OT: World celebrates Hitchcock's 100th birthday
Patty
Hitch's retreat
The world celebrates Alfred Hitchcock the legend;
Santa Cruz County remembers him as a neighbor
by Catherine Graham,
Sentinel arts writer
His is the most famous silhouette in the world, the outline with the pouting
lower lip and well-fed belly. Almost as famous is that lugubrious drawl
("Good eeevening."). Alfred Hitchcock - the master of the macabre, the sire
of sophisticated suspense - worked in Hollywood, but he lived in Scotts
Valley.
From 1940 to 1974, "Hitch" owned 200 acres and a house under constant
remodeling on Canham Road, adjacent to the now-controversial Glenwood
project. He loved to show off the place, inviting the likes of Ingrid
Bergman, Jimmy Stewart, and Princess Grace to lunch in the solarium
overlooking the formal garden.
He was rarely seen around town, though the locals who encountered him
remember Hitchcock as being charming and gracious, the perfect gentleman. He
and his wife Alma sent personal thank-you notes to the various local
contractors who worked on the property, and, like a kindly rich uncle,
Alfred relished handing out matchbooks with that famous silhouette on the
cover.
Though he never filmed in Santa Cruz County, the influence of this community
can be detected in his movies. Local homes - one in Santa Cruz, another in
Scotts Valley - may have been the inspiration for the spooky house-on-a-hill
in "Psycho." When a real-life "The Birds" incident happened in Capitola in
1961, Alfred himself called the Sentinel from Hollywood to have a reporter
read him the story over the phone.
His 100th birthday is being celebrated across the country with a
commemorative postage stamp, a retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern
Art and here with the recollections of Santa Cruzans who had the honor to
meet the master.
Hitchcock's Century
Alfred Hitchcock was born one hundred years ago today - Aug. 13, 1899 - in
Leytonstone, England. The son of a poultry dealer and educated in a Jesuit
school, young Alfred entered the movie industry in 1920 as a title designer
for then-silent films. He progressed to art director and screenwriter, and
in 1925, Alfred Hitchcock got his first stab, so to speak, at directing.
By 1940, Hitch was well on his way to becoming the world's most famous film
director. He was at the top of his game, having directed a series of popular
films in England - including "The Lodger" (a Jack-the-Ripper tale often
cited as his directorial debut, but was actually his third outing at the
helm) and "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (which he would remake with sound and
in color in 1956). Courted by Hollywood, his first American film "Rebecca"
won the Best Picture Oscar and cemented Hitchcock's standing in Hollywood.
The Hitchcocks purchased a home in Bel Air, which Alma dismissively referred
to as "a snug little colonial," conveniently located to the various studios
that might require Alfred's services. Once settled, the Hitchcocks, set out
on the task of finding a country home to love and cherish.
The Hitchcocks wanted to recreate their lifestyle back in England: a house
near Alfred's work in London and a country home in Shamley Green; Hitchcock
so loved his British retreat that he named his American film company Shamley
Productions. The British parents of "Rebecca" star Joan Fontaine, who lived
in Saratoga, suggested the Vine Hill area near Scotts Valley as the ideal
place for Alfred to pursue his interest in horses, gardening and
viticulture.
On Aug. 31, 1940, after filming "Foreign Correspondent," the Hitchcocks
chased "Heart O' The Mountain," a 200-acre ranch and summer home previously
owned by San Francisco attorney Bruce Cornwall, senior partner of Cornwall,
Coldwell and Banker. For the property, which included tennis courts,
stables, and a winery across Highway 17, Hitchcock paid the princely sum of
$40,000.
The locals were not impressed by the presence of a film director in their
midst. The caretakers living on the property were an Italian immigrant
family. The parents spoke no English; their 10-year-old daughter, Ann,
translated for her parents that the property had been sold. The family had
never heard of Alfred Hitchcock.
"We never went to the movies," Ann recalled to the Sentinel in 1986. "We'd
only go to town to buy food. We were part of the inventory, though. Three
cows. One horse. Thirty chickens. One family."
She vividly remembers her first glimpse of Hitchcock. "A black limousine
pulled up to the estate ... This huge man climbed out. He tried to walk up
the hill but couldn't make it because he was so heavy. He waved at us."
Ann became the liaison between Hitch and her parents. The family called him
"padrone," a term of respect. "They treated us well," Ann, adding that Hitch
doubled her father's salary and gave her mother a monthly wage for keeping
the main house in order.
As Ann grew up, she took on more and more responsibility and eventually
became Hitchcock's Northern California liaison. "I'd bring contractors in,
keep him informed by phone," Ann continued. "They were very precise people
...The gardens had to be immaculate. We used to go through so many brooms
just to keep the paths clean. And the house had to be absolutely immaculate.
No dust anywhere. I used to see Mrs. Hitchcock run her finger along the
louvered window blinds to check for dust."
The original house had nine rooms and was built in a California-Spanish
style, featuring arched doorways, a red-tiled roof, hand-hewn beams, and
adobe bricks made on the property. The first major renovations took place in
the kitchen and dining areas. Over the years Hitchcock added an outside
dining room with a heated tile floor and a long Mexican-style dining table
of dark wood and tile top, plus a wine cellar to accommodate his lavish
collection of fine inebrients.
Though the Hitchcocks sometimes drove from Los Angeles, most often they flew
into San Francisco airport where a driver would be waiting to make the rest
of the trip by car (Hitchcock himself did not drive). Often they brought
with them their German cook.
The actor Hume Cronyn, who collaborated with Hitchcock on the treatments of
"Lifeboat" (1944), "Rope" (1948) and "Under Capricorn" (1949), recalled to
Hitchcock biographer Donald Spoto: "At Santa Cruz, usually the weekend was
more than one's digestion and capacity could stand." Cocktail hour was an
hour-and-half affair, at which Hitchcock declared a martini as "simply 2
parts gin to one short glance at a bottle of vermouth."
"He was the perfect host, of course," Cronyn continued, "and he took a
marvelous, malicious delight in seeing his guests fall apart with all those
vintage wines and liquor he'd force."
Alfred Hitchcock was famous for meticulously pre-planning his films. After
working with a writer on the treatment (the basic story) of the screenplay,
the former title-writer would construct shot-by-shot drawings, including
camera movements and all relevant objects within the frame. And Hitch's
favorite place to do his pre-production work was his Scotts Valley retreat.
By 1955, Hitchcock had become an American citizen and had amassed
considerable wealth. He cultivated wine grapes on his Scotts Valley
property, from which he realized another source of income. He launched a
monthly magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (still in circulation
today), and agreed to host and occasionally direct the weekly series "Alfred
Hitchcock Presents." The TV show ran for more than a decade and became an
American institution, making Hitchcock the most famous film director in the
history of the movies, and a mulitmillionaire in the bargain.
In the fall of 1957, Hitchcock filmed key scenes for "Vertigo," one of his
most studied and discussed thrillers, in San Juan Bautista. The film starred
Jimmy Stewart as a detective deathly afraid of heights and Kim Novak in a
dual role as the blonde object of a murder investigation then the brunette
object of Stewart's somewhat creepy desires. The script called for scenes to
take place in the mission belfry where Stewart is forced to face his
vertigo.
However, in 1957 there was no tower at the mission in San Juan. So Hitchcock
had one built on a set in Hollywood, then superimposed it onto the mission's
exterior shots.
One gawker on the set grew up to be local historian Sandy Lydon. "I had the
hots for Kim Novak," Lydon recalls with a hearty laugh from his office at
Cabrillo College. "I was a freshman at UC Davis when I heard that Novak and
Stewart were coming to San Juan, and I drove home to Hollister on that
October weekend to try and catch a glimpse of her."
Unfortunately for Lydon, the movie company had hired "several of Watsonville
's larger policemen" to fend off such sightseers. "My buddies and I prowled
around San Juan for two days but only saw the big Cadillac into which Novak
retreated to work on her lines between takes." After telling this story to
one of his classes, his students presented him with a Kim Novak mouse pad
for his office proudly in use to this day.
Lydon says that after "Vertigo" was released, a steady stream of visitors
flocked to San Juan to see the place where the movie was filmed. The mission
was there; the livery stable (where a famous shot of Stewart and Novak
kissing sets the background spinning) was there. But where was the tower?
So during a restoration project in the 1970s, a bell tower was added. Lydon
says this is not as ridiculous as it sounds, since the original plans for
the mission called for a belfry, but in 1812 when the mission was
established the padres decided not to build one because of the frequent
earthquakes.
Hitchcock had a notorious disdain for some actors, likening them to "cattle"
in a famous interview with Francois Truffaut. On the set of "Vertigo,"
tensions between director and leading lady were high, particularly since
Novak was the second choice for the role (Vera Miles was originally cast,
but dropped after getting pregnant).
But an incident in Scotts Valley gave Hitchcock new respect for Novak. After
"Vertigo," Novak had been so taken with the area that she purchased a home
in Carmel. Alfred and Alma did the neighborly thing and invited her over for
dinner. The time Novak was supposed to arrive came and went, and about a
half hour later there was a phone call. She and her escort were lost. They
got directions and another half hour later she arrived with her story of a
broken-down car and a trek through the woods. Even so, she arrived looking
like a movie star, "with just one lock of hair out of place, a symbolic
smudge of earth on one cheek, just like in a Forties movie," Hitchcock told
his official biographer, John Taylor. Hitch said that when he saw this he
had to admit that, whatever reservations he might have had, Novak "was the
stuff real stars are made of."
After the release of the audacious "North By Northwest" in 1959, Hitch
celebrated his 60th birthday at Scotts Valley. He was finishing the film
that would be his most financially successful, "Psycho" when a young Santa
Cruz native named Ron Miller contacted him about doing an interview for the
student magazine at San Jose State. Miller, who would eventually be
nominated for two Pulitzers as a television columnist for the San Jose
Mercury News, requested an interview with Hitchcock at his Scotts Valley
home, and Hitchcock readily agreed. "In those days, nobody paid attention to
directors," Miller recalls during a recent interview. "Hitchcock became
famous because of the television series, but it's relatively new idea that
directors like Francis Ford Coppola are stars."
Unfortunately, Alma took ill in Los Angeles, and Hitchcock wrote to Miller
saying he wanted to stay close to his wife but would make himself available
for an interview in his office at Universal. So Ron and a photographer buddy
coughed up the air fare, loaded a console reel-to-reel tape recorder on
board, and spent the night on a friend's couch before heading over to
Hitchcock's office in a borrowed MG.
On the Universal lot, the students had a hard time finding a parking place.
While squeezing into a tight space, they dented the fender on a Bentley
belonging to Cary Grant.
Other than that, the interview went well. "He impressed us both, he was so
completely nice and cooperative, Miller recalls. He treated us like we were
the New York Times."
"My favorite story from the interview was as he was giving a lengthy answer
to a question," says Miller. "He noticed the photographer crouching down low
to get a picture. Hitchcock was very fat, and he had several chins. As he
continued to speak he climbed up on a chair, stuck out his chins, patted
them and said, 'Is this what you like?'"
Soon after the publication of the question-and-answer interview in the San
Jose State magazine, Miller was hired on at the Sentinel, and he rewrote the
interview as a story headlined "Four Faces of Alfred Hitchcock" which ran on
April 17, 1960. The story began, "Just when the Hollywood scene starts to
scare him out of his wits, Alfred Hitchcock packs his bags, climbs into his
car, and chugs off to Santa Cruz. 'And why not' he says. 'It's the only
place I can find complete seclusion.'"
One Saturday Miller was alone in the newsroom. The phone rang. A familiar
voice introduced itself as Alfred Hitchcock calling from Los Angeles.
Hitchcock was at work on "The Birds," based on a 1958 Daphne DuMaurier story
set in England. Hitchcock had heard of a recent seabird invasion of
Capitola, and asked Miller to read him the Sentinel coverage, word for word,
over the phone.
In August 1961, crazed sooty shearwaters rained down on the Central Coast,
crashing into homes from Pleasure Point to Rio del Mar, pecking people,
shattering windows, smashing car headlights. As it turned out, the demented
birds had been poisoned by a naturally occurring neurotoxin in their food.
"Startled by the invasion, residents rushed out on their lawns with
flashlights, then rushed back inside as the birds flew toward their light,"
the Sentinel breathlessly reported on Aug. 18, 1961. Hitchcock used one
incident reported in the Sentinel story involving a man who took refuge in a
phone booth (Hitch used artistic license to blow the guy up from a leaky
gasoline line).
As Hitchcock neared age 65, his Hollywood activity wound down. "The Alfred
Hitchcock Hour" (as "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" was later called) was
canceled in 1965 when the cost of production became too expensive and
television's jovial undertaker leaned toward the camera and offered the
audience his final, solemn "Good night!" Hitch was in poor health, mostly
from complications brought on by his obesity, including a painful arthritis
in his knees. He cut back on the frequency of making feature films, giving
him an opportunity to spend more time in his beloved Scotts Valley home. In
1966, he hired Roy Rydell, Santa Cruz's legendary landscape architect (whose
contributions to the community included the design of the original Pacific
Garden Mall and the landscaping around City Hall and the main branch of the
library) to renovate his Scotts Valley garden.
"One day I got a phone call from this Hitchcock voice," recalls Rydell, now
84 and living in Bonny Doon. "I thought someone was playing a joke."
Today, Rydell's correspondence with Hitchcock is in the Special Collections
at the UC Santa Cruz library. Rydell and his wife were frequents luncheon
guests of the Hitchcocks, and even made a trip to Bel Air where Roy
consulted on the design of the gardens in the Hitchcocks' Southern
California abode. But it was the Scotts Valley garden that Hitchcock loved.
"He was very interested and involved in his garden," says Rydell. "He and
his wife had considerable knowledge of plant material and had an extensive
collection of gardening books."
The four acres surrounding the house were formally landscaped. Most dramatic
was the rose garden, completely planted with varieties of white roses. At
the end of one of the pathways was a stone wall bearing a 12-foot ceramic
mosaic depicting doves of peace that Hitchcock commissioned from
impressionist artist Georges Braque.
"He was very much interested in art," Rydell continues, noting that Alfred
collected French and German paintings from the beginning of the century.
After the home was burglarized in 1966 (a TV set and record player were
taken), Hitchcock had artists at Universal make copies of the original art
and hung the fakes in his home.
Rydell says that Hitchcock would often make one-day trips to observe the
various projects underway on his property, including annual painting of the
interior and exterior, and blacktopping the long driveway in honor of a
visit by Princess Grace and her family.
Rydell describes the house itself as "Comfortable. You might say luxurious,
but not presumptuous. Not done to show off his wealth or position." Alfred,
his wife and daughter were voracious readers and one entire wall of the
living room was a bookcase containing every volume published by Modern
Library. "It was great fun," Rydell says of working with Hitchcock. "He was
always amusing, he always had great stories to tell.
Unfortunately, the Hitchcocks' time in Scotts Valley would soon come to an
end. The late '60s and early '70s would find Hitch professionally in peak
form for a short time playing violence against humor as only he could in
"Topaz" and "Frenzy." However, he was in constant pain from the arthritis in
his knees and after Alma suffered a stroke in 1972 the Hitchcocks would
never visit their beloved Scotts Valley home again.
The property was acquired by artist James Scoppettone, whose father had been
a prominent municipal court judge. Scoppettone's brother Dick was a member
of the pop group Harper's Bizarre, which had started as a local group called
the Tikis before rocketing into international fame with such hits as "Feelin
' Groovy" and "Chattanooga Choo-Choo." The brothers used the old Hitchcock
mansion as headquarters for a music production company called the Forest Bay
Company. In 1976, Harper's Bizarre reunited for an album entitled "As Time
Goes By" recorded in a former guest bedroom.
Eventually the main house was sold to owners who diligently protect their
privacy. James Scappettone lives with his family on the 24-acre former
Hitchcock property using remodeled former barn as his art studio.
Though Hitchcock never received a Best Director Oscar, he was honored in
1979 with the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award. He died in Los
Angles in 1980 just before his 81st birthday.
Happy 100th, Alfred.