Alfred Hitchcock did hire brunettes as the female leads in his movies--Joan Fontaine in Rebecca (1940) and Suspicion (1941), for starters--but it can't be coincidence that the vast majority of his leading ladies were blondes. Laurence Leamer (The Price of Justice; Capote's Women) explores this apparent fixation in the entrancing Hitchcock's Blondes: The Unforgettable Women Behind the Legendary Director's Dark Obsession, which presents the Master of Suspense's predilection as the sort of fetish that could be found at the center of one of his films.
Leamer profiles eight blondes who received top billing in 14 of Hitchcock's most highly regarded films. First up is June Howard-Tripp, star of The Lodger (1927), in which, Leamer writes, "for the first time, [Hitchcock] revealed his passion for blondes and his pleasure in making them suffer." The roundup concludes with Tippi Hedren, who starred in both The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964). Of Hitchcock's casting choice Leamer writes, "he envisioned [Hedren] as one of his classic blondes, her coolness hiding a smoldering sexuality."
Unlike the director, Leamer is evenhanded with Hitchcock's leading ladies. As Leamer tells each actress's story, Hitchcock usually comes across as a friendly colleague, but occasionally he's closer to a creepy uncle. (Leamer is attuned to the sea change in thinking about predatory sexual behavior since Hitchcock's day.) Hitchcock's Blondes is more than a valuable exploration of Hitchcock's casting choices: it charts the personal shortcomings of a great director who seems not to have been such a great man. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer