one, from a letter written by arguably the greatest of mid-century middle-aged character actresses, Thelma Ritter, to her husband, about whether or not to play "Miss Gravely"(the Mildred Natwick part) in The Trouble With Harry:

"I must not have much vision, but this one scares me. Its lewd, immoral, and for anyone without a real nasty offbeat sense of humor, in poor taste."

END

How revelatory. Here's Ritter writing a "professional critique" to her HUSBAND(shades of Alfred and Alma) Here's Ritter revealing a certain sophistication of phrase that we didn't always hear from her characters.

Here's Ritter finding the movie "lewd." Well...indeed, young John Forsythe pursues young Shirley MacLaine with a lot of suggestive patter("I'd love to paint you in the nude") but also Miss Gravely is discussed in sexual terms: "She's well preserved...all preserves must be opened eventually." So evidently Thelma Ritter wasn't up for playing a sex object.

Here's Ritter calling the movie "immoral" and "in very bad taste." For the sex? For the cavalier treatment of a dead body? I'm reminded of LA Times critic Philip Scheuer writing of Psycho: "Psycho is the most disagreeable Hitchcock picture since The Trouble With Harry...which was disagreeable in a different way."

Ritter did peg the movie's play to a "real nasty offbeat sense of humor." That is why it is loved today(along with the middle-aged sex stuff, I"d say) and..it was a flop then.

Sad: we were deprived of Thelma Ritter in another Hitchcock movie. That said, as with Tony Perkins and Janet Leigh in Psycho...perhaps its just as well that she is only in a Hitchcock top level classic(Rear Window)...and playing a very moral character, which probably kept her comfortable.

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Skipping forward 20 years to 1975 , here is a quote from Bruce Dern on his first day on the set of Family Plot. Dern says he told Hitchcock:

"I don't give a shit if you like this or not, but I'm sitting right next to you for the next ten weeks."

Dern evidently sensed that the elderly Hitchcock felt "left alone" by all the people who saw him as a "living cinema God" among them and wouldn't approach, and that he was just gonna sit there and be pals.

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Another quote I never read before was from Hitchcock himself, about how Universal fretted over the type of movies he kept making for them(instead of a new North by Northwest):

(Hitchcock felt he had become)...."the questionable old man of the later movies, who occupied himself dispassionately with sex matters."

Did Hitchcock really SAY that? I checked the"Notes" pages and it claims Hitchcock WROTE that to John Russell Taylor, whose "Hitch" was a biography written while Hitch was still alive in 1978.

Think about that quote. "Sex matters" in Hitchcock were always there but I would say that , from Vertigo on , they really took the floor: Vertigo(Stewart/Bel Geddes/Novak); NXNW(Grant/Saint/Mason; Saint/Mason/Landau); Psycho(Sam and Marion; Norman and Marion; Norman and Mother); The Birds(not much, but Lydia and Annie complicate matters); Marnie(sold by Hitchcock as a "SEX MYSTERY"); Torn Curtain(Paul and Julie in bed at the beginning) Topaz(everybody's cheating on everybody); Frenzy(heroines have sex with both the anti-hero and the rapist who kills them --no consent there); Family Plot(two unmarried, sexually active couples in conflict.)

OK , Hitch...yeah. Never thought of that before.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The plethora of "new quotes" for my education helped push me to buy this book, but so did some of the opinions of the author( Edward White.)

Here is White "picking a small fight" about Psycho:

"One of the many half-truths of Psycho, perpetuated by Hitchcock himself, was that his decision to film the shower scene in black and white stemmed from his belief that the sight of Marion Crane's blood gurgling its way down the shower drain would have been distasteful in color. In fact, the decision was motivated by more practical concerns relating to budget.."

Hmm...how could he be so SURE? Why is this a "half truth"? Hitchcock's quote about not wanting red blood in the shower was repeated by Hitchcock a LOT of times, including while promoting Family Plot in 1976. The quote makes sense to me, given the Hays Code of 1960. I'd guess(because I don't KNOW) that budget mattered somewhat, but Hitchcock made The Trouble With Harry quite cheaply in color.

In any event, this author, Edward White, takes it upon himself in this book to offer many an opinion -- some rather David Thomson-like(an influence?) -- and where the book "wins" for me(another reason I bought it, and likely the reason White got it published) was his "12 Lives" approach to Hitchcock.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

According to author Edward White, these are the "12 Lives of Alfred Hitchcock" -- twelve "sides" which allow White to study Hitchcock in a new way (at least some of the time) and White makes sure not to go in the usual "chronological order" with Hitchcock's movies and career.

The Twelve Lives:

The Boy Who Couldn't Grow Up
The Murderer
The Auteur
The Womanizer
The Fat Man
The Dandy
The Family Man
The Voyeur
The Entertainer
The Pioneer
The Londoner
The Man of God

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That's an interesting 12. Some, we've considered before -- The Auteur, The Voyeur. "The Dandy" is an interesting chapter because it brings in a discussion of Beau Brummel and Oscar Wilde AS dandies(but of different types) and then brings Hitchcock into their orbit. (Another way that this book avoids the usual Hitchcock book trap is to "go historical" on all sorts of other figures.) White makes the case that Young Hitchcock sought to dress as a dandy and -- immediately upon making good money in British movies, went to the best tailors on Savile Row. White also reveals that Hitchcock's famous "closet with 50 of the same suits" was NOT so uniform. They were cut to his fluctuating weight, some were blue, many were cut differently. But Hitchcock -- a rich man -- was as attuned to his tailoring for his body as Cary Grant was to HIS well-tailored thinner frame.

This allows White to segue into North by Northwest and Cary Grant's silver-gray suit as "the greatest man's suit in the history of motion pictures"(as voted in several polls.") That's the OTHER way White's book works -- he brings one or more Hitchcock movies into each chapter to discuss a theme begun with Hitchcock's own life. Thus: Hitchcock was a dandy; he got tailored suits; Cary Grant was a dandy, one of HIS tailored suits was the greatest suit in movies. Fun!

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

In the chapter on Hitchcock, "The Family Man," White picks "Shadow of a Doubt" as the "family" movie to dissect, but also notes that Hitchcock -- unlike many other directors of his time who "hid" their wives and kids (all the better to have affairs)...Hitch put Alma front and center as a collaborator and gave ever increasing visibility to daughter Pat.

And then there is this chapter, which really does elect to linger on that which we often DON'T.

"The Fat Man."

So often here, I try to use other terms than fat for real people and movie characters. It is easy and alliterative for writers to call the Norman Bates of Robert Bloch's novel "fat and forty" -- but we prefer terms like "overweight," "obese," "heavyset," etc.

Still, when you say "fat," it means something.

And Edward White in his chapter on Hitchcock "The Fat Man' comes to remind us that while Hitchcock "captured and exploited" his own fatness (his caricature, his shadow on his TV show) ...it had to be of some pain to him.

Think of it: just how many fat film directors do we have nowadays? By the very nature of their energetic working methods and health regimes, folks from Spielberg and Scorsese to the Coens and any of the Andersons are not fat people. Michael Bay is a director, thin, fit...and evidently gets all the chicks he wants.

And even in Hitchcock's own era(eras), though a lot of directors weren't all that handsome(Lang, Ford, Lubitsch, Huston, Joe Mankiewicz) they weren't fat...that was Hitchcock's own cross to bear. The handsome Orson Welles GOT fat...and rather became Hitchcock's doppelganger accordingly in later years (from say, Touch of Evil, on), but a slender, handsome Welles starred and directed in Citizen Kane.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I"ve read some debate over the years as to how much of Hitchcock's size was due to eating versus how much was due to "a glandular condition." Proponents of the latter say that Hitchcock really wasn't much of an eater; it MUST have been glandular. Others spoke of Hitchcock eating "five steaks at one meal" in his younger years so maybe...

That said, Hitchcock definitely dieted himself down from the rather huge 300 pound man who made The 39 Steps and the movie White picks to discuss this is "Lifeboat" with its famous "Reduco" ad of fat and thinner Hitchcocks, side by side. (Evidently, a still slim Hitchcock put his profile in a neon Reduco ad for Rope, too.)

The "slimmed down" (193 pounds) Hitchcock of the forties could very likely had rumored brief romances with Ingrid Bergman and his assistant Joan Harrison , he certainly could have joined his fellow movie directors in affairs and casting couch adventures. (And even as "the fat man," he was propositioned by call girls at private parties -- once in FRONT of Alma.) Its a mystery exactly what Hitchcock did with his personal life in those thinner years.

Still, author Edward White in making one of Hitchcock's "12 Lives" the life of The Fat Man forces us to confront aspects of Hitchcock we didn't much think of(says I.) Perhaps Hitchcock made sure to hang out with Sydney Greenstreet and Laird Cregor in those days to feel better.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The final "Life" given to Hitchcock in this interesting book is "The Man of God," which at once allows author White to get "chronological"(he closes with the final years and months of Hitchcock til his death in 1980) , and to cover his two most religious(Catholic) movies: I Confess and The Wrong Man. (Interesting: despite the "Psycho" musical notes in Bernard Herrmann's Taxi Driver score and DeNiro's ties to Norman Bates; Scorsese says that The Wrong Man is the biggest influence on Taxi Driver.)

In "real life," the book presents an interesting vignette of Hitchcock -- asleep on a chair in black pajamas, that's cool -- being visited by Catholic priests at his home near his death and being given communion. One priest woke Hitchcock up and said "Hitch, this is Mark Henniger, a young priest from Cleveland." Looking up, a sleeping Hitchcock awoke and and said, "Cleveland? Disgraceful."

"The 12 Lives of Alfred Hitchcock," to me, is a worthy addition to one's Hitchcock library, with a bunch of quotes I've never read before and an interesting review of things.

Oh, I forgot one GREAT new fact here: Hitchcock was paid $129,000 per episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents -- his base pay for MOVIES was $250,000 to direct something like North by Northwest. Thus, Hitchcock made more on two episodes of AHP than on his movie base pay(percentages and ownership made the difference on movie income, though.)

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Fearing too much of an "immersion" in Hitchcock, I also bought one book about The Making of Chinatown("The Big Picture") -- with looks at Nicholson, Polanski, Robert Evans and screenwriter Robert Towne -- and one book about Mike Nichols. I guess I'll report at their pages but the books reveal that as Hitchcock's era gave way to the 70's and beyond, Hollywood became even more a place of sex and drugs. Why, Mike Nichols got hooked on crack!

Interesting business...

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

Thanks for this long-ish review ecarle. Perhaps I can add another book to your reading pile: The Guardian had an interesting review the other day of "Billy Wilder on Assignment: Dispatches from Weimar Berlin and Interwar Vienna", a collection of Wilder's journalism in Vienna and Berlin (including various film reviews) from 1925-1930 (Wilder got his his first screenwriting credit in 1929 for People on Sunday). None of this stuff has been widely available before and never translated into English. Here's the review:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/apr/18/billy-wilder-from-poor-austrian-journalist-to-hollywood-superstar
and here's the University Press page on it:
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691194943/billy-wilder-on-assignment

No word on whether Wilder reports running across Hitch and Alma in Berlin in 1928 either when they were observing and assisting Murnau or when they out and about enjoying the very freely sexual Berlin nightlife of the period.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

No word on whether Wilder reports running across Hitch and Alma in Berlin in 1928 either when they were observing and assisting Murnau or when they out and about enjoying the very freely sexual Berlin nightlife of the period.

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Intriguing. Looking at photos of Young Billy Wilder, and understanding his sexual drives(from writings) I can see where he had a bit more fun than Hitchcock in his younger years even as they both seemed to movie in tandem in the forties, fifties, sixties and(almost) the seventies as directors. Its uncanny how much they matched up -- with the centerpiece of 1959/1960 North by Northwest/Psycho; Some Like it hot/The Apartment PEAK.

I'll give all of that a look.

One Wilder anecdote I like.

He had a gorgeous wife named Audrey for most of his life, I think.

One morning as they were having breakfast, this exchange:

Mrs. Wilder: Billy, you know...today is our anniversary.
Billy: Please...not while I'm eating!

[–] jay440 (107) 4 years ago

I'll add my thanks for the write-up too, ecarle. I’ve got the Chinatown book in my Kindle but I haven’t gotten to it yet. I first read about this Hitchcock bio earlier this week in a New York Times review. The reviewer had a suggestion for a 13th Hitchcock: “The Dissembler, for Hitchcock’s own joy in issuing contradictory statements about his life.”

Also: “The traditional task of the Hitchcock biographer has been to locate the defining event that became the wellspring for his lifelong interest in paranoia, surveillance and sexual violence. The biographer as detective, as it were, wandering the Bates home in Psycho, searching for the body of the mother, the all-revealing trauma.”
Hopefully with more success than Arbogast.

And also: “Hitchcock rarely discussed — the death of his father and the strain of living through war — ‘the very type of tortuous suspense and grinding anxiety that was the adult Hitchcock’s stock in trade.’ Neighborhood children and infants died in the air raids, and White suggests that The Birds — with the attacks on a school, and the pioneering aerial shots — can be seen as Hitchcock’s way of reliving the terror.”

[–] jay440 (107) 4 years ago

This is new to me, and I had to google WWI aerial bombing London: “Between May 1915 and May 1918, Zeppelins and bombing planes killed 668 persons in the Metropolitan Police District and injured 1,938 more.”
Did Hitchcock live through something like this? Born in 1899, he was a teenage school boy during the war years. I have to agree that the war was on his mind while making the school attack scene.

The review concludes with this: “Thwarted, unfulfilled desire is the wire running through Hitchcock’s work.”
Thwarted and unfulfilled certainly applies to Scotty in Vertigo, but I think also to each main character in Psycho as well: Sam and Marion in their secretive, long-distance love affair, Norman’s desperate solitude, and even Lila, played by pin-up beauty Vera Miles, seems not to have any love in her life, only her sharp, tense disposition.

I believe at some point I’ll be adding this to my Hitchcock collection, but through Kindle. I’m not at the point of browsing through a bookstore just yet, but soon enough.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I'll add my thanks for the write-up too, ecarle.

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Thank you!

--

I’ve got the Chinatown book in my Kindle but I haven’t gotten to it yet.

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Ah, Kindle...how the world reads...but me, I still love books I can browse and/or buy...and the bookcases they are cluttered.

I still have my first copy of Hitchcock/Truffaut -- a 1967 book I received in 1970. It all starts back there -- with Hitchcock telling the story "his way" and Truffaut sucking up a bit. But I saw a documentary about all these rich and famous directors who still have their copy of Hitchocck/Truffaut, too. So I match them THAT way. That's all. Ha.

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The Chinatown book is good...and evidently en route to docudrama land. I wish it good luck. Its interesting to see Hollywood changing so massively in the 70's...with Hitchcock rather haunting the decade and dying "right on time" in 1980. Surely there was drinking and drugging and womanizing/man-izing in Hitchcock's decades(20s-50's), but New Hollywood took it up to new levels. Cocaine seems to be the real additive.

Anyway, with all of that, the book posits that four men -- screenwriter Towne, producer/studio head Robert Evans, director Roman Polanski(brought in by Evans) and star Jack Nicholson(it was written for him by Towne) came together to make this one special movie. Oh, there was a woman, too, right? Faye Dunaway, difficult here, difficult there(The Towering Inferno), difficult everywhere(Network) say the books, but invariably a part of a LOT of 70's movies(its like she and Candice Bergen were the only ones available for roles once Streisand and Fonda said no.) Female stars often say "if its a woman, she's difficult, if its a man , he's creative" -- but Dunaway sure showed up late a lot. On the other hand, so did Robert Redford, I've read.

The book does NOT mention that two-page LA Times ad promoting Chinatown that led across the top with a critic saying "FORGET HITCHCOCK-- WE'VE GOT POLANSKI." And Hitch was still alive and lived in that town...

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I first read about this Hitchcock bio earlier this week in a New York Times review. The reviewer had a suggestion for a 13th Hitchcock: “The Dissembler, for Hitchcock’s own joy in issuing contradictory statements about his life.”

--

A great 13th! Part of my "life's education" in choosing Hitchcock as an idol early in my life was to grow up realizing just how much he made up, or took credit for, or contradicted. But in the end, the movies got me in and the movies he made are still the proof of my (and others) regard for him.

Too bad Hitchcock isn't that famous anymore...I could see entire articles coming up with other Lives of Hitchcock. Though me, personally -- I can't think of a one.

--

Also: “The traditional task of the Hitchcock biographer has been to locate the defining event that became the wellspring for his lifelong interest in paranoia, surveillance and sexual violence. The biographer as detective, as it were, wandering the Bates home in Psycho, searching for the body of the mother, the all-revealing trauma.”
Hopefully with more success than Arbogast.

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Ha. Indeed. I like that aspect of Psycho...Norman goes in the house first, almost goes up the stairs...but doesn't(he goes to the kitchen.) Arbogast goes in the house second, gets up the stairs, but doesn't get into Mother's room(he gets stabbed and a nice ride back down the staircase, courtesy of his own two feet). Lila goes in the house third, gets up the staircase, gets into Mother's room(for a full tour of clues and symbols), gets into Norman's room, and gets down to the fruit cellar. Nice work, Lila!

But to the point: yes, Hitchcock was such a major artist and showman that everybody gets into the act of finding out the whys and wherefores that drove him. Fear? Not that much -- he told Truffaut that he was never scared filming scenes in Psycho or The Birds. Sex? Well he didn't have much except to make Pat("with a fountain pen" he once joked.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

CONT:

But here's where you hit the nail, I'd say:

BEGIN:

And also: “Hitchcock rarely discussed — the death of his father and the strain of living through war — ‘the very type of tortuous suspense and grinding anxiety that was the adult Hitchcock’s stock in trade.’ Neighborhood children and infants died in the air raids, and White suggests that The Birds — with the attacks on a school, and the pioneering aerial shots — can be seen as Hitchcock’s way of reliving the terror.”

END

For people of Hitchcock's generation, the deaths of parents at an early age, the ravages of war(in this case upon the population as well as soldiers) dislocation(Hitchcock left England for America on his own, but it must have hurt a little.)....it creates a tough man(who survived tough Hollywood) but also a man of fears who knows...as Hitchcock taught us time and again....that it could all fall apart at any time, that evil forces or bad people were waiting to kill us...that the world is a dangerous place. I'm sure he would have found COVID-19 "par for the course." (The Birds is his movie about THAT.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

This is new to me, and I had to google WWI aerial bombing London: “Between May 1915 and May 1918, Zeppelins and bombing planes killed 668 persons in the Metropolitan Police District and injured 1,938 more.”

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I read that and (shame)...it was new to me too. Hey, my education was evidently elsewhere. I certainly knew of the raids on London during WWII. I suppose this reminds us that England and London were "there for the taking" with only a bit more physical protection(the English Channel and some territory) when the enemy came bombing.

I don't know if Hitchcock experienced that personally, but he had to have heard about it or heard rumblings in the distance.

Hitchcock died long before 9/11 and COVID-19 and as bad as those events seem to us today, I'm sure if Hitchcock could visit, he'd say "I see -- well let me tell you about WWI and WWII and the Holocaust and the nuclear bomb ..."

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Did Hitchcock live through something like this? Born in 1899, he was a teenage school boy during the war years. I have to agree that the war was on his mind while making the school attack scene.

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Yes, it makes sense the way it is staged. Interesting.

This book goes back and forth, by the way, on whether or not Hitchocck intentionally intended the gassing of Gromek in Torn Curtain to be a statement on the Holocaust gas chambers. No..he said one year. Yes...he said in a later year. The Dissembler.

I like how the author covers how little Hitchcock was willing to say about other filmmakers. The author covers by noting "not all that many directors talked about other directors then, Hitchcock wasn't the only one." I guess we needed Marty Scorsese and Peter Bogdanovich and a bunch of film history to get that going. Hitch DID watch all sorts of films in his screening room , he was up to date on what was happening around him.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The review concludes with this: “Thwarted, unfulfilled desire is the wire running through Hitchcock’s work.”
Thwarted and unfulfilled certainly applies to Scotty in Vertigo, but I think also to each main character in Psycho as well: Sam and Marion in their secretive, long-distance love affair, Norman’s desperate solitude, and even Lila, played by pin-up beauty Vera Miles, seems not to have any love in her life, only her sharp, tense disposition.

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I suppose one thing that is interesting is that it is in two of Hitchcock's greatest movies that desire is indeed not fulfilled: Vertigo and Psycho (as above.)

On the other hand, more often than not, Hitchcock "played the Hollywood game" and got his couples together at the end: Rebecca, Notorious, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Trouble With Harry, North by Northwest...on to Torn Curtain(in the most traditional way.) But the married couple in Topaz -- cheaters both -- end on a sad rueful note(in all three endings). No happy couples in Frenzy. Family Plot -- well ,Madame Blanche and Lumley seem OK as a team, and probably as lovers given how George saved Blanche's life and all.

Then you've got those "maybe they are, maybe they aren't" romantic endings. Rebecca, maybe. Suspicion, definitely. Saboteur?(I can't remember if Priscilla Lane is in the last shot.) Shadow of a Doubt( a couple with a heavy secret.)

Psycho famously posits Sam and Lila as a "non-romantic couple" at the end, and given that Lila is given no lover/spouse("A steak dinner for three"; she comes alone to Fairvale and calls no one)..we are likely meant to THINK it could happen. Psycho II guessed that it did. We'll never know, but we can figure it was a sad, sad marriage if it happened.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I believe at some point I’ll be adding this to my Hitchcock collection,

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I found it worthwhile. I'll add the quotes in the book to my mental stockpile of them(they illustrate a time and a place and a people)...and the 12 Lives opinions are not the usual thing.

What's amazing is that books are STILL being WRITTEN about Hitchcock. I suppose they know a target audience of "oldsters"(hey!) is known to be out there...worldwide. And I suppose Hitchcock movies are being taught in schools; this is ALMOST a textbook.

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but through Kindle. I’m not at the point of browsing through a bookstore just yet, but soon enough.

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Understood. I've tried Kindle, seems too impermanent for me. I like a book I can get sand in at the beach. As for bookstore browsing, it gets lesser and lesser in available books as bookstores disappear. But how can you tell if you want to BUY a book if you don't READ some of it, and flip through the pages and see if it has photos or not...

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

The book does NOT mention that two-page LA Times ad promoting Chinatown that led across the top with a critic saying "FORGET HITCHCOCK-- WE'VE GOT POLANSKI." And Hitch was still alive and lived in that town...

I've covered in threads before all the movies that referred to or compared themselves with Psycho in their advertizing. The most recent examples I was able to find were from the '80s. Well, I know that general references to Hitchcock in other movies' advertizing, even if a little snide like the Chinatown example you cite, persisted longer than that. For example, there's a 1990 movie by the occasionally interesting, Italian, horror/giallo director, Lucio Fulci, the main poster for which proclaims, "Hitchcock invented the thriller, Fulci perfected it!"
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099637/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099637/mediaviewer/rm3839313920/

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I've covered in threads before all the movies that referred to or compared themselves with Psycho in their advertizing.

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The 60s and 70s were a different movie era -- with American studios falling apart(only to rebuild "corporate") and "international film" (of various budgets and quality) getting more of a foothold in America. And hence, it seems, lots of low budget folks making bloody thrillers in America AND Europe decided that the best way to sell their shocker was to mention Psycho in the advertising. Maybe I should cut this off at 1974 -- because for years, Psycho was THE horror movie to quote in ads, but came 1973...you could add The Exorcist in.

I do recall that the print ad for the seminal "Night of the Living Dead" (1968) featured a minor critic's reference to "scariest movie since PSYCHO" and that was pretty much THE ad.

On the European side, I recall "Bird with the Crystal Plumage" getting PSYCHO in the ad...but not as a review.

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The most recent examples I was able to find were from the '80s. Well, I know that general references to Hitchcock in other movies' advertizing, even if a little snide like the Chinatown example you cite, persisted longer than that.

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I recall reading that Hitchcock diss in the Chinatown ad and thinking "well, maybe for now, Polanski but -- Hitchcock lasted for decades."

As it turned out, Chinatown was the final film that Polanski ever made for an American studio --one of only two. Classics to be sure(Rosemary's Baby was the other one), but Polanski ran aground. That said, he has worked for decades out of Europe. Indeed of the four men who made Chinatown come together, Evans and Towne went broke, Nicholson became a long-lived movie star and a multi-millionaire -- and Polanski seems to come in second to Nicholson for EUROPEAN longevity in the film business(American stars like Walter Matthau and Harrison Ford came over to work with h I'm.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

For example, there's a 1990 movie by the occasionally interesting, Italian, horror/giallo director, Lucio Fulci, the main poster for which proclaims, "Hitchcock invented the thriller, Fulci perfected it!"
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099637/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099637/mediaviewer/rm3839313920

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Ha...in Italian, yet!

Well, Hitchcock on his own for many years and then with the help of Lew Wasserman, Hitchcock made himself a star and a brand and a standard. When I think of Saboteur(which is a bit of a "B" movie to my mind) or Topaz(which isn't much of a thriller at all) I wonder...what's the big deal?

And then I think of Psycho. And Rear Window. And Vertigo(that critical all-time great). And North by Northwest (Bond! Rushmore!). And The Birds(referenced in news reports to this day.) And(for a generation long gone) Rebecca. And(for a generation even longer gone) The 39 Steps.

And the cinematic technique. And the set-pieces. And the stars. And Bernard Herrmann.

Yep. Big deal. Worthy of being placed in those ads.

In fact, one single ad ran for Silence of the Lambs in 1991 with one line from some critic:

"The greatest thriller since Psycho."

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

The Guardian's review of "The 12 Lives of Alfred Hitchcock" is here:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/25/the-twelve-lives-of-alfred-hitchcock-by-edward-white-review-looking-for-mr-fright

The relatively warm review also mentions a number of examples from White's book of contemporary Hitch-related culture that were new to me. E.g. 1. A series of Hitchcock mosaics at the London Tube station near where Hitch grew up:
https://www.london-walking-tours.co.uk/secret-london/hitchcock-mosaics-leytonstone.htm
http://www.thejoyofshards.co.uk/london/hitch/

E.g.2. Eminem's 2020 album Music to Be Murdered By (how did I not hear about this before now?). The wiki page about it explains a lot of Eminem's intent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_to_Be_Murdered_By
At any rate, the album has Hitch samples all over it especially on two tracks called Alfred (interlude) and Alfred (Outro). Its first single 'Darkness' is about the 2017 Las Vegas shooting and told from the point of view of the shooter Stephen Paddock:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHQC4fAhcbU
Much funnier and more spitfire-rappier is the amazing vid. for the album's biggest single 'Godzilla' (#3 US, #1 UK, #2 NZ):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_0JjYUe5jo
Eminem's still got it (who knew?) and I dare say that Hitch's humorous, macabre persona from around 1958-1960 gave Em a good frame for his own wide-ranging cultural and media-saturated back-chat about the present and his own place in it.
Update: Eminem released a whole second disc of (closely-realted) material called 'Music to Be Murdered By-Side B'. This is the disc that has 'Alfred's Theme' on it where he samples the AHPresents theme and raps especially obscenely in the way White describes about Hitchcock but also about Billie Eilish, Saddam, Coronavirus, you name it. Eminem's schtick is that he's the top predator omnivorously devouring all of culture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgsySQQ0eBI

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The Guardian's review of "The 12 Lives of Alfred Hitchcock" is here:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/25/the-twelve-lives-of-alfred-hitchcock-by-edward-white-review-looking-for-mr-fright

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Well, as a new Hitchcock book attempts to take hold in the marketplace...reviews that go in different directions about the book AND about other Hitchcock projects can't help but assist....and in this case "trigger" some new knowledge: the "Bates Barn" at MOMA; the Leytonstone mosaics and...indeed, Emimem's album(the real "schocker" of the bunch.) For those who wish to embrace him, Hitchcock seems to be a man for all decades, one way or the other.

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The relatively warm review also mentions a number of examples from White's book of contemporary Hitch-related culture that were new to me. E.g. 1. A series of Hitchcock mosaics at the London Tube station near where Hitch grew up:
https://www.london-walking-tours.co.uk/secret-london/hitchcock-mosaics-leytonstone.htm
http://www.thejoyofshards.co.uk/london/hitch/

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I had seen photos elsewhere of some of those but I hadn't realized that they have so many over there in Hitchcock's birth town...quite an array, a reminder that the Hitchcock canon is about as extensive as it gets. (Scorsese and Spielberg have almost worked as long as Hitchcock did, but not with as many movies..)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

E.g.2. Eminem's 2020 album Music to Be Murdered By (how did I not hear about this before now?).

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I had thought we had brought this up previously, but I guess not.

Personally, I was astonished to read of this album...and to see the cover for it, in which Eminem re-stages the cover of the Hitchcock album from 1958 (which then, as now offers a somewhat queasy, borderline offensive image of the artist with a gun at his own head.)

I've mentioned how Hitchcock had movies, a hit TV series, books for adults, books for kids, the "Mystery Magazine" -- I forgot the man managed to get an LP album out there -- amazing. Hitch was multi-media before there was multi-media.

I'd like to note this, though: when Psycho came into my childhood consciousness around 1965 and took root for a couple of years(through its 1966 aborted CBS showing and then its allowed 1967 Los Angeles local showing), I did NOT see it as part of the "Hitchcock machine." It began life as "the most terrifying movie ever made, you cannot see it...its sick and horrible" and THEN, over time, I came to understand that it had been made by the same man who was so funny with his TV show. I remember it was rather a jolt understanding that -- HITCHCOCK made Psycho? How could he do that?

Well, the roots of Psycho in 1960 can be found, I suppose, in that 1958 LP "music" album(with Hitchcock's plummy narration at times)..."Music to Be Murdered By." Hitchcock was making a shift from being the "dramatic" director of serious adult pieces like Rebecca and Suspicion and Notorious...and joining the "in crowd of the 50s/60s cusp" -- the teenage horror crowd. If only for a little bit.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

At any rate, the album has Hitch samples all over it especially on two tracks called Alfred (interlude) and Alfred (Outro).

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Well, I guess I may have to buy my first rap CD...or download it ....or something. (But I want to have that cover!)

Rap is in my life currently as played by the young folks in my life who put it on in the car....I've learned to understand it better but it is still not of my generational , musical taste. The joke among those who know me is that I'm "generation older than my age." I have Sinatra CDs to go with my Led Zepplin CDs to go with my James Taylor CDS. And I have the requisite 80's artists. Rap's just a bit...after me.

Eminem and Alfred could change that!

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Its first single 'Darkness' is about the 2017 Las Vegas shooting and told from the point of view of the shooter Stephen Paddock:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHQC4fAhcbU

--

A creepy bit of business and surprisingly direct in recreating the scene and...eventually ...the shooter.

Funny: I just mentioned the Vegas shooting the other day in a post....and here it is in clear representation. Has it not claimed the most victims in America to date?

Hitchcock was alive for the first "major" mass shooting of the 29th Century -- the Texas Tower sniper, Charles Whitman. That happened in the summer of 1966, not long before Psycho was to be shown on CBS. As I recall that sniper attack -- coupled with the knife murders committed by psycho Richard Speck upon some nurses in their apartment ALSO helped lead to the cancellation of Psycho by CBS(along with the stabbing death of Senator-to-be Charles Percy's daughter -- that Senator remains famous today as linked to Psycho.) This was its own "violent" time, including psycho mass shootings, and thus Hitchcock likely understood the connection between these real-life psychos and his seminal movie about "a madness centered on the urge to kill for the sake of killing."

What would Hitchcock make of today's multiple mass shootings?

He'd take it in stride. He made it his business to read up on evil.

As the debate continues about "what to do about the mass shootings"(the gun control debate renews anew in America) there are darker aspects:

Something that seems to have changed for the better is the internet not quite lingering on the names and deeds of the shooters. For too long, "this week's shooter" would post how he was honoring LAST week's shooter -- or trying to beat the number of victims. "Satan's machine" here did its job well of creating a link from one killer to the next to the next. They are trying to cut back on publicizing the killers.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

But this: the shooter last week(of a FedEx facility) had been reported in advance to the cops by his FAMILY as being a dangerous nut and...the FBI interviewed him and....they decided not to press charges or (evidently) check him for guns. Indeed several of the mass shooters of recent years were known to be CLEARLY nutty and scary to their classmates and teachers and neighbors, but nothing could be done. That's the theme of "Cape Fear," a non-Hitchcock thriller with a legalistic tale to tell, as articulated in the 1962 original by Arbogast himself(Martin Balsam), here as police chief Mark Dutton: "You can't arrest a man for a crime he hasn't committed."

And did that theme not, in turn, decades later, power the Spielberg/Cruise movie Minority Report, in which murders COULD be prevented before they occur? Wishful thinking.

Congress and the law will do what they can to deal with our mass shooters but they remain a reminder that Hitchcock's psychos were hardly creations of fantasy. Unlike Dracula and the Wolf Man...these monsters are very real. (And not only in America -- did not Norway have a shooter who killed a lot of teenagers on an island?)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Update: Eminem released a whole second disc of (closely-realted) material called 'Music to Be Murdered By-Side B'. This is the disc that has 'Alfred's Theme' on it where he samples the AHPresents theme and raps especially obscenely in the way White describes about Hitchcock but also about Billie Eilish, Saddam, Coronavirus, you name it. Eminem's schtick is that he's the top predator omnivorously devouring all of culture:

---
Well, I suppose the Hitchcock Estate can feel honored....Hitch has managed to get relevant to rap and mentioned with coronavirus. He lives on.

I'm reminded that though his varied fans like different decades of Hitch, he REALLY peaked in a fifties/sixties cusp during which...also.. ELVIS PRESLEY hit big. Elvis died young in 1977, one year after Hitchcock's final movie(Family Plot, 1976) and three years before the much older Hitch died in 1980. But my point is that, in a certain way, Hitchcock and Elvis were "contemporaries" for a weird number of years and Elvis, too, lives on today, decades after his death. "Hitchcock as Elvis," a funny concept but not entirely impossible to consider. Though actually I always linked Hitchcock to Sinatra as true stars of that 50's/60's cusp. There were icons, all three of them. Sinatra and Elvis were singers who made it big in movies. Hitchcock made it big in movies...but evidently made it big in records. One time. Music to be murdered by.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

Well, I guess I may have to buy my first rap CD...or download it ....or something. (But I want to have that cover!)

You can listen to the music in playlist order on youtube. Here's the playlist for the main album:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLN1mxegxWPd3d8jItTyrAxwm-iq-KrM-e
and here's the playlist for Side-B:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxA687tYuMWhhkJevHfjBf5FGCY4bErYH
The videos for the singles are the separate links I used before.

And, the beauty/gift/terror of abundance again! Spotify is worth learning how to use (it's super-easy to use on the web). It's free level involves listening to the odd advertisement (I'm always stunned how few ads I get - maybe one 30s ad. per album - your mileage may vary). That's where *I* checked out Eminem's record without having to buy anything. Music was damned expensive and hard to get when I was a kid... now more than you could ever listen to is available to anyone anywhere immediately for the price of viewing the odd ad. either on Youtube or Spotify.