Recasting Hitchcock’s Spell

Eva Marie Saint, Tippi Hedren and Janet Leigh all worked with director Alfred Hitchcock. And each one of the blond actresses had a different experience with the master of suspense.

“I am always fascinated when I am with someone who has also worked with Hitch,” says Saint, who played a sultry spy opposite Cary Grant in the 1959 Hitchcock thriller “North by Northwest.”

“We tell our stories and I sit there fascinated by what we’re saying. I have this feeling we have all been married to the same man who is gone, and now we have all different reactions and stories about it.”

Saint, Hedren and Leigh recently got together to share their memories about Hitchcock for “The Girl’s Guide to Getting Hitched,” a series of interstitials that will appear during an all-day Halloween Hitchcock film festival on cable’s WE: Women’s Entertainment

Leigh, who played the ill-fated Marion Crane in 1960’s classic “Psycho,” says all three actresses came under Hitchcock’s wing at various points in their careers. “Tippi, as an example, had never done a movie and was totally inexperienced. She was a model. Eva Marie had a different relationship with Mr. Hitchcock, and I had yet another. I had made maybe 30 pictures or more before I worked with Mr. Hitchcock.”

Leigh recalls getting an envelope from Hitchcock one day with Robert Bloch’s novel “Psycho” inside, along with a note from the director telling her to consider the role of Mary. “Her name was Mary in the book,” Leigh explains. “Anthony Perkins was being considered for Norman Bates. So I read it and I called my agent immediately and I said, ‘Yes.”’

In her first scene in the film, Leigh is sitting on the bed in her bra and half slip. “That was very hot stuff,” she recalls, laughing. “We had censors, but they didn’t think anything about a bathing suit, but the fact you had on underwear .... The connotation meant it was sexual.”

She wore even less for her infamous murder in the shower--just strategically placed moleskin to give the illusion of nudity. Leigh spent seven days filming the now-classic scene.

Saint was happily married, the mother of two young children and an Oscar winner for 1954’s “On the Waterfront” when she made “North by Northwest,” which marked her first real glamour role.

“When we were making the film I felt so secure, although I had never played a sexy spy lady,” Saint says. “I said [to my husband] Jeff [Hayden], ‘Hitch sees me as a sexy spy lady.’ And my husband said, ‘So do I!’ So that gave me confidence.”

Saint found that Hitchcock treated the cast like royalty. “I just felt everybody on the set had the feeling that you wouldn’t be on the set unless he really wanted you there and thought you would be perfect for the role. That carries you a long way.”

Hitchcock, though, gave her little direction. “He knew exactly what he wanted. He gave me three [commands]: Lower my voice; don’t use my hands; and look directly into Cary Grant in my scenes with him, look right into his eyes. From that, I conjured up in my mind the kind of lady he saw this woman as.”

Unlike Leigh and Saint, Hedren had never acted before Hitchcock cast her in 1963’s classic “The Birds.” “I did a lot of commercials and that is how he saw me,” Hedren says. “He had me sit in on meetings with all the different departments making the motion picture.... He really gave me a tremendous education in making a motion picture.”

Since the two went over the character and the scenes so extensively in pre-production, Hitchcock would do only two or three takes for each of her scenes. “It was amazing,” she says. “He knew so clearly what he wanted.”

Hedren found Hitchcock had an unusual sense of humor. “He would love to hold court,” she says. “He loved dirty limericks. Sometimes he would tell us very funny jokes before we would go into serious scenes.”

Hedren also found him a psychological director, especially on her second and last film for him, 1964’s “Marnie,” in which she played a deeply disturbed young woman.

“He would say something to me and I was so offended it would make me nervous,” she says. “Of course, that is what he wanted.”

However, their working relationship and friendship ended after “Marnie.” “She had to break away,” says Saint. “It was like ‘Pygmalion.”’

“He was so controlling,” Hedren says. “It caused an enormous problem for me.”

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“A Girl’s Guide to Getting Hitched” starts today at 7 a.m. with “The Trouble With Harry” on WE: Women’s Entertainment. “Family Plot” follows at 8:50 a.m., “The Man Who Knew Too Much” at 11 a.m., “Rear Window” at 1:10 p.m., “Vertigo” at 3:15 p.m., “Psycho” at 6 p.m., “The Birds” at 8 p.m and “Marnie” at 10 p.m.