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Washington Blade (14/Feb/2008) - Celebrating the Hitchcock blonde

(c) Washington Blade (14/Feb/2008)

Celebrating the Hitchcock blonde

The March edition of Vanity Fair, the venerable magazine’s annual “Hollywood Issue,” is a particularly delicious tinseltown-themed bon mot that had me salivating for several reasons — mostly for its brilliantly executed Hitchcock gallery homage.

There’s also an excerpt from Charlotte Chandler’s new Joan Crawford biography which, refreshing though it is to see Joan get a fair shake, is a fourth-rate hack job, far too inferior to be deserving of the lavish preview Vanity Fair gives it.

But that’s another blog. I’ll give you my take on the Crawford legend one of these days but I’m too busy now gushing about classic Hitchcock iconography which invariably includes that irresistible cinematic archetype, the Hitchcock blonde.

Hitch fans, of course, know immediately of that which I speak but in case your Hitchcock touchstones are a little rusty, the Hitchcock blonde is the type the famous director used as leading lady in several of his most well-known films. Conceptually it’s become so well-known, both in fashion and pop culture, that a 1999 play by Terry Johnson used the conceit for both theme and title.

Some argue that British actress Madeleine Carroll, who starred in Hitchcock’s “The 39 Steps” (1935) and “Secret Agent” (1936) was the first such blonde and, indeed, a good case could be made that she was.

Others, though (and I’m of this mindset), say Grace Kelly deserves the credit, though she came much later starring in three Hitchcock movies: “Dial M for Murder” (1953), “Rear Window” (1954) and “To Catch a Thief” (1955). Hitch often said Kelly was his favorite leading lady and it’s easy to see that it was true, for not only did he use her in three consecutive films, actresses in several post-1955 Hitchcock leads were clearly cast with Kelly in mind.

It has been oft-noted that Kim Novak (1958’s “Vertigo”), Eva Marie Saint (1959’s “North By Northwest”) and Tippi Hedren (1963’s “The Birds” and 1964’s “Marnie”) were probably offered those parts only because Kelly, who by that time had married into Monaco royalty, had retired from the screen and wasn’t considering scripts (though she did consider making a comeback in “Marnie,” she ultimately declined).

And even though Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane in “Psycho” (1960) isn’t a particularly glamorous or regal character like the blonde leads in the aforementioned films, she earns her place in the pantheon of classic Hitchcock blondes not only for her golden tresses but also for the way she suffers (the famously grisly shower stabbing) and Hitchcock blondes always suffer — seeing these hypnotically beautiful screen sirens under duress is part of what makes us squirm so maddeningly in the best Hitchcock thrillers.

There were other blonde actresses who appeared in Hitchcock movies but they didn’t fit this type: Peroxide blonde Marlene Dietrich was too campy glam in “Stage Fright” (1950) to fit the bill; Doris Day too wholesome and motherly in “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1956); Dany Robin too matronly and fleeting in “Topaz” (1969); and Barbara Leigh-Hunt and Barbara Harris, too plain Jane and common in “Frenzy” (1972) and “Family Plot” (1976), respectively.

For the lead role in “Torn Curtain” (1966), it’s almost as though Hitch had normally blonde Julie Andrews dye her hair to frosted brown to emphasize that her Sarah Sherman wasn’t to be confused with the Kelly archetype as Andrews, while undoubtedly appealing, was (and is!) a much different type.

So while some may quibble, my canonical Hitchcock blonde list is comprised of Kelly, Novak, Saint, Leigh and Hedren. And they’re all represented in the Vanity Fair photo essay, though, as with any great Hitchcock movie, there are a few unexpected twists along the way. For my money, today’s starlets pale in comparison to their Hitchcock-era predecessors, but the project’s still tremendous fun and mostly well done.

Charlize Theron recreates Kelly’s Margot Wendice in the murder scene from “Dial M.” It’s beautifully recreated by photographer Norman Jean Roy.

Scarlett Johansson takes over for Kelly in the “Rear Window” shot, also photographed by Roy. Johansson, shot in profile, pulls off the look pretty well but it’s a shame the Isaac Mizrahi gown she wears is of only vague resemblance to the black and white Edith Head original Kelly wears in the film, one of the most glamorous and memorable gowns ever worn on film, in my opinion. Even the length is wrong — the Mizrahi here is full-length while Head’s came just below the knee. It’s one of the few instances where the Vanity Fair crew opted for couture over replication, a shame.

Naomi Watts becomes Marnie Edgar Rutland in the dinner party scene from “Marnie.” Her upswept hairdo is more of a bun than the complex chignon Hedren donned for the original scene, but the look is certainly there. It’s the one shot in the portfolio Vanity Fair didn’t bother to build a set for. Instead Julian Broad shoots her against a plain background.

Gwyneth Paltrow stands in for Kelly in a recreation of the fireworks scene from “To Catch a Thief.” I’ve never though Paltrow quite had the gravitas to pull off old Hollywood glamour but she does a decent-enough simulation of it with Robert Downey Jr. in the Cary Grant role in this shot, also by Roy.

The laziness pops up again, though, in the “Psycho” shower scene recreation by Mark Seliger with actress Marion Cottilard: several frames from the 45-second montage are recreated but Cottilard isn’t even blonde. Surely they didn’t choose this little-known French actress only because she shared a first name with the heroine of the original, did they?

The most unconvincing recreation, though, is Jodie Foster standing in for Hedren in the phone booth attack scene from “The Birds.” Yes, the feel of the shot is there, but Foster is too tough and ball-busting to evoke even a smidge of Hedren’s porcelain class and fragility. She’s not helped by the fact that the costumer didn’t even bother to match up the green of Head’s original suit or the stylist the lemon-blonde French twist Hedren sported.

The best of the batch, by far, is the flawless recreation of the climactic tower scene from “Vertigo” with Renee Zellweger gloriously evoking Novak’s bravura turn in the original. The gown, Carlotta’s necklace (a pivotal plot point), the set and Zellweger combine to form a haunting reflection of the classic inspiration. I even hear Bernard Herrmann’s swirling score whirl through my mind as I look at the photo, another by Roy.

There are two unexpectedly nice touches. Although the “North by Northwest” crop-dusting scene recreated by Art Streiber doesn’t require a Hitchcock blonde, actress Eva Marie Saint, who played Eve in the 1959 movie, instead appears in another scene, sitting in for Tallulah Bankhead in the brilliant “Lifeboat” recreation shot by Mark Seliger two pages before. It’s a bit jarring to see a “for real” Hitchcock blonde make an appearance in this series, but it feels refreshingly appropriate.

It also feels wonderfully dead on to have actress Joan Fontaine (a Hitchcock leading lady, if not particularly a blonde, in the director’s “Rebecca” and “Suspicion”) answer the Proust questionnaire on the back page of this month’s issue. Sister Olivia de Havilland answered it a few years ago, so it’s nice to read Joan’s responses.

Scenes from “Rebecca” and “Strangers on a Train” round out the Hitch montage. The “Train” shot, with actors Emile Hirsch and James McAvoy, is especially well done. The film that inspired it is one of several movies in which Hitch used a brunette leading lady — in that case, Ruth Roman. One of the director’s favorites, who pre-dates Kelly in the Hitchcock canon, was brunette Ingrid Bergman, who made three films with the Master.

I have to share one sidenote to all this from several years ago that irritates me to this day. I don’t recall what year it was offhand, but in a previous Hollywood issue, Vanity Fair almost got a great shot of the surviving Hitchcock blondes together. Janet Leigh gathered with Tippi Hedren and Eva Marie Saint for the almost-historic shot but instead of including Kim Novak (Kelly died in an accident in 1982), they included Suzanne Pleshette who not only wasn’t blonde, she wasn’t even a Hitchcock leading lady (she played only a supporting part in “The Birds”). I love Pleshette and was saddened by her recent death, but it was clear she must have been dragged in at the last minute.

At first I thought Novak may have refused to participate (for surely she was invited). Her relationship with Hitchcock hadn’t been spectacular during “Vertigo.” They clashed over his insistence that her character’s suit be gray and she found him aloof and unwilling to discuss motivation during filming.

But during a 2003 appearance on “Larry King Live” that featured Hedren, Saint, Leigh and Hitch’s daughter, Pat Hitchcock O’Connell, Novak called in to the telecast, gushed about how excited she was to see “all my favorite people” together and recalled Hitchcock as her favorite director.

So surely she would have been willing to pose for the Vanity Fair photo with her fellow Hitch alums. Perhaps she was unavailable though even that’s a bit hard to fathom. She hasn’t exactly been igniting the screen with a flurry of recent parts. And unless she was saving face, why couldn’t the King team manage to get her for that appearance?

It’s tragic to think that, to my knowledge, nobody managed to get a shot of Novak, Saint, Leigh and Hedren together. Before Kelly died, Hitchcock legend hadn’t grown enough to have likely inspired such a shot. Kelly only outlived Hitch by two years.

If you know of a Novak/Leigh/Saint/Hedren photo, please let me know or send me a copy. I’d love to have it. It’s too late to do it now as Leigh died in 2004.

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