Alfred Hitch Blog: Wemisse- Vertigo (1958) ‘I Need You To Be Madeline For a While’

Source:Alfred Hitch Blog- Kim Novak, under the Golden Gate Bridge.

Source:The New Democrat 

“(My analysis of Vertigo will be divided into two parts.)

In 1956 Paramount purchased two books as potential Alfred Hitchcock projects: Flamingo Feather, and D’entre Les Morts (From Among the Dead). He was planning to make Flamingo Feather first; it was announced in the trade papers as his next movie, and he went so far as to take a trip to South Africa, scouting locations for the movie. What he saw there discouraged him. He felt the movie would be costly, and the political subject matter touchy. So after returning to Hollywood, he scrapped this movie for From Among the Dead, the movie that would become Vertigo…

From the Alfred Hitch Blog 

“I need you to be Madeleine for a while”

Source:The Monty Andrew- Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak.

From The Monty Andrew

I saw North by Northwest for like the 200th time last night ( not that I’ve been counting ) because it’s my favorite movie and I hadn’t seen in about like an entire year and it has my favorite actor in Cary Grant, as well as my favorite director Alfred Hitchcock. I was just in the mood to see that movie again and watch Cary make a comedian of himself in every basic scene in the movie, with absolutely no direction from Hitch. The scene where he’s climbing out his hospital room and sneaking into another room from by going out his window into another window, is a perfect example of that. So I’m sort of in a Hitchcock mood, plus I love Kim Novak as well.

Source: Paste Magazine- Hollywood Goddess Kim Novak 

Vertigo is not the perfect movie, but North by Northwest is, but Vertigo has a lot things in it that are perfect. Where the movie takes place and is shot which is San Francisco, which is at least arguably the best looking big city in America, if not the world. You couldn’t shoot a movie in a better looking big city than San Francisco. The director who I don’t need to mention. The two lead characters with Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak. Kim playing a woman who in many ways is a lot like herself. Sort of shy and lacking in self-confidence. Which is almost impossible to believe when you look at Kim Novak and then she’s also a very good if not great actress as well, because she’s so real and turns herself into the women she plays.

Source: WTOP Radio- Hollywood Goddess Kim Novak 

To be familiar with ‘I want you to be Madeline for a while”, you have to be familiar with Vertigo itself. Which should go without saying, but it’s about a man who hires an old classmate of his who is a retired San Francisco police detective ( or inspector ) who is now in retirement completely and I guess living off of his pension, to essentially spy on his wife, because he believes she in some type of trouble. Or that’s what he tells Scottie ( played by Jimmy Stewart ) but really what this is about is Gavin Elster ( played by Tom Helmore ) playing Scottie for a fool and making him believe that Madeline ( played by Kim Novak ) is in love with him. And he falls in love with her and then she suddenly dies in the movie or that is what Gavin and Madeline want Scottie to believe. And he goes crazy and has a nervous breakdown and is not able to communicate at all and even does some time in a rest home to recover from his condition.

And then Madeline comes back, except that Madeline is now Judy Barton ( also played by Kim Novak ) and Scottie sees Judy who he believes strongly resembles Madeline at a store and Scottie is still in love with Madeline and decides he wants Judy to be Madeline and dress like Madeline and go to the same restaurants and places that Scottie and Madeline went to when they had their affair. Except that Judy is really Madeline Elster and she never actually died. She and her husband are just playing this scam on Scottie that he never figures out ( even though he’s a detective ) until the last scene in the movie. Where she actually does die for real.

If I had to do a scale for the best Hitchcock movies of all-time, Vertigo would be like number five. Alfred Hitchcock made a lot of films and made a lot of great films, but North by Northwest, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, Dial M For Murder, Family Plot, are all better so Vertigo wouldn’t even be in my top five, but again Hitch made a lot of great movies, so number 6 is actually pretty good. But it had a great cast, great director, the writing is a little cheesy with grown men and women using words like darn with no sense that any of these people are very religious at all and there in San Francisco and in the late 1950s when moderate swearing in Hollywood movies was becoming somewhat noticeable. But it has am iterating plot and Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak, are both very entertaining by themselves and Kim is hot, sexy, and adorable enough to get met to watch her in anything that she does.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1961)

Source:Alfred Hitchcock- Diana Dors & David Stewart. Perhaps you can tell for yourself who is who.

Source:The Daily Review

If you’re familiar with the movie Berserk from 1967, The Sorcerer Apprentice should look at least somewhat familiar to you. Diana Dors, is in both films. In Berserk, she plays an assistant to a magician at a circus. In The Sorcerer Apprentice she plays an assistant to a magician at a carnival. In Berserk, she thinks she knows who the killer is. In The Sorcerer, she puts the killer up to killing her husband. In neither film is Diana an angel, she just looks like one in both films. As well as anything else she’s ever done, but that is one of the reasons why she was a great actress. Because she could fool people with her hot baby-face looks and play the killer, or a killer angel as well as it can be played. If you’re familiar with the movie The Unholy Wife, where she tries to frame her husband for killing his best friend, you should have an idea what I’m talking about here.

The Sorcerer Apprentice, looks very entertaining to me, but I’m not sure it is very believable. You have a sick kid (I guess) who should be back in the institution that he escaped from (no joke) who gets picked up off the street by a magician. Who picks him up in real-life and is no trick, (ha hah) who I think can tell this kid is not completely there and is told by the kid that he’s escaped from his home. And decides to take him in anyway instead of reporting him to the proper authorities. (Damn! That sounds corny.) Again Diana, is no angel, she just looks like one and can tell Hugo (the kid) likes her and is attractive to her and she’s cheating on her magical husband (lets say) the magician and wants to move on from him. And tries to put the kid up to killing her husband. The kid is at least 4-5 beers short of s six-pack and thinks this would be fun or something.

You would think this couple having seen this kid and figuring out that he’s not completely there and needs close supervision (to put it mildly) and are less qualified to take care of kids than the guy who freaks out when he finds out that his girlfriend is pregnant with his baby and ditches her, that they could give him a bite to eat, find out where he came from, if not turn him in and move on. But instead they keep him around even though they are too busy to take care of him and probably don’t want to either. But no! That could be too boring for the great Alfred Hitchcock. Instead of making it a boring everyday story, they make a killer out of this gorgeous baby-face wife whose cheating on her husband with a high-wire artist (whose probably scared of heights) and this unfortunate boy. Who perhaps nobody wants to take care of him and has really no one who loves him. Just one example of why Alfred Hitchcock was such a great director.

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: Run For Doom (1963) Starring Diana Dors

Source:IMDB- English Muffin Diana playing Nikki Carrol, on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, in 1963.

Source:The New Democrat

“A young doctor continues to date a beautiful showgirl in spite of warnings that her three previous marriages ended badly for her past husbands.” 

From IMDB 

“Dr. Don Reed falls in love with a nightclub singer named Niki Carroll despite the warnings of his seriously ill father and her ex-boyfriend who both tell him she is not good for him. Niki accepts his marriage proposal, but Don’s father dies when he hears the news. The newlyweds take an exotic honeymoon cruise with the inheritance money. During the cruise, Don becomes enraged when he sees Niki kissing another man and he accidently pushes him overboard. Niki convinces Don to keep his mouth shut and since no one saw the incident he gets away with murder. Niki eventually grows tired of him. She tells him that she is going to leave him. She also wants all his money or else she will tell the police about the murder. Niki also dumps her band leader boyfriend, but instead of accepting this he strangles her. The police call Don to the scene. He examines his wife’s body in the bedroom and discovers that she is still alive. Believing that the band leader is going to take the rap for murder, Don finishes her off. When he rejoins the police he is shocked to learn that the police knew that Niki was still alive. They had told the bandleader she was dead in order to calm him down. The police then inform Don that they like to finish questioning her. (TV.com)”

Source:EBAY- Alfred Hitchcock's TV baby.

From The Hitchcock Zone

“Diana Dors – How Long Has This Been Going On” 

Source:Ramon Bautista- English Muffin Diana Doras guest-starring on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1963.

From Ramon Bautista

“Diana Dors – Just One Of Those Things (The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, 1963)”

Source:Mark Moyer- English Muffin Diana Dors, on the Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1963. She plays nightclub singer and gold digger Nikki Carroll.

From Mark Moyer 

“Diana Dors: Just One of Those Things”

Source:Calango of Corona- English Muffin Diana Dors, on the Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1963.

I think Run For Doom is Alfred Hitchcock at his best because you see the full-scale of what he wanted to give his audience. A suspense/thriller involving people who were not saints or angels and not devils either, but real people who tend to be somewhere in between. With clever writing and a lot of humor and the female lead being a goddess. A gorgeous ,sexy woman who is also very adorable and yet very clever and witty. Which is Diane Dors at her best, Jayne Mansfield who was also on this series and several other women who appeared on this series.

Run For Doom is about a nightclub singer with a bad history of marriages and relationships where the men in her life do not survive the relationship. And she walks away with a lot of money from the experiences.

Diana Dors plays Nikki Carroll the nightclub singer and she’s performing one night and is introduced to a young doctor. Dr. Don Reed played by John Gavin and they naturally hit it off. Reed being a doctor is probably Nikki’s main interest him, but he’s a young doctor who doesn’t have a lot of money yet.

Dr. Reed has an ailing very wealthy father and his relationship with Nikki goes well enough for him to want to marry Nikki. Reed has gotten several warnings about Nikki’s history with men and her dead husbands and is warned not to pursue her. But I guess he’s blinded by his love for a woman who doesn’t love him and decided to propose and marry her anyway.

Reed’s father dies after finding out that his son is going to marry Nikki and now Reed is a very wealthy man. And naturally Nikki looses personal interest in Reed and looks to get out of the marriage.

Nikki has something that she can blackmail her husband on: Dr. Reed accidentally killed someone on their honeymoon by pushing a man over the cruise boat that they were on. And they didn’t bother to report the incident. Nikki tells the doctor to give her his money or she’ll report the killing to the police.

Nikki also has a long-term on and off again boyfriend who wants her back. And knows what she is up to with her husband and decides to step in to get a piece of the action. And they have a physical struggle that leads to him strangling her and thinking he killed her.

To be honest with you: Diana Dors was the main reason why I’m so interested in this show. But it is a very entertaining and at times a pretty funny show as well. With Diana playing a woman that is so cunning personally and bright and yet she looks too sweet and cute to hurt, let alone kill anyone. And yet she has a history of dead boyfriends and husbands. But in this marriage she is the one who doesn’t survive the affair.

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: Hangover (1962) Tony Randall & Jayne Mansfield

Source:Alfred Hitchcock- Hollywood Babydoll Jayne Mansfield on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1962.

Source:The New Democrat

A chance to see Jayne Mansfield with short hair. Don’t worry, she’s still baby-face adorable and hot with short hair. Tony Randall plays a talented, but alcoholic advertiser who’s drinking has gone too far to the point that it costs him his job, which is a very good job and his wife. And as well as his memory where he doesn’t remember the night before. Where he gets kicked out of a bar, screws up his presentation at work for one of his clients and wife walks out on him. He also forgets about an affair he had with Marion played by Jayne Mansfield.

He actually shows up at work the next morning thinking everything is normal and that nothing incredible happened the night before. He doesn’t even remember being fired and is wondering what Marion is doing at his home the next morning. He shows up to work locked out of his office where they tell him again that he was fired. And essentially spends the rest of the day trying to figure out what happened the day before.

As Alfred Hitchcock said on this show himself, this was about showing people the dangers of alcoholism, which I’m even surprised that term was even around in the early 1960s. And would assume that people who were alcoholics were considered to be mentally weak and not people with disease that needed serious treatment. But alcoholism causes Hadley Purvis played by Tony Randall his job and his wife and he loses his temper and takes it out on Marion.

Movie Clips: Vertigo (1958) Jimmy Stewart & Kim Novak: 'Let's Wander Together'

Source:The New Democrat

I could simply listen and watch Kim Novak until Israel and Palestine came to peace and agree to a two-state solution. There's just something about her voice and those eyes and cheeks that just makes me want to go "aw, she's so sweet and sexy". Angie Dickinson who is from the same generation as Kim has the exact same effect on me. And not only that, but her movies were really good and she worked for and with great people like Jimmy Stewart and Alfred Hitchcock. So you got to see her in great roles.

This scene right here is just coming after Madeline spending the night or a big part of the night at Scottie's apartment in San Francisco the nigh before. They were complete strangers, but she fell into the San Francisco Bay and Scottie rescued her and brought her back to his place. He was paid by her husband to follow her because the husband claimed to be worried about her mental condition. What Scottie wasn't aware of was that a lot of this was part of a big act that the husband was setting up to cover up a murder. And they were using Scottie in this process.
Source:Movie Clips

Alfred Hitchcock: Vertigo (1958) Starring Jimmy Stewart & Kim Novak

Source:Movie Clips- the official trailer for Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, (1958) according to Movie Clips. 

Source:The New Democrat

"CLIP DESCRIPTION:

A San Francisco detective (James Stewart) suffering from acrophobia investigates the strange activities of an old friend's wife, all the while becoming dangerously obsessed with her.

FILM DESCRIPTION:

Dismissed when first released, later heralded as one of director Alfred Hitchcock's finest films (and, according to Hitchcock, his most personal one), this adaptation of the French novel D'entre les morts weaves an intricate web of obsession and deceit. It opens as Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) realizes he has vertigo, a condition resulting in a fear of heights, when a police officer is killed trying to rescue him from falling off a building. Scottie then retires from his position as a private investigator, only to be lured into another case by his old college friend, Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore). Elster's wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak), has been possessed by a spirit, and Elster wants Scottie to follow her. He hesitantly agrees, and thus begins the film's wordless montage as Scottie follows the beautiful yet enigmatic Madeleine through 1950s San Francisco (accompanied by Bernard Herrmann's hypnotic score). After saving her from suicide, Scottie begins to fall in love with her, and she appears to feel the same way. Here tragedy strikes, and each twist in the movie's second half changes our preconceptions about the characters and events. In 1996 a new print of Vertigo was released, restoring the original grandeur of the colors and the San Francisco backdrop, as well as digitally enhancing the soundtrack."

From Movie Clips

I wouldn't say that Vertigo is a great movie, especially not a great Alfred Hitchcock film. There are at least three others and probably more Hitchcock movies that are better. North by Northwest my favorite, Rear Window and To Catch a Thief, and I'm sure others are definitely better than Vertigo. Vertigo is not Kim Novak's best movie either. But Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart made Vertigo a very good and entertaining movie almost by themselves by how they worked together and the chemistry they had.

Vertigo does have a very good plot. Jimmy Stewart plays a former San Francisco police detective who is now in semi-retirement. His old buddy from I believe college gets a hold of him with a job for him, but now as a private detective. His old friend who hasn't seen a long time is a very wealthy San Francisco businessman who has a gorgeous, baby-face, goddess, of a wife Madeline (played Kim Novak). He wants Scottie (played by Jimmy Stewart) to believe that his wife is going crazy and wants her to tail her to see what she does during the day.

What Scottie isn't aware of is that this couple is using him and is in on a murder plot. They want Scottie to think that Madeline (played by Kim Novak)  is dead. When the fact is she is alive and well and comes back in the movie playing another character that just happens to meet Scottie. And Scottie is blown away by her because of the incredible resemblance and falls in lover with the same woman again. A very interesting and good movie, but certainly not the best Hitchcock movie. 

Alfred Hitchcock: North by Northwest (1959)

Source:The New Democrat

North by Northwest is my favorite movie of all time.  Cary Grant is my favorite actor of all time and Alfred Hitchcock is probably my favorite director of all time.  I have a couple versions of this movie on DVD, saw it on Turner Classic Movies a couple of nights ago and again on  DVD last might.  I decided to write a blog about it today because I've been thinking about it a lot. This movie is Cary Grant, perhaps the best comedic actor of all time, at his best.

North by Northwest has all the ingredients of a great Hitchcock movie. A great plot, great writing, great cast,  Hitchcock's sense of humor, that Cary Grant shares, and James Mason. The very sexy and beautiful Eva Marie Saint (On the Waterfront, The Russians are Coming) has a big role in the movie. According to my father, she's smarter, sexier, and more beautiful than Grace Kelly or Marilyn Monroe.  She reminds him of my mother.

Then, there's Jessie Royce Landis who plays Roger Thornhill's (Cary Grant) mother, a great smart ass,  even though she's only four years older. 

The movie is a Cold War thriller about a man, Van Damme (James Mason), who exports American weapons and national security secrets.  Thornhill gets caught up in it, accidentally, and you have a great movie.

Thornhill is a charming playboy New York advertising man who's just living his life as a very successful businessman.  He's kidnapped by Van Damme's henchmen at a New York bar.  They believe he has inside information about Van Damme's organization.

The Van Damme crew tries to murder Thornhill but he gets away.  He tries to get back in touch with Van Damme and instead connects with Lester Townsend, someone Van Damme had pretended to be.  The Van Damme crew, trying to murder Thornhill, instead murder Townsend.  They believe he also knows something about their organization that they want kept secret.  Thornhill is now not only on the run from Van Damme and company but also fron the NYC PD, the New York State PD, and  the Feds.

Thornhill once again escapes and is now on the run from everyone because of the murder he didn't commit.  This time, he escapes by train where he meets Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) who just happens to be an undercover Federal agent pretending to work for Philipp Van Damme.  She's actually working to bring down Van Damme's and his organization.  She has Thornhill believing she's on his side and helping him to escape.  She's actually just using him.

This movie starts in New York, moves to Chicago and then Indiana where the Van Damme crew tries to murder Thornhill and Thornhill is trying to meet the real George Kaplan to find out what this whole thing is about. The problem is that George Kaplan doesn't exist.  Back to Chicago Thornhill gets arrested again, thinking that he would be safer with the police than on the run. The Feds grab him instead and use him to help bering down Van Damme and company in Rapid City where Philipp Van Damme has a home.

This is one of the best action suspense comedies you'll ever see.