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Tony Lee Moral, "A Century of Hitchcock: The Man, the Myths, the Legacy" (UP of Kentucky, 2026)
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Welcome to the New Books Network. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of New Books Network. This is your host, Morteza Hajizadeh. Today I'm honored to be speaking with a very special guest about a fascinating topic. The book we are going to discuss today is called A Century of Hitchcock, the Man that Meets the Legacy, which was written by Tony Lee Morrell and the book was just published by the University Press of Kentucky. Tony Lee Morrell is a British filmmaker and author who specializes in film history, especially the work of Alfred Hitchcock. He has written a number of books on Hitchcock, including Hitchcock and the Making of Marnie, the Making of Hitchcock's the Birds, the Young Alfred Hitchcock's Moviemaking Masterclass, and Alfred Hitchcock's Storyboards. And this is his latest book, Book which is going to be released in a month. And I'm very honored to be able to speak to Tony about the book. Tony, welcome to New Books Network.
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C
Thank you. I'm delighted to be here.
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B
Before we start talking about the book, can you just very briefly introduce yourself to us and tell us what made you fall in love with, let's say, Alfred Hitchcock? You've written a lot of books on him. And then how did the idea of this book come about? Because there are many books on Hitchcock how do you approach his life and legacy differently from available books in the market?
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C
Sure. Well, I've been fascinated with Hitchcock ever since I was a child, really. I was reading the Alfred Hitchcock Investigator series of books, his mystery books, as a child. And I saw my first Hitchcock film when I was 11 years old. It was I Confess. And even at that age I knew he was a great filmmaker. With I Confess, it's about Montgomery Cliff, who plays a priest who he hears in confession the murderer. Then he becomes implicated in the murder himself. And that moral ambiguity and grayness and the psychology of the characters really interested me as a child. And so I went on and I studied all his films. I read Robin Wood's wonderful book, Hitchcock's Films. And then later on, when I moved to California, I wrote my first book on the making of Marnie and had the fortune to interview most everyone in the production, in the crew. And then I followed it up with the book on the Birds and then this latest book. I had accumulated so many interviews over the last 30 odd years, which never really been published in a book for. And it was really time to put the record straight on Alfred Hitchcock's legacy because many myths, especially in the last 10 years since the MeToo movement, have grown up around Hitchcock. So I wanted to set the record straight.
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B
I personally don't remember what was the first Alfred Chica movie that I watched, but I've. I think I started with watching. I think the first one I watched was Family Plot, which was one of his latest films and not one of his best. But still you could see the greatness in that film as well. We'll get to talk about some of these issues, but I do like to ask you about, let's say, his early years. That's something that I haven't really seen in a lot of other articles or books. His early experiences, maybe in Germany or in Britain, written. Can you tell us a little bit about what those experiences were and how did they shape the kind of visual and also the psychological style that Hitchcock is famous for?
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C
Well, this year is a very important year, 2026, because it really is 100th anniversary since the release, the UK release of Hitchcock's first film, the Pleasure Garden. And Germany was instrumental to that because Hitchcock went over to Germany to film it. So I dedicate the whole first chapter to the Pleasure Garden and the influences of working in Germany with a German crew, the influences of German expressionism. Previously he'd worked at the UFER studios in Berlin, but for this film he filmed at the Amalkus studios in Bavaria, just outside Munich. And. And a couple of years ago I went to visit the studios just to get the sense of what the 25 year old young Alfred Hitchcock would feel like going with his wife Alma to Munich to film with an all German crew. And I walked around the studios. A wonderful archivist there showed me around obviously the glass studio. They had a glass studio used at the time because they couldn't have enough available light to light the set. So they had a glass studio that's no longer there, it's now kind of warehouse studio. But we went through the press clippings and the paper clippings and the German crew had nothing but good things to say about Hitchcock. He was very meticulous, very well prepared, studied and, you know, storyboarded. And because of a glass studio, he had to cope with the vagaries of weather. And so that kind of timetabling and that kind of chronology was very suited to Hitchcock for his scheduling. And that's where he became such a kind of controlling, in many ways, controlling director and very keen on precision.
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B
And I guess some of it also, as you mentioned, comes from that German Expressionism and is and those silent films. I have seen that Gardener of Pleasure I watched a long time ago, but at that time I didn't. I wasn't really aware of how it was influenced or impacted, inspired, let's say, by German Expressionism. And that's something that didn't really occur to me until reading your book.
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C
It's a question that I did.
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B
Was there a censorship code in England when he first started making his films? And did it impact his work or did he learn to navigate through those restrictions?
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C
Let's say there were codes, obviously the most famous one when he moved to America, the Hays Code. But at the time there were codes, obviously. It's very remarkable watching the Pleasure Garden today, even though it was made in 1925. I actually think it was quite risque for its time. The first shot of those leggy chorus girls running down the stairs. And there's that very funny shot of pan over the lascivious faces of the men. And there was woman falling asleep at the end. And the point of view of voyeurism, the man looking through his kind of monocles or binoculars to the chorus girls. So it's extremely well crafted. But the essence of men looking at women, the point of view, the voyeurism, the Hitchcock blonde, they're all indelible to be stamped in the first couple of minutes of a pleasure garden that is really quite Striking when you watch it.
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B
One of the key things, threads, let's say, running through your book, is the idea that Hitchcock's need for control in a camera or actors or even the editing process. And that's often interpreted as a personal Hitchcock, personal quirk, or sometimes even a flaw, maybe by outsiders, let's say. But the way you frame it, it feels more like a foundation, something more foundational than that. Than that. It's built into how his films even function. So why do you see control over the camera, actors, even the editing process, as being central to his artistic legacy? And also his personal trait, personality traits as well.
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C
I think from the early days, he was given a lot of responsibility by Michael Balcon and talking later to his secretary during the making of Psycho, he was very cost conscious. Obviously, films made are expensive and they cost money. And Hitchcock was very aware of the director about his responsibility to stay on schedule. And for that, you need preparation, you need control, whether it's storyboarding, the use of a camera, the actors, the editing. And so he famously only worked from nine to five when he was in Hollywood because he was so prepared, and crew and the cast loved him for that. But I think that was central to his artistry. But he was first and foremost, according to his secretary and close associates, he was very much a businessman. He made Psycho with his own money, $800,000, and he made 14 million very quickly. So he was extremely cost conscious. And that was really impressed on me by those closely working with him.
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B
Like I said, I approached Hitchcock while English is not my first language, I guess I was. I started watching a lot of English movies, movies in English, let's say, to improve my English. And I came across Hitchcock by accident, I guess, when I was a little kid. So I saw. I watched most of his films, but then after I kind of polished my taste in cinema, I started watching his movies more systematically, or let's start watching it more critically. And then I began to realize that some movies were filmed in Britain and some in England, sorry, some in America. And you could see a shift in the way he was making films. And this is one of the most, I guess, compelling parts of your book is that you frame. Hitchcock moved from Britain to Hollywood. It's not only a career step. You frame it as something that he moved into an entirely different system of power he's refined in Britain, I guess he refined his voice. He built. He was building control and also in an experimental way. But when he moved to this industrial machine called Hollywood, things were different. He had to deal with Producers, big names such as Selznick dealing with contracts, loans. I'm keen to know this transition from British cinema to Hollywood. What does it show or tell us about the idea of power, authorship, creativity, both in the general sense and also specifically in Hitchcock's case.
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C
Well, he moved to Hollywood because he was offered a seven year contract with David O. Selznick. But he had spent all of the 30s working at Gorman, British British International, and then for Michael Balcon again. And he made some of his best thrillers such as 39 Steps and the Lady Vanishes. So he had many hits under his belt. He was attracted to Hollywood partly because of a sales offer, but also he recognized the technical ingenuity of a Hollywood cruise in terms of lighting, in terms of production values, which were superior to the British industry. And obviously Britain was about to enter a war in 1939, so the studios were really closing down. They weren't really making big films, whereas Hollywood was churning them out during that time. If you think of films obviously like Gone with the Wind and the wizard of Oz. And so there was a lot of escapism in the cinema. And so it was really a technical reason that he moved over because of a war, because he was given bigger budgets. Selznick, despite his kind of controlling nature, could command the big budgets and the stars, very attractive big stars like Laurence Olivier to filming his first film, Rebecca. And so there was trouble looming ahead because they were both auteurs, Hitchcock and Selznick. And I devote a chapter to that in the book. But it's been well documented how controlling. Selznick used to send memos to Hitchcock on the set which would drive him a bit crazy. And he was just like forever sending memos and notes. And Hitchcock kind of circumvented a lot of it with what he called his jigsaw cutting. He would only cut what he wanted. He would only film what he wanted to cut in the edit. And so that gave no options to Selznick. So there's no wide shot or there's no like master coverage that he could do because Hitchcock had it all planned in his head. So I guess that was a kind of power play and the battle for authorship and creativity between Hitchcock and Selznick. Jing that studio era, one of the,
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B
I guess the, the famous actresses who work with Hitchcock with TP Hedren. And some controversies also arose after Hitchcock's death. But I've got two questions, but I first ask you the first one and then I'll we go to that famous controversy or that interview in 1980 with Donald Spado. But that's something I'll ask you later. But let's talk about TP Hedren first, because Yobo gets into Hitchcock's relationship with TP Hedren and has become one of the most debated parts of his legacy in terms of power and control in his later career. And what's interesting is how you place this relationship within a changing Hollywood system as well, where the old studio structures are weakening, but power imbalance. Imbalances still remain. So what do you think Hitchcock's relationship with Tippi Hedren show us about the idea of power and mentorship and also vulnerability, let's say, in post studio Hollywood systems.
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C
Well, Hitchcock and I do a deep dive to this and because there's been lots of mythology and tales about their relationship. But I interviewed several key people who'd never really been interviewed before, one of which was Jerry Adler. He was a production assistant who then became producer of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. And the second was Yvonne Hessler, who was Hitchcock secretary during the time of Psycho and the Birds. And they both told me that Hitchcock relationship was purely business. He was looking for a cheap star that he could groom. After Psycho, which, as I said, he made for 800,000, he realized that he can make films without major stars because Cary Grant would cost a lot of money. Grace Kelly would cost a lot of money. Cary Grant on North by Northwest was $5,000 a day, whereas Tippi Hedren, if he could make a star, would be $500 a week. So that is a huge difference. And so from a cost conscious and budget point of view, as I said, Hitchcock was a great financier and very cost conscious, as Yvonne Hessler kept telling me. And so he was looking for a cheap person for the Birds because the Birds being a special effects movie, would eat up a lot of the budget. In the end, it cost 3 million. But you had CGI kind of special effects before that time. There were like fake birds, there were mechanical birds, There were process birds. I birds flying against sodium vapor. I write all about this in my Making of the Birds book. And so with Hedren, he saw in a TV commercial, and he did probably develop a kind of Pygmalion complex. People like Jay Preston Allen and even Yvonne Hessler said, but he could turn this person into a star. And obviously, as we all know, it didn't turn out the way either of them wanted it to be. And for various reasons, I go in the book and yes, I do dispel a lot of myths which have arisen out of that relationship and I chart through it throughout the birds and Marnie and then post Marnie and what happened with their prospective plans after that.
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And again, that's one of the most important parts of the book, which is that famous or let's say infamous 1980 interview, which was I guess done shortly after Hitchcock's death, where this guy Donald Sparto interviewed TP Hedren and recorded a conversation. And I guess Hedren described TP Hedren described Hitchcock as kind of controlling, possessive, psychologically intense, but she did not. But what was the controversy? Was there any, let's say, accusations of sexual demands or coercion in that?
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C
Not in the 1980 interview, which makes it really interesting. So Donald Spoto had just written his book the Art of Alfred Hitchcock. And after Hitchcock's death he was writing his second book, a biography, the Dark side of Genius. And I go into the reasons why he was doing that in the book because I really investigated. Spoto spoke to his colleagues and his publisher at Little Brown, which eventually published the Dark side of Genius. So Hedren at the time Spoto asks her if there was anything suggestive, there was any advances, and she explicitly says, oh, it was never any, anything like that. But later on, as we all know, in her memoirs, in 2016 and much earlier before that, and even during the Dark side of Genius chapter, they intimate there was kind of harassment, much more that they do in the interview. So just makes you wonder where this all came from, the later accusations, if they weren't in this foundational interview. I mean, Spoto and Hedren had known each other for seven years by 1980. So it just makes you question, you know. And it was a transcribed interview, tape, recorded interview, and I read the transcript and hit and Spoto used It as a basis for his dark side of genius. And I went to UCLA because Donald Spoto left America in the early 2000s to move to Denmark. But I thought it was very important to look at his original files, which he donated to ucla. So anyone can go to the special collections and look at those files. You could just make an appointment. So I did this for the research for this book. And it was just very revealing what he said in public and what he left out and what other things he left out which are in his production notes. So my thesis of the whole book, it's how personal grievances have shaped public narrative. Both of them really had a personal grievance of Hitchcock, which I go into in the book as well.
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Would it be possible to expand this? Because this is an important part of the book. Why Sparta did that? What was the source of that grievance? Let's say.
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Well, Spoto idolized Hitchcock. He grew up in New Rochelle in New York State, and he. He went to see Strangers on a Train when he was 10 years old. It blew him away. He cites Vertigo as his favorite film. And notorious. I mean, 1974, the Lincoln center in New York actually did a retrospective honor for Hitchcock. And Hitchcock was there with Grace Kelly and all the stars. And Spoto managed to get a cheap seat up in the balcony and was just in awe. And he eventually made his way to the set of Family Plot via Hitchcock's assistant, Peggy Robertson. And I detail all of that in the book. And so Hitchcock gave him a couple of interviews, but Hitchcock didn't like him. He was a good judge of character. Hitchcock. And I spoke to people like Howard Kazanjian, who's his ad on Family block. And so Hitchcock was a shrewd judge of character, and he just didn't like Spoto. He didn't think he was a great writer. He didn't like him personally. And so when you have. When you idol, just imagine meeting a famous film spot star or sports star, and you've idolized them all your life, and then you meet them in real life and they don't like you. That is actually quite crushing. And so Spoto was looking for a figure which Hitchcock didn't fulfill for him. And that is, as John Russell Taylor, who was the first biographer, said, when the love turned to hate. And those two emotions, as we all know, are quite intertwined in our psyche, as Molly Haskell says, from reverence to rape. And so that's what happened with the Hitchcock spater relationship. I have all the evidence in the book. It's a fascinating read.
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B
Wow. It is indeed keen to ask you about another aspect of the book. So one of the things your book really highlights is also how Hitchcock's film didn't really change in isolation. It was also the audiences who changed, especially in 1960s, the cultural attitudes around, for example, sex, psychology, authority, they were all shifting quite dramatically. And it seems that these changes started to reshape how other people read themes or had always been, that had always been there in Hitchcock's work. Can you tell us how these changing attitudes in 1960s changed the way audiences and also critics started interpreting Hitchcock's long standing themes and legacy?
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C
Well, Hitchcock started the 60s, as we all know, with Psycho and he was very avant garde and pioneering with that. It really was like the shock of the new. It was like the Titanic hitting the iceberg in terms of filmmaking. It really broke new grounds, created a new wave, inspired many, many, many directors and launched a whole genre. And so he started the 60s fabulously, you know, but really was a golden goose that laid the egg, as he says. It was like a once in a lifetime. And then the challenge was how to top it. And he tried with the Birds, but because of a Tippy Hedron angle, the lack of stars didn't really help the Birds and so it wasn't as successful as Psycho. And then he followed it up with Marnie, which was a vehicle for Grace Kelly's return to a screen. But unfortunately that didn't pan out. And so with the 60s, he suffered from a lack of stars and he was also very studio bound. And it was a case when this division, Lots of Arabia, widescreen cinema, was using all these techniques to bring audiences to the cinema and Hitchcock was still locked up in his studio. So most of Marnie was filmed in the studio and you can really tell that. And so it felt rather old fashioned. Plus there was a new youth movement in the 60s, obviously with the Beatles, Summer Holiday and all those kind of films. And London was very much leading the way with that. And so Hitchcock was struggling a bit culturally, I think, just to keep up with the times. And unfortunately he turned to a couple of rather turgid spy dramas, also at the behest of Universal, Torn Curtain and Topaz, which didn't really resonate with audiences, but he did try in the late 60s and it's shame it didn't really happen. He tried because he saw Antonioni's Blow up and that really inspired him. He was saying, oh, these directors are light years ahead of me of what I'm doing. So he tried to make a film called Kaleidoscope Frenzy, which never really got beyond the kind of storyboard and mood board. He shot some footage just for mood, but it was just too risque for Universal. It was about a serial killer who goes around killing women near water. It was. It was made around 67, 68, but he never got past the pre production stage, which is a shame, really, because it kind of anticipated Frenzy, which he made later. But I'm just wondering what trajectory Hitchcock's film career would have gone if he'd made that in the late 60s.
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B
I do like to go back to that, to the previous question, which was about Spoto and how the power of biographies, let's say, because that's something, again, you discuss in the book, especially towards the end of the book, you really open up bigger issues beyond Hitchcock himself. And it's about how reputations are shaped. It's, for example, and in this case it's Spoto that you discussed. So, like, between influential biographers like Sparta, and also broader cultural shifts like the MeToo movement, it seems that Hitchcock's legacy has been continually reinterpreted. So how much power do you think biographers, or even cultural movements such as this MeToo movement have in defining. And I don't think Hitchcock is the only director or even actor who's gone through this. How much power do you think these cultural movements of biographies having defining this historical figure like Hitchcock
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C
during the 70s and the early 80s, and Spater was very much aware of this, there was a cultural shift from just talking about people's lives to really delving into the psychology, whether it was figures such as Elvis Presley or even biographer Charles Hyams books, and even Joan Crawford's A book, Mummy Dearest, a book about Jane Crawford. So there was a real culture shift in emphasis, and people wanted the psychology and the scandal. And Spoto was keenly aware of this. And he and his agent took the dark side of genius to Little Brown and they immediately commissioned it within a couple of weeks, you know, that salacious title, the idea of Hitchcock was now dead, so he could no longer sue you. I mean, you can't defeat fame, the dead. And so that was in Spoto's advantage. And so with that, and that was really a precursor to the kind of gossip, National Enquirer, kind of magazines that everyone's familiar with in the supermarkets. And so people just didn't want a straightforward retelling of people's lives. They wanted more sensationalist accounts. And Spoto certainly leaned towards that. And that really set him on the career as a celebrity biographer, because he eventually published about, I think it was 27 books. And he went on to do subjects such as Marilyn Monroe and James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor. And when Laurence Olivier died in 1989, he did a Laurence Olivier biography, very famously, with insinuations that Olivia was having an affair with Danny Kaye. And so Spoto, when he died, a Telegraph wrote an obituary and they headlined it that he probed into the seamier sides of his subject's life. And that kind of summed him up. And he did very well out of that. And, you know, he did a third book, which I talk about, Spellbound by Beauty. And he really had to up the ante. And so there are even more salacious accusations about Hitchcock again, some of which involve Tippi Hedren. And as I mentioned, they went in the 1980 interview transcript. So it makes you wonder where they came from and reasons why they came there.
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B
And I guess it's also about the, let's say, response, how we can responsibly reassess artists when it comes to issues like this or when there are cultural movements such as MeToo. I guess it's about responsibly assessing their work, especially when there are ethical questions regarding their legacy.
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Why?
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B
Just one final question that I have is why do you think Hitchcock's films still continue to influence film filmmakers? From an. You are a filmmaker yourself, despite some of the controversies that you have debunked, of course, in the book, why do you think still continues to inspire filmmakers?
- [31:22]
C
I think Hitchcock will always be relevant because his career spans the history of cinema. As we mentioned, he started with a silent era in the 1920s. He worked in Germany. He had a great educational foundation with UFA studios, watching some of the German filmmakers, like Fritz Lang at work. I mean, he worked in the 1930s with a British cruise making those really great Polish thrillers, the British sextet, from the Man He Knew Too Much to the Lady Vanishes and Young and Innocent. So. And then obviously the great studio Hollywood era of 40s and 50s. And so his career really spans the history of cinema. And there are so many Hitchcock films to watch in the mine. You can rewatch them and always see something new. I mean, there's like 52, 53 of those films, and everyone has a favorite filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese. He really likes a wrong man. Brian De Palma obviously was a big Hitchcock fan and loved Vertigo. Christopher Nolan and David Fitcher and Bong Joon Ho and Part Chan Wook. They're inspired by Psycho and Vertigo and so and also Rear Window and so there are so many facets of Hitchcock because he he was very much exemplify film grammar and be very interesting to see now with AI when people really come back to the root of Hitchcock, which is not the CGI or the AI but just character and human emotions and the psychology.
- [33:10]
B
You've recently published this book. Is there any other project or book you have in mind about Hitchcock or any other topics that you might be wanting to publish sometime soon?
- [33:22]
C
Well, I'm in talks with publishers at the moment for maybe my sixth and probably final book. I think I should stop at 6. 6, 6 seems like a nice round number for me. So I can say I've done half a dozen books on Hitchcock, but it's more of a kind of personal family look at Hitchcock. Rather like my storyboards book but a more pictorial family representation and how the family life a kind of conduit to his films. So that's being discussed at the moment
- [33:56]
B
with a couple of I certainly hope to be able to speak to you soon about your future book on Hitchcock. Tony, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us on New Books Network. The book we just discussed was a center of Hitchcock the Man, the Myths, the Legacy written by Tony Lee Morale. Thank you very much for your time on New Books Now Network.
- [34:19]
C
Thank you. I hope you enjoy the book.
- [34:21]
B
Thank you for listening to this episode
- [34:23]
C
of the New Books Network.
- [34:25]
B
We are an academic podcast network with the mission of public education.
- [34:29]
A
If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend and rate us on your preferred podcast platform. You can browse all of our episodes on our website new books network.com connect with us on Instagram and Blue sky with the handle New Books Network and subscribe to our weekly substract newsletter. Add newbooksnetwork.substack.com to get episode recommendations straight to your inbox. Your next chapter in healthcare starts at Carrington College's School of Nursing in Portland. Join us for our open house on Tuesday, January 13th from 4 to 7pm you'll tour our campus, see live demos, meet instructors and learn about our Associate Degree in Nursing program that prepares you to become a registered nurse. Take the first step toward your nursing career. Save your spot now at Carrington Edu Events. For information on program outcomes, visit Carrington. Edu Sci.