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Mckittrick, Casey. McKittrick, Casey. "Hitchcock’s Hollywood diet." Hitchcock’s Appetites: The corpulent plots of desire and dread. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. 21–41. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 30 Sep. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781501311642.0005>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 30 September 2021, 09:01 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. 1 Hitchcock ’ s Hollywood diet lfred Joseph Hitchcock ’ s 1939 relocation from his native London to Los AAngeles set the stage for a surreal indoctrination into a culture he had only glimpsed through the refractions of the silver screen. Signing with SIP meant much more than leaving the homeland that had embraced him with growing enthusiasm as a national treasure over a fi fteen-year directorial career. It meant more than adapting to new and cutting edge fi lm technologies, more than submitting to the will of an erratic and headstrong studio boss. It also signaled his entrance into a milieu that demanded public, almost quotidian, access to his body. Consequently, it required a radical reassessment of his relationship to his body, and an intensifi cation of self-surveillance and heightened self- consciousness. In making the move to America, it is impossible to say how much Hitchcock had anticipated this rigorous negotiation of his celebrity persona. He discovered quickly that playing the Hollywood game required a new way of parsing the corporeal, and it made impossible the delusion — had he ever entertained one — of living or directing fi lms with any sense of disembodiment. Between the mundane familiarity of Jamaica Inn — his last British production — and the jarring culture shock of Rebecca , where he began preproduction by sifting through hundreds of starlet screen tests, he had to acknowledge a new marketplace of glamorous signifying bodies, and in participating in the publicity for this DuMaurier adaptation, he would quickly learn that, for the fi rst time in his forty years, his was also a body that mattered, both to the media and to the viewing public. Once solely the subject of his private frustration and anxiety, his corpulence was suddenly writ large, and it became startlingly connected to his public perception and, through his superiors ’ orchestrations, to his professional success. The Americanization of Hitchcock’ s body was an ambivalent transformation, where the commodifi cation of his fatness gave him purchase in the cult of charismatic celebrity, as a jovial avuncular, but it also magnifi ed his feelings of HHitchcock.indbitchcock.indb 2211 228-04-20168-04-2016 112:41:132:41:13 22 HITCHCOCK’S APPETITES shame and impotence, particularly when aggressive insults and more subtle insinuations about his body were used to manipulate him. The pages to come describe the pervasive and potent signifying powers of his body, used by and against him. Focusing on the fi rst decade of Hitchcock ’ s American life yields great insight into how his cultural legibility was rooted in his public, spectacular fatness. 1 The second half of this chapter examines the relationship between Hitchcock and his fi rst American employer David O. Selznick to suggest that throughout the 1940s, artistic control over Hitchcock ’ s body of work was tautly, and in unsuspected ways, linked to control of his body ’ s signifi cation. Indeed, Hitchcock ’ s body was implicated, and its meanings contested, at the center of many tumultuous business negotiations within SIP while he was under contract. This chapter will underwrite the endeavor of the following ones that explore Hitchcock ’ s interior life, particularly as it both was infl uenced by, and made sense of, his fatness, and how that interior life found expression in his body of work. The makings of a media giant In his comprehensive biography, Patrick McGilligan rightly remarks that — unlike the American media — the British press was by and large respectful of Hitchcock in its reportage of his career, and usually refrained from any mention of his size or his weight, at least until he made his historic and ambivalently received move to America. In the 1920s and 1930s, Britain had not quite embraced motion pictures as part of its tabloid and celebrity gossip culture, preferring instead to focus on debutantes, royals, and stars of the theater. In stark contrast, America had by the late teens already cultivated a media industry — newspapers, magazines, fan clubs — devoted to fi lm celebrity. In his early days as title designer and even after easing into his fi rst few directorial efforts for UFA in Berlin and Islington at home in London, Hitchcock likely gave little thought to receiving even a mention in the papers. It was the great success of his 1927 The Lodger that fi rst put him on the radar of London publications, and by 1929 ’ s Blackmail , and Murder! the following year, his work was regularly followed by the London Times, Bioscope , and the Daily Express , among others. Most English coverage of the director was respectful, if not always celebratory, primarily addressing the production and release of his fi lms; his frequent studio movement among Gainsborough, British International, and Gaumont British Picture Corporation also garnered attention. The fi rst notable departure from his usually harmonious relationship with the British media found its expression in a remark that Sidney Gilliat, cowriter HHitchcock.indbitchcock.indb 2222 228-04-20168-04-2016 112:41:132:41:13 HITCHCOCK’S HOLLYWOOD DIET 23 with Frank Launder on 1938 ’ s The Lady Vanishes , made to the press after feeling slighted by the writing credit he was given. Hitchcock took umbrage at Gilliat ’ s sour description of him as “ a big bully who steals all the marbles. ” 2 Seeing this playground metaphor as a barely veiled reference to his weight, Hitchcock answered back in the press, and took time to get over the perceived insult. In retrospect, Hitchcock ’ s offense at such an innocuous, off-the-cuff remark seems disproportionate, considering the slings and arrows of American publicity to come. If he had felt pricked by Gilliat, then his treatment in the United States must have been deeply penetrating, regardless of the thick (or, at least, calloused) skin he developed over the years. Indeed, journalists in the United States seized on the spectacle of his size and peppered their introductory pieces with anecdotes of his remarkable appetite right away. In 1937, intrigued by American innovations in cinema, Hitchcock embarked on his fi rst prospecting venture to the States in hopes of securing a picture deal with a Hollywood studio, or at least some promising contacts. After his fi rst encounters with New York City ’s fourth estate, it became clear that reporters found their hook in his eating habits as well as his physique, and Hitchcock, to a large degree, was complicit in promoting this angle; at mealtime interviews, reporters attentively recorded his menu choices and appropriated the lighthearted quips he made about his girth for their often hyperbolic profi les of the director. On this whirlwind New York visit he succeeded in making an indelible mark on the 21 Club, and unwittingly laid the foundation for America’ s tireless fascination with his appetite. In what may be described as the primal scene of his public identity as America ’ s favorite fat man, Hitchcock dined with the New York Herald Tribune ’ s H. Allen Smith and, capitalizing on this perceived fascination with his gustatory potential, ordered his now legendary six- course meal: steak, followed by ice cream, repeated two more times, and washed down with brandies and three pots of English tea. The Tribune of course trumpeted this one-man orgy, delighting in the fact that after the meal, Hitchcock was taken to the cooler of the 21 Club to tour its meat offerings. Smith ’ s write-up of this 21 Club encounter included a moment of what biographer Donald Spoto has called Hitchcock ’ s “ uncharacteristic honesty. ” As an apparently impressed Smith turned the interview to the question of his appetites, Hitchcock thoughtfully confessed: “ I fi nd contentment from food. It ’ s a mental process rather than a physical. There is as much anticipation in confronting good food as there is in going on a holiday, or seeing a good show. There are two kinds of eating — eating to sustain and eating for pleasure. I eat for pleasure. ” In another interview a few days later, given to a Brooklyn reporter, he offhandedly observed, “ I fi rst started to put on weight when I took to drink. ” HHitchcock.indbitchcock.indb 2233 228-04-20168-04-2016 112:41:132:41:13 24 HITCHCOCK’S APPETITES His wife Alma Reville, who dutifully monitored, and would at times restrict, his eating and drinking over the years, was notably absent from this exchange, and one wonders if Alma may have served a very useful purpose as buffer in much of his publicity. 3 Hitchcock, of course, was savvy in realizing that this food-and-drink angle would make for good copy, but after returning to London, he was dismayed that in print, this interest in his Bacchanalian appetites eclipsed the celebration of his status as Britain ’ s most promising director. Instead of being hailed as the next European to conquer Hollywood, he was cast as a “ Falstaffi an ” who resembled “ one of those jolly sultans in an Esquire cartoon, ” and perhaps most savagely, “ a walking monument to the principle of uninhibited addiction to sack and capon, prime beef and fl owing ale, and double helpings of ice cream. ” 4 Even more upsetting to him, no movie deal materialized to soften the blow.
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