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Newsday.com (23/Nov/2008) - Review: 'Spellbound by Beauty,' by Donald Spoto

(c) Newsday.com (23/Nov/2008)

Review: 'Spellbound by Beauty,' by Donald Spoto

SPELLBOUND BY BEAUTY: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies, by Donald Spoto. Harmony Books

Alfred Hitchcock always denied that he said "actors are cattle." According to him, the actual quote was "actors should be treated like cattle." Either way, it's not a sentiment that conjures the image of a nurturing director.

And neither does Donald Spoto in the fascinating new book "Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies," his third tome devoted to the man who took such delight in chilling moviegoers' spines with films like "Rear Window" and "Psycho." In "The Art of Alfred Hitchcock," Spoto painstakingly dissected all of the director's films. In "The Dark Side of Genius," Spoto painted the portrait of a sexually repressed, cruel practical joker with a lust for gorgeous blondes. Now with "Spellbound by Beauty," Spoto probes an even darker side of Hitchcock, that of a self-absorbed Svengali prone to lecherous and boorish behavior toward the women he directed.

More than 30 years ago, Spoto began interviewing numerous Hitchcock performers, including Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, Doris Day and Joan Fontaine. Though some actresses, like Eva Marie Saint and Janet Leigh, had pleasant relationships with him, others had horror stories to rival anything Hitchcock ever put on film.

Today Hitchcock probably would have been slapped with numerous sexual harassment suits, starting with Madeleine Carroll, the luminous blonde star of "The 39 Steps." Hitchcock's directing style consisted of tactics like unbuttoning his trousers as if to expose himself - just so Carroll would register the right expression of shock. He thought nothing of whispering dirty jokes in her ear.

On "Rebecca," he repeatedly told Joan Fontaine that everyone in the cast disliked her, just so she'd feel as meek and insignificant as her character. His mystifying indifference toward Doris Day on the set of "The Man Who Knew Too Much" nearly drove her to walk off the picture. Kim Novak said she wasn't sure "if Hitchcock ever liked me," especially after their many clashes over costumes while making "Vertigo."

He was more respectful toward Bergman, whom he hoped would leave her husband, Petter Lindstrom, for him, and Kelly, another of his unrequited loves.

But no leading lady suffered greater indignities than Tippi Hedren, who was put under an exclusive seven-year contract to Hitchcock in 1961. Hedren had grounds for a lawsuit based just on the hellish week spent filming the climactic attic scene in "The Birds" (Hitchcock used live birds, after promising her mechanical ones), but his off-camera antics were even more distasteful: While shooting "Marnie," he began stalking her, and when it was finished, he demanded that she sleep with him to keep her job. She refused, and Hitchcock retaliated by not casting her again and turning down offers from other producers for her services.

Perhaps Spoto's most shocking revelation deals with Hitchcock's unconventional marriage to Alma Reville, his close collaborator on several scripts. He was a virgin when they married at age 26, and, according to Spoto, he and Alma had sex together only once - a year after their wedding - resulting in the birth of their daughter, Pat.

Spoto might have done a bit more fact-checking. He notes that Bergman was not Oscar-nominated for "Notorious," "nor was anyone else associated with this masterwork," forgetting about nods for supporting actor Claude Rains and for Ben Hecht's screenplay. He also writes that Anne Baxter, Hitchcock's leading lady in "I Confess," was a major contender to play Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind" (it was actually Fontaine's role in "Rebecca" that she almost landed).

No one can deny Hitchcock had a genius for making brilliant movies. It's too bad that he didn't also possess a genius for treating his leading ladies with respect. Perhaps what Hitchcock really said was, "All actresses should be treated like cattle."

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