The Long Wait for 'Frenzy' Photos
Memories of a young Hitchcock fan, circa 1971-22:
Modernly in the internet age, there is a great PR fanfare -- and some fan excitement -- to the publication of "first photos" from a movie that has gone into production.
If not on the Internet, magazines like Entertainment Weekly bag the "first gets" of photos.
Go back further in time, and magazines like the now defunct Newsweek and Time got such "gets." I recall some excitement when Newsweek published the first photo of Jack Nicholson as the Joker in "Batman"(1989) for instance. Modernly, first shots from "The Avengers" or of Daniel Craig as James Bond or of Jennifer Lawrence in "The Hunger Games" got that kind of heat.
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Well, back in the summer of 1971, word went out that the famous Alfred Hitchcock had decided to make one of his ever-more-rare forays into giving us a movie. The title, we were told, was "Frenzy." The cast -- very little known Brits(Jon Finch, Barry Foster) in the leads, somewhat better known Brits(Vivien Merchant, Billie Whitelaw) in support.
The "first photo from Frenzy" was published in Time's "People" section(soon to beget an entire magazine in 1974), simply of Hitchcock himself -- a rather aged and wheezy looking Hitchcock -- in Covent Garden surrounded by gawkers and photographers, first week of filming "Frenzy". No actors were in the shot.
As the summer moved on, Time published another photo "from ""Frenzy" -- but it was more publicity, and it was again centered on Hitchcock, with him sitting on a London bench holding a replica of his own head(used for a dummy to float on the Thames that Time erroneously reported as Hitchcock's cameo in "Frenzy.")
Months passed, with some relief given to the news that Hitchcock had actually finished filming "Frenzy" and that it was in the can(there were worries near th end of Hitchcock's career that he might not live to finish the final two films he made, each time.)
With the imminent release of "Frenzy" in the US in June, the first major US review appeared: a very positive one, in "Life" magazine, by Richard Schickel, titled "The Return of Alfred the Great," with the great line: "Hitchcock has finally delivered the kind of sly and savage movie that we felt he either would not or could notgive us anymore."
The accompanying photograph was of: Alfred Hitchcock. In a bowler hat, for his cameo by the River Thames.
This Hitchcock fan was getting flummoxed. Here was this movie called "Frenzy"(with some hopes for another "Psycho" attached) ...and yet all we had seen for almost a year had been photos of Hitchcock, not his cast.
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About a week later, Newsweek published the biggest rave "Frenzy" got: a review by Paul Zimmerman saying how "the old master had once again fooled us" into thinking he was senile and out of it, by delivering "Frenzy, one of his very best." Nice.
Two photos accompanied the review: one of Hitchocck(!) being interviewed BY Newsweek, and..FINALLY!...one from the movie of an actress in it:
Barbara Leigh-Hunt, as Brenda Blaney. Dead in her office chair, eyes wide open, tongue way out, a necktie around her neck.
It was an odd photo to see. It didn't really carry the power of Janet Leigh's dead face on the bathroom floor in "Psycho." Certainly, it had a certain comic effect(that tongue sticking out.) But it WAS brutal and it announced a motif of "Frenzy," straightaway: this movie's psycho was a strangler who used neckties for his weapons.
About a week later, Time weighed in with a respectful not-quite-rave: "Not at the level of his best work, but smooth and shrewd and dextrous, a fitting reminder that anyone who sets out to make a suspense film is an apprentice to this old master."
The accompanying photo was of an actor: Barry Foster, as villain Bob Rusk, in cap and apron steering a wheelbarrow with a potato sack in it. A great shot -- of a great Hitchcock killer and his newest unseen victim -- the body in the potato sack.
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I expect that Hitchcock and Universal had orchestrated that sequence of photo release: Life got a shot of Hitchocck(in his cameo garb, but a posed portrait); Newsweek got a shot of the film's first on-screen victim, and how she has been killed; and Time got a shot of the film's killer. Brenda with the tie round her neck and Rusk with the potato sack pretty much spelled out THE big motifs of the movie.
That was enough for this Hitchcock fan to get the flavor of the movie.
A few more reviews ran a few more photos. The LA Times ran posed portraits of Jon Finch, Alec McCowen and Billie Whitelaw, and an expository photo of Finch as Richard Blaney purchasing a newspaper from a stand with the sign: "Another Necktie Murder."
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By somewhat interesting contrast, when Hitchcock was filming "Family Plot" in 1975 for '76 release, many photos were sent out, long before release, of the cast in their costumes and scenes, including an insert in Variety on the movie. By the time "Family Plot" came out in 1976, we Hitchcock fans knew what to expect in terms of how Bruce Dern, Karen Black, Barbara Harris, and William Devane would look and behave in this film. And of course, many photos of Hitchocck were released to promote the movie, too.
I would expect this might be because Dern, Black and Harris(at least) were known actors, because Family Plot was filmed in the US, not England...and because Universal and Hitchcock let the press on Family Plot locations and soundstages practically every day to cover this very late Hitchcock project(rumored, over Hitch's objections but correctly, as his last).
But "Frenzy" was a much more mysterious project, with only Hitchcock himself placed before the public for the longest time in photos.
Probably just the way he wanted it.