Before Grace Kelly, there was Gene Kelly! By 1940, the dancer was a hot property on Broadway, taking the lead role in Rogers & Hart’s musical “Pal Joey“. Hollywood wanted a piece of the action and it was producer David O. Selznick who eventually persuaded Kelly to sign a contract. With Kelly due into Hollywood in October 1941, Selznick began thinking about what the dancer’s first picture should be. In August 1941, Variety reported that… (read more)
From the first issue of The Cine-Technician (May 1935), a lead article by Hitchcock… Alfred Hitchcock Says “Acquire a Real Knowledge of Cinema Technique” Any young technician entering films to-day should take a parallel from the instruction given to sailors learning the art of navigation. Just as the best of the present-day candidates for the Mercantile Marine have to pass through a sailing course as an elementary part of their training, so the young man… (read more)
Reproduced from the Winter 1933-34 issue of Cinema Quarterly. ALFRED HITCHCOCK on MUSIC IN FILMS In an Interview with STEPHEN WATTS When the British student of intelligent cinema turns to survey the creative side of film-making in his own country the names available for reference are pathetically few. Even ranging over the whole of the talkie’s short history he can probably produce a bare half-dozen, say (alphabetically for safety!) Asquith, Dupont, Grierson, Hitchcock, Korda, and… (read more)
A surprise from the newspaper archives! I knew Hitchcock was considering several potential projects for Transatlantic Pictures, but this one from the Yorkshire Evening Post (27/Mar/1948) was new to me… Alfred Hitchcock hopes to produce “King Lear” in England, with Orson Welles in the lead. “Hitch” leaves for England early next month to produce “Under Capricorn,” starring Ingrid Bergman. I can’t even begin to imagine how Hitch would have approached filming “King Lear” with Welles!… (read more)
The Yorkshire Evening Post carried details of the death of Charlie Brown in December 1936. However, this wasn’t the Peanuts cartoon character created by Charles M. Schulz — this was the head carver at the famous Simpson’s in the Strand: Charlie Brown is dead. After working at Simpson’s in the Strand for 59 years he was pensioned off two moths ago (writes the London correspondent of “The Yorkshire Post”). Deprived of his barons of beef… (read more)
Here’s another article from the archives, this time from the Dundee Courier (27/Jan/1953)…
In 1928, British International Pictures ran a series of newspaper adverts, hoping to find new female stars…
Following on from yesterday’s post, here’s another archive clipping about Blackmail (1929) from the Hull Daily Mail (11/Sep/1929)… SOUND v. SILENT FILM VOTE. BERLIN, Tuesday. The first showing in Berlin of the British International Pictures production, “Blackmail,” was used to test the feeling of the public here on the vocal film. The whole work was passed twice across the screen, once with and once without the voices, and the audience, consisting mainly of people connected… (read more)
Another newspaper clipping from the archives! The Dundee Evening Telegraph (09/Aug/1929) proclaimed Blackmail to be a “triumphant success” and Hitchcock’s direction filled with “touches of sheer genius”…
The list of Hitchcock projects that failed to move into production (or even pre-production) is long and relatively well documented. However, I believe this is one which has been missed by Hitchcock scholars — a project to film John Buchan’s Huntingtower. It’s well known that Hitchcock was a fan of Buchan’s novels and he would eventually adapt The Thirty-Nine Steps in 1935. It is also well-known that he considered adapting two other Richard Hanney novels… (read more)
