Hitchcock’s Leytonstone

On my East London wanderings today I ended up in Leytonstone where I’d been meaning to go on a Sunday morning Hitchcock guided walk for months but never made it and then Corona kicked in. As I was driving into the High Street where Hitch was born (at No. 517) I spotted a mural of him on a side street and that prompted a small Hitchcock pilgrimage.

I got my very first job in the industry by attending a talk about Hitchcock’s The Birds at uni given by playwright David Rudkin – I met his friend, producer Stephen Mellor, after the talk and managed to get a runner job out of him at his company AKA in Farringdon. Director Alastair Reid was also at the talk – he’d recently completed the debut episode of a new series called Inspector Morse.

The first place I found was the site of the police station where Hitchcock was locked in a cell for a few hours at the behest of his father, William. Here’s how Hitch told the story of this formative event to François Truffaut:

“I must have been about four or five years old when my father sent me to the Police Station with a note. The Chief of Police read it and locked me in a cell for five or ten minutes, saying, ‘This is what we do to naughty boys.’ … I haven’t the faintest idea why I was punished. As a matter of fact, my father used to call me his ‘little lamb without a spot,’ so I truly cannot imagine what I did …” 

The lifelong impact of the trauma was an unwavering suspicion and fear of the police and judicial authorities reflected in his movies.

site of the Harrow Road police station (616-618 High Road)

Here’s a model of what the cop shop looked like when Hitch was a lad, made by illustrator and model-maker Sebastian Harding

Next I went in search of Hitchcock’s birthplace above his father’s greengrocery and poultry shop W. Hitchcock at 517 High Street. In 1899 when Alfred was born it looked something like this

one of the Alfred Hitchcock mosaics at Leytonstone Station

It was demolished in the 60s and the site is now occupied by a petrol station. Let’s just call it short-sighted.

The plaque is on the wall just to the left of the skip

Presumably he hasn’t got an English Heritage Blue Plaque here because the twats knocked down the actual building

While he has no national plaque here one was put up in in 1999 on the centenary of his birth by English Heritage at 153 Cromwell Road, South Kensington, London, SW5 0TQ in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea near his adult home. (I suspect he would have preferred Leytonstone).

In the vicinity of his birthplace there were various nods to Leytonstone’s finest son. 

Birds embedded in the pavement (though they don’t look much like gulls – the 3rd one up looks like one of the notorious London parakeets)

More un-gull-like birds in a mural beside his birthplace

complete with ‘lead pipe’ fit for murder in the billiard room

pub on the High Street

When I got home from the outing I stumbled across Vertigo on Netflix and hit play. It brought back memories of my last Hitchcock pilgrimage which was in San Francisco in August 2015.

Where Madelaine (Kim Novak) jumps into San Francisco Bay in Vertigo

Vertigo: Madeleine jumps

Coit Tower – how Madeleine finds her way back to Scottie’s apartment

Paramount Studios in Hollywood – from the same 2015 Highway 1 revisited road trip

Vertigo trivia: The opening Paramount logo is in black and white while the rest of the film, including the closing Paramount logo, is in Technicolor.

The original press book (or “showmanship manual”) for the film

A long way from the greengrocery in Leytonstone

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Hitch’s cameo in Vertigo

(Apparently this is my 1000th post on Simple Pleasures part 4 – in August 2012 Vertigo was named the best film of all time in the BFI’s once-a-decade The 100 Greatest Films of All Time poll making it more than worthy to be the subject of this 1000th post)

VE Day Walk supplementary

These images relate to VE Day 75 – The Walk

Brad Pitt & Marion Cotillard at the Hampstead location

Nicholas Winton

Nicholas Winton

Liam Gallagher

Lee Miller by Man Ray

Lee Miller goes to war as an accredited US war correspondent

Lee in Hitler’s bath tub, Munich – the day she photographed Dachau – by David Sherman

Orwell’s wartime broadcasts

Eileen Maud Blair – Orwell’s wife

VE Day 75 – The Walk

Beginning of my VE day walk – a lone hint of celebration on our street – East Finchley, London N2

Coronavirus has stopped normal access to the commonwealth war graves in St Pancras & Islington cemetery

The commonwealth war graves in St Pancras & Islington cemetery earlier in the lockdown (before they closed the cemeteries)

I’m sitting just beneath Emile Guillaume’s La Délivrance known locally as The Naked Lady – it’s a WW1 memorial but it is opposite the flat where my great-uncle Bruno lived, a concentration camp survivor & refugee from Leipzig Germany, so its WW2 victory for me

Flowers for children VE Day 75, Henly’s Corner

The clock tower memorial to WW1 & WW2 at Golders Green with its distinctive blue

WW2 poetry Keith Douglas in flower garden at Golders Hill – wisteria no hysteria, stiff upper lip

Comment: unicornsalmost

‪This Sunday, on @bbcradio3 : Unicorns, Almost – a play about the life and poetry of Keith Douglas https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000j2bn‬

Hampstead war memorial to both world wars – a few hundred yards from where I was born, overlooking all of London

Film location of ‘Allied’ movie with Brad Pitt & Marion Cotillard set during WW2

Film location of ‘Allied’

I met a family sitting out on their front steps down the road from here, told them what I was doing and they pointed me to…

Nicholas Winton saved 669 Jewish children from the Nazis when based in this house in Hampstead

Liam Gallagher‘s RAF roundel window at his old place in Hampstead

Photographer Lee Miller‘s house Hampstead – she photographed WW2 for Vogue magazine including the liberation of Dachau & Hitler’s bathtub in Munich

My dad remembered vividly a doodlebug V1 exploding in the corner of this pond near his childhood home – I never walk by without thinking of him Hampstead Heath, VE day 75

George Orwell‘s house – his wife Eileen O’Shaughnessy worked at the Ministry of Information during WW2 (in the censorship department) in Senate House, University of London & he famously used it as the model for the Ministry of Truth in 1984 – Orwell was in the Home Guard & broadcast for the BBC

That’s the VE day 75 walk done – 9 hours, 24,600 steps, good fun

The Casting Game No. 127 Take 2 – moody with big chin

I was struggling to figure out who actor Stanley Holloway looks like and think I may have put my finger on who wouldn’t quite come to the surface on my original attempt…

Stanley Holloway (in Eva – 1962)

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Morrissey of The Smiths

The Casting Game No. 127 – moody 60s male leads

Sean Connery

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Stanley Holloway (in Eva – 1962)

The Casting Game No. 288

Humphrey Bogart

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Albert Camus

The Casting Game No. 403 – bushy eyebrows

John Cassavetes

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Martin Landau

I was watching John Cassavetes’ Opening Night (1977) at the Prince Charles Cinema, Leicester Square last night when this one occurred to me. I’m looking forward to seeing one of my new Red Bull Media House commissions in the same cinema later this week.

As a bonus casting prompted by the same film I offer…

Ben Gazarra

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Liev Schreiber

(This one’s a bit harder to capture in photos, it’s attitudinal as well.)

The Casting Game No. 402 – Six Nations Special

Liam Williams

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Spud in ‘Trainspotting’

(I worked with Ewen Bremner in one of his very first roles at Melrose Film Productions around 1989)

The Casting Game No. 59

Robert Downey Jnr

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Sam Mendes

…at least Mendes looked a lot like Iron Man at the Q&A after the screening of 1917 at the Odeon Leicester Square last week.

9th January 2020

Best of luck to Roger Deakins (one of my 4 first bosses, at Solus), Pippa Harris (whose Wikipedia entry I got rolling after she helped me with the research on this old blog post ) and Nina Gold (who I went to a ball with at uni back when she was called Gould – given the competition this year, getting a look-in on the acting/casting front is rather a long shot) in the Oscar nominations this morning.

Update: 2pm 13/1/20

1917 has been nominated at this year’s Oscars for Best Picture (Pippa and her business partner Sam Mendes); Best Cinematography (Roger – could he pull off a back-to-back Oscar victory? I reckon there’s a very good chance); 8 other nominations including Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Production Design, Original Score, Hair & Make-up, and VFX. We’ll see the outcomes on 9th February.

The Casting Game No. 58 – Messiah Complex

Michelle Monaghan (Eva in Netflix’s Messiah)

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Michael Jackson (singer of Earth Song)

Earth Song at The Brits Awards 1996 where Jarvis Cocker of Pulp accused him of “pretending to be Jesus”