“Tonight: Golden curls!”
Those were the words blazing from a theatrical sign in Alfred Hitchcock’s first great thriller, “The Lodger,” and though this 1926 silent was a “Tale of the London Fog” about a ’20s Jack the Ripper, it signaled what became his lifelong cinematic obsession: blonds. Over and over, the Master of Suspense showed them-chilly, earthy, chic or voluptuous-as his heroines or designated ladies-in-distress.
What did he see in all those blonds? The ultimate innocence? The ultimate prize? The ultimate fantasy? Hitchcock, according to biographer Pat McGilligan, “became testy about his supposed fixation with blonds,” insisting “I think it’s tradition.”
Besides, he said, they photographed better, especially in black and white.
FALLING FOR KIM
Fashion and women were almost always crucial to Hitchcock’s storytelling, never more so than in his great 1958 romantic thriller, “Vertigo.” In that masterpiece, which placed second to “Citizen Kane” in the last “Sight and Sound” all-time-best movie poll, Jimmy Stewart-as Scottie Ferguson, a San Francisco detective with a fear of heights-falls in love twice with Kim Novak: first as Madeleine Elster, a millionaire’s wife obsessed with the past, and then as Judy Barton, a gum-chewing brunette and dead ringer for Madeleine. It’s Scottie’s mania for redressing and restyling Judy into the image of Madeleine that triggers the film’s final frisson and Hitch, backed by Bernard Herrmann’s haunting music, lovingly dwells on all the details of her eerie makeover. From tawny long hair and tight green sweaters, she’s coaxed into shortening and lightening her hair and donning Madeleine’s signature outfit: a mesmerizing gray dress suit. Just like Scottie, Hitchcock punctiliously planned all Madeleine/Judy’s dresses and hairdos-and, in fact, he and Novak initially quarreled over them. Just like Scottie, one imagines he was dazzled and dreams-wept by the result–as audiences still are.
THAT NOTORIOUS KISS
The ultimate in Hitchcockian black-and-white fashion and eroticism can be found in “Notorious”-which starred his favorite couple of that time, Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, seen in a record-breaking one-take, five-minute-long kiss in their (obviously well-used) Rio de Janiero hotel suite. The two are spies in love, but Bergman has a notorious amorous reputation and Grant’s job agonizingly forces him to push her into Claude Rains’ bed. The film, Francois Truffaut’s personal favorite of all Hitch’s work, is a dream of monochrome eroticism, with the adorable Bergman robed in one stunning outfit and gown after another-all designed, for the first time, by Hitch’s eventual favorite costume designer, Edith Head. According to Head’s memoir, Hitchcock notated in the scripts he sent her precise wardrobe details, such as the color of the clothes and how they should move on the actors. Said Head: “He spoke a designer’s language, even though he didn’t know the first thing about clothes.”
WALK IN CARY’S SHOES
Want to visit your own bit of Hitchcockiana here in Chicago? Drop by the Ambassador East Hotel at 1301 N. State Pkwy., site of the scene in “North by Northwest” where Grant exposes Eva Marie Saint to James Mason. Still there: the alley on the southwest corner where Grant spies Saint entering the Ambassador.
At the start, Hitchcock told the hitherto saintly Saint he was going to transform her image for the film. When the wardrobe suggestions came in from MGM, he rejected the designs and personally took Saint to New York’s Bergdorf Goodman. There he chose her clothes from the sale items in the department store.
FULL OF GRACE
When Hitchcock found Grace Kelly–the 25-year-old movie actress he chose for 1954’s “Dial M for Murder”–he acted as if he’d found the star of his life. He cast the lovely, Philadelphia-born ex-deb in his next two classics, “Rear Window” and “To Catch a Thief.”
To him she was the perfect woman, to be perfectly dressed in his films. And no doubt he would have gone on choosing her if she hadn’t retired from films after meeting (and later marrying) Monaco’s Prince Rainier while filming “Thief” on the French Riviera.
Hitchcock never lost hope that she would relent and return, and in 1964 he actually talked her into making a comeback with him in “Marnie,” before outrage in Monaco forced her to withdraw. (The role went to his own made-over junior version of Kelly, Tippi Hedren. )
What appealed to Hitchcock so strongly about Grace Kelly? Her classic features and ice-blond hair? Her regal bearing and bemused smile? Perhaps her duality? Despite her porcelain beauty, Kelly had a Hollywood rep for serial affairs with her leading men, and if you watch her eyes in close-up, you can often see mischief dancing. She stole a lot of hearts–Hitch’s most completely.
NO BAIL FOR AUDREY
Hitchcock never made a movie with Hollywood’s imperishable fashion icon Audrey Hepburn, but it wasn’t for want of desire–nor because Hepburn wasn’t a blond.
After “North by Northwest” in 1959, Hitchcock had planned his next film as an adaptation of Henry Cecil’s novel “No Bail for the Judge,” starring Hepburn as a London barrister trying to clear her judge father (John Williams) of a murder charge with the aid of a gentleman thief (Laurence Harvey).
The cast was set; the script had been worked on by Ernest Lehman (“North by Northwest”) and finished by Sam Taylor (“Vertigo”). But Hepburn, or the studio, balked at letting the angelic star suffer though a terrifying near-rape scene Hitch had added. The project was shelved (Hitch wouldn’t accept a substitute for Hepburn) and he went on to make the even more daring “Psycho.”
JANET IN BLACK AND WHITE
“Psycho” is a thriller most notable for the absence of fashion: the clothes star Janet Leigh isn’t wearing in the nerve-shredding shower scene, which shocked moviegoers in 1960. But the image of the blond Leigh, in her famous white brassiere, probably raised more eyebrows and haunted more memories than any other movie costume of the young decade. Actually, Leigh wore two bras during the film: one white, one black.
