McKittrick, Casey. "Notes." Hitchcock’s Appetites: The corpulent plots of desire and dread. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. 165–175. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 1 Oct. 2021. <http:// dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781501311642.0012>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 1 October 2021, 09:32 UTC. Copyright © Casey McKittrick 2016. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. Notes Introduction 1 Alfred Hitchcock, from “ After-Dinner Speech ” at the Screen Producers Guild Dinner, Los Angeles, March 7, 1965. 2 John Russell Taylor, Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), 17. 3 Jan Olsson ’ s recent book Hitchcock a la Carte (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015) similarly investigates Hitchcock ’ s size as both an integral part of his self-promotion as a celebrity and as a compelling factor in the analysis of his use of food in his two television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour . 4 Charlotte Chandler, It ’ s Only a Movie: Alfred Hitchcock, a Personal Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 11. 5 Ibid ., 11. 6 Sander Gilman, Fat Boys (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 11. 7 Chapter 5 contains a more in-depth look at Hitchcock ’ s childhood relationships. 8 Chandler, It ’ s Only , 33. 9 Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 171. 10 Details of his diet and weight gain, and also the public reportage of his diet, can be found in greater detail in Chapter 1 . 11 Pat Hitchcock O ’ Connell and Laurent Bouzereau, Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Behind the Man (New York: Berkley Book, 2003), 184. 12 Ibid ., 256 – 84. 13 Ibid ., 229. 14 William Rothman, Hitchcock: The Murderous Gaze (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 106. 15 Tania Modleski, The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory (New York: Routledge, 2005). 16 Laura Mulvey, “ Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, ” Screen 16, no. 3 (Spring, 1975): 6 – 18. 17 Modleski, Women , 7. HHitchcock.indbitchcock.indb 116565 228-04-20168-04-2016 112:41:172:41:17 166 NOTES Chapter 1 1 By “ spectacular ” here, I emphasize the notion of body-as-spectacle, not a degree of fatness. 2 Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New York: Regan/Harper Collins, 2003). 3 Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 170 – 71. 4 McGilligan, Darkness and Light , 205. 5 All telegrams, memos, and letters in this chapter are archived in the David O. Selznick collection in the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas, from which I received a generous fellowship for the summer of 2012 to research this fi rst chapter of the book. I cannot thank the Ransom Center staff enough for their help and support. 6 Memo, Selznick Archive. 7 Katharine Roberts, “ Mystery Man: Thrills and Chills of Alfred Hitchcock, ” Collier ’ s Weekly (August 5, 1939): 22. 8 Obviously, we can never be certain that Hitchcock ’ s diet regimens were as strict or consistently followed as his public reportage of them suggests. McGilligan and Spoto both comment on episodes of “ cheating ” on his diet(s) in the early 1940s. Regardless of the accuracy of his dietary claims, he nevertheless wanted to convey a sense of commitment to improving his body. 9 Alfred Hitchcock, “ The Woman Who Knows Too Much, ” McCall ’ s 83 (March, 1956): 12, 14. 10 Spoto, Dark Side , 234 – 35. 11 Michael Balcon, London Sunday Dispatch , August 25, 1940. 12 Hitchcock struck back at Balcon in the press. Balcon ’ s view is colored by his own personal experiences with Hollywood, which have invariably wound up unfortunately for Balcon. We have all placed ourselves at the disposal of our government. The British government has only to call on me for my services. The manner in which I am helping my country is not Mr. Balcon ’ s business. Hitchcock, Alfred. ( “ Hitchcock Responds to ‘ Deserter ’ Charge, ” New York World-Telegram , August 27, 1940) 13 McGilligan, Darkness and Light . 14 Hitchcock ’ s venture with Bernstein Transatlantic Pictures was short-lived. They only made two pictures together, Rope (1948) and Under Capricorn (1949); neither performed well at the box offi ce. The company sank into oblivion the following year during the fi lming of Stage Fright , and Warner Brothers/First National had to come to the aid of the production to fi nance and release it. This was the end of Transatlantic, and the beginning of Hitchcock ’ s lucrative deals with Warner for the fi rst half of the 1950s. 15 Alva Johnston, “ 300-Pound Prophet Comes to Hollywood, ” Saturday Evening Post 215, no. 47 (May 22, 1943): 12. HHitchcock.indbitchcock.indb 116666 228-04-20168-04-2016 112:41:172:41:17 NOTES 167 16 Myron Selznick Archive, File 169, Folder 3, Harry Ransom Center, Austin, Texas. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 He was also offered a job as producer and MC of the Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer show, another DeMille-like role, and also for the Philip Morris Playhouse. 20 Here, and in the paragraphs that follow, the italicized words and phrases are my emphasis. I use them to foreground the language of fatness that occurs with great frequency in SIP communications. 21 An assumption that underwrites this entire book is that American culture, and to some degree Western culture in general, is fat-phobic. Fat bodies are devalued for their failure to uphold normative standards of size. Furthermore, American culture conditions its subjects to link attractiveness and desirability, even acceptability, to the maintenance of fi t bodies. Thus, Selznick and colleagues ’ fat-phobia is not an allegation that sets them apart from most of the populace; it simply manifests itself in an important and germane way in the relationship with Hitchcock. 22 After Foreign Correspondent , Selznick worried that Wanger was complaining around town that Hitchcock was slow in shooting, and feared that it would hurt his reputation. Also, in 1946, he angrily decried Hitch’ s “ increasing habit of taking a year per picture. ” 23 Rene Clair ’ s fi rst American fi lm The Flame of New Orleans (1941) for Universal performed disastrously at the box offi ce, so much so that his career was in jeopardy. Through I Married a Witch (1942) and It Happened Tomorrow (1944), and especially with the success of And Then There Were None (1945), he fought his way back to respectability. While Jean Renoir ’ s fi rst American fi lms, Swamp Water (1941) and This Land Is Mine (1943), made a profi t, he struggled a great deal fi nding an acceptable project in Hollywood and also had great diffi culty adapting to American fi lming techniques. 24 Spoto mentions in Dark Side of Genius that in his 1939 Christmas holiday card to Hitchcock, Selznick gently offered some nutrition pointers, in acknowledgment of concerns with his weight. That one correspondence is the only time I have heard of or seen any encouragement by Selznick for him to lose weight. 25 Right after this slight, Selznick had his opportunity to return the favor. Hoping to draw on elements from Spellbound to form the backbone of one of his Hitchcock Presents , Hitchcock petitioned him for use of the story, and then-owner of the fi lm Selznick refused him. Chapter 2 1 According to Janet Staiger in her essay, “ Creating the Brand: Hitchcock ’ s Touch, ” (in The Cambridge American Companion to Hitchcock , ed. Jonathan Freeman), the Young and Innocent cameo, was reproduced in Leslie Perkoff ’ s “ The Censor and Sydney Street, ” World Film News 2, no. 12 HHitchcock.indbitchcock.indb 116767 228-04-20168-04-2016 112:41:172:41:17 168 NOTES (March 1938): 4 – 5. The same image appeared in the Hellman profi le on him in Life , November 20, 1939, where the cutline introduced the idea that Hitchcock liked to be in one scene in each of his movies. Staiger reads that image not as Hitchcock as a mere spectator but as a journalist attempting to snap a photo of our “ wrong man ” being led out of the courthouse. 2 David Sterritt, The Films of Alfred Hitchcock (Boston: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 11 – 16. 3 Tom Ryall, Alfred Hitchcock & the British Cinema (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 165. Ronald Christ, “ Strangers on a Train : The Pattern of Encounter, ” in Focus on Hitchcock , ed. Albert LaValley (New York: Prentice Hall, 1972), 107. 4 Sterritt, Alfred Hitchcock , 12. 5 I concede that spectators watch fi lm with differing degrees of concentration, and are differently susceptible to diegetic disruption; while some may greet Hitchcock ’ s presence with a minimal feeling of dissonance, others may feel disengaged from the story in a more profound way. I still call the cameo an avoidance of total diegetic disruption because the average viewer becomes reabsorbed quickly into the narrative. 6 I would like to thank Janet Staiger for helping me think through the mesogetic as a narrative mode versus intertextuality as a reading strategy. 7 Obviously, this was not Hitchcock ’ s fi rst picture but, as indicated in the fi rst chapter, it was the fi rst great success of his career, and the idea of an “ origin story ” for the cameos is heightened with this description. 8 This passage about Hitchcock ’ s cameos was written by Hitch to Jack Goldstein of Vanguard Films, in a letter dated October 19, 1945. Vanguard coproduced Spellbound with SIP. 9 This was the original plan for his cameo.