The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock by Edward White (best finance books of all time TXT) 📕

from Hitchcock’s, though Liberace claimed Brummell as his sartorial godfather. “Whenever I need some new ideas,” Liberace told the New York Times in 1970, “I invite Frank over for a screening of the movie ‘Beau Brummell,’ starring Stewart Granger. . . . When I see something I like, I say, ‘Make that!’ ”

The real-life Brummell, however, would have appreciated Hitchcock’s restraint far more than Liberace’s peacocking. Hitchcock’s approach to dressing was as Brummell had intended: a rational, efficient means of obliterating dirt and disorder. The conquest of the modern and the measurable over backwardness and uncertainty.

When color films began to be produced in the 1930s, Hitchcock repeatedly said that he was keen to work in the medium, but only for “dramatic and emotional effect, as a symbol of action and thought.” One of the many half-truths about Psycho, perpetuated by Hitchcock himself, was that his decision to shoot the film in black and white stemmed from his belief that the sight of Marion Crane’s blood gurgling its way down the shower drain would have been distasteful in color. In fact, the decision was motivated more by practical concerns regarding budget, but the power of vivid blood-red was something Hitchcock had thought about for years. As early as 1937, a decade before he shot his first color film, he imagined “red drops of blood dripping on to a bunch of white daisies—just that would bring out the stark horror of a murder much more strongly.” Or, how about a girl with a lipstick who “smears her lips and you see her face take on an artificial health from the rouge she puts on it.” In Spellbound, shot in black and white, Hitchcock stained two frames in red at the moment Dr. Murchison turns his gun on himself and commits suicide. Proustian flashes of red were likewise incorporated into Marnie, the color triggering a sense memory of the killing she committed as a child.

When it came to costume, Hitchcock planned color schemes early in the scripting process, with a view to expressing psychological and emotional truths about his characters that would aid the storytelling. Edith Head, the legendary costume designer who worked on eleven Hitchcock films, beginning with Rear Window, said, “Hitchcock thinks in terms of color; every costume is indicated when he sends me the script. . . . He’s absolutely definite in his visual approach, and gives you an exciting concept of the importance of color.” Taking his dandyish instincts for clothes to the screen, Hitchcock gave Head what she termed “an education in restraint.” When he identified Vera Miles as his new protégé, it was through the color of her clothing that Hitchcock worked to transform her into the movie star of his imagination. “She’s an extraordinarily good actress,” he told Edith Head, but “she uses too much colour. She’s swamped by colour.” On his instruction, Head compiled an entire wardrobe for Miles, solely in black, white, and gray. In costuming his female stars, Hitchcock applied the same basic rules that governed his own dress. He forbade garishness and favored “classic” looks over the latest fashion, resisting an actress’s personal taste if he found it unsympathetic. His concerns began and ended with what best communicated unspoken information to the audience. The most famous example occurred during the shooting of Vertigo when he insisted that, in the Madeleine part of her dual role, Kim Novak would wear a gray suit. Novak was not keen, and told Head that she was happy to wear any color except gray. Head explained that “Hitch paints a picture in his films, that color is as important to him as any artist,” but Novak was not persuaded. “Handle it, Edith,” was Hitchcock’s unequivocal response. “I don’t care what she wears as long as it’s a gray suit.” Ultimately, Novak relented—she didn’t have a great deal of choice—and saw the benefit of having Madeleine dressed so differently from Judy, the second character she played in Vertigo. The gray suit created a barrier between the two characters and “helped me stand so straight and erect . . . it helped me feel uncomfortable as Madeleine,” a sensation that is almost palpable in Novak’s performance.

Hitchcock was rarely happier than when dressing his female stars, an activity that for him, as for James Stewart’s character in Vertigo, held a sensual pleasure equal to undressing them. Being aware of the avid interest Hitchcock took in women’s clothing, Eva Marie Saint made a conscious effort to dress in a demure outfit she had heard would please him, a beige dress with white gloves, on the occasion of their first meeting to discuss her potential role in North by Northwest. Hitchcock didn’t ask for a screen test, but he did have her perform lengthy tests for her hair, makeup, and costumes, which was an unprecedented experience for Saint. “I think Hitchcock was the only one who demanded that every bit of everything—whether it was the hair, makeup, the whole look—would be tested on camera.” Unhappy with what he saw—Helen Rose, not Edith Head, designed the costumes on this production—he and Saint flew to the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan, where they picked out every item of clothing she would need. Saint was struck by Hitchcock’s attention to cosmetic detail. “He had such an overall look for me, for Eve Kendall,” she remarked half a century later. “But it wasn’t just the clothes. It was the accessories, the hair, definitely the hair, the makeup, the beads around my neck and that sort of thing. And the shoes. I loved all that and the fact that he cared that much. It helped me as an actress to conjure up what he had in mind for Eve Kendall.” Saint had her own ideas for her costume design, too, which Hitchcock accommodated. It was she who picked out a black dress covered with swirls of red roses, one of the most memorable outfits in North by Northwest, a movie full of beautiful clothes.

Unquestionably, Hitchcock