Rebecca is a 1940 psychological/dramatic noir thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock as his first American project, and his first film produced under his contract with David O. Selznick. The film's screenplay was an adaptation by Joan Harrison and Robert E. Sherwood from Philip MacDonald and Michael Hogan's adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel of the same name, and was produced by Selznick.^[1] It stars Laurence Olivier as the aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter, Joan Fontaine as his second wife, and Judith Anderson as the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers.

The film is a gothic tale about the lingering memory of the title character, Maxim de Winter's dead first wife, which continues to haunt Maxim, his new bride, and Mrs. Danvers. The film won two Academy Awards, including Best Picture, out of a total 11 nominations. Olivier, Fontaine and Anderson were all Oscar nominated for their respective roles. Since the introduction of awards for actors in supporting roles, this is the only film named Best Picture that won no other Academy Award for acting, directing or writing.

It was the opening film at the 1st Berlin International Film Festival in 1951.^[2]

Plot[link]

The film begins with a voiceover of a woman speaking the first lines from the novel: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again", to the images of a ruined country manor. She continues that she can never return to Manderley — as it no longer exists, except as a ruin.

Joan Fontaine plays a young woman of age 21 (who is never named), an orphan, who works as a paid companion to the wealthy Edythe Van Hopper (Florence Bates). In Monte Carlo, she meets the aristocratic widower Maximilian (Maxim) de Winter (Laurence Olivier) and they fall in love. Within weeks, they decide to get married.

Maxim takes his new bride to Manderley, his country house in Cornwall, England. The servants accept the new Mrs. de Winter as the new lady of the house. The exception is the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), who is particularly unpleasant to the new bride. She is still obsessed with the beauty and sophistication of the first Mrs. de Winter—the eponymous Rebecca—and preserves her former bedroom as a shrine, even cherishing her handmade underwear and expensive négligée. Rebecca's "cousin" Jack (George Sanders) (who, as we only discover later, was in fact one of her lovers) appears at the house when Maxim is away, and evidently knows Mrs. Danvers well, calling her by the name "Danny", which was Rebecca's pet name for her.

The new Mrs. de Winter is intimidated by Mrs. Danvers and by the responsibilities of being the new mistress of Manderley. As a result, she begins to doubt her relationship with her husband. The continuous presence of Rebecca in the house starts to haunt her, and she convinces herself that Maxim is still in love with Rebecca. She discovers, too, that her husband has a fiery temper, and sometimes erupts at apparently innocent actions on her part.

Mrs. Danvers tries to persuade Mrs. de Winter to leap to her death

Trying to act the perfect wife, Mrs. de Winter suggests to Maxim that they host a costume party as he used to do with Rebecca. Maxim reluctantly consents. Mrs. de Winter excitedly plans her own costume in secret, but Mrs. Danvers suggests that she copy the dress of Caroline de Winter, an ancestor, whose portrait hangs in the upstairs hallway. On the night of the party, Mrs. de Winter reveals her costume to Maxim, who is both surprised and angry at her, shouting at her to change her costume. Mrs. de Winter rushes upstairs, sees Mrs. Danvers go into Rebecca's room and follows her. There she confronts Mrs. Danvers about her knowing that Rebecca had worn the same costume at a previous ball. Mrs. Danvers retaliates by saying that she will never take Rebecca's place and tries to convince Mrs. de Winter to commit suicide. But Mrs. de Winter snaps out of her trance when a sudden commotion starts outside — a ship has been spotted foundering off the coast.

Mrs. de Winter (after changing her outfit) rushes downstairs to the front lawn, where she hears news that, during the rescue, a sunken boat has been found off the coast - with Rebecca's body in it. She spots a distant glow from the cottage on the shore and enters to find Maxim. Maxim admits to his new wife that he had earlier misidentified another body as Rebecca's in order to prevent discovery of the truth. From almost the beginning of their marriage, when Rebecca broke the news to him of her own promiscuous nature, he and Rebecca had hated one another. They had agreed to a sordid deal: she would act the perfect wife and hostess in public, preserving his family honour and her position, while he ignored her discreetly-conducted affairs. Rebecca, however, began to get "careless" after a while, for example disappearing for days on end to London and then returning as though nothing was wrong. Maxim was also aware of Rebecca's ongoing affair with Jack. One night, expecting to find Rebecca and Jack together, Maxim came down to the cottage. Rebecca had been expecting Jack. She told Maxim that she was pregnant with Jack's child. During the ensuing argument, she fell, hit her head, and died. Maxim took the body out in a boat which he then scuttled.

Shedding her girlish innocence, Maxim's wife immediately starts coaching her husband on how best to conceal the facts of Rebecca's death from the authorities.

In the ensuing police investigation, officials question whether the evidently deliberate damage to the boat pointed to suicide. Privately, Jack shows Maxim a letter from Rebecca urging him excitedly to meet her, which seems to suggest she was not suicidal. He tries to blackmail Maxim with the letter, but Maxim tells the police about the attempt. Maxim nevertheless comes under suspicion of murder and the second Mrs. de Winter must face the prospect of losing her husband. The investigation focuses on Rebecca's secret visits to a London doctor (Leo G. Carroll), which Jack presumes was due to what believes to have been her illicit pregnancy. However, the coroner's interview with the doctor in the presence of Maxim and Jack reveals that Rebecca was mistaken in believing herself pregnant, and was in fact suffering from terminal cancer.

The doctor's evidence persuades the coroner to bring in a verdict of suicide. Only Maxim and his wife will be able to understand the full story: that Rebecca had lied to Maxim about being pregnant with another man's child so as to goad him, in full knowledge of his family pride and easily-roused temper, into killing her — as an indirect means of suicide.

As Maxim returns home from London to Manderley, he finds the manor on fire, set alight by the deranged Mrs. Danvers. The second Mrs. de Winter has escaped the blaze, but Danvers dies in the flames.

Adaptation[link]

At Selznick's insistence, the film adapts the plot of du Maurier's novel Rebecca faithfully.^[3] However, one plot detail was altered to comply with the Hollywood Production Code, which said that the murder of a spouse had to be punished.^[3] In the novel, Maxim shoots Rebecca, while in the film, he only thinks of killing her after she taunts him, whereupon she suddenly falls back, hits her head on a heavy piece of ship's tackle, and dies from her head injuries, so that her death is an accident, not murder. According to the book It's only a Movie, David O. Selznick wanted the smoke from the burning Manderley to spell out a huge "R". Alfred Hitchcock thought the touch lacked subtlety. While Selznick was preoccupied by Gone with the Wind (1939), Hitchcock was able to replace the smoky "R" with the burning of a monogrammed négligée case lying atop a bed pillow. Hitchcock also edited the picture in camera - shooting only what he wanted to see in the final film - a method of filmmaking that did not allow Selznick to reedit the picture. Although Selznick insisted the film be faithful to the novel, Hitchcock made some changes, especially with the character of Mrs. Danvers, though not as many as he had made in a previous rejected screenplay, in which he altered virtually the entire story. In the novel, Mrs. Danvers is something of a jealous mother figure. Her past is mentioned in the book. But in the film, Mrs. Danvers is a much younger character (the actress, Judith Anderson, would have been about 42 at the time of shooting, though she looks older) and her past is not revealed at all. The only thing we know about her is that she came to Manderley when Rebecca was a bride. Hitchcock made her more of a ghostly figure, with possible lesbian undertones (as discussed in the documentary The Celluloid Closet).

The theatrical release of Rebecca was delayed in order to give it a shot at the 1940 Academy Awards - the 1939 Awards would (obviously) be dominated by Gone with the Wind, another Selznick production.

Cast[link]

Hitchcock's cameo appearance, a signature feature of his films, takes place near the end; he is seen outside a phone box when Jack is making a call.

Awards[link]

1940 Academy Awards wins[link]

• Best Picture - Selznick International Pictures - David O. Selznick.
• Best Cinematography, Black and White - George Barnes.^[4]

1940 Academy Award nominations[link]

• Best Actor in a Leading Role - Laurence Olivier.
• Best Actress in a Leading Role - Joan Fontaine.
• Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Judith Anderson.
• Best Director - Alfred Hitchcock.
• Art Direction, Black and White - Lyle R. Wheeler.
• Special Effects - Jack Cosgrove, Arthur Johns.
• Best Film Editing - Hal C. Kern.
• Best Music, Original Score - Franz Waxman.
• Best Writing, Screenplay - Robert E. Sherwood, Joan Harrison.

Rebecca was twice honored by the AFI in their AFI 100 Years... series

• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills - #80
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains - Mrs. Danvers, #31 Villain

Adaptations in other media[link]

Rebecca was adapted as a radio play on numerous occasions, including May 31, 1943, as an episode of The Screen Guild Theater starring Joan Fontaine, Brian Aherne and Agnes Moorehead; again on The Screen Guild Theater on November 18, 1948, with Loretta Young, John Lund and Agnes Moorehead; on Lux Radio Theater's February 3, 1941, broadcast with Ronald Colman and Ida Lupino; and again on Lux November 6, 1950, with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. The Campbell Playhouse also aired an adaptation on December 9, 1938.

Rebecca has been remade in Bollywood twice. The first remake was the Waheeda Rehman-Biswajeet starrer Kohra (1964 film) and the second was the Anamika (2008 film) starring Dino Morea, Minissha Lamba and Koena Mitra.

Rebecca was used as the basis of a sketch on BBC comedy sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Look.

Many elements of Rebecca feature in a Star Stories episode based on Paul McCartney's marriage to Heather Mills.

Legacy[link]

Since the 1940s, and according to the Dictionary of the Spanish Language of the Royal Spanish Academy, the word Rebeca in Spanish stands for the kind of cardigan used by Joan Fontaine in the film.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Rebecca (film)

• Rebecca at the TCM Movie Database
• Rebecca at the Internet Movie Database
• Rebecca at AllRovi
• Rebecca at Rotten Tomatoes
• Criterion Collection essay by Robin Wood.
• Rebecca Eyegate Gallery
• Rebecca trivia

Streaming audio

• Rebecca on Screen Guild Theater: May 31, 1943
• Rebecca on Lux Radio Theater: November 6, 1950

v t e Alfred Hitchcock Filmography Unproduced projects Themes and plot devices Cameos Awards and honors Films directed 1920s Number 13 The Pleasure Garden The Blackguard The Mountain Eagle The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog The Ring Downhill The Farmer's Wife Easy Virtue Champagne The Manxman Blackmail 1930s Juno and the Paycock Murder! The Skin Game Mary Rich and Strange Number Seventeen Waltzes from Vienna The Man Who Knew Too Much The 39 Steps Secret Agent Sabotage Young and Innocent The Lady Vanishes Jamaica Inn 1940s Rebecca Foreign Correspondent Mr. & Mrs. Smith Suspicion Saboteur Shadow of a Doubt Lifeboat Spellbound Notorious The Paradine Case Rope Under Capricorn 1950s Stage Fright Strangers on a Train I Confess Dial M for Murder Rear Window To Catch a Thief The Trouble with Harry The Man Who Knew Too Much The Wrong Man Vertigo North by Northwest 1960s Psycho The Birds Marnie Torn Curtain Topaz 1970s Frenzy Family Plot Shorts Always Tell Your Wife Elstree Calling An Elastic Affair Aventure malgache Bon Voyage The Fighting Generation Watchtower Over Tomorrow Related topics Hitchcockian Alfred Hitchcock Presents Alfred Hitchcock Edition Clue Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine High Anxiety

Sir Alfred Hitchcock
Studio publicity photo
Born	Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (1899-08-13)13 August 1899 Leytonstone, London, England, UK
Died	29 April 1980(1980-04-29) (aged 80) Bel Air, California, US
Other names	Hitch The Master of Suspense
Occupation	Film director, film producer
Years active	1921–76
Influenced by	D. W. Griffith, Fritz Lang, Sergei Eisenstein,[1] F.W. Murnau[2]
Influenced	Brian De Palma, François Truffaut, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Claude Chabrol, Robert Zemeckis, M. Night Shyamalan, David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, Dario Argento, John Carpenter, Jonathan Demme, Tim Burton, Mel Brooks, David Fincher
Religion	Roman Catholic[3]
Spouse	Alma Reville (m.1926-80; his death)
Children	Patricia Hitchcock
Parents	William Hitchcock (father) Emma Jane Whelan (mother)

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980)^[4] was an English film director and producer.^[5] He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood. On 19 April 1955, he became an American citizen while remaining a British subject.

Over a career spanning more than half a century, Hitchcock fashioned for himself a distinctive and recognisable directorial style.^[6] He pioneered the use of a camera made to move in a way that mimics a person's gaze, forcing viewers to engage in a form of voyeurism.^[7] He framed shots to maximise anxiety, fear, or empathy, and used innovative film editing.^[7] His stories frequently feature fugitives on the run from the law alongside "icy blonde" female characters.^[8] Many of Hitchcock's films have twist endings and thrilling plots featuring depictions of violence, murder, and crime, although many of the mysteries function as decoys or "MacGuffins" meant only to serve thematic elements in the film and the extremely complex psychological examinations of the characters. Hitchcock's films also borrow many themes from psychoanalysis and feature strong sexual undertones. Through his cameo appearances in his own films, interviews, film trailers, and the television program Alfred Hitchcock Presents, he became a cultural icon. Hitchocks reputation as a filmmaker is offset by claims that he engaged in obsessive and controlling behaviour towards many of his leading ladies, and that in some cases this extended to physical abuse and sexual harrassment.^[9]

Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades. Often regarded as the greatest British filmmaker, he came first in a 2007 poll of film critics in Britain's Daily Telegraph, which said: "Unquestionably the greatest filmmaker to emerge from these islands, Hitchcock did more than any director to shape modern cinema, which would be utterly different without him. His flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information (from his characters and from us) and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else."^[10][11] The magazine MovieMaker has described him as the most influential filmmaker of all time,^[12] and he is widely regarded as one of cinema's most significant artists.^[13]

Early life[link]

Hitchcock mosaic at Leytonstone Station

Hitchcock was born on 13 August 1899 in Leytonstone, London, England, the second son and youngest of three children of William Hitchcock (1862–1914), a greengrocer and poulterer, and Emma Jane Hitchcock (née Whelan; 1863–1942). Named Alfred after his father's brother, Hitchcock was raised Catholic and was sent to Salesian College (London)^[14] and the Jesuit Classic school St Ignatius' College in Stamford Hill, London.^[15][16] His mother and paternal grandmother were of Irish extraction.^[17][18] He often described his childhood as being very lonely and sheltered, a situation compounded by his obesity.^[19]

Around the age of 5, according to Hitchcock, he was sent by his father to the local police station with a note asking the officer to lock him away for ten minutes as punishment for behaving badly.^[20] This idea of being harshly treated or wrongfully accused is frequently reflected in Hitchcock's films.^[21]

Hitchcock's father died when he was 14. In the same year, Hitchcock left St. Ignatius to study at the London County Council School of Engineering and Navigation in Poplar, London.^[22] After leaving, he became a draftsman and advertising designer with a cable company called Henley's.^[23]

It was while working at Henley's that he first started to dabble creatively. Upon the formation of the company's in-house publication The Henley Telegraph in 1919, Hitchcock started to submit short articles, eventually becoming one of its most prolific contributors. His first piece was Gas (1919), published in the very first issue, in which a young woman imagines that she is being assaulted one night in Paris – only for the twist to reveal that it was all just a hallucination in the dentist's chair, induced by the anaesthetic. His second piece was The Woman's Part (1919), which involves the conflicted emotions a husband feels as he watches his wife, an actress, perform onstage.^[24] Sordid (1920) surrounds an attempt to buy a sword from an antiques dealer, with another twist ending. The short story And There Was No Rainbow (1920) was Hitchcock's first brush with possibly censurable material. A young man goes out looking for a brothel, only to stumble into the house of his best friend's girl. What's Who? (1920), while being very funny, was also a precursor to the famous Abbott and Costello "Who's on First?" routine. The History of Pea Eating (1920) was a satirical disquisition on the various attempts mankind has made over the centuries to eat peas successfully. His final piece, Fedora (1921), was his shortest and most enigmatic contribution. It also gave a strikingly accurate description of his future wife, Alma (whom he had not yet met).^[25]

During this period, Hitchcock became intrigued by photography and started working in film production in London, working as a title-card designer for the London branch of what would become Paramount Pictures.^[26] In 1920, he received a full-time position at Islington Studios with its American owner, Famous Players-Lasky, and their British successor, Gainsborough Pictures,^[27] designing the titles for silent movies.^[28] His rise from title designer to film director took five years.

Inter-war British career[link]

Hitchcock's last collaboration with Graham Cutts led him to Germany in 1924. The film Die Prinzessin und der Geiger (UK title The Blackguard, 1925), directed by Cutts and co-written by Hitchcock, was produced in the Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam near Berlin. Hitchcock also observed part of the making of F. W. Murnau's film Der letzte Mann (1924).^[29] He was very impressed with Murnau's work and later used many techniques for the set design in his own productions. In his book-length interview with François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut (Simon and Schuster, 1967), Hitchcock also said he was influenced by Fritz Lang's film Destiny (1921).

Hitchcock's first few films faced a string of bad luck. His first directing project came in 1922 with the aptly titled Number 13.^[30] The production was cancelled due to financial problems^[30] and the few scenes that were finished at that point were apparently lost. In 1925, Michael Balcon^[31] of Gainsborough Pictures gave Hitchcock another opportunity for a directing credit with The Pleasure Garden made at UFA Studios^[32] in Germany; the film was a commercial flop.^[33] Next, Hitchcock directed a drama called The Mountain Eagle (possibly released under the title Fear o' God in the United States). This film was also eventually lost.^[34] In 1926, Hitchcock's luck changed with his first thriller, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog. The film, released in January 1927, was a major commercial and critical success in the United Kingdom.^[35] As with many of his earlier works, this film was influenced by Expressionist techniques Hitchcock had witnessed first-hand in Germany.^[36] Some commentators regard this piece as the first truly "Hitchcockian"^[37][38] film, incorporating such themes as the "wrong man".^[39]

Following the success of The Lodger, Hitchcock hired a publicist to help enhance his growing reputation. On 2 December 1926, Hitchcock married his assistant director, Alma Reville, at the Brompton Oratory in South Kensington. Their only child, daughter Patricia, was born on 7 July 1928. Alma was to become Hitchcock's closest collaborator, but her contributions to his films (some of which were credited on screen) Hitchcock would discuss only in private, as she was keen to avoid public attention.^[40]

In 1929, Hitchcock began work on his tenth film Blackmail. While the film was still in production, the studio, British International Pictures (BIP), decided to convert it to sound. As an early 'talkie', the film is frequently cited by film historians as a landmark film,^[41] and is often considered to be the first British sound feature film.^[42][43] With the climax of the film taking place on the dome of the British Museum, Blackmail began the Hitchcock tradition of using famous landmarks as a backdrop for suspense sequences. It also features one of his longest cameo appearances, which shows him being bothered by a small boy as he reads a book on the London Underground.^[44] In the PBS series The Men Who Made The Movies,^[45] Hitchcock explained how he used early sound recording as a special element of the film, emphasising the word "knife" in a conversation with the woman suspected of murder.^[46] During this period, Hitchcock directed segments for a BIP musical film revue Elstree Calling (1930) and directed a short film featuring two Film Weekly scholarship winners, An Elastic Affair (1930). Another BIP musical revue, Harmony Heaven (1929), reportedly had minor input from Hitchcock, but his name does not appear in the credits.

In 1933, Hitchcock was once again working for Michael Balcon^[31] at Gaumont-British Picture Corporation.^[47] His first film for the company, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), was a success and his second, The 39 Steps (1935), is often considered one of the best films from his early period.^[48] This film was also one of the first to introduce the concept of the "MacGuffin", a plot device around which a whole story seems to revolve, but ultimately has nothing to do with the true meaning or ending of the story. In The 39 Steps, the MacGuffin is a stolen set of design plans. Hitchcock told French director François Truffaut:

There are two men sitting in a train going to Scotland and one man says to the other, "Excuse me, sir, but what is that strange parcel you have on the luggage rack above you?", "Oh", says the other, "that's a Macguffin.", "Well", says the first man, "what's a Macguffin?", The other answers, "It's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.", "But", says the first man, "there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands.", "Well", says the other, "then that's no Macguffin."^[49]

Hitchcock's next major success was his 1938 film The Lady Vanishes, a fast-paced film about the search for a kindly old Englishwoman Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty), who disappears while on board a train in the fictional country of Bandrika.^[50]

By 1938, Hitchcock had become known for his alleged observation, "Actors are cattle". He once said that he first made this remark as early as the late 1920s, in connection to stage actors who were snobbish about motion pictures. However, Michael Redgrave said that Hitchcock had made the statement during the filming of The Lady Vanishes. The phrase would haunt Hitchcock for years to come and would result in an incident during the filming of his 1941 production of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, where Carole Lombard brought some heifers onto the set with name tags of Lombard, Robert Montgomery, and Gene Raymond, the stars of the film, to surprise the director. Hitchcock said he was misquoted: "I said 'Actors should be treated like cattle'."^[51]

At the end of the 1930s, David O. Selznick signed Hitchcock to a seven-year contract beginning in March 1939, when the Hitchcocks moved to the United States.

Hollywood[link]

In Hollywood, the suspense and the gallows humour that had become Hitchcock's trademark in film continued to appear in his productions. The working arrangements with Selznick were less than optimal. Selznick suffered from perennial money problems, and Hitchcock was often displeased with Selznick's creative control over his films. In a later interview, Hitchcock summarised the working relationship thus:

[Selznick] was the Big Producer. [...] Producer was king, The most flattering thing Mr. Selznick ever said about me—and it shows you the amount of control—he said I was the "only director" he'd "trust with a film".^[52]

Selznick loaned Hitchcock to the larger studios more often than producing Hitchcock's films himself. In addition, Selznick, as well as fellow independent producer Samuel Goldwyn, made only a few films each year, so he did not always have projects for Hitchcock to direct. Goldwyn had also negotiated with Hitchcock on a possible contract, only to be outbid by Selznick. Hitchcock was quickly impressed with the superior resources of the American studios compared to the financial restrictions he had frequently encountered in England.^{[citation needed]}

Hitchcock's fondness for his homeland resulted in numerous American films set in, or filmed in, the United Kingdom,^[53] including his penultimate film, Frenzy.

With the prestigious Selznick picture Rebecca in 1940, Hitchcock made his first American movie, set in England and based on a novel by English author Daphne du Maurier. The film starred Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. This Gothic melodrama explores the fears of a naïve young bride who enters a great English country home and must adapt to the extreme formality and coldness she finds there. The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1940.^[54] The statuette was given to Selznick, as the film's producer.^[54] The film did not win the Best Director award for Hitchcock.

There were additional problems between Selznick and Hitchcock. Selznick was known to impose very restrictive rules upon Hitchcock, forcing him to shoot the film as Selznick wanted.^{[citation needed]} At the same time, Selznick complained about Hitchcock's "goddamn jigsaw cutting", which meant that the producer did not have nearly the leeway to create his own film as he liked, but had to follow Hitchcock's vision of the finished product.^[55] Rebecca was the fourth longest of Hitchcock's films, at 130 minutes, exceeded only by The Paradine Case (132 minutes), North by Northwest (136 minutes), and Topaz (142 minutes).^[56]

Hitchcock's second American film, the European-set thriller Foreign Correspondent (1940), based on Vincent Sheean's Personal History and produced by Walter Wanger, was nominated for Best Picture that year. Hitchcock and many other English nationals felt uneasy living and working in Hollywood while their home country was at war, so his concern resulted in the making of the film that supported the British war effort.^[57] The movie was filmed in the first year of World War II and was inspired by the rapidly changing events in Europe, as fictionally covered by an American newspaper reporter portrayed by Joel McCrea. The film mixed actual footage of European scenes and scenes filmed on a Hollywood back lot. In compliance with Hollywood's Production Code censorship, the film avoided direct references to Germany and Germans.^[58]

1940s films[link]

Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in Notorious (1946)

Hitchcock's films during the 1940s were diverse, ranging from the romantic comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) to the courtroom drama The Paradine Case (1947) to the dark and disturbing film noir Shadow of a Doubt (1943).

In September 1940, the Hitchcocks purchased the 200-acre (0.81 km²) Cornwall Ranch, located near Scotts Valley in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The ranch became the primary residence of the Hitchcocks for the rest of their lives, although they kept their Bel Air home. Suspicion (1941) marked Hitchcock's first film as a producer as well as director. Hitchcock used the north coast of Santa Cruz, California, for the English coastline sequence.^[26] This film was to be actor Cary Grant's first time working with Hitchcock, and it was one of the few times that Grant would be cast in a sinister role.^[26] Joan Fontaine^[59] won Best Actress Oscar^[26] and the New York Film Critics Circle Award^[60] for her "outstanding performance in Suspicion". "Grant plays an irresponsible husband whose actions raise suspicion and anxiety in his wife (Fontaine)".^{[citation needed]} In what critics regard as a classic scene^{[citation needed]}, Hitchcock uses a light bulb to illuminate what might be a fatal glass of milk that Grant is bringing to his wife. In the book the movie is based on (Before the Fact by Francis Iles), the Grant character is a killer, but Hitchcock and the studio felt Grant's image would be tarnished by that ending. Though a homicide would have suited him better, as he stated to François Truffaut, Hitchcock settled for an ambiguous finale.^[61]

Saboteur (1942) was the first of two films that Hitchcock made for Universal, a studio where he would continue his career during his later years. Hitchcock was forced^{[citation needed]} to use Universal contract players Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane, both known for their work in comedies and light dramas. Breaking with Hollywood conventions of the time, Hitchcock did extensive location filming, especially in New York City, and depicted a confrontation between a suspected saboteur (Cummings) and a real saboteur (Norman Lloyd) atop the Statue of Liberty. That year he also directed Have You Heard?, a photographic dramatisation of the dangers of rumours during wartime, for Life magazine.^[62]

Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Hitchcock's personal favourite of all his films and the second of the early Universal films,^[63] was about young Charlotte "Charlie" Newton (Teresa Wright), who suspects her beloved uncle Charlie Oakley (Joseph Cotten) of being a serial murderer. Critics have said that in its use of overlapping characters, dialogue, and closeups it has provided a generation of film theorists with psychoanalytic potential^{[citation needed]}, including Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek. Hitchcock again filmed extensively on location, this time in the Northern California city of Santa Rosa, California, during the summer of 1942. The director showcased his own personal fascination with crime and criminals when he had two of his characters discuss various ways of killing people, to the obvious annoyance of Charlotte.

Working at 20th Century Fox, Hitchcock adapted a script of John Steinbeck's that chronicled the experiences of the survivors of a German U-boat attack in the film Lifeboat (1944). The action sequences were shot in a small boat in the studio water tank. The locale also posed problems for Hitchcock's traditional cameo appearance. That was solved by having Hitchcock's image appear in a newspaper that William Bendix is reading in the boat, showing the director in a before-and-after advertisement for "Reduco-Obesity Slayer".^[64]

While at Fox, Hitchcock seriously considered directing the film version of A.J. Cronin's novel about a Catholic priest in China^{[citation needed]}, The Keys of the Kingdom, but the plans for this fell through. John M. Stahl ended up directing the 1944 film, which was produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and starred Gregory Peck, among other luminaries.^[65]

Returning to England for an extended visit in late 1943 and early 1944, Hitchcock made two short films for the Ministry of Information, Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache. Made for the Free French, these were the only films Hitchcock made in the French language, and "feature typical Hitchcockian touches".^[66] In the 1990s, the two films were shown by Turner Classic Movies and released on home video.

In 1945, Hitchcock served as "treatment advisor" (in effect, a film editor) for a Holocaust documentary produced by the British Army. The film, which recorded the liberation of Nazi concentration camps, remained unreleased until 1985, when it was completed by PBS Frontline and distributed under the title Memory of the Camps.^[67][68]

Hitchcock worked for Selznick again when he directed Spellbound (1945), which explored psychoanalysis^[69] and featured a dream sequence designed by Salvador Dalí. Gregory Peck plays amnesiac Dr. Anthony Edwardes under the treatment of analyst Dr. Peterson (Ingrid Bergman), who falls in love with him while trying to unlock his repressed past.^[70] The dream sequence as it actually appears in the film is considerably shorter than was originally envisioned, which was to be several minutes long,^{[citation needed]} because it proved to be too disturbing for the audience. Two point-of-view shots were achieved by constructing a large wooden hand (which would appear to belong to the character whose point of view the camera took) and out-sized props for it to hold: a bucket-sized glass of milk and a large wooden gun. For added novelty and impact, the climactic gunshot was hand-coloured red on (some copies of) the black-and-white film. Some of the original musical score by Miklós Rózsa (which makes use of the theremin) was later adapted by the composer into a concert piano concerto.

Grant and Bergman in Notorious (1946)

Notorious (1946) followed Spellbound. According to Hitchcock, in his book-length interview with François Truffaut, Selznick sold the director, the two stars (Grant and Bergman) and the screenplay (by Ben Hecht) to RKO Radio Pictures as a "package" for $500,000 due to cost overruns on Selznick's Duel in the Sun (1946). Notorious starred Hitchcock regulars Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant, and features a plot about Nazis, uranium, and South America. It was a huge box office success and has remained one of Hitchcock's most acclaimed films^{[citation needed]}. His use of uranium as a plot device led to Hitchcock's being briefly under FBI surveillance. McGilligan writes that Hitchcock consulted Dr. Robert Millikan of Caltech about the development of an atomic bomb. Selznick complained that the notion was "science fiction", only to be confronted by the news stories of the detonation of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in August 1945.^[71]

After completing his final film for Selznick, The Paradine Case (a courtroom drama that critics found lost momentum because it apparently ran too long and exhausted its resource of ideas), Hitchcock filmed his first colour film, Rope (1948). Here Hitchcock experimented with marshaling suspense in a confined environment, as he had done earlier with Lifeboat (1943). Appeaering to have been shot entirely in a single take, Rope (1948) was actually shot in 10 takes ranging from four and a half to 10 minutes each; a 10-minute length of film being the maximum a camera's film magazine could hold. Some transitions between reels were hidden by having a dark object fill the entire screen for a moment. Hitchcock used those points to hide the cut, and began the next take with the camera in the same place. Featuring James Stewart in the leading role, Rope was the first of four films Stewart would make with Hitchcock. It was based on the Leopold and Loeb case of the 1920s. Somehow Hitchcock's cameraman managed to move the bulky, heavy Technicolor camera quickly around the set as it followed the continuous action of the long takes.

Under Capricorn (1949), set in nineteenth-century Australia, also used the short-lived technique of long takes, but to a more limited extent. He again used Technicolor in this production, then returned to black-and-white films for several years. For Rope and Under Capricorn, Hitchcock formed a production company with Sidney Bernstein called Transatlantic Pictures, which became inactive after these two unsuccessful pictures. Hitchcock continued to produce his own films for the rest of his life.

1950s: Peak years[link]

James Stewart and Grace Kelly in Rear Window (1954)

Hitchcock filmed Stage Fright (1950) in the UK. For the first time, he matched one of Warner Bros.'^[72] biggest stars, Jane Wyman, with the sultry German actress Marlene Dietrich. Hitchcock used a number of prominent British actors, including Michael Wilding, Richard Todd, and Alastair Sim. This was Hitchcock's first production for Warner Bros., which had distributed Rope and Under Capricorn, because Transatlantic Pictures was experiencing financial difficulties.^[73]

With the film Strangers on a Train (1951), based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith, Hitchcock combined many elements from his preceding films. He approached Dashiell Hammett to write the dialogue but Raymond Chandler took over, then left over disagreements with the director.^[74] Two men casually meet, one of whom speculates on a foolproof murder technique. He suggests that two people, each wishing to do away with someone, should each perform the other's murder. Farley Granger's role was as the innocent victim of the scheme, while Robert Walker, previously known for "boy-next-door" roles, played the villain.^[75]

MCA head Lew Wasserman, whose client list included James Stewart, Janet Leigh and other actors who would appear in Hitchcock's films, had a significant impact in packaging and marketing Hitchcock's films beginning in the 1950s.

After I Confess (1953) with Montgomery Clift, three popular films starring Grace Kelly followed. Dial M for Murder (1954) was adapted from the stage play by Frederick Knott. Ray Milland plays the scheming villain, an ex-tennis pro who tries to murder his unfaithful wife Grace Kelly for her money. When she kills the hired assassin in self-defense, Milland manipulates the evidence to pin the death on his wife. Her lover, Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings), and Police Inspector Hubbard (John Williams), work urgently to save her from execution.^[76] Hitchcock experimented with 3D cinematography. The depth effect was utilised in a major way only in one key scene. The public was growing weary of 3D by the time of the film's release, however, and it was shown in 3D only in a few first-run engagements. The 3D version has been revived from time to time, including a brief reissue in some major US cities in the 1980s. The film marked a return to color productions for Hitchcock.

Hitchcock then moved to Paramount Pictures and filmed Rear Window (1954), starring James Stewart and Kelly again, as well as Thelma Ritter and Raymond Burr. Stewart's character, a photographer based on Robert Capa, must temporarily use a wheelchair; out of boredom he begins observing his neighbours across the courtyard, and becomes convinced one of them (Raymond Burr) has murdered his wife. Stewart tries to sway both his glamorous model-girlfriend (Kelly), which screenwriter John Michael Hayes based on his own wife, and his policeman buddy (Wendell Corey) to his theory, and eventually succeeds.^[77] As with Lifeboat and Rope, the principal characters were almost entirely confined to a small space, in this case Stewart's tiny studio apartment overlooking a massive courtyard. Hitchcock used closeups of Stewart's face to show his character's reactions to all he sees, "from the comic voyeurism directed at his neighbours to his helpless terror watching Kelly and Burr in the villain's apartment".^[77]

The third Kelly film, To Catch a Thief (1955), set in the French Riviera, paired her with Cary Grant. He plays retired thief John Robie, who becomes the prime suspect for a spate of robberies in the Riviera. An American heiress played by Kelly surmises his true identity, attempts to seduce him. "Despite the obvious age disparity between Grant and Kelly and a lightweight plot, the witty script (loaded with double-entendres) and the good-natured acting proved a commercial success."^[78] It was Hitchcock's last film with Kelly. She married Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1956, and the residents of her new land were against her making any more films.

Hitchcock successfully remade his own 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1956, this time starring Stewart and Doris Day, who sang the theme song, "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)", which won the Oscar for Best Original Song and became a big hit for her. They play a couple whose son is kidnapped to prevent them from interfering with an assassination.

James Stewart and Kim Novak in Vertigo (1958)

The Wrong Man (1957), Hitchcock's final film for Warner Brothers, was a low-key black-and-white production based on a real-life case of mistaken identity reported in Life Magazine in 1953. This was the only film of Hitchcock's to star Henry Fonda. Fonda plays a Stork Club musician mistaken for a liquor store thief who is arrested and tried for robbery while his wife (newcomer Vera Miles) emotionally collapses under the strain. Hitchcock told Truffaut that his lifelong fear of the police attracted him to the subject and was embedded in many scenes.^[79]

Vertigo (1958) again starred Stewart, this time with Kim Novak and Barbara Bel Geddes. Stewart plays "Scottie", a former police investigator suffering from acrophobia, who develops an obsession with a woman he is shadowing (Novak). Scottie's obsession leads to tragedy, and this time Hitchcock does not opt for a happy ending. The film contains a camera technique developed by Irmin Roberts that has been copied many times by filmmakers, wherein the image appears to "stretch". This is achieved by moving the camera in the opposite direction of the camera's zoom. It has become known by many nicknames, including Dolly zoom, "Zolly," "Hitchcock Zoom," and "Vertigo Effect."

Although the film is widely considered a classic today, Vertigo met with negative reviews and poor box office receipts upon its release, and was the last collaboration between Stewart and Hitchcock.^[80] The film is ranked second (behind Citizen Kane) in the 2002 Sight & Sound decade poll. It was premiered in the San Sebastián International Film Festival,^[81] where Hitchcock won a Silver Seashell.

Cary Grant in North by Northwest (1959)

By this time, Hitchcock had filmed in many areas of the United States.^[82] He followed Vertigo with three more successful films. Two are also recognised as among his best movies: North by Northwest (1959) and Psycho (1960). The third film was The Birds (1963).

In North by Northwest, Cary Grant portrays Roger Thornhill, a Madison Avenue advertising executive who is mistaken for a government secret agent.^[83] He is hotly pursued by enemy agents across America, apparently one of them being Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), in fact working undercover.

From 1960[link]

Psycho is almost certainly Hitchcock's best-known film.^[84] Produced on a highly constrained budget of $800,000, it was shot in black-and-white on a spare set.^[85] The unprecedented violence of the shower scene, the early demise of the heroine, the innocent lives extinguished by a disturbed murderer were all hallmarks of Hitchcock, copied in many subsequent horror films.^[86] After completing Psycho, Hitchcock moved to Universal, where he made the remainder of his films.

The Birds, inspired by a Daphne Du Maurier short story and by an actual news story about a mysterious infestation of birds in California, was Hitchcock's 49th film.^[87] He signed up Tippi Hedren as his latest blonde heroine opposite Rod Taylor. The scenes of the birds attacking included hundreds of shots mixing actual and animated sequences. The cause of the birds' attack is left unanswered, "perhaps highlighting the mystery of forces unknown".^[88]

The latter two films had unconventional soundtracks, both orchestrated by Bernard Herrmann: the screeching strings played in the murder scene in Psycho were unusually dissonant, and The Birds dispensed completely with conventional instruments, instead using an electronically produced soundtrack and an unaccompanied song by schoolchildren (just prior to the attack at the Bodega Bay School). These films are considered his last great films, after which critical opinion was usually against his new films, although some critics, such as Robin Wood and Donald Spoto, contend that Marnie (1964) is first-class Hitchcock, and some have argued that Frenzy is unfairly overlooked.

Failing health took its toll on Hitchcock, reducing his output during the last two decades of his career. He filmed two spy thrillers set with Cold War-related themes. The first, Torn Curtain (1966), with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews, displays the bitter end of the twelve-year collaboration between Hitchcock and composer Bernard Herrmann. Herrmann was fired when Hitchcock was unsatisfied with his score. Topaz (1969), (based on a Leon Uris novel), is partly set in Cuba. Both received mixed reviews from critics.

Hitchcock at work on location in San Francisco for Family Plot

In 1972, Hitchcock returned to London to film Frenzy. After two only moderately successful espionage films, the plot marks a return to the murder thriller genre of earlier in his career. The basic story recycles his early film The Lodger. Richard Blaney (Jon Finch), a volatile barkeeper with a history of explosive anger, becomes the prime suspect for the "Necktie Murders," which are actually committed by his friend Bob Rusk (Barry Foster).^[89] This time, Hitchcock makes the victim and villain twins, rather than opposites, as in Strangers on a Train. Only one of them, however, has crossed the line to murder.^[89] For the first time, Hitchcock allowed nudity and profane language, which had before been taboo, in one of his films. He also shows rare sympathy for the chief inspector and his comic domestic life.^[90] Biographers have noted that Hitchcock had always pushed the limits of film censorship, often managing to fool Joseph Breen, the longtime head of Hollywood's Production Code. Many times Hitchcock slipped in subtle hints of improprieties forbidden by censorship until the mid-1960s. Yet Patrick McGilligan wrote that Breen and others often realised that Hitchcock was inserting such things and were actually amused as well as alarmed by Hitchcock's "inescapable inferences".^[91] Beginning with Torn Curtain, Hitchcock was finally able to blatantly include plot elements previously forbidden in American films and this continued for the remainder of his film career.

Family Plot (1976) was Hitchcock's last film. It related the escapades of "Madam" Blanche Tyler played by Barbara Harris, a fraudulent spiritualist, and her taxi driver lover Bruce Dern making a living from her phoney powers. William Devane, Karen Black and Cathleen Nesbitt co-starred. It was the only Hitchcock film scored by John Williams.

Last project and death[link]

Near the end of his life, Hitchcock had worked on the script for a projected spy thriller, The Short Night, collaborating with screenwriters James Costigan and Ernest Lehman. Despite some preliminary work, the story was never filmed. This was due primarily to Hitchcock's own failing health and his concerns over the health of his wife, Alma, who had suffered a stroke. The script was eventually published posthumously, in a book on Hitchcock's last years.^[92][93]

Hitchcock died in his Bel Air home of renal failure at 9:17 am on 29 April 1980. He was survived by his wife and their daughter. Hitchcock's funeral service was held at Good Shepherd Catholic Church^[94] in Beverly Hills, after which his body was cremated and his remains were scattered over the Pacific Ocean.^[95]

Themes, plot devices and motifs[link]

Hitchcock returned several times to cinematic devices such as suspense, the audience as voyeur, and his well-known "MacGuffin," an apparently minor detail serving as a pivot upon which the narrative turns.

Signature appearances in his films[link]

Hitchcock appeared briefly in most of his own films. For example, he is seen struggling to get a double bass onto a train (Strangers on a Train), or walking dogs out of a pet shop (The Birds).

Psychology of characters[link]

Hitchcock's films sometimes feature characters struggling in their relationships with their mothers. In North by Northwest (1959), Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant's character) is an innocent man ridiculed by his mother for insisting that shadowy, murderous men are after him. In The Birds (1963), the Rod Taylor character, an innocent man, finds his world under attack by vicious birds, and struggles to free himself of a clinging mother (Jessica Tandy). The killer in Frenzy (1972) has a loathing of women but idolises his mother. The villain Bruno in Strangers on a Train hates his father, but has an incredibly close relationship with his mother (played by Marion Lorne). Sebastian (Claude Rains) in Notorious has a clearly conflictual relationship with his mother, who is (correctly) suspicious of his new bride Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman). Norman Bates has troubles with his mother in Psycho.

Hitchcock heroines tend to be lovely, cool blondes who seem proper at first but, when aroused by passion or danger, respond in a more sensual, animal, or even criminal way. The famous victims in The Lodger are all blondes. In The 39 Steps, Hitchcock's glamorous blonde star, Madeleine Carroll, is put in handcuffs. In Marnie (1964), the title character (played by Tippi Hedren) is a thief. In To Catch a Thief (1955), Francie (Grace Kelly) offers to help a man she believes is a burglar. In Rear Window, Lisa (Grace Kelly again) risks her life by breaking into Lars Thorwald's apartment. The best-known example is in Psycho where Janet Leigh's unfortunate character steals $40,000 and is murdered by a reclusive psychopath. Hitchcock's last blonde heroine was—years after Dany Robin and her "daughter" Claude Jade in Topaz—Barbara Harris as a phony psychic turned amateur sleuth in his final film, 1976's Family Plot. In the same film, the diamond smuggler played by Karen Black could also fit that role, as she wears a long blonde wig in various scenes and becomes increasingly uncomfortable about her line of work.

Some critics and Hitchcock scholars, including Donald Spoto and Roger Ebert, agree that Vertigo represents the director's most personal and revealing film, dealing with the obsessions of a man who crafts a woman into the woman he desires. Vertigo explores more frankly and at greater length his interest in the relation between sex and death than any other film in his filmography.^{[citation needed]}

Hitchcock often said that his favourite film (of his own work) was Shadow of a Doubt.^[96]

Style of working[link]

Writing[link]

Hitchcock once commented, "The writer and I plan out the entire script down to the smallest detail, and when we're finished all that's left to do is to shoot the film. Actually, it's only when one enters the studio that one enters the area of compromise. Really, the novelist has the best casting since he doesn't have to cope with the actors and all the rest." In an interview with Roger Ebert in 1969, Hitchcock elaborated further:

Once the screenplay is finished, I'd just as soon not make the film at all... I have a strongly visual mind. I visualize a picture right down to the final cuts. I write all this out in the greatest detail in the script, and then I don't look at the script while I'm shooting. I know it off by heart, just as an orchestra conductor needs not look at the score... When you finish the script, the film is perfect. But in shooting it you lose perhaps 40 percent of your original conception.^[97]

In Writing with Hitchcock, a book-length study of Hitchcock's working method with his writers, author Steven DeRosa noted that "Although he rarely did any actual 'writing', especially on his Hollywood productions, Hitchcock supervised and guided his writers through every draft, insisting on a strict attention to detail and a preference for telling the story through visual rather than verbal means. While this exasperated some writers, others admitted the director inspired them to do their very best work. Hitchcock often emphasised that he took no screen credit for the writing of his films. However, over time the work of many of his writers has been attributed solely to Hitchcock’s creative genius, a misconception he rarely went out of his way to correct. Notwithstanding his technical brilliance as a director, Hitchcock relied on his writers a great deal."^[98]

Storyboards and production[link]

Hitchcock's films were strongly believed to have been extensively storyboarded to the finest detail by the majority of commentators over the years. He was reported to have never even bothered looking through the viewfinder, since he did not need to do so, though in publicity photos he was shown doing so. He also used this as an excuse to never have to change his films from his initial vision. If a studio asked him to change a film, he would claim that it was already shot in a single way, and that there were no alternate takes to consider.

However, this view of Hitchcock as a director who relied more on pre-production than on the actual production itself has been challenged by the book Hitchcock At Work, written by Bill Krohn, the American correspondent of Cahiers du cinéma. Krohn, after investigating several script revisions, notes to other production personnel written by or to Hitchcock alongside inspection of storyboards, and other production material, has observed that Hitchcock's work often deviated from how the screenplay was written or how the film was originally envisioned. He noted that the myth of storyboards in relation to Hitchcock, often regurgitated by generations of commentators on his movies was to a great degree perpetuated by Hitchcock himself or the publicity arm of the studios. A great example would be the celebrated crop-spraying sequence of North by Northwest which was not storyboarded at all. After the scene was filmed, the publicity department asked Hitchcock to make storyboards to promote the film and Hitchcock in turn hired an artist to match the scenes in detail.

Even when storyboards were made, scenes that were shot differed from it significantly. Krohn's extensive analysis of the production of Hitchcock classics like Notorious reveals that Hitchcock was flexible enough to change a film's conception during its production. Another example Krohn notes is the American remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much, whose shooting schedule commenced without a finished script and moreover went over schedule, something that, as Krohn notes, was not an uncommon occurrence on many of Hitchcock's films, including Strangers on a Train and Topaz. While Hitchcock did do a great deal of preparation for all his movies, he was fully cognizant that the actual film-making process often deviated from the best-laid plans and was flexible to adapt to the changes and needs of production as his films were not free from the normal hassles faced and common routines utilised during many other film productions.

Krohn's work also sheds light on Hitchcock's practice of generally shooting in chronological order, which he notes sent many films over budget and over schedule and, more importantly, differed from the standard operating procedure of Hollywood in the Studio System Era. Equally important is Hitchcock's tendency to shoot alternate takes of scenes. This differed from coverage in that the films were not necessarily shot from varying angles so as to give the editor options to shape the film how he/she chooses (often under the producer's aegis). Rather they represented Hitchcock's tendency of giving himself options in the editing room, where he would provide advice to his editors after viewing a rough cut of the work. According to Krohn, this and a great deal of other information revealed through his research of Hitchcock's personal papers, script revisions and the like refute the notion of Hitchcock as a director who was always in control of his films, whose vision of his films did not change during production, which Krohn notes has remained the central long-standing myth of Alfred Hitchcock.

His fastidiousness and attention to detail also found its way into each film poster for his films. Hitchcock preferred to work with the best talent of his day—film poster designers such as Bill Gold and Saul Bass—and kept them busy with countless rounds of revision until he felt that the single image of the poster accurately represented his entire film.

Approach to actors[link]

Similarly, much of Hitchcock's supposed dislike of actors has been exaggerated. Hitchcock simply did not tolerate the method approach, as he believed that actors should only concentrate on their performances and leave work on script and character to the directors and screenwriters. In a Sight and Sound interview, he stated that, 'the method actor is OK in the theatre because he has a free space to move about. But when it comes to cutting the face and what he sees and so forth, there must be some discipline'.^[99] During the making of Lifeboat, Walter Slezak, who played the German character, stated that Hitchcock knew the mechanics of acting better than anyone he knew. Several critics have observed that despite his reputation as a man who disliked actors, several actors who worked with him gave fine, often brilliant performances and these performances contribute to the film's success.

For Hitchcock, the actors, like the props, were part of the film's setting, as he said to Truffaut:

In my opinion, the chief requisite for an actor is the ability to do nothing well, which is by no means as easy as it sounds. He should be willing to be utilised and wholly integrated into the picture by the director and the camera. He must allow the camera to determine the proper emphasis and the most effective dramatic highlights.^[100]

Regarding Hitchcock's sometimes less than pleasant relationship with actors, there was a persistent rumour that he had said that actors were cattle. Hitchcock addressed this story in his interview with François Truffaut:

I'm not quite sure in what context I might have made such a statement. It may have been made...when we used actors who were simultaneously performing in stage plays. When they had a matinee, and I suspected they were allowing themselves plenty of time for a very leisurely lunch. And this meant that we had to shoot our scenes at breakneck speed so that the actors could get out on time. I couldn't help feeling that if they'd been really conscientious, they'd have swallowed their sandwich in the cab, on the way to the theatre, and get there in time to put on their make-up and go on stage. I had no use for that kind of actor.^[101]

Carole Lombard, tweaking Hitchcock and drumming up a little publicity, brought some cows along with her when she reported to the set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith.^[101]

In the late 1950s, French New Wave critics, especially Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol and François Truffaut, were among the first to see and promote Hitchcock's films as artistic works. Hitchcock was one of the first directors to whom they applied their auteur theory, which stresses the artistic authority of the director in the film-making process.

Hitchcock's innovations and vision have influenced a great number of filmmakers, producers, and actors. His influence helped start a trend for film directors to control artistic aspects of their movies without answering to the movie's producer.

The ugly side of Hitchcock - Sexual harrassment and abuse of leading ladies[link]

“The trouble today is that we don’t torture women enough.” —Alfred Hitchcock

Hitchcock engaged in obsessive sexually abusive behaviour towards many of his female leads. He used his position as director to seek to dominate and control his leading ladies. In the case of Tippi Hedren this extended to sexual harrassment. Hitchcock often used filming conditions to physically abuse actresses.

He insisted, for example, that Madeleine Carroll submit herself to painful physical demands during the making of The 39 Steps.

Awards and honours[link]

Hitchcock was a multiple nominee and winner of a number of prestigious awards, receiving two Golden Globes, eight Laurel Awards and five lifetime achievement awards, as well as being six times nominated for, albeit never winning, an Academy Award as Best Director. His film Rebecca (nominated for 11 Oscars) won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1940—particularly notable considering the fact that another Hitchcock film, Foreign Correspondent, was also nominated that same year.

Television, radio, and books[link]

Along with Walt Disney, Hitchcock was among the first prominent motion picture producers to fully envisage just how popular the medium of television would become. From 1955 to 1965, Hitchcock was the host and producer of a television series titled Alfred Hitchcock Presents.^[102] While his films had made Hitchcock's name strongly associated with suspense, the TV series made Hitchcock a celebrity himself. His irony-tinged voice and signature droll delivery, gallows humour, iconic image and mannerisms became instantly recognisable and were often the subject of parody.

The title-theme of the show pictured a minimalist caricature of Hitchcock's profile (he drew it himself; it is composed of only nine strokes), which his real silhouette then filled. His introductions before the stories in his program always included some sort of wry humour, such as the description of a recent multi-person execution hampered by having only one electric chair, while two are now shown with a sign "Two chairs—no waiting!" He directed a few episodes of the TV series himself, and he upset a number of movie production companies when he insisted on using his TV production crew to produce his motion picture Psycho. In the late 1980s, a new version of Alfred Hitchcock Presents was produced for television, making use of Hitchcock's original introductions in a colourised form.

The series used a curious little tune^[103] by the French composer Charles Gounod (1818–1893),^[104] the composer of the 1859 opera Faust, as the theme for his television programs, after it was suggested to him by composer Bernard Herrmann. Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra included the piece, Funeral March of a Marionette, on one of their extended play 45-rpm discs for RCA Victor during the 1950s.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents was parodied by Friz Freleng's 1961 cartoon The Last Hungry Cat, which contains a plot similar to Blackmail.

Hitchcock appears as a character in the popular juvenile detective book series, Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators. The long-running detective series was created by Robert Arthur, who wrote the first several books, although other authors took over after he left the series. The Three Investigators—Jupiter Jones, Bob Andrews and Peter Crenshaw—were amateur detectives, slightly younger than the Hardy Boys. In the introduction to each book, "Alfred Hitchcock" introduces the mystery, and he sometimes refers a case to the boys to solve. At the end of each book, the boys report to Hitchcock, and sometimes give him a memento of their case.

When the real Hitchcock died, the fictional Hitchcock in the Three Investigators books was replaced by a retired detective named Hector Sebastian. At this time, the series title was changed from Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators to The Three Investigators.

At the height of Hitchcock's success, he was also asked to introduce a set of books with his name attached. The series was a collection of short stories by popular short-story writers, primarily focused on suspense and thrillers. These titles included Alfred Hitchcock's Anthology, Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories to be Read with the Door Locked, Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum, Alfred Hitchcock's Supernatural Tales of Terror and Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbinders in Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock's Witch's Brew, Alfred Hitchcock's Ghostly Gallery, Alfred Hitchcock's A Hangman's Dozen and Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houseful. Hitchcock himself was not actually involved in the reading, reviewing, editing or selection of the short stories; in fact, even his introductions were ghost-written. The entire extent of his involvement with the project was to lend his name and collect a check.

Some notable writers whose works were used in the collection include Shirley Jackson (Strangers in Town, The Lottery), T.H. White (The Once and Future King), Robert Bloch, H. G. Wells (The War of the Worlds), Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain and the creator of The Three Investigators, Robert Arthur.

Hitchcock also wrote a mystery story for Look magazine in 1943, "The Murder of Monty Woolley". This was a sequence of captioned photographs inviting the reader to inspect the pictures for clues to the murderer's identity; Hitchcock cast the performers as themselves, such as Woolley, Doris Merrick and make-up man Guy Pearce, whom Hitchcock identified, in the last photo, as the murderer. The article was reprinted in Games Magazine in November/December 1980.

In September 2010, BBC Radio 7 broadcast a series of five fifteen-minute programs entitled The Late Alfred Hitchcock Presents with Michael Roberts impersonating Alfred Hitchcock for introductory/concluding comments and reading the stories in his own voice. These five stories were originally intended for the television series, but were rejected because of their rather gruesome nature:

• "The Waxwork" by A. M. Burrage (broadcast 13 September 2010)
• "Sredni Vashtar" by Saki (broadcast 14 September 2010)
• "The Perfectionist" by Margaret St. Clair (broadcast 15 September 2010)
• "Being a Murderer Myself" by Arthur Williams (broadcast 16 September 2010)
• "The Dancing Partner" by Jerome K. Jerome (broadcast 17 September 2010)

Filmography[link]

Frequently cast actors and actresses[link]

• 7 films: Clare Greet: Number 13 (1922), The Ring (1927), The Manxman (1929), Murder! (1930), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), Sabotage (1936), Jamaica Inn (1939)
• 6 films: Leo G. Carroll: Rebecca (1940), Suspicion (1941), Spellbound (1945), The Paradine Case (1947), Strangers on a Train (1951), and North By Northwest (1959)
• 4 films: Cary Grant: Suspicion (1941), Notorious (1946), To Catch a Thief (1955), and North By Northwest (1959)
• 4 films: James Stewart: Rope (1948), Rear Window (1954), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), and Vertigo (1958)
• 4 films: Edmund Gwenn: The Skin Game (1931), Waltzes from Vienna (1934), Foreign Correspondent (1940), and The Trouble with Harry (1955)
• 4 films: Phyllis Konstam: Champagne (1928), Blackmail (1929), Murder! (1930), and The Skin Game (1931)
• 3 films: Ingrid Bergman: Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), and Under Capricorn (1949)
• 3 films: Grace Kelly: Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), and To Catch a Thief (1955)
• 3 films: Basil Radford: Young and Innocent (1937), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Jamaica Inn (1939)
• 3 films: John Williams: The Paradine Case (1947), Dial M for Murder, (1954), and To Catch a Thief (1955)
• 3 films: Patricia Hitchcock: Stage Fright (1950), Strangers on a Train (1951), Psycho (1960)
• 3 films: Charles Halton: Foreign Correspondent (1940), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941), Saboteur (1942)
• 2 films: Gregory Peck: Spellbound (1945), The Paradine Case (1947)
• 2 films: Robert Cummings: Saboteur (1942), Dial M for Murder (1954)
• 2 films: Tippi Hedren: The Birds (1963), Marnie (1964)
• 2 films: Joan Fontaine: Rebecca (1940), Suspicion (1941)
• 2 films: Joseph Cotten: Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Under Capricorn (1949)

Frequent collaborators[link]

See also[link]

• Alfred Hitchcock Presents
• Alfred Hitchcock filmography
• List of unproduced Hitchcock projects
• List of film collaborations
• List of Alfred Hitchcock cameo appearances

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Leitch, Thomas: The Encyclopedia of Alfred Hitchcock (ISBN 978-0-8160-4387-3). Checkmark Books, 2002. A single-volume encyclopaedia of all things about Alfred Hitchcock.
• McGilligan, Patrick: Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light. Regan Books, 2003. A comprehensive biography of the director.

Further reading[link]

• Auiler, Dan: Hitchcock's notebooks: an authorised and illustrated look inside the creative mind of Alfred Hitchcock. New York, Avon Books, 1999. Much useful background to the films.
• Barr, Charles: English Hitchcock. Cameron & Hollis, 1999. On the early films of the director.
• Conrad, Peter: The Hitchcock Murders. Faber and Faber, 2000. A highly personal and idiosyncratic discussion of Hitchcock's oeuvre.
• DeRosa, Steven: Writing with Hitchcock. Faber and Faber, 2001. An examination of the collaboration between Hitchcock and screenwriter John Michael Hayes, his most frequent writing collaborator in Hollywood. Their films include Rear Window and The Man Who Knew Too Much.
• Deutelbaum, Marshall; Poague, Leland (ed.): A Hitchcock Reader. Iowa State University Press, 1986. A wide-ranging collection of scholarly essays on Hitchcock.
• Durgnat, Raymond: The strange case of Alfred Hitchcock Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1974 OCLC 1233570
• Durgnat, Raymond; James, Nick; Gross, Larry: Hitchcock British Film Institute, 1999 OCLC 42209162
• Durgnat, Raymond: A long hard look at Psycho London: British Film Institute Pub., 2002 OCLC 48883020
• Giblin, Gary: Alfred Hitchcock's London. Midnight Marquee Press, 2006, (Paperback: ISBN 978-1-887664-67-7)
• Gottlieb, Sidney: Hitchcock on Hitchcock. Faber and Faber, 1995. Articles, lectures, etc. by Hitchcock himself. Basic reading on the director and his films.
• Gottlieb, Sidney: Alfred Hitchcock: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi, 2003. A collection of Hitchcock interviews.
• Grams, Martin, Jr. & Wikstrom, Patrik: The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. OTR Pub, 2001, (Paperback: ISBN 978-0-9703310-1-4)
• Haeffner, Nicholas: Alfred Hitchcock. Longman, 2005. An undergraduate-level text.
• Hitchcock, Patricia; Bouzereau, Laurent: Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Behind the Man. Berkley, 2003.
• Krohn, Bill: Hitchcock at Work. Phaidon, 2000. Translated from the award-winning French edition. The nitty-gritty of Hitchcock's filmmaking from scripting to post-production.
• Leff, Leonard J.: Hitchcock and Selznick. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987. An in-depth examination of the rich collaboration between Hitchcock and David O Selznick.
• McDevitt, Jim; San Juan, Eric: A Year of Hitchcock: 52 Weeks with the Master of Suspense. Scarecrow Press, 2009, (ISBN 978-0-8108-6388-0). A comprehensive film-by-film examination of Hitchcock's artistic development from 1927 through 1976.
• Modleski, Tania: The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock And Feminist Theory. Routledge, 2005 (2nd edition). A collection of critical essays on Hitchcock and his films; argues that Hitchcock's portrayal of women was ambivalent, rather than simply misogynist or sympathetic (as widely thought).
• Mogg, Ken. The Alfred Hitchcock Story. Titan, 2008 (revised edition). Note: the original 1999 UK edition, from Titan, and the 2008 re-issue world-wide, also from Titan, have significantly more text than the 1999 abridged US edition from Taylor Publishing. New material on all the films.
• Moral, Tony Lee: Hitchcock and the Making of Marnie. Scarecrow Press, 2005 (2nd edition). Well researched making of Hitchcock's "Marnie".
• Paglia, Camille. The Birds. British Film Institute, January 2008 ISBN 978-0-85170-651-1
• Rebello, Stephen: Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho. St. Martin's, 1990. Intimately researched and detailed history of the making of Psycho,.
• Rohmer, Eric; Chabrol, Claude. Hitchcock, the first forty-four films (ISBN 978-0-8044-2743-2). F. Ungar, 1979. First book-long study of Hitchock art and probably still the best one.
• Rothman, William. The Murderous Gaze. Harvard Press, 1980. Auteur study that looks at several Hitchcock films intimately.
• Spoto, Donald: The Art of Alfred Hitchcock. Anchor Books, 1992. The first detailed critical survey of Hitchcock's work by an American.
• Spoto, Donald: The Dark Side of Genius. Ballantine Books, 1983. A biography of Hitchcock, featuring a controversial exploration of Hitchcock's psychology.
• Taylor, Alan: Jacobean Visions: Webster, Hitchcock and the Google Culture, Peter Lang, 2007.
• Truffaut, François: Hitchcock. Simon and Schuster, 1985. A series of interviews of Hitchcock by the influential French director.
• Vest, James: Hitchcock and France: The Forging of an Auteur. Praeger Publishers, 2003. A study of Hitchcock's interest in French culture and the manner by which French critics, such as Truffaut, came to regard him in such high esteem.
• Weibel, Adrian: Spannung bei Hitchcock. Zur Funktionsweise der auktorialen Suspense. (ISBN 978-3-8260-3681-1) Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2008
• Wikstrom, Patrik & Grams, Martin, Jr.: The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. OTR Pub, 2001, (Paperback: ISBN 978-0-9703310-1-4)
• Wood, Robin: Hitchcock's Films Revisited. Columbia University Press, 2002 (2nd edition). A much-cited collection of critical essays, now supplemented and annotated in this second edition with additional insights and changes that time and personal experience have brought to the author (including his own coming-out as a gay man).
• Youngkin, Stephen D. (2005). The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-8131-2360-8.  Contains interviews with Alfred Hitchcock and a discussion of the making of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and Secret Agent (1936), which co-starred classic film actor Peter Lorre.

External links[link]

Find more about Alfred Hitchcock on Wikipedia's sister projects:
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• Alfred Hitchcock at the BFI
• Alfred Hitchcock at the Internet Movie Database
• Alfred Hitchcock at AllRovi
• Alfred Hitchcock at the TCM Movie Database
• Alfred Hitchcock at the British Film Institute's Screenonline

v t e Alfred Hitchcock Filmography Unproduced projects Themes and plot devices Cameos Awards and honors Films directed 1920s Number 13 The Pleasure Garden The Blackguard The Mountain Eagle The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog The Ring Downhill The Farmer's Wife Easy Virtue Champagne The Manxman Blackmail 1930s Juno and the Paycock Murder! The Skin Game Mary Rich and Strange Number Seventeen Waltzes from Vienna The Man Who Knew Too Much The 39 Steps Secret Agent Sabotage Young and Innocent The Lady Vanishes Jamaica Inn 1940s Rebecca Foreign Correspondent Mr. & Mrs. Smith Suspicion Saboteur Shadow of a Doubt Lifeboat Spellbound Notorious The Paradine Case Rope Under Capricorn 1950s Stage Fright Strangers on a Train I Confess Dial M for Murder Rear Window To Catch a Thief The Trouble with Harry The Man Who Knew Too Much The Wrong Man Vertigo North by Northwest 1960s Psycho The Birds Marnie Torn Curtain Topaz 1970s Frenzy Family Plot Shorts Always Tell Your Wife Elstree Calling An Elastic Affair Aventure malgache Bon Voyage The Fighting Generation Watchtower Over Tomorrow Related topics Hitchcockian Alfred Hitchcock Presents Alfred Hitchcock Edition Clue Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine High Anxiety

Lady Vivien Leigh Olivier
1955 photo
Born	Vivian Mary Hartley (1913-11-05)5 November 1913 Darjeeling, Bengal Presidency, British Raj
Died	8 July 1967(1967-07-08) (aged 53) London, England
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1933–67
Spouse	Herbert Leigh Holman (1932–1940) Laurence Olivier (1940–1960)
Partner	John Merivale (1959-1967)
Children	Suzanne Farrington, born 12 October 1933

Vivien Leigh, Lady Olivier (5 November 1913 – 8 July 1967) was an English actress.^[1] She won the Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a role she also played on stage in London's West End, as well as for her portrayal of the southern belle Scarlett O'Hara, alongside Clark Gable, in the epic American Civil War drama Gone with the Wind.

She was a prolific stage performer, frequently in collaboration with her then-husband, Laurence Olivier, who directed her in several of her roles. During her 30-year stage career, she played roles ranging from the heroines of Noël Coward and George Bernard Shaw comedies to classic Shakespearean characters such as Ophelia, Cleopatra, Juliet and Lady Macbeth.

Lauded for her beauty, Leigh felt that it sometimes prevented her from being taken seriously as an actress. However, ill health proved to be her greatest obstacle. For much of her adult life Leigh suffered from bipolar disorder.^[2] She earned a reputation for being difficult to work with, and her career suffered periods of inactivity. She also suffered recurrent bouts of chronic tuberculosis, first diagnosed in the mid-1940s. Leigh and Olivier divorced in 1960, and she worked sporadically in film and theatre until her death from tuberculosis in 1967.

She is ranked 16th on AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars list, unveiled on 15 June 1999 by the American Film Institute.

Early life and acting debut[link]

Leigh was born Vivian Mary Hartley in the campus of St. Paul's School, Darjeeling, Bengal, India (British India), to Ernest Hartley, an officer in the Indian Cavalry, and Gertrude Robinson (Yackjee).^[3] Leigh's parents were married in Kensington, London, in 1912.^[4]

In 1917, Ernest Hartley was transferred to Bangalore, while Gertrude and Vivian stayed in Ootacamund.^[5] Young Vivian made her first stage appearance at the age of three, reciting "Little Bo Peep" for her mother's amateur theatre group. Gertrude Hartley tried to instill in her daughter an appreciation of literature and introduced her to the works of Hans Christian Andersen, Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling, as well as stories of Greek mythology and Indian folklore. An only child, Vivian Hartley was sent to the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Roehampton (now Woldingham School) in 1920, from Loreto Convent, Darjeeling by her devoutly Catholic mother. One of her friends there was future actress Maureen O'Sullivan, two years her senior, to whom Vivian expressed her desire to become "a great actress".^[6][7]

Vivian Hartley was removed from the school by her father, who took her travelling in Europe; with schooling provided by schools in the areas they travelled, returning to England in 1931. She attended one of O'Sullivan's films playing in London's West End and told her parents of her ambitions to become an actress. Her father enrolled her at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London.^[8]

Vivian Hartley met (Herbert) Leigh Holman in 1931. Leigh Holman was a barrister 13 years her senior. Despite his disapproval of "theatrical people", they were married on 20 December 1932, and she terminated her studies at RADA. On 12 October 1933, she gave birth to a daughter, Suzanne, but did not seem to settle to the normal domestic life role. Her friends suggested to her a small role in the film Things Are Looking Up, which marked her film debut. She engaged an agent, John Gliddon, who believed that the name "Vivian Holman" was not suitable for an actress. After rejecting his suggestion, "April Morn", she took "Vivian Leigh" as her professional name. Gliddon recommended her to Alexander Korda as a possible film actress, but Korda rejected her as lacking potential.^[9]

Cast in the play The Mask of Virtue in 1935, Leigh received excellent reviews followed by interviews and newspaper articles. One such article was from the Daily Express, in which the interviewer noted "a lightning change came over her face", which was the first public mention of the rapid changes in mood that became characteristic of her.^[10] John Betjeman, the future Poet Laureate, also wrote about her, describing her as "the essence of English girlhood".^[11] Korda attended her opening-night performance, admitted his error, and signed her to a film contract, with the spelling of her name revised to "Vivien Leigh". She continued with the play; but, when Korda moved it to a larger theatre, Leigh was found to be unable to project her voice adequately or to hold the attention of so large an audience, and the play closed soon after.^[12] In 1960, Leigh recalled her ambivalence towards her first experience of critical acclaim and sudden fame, commenting, "some critics saw fit to be as foolish as to say that I was a great actress. And I thought, that was a foolish, wicked thing to say, because it put such an onus and such a responsibility onto me, which I simply wasn't able to carry. And it took me years to learn enough to live up to what they said for those first notices. I find it so stupid. I remember the critic very well and have never forgiven him."^[13]

Meeting Laurence Olivier[link]

Leigh with Laurence Olivier in Fire Over England (1937), their first collaboration

Laurence Olivier saw Leigh in The Mask of Virtue, and friendship developed after he congratulated her on her performance. Olivier and Leigh began an affair after acting as lovers in Fire Over England (1937), when Olivier was married to actress Jill Esmond. During this time, Leigh read the Margaret Mitchell novel Gone with the Wind and instructed her American agent to suggest her to David O. Selznick, who was planning a film version. She remarked to a journalist, "I've cast myself as Scarlett O'Hara"; and The Observer film critic C. A. Lejeune recalled a conversation of the same period in which Leigh "stunned us all" with the assertion that Olivier "won't play Rhett Butler, but I shall play Scarlett O'Hara. Wait and see."^[14]

Despite her relative inexperience, Leigh was chosen to play Ophelia to Olivier's Hamlet in an Old Vic Theatre production staged at Elsinore, Denmark.^[15] Olivier later recalled an incident when her mood rapidly changed as she was preparing to go onstage. Without apparent provocation, she began screaming at him, before suddenly becoming silent and staring into space. She was able to perform without mishap; and, by the following day, she had returned to normal with no recollection of the event. It was the first time Olivier witnessed such behaviour from her.^[16] They began living together, as their respective spouses had each refused to grant either of them a divorce. Under the moral standards then enforced by the motion picture industry, their relationship had to be kept from public view.^{[citation needed]}

Leigh appeared with Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore and Maureen O'Sullivan in A Yank at Oxford (1938), the first of her films to receive attention in the United States. During production, she developed a reputation for being difficult and unreasonable; and Korda instructed her agent to warn her that her option would not be renewed if her behaviour did not improve.^[17] Her next role was in St. Martin's Lane (1938) with Charles Laughton.

Achieving international success[link]

Olivier had been attempting to broaden his film career. He was not well known in the United States despite his success in England, and earlier attempts to introduce him to the American market had failed. Offered the role of Heathcliff in Samuel Goldwyn's production of Wuthering Heights (1939), he travelled to Hollywood, leaving Leigh in London. Goldwyn and the film's director, William Wyler, offered Leigh the secondary role of Isabella; but she refused, preferring the role of Cathy, which had been assigned to Merle Oberon.^[18]

Leigh in the trailer for Gone with the Wind (1939)

Hollywood was in the midst of a widely publicized search to find an actress to portray Scarlett O'Hara in David O. Selznick's production of Gone with the Wind (1939). Leigh's American theatrical agent was the London representative of the Myron Selznick Agency (Myron was David's brother). In February 1938, Leigh asked that she be allowed to play Scarlett O'Hara. Selznick, who watched her performance that month in Fire Over England and A Yank at Oxford, thought her to be excellent but in no way a possible Scarlett, as she was "too British". Leigh travelled to Los Angeles to be with Olivier and to try to convince Selznick that she was Scarlett. When Myron Selznick, who also represented Olivier, met Leigh, he felt that she possessed the qualities his brother was searching for. Myron Selznick took Leigh and Olivier to the set where the burning of the Atlanta Depot scene was being filmed and introduced Leigh, telling his brother, "Hey, genius, meet your Scarlett O'Hara." The following day, Leigh read a scene for Selznick, who organised a screen test and wrote to his wife, "She's the Scarlett dark horse and looks damn good. Not for anyone's ear but your own: it's narrowed down to Paulette Goddard, Jean Arthur, Joan Bennett and Vivien Leigh". The director, George Cukor, concurred and praised Leigh's "incredible wildness"; she secured her role as Scarlett soon after.^[19]

as Scarlett O'Hara

Filming proved difficult for Leigh. Cukor was dismissed and replaced by Victor Fleming, with whom Leigh frequently quarrelled. She and Olivia de Havilland secretly met with Cukor at night and on weekends for his advice about how they should play their parts. She befriended Clark Gable, his wife Carole Lombard and Olivia de Havilland; but she clashed with Leslie Howard, with whom she was required to play several emotional scenes. Leigh was sometimes required to work seven days a week, often late into the night, which added to her distress; and she missed Olivier, who was working in New York. She said to Laurence Olivier on a long-distance call, "Puss, my puss, how I hate film acting! Hate, hate, and never want to do another film again!"^[20]

In 2006, Olivia de Havilland responded to claims of Leigh's manic behaviour during filming Gone with the Wind, published in a biography of Olivier. She defended Leigh, saying, "Vivien was impeccably professional, impeccably disciplined on Gone with the Wind. She had two great concerns: doing her best work in an extremely difficult role and being separated from Larry [Olivier], who was in New York."^[21]

Gone with the Wind brought Leigh immediate attention and fame; but she was quoted as saying, "I'm not a film star – I'm an actress. Being a film star – just a film star – is such a false life, lived for fake values and for publicity. Actresses go on for a long time and there are always marvelous parts to play."^[22] Among the 10 Academy Awards won by Gone with the Wind was a Best Actress award for Leigh, who also won a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress.