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Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies | 
 enlarge | Author: Donald Spoto
Publisher: Harmony
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $15.97
You Save: $9.98 (38%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 18071
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.5 x 1.3
ISBN: 0307351300
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.430233092
EAN: 9780307351302
ASIN: 0307351300
Publication Date: October 28, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW
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Product Description
“The trouble today is that we don’t torture women enough.”
—Alfred Hitchcock
It is remarkable how infrequently, over a period of more than fifty years, Alfred Hitchcock spoke about the beautiful, legendary and talented actresses he directed. And when he did, his remarks were mostly indifferent and often hostile. But his leading ladies greatly enriched his films, even as many of them achieved international stardom precisely because of their work for Hitchcock—among the dozens of women were Madeleine Carroll, Joan Fontaine, Grace Kelly and Tippi Hedren. Yet he maintained a stony, insistent silence about the quality of their performances and their contributions to his art.
Spellbound by Beauty—the final volume in master biographer Donald Spoto’s Hitchcock trilogy that began with The Art of Alfred Hitchcock and continued with The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock—is the fascinating, complex and finally tragic story of the great moviemaker and his female stars, the unusual ideas of sex and romance that inform his films and the Hollywood dreams that often became nightmares.
Rich with fresh revelations based on previously undisclosed tapes, new interviews, private correspondence and personal papers made available only to the author, this thoughtful, compassionate yet explosive portrait details Hitchcock’s outbursts of cruelty, the shocking humor and the odd amalgam of adoration and contempt that time and again characterized Hitchcock’s obsessive relationships with women—and that also, paradoxically, fed his genius.
He insisted, for example, that Madeleine Carroll submit herself to painful physical demands during the making of The 39 Steps. He harbored a poignantly unrequited love for Ingrid Bergman. He meticulously and deliberately constructed Grace Kelly’s image. Finally, he stalked, harassed and abused Tippi Hedren. His treatment of his daughter, Pat, was certainly unusual, while his strange marriage to his sometime collaborator Alma Reville was a union that (according to Hitchcock himself) was forever chaste after one incident.
Spellbound by Beauty offers important insights into the life of a brilliant, powerful, eccentric and tortured artist, and it corrects a major gap in movie history by paying tribute at last to those extraordinarily talented actresses who gave so much to his films.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Terrific! November 14, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
I have always enjoyed Spoto's books about the film industry, and this one is superb. Having already mastered Hitchcock and his work in other books, this one takes the Master a step further.
In short, Hitchcock was a "weirdo" who harrassed his leading ladies all through the making of his classic films. He told them dirty stories, propositioned them, and harrassed them in eras where that was acceptable and allowable. But it must have worked, as his leading actresses all were superb in his films, with one, Joan Fontaine, winning the only acting Oscar for a Hitch film, "Suspicion." AH was terrible to Tippi Hedren, Anne Baxter, and Diane Baker, but somehow he was in love unfailingly with Ingrid Bergman, who worked with him in 3 movies.
A fascinating book - highly recommended!
Spoto returns to the subject he knows better than anyone. November 10, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Few film historians have the understanding of Hitchcock that Donald Spoto possesses. He sat at the master's arm during the making of Family Plot. He has previously written about Hitchcock in two other fine books, but here, unburdened by the need for censorship, Spoto offers his most uncompromising view of the obsessions and quirks that were an undeniable, if unattractive part of Alfred Hitchcock. Spoto is an artist of the first rank and this is one of his best.
 The Trouble With Alfred November 10, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A theme of the author's more detailed biography of Hitchcock is drawn-out over this slight, at time frustrating, but hard to put down overview of the master's treatment of women. It amounts to a sexual biography. We get lots of details of Hichcock's scatological pestering of his leading ladies (and everyone else) as well as his delight in putting them through physical hardships that grow increasingly sadistic. Exhibit "A" here as elsewhere is his treatment of Tippi Hedren. After being rebuffed by Ingrid Bergman and Grace Kelly, it seems he wanted to build a star from scratch who would have fewer options and be beholden to him and his finally expressed sexual appetites. It's a fairly damning indictment, and Hedren and Diane Baker are wholly credible. As for the book, if this is the crux of the case against him, why do we spend so much time on his earliest British films (pre 39 Steps) and then almost none once he's become unhinged by the author's estimation at the end of his career? (It would seem Frenzy, arguably his most misogynistic film, is worth examining in this light. Here it's relegated to a single paragraph.) And we get a long account of Madeline Carroll's good works in life after her film career, wonderfully admirable as it was -- does it belong in a book this brief? It seems to somehow vaguely buttress an argument that Hitchcock's Edwardian, sexual hang-ups were an affront to all women's essentially sainted natures.
it's ok November 3, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
1.)Pauline Kael once said she found most directors to be more or less jerks (a paraphrase).
2.)That said, I love Psycho, Vertigo, Strangers on a Train, Rebecca, etc. But I believe this book when Spoto says Hitchcock sexually harassed Tippi Hedren and Diane Baker. I also believe that Miles Davis physically abused his wife, Picasso was a jerk to his mistresses and maybe, just maybe, Joan Crawford was guilty of child abuse. That said, great artists are complicated just like the rest of us. Art doesn't excuse anything, but Hitchcock did give us the gift of his movies with their profound themes. The only thing I would change about this book is the mediocre writing.
3.) The structure of this book is strange. It's like a condensed version of "The Dark Side of Genius", just about the women in Hitchcock's movies. Spoto self plagiarizes himself several times, if that's possible. What should have happened is someone should've issued a new edition of "Dark Side of Genius" with the new information this book has.
4.) Plus Spoto makes unwarranted conclusions about Doris Day and Janet Leigh. Janet Leigh said many positive things about working with Hitchcock (to the point where she said she loved it) and that should be taken at face value. But since she died in 2004, she can't argue with Spoto's speculations. Doris Day didn't exactly "love" Hitchcock but I think she was proud of the work she did in "The Man Who Knew Too Much", based on reading her autobiography. The Tippi Hedren accusations I can accept since Spoto knows her personally and has presumably for at least 30 years. The Leigh and Day speculations I have to take with a huge grain of salt.
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