The very first Alfred Hitchcock movie that author Tony Lee Moral remembers seeing was "I Confess," about a Catholic priest who becomes a murder suspect after hearing the real killer's confession.
"I was just fascinated as a child about that moral ambiguity," Moral told me on a Zoom interview this summer from his home in England.
It's a theme that Moral continued to find fascinating in the director's films.
"You're never quite sure who the real villain is in films such as 'Rope,' 'Strangers on a Train,' or even 'Psycho,' because Hitchcock wanted his villains not to be black and white. He found the grayness much more interesting. Also the heroes, who are normally the heroes, if you think of someone like Cary Grant in 'Notorious,' or James Stewart in 'Vertigo,' Hitchcock was actually very critical of those heroes."
In the years after Alfred Hitchcock's death in 1980, author Donald Spoto write a book that in the decades since has influenced our view of Alfred Hitchcock. "The Dark Side of Genius" was a captivating portrait of Hitchcock and an exploration of the director's psyche and obsessions. It was also, according to Moral, full of falsehoods and exaggerations.
Moral has written several books on Hitchcock, and his latest is "A Century of Hitchcock: The Man, The Myths for Legacy," which is in many respects a rebuttal to Donald Spoto's interpretation of Hitchcock as a tortured artist who abused his directorial power with stars and staff alike.
"That was one of the central aims," Moral said of his book.
"During my interviews [with Hitchcock's collaborators]… it was just a real mismatch about what his interview subjects were telling me… and what Donald Spoto was writing."
Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.
Nathan Cone: I know you've written about Hitchcock before, both a book on his storyboards as well as books on "Marnie" and "The Birds." What was the first Alfred Hitchcock movie that you saw that captured your attention?
Tony Lee Moral: The first film I saw was "I Confess," and I was about 10 or 11 years old, and I was just struck at that early age by the moral ambiguity of essential characters. Montgomery Clift plays a priest who, at confession, hears the murderer admit to committing a murder, and then the priest himself becomes implicated, and I was just fascinated as a child about that moral ambiguity, because I was raised a Catholic myself, and I went to confession, and the idea that what would happen if you couldn't confess, or if you had priestly vows that you were sacred to, and then you're actually charged with a murder yourself. So, I found that really interesting.
Is that moral ambiguity one of the things that fascinates you about his career, and filmmaking wise, is there anything about his style that fascinates you?
Oh, absolutely. I mean, the moral ambiguity permeates many of Hitchcock's films. You're never quite sure who the real villain is in films such as "Rope," or even "Strangers on a Train," or even "Psycho," because Hitchcock wanted his villains not to be black and white. He found the grayness much more interesting, and also the heroes who are normally the heroes…If you think of someone like Cary Grant in "Notorious" or James Stewart in "Vertigo," Hitchcock was actually very critical of those heroes.
Yeah, in "Notorious," I think modern audiences are shocked at the beginning when Cary Grant slaps Ingrid Bergman, and of course, Jimmy Stewart's character in "Vertigo" is very uncomfortable, especially for modern audiences, and I imagine it was then as well.
Absolutely, I mean, "Vertigo" was wasn't very well received at all, had a very lukewarm, warm reception. Now it's considered a masterpiece, and is often voted number one film of all time. "Notorious" did somewhat better, but Hitchcock was very good at casting against type. So Cary Grant's character plays a very cold devil in "The Secret Agent," and he also portrayed Ingrid Bergman, for the first time, as a kind of morally loose, ambiguous woman, the title of "Notorious."
One of the things that I have enjoyed as I'm going through your book is that it contains quotes from several previously hidden or newly unearthed interviews with actors and staff and other collaborators with Alfred Hitchcock. What was the research process like in putting together this particular book and finding those hidden keys to Hitch and his working methods?
Well, it's something I've been doing for almost 30 years. So I started my first book on "Marnie," as you mentioned, started researching and interviewing that in 1998 so… I still have many, many hundreds of hours of interviews from all these people that I interviewed for "The Birds" and "Marnie" books, and then later on for the masterclass and storyboards books, and so a lot of that is unpublished before and as I mentioned, I've been sitting on a mountain of interviews, and I just wanted to condense them all into this book as a kind of legacy book, because, as you know, Hitchcock's reputation has taken a bit of a bashing in the last 10 years, in particular.
Well, yeah, I mean, going back even further than that, as you posit in the book, to the 1980s and Donald Spoto's book, "The Dark Side of Genius," which I think so many people have referenced over the years, and so your book… could you see it as kind of a little bit of a rebuttal to Spoto's characterization of Hitchcock?
Oh, absolutely, that was one of the central aims, to dispel the myths and really write about the man who I was told about during my interviews, and it was nothing like the portrayal of Donald's, and so that got me on the path, it just, it was just a real mismatch about what his interview subjects were telling me, the people who knew Hitchcock, the cast and crew, and what Donald Spoto was writing, so it was really a corrective, which it's fascinating to read the reviews, because it has traveled around the world now, and people are beginning to question about what they're being told or taught or informed from those kind of primary sources of biographies, and that classic adage, you know, you can't believe everything you read in the papers or a book these days, with so much fake news.
Well, if he wasn't the dark, dark genius that Spoto put out in his book, Hitch had a at least a sense of humor that could be nasty sometimes. I recall you talking in your book here about a 1959 Christmas gift to several of his secretaries, and the one that he didn't like, he gifted her, instead of a nice handbag, like he did all the others, a box of tampons to her, so something like that is… it isn't nice, I guess!
He loved practical jokes like that, and even though they were slightly malicious, they weren't terribly as mean-spirited as Donald Spoto makes out. The secretary (you mention), Yvonne Hessler told me that story about the tampons, and she just found it very amusing! She said that was Hitchcock's sense of humor, of just checking a person in their place, because apparently this particular secretary was rather greedy, and so it's just Hitchcock's sly sense of humor.
Do you think he was testing people? I think about other artists, like, for example, in jazz when a leader is on the bandstand and tests the musicians by, I don't know, kind of pulling the rug out under them [musically] in order to see what they're worth, right? So, is that kind of the way that Hitch maybe was thinking about things like this, or the way he worked sometimes?
I think so, from what his close associates, like Yvonne Hessler, his secretary during "Psycho" and "The Birds," told me, he liked people who were competent around him, he expected people to do their job, whether it was a production designer or a storyboard artist, and if you didn't know your job, that was terrible, as Yvonne said. I mean, in the interview, for example, he asked her what was a cube root of, I think it was eight, you know, just to test how smart she was, and luckily she knew the answer, and so you have to remember he really knew his business and the job of everyone else, because he started in the business in 1920 and he worked himself up through the silent film industry, and he did everyone else's job, aside from his own, he started as a title designer, he worked as an assistant director, as a set designer, a script supervisor, scripter, so he really knew every aspect of production and expected people to fulfill their roles to the fullest.
Your book has two chapters on "The Birds" and "Marnie," both starring Tippi Hedren, and I was wondering if you would go into a little bit of detail about Hedren's relationship with Hitchcock, and maybe talk about the conflicting stories from her own interviews about working with Hitchcock and these two films… because the contemporary narrative that we know right now, is that after "Marnie," Hitch made it to where Tippi Hedren couldn't work anymore, you know, or something along those lines, and that Hitch, was coming on to her, etc. etc. but there are different, differing stories, even from Tippi Hedren, about this, according to your research.
Absolutely, I start the book with a discovery of a 1980 transcript. ... in 1980 shortly after Alfred Hitchcock died, Hedren had an interview with the biographer Donald Spoto, who, as we know, wrote "The Dark Side of Genius," and it's a 36-page transcript, and it's at UCLA Special Collections, because when Donald went to Denmark, he left his U.S. correspondence in UCLA, and I think he made a mistake of leaving that transcript there, because he explicitly asked Hedren in 1980 if he ever made a pass at Hedren, i.e. Hitchcock, and she said, "Oh, it was never ever a bold proposition, it was always... he was controlling what I ate, what I wear, what friends I would see," but that's very different to sexual harassment, so she does not in that transcript identify those allegations, which she later makes in "Spellbound by Beauty" by Spoto in 2008 and then obviously the TV remake of "The Girl" in 2012 which was based on the book, so that was one of my central investigations, and I've interviewed a lot of cast and crew, and Hedren's evolving story, and so we just have to ask why that is, and I've got a few theories, which I put in the book.
You talked about Hitch being controlling just now, and how Hedren referred to that, and you know, here at TPR, one of the things we're going to be doing this fall is having an event centered around "Vertigo." How do you feel about that film as being a key insight into Hitch's own psyche?
Well, I do like "Vertigo." Hitchcock very much liked it [and] was very disappointed when it didn't do as well. I don't see it as just a mirror of Hitchcock's personality. I think he was very intrigued — it's based on the short story, a French short mystery novel--I think he was very interested in the duality. He said there was a lot in it. He did like, obviously, women who were very Nordic and cool. He liked women of mystery, generally. He adored people like Ingrid Bergman and Grace Kelly. I don't love "Vertigo" as much as some critics. I think I prefer "North by Northwest," as a better Hitchcock movie, but I can see why it's so tempting to watch "Vertigo" and see Hitchcock's designs, you know, even Eva Marie Saint said when she was starring in "North by Northwest." It was Hitchcock, was like her sugar daddy, took her to Bergdorf Goodman's, and went shopping, and it was just his, his love of female beauty and the idealized female form, but he was very, he was very faithful to [his wife] Alma, he basically described himself as a celibate director, when I interviewed the Hesslers who knew him very well, Yvonne being the secretary and Gordon being the producer of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." They explicitly told me that Hitchcock's real interest was food. If he any had any carnal inclinations, it was just food rather than sex.
And mixing drinks from time to time, as well.
Hahaha! Yes, he loved a martini, he loved a good scotch, end of a day drink, and a cocktail, and he was a member of a Chevalier de Tastevin, as Yvonne told me, which was a wine connoisseur from France, so he loved French wine.
I find it fascinating that your book also has a chapter on one of the things that I've been very interested in, which is the development of "The Short Night," the movie that never was, that Hitchcock was working on before he just kind of called it off on his own, I guess, when he realized that he could not make it happen. So, tell me about your interest in that last period of his life.
Well, I was very fortunate to have interviewed Norman Lloyd a couple of times. I went to his house in Brentwood in about 2012 and 2013 and Norman was obviously very closely associated with Hitchcock and was asked to write "The Short Night," but he didn't believe in the story, and so he declined, and had a real falling out with Hitch right at the end of his life, and he described him like King Lear in decline, which was a really, really sad quote, but very evocative, and I also interviewed Thomas Mount, whom many people have not heard of, but he was a young Universal executive who Hitchcock toyed with in the 1970s and you know, sent him to Wormwood Scrubs [Prison] on a mission for research, not knowing where he was going, and he told me about the politics involved in the 1970s with Lew Wasserman, and how protected Hitchcock was, and how disappointing Family Plot was really, as the last film that Hitchcock made in the mid '70s, and so "The Short Night" was hopefully going to be that final kind of flourish, but Hitchcock was really failing because of his arthritis and his poor health.
Your book concludes with chapters about Hitchcock's place in our modern discourse. I like the way that you made reference to modern filmmakers like Christopher Nolan and "Inception" in the dream world that he builds in that with some of the things that Hitchcock did, you know, the "Spellbound" dream sequence, etc. etc. And where do you think Hollywood sees Alfred Hitchcock today? And you know, where do you place him?
Well, certainly, you know, the movie brats, the George Lucas's, the Stevens Spielbergs, Brian De Palmas, Francis Ford Coppolas, they all grew up inspired by Hitchcock, and they know David Fincher and Nolan was, and even international directors today like Bong John Ho and Park Chan, work if you see like "Decision to Leave" or "Parasite," they've got very shocking elements in them, and also not, not, not forgetting the female directors like Katharine Bigelow or Lynne Ramsey, and so they're also inspired by Hitch, so his blueprints and his fingerprints are everywhere, because practically every, every director or film producer has seen a Hitchcock movie and has been inspired by Hitchcock growing up, his career spanned the history of cinema. I think he invented much of cinematic grammar. If you think of a point of view shot, the tracking shot, the famous zoom dolly, and just his favorite lens was the lens, 50 millimeter lens of a human eye. So that point of view shot, and not to forget how expressionistically he used sound right from the get-go with "Blackmail." I always find extraordinary, and right up until "Frenzy," the use of sound in that film. So it's just, it's literally a masterclass, as Jay Presson Allen told me (she was the screenwriter of "Marnie"), he was a great teacher who inspired many others.
I love also Hitchcock's use of music in his movies. Of course, his great relationship with Bernard Herrmann, and I think about those long sequences in "Vertigo" where it's just music, and Jimmy Stewart tracking Kim Novak, or of course, the famous example of "Psycho," and how that would not be the film it was without that score by Bernard Herrmann. So, I think Hitchcock was a very musical director as well, in both his relationship to composers and in the editing of his films.
Absolutely, I mean, the Hitchcock-Herrmann partnership over, say, eight films is so valuable, and again it's a real shame what happened with "Torn Curtain," and how Hitchcock would end associations abruptly if people displeased him, because he was very controlling, so even, even you know, it's not just with people like Vera Miles or Tippi Hedren. As I make a point in the book, it was with production crew, lesser-known production crew like Doc Erickson, who was a production manager during the Paramount eras, to screenwriters like Joseph Stefano and Evan Hunter, and obviously then with Bernard Herrmann and Norman Lloyd, and so Hitchcock did not like confrontation, and so he opted for severance if people displeased him, or he didn't get what he wanted out of the film, but that's very different from harassment, you know. Being the top director, it's your prerogative to know what you want, your vision of a director, I believe.
And people on the opposite end of something like that, when they are dismissed, when they are cut off from somebody who looms as large as Alfred Hitchcock, then I assume they might see that a different way, I guess, from their end, so that's where some of these instances, maybe stories might come out.
Absolutely, and that's the other thesis of the book, how personal grievances become public narrative, and they're obviously exemplified by Donald Spoto, and I discuss in the book what happened between him and Hitchcock, and the falling out they had, as well as Tippi Hedren, because both of those have been the most vocal about it. All the other cast members I interviewed, like Joseph Stefano, Evan Hunter, Doc Erickson, they were more sanguine about it, but they're more professional. They were like top of their game in the industry, and so they weren't dependent on Hitchcock after they were cut loose.
Yeah, I also love, just as an aside, you know, I just want to tell you that I appreciated the bit you put in there about the famous attic scene in "The Birds," and how they actually took care to protect Tippi Hedren, that there was evidence that she wasn't just thrown to the birds, so to speak, which really makes sense, because you just don't want to injure your star actress.
Yes, I know it's crazy, and that's why "The Girl" was so silly. You would never deform your actress on a $3 million movie, you know. Hitchcock was a businessman, first of all, and I interviewed the stunt woman, Rosemary Johnson, and she explicitly told me they never put Tippi in danger.
Well, Tony, this is terrific. Thanks for writing a great book, and about one of my top five directors, Alfred Hitchcock. I've been a [Hitchcock] fan for a long time. My favorite Hitchcock movies are "North by Northwest" and "Rear Window."
I think you've got great taste. I would definitely vote those in the top two or three, as well. Cheerio!
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