MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > Psycho versus "The Lost Hitchcock Five"

Psycho versus "The Lost Hitchcock Five"

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
8 replies | jump to latest

Encore Suspense is running the "Hitchcock Universal/Paramount collection" of films right now, which pretty much means all of his most famous movies from 1954(Rear Window) through Family Plot(1976, his final film), less (from that time period), To Catch A Thief(kept as a Paramount film because Hitch didn't own it); The Wrong Man(a Warners film) and North by Northwest(an MGM film.) Plus one(Rope) from before that period(1948, a Hitchcock "Transatlantic Picture" released via Warners.)

The movement of Hitchcock among studios could make a special business course, particularly if one also showed how he shuffled not only HIMSELF among movie studios, but his movie studio pictures TO different studios.

At the core: Hitchcock owned three of his Paramount films outright: The Trouble With Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo. Somehow he wrestled the rights to Rear Window as well(perhaps WITH Universal as a partner.)

Hitch took his ownership of those four films and added one fifth one(Rope) to which he also owned the rights and -- took them away from the public and his fans. It was at once a canny business move and rather a bit of(typical?) sadistic cruelty from the man who liked to mess with us.

None of this matters now -- the five "Lost Hitchcocks" have been available since 1984 on tape, cable, DVD, and streaming, but it DID matter for about a decade: 1973 to 1983. During that time, these movies were only memories to those of us who had seen them, and rumors to a younger generation who had not.

In 1979 at the AFI salute to Hitchcock, they showed clips from Rear Window and Vertigo( the two "biggest losses" of the lost Hitchcocks) and The Man Who Knew Too Much, and The Trouble With Harry, and Rope -- and for me, it was like seeing long dead relatives come back to life..if only for a few moments.

Hitchcock coldly told the press that the "lost Hitchcock five" would not be re-released until after his death "to earn money for my family"(who were plenty rich already.) The real effect was more canny that that: when the films were finally re-released in 1983 and 1984, the evidence of the classic Rear Window and Vertigo together in '83 made Hitchcock "the best director of 1983, and he's dead." Well played Hitch. Well played.

Note from a once-young fan. In the sixties four of the lost Hitchcock five had network TV debuts: Vertigo(NBC, May 1966), Rear Window(NBC, September 1966), The Trouble With Harry(ABC, 1967) and The Man Who Knew Too Much (NBC, 1968 -- after a mid-sixties all-week release on the Million Dollar Movie in LA that forced a lawsuit from Hitchcock and Jimmy Stewart.)

But I don't ever recall seeing Rope on TV in the 60s or 70s. Not on network, not on local. I don't know why. Gueses would lnclude that commercials would ruin its "continuous take" effect and that maybe its overt gay content wasn't right for TV in that time.

Indeed when I finally saw the re-released Rope at an art theater in 1984-- that was it for me: I'd finally seen every Hitchcock movie ever made(that was not "lost to time.")

The removal of the "Lost Hitchcock Five" for an entire decade allowed for some OTHER Hitchcock movies to take control of 70's TV, pretty much in this order of broadcast popularity:

Psycho
The Birds
North by Northwest
To Catch a Thief(the only Paramount movie to escape Hitchcock ownership, it was on all the time to remind us of Rear Window, Harry, and Man 2 by osmosis -- all four were written by John Michael Hayes and filmed rather the same way by Hitchcock.)
Strangers on a Train and Dial M for Murder(two Warners films that were hits on release.)

Psycho had been a different kind of "lost Hitchcock." Its 1966 CBS showing was famously aborted and it took on the cachet of "too sick and scary for broadcast TV." Then it played in 1967 and 1968, locally in Los Angeles and a few other US markets. In 1969, it played nowhere on TV, but came out again with "See the version of Psycho that TV dared not show!"

This second re-release(after a previous one in 1965 after initial 1960 release) came about because by 1969, Universal now owned this Paramount movie. Hitchcock had majority ownership of Psycho and sold it to Universal along with the rights to his TV series...and became richer than ever -- the third largest stockholder in Universal MCA.

By 1970, Universal as the new owner of Psycho put it into local syndication, and I recall it being on about once a year. And something weird happened: this once "verboten" Hitchcock movie that had been pulled by CBS and re-released theatrically two times -- became a TV staple -- THE Hitchcock movie. I suppose what I am saying is that with Rear Window and Vertigo out of circulation, Psycho became THE Hitchcock classic most in circulation -- and started developing an ever stronger cult that climaxed in Anthony Perkins having to return as Norman in the sequels of the 80s.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

i think there were some OTHER "lost Hitchcocks" in the 70's and early 80s, by the way: I'm wondering if Hitchcock himself made sure that Marnie, Torn Curtain and Topaz didn't get much(any?) TV airplay on local channels. Torn Curtain was on NBC in 1970 and Topaz was on NBC in 1971(less than two years after its release) but...I just don't recall them being shown much on TV thereafter. It was only in the 80s, when VHS got affordable and "the Universal/Hitchcock collection" was released. that people got a chance to see those "lesser" Hitchcock movies, too.

Frenzy was a different deal. It was hard-R rated for sex and violence. It got one heavily edited ABC broadcast in 1975 and then -- disappeared. The sanitized ABC version(which turned a rape into a struggle and removed a long strangulation entirely) got a few plays but was such a worthless version of this shocking film that nobody much watched it. Still, Frenzy played in theaters a LOT in the 70's, affixed by Universal as a second feature to such movies as Ulzana's Raid, Breezy, and...Sleuth(from another studio, both written by Anthony Shaffer; a deal was cut between studios to release them together.) In the 70's also, Psycho was sent out as a second feature to Frenzy in late 1972 and Frenzy was attached to Family Plot as a late-run second feature in 1976.

One more thing: with Hitchcock hoarding his Paramount movies Rear Window, Harry, and Man 2 in the 70s, and with Psycho now properly a Universal film (it was FILMED at Universal, given Universal sound effects, etc)....it was up to To Catch a Thief to stand as "the Hitchcock Paramount film of the 70's. It was on ALL the time, and I adopted To Catch a Thief as a Hitchcock favorite largely because it was on so damn much and I learned it, head to toe. (It stands tall for the gorgeous matching of the gorgeous Grant with the gorgeous Kelly on the gorgeous French Riviera, and for the great one liners.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Sidebar on North by Northwest:

After playing on the CBS Friday Night Movie twice a year apart in 1967 and 1968 (for big ratings), NXNW got sent out in 1969 for syndication. On the "early show" of movies screened at 6:00 pm, it played IN TWO PARTS on the local ABC channels in Los Angeles and San Francisco; I saw it in both places, both times by sheer luck of vacations.

A "one part" version of NXNW went out each year as well, and it always got a broadcast slot of distinction: the Saturday Late Show(full page ad: "Hitchcock's Greatest Thriller"); a Monday night local broadcast that pre-empted the network feed. NXNW in the 70s was easily as big a broadcast favorite as Psycho, but treated less well: as two-parter and, sometimes, with key scenes removed(in one broadcast, all of the scenes with Grant and his mother.)

What became clear to me in those broadcast days was that NXNW, made a mere four years after To Catch a Thief, was a much bigger, more epic, and more action-packed production than To Catch a Thief. Hitchcock knew that a quiet low-key romantic thriller like TCAT just wasn't going to cut it with the 60's coming -- NXNW is a much bigger deal.

[–] swanstep (2616) 4 years ago

The removal of the "Lost Hitchcock Five" for an entire decade allowed for some OTHER Hitchcock movies to take control of 70's TV, pretty much in this order of broadcast popularity

Yes. This also had the effect of privileging people who lived in a few key metropoles: LA, NYC, London, Paris. Each of those centers had institutions or individuals with prints of most of the lost Hitchcocks & arrangements *were* often made for special screenings (often officially advertised under false- or code-names that only film society members or people with connections would recognize) esp. of Rear Window & Vertigo in those cities.

Of course, the whole structure of things pre-1980 led to people outside the most major film centers having enormous gaps in their film educations. E.g., you'd read about Caligari or Sunrise or Metropolis or Citizen Kane or Red Shoes or Sunset Blvd but literally *never* have had a chance to see them. Famous contemporary foreign films similarly might never have got a screening anywhere near you or might have played only once at a festival. And whole other tiers of films would be available through rep. houses but the prints would be poor quality to begin with but then also scratched to death & full of splice-cuts (to repair film breakages, etc.). I first saw 39 Steps (1935) in this sort of ghastly, blurry,staticky way and really couldn't appreciate it at all as a film. Ditto for Capra's Lost Horizon (1937).

[–] swanstep (2616) 4 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Yes. This also had the effect of privileging people who lived in a few key metropoles: LA, NYC, London, Paris. Each of those centers had institutions or individuals with prints of most of the lost Hitchcocks & arrangements *were* often made for special screenings (often officially advertised under false- or code-names that only film society members or people with connections would recognize) esp. of Rear Window & Vertigo in those cities.

--

Yes. I recall going with friends to an LA college for a marathon day of movies on the big screen , as advertised with one "special surprise feature." It turned out to be Rear Window, which I had not seen in years, and it was exciting to see it with a fully engaged full house. (Also on the day's marathon bill: "The African Queen." Departing talk among we youths was that Rear Window was the much more exciting movie.)

I can't remember much about the TV releases of other movies -- and certainly not much past 1980 when I stopped watching much broadcast TV -- but the "Paramount Hitchcocks" had the honor of playing on all three networks before being pulled in 1973:

NBC :1966 through 1967

ABC: 1970-1971

CBS: Final showings in 1973, right before Hitchcock took them away.

And think of this: Hitchcock announced that the lost Hitchcocks would not return until after his death, but once he died in 1980, we Hitchcock fans waited...and waited...and WAITED...for the lost Hitchcocks to return. It took three full years until 1983 to get them back. And we had no idea when the wait would end.

I tell you, being a Hitchcock fan back then had its own brand of suspense...

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The 'lost Hitchcocks' case is extraordinary, but in a wider sense it fitted into the landscape of cinematic scarcity outside film metropoles at the time. Almost *everybody* then had lists of hundreds of major films that they just hoped one day to have a chance to see in relatively good shape. This landscape of film scarcity has given way increasingly since 1980 to a landscape of abundance, where almost every film of note can be viewed, often in a quite pristine form, & can be assumed as common knowledge when film buffs meet now in a way that was quite impossible before at least outside the metropoles

---

Its been pretty fascinating to live enough decades to see movies go from "never seen" or "seen once and then removed from distribution for years" to..."always available on DVD, cable or streaming."

And not only does this apply to foreign films, old classics, and indies. Recall that I like "Damn Yankees" from 1958 as my favorite of that year, but it was simply GONE from TV distribution from about 1966 to 1986(I caught ONE showing in all those years, in the 70's, on the "Late Night CBS Movie." Now -- its back.)

And amazingly, somebody somewhere always seems to have a cache of old TV series. Peter Gunn, Burke's Law....no longer lost to the mists of time(and, on viewing, just a bit cheaper in the watching than the memory.)

This question is begged: were movies more "important" when they were lost for years and could only be talked of in memory? I am thinking of Vertigo and The Manchurian Candidate for two. The ability to watch them anytime, all the time somewhat took away their "mystery cachet."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

but once he died in 1980, we Hitchcock fans waited...and waited...and WAITED...for the lost Hitchcocks to return. It took three full years until 1983 to get them back. And we had no idea when the wait would end.

--

Here's some personal trivia about Psycho that might suggest how "waiting and waiting and waiting" can give another movie a great power in the "absence."

I've noted that Psycho had an aborted "non showing" on CBS in 1966 and how it got two LA screenings three months apart("sweeps months") in November of 1967 and February of 1968 that were "big deals." Well, the November one at least: giant billboards all over LA, full page ads in TV Guide and the LA Times, etc.

I saw the first 30 minutes of that February 1968 showing only(bedtime, lights out, etc.)

And then Psycho disappeared from TV , and my personal radar screen for a long time. And -- as with the "Lost Hitchcocks" I could never really know WHEN Psycho would come back to TV. It took almost three years. That's a long time when you are that young.

February 1968 to February 1969: Nothing.
February 1969 to February 1970: Nothing.
February 1970 to November 1970: SOMETHING. A late night showing in a distant city that I watched through a haze of static. That's almost three years.

And in February of 1971, it came to the small city to which my family had moved, and I finally saw Psycho. That IS three years.

No billboards. No full page ads in TV Guide. No ads in TV Guide at all.

Simply this paragraph for 11:30 pm on a Friday night, in TV Guide:

MOVIE: Psycho(1960.) Alfred Hitchcock's weird and terrifying masterpiece of murder and madness at an isolated motel. Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh.

They ALWAYS ran a good movie on Friday night at 11:30 pm in that city, so I was rather always watching for Psycho. En route to it came: Charade, The Birds, Mirage, etc.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

But that's the story. Psycho all over the place from 1965-1968. Psycho nowhere until 1970 and 1971. (Evidently, that's how long it took Universal to buy the rights from Paramount and to put Psycho into a "TV package of movies" for syndication. And yeah -- there was that 1969 "version TV dared not show" Universal re-release.)

And in years after that, Psycho DID get a few full-page ads in TV Guide, again. It became part of a series of "Summer Film Classics" and merited full page treatment.

Back from the grave, like Mrs. B herself.