Classic movie site with rare images, original ads, and behind-the-scenes photos, with informative and insightful commentary. We like to have fun with movies!
Archive and Links
grbrpix@aol.com
Search Index Here




Wednesday, November 15, 2006



Alfred Hitchcock Blog-A-Thon Today!


Better writers than myself have been flogging the Hitchcock oeuvre for the past forty years, and in deference to them, I’ll spare you my own ruminations on the deeper meanings of the Master Of Suspense and his films. The Film Vituperatem is the host for today’s Blog-A-Thon devoted to Hitchcock, and you can go HERE for coverage and events related to this auspicious celebration. There’s nobody I’d rather talk about than Hitchcock, having done it previously HERE and HERE, but finding fresh game to lay upon that table is something else again, for this is far and away the most discussed and (over) analyzed director in the history of movies. Well, why not? His work is so accessible. You don’t watch him out of a sense of duty. His shows are a pleasure even for teen-agers otherwise hostile to classic film. In all the college programs I’ve done, Hitchcock always rings the bell. You don’t have to justify Hitch or apologize for him. There’s never a need to put this director in historic context or make excuses for dated devises. There's no begging your audience to just give him a chance. Girlfriend Ann saw Psycho theatrically at the Liberty in 1972. We bonded on her memory of that day (but why wasn’t I there --- being an hour away at college was no excuse --- I should have walked home for that!). I did get to spend a day watching him direct Family Plot (then called Deceit) on a Universal sound stage, and stood there the whole time thinking what an epochal moment this was in my life. Hitch sat quietly as cast and crew members approached his chair and sought instruction. My USC class got in by virtue of some tie-in the school had with the studio. After forty or so minutes, he walked over and called Action on a garage set with Karen Black and another actor. That was the summer of 1975.



A lot of us saw our first Hitchcocks on NBC Saturday Night At The Movies. That’s where I encountered Rear Window, Vertigo, and The Man Who Knew Too Much. CBS premiered North By Northwest in 1968. What a night. We never dreamed so many of these would disappear shortly thereafter. Hitchcock had a deal with Paramount that called for negatives to revert to him after a specified period. Rear Window, The Trouble With Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo (along with a Warners release, Rope) were in lock-up by the mid-seventies. You couldn’t see them (legitimately) anywhere. I remember small ads in Variety around that time offering rights to them. I assume those were run by Hitchcock’s representatives. The asking price must have been prohibitive during his lifetime. All five negatives were said to have been improperly stored. The restorations that took place years later were all the more difficult because of this. For all I know, Hitch had the things shoved to a corner in his wine cellar. 16mm collectors occasionally ran across prints that had once been rented by Films, Inc. Most of these were three-color Technicolor originals. You can imagine how coveted they were. A friend of mine bootlegged a negative of Rear Window from one of these treasures. It looked almost as good as the real thing. Being able to exhibit this one at your party in 1981 was quite the status symbol. A few years later, Universal bought the titles from Hitchcock’s estate and ground out ugly prints no better than our pirated ones, but we chased after them anyway. A lot of these were done for airline showings (they were still running 16mm on planes in the eighties!), and sometimes we’d run across three or four copies of Vertigo shoved under a dealer’s table at a collector’s show. The price? As with Xanadu, no man can say, but generally anywhere from $600 up, and this for a yellowish blur on a full-framed mockery of the intended Vistavision frame. But why go on rambling about the old days of film collecting when we can buy a superb rendition of Vertigo on DVD for a mere ten spot?



I decided to tackle To Catch A Thief for today’s Blog-A-Thon (why do I keep wanting to type It Takes A Thief? --- I never even watched the old Robert Wagner series). This movie has never come in for much analysis. I’ve not seen charts, graphs, nor blueprints in any of those academic explorations on Hitchcock. People call it eye candy. I’m still surprised and delighted at seeing Hitchcock’s cameo --- I mean, actually seeing it after all those years of being cropped out on television and rental prints. Remember how that was? Cary Grant would look over on the bus at --- nothing. I checked my clock a third of the way in and realized Grace Kelly hadn’t shown up yet, other than a glimpse on the beach. Much of that waiting was spent with yards of exposition. How many times must Cary assure us he’s not the Cat? John Williams sums up the whole thing at one point --- It’s a kind of travel folder heaven where a man dreams he’ll go when he retires. Imagine that Vistavision banquet audiences enjoyed in 1955. Paramount had already done a series of two-reel travelogues using the process. This was essentially the same deal, only it ran 106 minutes. Suspense takes a back seat to sport cars and overlooks. Lots of kissing goes on here. Hitchcock was clearly infatuated with Grace Kelly. Having complained previously about Cary Grant and his chicken leg (HERE), I’ll not revisit that. If any stars can get by without a story, it’s these two. Yes, even at my advanced age, I find that fireworks encounter pretty intoxicating. There must have been a lot of boomer infants conceived in the wake of dates to see this movie. To look at the confidence Grant displays, you marvel all the more at stories of how fussy and uncertain he could be on the set, but perfectionism asserts itself in different ways. For C.G., it seems to have resulted in parts turned down that one regrets all the more in hindsight, but I for one would hate to lose Humphrey Bogart as Linus Larabee. Still, what if Cary had done Sabrina? His good-will outreach during a publicity tour for To Catch A Thief confirmed Grant’s position as a favorite among showmen, as illustrated by this photo of him with Vancouver theatre-men. Regret to say I got an uneasy sensation watching Grace Kelly behind the wheel on a twisting Riviera byway, knowing the fate that awaited her decades later on that selfsame road. Was any director so enamoured of process shooting as Hitchcock? They didn’t spend a minute longer on that location than was necessary.





For me, it always comes back to the plight of the poor exhibitor. This time, they’d gone to war with Paramount over usurious terms on new releases. Every time a showman got out from under one screwing, another was poised to take its place. Paramount ranked second among distributors they loved to hate in 1955 (Warner Bros. was number one!). Harrison’s Reports was the straight-talking voice of disgruntled theatre-owners whose houses were near the point of closure in the wake of declining profits. Cinemascope provided a shot in the arm, but by August of 1955, when To Catch A Thief was released, that novelty had largely worn off, and it was back to bread and water for most small venues. Paramount seemed to offer a lifeline when it promised to address problems affecting exhibition, particularly theatres on the borderline of continued operation. Pete Harrison assured his readers that it was a lot of double-talk. "Distress" assistance seemed limited to those theatres already on the ropes, according to Harrison. Before you can expect relief from Paramount, it will be necessary for you to first "attain" the status of a pauper. Many theatres were struggling on receipts of less than a thousand per week. To Catch A Thief was being sold on a 50% basis, as were most major pictures of that year. It would be at least sixty days after release before they’d drop down to 35%, but that was long after the initial publicity build-up has worn down, according to theatre owners. Hitchcock’s film brought back domestic rentals of four million against negative costs of 2.8. Rear Window had performed better (4.8 million), though To Catch A Thief would top subsequent films from the director, The Trouble With Harry (a significant loss with only one million in domestic rentals) and The Man Who Knew Too Much (3.5). A 1963 re-issue of To Catch A Thief, which billed Cary Grant and "Princess" Grace Kelly, returned an additional $293,000. Unlike the other Paramount Hitchcocks, this negative remained with the distributor. It is the only one of the group not presently owned by Universal.

11 Comments:

Blogger Uncle Gustav said...

Nice write-up, excellent photos.

It's far from Hitchcock's best. But, given the option to see any one of his films, I'd choose this.

"Hold them, John," indeed!

7:58 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's interesting -- I think that the "world premiere" theatre marquee for TO CATCH A THIEF is the only time I've ever seen a major promorion for a post-'40s Hitchcock picture fail to mention the director's name.

9:06 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

In the shot of Kelly and Grant giggling on the couch, Cary appears to be wearing comfy slippers with his tux. Out of camera range, I guess!

9:56 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm thinking that if Hitchcock had indeed had those negatives "shoved to a corner in his wine cellar", they might have survived in better shape; more likely they wound up in some non-climate-controlled storage facility out in the San Fernando Valley. Somehow, it wouldn't surprise me at all if Hitchcock took better care of his wine than his films.

11:22 AM  
Blogger Kevin K. said...

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that you saw Hitchcock at work. Holy smokes, that is way, way cool.

"NBC Saturday Night at the Movies" really was a godsend back then. I had to wait 20 years between the TV airing of "Vertigo" and its first re-release in the '80s.

11:40 AM  
Blogger radiotelefonia said...

Very nice post.

However, when are we going to read about more obscure films like this one, made by the same studio in Paris, more than twenty years before:

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6557/3224/1600/Esp%3F%3Frame.jpg

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6557/3224/1600/Esp%3F%3Frame%20%28b%29.jpg

10:54 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

In 1987, I took an acting class in Chicago from Barbara Harris. On the last night of class, I asked if she had any special memories of working with Hitch on FAMILY PLOT. She told of how Karen Black was trying Hitch's patience by demanding to discuss her motivation before every scene. The limit came when she wanted to explore her motivation for a simple scene in which she and William Devane had to run back and forth from one garage room to another. Hitch, exasperated, turned to his camerman and said, "Shoot their feet." The resulting shot in the film shows nothing but two pairs of feet running--an effective and clever little moment that conveys the meaning clearly. Contrary to legend, Hitchcock did improvise a shot on the set from time to time (especially when being badgered by method actors, apparently).

I wonder if that might have been the same day you were there...

11:19 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Beautiful pictures. I'm living in Nice, just near Cannes. Isn't it the old Palais des Festival behind Cary Grant ?

3:28 AM  
Blogger John McElwee said...

Great comments! And a big thanks to John Larrabee for that Barbara Harris reminiscence.

5:37 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great stuff. Dug the pics. It's never been my favorite either, but I'm going to have give "Thief" another chance some time soon.

I also dig your film exhibitor/film lover sensibilitity here. Wish those were combined more often! And I was a very lucky young guy to have seen one of those 3-strip prints (at least I think it was) of "Vertigo" at a rich film geek's house in probably 1977 or so when I was but a geekpup.

...And just where is this Greenbriar cinema anyways.

11:31 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I have enjoyed this film even though it's Hitchcock "lite." I have always been immune to the Grace Kelly appeal. I just find her dreary and dull. I preferred the French gal Brigitte Auber to Grace Kelly any day of the week. When I see the scene between her (as Danielle Foussard, the real thief) and Grace Kelly when they are facing off in swimsuits competing for Cary Grant she was the one I'd have picked. Kelly always looked a bit anorexic to me and Ms. Auber was a healthy-looking gal.

3:47 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

grbrpix@aol.com
  • December 2005
  • January 2006
  • February 2006
  • March 2006
  • April 2006
  • May 2006
  • June 2006
  • July 2006
  • August 2006
  • September 2006
  • October 2006
  • November 2006
  • December 2006
  • January 2007
  • February 2007
  • March 2007
  • April 2007
  • May 2007
  • June 2007
  • July 2007
  • August 2007
  • September 2007
  • October 2007
  • November 2007
  • December 2007
  • January 2008
  • February 2008
  • March 2008
  • April 2008
  • May 2008
  • June 2008
  • July 2008
  • August 2008
  • September 2008
  • October 2008
  • November 2008
  • December 2008
  • January 2009
  • February 2009
  • March 2009
  • April 2009
  • May 2009
  • June 2009
  • July 2009
  • August 2009
  • September 2009
  • October 2009
  • November 2009
  • December 2009
  • January 2010
  • February 2010
  • March 2010
  • April 2010
  • May 2010
  • June 2010
  • July 2010
  • August 2010
  • September 2010
  • October 2010
  • November 2010
  • December 2010
  • January 2011
  • February 2011
  • March 2011
  • April 2011
  • May 2011
  • June 2011
  • July 2011
  • August 2011
  • September 2011
  • October 2011
  • November 2011
  • December 2011
  • January 2012
  • February 2012
  • March 2012
  • April 2012
  • May 2012
  • June 2012
  • July 2012
  • August 2012
  • September 2012
  • October 2012
  • November 2012
  • December 2012
  • January 2013
  • February 2013
  • March 2013
  • April 2013
  • May 2013
  • June 2013
  • July 2013
  • August 2013
  • September 2013
  • October 2013
  • November 2013
  • December 2013
  • January 2014
  • February 2014
  • March 2014
  • April 2014
  • May 2014
  • June 2014
  • July 2014
  • August 2014
  • September 2014
  • October 2014
  • November 2014
  • December 2014
  • January 2015
  • February 2015
  • March 2015
  • April 2015
  • May 2015
  • June 2015
  • July 2015
  • August 2015
  • September 2015
  • October 2015
  • November 2015
  • December 2015
  • January 2016
  • February 2016
  • March 2016
  • April 2016
  • May 2016
  • June 2016
  • July 2016
  • August 2016
  • September 2016
  • October 2016
  • November 2016
  • December 2016
  • January 2017
  • February 2017
  • March 2017
  • April 2017
  • May 2017
  • June 2017
  • July 2017
  • August 2017
  • September 2017
  • October 2017
  • November 2017
  • December 2017
  • January 2018
  • February 2018
  • March 2018
  • April 2018
  • May 2018
  • June 2018
  • July 2018
  • August 2018
  • September 2018
  • October 2018
  • November 2018
  • December 2018
  • January 2019
  • February 2019
  • March 2019
  • April 2019
  • May 2019
  • June 2019
  • July 2019
  • August 2019
  • September 2019
  • October 2019
  • November 2019
  • December 2019
  • January 2020
  • February 2020
  • March 2020
  • April 2020
  • May 2020
  • June 2020
  • July 2020
  • August 2020
  • September 2020
  • October 2020
  • November 2020
  • December 2020
  • January 2021
  • February 2021
  • March 2021
  • April 2021
  • May 2021
  • June 2021
  • July 2021
  • August 2021
  • September 2021
  • October 2021
  • November 2021
  • December 2021
  • January 2022
  • February 2022
  • March 2022
  • April 2022
  • May 2022
  • June 2022
  • July 2022
  • August 2022
  • September 2022
  • October 2022
  • November 2022
  • December 2022
  • January 2023
  • February 2023
  • March 2023
  • April 2023
  • May 2023
  • June 2023
  • July 2023
  • August 2023
  • September 2023
  • October 2023
  • November 2023
  • December 2023
  • January 2024
  • February 2024
  • March 2024