Hitchcock's Blondes by Laurence Leamer
What's It About?
If you love movies, “Hitchcock’s Blondes” is essential reading.Searching for gift ideas for an upcoming holiday, birthday or a film awards show party? Look no further as vaunted best-selling nonfiction and biography author Laurence Leamer has penned a gem with Hitchcock’s Blondes (G.P. Putnam’s Sons). It’s subtitled The Unforgettable Women Behind the Legendary Director’s Dark Obsession.
If there can be a sophisticated Cliff’s Notes for movie buffs, this engrossing group biography would fit the bill. In theatrical terms, this book is Boffo! The author has neatly encapsulated snappy, gossipy biographies of Alfred Hitchcock and eight of his most fascinating leading ladies who starred in fourteen of his best-remembered films.
It was no secret this gentleman DID prefer blondes and it mattered not whether the amber, ash, flaxen, golden, honey or striking platinum tresses were nature’s blessing or through a beautician’s paint pot. These hues caught and reflected the cinematic lights that made his stars glow brighter even when filmed in black and white.
A Blindingly Bright Cast
The Hitchcock’s Blondes who made the cut with Laurence Leamer were: June Howard-Tripp in the 1927 British classic silent The Lodger; Madeleine Carroll in The 39 Steps (1935) and Secret Agent (1936); Ingrid Bergman in Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), and Under Capricorn (1949); Grace Kelly in Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954) and To Catch a Thief (1955); Janet Leigh in Psycho (1960); Kim Novak in Vertigo (1958); Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest (1959); and Tippi Hedren in The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964).
June Howard-Tripp was primarily a stage actress who quit show business early.
Madeleine Carroll, the first of the Hitchcock “ice-blond” prototype began as a beauty contestant and stage actress and was successful in both her native England and America as a film actress. In the late 1930’s, under contract with Paramount Studios, she was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. She devoted most of the WWII years to the war effort. Although she lived to be 81, dying in 1987, Madeleine made her last film in 1949.
Swedish Ingrid Bergman received her initial acting training at the Royal Dramatic Theatre School (Greta Garbo had also been a scholarship student) and began as a stage actress. She quickly moved to films in Sweden and Germany before moving to California to star in a re-make of her previous film Intermezzo in 1939.
Grace Kelly, with her strikingly cool patrician looks, considered by many to be the ultimate Hitchcock blonde, was another formally trained actress. She graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1949 and immediately found success on stage and screen. To the lasting regret of many, she retired from acting at age 26 when she married Prince Rainier of Monaco.
Native Californian Janet Leigh was discovered at age 18 by Norma Shearer. She dropped out of college after one year and began working in radio plays, swiftly graduating to film. Psycho was her most definitive role winning her a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and a nomination for the Academy Award in the same category.
Kim Novak was a young model who moved to Los Angeles seeking work in films, quickly landing a contract with Columbia Pictures. Studio head Harry Cohn lent her out to Alfred Hitchcock for Vertigo, while pocketing most of the enormous fee.
Eva Marie Saint, former cheerleader and sorority sister, studied acting at Bowling Green State University in Ohio before beginning a career in New York as a radio, stage and television actress. She won the Drama Critics Award for her Broadway role in Horton Foote’s play The Trip to Bountiful. By the mid-1950’s she had received two Emmy nominations. Her feature film debut in On the Waterfront (1954) earned her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She was chosen over several contenders for the female lead in North By Northwest. Alfred Hitchcock was disappointed she chose to limit her acting career by placing her husband Jeffrey Hayden and their two children first. Their marriage lasted 65 years until his death in 2016.
The final of Hitchcock’s Blondes was Tippi Hedren who was a highly successful model gracing several magazine covers and appearing in a number of commercials before moving to Hollywood in hopes of breaking into films. The Birds and Marnie were her first two films, widely regarded as her most memorable. For the former, she received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year. Her acting career waned as she shifted her focus to animal rights activism. She is also remembered as being actress Melanie Griffith’s mother.
The Notorious Director
Nine of director Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s fifty films have been named to the prestigious U.S. National Film Registry maintained by the Library of Congress. Of the fourteen featuring the eight leading ladies listed above, six are among the chosen honorees while three are ineligible for inclusion as they are British. Only twenty-five American-made films annually receive this distinction. The 39 Steps ranks #4 on the British Film Institute (BFI) top 100 British-made films and in its beautifully restored Criterion version remains engaging, fast-paced, humorous and exciting.
One notable trademark of Hitchcock films is his highly anticipated cameo appearance typically appearing early in the movie to avoid distraction from the unfolding story. The first was in The Lodger where he appeared momentarily in a newspaper office. The director was known for his meticulous preparation and planning lasting a year or more before he began filming. He demanded the same attention to detail, punctuality and commitment from his stars.
Hitchcock was known for his regular habits off and on the set which included sometimes outrageous practical jokes and the telling of absolutely filthy stories. Whether he was naturally misogynistic or the product of his time, he appears to have held women in low esteem.
The director’s career spanned six decades beginning in the silent movie era, progressing to talkies in sharply contrasted black and white films and ultimately blossoming into color and full Technicolor productions. Many pioneer and far more recent filmmakers have been forgotten by the public but Alfred Hitchcock and his movies have remained in the public consciousness.
Indeed, several that originally received less than robust reviews have grown in stature. His body of work has been lauded by masters of cinema François Truffaut and Martin Scorsese, among others. Widely regarded as one of the all-time great innovative directors, his suspenseful, psychological dramas and sensational films continue to be staples of film school curricula, film society festivals and fan favorites. The fourteen films Laurence Leamer has chosen clearly demonstrate why Alfred Hitchcock is known as “the father of the thriller.”
The Blonde in His Own Life
There were many other blonde actresses including Carole Lombard and Doris Day featured in the director’s films but Laurence Leamer has chosen the most emblematic.
Alfred Hitchcock, the son of a London east-end greengrocer, born August 13, 1899, was bolstered throughout his career by another strawberry blond. She was Alma Reville, his wife of 52 years and collaborative partner until his death. Alma was one day younger and already more experienced in the budding English film industry when she met her future husband.
She began at age 16 as a tea girl at Twickenham Film Studios where her father worked and quickly became a cutter. She was fully an editor when she married Alfred on December 2, 1926. This petite powerhouse was also an accomplished screenwriter. If she disliked a potential script or project, it did not get made. A major failing of Sir Alfred Hitchcock was his reluctance or inability to acknowledge the important women in his life be they actresses, producers or his wife and daughter.
Fabulously Entertaining & Informative
Laurence Leamer was able to interview two of the three surviving Hitchcock’s Blondes: Kim Novak (90) and Eva Marie Saint (99), the oldest living Academy Award winner and the last star from Hollywood’s Golden Age, but not Tippi Hedren for undisclosed reasons. Both women spoke warmly of the professionalism of the director.
Eva Marie Saint has been quoted as saying “My experience with Hitch was one of utter respect, warmth, friendliness and humor, and North by Northwest was a glorious time in my life.”
There is a long list of other people interviewed and consulted including co-stars, stand-ins, crew members, family, friends and multiple former lovers of these very human women. The author has provided extensive notes, bibliography and index in this fabulously entertaining and informative book.
If you love movies, Hitchcock’s Blondes is essential reading.
About Laurence Leamer:
Laurence Leamer is the New York Times bestseller author of nineteen books. As a young man, he worked in a French factory, a West Virginia coal mine and a school in the mountains of Nepal. The subjects Leamer has written about are as varied as his life, from the costs of power in Washington to the travails of celebrity in Hollywood, and from the legal struggles of two Pittsburgh lawyers against a coal mogul to the games played in the elegant salons of Palm Beach.
The award-winning author’s books focusing on women have been particularly well regarded starting with The Kennedy Women, a number two New York Times bestseller. His recent book, Capote’s Women, a national bestseller, is being made into an eight-hour series starring Naomi Watts, Diane Lane, Calista Flockhart, Molly Ringwald and Tom Hollander. Leamer’s newest book, Hitchcock’s Blondes, is the second part of a trilogy about intriguing women involved with creative geniuses.
The author has a wife, Vesna Obradovic Leamer, who takes care of everything else in their complicated lives. He is fortunate as well in having a terrific daughter, Daniela Mantilla, a great son-in-law, Antonio Mantilla, and two dynamite grandkids, Alejandro and Emilia. If one has good health, a close family and loyal friends one has everything. The author lives in Palm Beach, Florida and Washington, D.C.
