Finch, Foster, and McCowen
In the winter of 1971, Alfred Hitchcock announced to the papers that his next film would be entitled "Frenzy," , from a novel of a different title by Arthur LaBern, and that the screenplay would be by superhot playwright Anthony Shaffer. It was to be, we read, "about a psychopathic multiple murderer and how the wrong man is picked up for his crimes." The excitement was palpable as Hitchcock fans waited anxiously for this possible combo of "Psycho" and "North by Northwest"(or The 39 Steps, or The Wrong Man).
I was a reader of Weekly Variety at the library back then, and I watched as "Frenzy" eventually appeared on the "Films in Pre-Production" list -- but with no cast announced. That was often the case with major films. Either just one big star was announced...or none til the film was ready to go into production.
Week after week, "Frenzy" was on the "Pre-Production" Variety list. And then one week, it was "In Production." And the cast was listed. And I read it quizzically:
Jon Finch, Barry Foster, Alec McCowen, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Anna Massey, Vivien Merchant, Billie Whitelaw, Bernard Cribbens.
I read it again. The only name I clearly recognized was Billie Whitelaw -- I'd recently seen her playing a bosomy French Queen type in "Start the Revolution Without Me", a Gene Wilder/Donald Sutherland comedy. Bernard Cribbins I knew from the "Carry On" movies. Anna Massey rang a bell, but I couldn't tell from where. Same with Vivien Merchant.
But those "lead names" threw me. Jon Finch?(Not PETER Finch?) Alec McCowen(Not Alec Guinness?) Barry Foster -- not a clue.
It was clear that this was just about the "least starry" Hitchcock film ever made -- Topaz had a least had a "small name" in John Forsythe, and some foreign names in Michael Piccoli and Phillipe Noiret.
Well, Hitchcock had been striking out a lot lately...
A year later, "Frenzy" opened to surprising, heartwarming raves. "A Hitchcock comeback!" I went and saw the movie, three times by November.
And I came to find myself almost treating Jon Finch, Barry Foster, and Alec McCowen as stars. Movie stars.
Finch, Foster and McCowen provide an interesting lesson in movie stardom, IMHO. You could tell that Hitchcock chose these three actors with an admirable regard for their "star quality": their faces, their voices, their differing amounts of charisma. Each man was handsome enough that it seems he COULD have been a star...but it just wasn't in the cards for any of them.
Barry Foster had perhaps the hardest go. Hitchcock cast him in the role of charming psychopath Bob Rusk after Michael Caine said "no," and so Hitchcock essentially found "another Michael Caine." Which is always a problem in Hollywood (or England, I'd suppose) -- you can really only have one star per "type." Foster was different from Caine in some ways -- one poster here says Foster's face was more Richard Dawson that Caine -- and Bob Rusk was a horrific role to be remembered by. Still, there was something suave and stylish and funny about Barry Foster as Rusk...when he's NOT killing women, he's easily the funniest, friendliest character in the movie. You'd want to be his pal. That's a star.
Jon Finch came to "Frenzy" with another major movie ahead of it -- Roman Polanski's bloody art film version of "MacBeth," which got a lot of press but little distribution. It was made by "Playboy Productions" and Finch got a brief photo article in Playboy that I saw a few months before "Frenzy" came out, so I could say: "So that's what Jon Finch looks like?" Turns out, we realize 38 years later, Finch looked rather like a young man to follow him: Johnny Depp. The same kind of brooding, somewhat beautiful looks. And a great Shakespearean voice. Alas, Richard Blaney was no kind of role to land a star career from --- and seven years later, Finch lost an even bigger chance for stardom, when he quit the John Hurt role in "Alien" over illness.
Alec McCowen, I learned much later, was a respected stage star of London and Broadway and I felt that Hitchcock had cast him well for the movies. McCowen's Inspector Oxford is a business-like, tweedy man -- but quite a handsome one; he has a pleasant face, a movie star face. Hitchcock's eye was good here, given that Oxford could have been played by someone in the bureaucratic, older tradition of Trevor Howard or Harry Andrews. "The usual suspects." McCowen and Vivien Merchant are well-matched as an attractive couple who seem to have simply let the sex drain out of their marriage entirely.
McCowen got a shot at stardom one film after "Frenzy" -- getting the coveted lead male role in "Travels With My Aunt" as the tweedy grown nephew of a flamboyant aunt (Maggie Smith in a role meant for Kate Hepburn) who accompanies her on a small-scale adventure and finds a little romance. McCowen's good looks and quiet manner suited him well, but "Travels With My Aunt" wasn't much of an adventure, it sank without a trace. I saw it, I liked it. Because I'd liked McCowen in Frenzy.
Shortly after Frenzy came out, Barry Foster got a "nice guy" role as Richard Burton's sidekick in the TV mini-series "Divorce His, Divorce Hers." (Liz Taylor was "Hers," ) In this two-night production, Foster shaped up much more as a funny, friendly sort of character, kind of a British Dick Van Dyke. No murderous intent. I understand that soon thereafter, Foster made quite a name for himself on British television as detective "Van Der Velk," but you'd think he could have been a movie star too.
If there is one scene in "Frenzy" that demonstrates to me that Jon Finch, Barry Foster and Alec McCowen -- singly or in some combination -- COULD have been movie stars, its that famous final scene where Blaney, Oxford, and Rusk all come together for the first time -- you know, "Mr. Rusk...you're not wearing your tie." Each actor gets to show off his chops, briefly, near silently -- Finch with his brooding intensity, Foster with his expert, suave comedy(Rusk, caught red-handed, just sputters and utters a weak laugh), McCowen with his supercool, tough-yet-proper utterance of the final line. They look like movie stars, they sound like movie stars, and for that one shining moment in a film framed and directed by Alfred Hitchcock...
....they ARE movie stars.