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New Book: 'Hitchcock's Blondes' by Laurence Leamer

posted a year ago by swanstep (2715)
11 replies | jump to latest

The book's Amazon link is:
https://tinyurl.com/bdz3u896
Leamer was interviewed on The Projection Booth podcast this week. You should be able to find that podcast wherever you normally go to find podcasts, also the following link for the episode appears to work fine:
https://www.spreaker.com/user/cstachiw/epx457-hitchcocks-blondes
Anyhow, it's only a 15 min interview but Leamer has some interesting stories. He mentions, for example, that he got to interview Eva Marie-Saint just by calling her up, and that he visited her at her apartment on Wilshire Blvd where she's apparently still fit as a fiddle and proudly living by herself at 99.

[–] Horrorlover656 (36) a year ago

The book can be found here:- https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=967610AC7E3F6CCDADE632D9DA5EEC18

[–] swanstep (2715) a year ago

@Horror. I hadn't heard of this site before. It looks like it entails a lot of legal liability and it should be approached with caution I believe. Don't even think about using it without a VPN would be my recommendation (and if you don't know what a VPN is then you probably don't have a good anti-virus, anti-malware game either so you should absolutely stay well clear!).

[–] roger1 (3626) a year ago

Anyhow, it's only a 15 min interview but Leamer has some interesting stories.

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Thank you for the heads up, swanstep!

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He mentions, for example, that he got to interview Eva Marie-Saint just by calling her up, and that he visited her at her apartment on Wilshire Blvd where she's apparently still fit as a fiddle and proudly living by herself at 99.

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That's a "good news, bad news" to me. The good news is that Eva Marie Saint she's apparently still fit as a fiddle and proudly living by herself at 99."

The bad news -- or worrysome news -- is that we've had some "close but no cigar" near misses in recent years -- both Bob Barker and Betty White made it to 99 and no further....and I think Betty was actually planning some sort of public 100th birthday celebration.

On the other hand: George Burns made it(as planned) to 100. Kirk Douglas lived to 103. Olivia de Havilland lived to 104. And Hitchcock's Own Norman Lloyd -- the Man Who Fell From Lady Liberty and lived to run Alfred Hitchcock Presents -- lived to 106.

How amazing that must be to pull off a century of life or more!

A few tidbits about Eva Marie Saint (one Psycho-related):

From David Thomson's essay on North by Northwest(a rave) in his book "Have You Seen...":

"Just write Cary Grant against a rising disorder, and you have a film. Eva Marie Saint found herself. James Mason is divine."

Short and sweet and rather interesting, I think. James Mason IS divine. Mason didn't think all that much of his performance(seeing as he got $60,000 and Grant got a million, I can see why)...but he launched a thousand spymasters, from Goldfinger to Blofeld to Belloq to Hans Gruber...plus that guy played by Patrick McGoohan in Silver Streak.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) a year ago

But.."Eva Marie Saint found herself." Well, maybe she did. In Saul Bass's glorious credit sequence(per Herrmann's glorious score) "EVA MARIE SAINT's" title is raised to a huge, iconic, Godlike size, right after CARY GRANT and right before JAMES MASON...in ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S....NORTH BY NORTHWEST. Well, Eva Marie ended up the only female in that land of title giants and ..found herself.

As she herself said, she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for On the Waterfront(her OTHER classic) but NOBODY asked her about THAT film as much as they asked about NXNW. It was magic.

Downside: for the print newspaper ad for North by Northwest, Cary Grant's reps(it couldn't have been Cary, could have it?) would not allow EVA MARIE SAINT(more letters than CARY GRANT) take up more ad space, so CARY GRANT became C A R Y G R A N T and Evamariesaint was all smushed up and took up less space. Hollywood.

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Hitchcock liked Eva Marie Saint very much and considered her to play...Marion Crane in Psycho. There was certainly precedent for actresses doing two(or more) Hitchcock movies in a row: Joan Fontaine, Ingrid Bergman and Grace Kelly(THREE in a row) and (after Saint) Tippi Hedren for two in a row. Evidently, Hitchcock felt that he had glamourized Saint after her "kitchen sink" roles(like On the Waterfront and A Hatful of Rain) and "couldn't bear to backslide" by casting Saint as the workaday beauty Marion.

But imagine if Eva Marie Saint had been BOTH the lady hanging off of Mount Rushmore in heels AND the woman in the shower! Could have made her even more iconic.

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Eva Marie Saint in NXNW and Janet Leigh in Psycho wear the same sexy outfit at different times in their movies: Tight white blouse, tight black skirt. (Saint on the train; Leigh in the hotel room with Sam after dressing...and at her office.)

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CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) a year ago

Eva Marie Saint told a great story about, during NXNW while it was filming in Chicago, she and Cary Grant going out to a theatrical performance one night. The audience stared and gawked at Grant AND Saint(though more at Grant, she said) and she got nervous as they applauded. Said Grant to her: "Wave, dear. This is one of the most important moments of their life. They've seen Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in person...they will never forget that."

Well, I ended up in the company of Cary Grant -- all evening, quite by accident -- at the Magic Castle in Hollywood in 1980 and...I"ve never forgotten it, so he's right. (I also paid money to see him ON PURPOSE at an evening with Cary Grant in 1984. He died while in Iowa to do one of those in 1986.)

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After Princess Grace Kelly backed out of her planned comeback in Marnie, evidently Eva Marie Saint and Vera Miles were considered for the role(along with Lee Remick, who would have been New Hitchcock Meat)...before Tippi Hedren got it.

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When asked in an interview who he would have preferred in the Julie Andrews role in Torn Curtain, Hitchocck answered "Eva Marie Saint." So you can see Hitchcock really liked her. I think this is why(starting with Grace Kelly before her.):

Grace Kelly quit movies to become Princess Grace.
After her big Hitchcock debut in The Wrong Man, Vera Miles backed out of Vertigo. Hitchcock used her in Psycho(in a supposed "nothing role" that is likely the most famous thing Vera Miles ever did) but didn't want to use her as a lead star.
Kim Novak and Hitchcock never really got along.
Eva Marie Saint and Hitchcock DID get along.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) a year ago

Janet Leigh and Hitchcock got along but he told her after Psycho hit big "I can never work with you again after that famous scene. It wouldn't be fair to you or the new role." (And yet, Tony Perkins swore that Hitchcock wanted him for Torn Curtain before Paul Newman won out. Imagine: Anthony Perkins and Eva Marie Saint in "Torn Curtain." I'm glad they didn't do the movie, actually. It wouldn't have been any better, and Perkins and Saint would have a "lesser Hitchcock" as a strike against their two classics.

After Janet Leigh, Tippi Hedren busted out after two movies and hence -- THAT's why I think Hitchcock wanted Eva Marie Saint for Torn Curtain.

(I recently bought a Julie Andrews autobio. She said ELSEWHERE -- but not in this book -- "I made Torn Curtain to work with Hitchcock. That's why I did it and that's what I got out of it." Polite enough. She DOES write in this book that Hitchcock told Paul Newman and her something amazing when they complained about their lines: "Say whatever you want." Again: Say Whatever you WANT! Here was a director who just didn't care about the perfect script anymore, eh? Andrews said that she and Newman DID re-write their lines but I guess that's another reason Torn Curtain doesn't have too good a script.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) a year ago

I have not listened to the podcast with the author of the book on Hitchcock's Blondes yet, but I did read an interview with him elsewhere.

It was funny. He said something like "I'm not just saying this to sell books, but Hitchcock's blondes actually had a lot of sex." Yeah, right. Not just saying this to sell books.

I don't know where "the Hitchocck blondes" begin -- Madeleine Carroll? Ingrid Bergman?(who always seemed more brown haired to me, even in black and white) but it seems like the "sex champion" among Hitchcock leading ladies was clearly ...Grace Kelly. Its only stuff that I've read, but I've read a lot. And a letter was printed from Hitchcock himself to a colleague about how on Dial M for Murder, Kelly had "affairs"(ahem) with not only married leading man Ray Milland, but the not great looking guy who tried to strangle her on screen(Anthony Dawson) and, wrote Hitchcock "even little Freddie, the writer!" (Frederick Knott, playwright of Dial M for Murder AND the scarier Wait Until Dark of the 60s.)

Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Ray Milland...evidently confirmed as Grace Kelly amours. James Stewart and Cary Grant" Much more elusive to pin down. Evidently, Mrs. James Stewart was on the set of Rear Window a lot watching out for Grace. And then she became a Princess and that all ended, right? Right?

Next up(earlier) Ingrid Bergman. An affair with Gregory Peck on Spellbound. Cary Grant? Elusive, again. Of course, Bergman left her husband for movie director Roberto Rossellini (father of Isabella "Blue Velvet" Rosselli with Bergman.) And then that marriage ended, too.

Kelly and Bergman would seem the most "loose women" among Hitchcock female stars. (And there are rumors that each one did SOMETHING with or for or to Hitchcock himself.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) a year ago

Of the others? Eva Marie Saint stayed married to a "lesser" 50s TV director for the rest of her life(he was a content "Mr. Mom.") Tony Curtis cheated all over the place on Janet Leigh during their marriage, but she remarried a handsome Beverly Hills stockbroker after that and was married to him until her death. (Jamie Lee Curtis considered the stockbroker, not Curtis, as her father.)

Kim Novak had a few affairs. A major one with Sammy Davis Jr. A rumored one with James Stewart on Vertigo -- that Novak has recently denied("just friends.") I do like that she professed longtime love to a rather "ordinary guy looking director" Richard Quine. In 1958, Quine made sure that Novak looked gorgeous in all the clothes and colors and hairstyles she loved (in Bell, Book, and Candle) even as Hitchcock encased Novak in that gray suit as Madeleine and dressed her (to my eyes) like a total sexpot frump as Judy. Honestly, one reason Vertigo is NOT the greatest movie of all time to me is how bad Novak looks as Madeleine and ESPECIALLY as Judy. Novak said she transferred her heartbreak and humliation over those clothes and hairstyle to her performance!

I'm not sure when the Novak/Richard Quine affair ended, but the guy directed my closet favorite of 1967 -- "Hotel" -- and that movie is the essence of sophistication and dramatic wit to me. Sadly, Quine was one of those Hollywood guys who committed suicide. But first...he got KIM NOVAK!

I'll have to get the book to see what those other Hitchocck blondes were up to, but I'll add this from "the other side": Shirley MacLaine noted that when they went to Vermont on location to film The Trouble With Harry, lead John Forsythe moved in with a local woman...and left when filmng was over. They are ALL horny, eh?

[–] dsfa2020 (14) a year ago

You didn’t mention Marsha Hunt who died September of last year (2022) at the age of 104! And older than Eva by almost a year is Glynis Johns who just turned 100 on October 5!

Some of the other actors born the same year as Marsha were Jane Wyman, Ernest Borgnine, Dean Martin, Susan Hayward, Richard Boone, Robert Mitchum, Herbert Lom, June Allyson, Joan Fontaine and Audrey Totter. None of them reached 100.

[–] roger1 (3626) a year ago

You didn’t mention Marsha Hunt who died September of last year (2022) at the age of 104! And older than Eva by almost a year is Glynis Johns who just turned 100 on October 5!

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Well...I was working from memory(and looking them up), I didn't know everyone and...the more names the merrier! Thank you for the names!

This whole concept of people living past to or past 100 is pretty amaizing. Though I have read that even for "non famous people," the 90s are growing more and more as a "corhort."

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Some of the other actors born the same year as Marsha were Jane Wyman, Ernest Borgnine, Dean Martin, Susan Hayward, Richard Boone, Robert Mitchum, Herbert Lom, June Allyson, Joan Fontaine and Audrey Totter. None of them reached 100.

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Well, its rather a "race" isn't it? Same starting gun...who gets the farthest? Three names come to my mind on that list: Richard Boone -- I know he died at 63 and that's way too young, really. His son said "I think my father could have been a great character actor into his 70's." But smoking got him. The other name is Ernest Borgnine. He was always overweight, but lived into his 90s and actually acted on screen a few times IN his 90s. He gives hope to the (er, slightly?) overweight. Dean Martin lived into his 80s even as a heavy smoker and drinker. Some of this stuff is genes, some is wealth, some is fame...

[–] roger1 (3626) a year ago

He mentions, for example, that he got to interview Eva Marie-Saint just by calling her up, and that he visited her at her apartment on Wilshire Blvd where she's apparently still fit as a fiddle and proudly living by herself at 99.

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I wanted to add: I think that the "wealthy show business apartments" on Wilshire Boulevard in West Los Angeles are all in the same few blocks, near UCLA and Westwood Village(where The Exorcist played so famously in 1973/1974.)

Billy Wilder and his wife lived in those apartments in their last years -- no need for a Bel Air mansion. I guess Eva Marie Saint lives there now, too.

In Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" Sharon Tate(Margot Robbie) picks up a female hitchhiker right in front of those apartments(or one block of them). Its a nostalgic memory for me. Tate then drives the hitchhiker and drops her off...in Westwood Village!