Much has been said about the fascination that Alfred Hitchcock felt towards blonde, elegant, somewhat cold, and distant-looking women.
Actresses such as Grace Kelly from 'Rear Window', Kim Novak from 'Vertigo' or the thief Marnie played by Tippi Hedren come to our memory. In his cinematographic beginnings, Hitchcock was already beginning to show this obsession with the platinum color in the actresses' hair, as in the film 'The Enemy of Blondes (1927).
"She is there, Grace Kelly, lovingly filmed by Alfred Hitchcock: running from her head to her feet...". Eva Marie Saint, the most insensitive of the British director's blondes, is also revealed as the most ardent of women. The scene in the restaurant car in 'With Death on our heels' (1959) is prodigious, with her flirtatious black suit, her impeccable hair, as if she had just left the hairdresser's, and wearing a mocking smile that is an invitation to prudence as well as depravity."
According to rumors, Tippi Hedren had stimulated her appetite. Hitchcock wanted to intrude on her privacy, but she closed her heart and everything else. "Former model, classic beauty," the press kit announced.
What happened to Tippi that everyone conspired against her, starting with those who rudely considered her just a Grace Kelly ersatz? Film critics from the Saturday Review would say, "Tippi Hedren, blonde and very pretty, but totally expressionless!" Hitchcock, rejected by the actress, takes revenge with the beaks of the birds for the "demands of the script."
Also, Kim Novak, who in the role of Madeleine has to fake drowning in San Francisco Bay to be saved by Scottie. Another spur-of-the-moment Hitchcock attitude that will be wickedly glad to throw her in the water, purposely multiplying takes off her so that the actress has to pour herself, change, and throw herself again.
Grace, Kim, Eva, and Tippi, but also Joan Fontaine, Vera Miles, Ingrid Bergman (hidden love of the Genius), and Janet Leigh are part of Hitchcock's actresses. Many marked his life, but only shat will last. Those fascinating actresses are still there, in their films, on the retina, in memory, fixed forever.
