Hitchcock Chronology: 1969

Overview

During 1969, Hitchcock was interviewed by Keith Berwick for the Channel 28 television programme Speculation.

Images from the Hitchcock Gallery (click to view larger versions or search for all relevant images)...

5th - Actress Thelma Ritter, who starred in Rear Window, dies of a heart attack aged 66.

US-based filming on Topaz finally comes to an end with only the film's finalé to be shot.^[1]

Hitchcock returns to Paris in mid-April to film the duel finalé for Topaz. News that Alma has been hospitalised forces the director to return to Los Angeles before the sequence is completed and Herbert Coleman takes over. Two further endings will be filmed, with Hitchcock returning to Paris once more to film an ending at Orly Airport. The third "suicide" ending is constructed from existing footage.^[1]

21st - BBC Radio broadcasts an adaptation of Josephine Tey's novel A Shilling for Candles.

Whilst vacationing at the Villa d'Este on Lake Como in Italy, Hitchcock telephones editor William H. Ziegler with the decision that the Orly Airport sequence should be used for the ending of Topaz.^[1]

27th - Actress Violet Farebrother, who appeared in Downhill, Easy Virtue and Murder!, dies aged 81.

3rd - Hitchcock is interviewed by Bryan Forbes in front of an audience at the National Film Theater in London.

Topaz is released in cinemas to disappointing reviews and a lacklustre box office. The film fails to recoup its $4,000,000 budget and is never re-released theatrically by Universal during Hitchcock's lifetime.^[1]
30th - Hitchcock appears on the KYW-TV television show The Mike Douglas Show, alongside James Brown and Joan Rivers.^[2]
30th - BBC Television broadcasts Bryan Forbes' interview with Hitchcock, which was recorded at the National Film Theatre in October.