HITCHED!

Drawing by John C. Tibbetts

New Hitchcock books, bless ‘em!, just keep a-comin, as Ma Joad says in The Grapes of Wrath. Back in the day, I myself was proud to be an executive editor with author Thomas Leitch of The Encyclopedia of Alfred Hitchcock in 2002.

But the appearance of a new book grabbed immediately my attention, on this day, his birthday (August 13th). Hitchcock a la Carte, by Jan Olsson, tracks and discusses the many television shows Hitchcock appeared in, as both host and (sometimes) as director. I refer, of course to the six seasons of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, a dramatic anthology series of half-hour programs on CBS and NBC, which ran from 1955-1962. The Alfred Hitchcock Hour followed, from 1962-1965. Of a total of 251 episodes, Hitchcock directed eighteen, and stepping in were other luminaries, including Robert Stevens (49 episodes), Paul Henreid (29 episodes), and many others, like Robert Altman, Ida Lupino, William Friedkin, John Brahm, and Sidney Pollack. Not to be forgotten was Suspicion, 1957-1959, another hour-long series, for which Hitch directed the outstanding first episode, “Four O’Clock,” adapted from Cornel Woolrich— literally a “ticking bomb” of a story. 

How vividly I remember as boy raptly watching the Monday night telecasts, delighted and teased by the modicum of menace, even limited gore, allowed by the television censors. An equally vivid memory is hearing my father vent his frustration when Hitch always appeared at the end, to explain, at the behest of those same censors, that in the end the crooks got their just desserts, after all.

Drawing by John C. Tibbetts

With his macabre humor and irreverence toward advertisers (his appearances were ghost-written by JimmyAllaradice), “Hitchcock was an instant hit on television,” writes author Olsson, “and his performance as host was sensational very cleverly crafted.” Success “in a medium with a deeper cultural penetration than cinema” turned him into “a fully-fledged celebrity” and had “repercussions for his cinema and particularly its marketing.”

Drawing by John C. Tibbetts

Among the episodes Hitch personally directed, and which are personal favorites, were ones adapted from a number of stories by modern masters of macabre humor. For example, John Collier was represented by “Wet Saturday” and “Back for Christmas” (both 1956); and Roald Dahl by “Dip in the Pool” (1958), “Lamb to the Slaughter” (1958), and, perhaps best of all, “Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat” (1960). Two more Dahl stories, but not Hitchcock-directed, were “The Landlady” and “Man from the South.” Everybody should remember the latter, starring Steve McQueen as a gambler caught up in a game whose high stakes included the potential loss of a finger from a chopper.

Drawing by John C. Tibbetts

We are reminded that concurrent with the television episodes was the production and release of PSYCHO in 1960, whose black-and-white images and production crew were drawn from his television colleagues.

Drawing by John C. Tibbetts

Hitchcock a la Carte is a book to savor. Keep it at hand as you watch those wonderful boxed sets of the half-hour programs. And as you watch “Lamb to the Slaughter,” consult the book to learn about the changes in the teleplay which Dahl agreed to at the behest of Hitchcock producer Joan Harrison.

WOODY’S RANDOM HARVEST!

Chance... predetermination... free will... accident... random vs intentional actions...

Not ten minutes into Woody’s new film, IRRATIONAL MAN, we have references to Kierkegaard, Kant, and Phenomenology... Woody is at it again. New adjunct philosophy professor Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix) has come to a small New England campus to teach all that stuff. Yes, “stuff.” The alcoholic Lucas is tired, listless, impotent, sapped of ambition and meaning, and suffering from writer’s block. It’s all just “words” to him now. But when, by “accident,” he overhears news of a thoroughly corrupt local judge, he decides to ACT. To act... Existential meaning resides in MAKING YOUR OWN MEANING. Empowered by Satrean rationales, Abe stage-manages a perfect crime and knocks off the offending judge. Eureka! The world’s a better place. And he’s a new man, re-energized with new life, energy, and potency.

But what happens when his new girl friend, a student in his philosophy class (Rachel McAdams), discovers his guilt and takes a moral high ground. She’ll go to the police unless Abe can confess.

I mean, what’s a murderer to do now?

I liked IRRATIONAL MAN quite a lot. There’s genuine suspense in the second half of the picture, once everybody stops talking and Abe starts squirming. Just as Woody evoked Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy in MATCH POINT (my favorite Woody movie in recent years), now he’s trolling Dostoevski’s Crime and Punishment.

I remember a conversation I had with Woody many years ago, in 1983, about his underrated A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S SEX COMEDY. He was startlingly young then. See my portrait of him at the time, which he signed (the signature now fading)...

Drawing by John C. Tibbetts

He had just returned from the mellow countryside of the Hudson River Valley. His film caught him in a sunny mood, and the results looked as if he were channeling Ingmar Bergman’s SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT:

“American audiences as a general rule have never been great audiences for the European style film,” he told me at the time. “You know, the more urban, civilized, charmingly-paced kind of thing that one hopes to do in the movies. I’m just hop­ing that this one’s funny enough, and that since it has an American cast, it will get at least enough people in the theaters to repay its cost.”

“Is Woody Allen mellowing out?, I asked him. “A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S SEX COMEDY is very easy and Innocent.” 

Woody replied: “That’s just that a part of me that I’ll cover up quickly. You won’t see that charm again for a long time. So don’t worry...”

Indeed, subsequent films like CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, MATCH POINT, and now IRRATIONAL MAN, are bearing his prophecy out: Some of the mellow charm may be gone. But a harder edge has replaced it.

And it seems to be quite intentional.