Letter from America (BBC Radio, 02/Nov/1969)

Broadcast Details

• broadcast on BBC Radio 4
• date: 02/Nov/1969 at 6:15pm
• length: approx 15 minutes

Transcript

It must have been thirty-one or two years ago that Alfred Hitchcock, the English film director, first descended on the United States like the mountain come to Mohammed. In his first week in America he achieved the rare privilege of a full-page photograph in the then-new illustrated magazine known as Life. It showed him in the one chair they found that would accommodate him, drawn up cosily to the fireplace in his New York hotel. But the fireplace was a fake — no flue, and therefore no wood, no coals. It was there simply for decoration, and Hitchcock got off his first comment on American life. Nowhere, he suggested, was there a private place to curl up and gossip. He was shown staring — at a distance of about two feet — into the cold, flameless void, and the caption on the picture read: "Disappointment in American fireplaces".

Credits

• Alistair Cooke — presenter

Notes

• Cooke is seemingly referring to this photograph of Hitchcock taken by photographer Peter Stackpole, which was in fact taken in Los Angeles in 1939. It's likely Stackpole would have posed Hitchcock for the picture, rather than the director necessarily choosing to make a "comment on American life".