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Alfred Hitchcock gives 1968 UC Santa Cruz commencement speech

posted a year ago by swanstep (2628)
3 replies | jump to latest

It's a hoot! Here's the audio link on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9dzCHZbrMc

Hitch seems to be in a *very* good mood (esp. given his struggles to get the First Frenzy made at the time).

I was given the link to this by a nice article, written by a son of the Hitchcocks' favorite florist in Santa Cruz, from the East Bay Times about Hitch's links to Santa Cruz:

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2022/10/31/the-santa-cruz-secrets-of-alfred-hitchcock-ross-eric-gibson-local-history/

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Its interesting, the extent to which Hitchcock made himself a "second life" away from Los Angeles, Hollywood, and his SoCal home in Bel Air(near Beverly Hills) by choosing that Santa Cruz "second home." For decades. Though he and Alma sold it once they aged out of the ability to travel there. Hitch died in his Bel Air home.

I've read that the colder climes of Northern California and the seaside vistas of the Monterey Bay reminded Hitchcock of England. He was somewhat , I guess, of the advance contingent for other stars who would go to the same area, but on the OTHER end of Monterey Bay...Carmel. Clint Eastwood(who became Mayor of Carmel for a short time); Kim Novak(who moved away) and Doris Day(who lived there in seclusion until her death in her 90's, I believe, not too long ago.)

But Hitch got up there first.

Its also interested me that many of Hitchcock's films were "informed" by that Santa Cruz/Carmel area -- and by the drive Hitchcock made from Los Angeles up the dusty "Central Valley" of California. Here are some of the uses of these areas in his movies:

Rebecca: the cliffs and coastline
Suspicion: Same cliffs, same coastline for the final car sequence with Grant and Fontaine.
Vertigo: The BIG ONE about Northern California, with San Franciso as the centerpiece but side trips down to Carmel and the Mission San Juan Bautista(that row of trees the Scottie and Judy/Madeleine drive through was just a few miles from Htichcock's home.) And the Sequoias. And San Mateo for a cemetary scene.
North by Northwest: the rocky sea cliffs of Big Sur near Carmel were moved to "flat" Glen Cove Long island for process shots of the background as the drunken Grant is poured into his car by the baddies. Later in the film, the Central Valley near Bakersfield(100 miles north of Los Angeles) becomes the plains of Indiana.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Psycho: Speaking of Bakersfield, that's where California Charlie's car lot is in Psycho(says a City Limits sign filmed in Bakersfield by a second unit) but the REAL car lot was only a couple of blocks from Universal Studios in North Hollywood. Still , Hitch would have driven past Bakersfield on his way to Santa Cruz, and he DEFINITELY would have driven past Gorman, just south of Bakersfield and where a sleeping Janet Leigh is awakened by the cop. Janet's day into dusk into night drive on Highway 99 follows the way Hitchcock would drive to Santa Cruz, too. Janet keeps going north; Hitchcock would eventually "cut west to the coast."

The Birds: The Birds opens in San Francisco, but Hitchcock couldn't make a town SOUTH of there work for the bird attacks, so he went NORTH. the real city of Bodega Bay, not too far from the real city of Santa Rosa, which was where Hitchcock shot Shadow of a Doubt in 1943 for location exteriors. (Interesting that he used REAL towns for those two movies, but set Psycho near the totally fictional town of "Fairvale," in reality meant to be near the real inland Northern California city of Redding, near the Oregon border.)

You might say that Northern California was "Hitchcock country." He very much became a weekend dining denizen of San Francisco and elected to set several of his movies north and South of that city.

All that said, I that just as many -- if not more -- Hitchcock movies were set in two cities: New York City and London.

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

It's a hoot! Here's the audio link on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9dzCHZbrMc

Hitch seems to be in a *very* good mood (esp. given his struggles to get the First Frenzy made at the time).

---

I suppose that in his later years, even as Hitchcock somewhat "knew" that his new movies were not among his best(Torn Curtain), he ALSO knew that he had a huge history of classics behind him and a TV stardom that rather eclipsed his movies(better works even that they were.)

So he could probably do speeches like this in full confidence: he proved himself an icon already, he could still bask in THAT glory and make speeches like this.

I recall Hitchcock doing some talk shows for Topaz(if memory serves, talk moved quickly to his old classics) but it was with the success of Frenzy that he could FINALLY take the TV stage as relevant to our times.

...and still be that guy at UC Santa Cruz.