The actor Alfred Hitchcock compared to a volcano covered with snow: “She’s sensitive, disciplined, and very sexy”
Without counting the master director’s own frequent cameos in his own work, thriller pioneer Alfred Hitchcock had a tendency to work with the same actors over and over again. Iconic Hitchcock roles were given to big names of the time like Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and James Stewart.
That didn’t stop the oft-acerbic Hitchcock from badmouthing thespians as a whole. Speaking to Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci at Cannes in 1963, he didn’t pull any punches. “When they aren’t cows, they’re children: that’s something else I’ve often said. And everyone knows that there are good children, bad children, and stupid children. The majority of actors, though, are stupid children.”
It is hard to picture a director in the limelight being so brazenly rude about their colleagues, but Hitchcock operated in a time long before the kind of media scrutiny that would have cancelled his career in the 21st century. He continued: “They’re always quarrelling, and they give themselves a lot of airs. The less I see of them, the happier I am. I had much less trouble directing fifteen hundred crows than one single actor. I’ve always said that Walt Disney has the right idea. His actors are made of paper; when he doesn’t like them, he can tear them up.”
It’s hard to tell how firmly Hitchcock’s tongue was planted in his cheek, but when Fallaci turned the conversation to one of his most frequent starlets, he had some nicer things to say. Grace Kelly, then Princess of Monaco, appeared in Hitchcockian thrillers like High Noon, Dial M for Murder and Rear Window. Her ascension into the royal family of a small European nation saw her leave Hollywood, but Hitchcock fought to have her appear in later films like Marnie as the titular kleptomaniac, eventually played by Tippi Hedren.
“She’s sensitive, disciplined, and very sexy,” Hitchcock said, outing himself as something of a fabulist in an interview where he had just finished saying he never thinks about sex. For Hitchcock, Kelly represented something magnificent with a touch of the sublime: “People think she’s cold. Rubbish! She’s a volcano covered with snow. I was sorry I couldn’t make Marnie with her, almost as sorry as she was.”
Marnie wasn’t ever likely to become one of Hitchcock’s better pictures, but it certainly suffered after Kelly was forced to withdraw from production following public outcry. After the news broke that Kelly was planning to appear in an erotically charged thriller, backlash from Monaco saw her decline the project. She eventually wrote to Hitchcock that it was “heartbreaking” for her to have to leave the picture.
The director’s take on the situation appears a little different, focusing on diplomatic issues at the time between France and Monaco and Kelly not wishing to rock the boat with any high-profile moves. It was a part of Kelly’s position, both as Hollywood and legitimate royalty, that would see her acting career greatly suffer.
“She was very keen to do it, you know,” the director remembered. “In point of fact, I wasn’t the one to go after her. It was she who came after me: ‘Hitch, haven’t you got a part for me?’ ‘Yes, Grace. The part of a lady robber.’ ‘Ah, splendid!’ Unfortunately, we broke the news at the wrong moment, when Ranieri was having trouble with De Gaulle, and so they said she wanted to leave her husband just when he was having trouble with De Gaulle.”
The flagrant filmmaker was typically bullish when faced with losing his preferred actor for the part: “Who could have expected it? Too bad. I’ll use another blonde.”
Hitchcock ended up casting Birds-alumni Tippi Hedren in the role, starring opposite a young Sean Connery. The dark trauma-related themes and use of rape as a narrative device have seen the film remembered as one of the most controversial entries in Hitchcock’s filmography, not least due to accusations of sexual pressuring by Hedren against the director. It would appear Kelly had a lucky escape.
