Archive for the ‘actress’ Category
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.

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


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


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.





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.





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.




(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)
The Casting Game No. 76

Monica Vitti (L’Eclisse 1962)
AS

Princess Diana
The Casting Game No. 58 – Messiah Complex

Michelle Monaghan (Eva in Netflix’s Messiah)
AS

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”
The Casting Game

Gemma Arterton (Vita & Virginia – Vita Sackville-West)
AS

Audrey Tautou (Amélie)
Marilyn & Ulysses

Marilyn reading the best book ever written
In my last post I included this photo by Eve Arnold, shot in Long Island in 1955. If you’re wondering whether it was just a pose and whether blondes prefer Irish gentlemen as a source of reading matter, this letter from Eve Arnold contains the answer:

Eve Arnold to Richard Brown, 20th July 1993
The letter is a response to Richard Brown, Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Leeds, a Joyce specialist. Brown subsequently wrote an essay entitled Marilyn Monroe Reading Ulysses: Goddess or Postcultural Cyborg? Which is the kind of title that puts people off of academia. But his query to Arnold was an interesting one and I’m glad he asked.

The Long Island playground shoot 1955
Marilyn was frequently photographed reading – which in my book is a big plus even when you are a blonde bombshell.

Close to home: Arthur Miller

Turning over an old leaf: Walt Whitman
Quotation capturing the essence of the digital age
“sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together”

Marilyn reading the best book ever written
This quotation is often attributed to Marilyn Monroe but that seems to be a typical web copycat quote error. Marilyn was pretty articulate and said plenty of interesting things but nobody seems to have a source for this. It derives from a longer quote:
- “I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right. You believe lies so that you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”
I like the last line because it captures how, when established institutions and practices fall apart due to the disintermediation made possible by the internet, new opportunities emerge in the gaps between the crumbling edifices.

Marilyn thinking about Ulysses