All the Movie Stars Who Ordered "Frenzy" for their Home Screens in 1972

An author named Raymond Fuery wrote a 2012 book called "The Last Masterpiece: Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy" for the 40th Anniversary of the film.

It has lots of detailed information about the making of the film. And the casting of the film(Rusk was offered to Michael Caine; Blaney to Richard Burton and then to Richard Harris; Brenda to Glenda Jackson.)

But near the end of the book, Fuery -- using Universal Pictures records -- takes note of the fact that once Frenzy was released and became a big critical hit, all sorts of movie stars personally ordered the film to view -- and show -- in their homes. Here's the list:

James Stewart
Mae West(!)
Frank Sinatra (on Labor Day weekend, long after the film's June release)
Dean Martin
Lucille Ball
John Wayne
Kirk Douglas
Barbra Streisand

An interesting group. Somehow, I'll bet a lot of them had the film turned off once they saw the Brenda Blaney rape-murder, or even at the beginning of it. Streisand, for example, indicated a real fear of thrillers and shockers. She never made one, and pushed then-lover-partner Jon Peters to cast Faye Dunaway in the gory "Eyes of Laura Mars." I can see Streisand turning it off. (Though I have also read that Streisand requested a copy of Deliverance "so I can see a man getting raped, for a change.")

I can see Lucy turning it off. I can see John Wayne turning it off in anger(he did not like the swerve of movies into depravity, he had often said.)

James Stewart, I wonder about. I always wondered what James Stewart and Cary Grant must have thought of Psycho, with it coming so soon after Vertigo and North by Northwest. Well, here is evidence that Stewart at least wanted to SEE a movie that was even worse in content than Psycho(Frenzy.) Stewart was a tough guy who had seen war. I'll bet he let Frenzy play to the end. I figure other tough guys -- Sinatra, Martin, Douglas -- would have let it play, too. Those men also knew from sexual activity. On the other hand, they may have been bored by a Hitchocck movie; maybe it was for their dinner guests(oops!)

Mae West. How fascinating. She was very old in 1972, but might have been intrigued by the sexual aspects of Frenzy, given her own landmark status as a sex star.

The list as reprinted by Fuery seems to be missing many "New Hollywood stars" ordering Frenzy for home viewing. No record of Nicholson or Redford or Hoffman -- perhaps Hitchcock was passe to them. More the shocking for the "old timers" who ordered Frenzy instead. Though Streisand making the order is interesting, she seems to have been a film buff.

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Fuery details a few more orders for private screenings of Frenzy other than movie stars, all interesting:

Paramount Studio Head Robert Evans(make of The Godfather, and soon to be producer of the thrillers Chinatown, Marathon Man and Black Sunday. Evidently Evans wanted to study Hitchcock in preparation for his thrillers in years to come.)

And after the Frenzy summer of 1972 concluded, these screenings:

The Oscar Academy: September 30. (Frenzy gleaned no Oscar nominations.)

The American Film Institute: October 2.

Disney Studios: October 30. (DISNEY? The OLD , sweet Disney? October 30..maybe a Halloween party.)

The Motion Picture Home: November 3 (This is where Hollywood's elderly retirees end up if no other homes exist for them; I'm not sure how a crowd of old actors and actresses reacted to Frenzy.)

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I expect that most major releases ended up doled out for private screenings to movie stars and movie execs and the Academy and AFI and The Motion Picture home, all the time. But the fact that the perverse, intense, and grim Frenzy made the rounds seems a bit of macabre fun to me. All these movie people thinking they were going to get a "sedate" Hitchcock thriller to view in their homes for guests, and ending up with THIS movie on their private screens.

Hitchcock was messing with people to the near-end.