Barbara Harris: The Last Hitchcock Blonde

SPOILERS

In a tale with four rather evenly-matched lead roles, it is the role of Madame Blanche Tyler which perhaps rises above the rest.

We meet Madame Blanche first, as she accepts a "case" from Julia Rainbird to use her psychic powers to find the long-missing male heir to the Rainbird fortune. Madame Blanche assigns her ornery cab driver-unemployed actor boyfriend George Lumley to his investigations, and Madame Blanche eventually finds the missing heir at the villains' lair and unintentionally confronts them.

Madame Blanche was a blowsy, middle-aged woman in Victor Canning's source novel, and Hitchcock initially considered opera singer Beverly Sills for the role. Sills declined. And Hitchcock started thinking about a younger Madame Blanche.

Universal was pushing Liza Minnelli on Hitchcock for Madame Blanche -- she had some star power back then -- but Hitchcock "just couldn't see her in the part."

Hitchcock also considered Goldie Hawn for the part. Close, but not quite right, either (and, in that year, very expensive to boot.)

Hitchcock's ultimate choice for Madame Blanche was a bit of a surprise when announced: Barbara Harris.

Miss Harris was known more as a stage star, but had been kicking around movies for a decade without gaining much traction -- her debut was in "A Thousand Clowns" (1965) the New York Movie that won Hitchcockian actor Martin Balsam ("Psycho") his only Oscar.

Barbara Harris was known on screen for playing quirky, slightly dizzy women. She was a COMIC actress, lightweight. She was also, in the beginning, a little too cherubic and rotund for sexy roles, though she certainly played them.

Going into "Family Plot," Barbara Harris had just stolen Robert Altman's "Nashville" from about 22 other actors (including Karen Black!) with her movie-ending musical performance as a weird housewife country music groupie who saves a concert with her singing.

Alfred Hitchcock seemed to know what he was doing, he seemed to be choosing Barbara Harris just at the moment that she might be star material, finally, after ten years.

It was interesting what Hitchcock did with Barbara Harris.

First of all, even on the modest terms of "Family Plot" - a low-budget backlot job about hardscrabble con artists -- Hitchcock made Barbara Harris kind of glamourous. She became another Hitchcock blonde -- but her blonde look was more subdued, a kind of perky ash-blonde bob of a look. Hitchcock was looking to create a kind of "Kooky Comic" Hitchcock heroine in Madame Blanche, but he couldn't help himself: there are some gauzy close-ups of Harris where the pert actress looks downright beautiful.

Second, Hitchcock definitely plays up Harris' comic talents. Harris knew her way around a comedy line reading, and she shows this quite well in her first cab ride with boyfriend Lumley (Bruce Dern, finally playing a good guy, if an eccentric and tempermental one.) Listen to Harris' litany on the missing heir: Who is he? "Nobody knows" Where is he? "Well...nobody knows," etc. Very funny.

Harris and Dern perform an expert comic duet during the "runaway car" set-piece mid-film. This couple is on the edge of instant death, but they just keep bickering as they always do ("Get your hands off the g-damn wheel!" "My hamburger's coming up!")

There was something light and witty and comical about Barbara Harris as Madame Blanche that we'd never really seen in a Hitchcock movie -- only Shirley MacLaine in "The Trouble With Harry" really came close. (Hey, MacLaine could have played the older version of Madame Blanche in '75, wonder if Hitch thought of her?)

But Barbara Harris brought other "colors" out in Madame Blanche. She's quite a sexy little number for one thing, and the fact that she looks to be late thirty-something gives her an air of sexual experience (this is likely what Hitchcock preferred to Goldie Hawn's pixieish innocence). Blanche is always hassling her boyfriend for sex (he never wants to; she must be quite ravenous), and always looking quite appealling in the open white sweater over a blouse that Hitchcock chooses as her main costume.

That white sweater provides Harris with her final "color" as Madame Blanche: sympathetic humanity. For when the villainous Arthur Adamson entraps Blanche in his garage and manhandles her, we are deeply hurt and shocked by his actions. Blanche has been such a FUNNY character up to now that to see Adamson slap her really hurts. And then he administers a shot to Blanches arm that draws red blood onto her white sweater, and she slumps down in unconsciousness, and we are very worried about her future. Will Madame Blanche get killed? (She does in the book.)

One critic who liked "Family Plot" wrote that one of its pleasures was to "finally enjoy the talents of Barbara Harris at full length." After years as a supporting player and in things like her small "Nashville" part, Harris had never quite been given center stage -- until Alfred Hitchcock chose to give it to her.

And Barbara Harris got her own very special piece of Hitchcock History: she is the sole person on screen for the very last shot in Hitchcock's career: looking pert, glamourous, and sexy all at once, Harris looks out at us and winks.

This wink matters to the story -- Madame Blanche is telling us she's not "for real" -- but it also matters to Hitchcock: he's winking goodbye after a lifetime of movies, courtesy of Barbara Harris.

A parade of great Hitchcock blondes, in far more more important Hitchcock pictures, came before Barbara Harris: Madeleine Carroll, (semi-blonde)Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, Doris Day, Kim Novak, Eva Marie Saint, Janet Leigh, Tippi Hedren...

...but none of them were quite LIKE Barbara Harris, the very cute, very funny, very memorable Last Hitchcock Heroine.


P.S. For her part, Harris has said that she almost said "no" to "Family Plot" because she knew working with Hitchcock would make her more famous than she'd ever been, and she didn't WANT to be; and that she never saw "Psycho" because she was too scared to.