Alfred Hitchcock: he was a mystery to many of the famous names he directed, but a new book gets inside the suspense maestro's mind. A sneak peek

Of the nearly 65 feature films that Alfred Hitchcock directed (starting in the silent era and continuing right up to his death in 1950), a surprising number of them remain compelling despite time's and fashion's fickleness. The following excerpt, from Patrick McGilligan's forthcoming Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light (ReganBooks/ HarperCollins), helps explain why: If God is in the details, then Hitchcock wanted to be too. In 1954, when the passage presented here begins, a lucrative deal with a new studio (Paramount) gave Hitchcock more money and time for--and control over--his films than he'd ever had before. That, together with the extraordinary performances he elicited from stars like James Stewart, Cary Grant, and Grace Kelly--as well as the unparalleled cinematic force his new production and design teams enabled him to realize--explains why his Paramount films, including Rear Window (1954), Psycho (1960), and especially Vertigo (1958), remain among his most remarkable.

PATRICK GILES

Some directors create their best films out of angst, cheap budgets, impossible schedules, and stars or projects that inspire in them conflict or indifference. But Hitchcock found his greatest inspiration during times of security and contentment, filming stories that took a leisurely amount of time to germinate, and which delved deeper into familiar, favorite themes. He could be marvelous on a shoestring, but he made his greatest films with first-class budgets.

By the time he began filming Rear Window in October 1953, Hitchcock was an almost svelte Master of Suspense. He had dieted down from his all-time high of some 340 pounds to his all-ime low of 189. He had "seldom been happier," wrote [Hitchcock biographer] John Russell Taylor. "I was feeling very creative at the time," Hitchcock told Francois Truffaut. "The batteries were well-charged."

Hitchcock had been credited as producer of the Transatlantic and Warner Bros. films, but Paramount gave him more power and authority, with fewer strings attached. And greater purse strings: after Rear Window--which was planned from the start as a soundstage-bound film, as much for the challenge as anything--Hitchcock was allowed to splurge on travel. It wasn't simply that he was enamored of location work, which involved a certain amount of risk; but going places, adding dashes of local flavor, was vital to Hitchcockery. And there were more personal considerations: Alma [Hitchcock's wife] had stopped coming into the studio, but she adored travel, and if Hitchcock was working on a location she would accompany him, and even follow him to the set from time to time. The Paramount films went to places the Hitchcocks wanted to visit together.

For seven years, Jack Warner had balked at paying what he considered the stratospheric salaries of Cary Grant and James Stewart. Actors under studio contract came cheaper, made no special demands, and didn't skim off percentages. But Paramount was willing to structure Hitchcock's budgets so the director could afford Stewart and Grant.

The two stars were as different in their professionalism as in their onscreen personas. While Grant could be a royal pain, fussy and demanding in his approach to a film, Stewart punched into work like a guy carrying a tin lunch box. Stewart was more of a partner, and the Hitchcock-Stewart films were organized as partnerships, with Stewart's company sharing a percentage of the gross and profits--and risk. As with Rope (1948), Stewart paid himself a reduced salary, taking the chance of making more money on the back end. The director knew from experience that such an arrangement wouldn't work with Cary Grant, but after Rope, Stewart would be involved in this way in each of his other three films with Hitchcock, from the script stage through to the end of production.

Hitchcock and Stewart had a peculiar friendship; they were intimate but also proper with each other, close but also businesslike. Stewart wasn't much of a gossiper, a chuckler at dirty stories, or a practical joker. He attended at least one "blue dye" dinner party at Bellagio Road, where Hitchcock served blue martinis, blue steak, and blue potatoes to the guests, but thereafter he was a rarer visitor to the Hitchcock houses, in Bel Air or up in Santa Cruz. (It worked the other way around; Hitchcock visited Stewart, often at his home in Hawaii.)

In meetings or on the set they didn't talk much. They had more of an unspoken communion, sharing amused glances--like Mr. and Mrs. Hitchcock.

Here is Stewart, tongue half in cheek, on the director:

"I never once saw him look through a camera. Uh, maybe he couldn't get up. He'd make a little screen with his hands, and the poor cameraman, whoever he was, had to get back there and look at it, and Hitch would say, 'This is what I want.'"

"I don't think Hitch paid much attention to a 'star image.' I never heard Hitch discuss a scene with an actor. He never did with me. I heard him say that he hired actors you know, the 'cattle' as he referred to them--because they were supposed to know what they were doing. When he said 'Action,' he expected them to do what he hired them to do."