Hitchcock's Blonds by Laurence Leamer
Alfred Hitchcock was no Harvey Weinstein. And unlike many Hollywood titans of his era, there is little evidence of a casting couch in his decision making—at least not a physical couch. Hitchcock was always casting to type for his lead female roles; he preferred blondes, and his working relationships with women were always queasy with unresolvable sexual attraction.
All of this has been spelled out in biographies by Donald Spoto, Patrick McGilligan and others. However, the director’s obsession is the focus of Laurence Leamer’s latest book, Hitchcock’s Blondes. Despite his catchy title, Leamer goes beyond Grace Kelly, Kim Novak and company to reconstruct the director’s attitudes toward women, generally. The author raises and drops the possibility that Hitchcock was also attracted to men. “But to a fearful Catholic like Hitchcock, the idea that he would act on his temptation was unthinkable,” Leamer proposes. The director’s temptations with women were far more verifiable.
Hitchcock was a voyeur and voyeurism was intrinsic to his filmmaking (Rear Window). Leamer traces the director’s proclivities to his lower middle class London childhood with a mother (mothers were intrinsic to his films) who doled out love to her son by the teaspoon. Leamer tracked down a psychoanalyst (intrinsic to Hitchcock’s films) who diagnosed the director as having Asperger’s. “He was a loner, an ogler, who sublimated his lack of sex into a voyeuristic cinema technique,” Leamer writes.
Hitchcock’s Blondes explores the director’s relationship with his wife, Alma Reville, a screenwriter, assistant director, manager of his affairs and the critic to whom he most deferred. Had she been born in the late 20th century, Reville could have enjoyed a career on her own, but she accepted the limits imposed by her epoch and her husband.
Hitchcock’s Blondes: The Unforgettable Women Behind the Legendary Director’s Dark Obsession is published by Putnam.
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