The Hitchcock Movie American TV Dominance: 1966-1969
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Psycho
ecarle — 9 years ago(February 10, 2017 07:38 AM)
As the sun slowly sets on these pages, I've thought to wheel out a few "golden oldies" thoughts about Hitchcock and Psycho as, perhaps, final statements of "the way it was" that might provide a historical context to Hitchcock's popularity. I've mentioned this before, but "one more time."
"On paper," the years from 1966 to 1969 were bad ones for Hitchcock. After having put out at least one movie a year from 1950 to 1960, sometimes two, even as, from 1955 on, Hitchcock had a major hit TV series on the airin 1966, things changed.
The TV show had gone off in 1965(at Hitchcock's own request, the ratings were still high.) And after the warning shot box office and critical troubles for "Marnie" (1964), the release of Hitchcock's highly anticipated 50th movie Torn Curtain (1966) with two top headlining stars(Paul Newman and Julie Andrews) was poorly reviewed and tapered off at the box office.
Torn Curtain came out in the summer of 1966 July I believe and there would not be another Hitchcock movie until the end of 1969. So, no Hitchcock movie came out in 1967(a watershed year for "New Hollywood"), and no Hitchcock movie came out in 1968, and no Hitchcock movie came out for almost the entirety of 1969. And when that movie DID arrive Topaz the reviews were again poor(though it got a few "Hitchcock's Best" nods) and box office was bad.
A poor time for Mr. Hitchcock "in the present tense."
But not on American network television and some local channels across the US.
A few months after "Torn Curtain" did so poorly at the box office and with critics, the 1966-1967 season of "NBC Saturday Night at the Movies" opened its season of theatrical films with "Rear Window." There was a nicely painted advertisement placed in TV Guide and newspapers, with Jimmy and Grace and the windows and the camera all done up handsomely.
NBC promoted its key returning hit 1966-1967 TV shows with handsomely painted posters for I Spy, The Man From UNCLE, Bonanza, and Get Smart you could order them by mail and put them on your wall. I did, with three of them. The spy shows. The "Rear Window" painting was not converted into a poster for mail by NBC, but it was memorably "large scale" for TV Guide and newspaper presentation.
Within a week or so of "Rear Window" opening "NBC Saturday Night at the Movies," it was advertised that "Psycho" would be one of the first(but not THE first) theatrical film for 1966-1967 season on "The CBS Friday Night Movie." Famously, that broadcast of "Psycho" never happened CBS pulled the movie "day of" and replaced it with "Kings Go Forth"(starring Frank Sinatra, and Janet Leigh's husband, Tony Curtis.) But somehow "Psycho" NOT being shown in 1966 only built on its legend as "the most terrifying movie ever made" and forbidden fruit not suitable for mainstream TV culture.
One year later when the 1967-1968 TV season arrived, Hitchcock anchored three major slots in the TV year. "North by Northwest" was one of the first debuts of the season on "The CBS Friday Night Movie" in September 1967(having been promoted all summer long along with "Viva Las Vegas" as the two biggest movies CBS had for the coming season.)
A coupla months later in November of 1967 "Psycho" got a late night debut on Los Angeles TV The KABC-7 late night movie. November and February were then known as "sweeps months"(when movies and TV shows were used to measure Nielsen ratings points), so after a smash local November sweeps debut for "Psycho," KABC-TV ran "Psycho" one more time in February of 1968.
In January of 1968, "NBC Saturday Night at the Movies" debuted "The Birds" and got the highest ratings for any theatrical film shown on any of the three networks(ABC, CBS, NBC) to date. Thus, if you lived in Los Angeles(and I did) "North by Northwest," "Psycho" and "The Birds" (three sequential Hitchcock hits) dominated network AND local TV from September through February.
CBS and NBC elected to hold their "repeat showings" of both North by Northwest and The Birds to the next season: 1968-1969. North by Northwest ended up as November 1968 sweeps airing on The CBS Friday Night Movie, and The Birds ended up as the NBC Saturday Night Movie in March of 1969.
Even as these major Hitchcock hits were the "flagship" Hitchcock films on network TV, other Hitchcock films got some screenings, too. Inexplicably the back-to-back Paramount films The Trouble With Harry and The Man Who Knew Too Much ended up on ABC and NBC, respectively. Vertigo had gotten its first showing a bit before Torn Curtain came out(May 1966 on the NBC Saturday Night at the Movies show.)
What does all this mean? I think it means that even as Hitchcock was "phasing out" as a major director and spacing out his NEW film releases, an American public used to only three television channels(networks at least) was providing audiences in the MULTI-MILLIONS for Rear Window, North by Northwest and The Birds, and probably not much less for the local Psycho showings(Psycho also got a New York -
ecarle — 9 years ago(February 10, 2017 06:18 PM)
Family Plot: Daunting: this 1976 release hit NBC Saturday Night at the movies in 1977. Not quite "the next year" the 1976-1977 season came between, but in time for the 1977-1978 season, and barely two years after release.
As a matter of "completion" to my own OP, for reasons of well, we're almost done here I will note:
NBC showed "Family Plot" nationwide one more time after showing it in 1977almost four years later in 1981.
April of 1981. Hitchcock had been dead about a year(April, 1980) and NBC made a show of showing "Family Plot" as "Hitchcock's final film."
By 1981, HBO was starting to make its inroads and VHS tapes were available and the entire concept of the "theatrical film on network TV"(which had driven ratings in the 60's and 70's) was on its way out. "Family Plot" came in almost perfectly to end an era of theatrical films as the anchors of network TV schedules.
If "Family Plot" in 1981 was the final Hitchcock film on network broadcast TVwhat was the first?
I'm not sure, but I can say that before the 1966-1969 corridor I describe above I believe I recall "To Catch a Thief" getting a debut on NBC Saturday Night at the movies in the 1964-1965 season. "Vertigo" followed in the 1965-1966 season and the next two seasons after that created the real "Hitchcock lock" on broadcast TV for a few years.
Meanwhile , I missed "Marnie" which I think got its NBC debut in the same 1967-68 season as The Birds.
And in the summer of 1971, ABC broadcast a "Summer of Selznick" which put Rebecca, Spellbound, Notorious, and The Paradine Case on national TV along with other Selznicks like "Portrait of Jenny.>
And that's it. I think.
Well: "Psycho" never got a network TV broadcast in the period above, but Janet Leigh hosted a "Showtime" cable premiere which she described as "the first nationwide broadcast of Psycho." This was in 1991, and in conjunction with the premiere on Showtime of "Psycho IV: The Beginning."
How do I remember all these dates? Well, sometimes it was the advertising in TV Guide.
But for network movies, TV Guide had a weekly column by Judith Crist which I followed religiously. Her list of reviewed movies might look like this:
Dr. Strangelove, ABC, Sunday
Charade, NBC, Monday
The Music Man, CBS Thursday
North by Northwest CBS Friday
Father Goose, NBC Saturday
..and thus I would know what movies were coming the next week and when/if one was a Hitchcock. NXNW, The Birds, Vertigoall of those made the "Crist list." I recall her one-liner on NXNW: "If you haven't seen North by Northwest you owe yourself the pleasure."
But Psycho never did make "The Crist List" of network movies. And I watched for it. Hopefully. For a few years before it began its continual run in local syndication (1970.) -
swanstep — 9 years ago(February 11, 2017 08:55 PM)
OK, so there's a lot of trivia in there. But perhaps this will demonstrate how Hitchcock managed to "hold on and grow fans" for well over a decade even as his current films weren't released all that often or were all that good. On TV network TV , where the largest audiences were Hitchcock was a staple from 1966 to 1977. That's a pretty good run. Ford, Hawks, Capra and Welles didn't come close to having that kind of representation on network TV during the same period.
Excellent point, very well argued I'd say.
I imagine that Hitchcock's personal morale was also kept high during the Torn Curtain/Topaz/First-Frenzy-flame-out period by all the love coming from France. Hitchcock/Truffaut is published in 1966 which surely all the movie brat generation and read alongside all those Network TV screenings (and surely Hitchcock's winning appearances on Mike Douglas and Dick Cavett and on the BBC in 1969 w/ Bryan Forbes for an hour) exist largely in the shadow of Hitchcock/Truffaut - interviewers now had that as their model for how to talk about film generally and with Hitch in particular). Hitchcock, who was always a bit of a Franco- and Euro-phile, corresponds regularly with Langlois, who regularly stages Hitchcock retrospectives and exhibits at his Cinematheque and museum, as well as with Truffaut, and he visits Paris quite a few times in the sixties and early seventies. When Langlois has his big showdown with the French govt in 1968, Hitchcock is one of the biggest international names who weighs in to give support to Langlois. Amazingly, though both are nearing 70 and quite conservative personally, Langlois and Hitchcock are the darlings of the cool kids and the sticking-it-to-the-man revolutionaries alike in Paris '68. In 1971, the French Govt gives Hitch an honorary award, the Chevalier level of the 'Legion of Honor' (there are some technicalities I forget about what foreigners can actually get since the Legion proper is just for French nationals but set that aside), which Hitch goes to Paris to accept. Famously Langlois presents the award to him. Hitch who'd just got the money for Frenzy sorted out and only days before had got Shaffer signed on to do the script looks well and like the cat that ate the canary. The stage was set for the Frenzy comeback.
In 1974, Anobile's Psycho photo-book comes out and becomes along with Hitchcock/Truffaut a cornerstone of every Public Library's slender film section. Meanwhile, with famous Hitchcocks like Rear Window and Vertigo out of circulation, Brian De Palma imprints restagings (almost every year through the '70s and early '80s) of their key scenes and Psycho's for a new generation (mine!) that has never (except for Psycho and except for what was in Hitchcock/Truffaut) seen the originals!
All of which sets the stage for Hitchcock's return from beyond the grave in 1983 with an expanded edition of Hitchcock/Truffaut, Psycho 2 a decent-sized hit in theaters, and most importantly the release on VHS of the lost Hitchcocks. Siskel and Ebert do a special 'Dial H for Hitchcock' episode to celebrate the return of a master:
http://siskelandebert.org/video/2UYBMBDKD4O2/At-the-Movies-Dial-H-for-Hitchcock -
ecarle — 9 years ago(February 12, 2017 09:56 AM)
OK, so there's a lot of trivia in there. But perhaps this will demonstrate how Hitchcock managed to "hold on and grow fans" for well over a decade even as his current films weren't released all that often or were all that good. On TV network TV , where the largest audiences were Hitchcock was a staple from 1966 to 1977. That's a pretty good run. Ford, Hawks, Capra and Welles didn't come close to having that kind of representation on network TV during the same period.
Excellent point, very well argued I'd say.
Thank you. I'm sensing "the countdown" on this board even as we now seem to have a few smaller places to hang out and I figured I would roll out this argument, which I only fully developed years after I "figured it out."
I think what triggered it (some years ago) was screenwriter William Goldman writing: "Why has Hitchcock turned into God, for some reason?"
And the comparisons of Ford, Hawks, Welles, Capra, etc were all rolled out. And I pondered : why HAD Hitchcock turned into God for some reason?
And I thought about my own experience with his work, which suddenly highlighted all manner of television seasons as "among the big movies being rolled out" that year.
One also realizes that Hitchcock's some of Hitchcock's biggest hits were of the late fifties and early sixtiesyears in which the quality and quantity of Ford, Hawks, and Capra (really filmmakers of the 30s and 40s in the main) slowed down. I mean, Hawks moved to Europe for most of the fifties and Rio Bravo in 1959 was his first movie in years, and one of his few major hits of that decade.
And Capra's final film Pocketful of Miracles - came out in 1961, one year after Psycho and thus removing Capra from competition in the years of The Birds, Torn Curtain, and Frenzy.
Thus, Hitchcock was working "new" in theaters in the same years his more classic films (Rear Window, North by Northwest, The Birds, Vertigo a little bit, and Psycho only on local channesl) hits became dominating parts of TV culture.
I imagine that Hitchcock's personal morale was also kept high during the Torn Curtain/Topaz/First-Frenzy-flame-out period by all the love coming from France. Hitchcock/Truffaut is published in 1966 which surely all the movie brat generation and read alongside all those Network TV screenings (and surely Hitchcock's winning appearances on Mike Douglas and Dick Cavett and on the BBC in 1969 w/ Bryan Forbes for an hour) exist largely in the shadow of Hitchcock/Truffaut - interviewers now had that as their model for how to talk about film generally and with Hitch in particular).
That's right. I would like to point out that the actual appearance of "Hitchcock/Truffaut" is a matter of some debate. I believe the book had a 1966 release date the final interview in the book is on Torn Curtain, and the book was timed to PROMOTE Torn Curtain.
And yet I don't recall seeing Hitchcock/Truffaut in an American bookstore(near me) until 1968.
I do recall Time magazine doing an article on Hitchcock/Truffaut and I think that was in late 1967.
In any event, some irony thereHitchcock/Truffaut arrived to salute Hitchcock in particular and film studies(as a "new thing") in general just as Hitchcock had begun his decline.
The TV appearances - particularly the episode-long appearance on Dick Cavett to promote Frenzy and yet to review his career in general seemed rather "Vertigo"-ish to me. "Hitchcock as the real Madeline" was gone; this late-breaking nostalgic retread version of him seemed a little sad. He was taking curtain calls and looking back now; even "Frenzy" couldn't obliterate his age and the fact that it wasn't one of the BIG hits of 1972(The Godfather and The Poseidon Adventure were.)Hitchcock, who was always a bit of a Franco- and Euro-phile, corresponds regularly with Langlois, who regularly stages Hitchcock retrospectives and exhibits at his Cinematheque and museum, as well as with Truffaut, and he visits Paris quite a few times in the sixties and early seventies.
Hitch put two and two together, I think. A spirited group of AMERICAN critics were "out to get him" as a lightweight elevated beyond his talent, but in France, the love was strong. Best to get on over there.
And hey, for those who didn't understand why he made "Topaz" how about because its protagonists are FRENCH, and the third act takes place in PARIS?
When Langlois has his big showdown with the French govt in 1968, Hitchcock is one of the biggest international names who weighs in to give support to Langlois.
Yep. Hitch still had his clout and his wealth.
Amazingly, though both are nearing 70 and quite conservative personally, Langlois and Hitchcock are the darlings of the cool kids and the sticking-it-to-the-man revolutionaries alike in Paris '68.
I've never read it, but I think Hitchcock made the list of "cool ones" including Bob Dylan and maybe Andy Warhol in some Esquire article written by the guys Robert Benton and David Newman who would go on to write Bonnie and Clyde. Hitch W