In case you’ve not already spotted it, Lyn Murrary‘s original score to To Catch a Thief (1955) is now available on CD, courtesy of the Intrada label. The CD also contains Murrary’s score to The Bridges at Toko-ri (1954), which also starred Grace Kelly. The full track listing for To Catch a Thief is: Paramount Seal / You’ll Love France / Le Chat (2:28) Red Convertible / To Catch a Thief – Part 1 /… (read more)
Everyone knows that Psycho (1960) was one of the first — if not the first — Hollywood feature film to show a flushing toilet, but was it the first Hitchcock film to show a toilet? The Lodger (1927) has a scene set in a bathroom, but no toilet is shown. Perhaps the Buntings only have an outside toilet? Nor do we get to see Sir John Menier’s toilet in Murder! (1930) whilst he shaves in… (read more)
In the 1997 documentary “The Making of Psycho“, actress Janet Leigh spoke about her reaction to seeing the shower scene in the completed film: When I saw it and I saw it cut together and I saw the boom, boom, and the music and everything, I absolutely went… I just was crazy. I really screamed. I never take a shower. I cannot take a shower. ‘Cause it never dawned on me until that moment how… (read more)
As Patrick McGilligan notes in his biography of Hitchcock, the director detested “the plausibles” — those who analysed his films too deeply and who delighted in finding plot holes. “I’m not concerned with plausibility,” Hitchcock liked to boast. “That’s the easiest part, so why bother?” Or, as he put it on another occasion, “Must a picture be logical, when life is not?” I was reminded of this when I stumbled across this little article published… (read more)
I’ve been planning to write something about J.M. Barrie’s Mary Rose for a while now, but I thought I’d share this little bit of trivia that I don’t think any of the Hitchcock scholars have stumbled across before… On Sunday 11th September, 1938, BBC Radio broadcast an adaptation of Mary Rose starring Nova Pilbeam, Griffith Jones and Irene Rooke. Pilbeam had previously appeared in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and Young and Innocent… (read more)
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the cinema, a number of websites are reporting that Michael Bay is still trying to get a remake of The Birds (1963) off the ground. If you’ve got a long memory, you’ll know that Bay has been pushing this project since 2005. Universal’s ‘The Birds’ Redo Nabs Dutch Director Diederik Van Rooijen ‘The Birds’ Remake Gets Its Director Back in 2005, Tippi Hedren was… (read more)
A combination of a publicity still for The Birds, dialogue from the shooting script and Tagxedo…
Another interesting article from the National Library of Australia’s Trove site, this time from the Brisbane Sunday Mail (27/Oct/1929): BLACKMAIL BRITISH “TALKIE” HIT AUSTRALIAN BAN Something of a sensation has been caused in the British film world by the banning of the British “talkie,” Blackmail, by the Australian film censor. Nobody appears to know why, and the action is regarded as even more strange when it is realised that the British film censor passed the… (read more)
Following on from the previous blog post, here’s another article that appeared in an Australian newspaper. This time, the Adelaide Advertiser (04/Sep/1937). Some Thoughts on Color by Alfred Hitchcock “I am whole-heartedly in favor of color films,” said Alfred Hitchcock, British director, who is now making “The Girl Was Young” (Nova Pilbeam), in Pinewood Studios, England. Truly reproduced, Hitchcock says, color is a step towards greater realism in photography, and as such is desirable: but… (read more)
I recently stumbled across this fascinating article from the Australian newspaper The Daily News (23/Nov/1928) about the production of “The Manxman“. MUSIC TO BRING TEARS Stirring Actors’ Emotions “Please play ‘La Boheme’.” A tall, handsome young man in the dress of a fisherman addressed these words to the conductor of a little orchestra hidden behind the scenery of a cottage interior at the studios of British International Pictures at Elstree, Hertfordshire, recently. He was playing… (read more)
