The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock

by An Anatomy of the Master of Suspense (epub)

  246 “This project was . . . denied him”: Auiler, Hitchcock’s Secret Notebooks, 549.

  246 his “conversation was . . . so on”: Ackland, The Celluloid Mistress, 39.

  246 “which they don’t know . . . WARS”: AH to Michael Balcon, October 6, 1977, AHC MHL.

  247 “questionable old man . . . matters”: AH notes on the manuscript of Hitch by John Russell Taylor, 1974, 12.

  247 Hitchcock remained fascinated . . . feminism: See clippings folders, AHC MHL.

  247 “completely desperate . . . conflict”: AH to François Truffaut, October 20, 1976, in Truffaut, Hitchcock, 342.

  248 “I’m in competition with myself”: Bogdanovich, Who the Devil Made It, loc. 9196 of 15740, Kindle.

  248 “a director who . . . immunity”: Truffaut, Hitchcock, 341.

  248 “intransigence, difficulty and unresolved contradiction”: Edward Said, On Late Style: Music and Literature Against the Grain (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 3.

  248 “a sort of deliberately unproductive productiveness”: Ibid., 4.

  248 “too-late style”: Mark Goble, “Live Nude Hitchcock: Final Frenzies,” in Jonathan Freedman, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 208.

  11: THE LONDONER

  252 “son of Essex”: AH to A. E. Sloman, March 26, 1975, AHC MHL.

  253 “not socially respectable”: Spoto, Dark Side of Genius, 22.

  253 “scars from a . . . revolt”: John Houseman, Unfinished Business: Memoirs, 1902–1988 (New York: Applause Theatre Books, 1989), 235.

  254 “plummy, posh-cockney voice”: Cardiff, Magic Hour, 19.

  254 “spoke in a . . . aitches”: Tripp, The Glass Ladder, 156.

  254 “electrification, motorization, socialism . . . state intervention”: Stephen Inwood, City of Cities: The Birth of Modern London (London: MacMillan, 2005), xv.

  254 During these three . . . 2015: Greater London Authority, “Population Change 1939–2015,” https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/population-change-1939–2015.

  254 “swarmed with people . . . Street”: Peter Ackroyd, London: The Concise Biography (London: Vintage Books, 2012), 560. Quoting Horace Thorogood’s memoir East of Aldgate (London: Allen and Unwin, 1935).

  254 “inordinate regard for personal privacy”: Alfred Hitchcock, “Murder—With English on It,” New York Times, March 3, 1957, 199.

  255 “stony neglect, each . . . newspaper”: Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits (London and New York: Tauris Parke, 2011), 77.

  256 “an ecstasy of fumbling”: Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est,” 1915, in Wilfred Owen, Anthem for Doomed Youth (London: Penguin, 2015), 2.

  256 “developed a kind . . . eyes”: Jerry White, London in the Twentieth Century: A City and Its People (London: Vintage Books, 2008), 313. Quoting Eileen Bailey’s memoir, The Shabby Paradise: The Autobiography of a Decade (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1958), 17ff.

  258 “The Royal Albert . . . romance”: Charles Champlin, “What’s It All About, Alfie?” Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1971, 12.

  258 In a similarly . . . bedroom: Margaret Pride, “Your Fears Are My Life,” Reveille, September 23, 1972, 7, AHC MHL.

  258 “the production of . . . refused”: Henry K. Miller, “Film Society, The (1925–39),” http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/454755/index.html.

  259 “twenty-four hours . . . everything”: Truffaut, Hitchcock, 320.

  259 “the first row . . . theater”: Ibid.

  259 “an English director of genius”: “From Our London Correspondent,” Western Morning News, May 29, 1926, 6.

  259 “mystery and magic . . . crime”: “British Films Booming,” Daily Herald, September 15, 1926, 2.

  260 “which will centre . . . back-garden”: “To Be Seen on the Screen,” Daily Herald, December 5, 1925, 7.

  260 The effort was . . . virus: Genevieve Abravanel, Americanizing Britain: The Rise of Modernism in the Age of the Entertainment Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 8.

  260 “They talk America . . . citizens”: G. A. Atkinson, “ ‘British’ Films Made to Please America,” March 18, 1927, cited in Mark Glancy, Hollywood and the Americanization of Britain: From the 1920s to the Present (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 14.

  260 he was even . . . empire: “The British Film,” Western Morning News, October 19, 1926, 4.

  261 “Americans, I am . . . woodlands”: “The Farmer’s Wife,” Daily Mirror, March 5, 1928, AHC MHL.

  261 “It’s been left . . . gloriously”: “Putting England on the Screen,” Evening Standard, March 5, 1928, AHC MHL.

  261 “Hear English as . . . spoken”: Advertising poster for Blackmail, AHC MHL.

  261 “British Triumph . . . Americans”: Daily Mail, June 24, 1929, AHC MHL.

  261 “All British—and . . . achieved”: London Evening News, June 22, 1929, AHC MHL.

  261 “sweeping aside American . . . glamour”: The Times, June 24, 1929, AHC MHL.

  261 “I’m American trained” . . . qualities: Batdorf, “Let’s Hear It for Hitchcock,” in Gottlieb, ed., Alfred Hitchcock Interviews, 82.

  264 “men who leap . . . feel”: Alfred Hitchcock, “More Cabbages, Fewer Kings: A Believer in the Little Man,” Kinematograph Weekly, January 14, 1937, 30.

  264 Unlike “stodgy” British films, “American . . . drama”: Alfred Hitchcock, “Stodgy British Pictures,” Film Weekly, December 14, 1934, 14.

  264 “must be a . . . income”: Britain Through a Lens: The Documentary Film Mob, BBC Four, July 19, 2011.

  264 “the best director . . . films”: John Grierson, “Two Reviews,” in Forsyth Hardy, ed., Grierson on Documentary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 71–72.

  265 in 1969, Hitchcock . . . movement: Barr and Kerzoncuf, Lost and Found, 209–10.

  266 “couldn’t just point . . . jewels”: Durgnat, The Strange Case of Alfred Hitchcock, 30.

  266 “you would go . . . that”: Norman Lloyd, SMU.

  266 “plump young junior technician”: Michael Balcon, “DESERTERS!” Sunday Dispatch, August 25, 1940, 6.

  266 “had sold his . . . Hitchcock”: C. A. Lejeune, “Cinema Cameos,” The Sketch, July 10, 1940, 52.

  267 “his first Hollywood . . . best”: Ibid.

  267 “a completely British picture”: Truffaut, Hitchcock, 128.

  267 “broader viewpoint than . . . Britain”: Ibid.

  267 “name of England . . . picture”: H. Mark Glancy, When Hollywood Loved Britain: The Hollywood ‘British’ Film, 1930–1945 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1999), 3, citing The Spectator (May 7, 1937).

  267 According to one . . . films: Ibid., 1.

  268 “You’ve got to . . . idiom”: Leslie Perkoff, “The Censor and Sydney Street,” World Film News, March 12, 1938, 5.

  268 Curiously, in her . . . lost his: Hitchcock O’Connell and Bouzereau, Alma Hitchcock, 167.

  269 “the Hitchcock name . . . history”: Coleman, The Man Who Knew Hitchcock, 217.

  269 “polyglot country. I . . . foreigners”: Ian Cameron and V. F. Perkins, “Interview with Hitchcock,” Movie, no. 6 (January 1963): 6.

  270 he exchanged letters . . . screen: Mogens Skot-Hansen, UN Representative to the Motion Picture Industry, to AH, February 5, 1951, AHC MHL.

  270 “widespread organized opposition . . . country”: Peter Bart, “Advertising: TV series on U.N. Stirs Debate,” New York Times, April 10, 1964, AHC MHL.

  271 Amid a galaxy . . . name: White, London in the Twentieth Century.

  271 Juliet Gardiner’s equally . . . Henry VIII: Juliet Gardiner, The Thirties: An Intimate History (London: Harper Press, 2010).

  273 “I’ve never really . . . Stinky”: Champlin, “What’s It All About, Alfie?” 12.

  274 During the fifties . . . earlier: Viewings of all these British films—and many others—are listed in Hitchcock’s appointment books, AHC MHL.

  274 “I am out . . . English”: AH notes
on draft script of The Man Who Knew Too Much, April 27, 1955, AHC MHL.

  274 Arthur La Bern . . . characters”: Arthur La Bern, “Letters to the Editor: Hitchcock’s ‘Frenzy,’ from Mr Arthur La Bern,” The Times, May 29, 1972, 7. See also Taylor, Hitch, loc. 4900 of 5468, Kindle.

  274 “England had changed . . . now”: Barbara Leigh-Hunt in discussion with the author, December 15, 2018.

  12: THE MAN OF GOD

  276 Several family members . . . live: Hitchcock O’Connell and Bouzereau, Alma Hitchcock, 216; Spoto, Dark Side of Genius, 550.

  277 “The Hitchcock pictures . . . paranoia”: Roger Ebert, “Scorsese Learns from Those Who Went before Him,” January 11, 1998, https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/scorsese-learns-from-those-who-went-before-him.

  277 “His face was . . . work”: Gilbert Harrison’s spoken notes on his meeting with AH, January 4, 1980, Gilbert A. Harrison papers relating to Thornton Wilder, 1956–1985, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

  278 “shapes the mind . . . powers”: O’Riordan, “Interview with Alfred Hitchcock,” 289.

  278 “to arrange things . . . judge”: Bruce Bradley, James Joyce’s Schooldays (Dublin: Gill and MacMillan, 1982), 7.

  278 “organization, control, and . . . analysis”: Bogdanovich, Who the Devil Made It, loc. 9287 of 15740, Kindle.

  279 “They epitomized the . . . radical”: Simon Callow, “The Spiritual SAS,” Guardian, January 31, 2004, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jan/31/featuresreviews.guardianreview6.

  279 One Jesuit critic . . . “Expressionism”: Neil Hurley, Soul in Suspense: Hitchcock’s Fright and Delight (Metuchen, NJ, and London: Scarecrow Press, 1993), 13.

  280 “a bright red . . . drab”: Jon Whitcomb, “Master of Mayhem,” Cosmopolitan, October 1959, 24.

  281 In his ill-fated . . . story: AH to Richard Condon, November 3, 1964, Richard Condon Collection, HGARC.

  281 In his youth . . . Mass: Spoto, Dark Side of Genius, 20.

  282 “The sense of . . . catacombs”: Anthony M. Maher, The Forgotten Jesuit of Catholic Modernism: George Tyrrell’s Prophetic Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017), 26.

  282 “Catholics live in . . . God”: Andrew Greeley, The Catholic Imagination (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 2000), 1.

  285 she did have . . . bed: Ackland, The Celluloid Mistress, 37.

  285 his granddaughters’ confirmation . . . 1966: AH appointment books, AHC MHL.

  285 When Pat and . . . Presents: Hitchcock O’Connell and Bouzereau, Alma Hitchcock, 213.

  286 “given greater glory . . . work”: Bernard Parkin S.J., St Ignatius College, 1894–1994 (Enfield, UK: St Ignatius Press, 1994), viii.

  286 “his admiration for . . . unbounded”: Ibid., 146.

  286 “I go through . . . failure”: AH to Reverend Thomas J. Sullivan, S.J., October 20, 1966, AHC MHL. See also McGilligan, Darkness and Light, loc. 15188 of 20272, Kindle.

  286 a rare example . . . Church: see Berry C. Knowlton and Eloise R. Knowlton, “Murder Mystery Meets Sacred Mystery: The Catholic Sacramental in Hitchcock’s I Confess,” in Regina Hansen, ed., Roman Catholicism in Fantastic Film: Essays on Belief, Spectacle, Ritual and Imagery (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011), 196.

  287 Dissatisfaction with casting . . . years: Truffaut, Hitchcock, 200–202.

  287 He was also . . . plausibility: Ibid., 203.

  287 “the Holy Church . . . men”: Murray Pomerance, An Eye for Hitchcock (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 173.

  288 “What’s a Jansenist?”: Bazin, Cinema of Cruelty, 152.

  288 As a matter . . . activities: Weaver, “The Man Behind the Body,” 88.

  288 For similar reasons . . . cubicle: Spoto, Dark Side of Genius, 385.

  289 “[A] claim to . . . belief”: O’Riordan, “Interview with Alfred Hitchcock,” 290.

  289 “concocting a moral . . . universe”: David Freeman, in discussion with the author, October 6, 2018.

  290 “today to a . . . evil”: Alfred Hitchcock, interview by Richard Schickel, The Men Who Made the Movies: Alfred Hitchcock, PBS, 1973.

  290 “Transference of guilt”: Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol were the first to discuss this. See Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol, Hitchcock: The First Forty-Four Films, trans. Stanley Hochman (Oxford: Roundhouse, 1992).

  291 “the principle that . . . happiness”: Hurley, Soul in Suspense, 72.

  291 “The soul of . . . initiative”: Ibid., 199.

  291 Hitchcock conceded that . . . filmography: Truffaut, Hitchcock, 54.

  292 “beautiful, holy things”: Oscar Wilde, “De Profundis,” De Profundis: The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Writings (London: Wordsworth Editions, 1999), 83.

  292 “what one can . . . at”: Ibid., 59.

  292 “an order for . . . wine”: Ibid.

  293 In Donald Spoto’s . . . absolution: Spoto, Dark Side of Genius, 551.

  293 “insisted on coming . . . Alma”: McGilligan, Darkness and Light, loc. 16939 of 20272, Kindle.

  294 “But something whispered . . . need”: Mark Henninger, “Alfred Hitchcock’s Surprise Ending,” Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2012, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323401904578159573738040636.

  294 On Henninger’s first . . . “cheeks”: Ibid.

  295 Alma struggled to . . . them: Hitchcock O’Connell and Bouzereau, Alma Hitchcock, 222.

  295 “I have lots . . . forever!”: Taylor, “Surviving,” 176.

  Selected Bibliography

  A NOTE ON PRIMARY SOURCES

  In researching the life and work of Alfred Hitchcock, the Alfred Hitchcock Collection at the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles, is an indispensable resource. Numerous other collections at the Library—including those of the various Hollywood studios for which Hitchcock worked, his writers, technicians, actors, and friends—are similarly important. The Academy’s oral history collections contain transcripts of lengthy interviews with key names from Hitchcock’s Hollywood years. Also in Los Angeles, the Special Collections at the Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA, provided many very useful materials in the research of this book.

  The Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University has collections of papers belonging to several of Hitchcock’s associates and collaborators. Texas has some excellent resources, including the Ernest Lehman and David O. Selznick collections at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin, and the Ronald Davis Oral History Collection at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas. In New York, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Rare Books and Manuscripts Division and the Billy Rose Theatre Division at the New York Public Library have limited but useful resources about various writers who wrote with and about Hitchcock. The Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library at Yale University has jewels scattered through its capacious archives, including a recording of Gilbert Harrison’s interview with Hitchcock in 1980, one of the last he ever did.

  In London, the British Film Institute (BFI) holds the best primary materials for studying Hitchcock’s career and milieu before his departure for Hollywood. Beyond its invaluable store of film periodicals, the BFI’s Reuben Library also has vast collections of photographs and film footage that help to shine light on Hitchcock’s work. North of the Thames, the British Library’s comprehensive collections of periodicals helped me locate original copies of dozens of articles by and about Hitchcock from the 1920s onward, and its audiovisual archives have a trove of Hitchcock interviews and documentaries. The Library’s magnificent online newspaper database also allowed me to stumble across many Hitchcock-related articles that I would not have otherwise encountered. I am indebted to the outstanding work of the scholars Sidney Gottlieb and Jane Sloan for bringing so much material by and about Hitchcock to my attention. Sloan’s bibliography and Gottlieb’s anthologies of Hitchcock’s writing and interviews are indispensable to any Hitchcock researcher.
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br />   PERIODICAL ARTICLES AND WEBSITES

  “Alfred Hitchcock Reveals His Methods.” Midland Daily Telegraph, July 14, 1936.

  “All the Fun of the Fair—Free.” Evening Standard, June 15, 1927.

  “Alma in Wonderland: A Woman’s Place Is Not Always in the Home.” Picturegoer, December 1925.

  “The British Film.” Western Morning News, October 19, 1926.

  “British Films Booming.” Daily Herald, September 15, 1926.

  “Case of the Missing Shoe.” Sydney Morning Herald, May 5, 1960.

  “The Elderly Cherub That Is Hitchcock.” TV Guide, May 29, 1965.

  “Everything Went Black.” The Herald, May 14, 1960.

  “Exposing Weaknesses of Top Ranking Stars.” Modern Screen, December 1940.

  “Falstaff in Manhattan.” New York Times, September 5, 1937.

  “The Farmer’s Wife.” Daily Mirror, March 5, 1928.

  “Film Crasher Hitchcock.” Cue, May 19, 1951.

  “Film Director’s Daughter Scores in New Comedy.” Hartford Times, October 13, 1944.

  “Film-Making Problems.” Daily Mail, March 31, 1927.

  “From Our London Correspondent.” Western Morning News, May 29, 1926.

  “From the archive, 24 January 1920: Is there a crime wave in the country?” Guardian, January 24, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2012/jan/24/crime-wave-uk-1920. Originally published in the Manchester Guardian, January 24, 1920.

  “Hitchcock Gives Free Rein to the Gentle Sex.” TV Guide, May 10, 1958.

  “Hitchcock in Sydney on PR Visit.” The Advertiser, May 5, 1960.

  “Hitchcock’s Shower Scene: Another View.” Cinefantastique 16, no. 4 (October 1986): 4–5, 64–67.

  “Hitchcock: ‘Treat Your Wives Better.’ ” The Sun, May 16, 1960.

  “Impersonating ‘The Lodger.’ ” The Bioscope, March 17, 1927.

  “Ingrid Bergman—As Played by Alfred Hitchcock.” Pageant, March 1946.

  “ ‘The Lodger,’ the Last Word in Screen Art.” Leeds Mercury, October 2, 1926.

  “ ‘Mary Rose’ at the Haymarket.” Common Cause, May 7, 1920.

  “Our Captious Critic: ‘Mary Rose.’ ” Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, May 15, 1920.