Speaker 1: Oh he is, folks, it's show die. People say good
Speaker 1: money to see this movie.
Speaker 2: When they go out to a theater, they want clothed, sodas,
Speaker 2: hot popcorn, and no monsters.
Speaker 1: In the Projection Booth.
Speaker 3: Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring. Got it off?
Speaker 1: Hey, folks, we.
Speaker 3: Can do a special episode of the Projection Booth. I'm
Speaker 3: your host Mike White. On this episode, it is the
Speaker 3: return of Tony Lee Morale, who is speaking about his
Speaker 3: new book, A Century of Hitchcock, the Man, the Myths,
Speaker 3: the Legacy. It is a pretty fantastic eye opening book.
Speaker 3: Really kind of takes the piss out of Donald Spoto
Speaker 3: and his very unflattering biography of mister Hitchcock is I
Speaker 3: was a treat having Tony on the show and had
Speaker 3: a great time talking with him, and I hope you
Speaker 3: have a great time listening to this interview. Thanks so much, Tony.
Speaker 3: It has been a while since we spoke. Are you
Speaker 3: reminded me that it was for the morning episode, and
Speaker 3: I'm curious what you've been up to since that.
Speaker 2: Since the Marni podcast, I have been writing more about Hitchcock.
Speaker 2: I think I wrote three books since then. Three Hitchcock
Speaker 2: books as Storyboards, The Masterclass, and now the newly published
Speaker 2: A Century of Hitchcock, which is in time for the
Speaker 2: centenary of his first film, The Pleasure Garden. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it's been very hitchcock in and very eventful.
Speaker 3: So tell me about the new book.
Speaker 2: It's really something which has been in genesis for a while,
Speaker 2: certainly since twenty twelve twenty thirteen. If you remember, those
Speaker 2: two biopics on Hitchcock came out, The Girl and Hitchcock
Speaker 2: with Anthony Hopkins, and those two movies dramatizations, they generated
Speaker 2: say much publicity in the press, not just film media,
Speaker 2: but mainstream media, and that really influenced how people thought
Speaker 2: about Hitchcock. Those who hadn't known about him or just
Speaker 2: heard his name came to know him through those movies,
Speaker 2: and those movies had a lot of myths attached. So
Speaker 2: I really wanted to set a record straight with this
Speaker 2: book and tell some of the interviews I had accumulated
Speaker 2: for the other books, and including a lot of unpublished
Speaker 2: material too.
Speaker 3: And I'm so glad that you're doing this because I
Speaker 3: was just speaking with one of my co workers recently
Speaker 3: and they're like, yeah, I don't really want to watch
Speaker 3: these Hitchcock movies I've heard he was such a creep
Speaker 3: and like, but they're great. They're great movies. So I'm
Speaker 3: hoping that this book helps temper the whole creep thing too,
Speaker 3: which I would say the way that Pauline and Cale
Speaker 3: was carrying an ax for Orson Wells, it was like
Speaker 3: Donald Spotrow with his Hitchcock book for this one or
Speaker 3: is a more to that?
Speaker 1: There definitely is.
Speaker 2: So Century of Hitchcock really digs deep into Spoto's motivations.
Speaker 2: And for those who don't know about Spoto, he passed
Speaker 2: away three years ago, but he was the second biographer
Speaker 2: of Alfred Hitchcock. The first one was John Russell Taylor,
Speaker 2: who wrote hitch in nineteen seventy eight, and then after
Speaker 2: Hitchcock died in nineteen eighty, Spoto saw the chance to
Speaker 2: write his own biography, which he published in nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 2: The Dark Side of Genius. But I found out through
Speaker 2: a lot of extensive research, archival research and talking to
Speaker 2: people that Spoto had a lot of personal grievances and
Speaker 2: vendettas against Hitchcock, which I go into in the book.
Speaker 2: So I just thought it was really important for readers
Speaker 2: who are interested in Hitchcock to see the different side
Speaker 2: to the story about that whole saying there's two sides
Speaker 2: to every story, and that certainly is with the Hitchcock case.
Speaker 3: Well, how did you even get on this? Were you
Speaker 3: just saying when those two movies came out, this isn't right.
Speaker 3: I really need to correct the record or what really
Speaker 3: motivated you to dive into this.
Speaker 1: It's a combination of the movies.
Speaker 2: And I made a concerted effort in twenty twelve twenty
Speaker 2: thirteen to interview the remaining cast and crew of the
Speaker 2: Hitchcock films, who most of them sadly passed away now,
Speaker 2: but I had the foresight to get all their memories
Speaker 2: down on tape on cassette recorder. But also I found
Speaker 2: a key what I call a game changer or the
Speaker 2: smoking gun. It was really the transcript which unlocked the
Speaker 2: whole key to the mystery for me. So when Donald
Speaker 2: Spoto left the USA in early two thousands because he
Speaker 2: went to live in Denmark, he left his files at UCLA.
Speaker 2: So I went to look at those primary files in UCLA.
Speaker 2: They're in a special collection and anyone can go and
Speaker 2: make an appointment with special collections and read through them.
Speaker 1: But I found it Ford.
Speaker 2: It was very important to look at that, and he
Speaker 2: he used those for the basis of the Dark Side
Speaker 2: of Genius. And in that is a transcript from nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty with Tippy Heedron. They met six months after Hitchcock's
Speaker 2: death in nineteen eighteen an La restaurant. It's thirty six
Speaker 2: pages long, and in it Spoto actually reveals his personal
Speaker 2: grievances with Hitchcock. Basically, Hitchcock didn't like him. Hitchcock was
Speaker 2: a very good judge of character, and he just preferred
Speaker 2: John Russell Taylor as his biography. He didn't like Spoto.
Speaker 2: He didn't like Spota as a writer, and Donald felt
Speaker 2: very slighted because he was looking for a father figure.
Speaker 2: Spoto had a very troubled childhood. He had a lot
Speaker 2: of problems with his both his mother and his father.
Speaker 2: And when he saw a Hitchcock movie at the age
Speaker 2: of ten, it was Strangers on the Train kind of
Speaker 2: blew him away. And then he saw Vertigo and the
Speaker 2: Tourists and all the great hits that we all love,
Speaker 2: and they made a deep impression on him. But he
Speaker 2: was saying in a transcript he was really looking for
Speaker 2: a father figure. But then ultimately Hitchcock didn't like him,
Speaker 2: and that was just really shattering for Spoto. If you
Speaker 2: meet if you imagine meeting your idol, whether it's a
Speaker 2: film director, a producer, or a sports star or an actor,
Speaker 2: you've worshiped them your entire adult life, and then you
Speaker 2: find out they actually don't like you. So that's a
Speaker 2: really crushing blow. And on top of that, Hitchcock's dog
Speaker 2: bit Spoto. Hitchcock had a very pugnacious terrier called Sarah,
Speaker 2: she's a West Highland terrier, and she put bits Donald
Speaker 2: on the hand and created a nasty bruise, and Hitchcock
Speaker 2: pretended to fall asleep in his presence during an interview,
Speaker 2: and so.
Speaker 1: That was also very crushing.
Speaker 2: But the most crushing thing probably he never called Spoto
Speaker 2: by his name, not once in four to five years association.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine going to meet someone for interviews and
Speaker 2: you've written a book about them. He wrote The Art
Speaker 2: of Alfred Hitchcock, which wasn't very well received, and not
Speaker 2: to be even called by your first name, Spoto only
Speaker 2: realize that when Sarah vit terrier bit him, Hitchcock said, oh,
Speaker 2: Donald don't come away from Donald.
Speaker 1: Don't do that.
Speaker 2: And that was the only time he called him by
Speaker 2: his name. He had a lot of personal grievances, as
Speaker 2: you can imagine.
Speaker 3: Ah tears. Yeah, it always feels like the Tippy Headron is.
Speaker 3: That's the biggest argument against Hitchcock. And I'm curious what
Speaker 3: you took away from that and if you had a
Speaker 3: chance to talk with Tippy Heedron and get her side
Speaker 3: of the story apart from this photo stuff.
Speaker 1: I did with my Marnie book.
Speaker 2: As you know from a podcast, I went to interview
Speaker 2: Tippy back in nineteen ninety nine in her Shambala cat
Speaker 2: preserve and she never told me about harassment charges. She
Speaker 2: said that Hitchcock was very controlling and that he didn't
Speaker 2: want her to marry his her agent, Noel Marshall. But
Speaker 2: Hitchcock was very protective over his leading ladies. If you
Speaker 2: listen to Julie Andrews even on YouTube, she says the
Speaker 2: same about when Blake Edwards come on the set of
Speaker 2: Torn Curtain. Hitchcock was very protective of her, and he
Speaker 2: was very protective of Vera Miles. He just felt that
Speaker 2: he owned his actresses if they were under contract at
Speaker 2: that particular time. But the game changer for me was
Speaker 2: again a nineteen to eighty transcript. Donald's asked Tippy if
Speaker 2: there were any kind of propositions, and she says, Oh,
Speaker 2: it was never ever that kind of thing. It was always, oh,
Speaker 2: who are you dating?
Speaker 1: What are you doing this evening?
Speaker 2: But he would do that with a lot of his associates.
Speaker 2: Was very Hitchcock was very controlling, and he was also
Speaker 2: very clingy with people that he worked with. I was
Speaker 2: into being the Hunter's Evan and his wife, Anita Hunter.
Speaker 2: Evan obviously wrote The Birds, but I went to meet
Speaker 2: Anita in New York and she wasn't even an actress.
Speaker 2: She was just a screenwriter's wife. And she said that
Speaker 2: Hitchcock would bring her every single day to ask how
Speaker 2: she was, what was she going to do that day,
Speaker 2: whether it's have lunch or have a tennis lesson.
Speaker 1: And so it was just the kind of father figure he.
Speaker 2: Was, really, And I think Tipp Miscrin strewed a lot
Speaker 2: of According to a lot of cast and crew that
Speaker 2: I interviewed.
Speaker 3: You mentioned the Pleasure Garden. I have to say I'm
Speaker 3: not familiar with that other than what I've read in
Speaker 3: your book. But can you tell the audience a little
Speaker 3: bit about that film and the significance of it in
Speaker 3: his filmography.
Speaker 2: Sure, it was the first time that Hitchcock was allowed
Speaker 2: to direct a big feature. So it's extremely important in
Speaker 2: its cannon, and it's a centenary. That's why we call
Speaker 2: it the Century of Hitchcock. So it was produced in
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty five, directed in Germany, and it was released
Speaker 2: in the UK and twenty six, and it will be
Speaker 2: released in the US in twenty seven, one hundred years.
Speaker 2: And so I actually went to Bavaria to the studios
Speaker 2: outside Munich for research in the book, and I took
Speaker 2: the train out to Malchus studios where Hitchcock is a
Speaker 2: twenty five year old was directing his first movie with
Speaker 2: an all German crew. He had Alma with him as
Speaker 2: a kind of right hand woman and a scriptwriter supervisor.
Speaker 2: But it was just a very important movie. And it's
Speaker 2: just quite striking watching the first two minutes of A
Speaker 2: Pleasure Garden because you can see the Hitchcock motifs stamped
Speaker 2: rights opening two minutes for laky blondes, men looking at
Speaker 2: women and voyeurism, the trademark Hitchcocky in sense of humor,
Speaker 2: the spiral staircase motif, all crammed in two minutes. It's
Speaker 2: quite extraordinary. So Hitchcock, right from his first movie, really
Speaker 2: had sketched his signature style or through the movie.
Speaker 3: I didn't start with The Lodger, but I go back
Speaker 3: all the way to the Lodger. I haven't gone to
Speaker 3: twenty six, just twenty seven. But yeah, I agree with
Speaker 3: you as far as the Lodger and the whole wrong
Speaker 3: man accused type of thing, and just so many of
Speaker 3: those things. I really saw a lot in The Lodger
Speaker 3: when I was watching Shuto of Doubt, and just to
Speaker 3: see those themes play out throughout his whole career was amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Hitchcock always said that The Lodger was the first
Speaker 2: true Hitchcock film for those themes that you identified, such
Speaker 2: as wrongfully accused man played by Ivan Novella, the psychopath.
Speaker 2: He goes around killing blonds on the Tuesday night. There's
Speaker 2: some fantastic expressionistic shots, especially the walking on the glass ceiling.
Speaker 2: So Missus Bunting, the landlady and her daughter look up
Speaker 2: and they can see Ivan Novella's footprints pacing up and down,
Speaker 2: and so the idea that fear is actually more powerful,
Speaker 2: suggestion is more powerful with actually showing the menace, and
Speaker 2: so obviously Hitchcock used that a lot of these films,
Speaker 2: and other directors, notablee. Stephen Spielberg has taken that and
Speaker 2: just showing about the power of suggestion, what's inside the
Speaker 2: human mind and fear and imagination is very powerful.
Speaker 3: That was the thing with Blackmail that I loved so
Speaker 3: much is here. It is his first sound film, and
Speaker 3: he's already playing with sound. The whole conversation where the
Speaker 3: girl only hears the word knife being said. All the
Speaker 3: other stuff is commuted, but then every time it's knife,
Speaker 3: it's basically stabbing her to hear that.
Speaker 2: It's really clever. Can you imagine? He was responsible for
Speaker 2: the first talk key in Britain, and he's not just
Speaker 2: going to use sound, As he said, he was never
Speaker 2: interested in photographs of people talking, and so right from
Speaker 2: the get go he's thinking of inventive ways to use
Speaker 2: sound expressionistically, like the knife.
Speaker 1: Mate.
Speaker 3: If you mentioned I love that you're talking about the
Speaker 3: ceiling shot because that always felt very surreal to me.
Speaker 3: And then of course he had a friendship or at
Speaker 3: least a working relationship with sell It or Dolly for
Speaker 3: a little bit.
Speaker 2: He did, and I talk about that in my Storyboards book.
Speaker 2: I have a whole chapter on Spellbound, so I really
Speaker 2: did a deep dive into the use of those Spellbound storyboards.
Speaker 2: Darley was hired as a big name. Hitchcock was always
Speaker 2: thinking of marketing, but the original sketches that Darly wanted
Speaker 2: turned out to be just unfilmable. For example, he wanted
Speaker 2: ingrid Bergman to turn into a statue, and then a
Speaker 2: statue disintegrate into ants, and so what was almost a
Speaker 2: ten minute sequence was really just truncated to a couple
Speaker 2: of minutes in a final film.
Speaker 3: Well, he plays with psychology so much throughout all of
Speaker 3: this films that I just love the opening of Vertigo
Speaker 3: with the concentric circles and the spirographs is just it
Speaker 3: hits you from the beginning what we're in for.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it was sol Bass inspired. I think it was
Speaker 2: John Ferron with a title designer who did that. But
Speaker 2: it's so hypnotic. Coming out of a woman's eye immediately
Speaker 2: shows what the film is about. It's going to be
Speaker 2: about hypnoptism and the kind of the mask of a
Speaker 2: woman and men looking at women and voyeurism and point
Speaker 2: of view, and so it's all indumbrated in that very
Speaker 2: opening image.
Speaker 3: So to take on a book with the title of
Speaker 3: a Century of Hitchcock, that sounds like a really big task.
Speaker 3: How do you even start to parse out this is
Speaker 3: what I'm going to talk about, and this is what
Speaker 3: I'm not going to talk about.
Speaker 2: Well, I really wanted to spell a lot of the myths,
Speaker 2: and so there's a big emphasis obviously on dispelling all
Speaker 2: the myths, because every time I pick up a newspaper
Speaker 2: it really used to make my blood boil. And all
Speaker 2: of those myths have perpetuated from Spoto's book, and so
Speaker 2: I want I took it. Okay, This is a stretch
Speaker 2: of his career from nineteen twenty five to nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: five in his last film, Family Plot, But one of
Speaker 2: the major misconceptions about Hitchcock. And obviously the me too
Speaker 2: movement has had a tremendous impact because as you mentioned
Speaker 2: earlier about your friend not wanting to watch a Hitchcock film,
Speaker 2: but actually has unfortunately reached several voters. For example, in
Speaker 2: the Site and Sound recent poll in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: some people didn't want to vote for Hitchcock because he
Speaker 2: misjudged him as a predator based on all the kind
Speaker 2: of press speculation. But I've never found real evidence of
Speaker 2: that in my research, especially from a woman. I've spoken
Speaker 2: to secretary, screenwriters, actresses, script supervisors. They all said he
Speaker 2: was a gentleman. I've got several keen new witnesses, such
Speaker 2: as a von Hessler, who was his secretary during the
Speaker 2: time of Psychope. She's never spoken out before I went
Speaker 2: to visit her in LA and so that was really
Speaker 2: important looking at Hitchcock post Me Too.
Speaker 1: And I think it's interesting reading reviews.
Speaker 2: I think people are more receptive now to a debate
Speaker 2: because there was a lot of sensitivity obviously the last
Speaker 2: couple of years after Me Too, but now some of
Speaker 2: the temperatures of card and I think it's very important
Speaker 2: to look at things with due process, innocent until proven guilty,
Speaker 2: and just have really examined me at evidence and see
Speaker 2: what's right and what's wrong.
Speaker 3: I can really see people, though, wanting to come at
Speaker 3: you and just be like, what are you doing apologizing
Speaker 3: for this predator.
Speaker 2: There isn't any real evidence that he's a presator except
Speaker 2: from Tippy Hedron's allegations, and I don't blame Tipp.
Speaker 1: I do blame.
Speaker 2: Donald exaggerating a lot of those, and there's archival evidence
Speaker 2: from exaggeration, and I create many examples in the book
Speaker 2: during the making of the Birds and Marny. But Tippy's
Speaker 2: story has evolved very much, especially in the last ten years,
Speaker 2: and so as I mentioned that nineteen eighty Key transcript
Speaker 2: when she says nothing happened untoward, and then she said
Speaker 2: different things in different interviews to different people, and so
Speaker 2: it has been a growing and shifting story. And so
Speaker 2: it does beg the question, if you're making accusations as
Speaker 2: serious as she has been making to Hitchcock, then we
Speaker 2: like to see the evidence, please, and the allegations really interrogate. So,
Speaker 2: for example, I noticed in Tippy her memoir from twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: she makes a awful lot of mistakes in that about
Speaker 2: people's names and dates and things like that. For example,
Speaker 2: just give you one example. She claims she met Lou Wasserman,
Speaker 2: who was the head of Universal during the first time
Speaker 2: that she was hired, but she didn't it was Hermann Citron.
Speaker 2: Lou Wassuman was far too high up. But again she
Speaker 2: was eighty six when she wrote it with the help
Speaker 2: of his ghostwriter writer. So it's factual inaccuracies like that.
Speaker 2: So she's getting things wrong. From that level, you just
Speaker 2: wonder what else is.
Speaker 1: She getting wrong?
Speaker 3: Speaking of what else is going wrong? What other things
Speaker 3: from the photo book or just other misconceptions where you're
Speaker 3: trying to correct with this.
Speaker 2: It has it all got to do with hedron. So,
Speaker 2: for example, Spoto writes about the nineteen thirties and the
Speaker 2: thirty nine Steps. Another key source of transcript I found,
Speaker 2: again no one had really tapped into it was British
Speaker 2: Entertainment History Project. Now this was a series of oral
Speaker 2: histories done in the eighties and nineties of the British
Speaker 2: crew that Hitchcock worked with for the Thirty nine Steps.
Speaker 2: The Lady vanishes all his polished thrillers from the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 2: and I went anyone can go online, you can just
Speaker 2: look look through the transcripts. So it's just hours and
Speaker 2: hours of it, and it's all on audiotape. And one
Speaker 2: of it is the practical joke about the handcuffs and laxatives.
Speaker 1: Have you heard of this one?
Speaker 3: I don't know if I have.
Speaker 2: During the thirty nine Steps, there was a prop man
Speaker 2: and according to Spoto, Hitchcock dared him to stay handcuffed
Speaker 2: overnight in the warehouse after he was laced with a
Speaker 2: beer of laxatives, and a crew arrived next morning to
Speaker 2: find him embarrassingly soiled. But actually didn't happen the way
Speaker 2: Spoto described it. According to Dudley Lovell, who was a
Speaker 2: camera assistant on the thirty nine Steps, they all went
Speaker 2: to a pub after after work, as they tended to do,
Speaker 2: and they had a point of beer and the prop
Speaker 2: man was quite a loud mouth, and Hitchcock asked to
Speaker 2: see the handcuffs because he wanted to expect the props
Speaker 2: before filming, and then he dared with a prop man
Speaker 2: to go home with the handcuffs on all night, not
Speaker 2: after the bartender had laced his laxative his beer with
Speaker 2: a drink. So that's actually a different kind of version
Speaker 2: of a story which Dudley says, and Dudley was laughing
Speaker 2: when he was saying the story. He said it was
Speaker 2: part of a wicked pranks that went on amongst the
Speaker 2: crew as a kind of camaraderie to relieve the boredom.
Speaker 2: That's very different from Spoto's account, who said it was
Speaker 2: a very sdistic and mean thing for Hitchcock to do.
Speaker 2: So there are subtle differences. Hitchcock had a great sense
Speaker 2: of humor, and in my research, Donald Boto and his
Speaker 2: assistant on Dark Side of Genius said this. He thought
Speaker 2: he was lacking in a sense of humor, which was
Speaker 2: very detrimental for him writing a book on Hitchcock because
Speaker 2: you couldn't appreciate the jokes and the irony.
Speaker 3: It almost sounds like you just re researched everything that
Speaker 3: Spoto did all those years ago.
Speaker 2: Anyone who's read The Dark Side of the Genius and
Speaker 2: it has become a seminole tomb for the tabloid journalist.
Speaker 2: Anyone wants to quote, you know, a handcuff story or
Speaker 2: Tippy Hedron being traumatized by birds in the attic for
Speaker 2: five days, Spote said, actually needed ten days recovery. It
Speaker 2: was actually three days of rest. Again, it's just little
Speaker 2: increments like that of exaggeration, and so he just wanted
Speaker 2: to sensalize the story and he did eat that even
Speaker 2: further with his last book, Spelled By and By a Beauty,
Speaker 2: which was a basis for the TV movie the Girl
Speaker 2: in twenty twelve, and again that just accentuated the whole
Speaker 2: drama to an nth degree.
Speaker 3: What was the most surprising thing you found while you
Speaker 3: were doing your research?
Speaker 2: The transfer for me was the game changer, As I said,
Speaker 2: that really unlocked the key to the mystery about why
Speaker 2: Spoto behaved as he did. It also gave me a
Speaker 2: good insight into Tippy's character and her changing story. She
Speaker 2: actually started to adopt Donald's story in her own narrative
Speaker 2: because a couple of years later she was interviewed by
Speaker 2: Ronald Davis, who was a famous oral historian, and she
Speaker 2: started to incorporate Donald's story in her story, and so
Speaker 2: he had a tremendous influence on her. So I found
Speaker 2: that very surprising. But the kind of motive and it's
Speaker 2: interesting reading reviews. It's not just about Hitchcock. It's about
Speaker 2: how biographies are formed and framed, and who gets to
Speaker 2: tell the story, and how personal grievances can become easily
Speaker 2: public narrative. As one critic said, a lie can spread
Speaker 2: across the world very quickly while the truth is just
Speaker 2: putting on its shoes.
Speaker 1: People are very.
Speaker 2: Willing to believe the lies and the exaggeration, but no
Speaker 2: one really wants to listen or interrogate the truth because
Speaker 2: it's often not as glamorous or as exciting.
Speaker 3: And almost I was like, this could be a new
Speaker 3: season of Facts as feud.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: Another review, I said that during the writing of a
Speaker 2: Spoto chapters, he was intrigued because he could see it
Speaker 2: being turned into a movie about the spurn biographer, the
Speaker 2: love lorn loser who gets his own vengeance when the
Speaker 2: idol turns his back on him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then breaks out that poison pen and goes
Speaker 3: at it. Yeah. I know, like you said, you've written
Speaker 3: several books since the last time we spoke. How long
Speaker 3: does it take you to put together a book? And
Speaker 3: how long did it take to put together this one?
Speaker 2: As I said, this one has been particularly long genesis,
Speaker 2: I would say since twenty twelve. Wow, really fourteen years.
Speaker 2: I couldn't really publish while Donald was still alive because
Speaker 2: he was very litigious. He actually threatened to sue Patrick
Speaker 2: McGilligan back in two thousand and three member Patrick's book,
Speaker 2: which was a third biography on Hitchcock, eight hundred page
Speaker 2: team called Darkness and Light, and that he balanced it
Speaker 2: as the title said, but it wasn't all dark. There
Speaker 2: was a lot of light, and so he actually threatened
Speaker 2: to see Patrick because of bemirching his dark Side thesis.
Speaker 2: When Donald passed, people obviously were very willing to talk
Speaker 2: about him, especially his colleagues and assistants. I interviewed the
Speaker 2: editor of Little Brown, who was a wonderful guy. He
Speaker 2: worked with him on the Dark Side of Genius. I
Speaker 2: interviewed his research assistance, and it's all in the chapter
Speaker 2: about the writing of a Dark Side of Genius, and
Speaker 2: a lot of them said, unfortunately foot Donald had his
Speaker 2: own dark side and he was battling his own demons.
Speaker 3: I have to say the book it hit me with
Speaker 3: one word that just kept coming through my mind, which
Speaker 3: was bombshell. And it just felt like bombshell after bombshell,
Speaker 3: and just I love this kind of thing where you
Speaker 3: are correcting the record. So just kudos to you on
Speaker 3: all of that.
Speaker 2: Thank you a lot of information, a lot of trust,
Speaker 2: especially the chapters on the birds. Obviously, I do a
Speaker 2: deep dive into what happened with Rod Taylor and Hitchcock,
Speaker 2: which was very interesting in how that's been misconstrued and
Speaker 2: Hitchcock's controlled but Basically, Rod Taylor was arrested for drink
Speaker 2: driving during the making of The Birds when they were
Speaker 2: filming in Santa Rosa. So Hitchcock was obviously very protective
Speaker 2: of Tippy at the time, but Rod had a real
Speaker 2: axe to grind of Hitchcock after.
Speaker 3: That, What are you working on now?
Speaker 1: And had thing to do?
Speaker 2: Maybe a sixth book on Hitchcock, probably my final one.
Speaker 2: Six seems like a nice number to stop. But I
Speaker 2: just returned recently from Scott's Valley where Hitchcock had his
Speaker 2: weekend home, because every year they have their annual Hitchcock Festival,
Speaker 2: and I was a guest speaker this year, and there's
Speaker 2: some wonderful photographs and archives associated with Hitchcock's weekend home
Speaker 2: with the stars Ingrid Bergman and Carry Grant come down.
Speaker 2: So it's another side of Hitchcock. I think the public
Speaker 2: would love to see.
Speaker 3: How was the reaction to the book and to you
Speaker 3: at the celebration.
Speaker 2: It was very interesting their receptive. It was the first
Speaker 2: time I told him the story, just a couple of
Speaker 2: months before publication, so they loved the story about Sarah
Speaker 2: the West Highland Terrier, and many people identified it because
Speaker 2: as we all know dogs have a great sense of character.
Speaker 2: We often know if a person is good or bad
Speaker 2: before Sarah sense out in Donald, So we love that story.
Speaker 2: But I think, as you said, there are quite a
Speaker 2: few bombshells which surprise people.
Speaker 3: Where's the best place for people to follow you and
Speaker 3: keep up with you online?
Speaker 2: Tony Leemarle books dot com is my website and the
Speaker 2: book's available through University Press of Kentucky or probably easier
Speaker 2: on Amazon, and I now Amazon's doing there. It's discounts at
Speaker 2: the moment too.
Speaker 3: It is worth whatever amount because I had such a
Speaker 3: great time reading this book. Can I really thank you
Speaker 3: so much for reaching out and making sure that I
Speaker 3: got my hands on it great.
Speaker 2: It's a pleasure to be back on again. Thank you
Speaker 2: very much for the invite.
Speaker 3: I look forward to our next time.
Speaker 1: Thank you, s