Jay Rohr
A Century of Hitchcock: The Man, The Myths, The Legacy is a new book by Hitchcock scholar Tony Lee Moral. It aims to deliver details about the auteur Alfred Hitchcock, while primarily aspiring to repair his reputation. Towards that end, the book puts forth some compelling evidence that the conventional perception of the iconic director as abusive tyrant isn’t entirely accurate.
Recently, Moral gave Film Obsessive a bit of time to discuss his latest work. He shares when his suspicions began that Donald Spoto’s biography The Dark Side of Genius may have presented a less-than-truthful portrait of Hitchcock. Moral details the many years spent gathering evidence in support of that suspicion. Following the video embedded below is an abridged transcript of our conversation.
Film Obsessive: What inspired you to write A Century of Hitchcock?
Tony Lee Moral: It’s my fifth book on Hitchcock and I’d accumulated a lot of information because I’d written individual books on The Birds and Marnie, and so it’s really been in genesis for the last 12 to 14 years. Then the two biopics came out in 2012, The Girl and Hitchcock. There were a lot of rumors and myths and false impressions which the media perpetuated, so I just thought it was time to set the record straight from all the interviews I had gathered and all the first-hand reports.
What gets you into this area?
Well, I’ve been researching Hitchcock for almost 30 years. I lived in California for a couple of years, so I was able to interview a lot of his surviving cast and crew who have now sadly passed away, but I had the foresight to record a lot of the interviews on tape. That really formed the backbone of A Century of Hitchcock and obviously it being the centenary of The Pleasure Garden seemed like the right opportunity to publish a lot of information about him.
One of the things in your book that’s very interesting is how well you dismantle the perception of Hitchcock that’s been put forward by the biographer Donald Spoto [in The Dark Side of Hitchcock]. When did you begin to become aware that there was this discrepancy in what he had said?
It was really when I was writing my Marnie book back in 1998, 28 years ago. I was interviewing Louise Latham, who played the mother in Marnie. I interviewed Evan Hunter, the screenwriter of The Birds. I was interviewing Jay Preston Allen, and they were giving me a very different impression of the one that was in Spoto’s book. It just didn’t add up what was being said in the media through Spoto’s accounts.
What the testimony was telling me, the eyewitness testimony, and that grew and I gathered more eyewitnesses, which were supportive of my theory, that there was a big kind of personal vendetta or grievance on Spoto’s part. So, I set about interviewing people who knew Spoto. He passed away a few years ago and then people were more open to talk about him and their own personal experiences. A lot of his personal experiences mirrored what happened with Hitchcock, personal grievances, which made [Spoto] turn against his friends.
Do you feel that you make it clear in the book that part of the problem here is that this inaccuracy in the depiction of Hitchcock is not only ruining his legacy, but do you feel that it’s also hurting the ability to look into him more?
Yes, and that’s a real shame. I was invited as a speaker to the Hitchcock Festival in Scotts Valley and I met [Hitchcock’s] granddaughter. She has so many memories of Hitchcock, obviously and fond ones and critical ones and just very useful information. But obviously the family felt a little bit burnt, especially after the #MeToo movement and so they’re understandably very cautious about the media.
Also, in the case in academic studies, after The Dark Side of Genius, Matthew Bernstein, the assistant for [Donald] Spoto, said [Spoto] was castigated as well by the academic community, saying that a lot of bridges were burned.
Do you feel like you’ve put forward this narrative now that [Tippi Hedren] is just this person that’s been taken advantage of throughout her whole career?
You can see it in the evidence. In 1980, because that key transcript, which is in Spoto’s files, none of their later claims are in that transcript. It makes you wonder why in 1982, she’s interviewed by the historian Ronald L. Davis., and it’s very obvious that Spoto’s influence and narrative now becomes part of her story. She specifically mentioned Spoto in that ’82 interview, so now she’s taken on board what Spoto supposedly has found out.
I go into all the personal grievances between Spoto and Hitchcock in the book, but they had a falling out. Hitchcock basically didn’t like Spoto and Spoto acknowledged that in his transcript. When Hitchcock passed away, that was an opportunity for him to take others on board and try and get others on his cause. He found the most successful person with Tippi Hedren, who also had a similar grievance against Hitchcock.
When you’re putting together a historical piece like this, where do you get all this information from?
The key thing about Hitchcock, he was very well prepared, a great note taker, and that’s his best witness. All of that is filed at the Margaret Herrick Library in Los Angeles. That’s a cornerstone for many Hitchcock studies. It was a cornerstone for my Marnie book and for The Birds and also my storyboards book, because all of it was kept on paper and filed. But the key thing, he was a great correspondent and because of the Universal memos restored, his diaries are there, everything is jotted down on paper, every meeting, every memo. So, with a fallibility of human memory, that is a great counterpoint.
When I went to interview Tippi Hedren in 1999 in her cat preserve, she even said to me, it was a long time ago, I can’t remember. Now we’re thinking 25 years later, and she’s in her mid-90s now. Unfortunately, she’s got dementia, but it’s a fallibility of memory and obviously also how personal grievances can affect people’s memories.
Brian de Palma gets quoted in your book as saying Hitchcock wrote a grammar for films. Basically, everybody’s borrowing from him in some capacity. Is that part of the reason why you wanted to help restore an accuracy to his legacy so that he can be regarded again as this icon in cinema?
I think so, because it’s been really damaging the last 10 years, especially since the #MeToo movement, when he’s mentioned in the same breath as Harvey Weinstein, and the two are not even in the same league. Hitchcock was very devoted to his wife for over 50 years, and it’s only really Tippi Hedren who’s broken out against him.
So yes, that was part of the reason, but also even in the 2022 Sight & Sound poll, Vertigo slipped from the 1st place because apparently some critics didn’t want to vote for Hitchcock because they thought he was a predator, which I think is ridiculous.
When you’re having these literal interactions with these actual people, do you ever get a vibe from them where [they] might be missing details or something like that, which then inspires you to look into other sources to verify.
Yes, I made a great point to physically meet these people. I clocked up a lot of travel miles in the US. My research took me from New York to Arizona to California to London. People did open up to me in person, especially Louise Latham and Louis Furman and Jay Preston Allen and Yvonne Hessler, those were key women who worked with Hitchcock.
Did I ever feel that people were holding things back? I did a little bit with Diane Baker, the second lead in Marnie, but she did open up more and more. Similarly with Jay, you know, she told me things which were very useful, which I did put in the book in the end, because she passed away in 2006. She was very reluctant to criticize Tippi. I thought it was important just to do a counterbalance there.
Have you considered what it’s going to be like for other people to push back on this?
Well, they’re entitled to believe what they want. I can’t influence them. I say, this is the evidence. This is what Spoto says. This is where he’s misquoted. This is where he’s exaggerated.
For example, after The Birds filming in the attic attack, he says, Hedren needed 10 days of rest. It was three days. It’s all those little exaggerations, they’re cumulative and things he leaves out.
Given the amount of people that are willing to dispute this, what is the reason, in your opinion, that this hasn’t come to light sooner?
There was a little pushback with Patrick McGilligan’s book in 2003, Darkness and Light, the biography after Spoto’s. But even then, Spoto threatened to sue. He was very litigious. Now that he’s passed away, he can’t sue.
How long did your book take to put together?
Since really 2012. When you look at the end notes, you can see that the interviews really go back, but there was a big cluster around 2012, 2013, 2014. Then I did another big cluster after Spoto died in ‘22, ‘23, ‘24. So those are the two big, concerted efforts.
When do you feel safe, like you have enough material to put out your opinion in a place where it will stand on its own?
Well, I think it does because I know I’m telling the truth. I know I’ve got the interview tapes, I’m sure of the material. I’m sure of the archives. Anyone can go to the Margaret Herrick Library. Anyone can go to UCLA and look through Donald’s files and see the conclusion. I feel I’m on solid ground in terms of my research. I haven’t made anything up. I think it’s quite a thorough job.
Is there a sense of relief now that it’s done and you’ve put it out there in the world?
Yes, there is. It was so funny actually, because books take time to publish. And I’ve been talking to Kentucky Press for about 18 months, because that’s how long it takes for a university press, because it has to go through peer review. I wrote an e-mail to the editor and I said, if anything happens to me, like if I get run over by a bus, you have my permission to publish. I do not care about royalties. I just want to get the truth out there.
