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Ingrid Bergman and Grace Kelly in Hitchcock: Interesting Rhymes and Contrasts

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Elsewhere, I did a post on Cary Grant and James Stewart as Hitchcock's two favorite leading men: each man made four movies apiece for Hitchcock, and there are other "rhymes" to their work for Hitchcock, too. But also: contrasts. As another poster mentioned, someone said that "Stewart was the man Hitchcock thought he was; Grant was the man Hitchcock wanted to be."

I "led" with Grant and Stewart because -- I must frankly admit -- I've always been more interested in male movie stars than female movie stars. As a man, male movie stars have been my role models for decades now, from Grant and Stewart to Wayne and Fonda; from the sixties triumvirate of Newman, McQueen, and Connery to the 70's counterculture fellows like Nicholson, Pacino, and DeNiro...and to today. Though it sure has been hard to accept Tom Cruise, Leo DiCaprio,and Matt Damon after growing up with Lee Marvin and Burt Lancaster.

Hitchcock got to use some, but not all , of the major male stars of his multi-decade career. Grant and Stewart mainly, but also Peck(twice) and then "one time only" shots with Clift, Fonda, and Newman.

That said, Hitchcock seems to have had better luck with the ladies...as stars of his movies, that is.

And again, a pattern: as with Grant and Stewart, two female stars rose above the rest: Ingrid Bergman and Grace Kelly. Three movies apiece -- thus "shadowing" Grant and Stewart at four apiece.

Interesting to me: Grace Kelly was the literal epitome of "the Hitchcock blonde" -- cool, prim but "sexy beneath the surface"(Hitchcock talked often of such women "ripping a man's clothes off in a cab"). And when Kelly became Princess Grace after making To Catch a Thief for Hitchcock in 1955(with a movie or two after that for others), its as if Hitchcock spent the 25 years of his career(and life) ...trying to duplicate Grace.

With the odd exception of redhead Shirley MacLaine in The Trouble With Harry(in a role first offered to Kelly), its nothing but blondes for a decade:

Doris Day
Vera Miles
Kim Novak
Eva Marie Saint
Janet Leigh(AND Miles back again)
Tippi Hedren(famously, an unknown model "turned into Grace Kelly)')

Then, after a "one off" dalliance with brunette Julie Andrews, Hitchcock finished up with a few more, lesser known blondes:

Dany Robin(Topaz)
Barbara Leigh Hunt and Billie Whitelaw(Frenzy)
Barbara Harris(Family Plot)
Karen Black(Family Plot, but only when wearing a blonde wig as disguise.)

Now, those are the blondes AFTER Grace Kelly, but there were some Hitchcock blondes BEFORE Grace Kelly, too:

Madeline Carroll
Joan Fontaine(two films, one the only Oscar winning perf in a Hitchcock film)
Priscilla Lane

Though...it can't be said that either Teresa Wright or Tallulah Bankhead were blondes, so...no dice there. Sometimes Hitchcock had to go brunette. (Nowhere moreso, I'd say, than with the raven-haired Ruth Roman in Strangers on a Train.)

Grace Kelly ended up with a true record among Hitchcock players: three of his films in a row(for HITCHCOCK, that is; she worked so much in that period that she squeezed in other movies, like The Country Girl and The Bridges at Toko-Ri, AROUND the HItchcocks.)

The first one -- Dial M for Murder -- started with Kelly in a bright red dress playing a cheating wife(on her cheating husband) who is reduced to a dowdy Death's Row inmate before redemption arrives. The second one -- Rear Window -- is a stone classic, landmark film which everybody puzzles over today -- why is that hot young blonde going nuts for that mean old man she's dating?(James Stewart.)

But it was Grace Kelly's final film for Hitchcock in which she reaches a kind of perfection. "To Catch a Thief" isn't a classic on the level of Rear Window, but it was certainly a hit and Kelly found her best "match" ever in...Cary Grant. HE was older than Kelly, too -- he was older than Stewart, in fact -- but THIS time, it doesn't look like "opposites attract" -- they are matched as physical beauties, in suave voices(his British with a change; hers American with a British-like lilt), in sophistication. Much as Stewart's final role HAD to be Vertigo, and Grant's final Hitchcock role HAD to be North by Northwest, Grace Kelly's final role HAD to be To Catch A Thief -- from her sexy bathing suit to her pure white dress to her golden dress ball gown -- To Catch a Thief was the epitome of glamour for Kelly, with her greatest male co-star and...the end. With Hitchcock, at least.

Not that he didn't try to get her back. I've read of Kelly being approached for: The Trouble With Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much(to re-team her with Stewart); the unmade Flamingo Feather(yet AGAIN to re-team her with Stewart); and North by Northwest(now, THAT might have bested To Catch a Thief for perfection, but Eve Kendall doesn't get to wear a golden dress ball gown.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

There is no record of Kelly (as Princess Grace) being approached for The Wrong Man(where she could have been dowdy, like in The Country Girl) or Vertigo(good for Madeleine, not good for Judy) or Psycho(the mind reels at Grace Kelly in the shower scene, and she'd have been overqualified for the Miles role.) I think Hitchcock dabbled with the thought of Kelly in The Birds, but "made" a Kelly instead. Tippi Hedren.

And then came Marnie. Princess Grace said "yes" to that one, and Hitchcock had a great hook for the otherwise rather pedestrian drama. Imagine: the string of great films from Vertigo through The Birds COULD have led to "the return of Princess Grace to the movies."

Ultimately, Princess Grace pulled out. Her subjects objected, and there were tax issues. But there was also the story of "Marnie" itself: a sexually frigid basket case of a woman who is raped by her unloving husband and revealed to have a sordid childhood as the child of a hooker who brought tricks home. As Hitchcock later said, "I offered Grace the wrong role." Uh, yeah. Tippi took it...personal disaster for Hitch followed.

But, really, from Psycho on, what role WOULD have worked for Grace Kelly? I suppose the Julie Andrews role in Torn Curtain was harmless (with an opening sex scene under blankets) . In real life in the late sixties, Kelly's beauty started to fade and she got matronly(she saw THAT coming, that's one reason she became a princess.) And there was no role for her among the French folks of Topaz or the British folks of Frenzy. I suppose that Grace Kelly COULD have come back as a middle-aged version of Madame Blanche - the comical Barbara Harris in Family Plot (opposite an older co-star -- Michael Caine, maybe?)

But, no -- it was over. Grace Kelly properly ended with Hitchcock on To Catch a Thief, and I think only North by Northwest would have afforded her a great Hitchcock comeback role.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Its funny, given how much Grace Kelly "set the mold" for the "Cool Hitchcock Blonde" that the actress who was Hitchcock's favorite before Kelly was...not particularly blonde.

Ingrid Bergman.

Honestly, WAS Bergman blonde in any of her three Hitchcock movies? Spellbound or Notorious(back to back, ill-matched with Peck, perfectly matched with Grant -- but both were hits)? Under Capricorn? (In Technicolor, yet.)

Whereas Grace Kelly came to Hitchcock somewhat unformed (she had the hit of High Noon, and a third lead in Mogambo, but not much else), Hitchcock got Bergman when she was hot: Casablanca had been two years before he used her for Notorious, and the two films together are rather a matched pair of agonizingly unrequited love for Bergman with a tough, cynical man.

Hitchcock also got with Ingrid Bergman the "mysterioso" of a heavy foreign accent. For a filmmaker who often told stories of "ordinary women"(Young Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt, mother Doris Day in Man Who Knew Too Much, bourgeoise secretary Janet Leigh in Psycho) HERE was a truly EXOTIC woman. An international woman of mystery in Notorious. A bespectacled Brainy Psychologist in Spellbound. A florid and flamboyant drunken wreck in Under Capricorn. These were NOT regular women.

The fifties were rough on Ingrid Bergman. She had a child out of wedlock (with another director, Hitch must have been irked) and was exiled from Hollywood for a few years. Physically, she too got "matronly." In "Indiscreet"(1958) opposite a 12-years older Cary Grant, HE looked even more suave than ever (with a little gray) , but SHE looked, well, "mature."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

That said, Ingrid Bergman soldiered on through the 60s and 70's , retaining her sex appeal for as long as possible(opposite romantic leads who ranged from Tony Perkins to Walter Matthau) and then became a Meryl Streep-like grand dame and character actress. She is truly sweet and funny as the Nervous Nellie in "Murder on the Orient Express" who keeps talking about "the little Brown babies" she raised as a nurse in Africa or wherever it was. Give that woman an Oscar!

Unlike Grant and Stewart, who "mixed and matched" their Hitchcock movies through the 40s and 50's, Bergman and Kelly rather "bifurcated" the Hitchcock canon: Bergman was his muse of the 40's; Kelly became his muse of 50's. It is interesting that both women were paired with Grant. Bergman got the young, black-haired, luscious Grant of Notorious. Kelly got the more seasoned and settled "grumpy Grant" of To Catch a Thief. Grant made them both look good (and grumbled in an interview about Notorious -- "Hitch threw THAT one to Ingrid.")

In my post about Grant and Stewart, I rather "collected" the other major Hitchcock men -- and they were rather a small bunch: Clift, Fonda, Newman. I suppose I could here take note that some major actors played Hitchcock VILLAINS -- Joseph Cotton, Robert Walker, Ray Milland, Anthony Perkins, James Mason -- but none of them save Mason were really ever as big as Grant or Stewart. Still, when those guys played the villains, the heroes were rather bland: MacDonald Carey, Farley Granger, Bob Cummings, John Gavin...eh, hey, wait, not CARY GRANT opposite Mason. That's a true "matched star pair." Another reason that NXNW is so great.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Meanwhile, back at the ladies. Setting aside Bergman and Kelly as Hitchcock's two favorite actresses, he sure had a lot of other interesting ladies fronting others of his movies.

Take a look: Madeleine Carroll, Margaret Lockwood, Maureen O'Hara, Joan Fontaine(TWICE , once for Oscar) , Judith Anderson, Carole Lombard, Priscilla Lane(a real 40s hottie, you ask me); Teresa Wright, Tallulah Bankhead(in pretty much, to my knowledge, her ONLY major movie role, am I wrong?) , Margaret Leighton, Jane Wyman(coming off of a Best Actress Oscar), Marlene Dietrich(who always confused her Hitchcock film with one of her Billy Wilder films, Witness for the Prosecution), Ruth Roman(dissed in the Hitchcock lit, but I think she was kinda sexy then), Kasey Rogers aka Laura Elliott(Miriam in Strangers on a Train, a spectacularly promiscuous character for 1951); Anne Baxter, Brigitte Auber(the "visual" inspiration for Shirley MacLaine being cast in The Trouble With Harry); Barbara Bel Geddes....

The "trifecta" of Kim Novak, Eva Marie Saint, and Janet Leigh in three-in-a-row Hitchcock greats.

Vera Miles -- two Hitchcock movies, one as a star(The Wrong Man) one almost as support(Psycho.)

Suzanne Pleshette, Diane Baker(brunette rivals to Tippi Hedren), Julie Andrews(the final MAJOR female star in a Hitchcock film), Karin Dor(a raven haired Cuban beauty for Hitchcock), Barbara Leigh Hunt and Anna Massey in Frenzy(two tragic victims, one blonde, one red head), and the three other women in the same film; Barbara Harris and Karen Black as a matched pair in Family Plot.

That's a lot of ladies. And, overall, a lot more STAR females than star males in the Hitchcock canon. (Despite his current bad press on his relationships with women, Hitch sure seems to have worked with a lot of them.)

Indeed, that's so many of them that...they can wait for another post. After all, they all deserve it.