Amerika-Institut
at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich
SoSe 2001

The Blondes Who Knew Too Much
The Hitchcock Women during the Monroe Era

by

Uwe Sperlich

Thesis Statement: 
Hitchcock’s Blondes were a formation of the director’s own creative vision, the image of women in film during the Monroe Era did not influence him in his depiction of women.

I. Introduction

A. Alfred Hitchcock and Marilyn Monroe

II. Hitchcock and women

A. The Monroe image
1. Marilyn Monroe
a. Biography and films
b. Monroe’s image
2. Women in the movies during the 1950s
a. Reality vs. Screen image

B. Alfred Hitchcock
1. Biography and films
2. Authorship and leading ladies

C. Analysis of female roles in Hitchcock’s films
1. Vertigo
a. Plot and critique
b. Main female character
2. North By Northwest
a. Plot and critique
b. Main female character
3. The Birds
a. Plot and critique
b. Main female character

III. Conclusion

Without question, Alfred Hitchcock is considered one of the most important and most influential film directors of the Twentieth Century. Throughout his career, which lasted more than 50 years, he directed over 50 feature films, many of which are now considered classics. Interestingly, he directed his most critically acclaimed movies ¹ during the relatively short life and career of one distinctive actress: Marilyn Monroe. It is a striking fact, however, that Marilyn Monroe never starred in a Hitchcock film, although it seems that her blond hair and her star-status would have made her the perfect ‘Hitchcock Blonde’. It would be too simple to quote the Master of Suspense about his preferences for a leading lady:

Suspense is like a woman. The more left to the imagination, the more the excitement. ... The conventional big-bosomed blonde is not mysterious. And what could be more obvious than the old black velvet and pearls type? The perfect ‘woman of mystery’ is one who is blonde, subtle and Nordic. ... Although I do not profess to be an authority on women, I fear that the perfect title [for a movie], like the perfect woman is difficult to find (qt. in Spoto 431).

In this paper I will attempt to compare Hitchcock’s female characters during the Monroe Era with the image of women in film and how they differed from each other. For this purpose, it is necessary to first take a closer look at Marilyn Monroe and the image she embodied as well as women’s role in general during that period. In addition, Hitchcock’s background, education and attitude towards his leading ladies must also be examined. In my analysis I will focus on three films by Hitchcock: Vertigo (1958), North By Northwest (1959) and The Birds (1963). I chose these films in particular because they not only show a certain progression in Hitchcock’s work in the way he treats and presents his female characters, but also because these films were highly successful.

Granted Hitchcock’s rich body of work has been analyzed under various points of view by many scholars, I have not been able to locate a work solely concerned with the female characters in his films during the Monroe Era. There are however some works which deal with female roles, such as Tania Modleski’s focus on Hitchcock and Feminist Theory in her book The Women Who Knew Too Much.² Robert Samuels looks at Lacan, Feminisms [sic] and Queer Theory in his book Hitchcock’s Bi-Textuality, and Susan White examines Vertigo and Problems of Knowledge in Feminist Film Theory in her 1999 essay. But before turning to Alfred Hitchcock and some of his works, it is important to circumscribe the period we are looking at by focusing on the life, career and image of Marilyn Monroe.

Born as Norma Jean Baker in 1926, Marilyn Monroe lived through a troubled youth. At age eight she was sexually abused and later she spent several years in foster homes and orphanages before marring an aircraft-plant worker at age sixteen (Cinemania, par. 1). Her first occupation in front of a camera lens was modeling for bathing suits and posing for glamour photos and pin-ups. Through these photographs she signed a contract with 20th Century Fox under the condition that she change her name to Marilyn Monroe (par. 2). She first starred in minor film roles such as Love Happy (1949), All About Eve (1950) and The Asphalt Jungle (1950). In 1953 she became famous with three films in a row: Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and How To Marry A Millionaire, as well as some nude calendar photos that appeared in the debut issue of Playboy (par. 3). In the years to follow she appeared in such memorable films like The Seven Year Itch (1955), Bus Stop (1956), Some Like It Hot (1960), and The Misfits (1961). Although she tried to fight her image of the ‘dumb blonde’ in films like River of No Return (1954), the audience did not accept this change and the film was subsequently a failure at the box office. After failed marriages with Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller and increasing problems with drugs and alcohol , Monroe died from an overdose of sleeping pills in 1962 (Cinemania, par. 3-7).

Marilyn Monroe’s image has changed significantly throughout the years, although Molly Haskell argues that through her death she became an icon whose image now cannot be viewed apart from the person (258). This tragic fact had already manifested itself in her final film The Misfits (Haskell 256). While she was still alive, “women couldn’t identify with her and didn’t support her”(Haskell 254), which meant that she had little sympathy from the general female population. Haskell also remarks that “women hated Marilyn for catering so shamelessly to a false, regressive, childish, and detached idea of sexuality” (254). According to these observations, Marilyn Monroe must have been a 1950s nightmare for many women fearing their husbands might fall for her.

But why did women react so enviously towards Monroe? Lori Landri provides a very plausible answer in her observations of Monroe: For one, she has “much in common with postwar ideals of femininity and representations of female power as covert” (156). Further, “because Monroe’s incarnation of female sexuality is passive, she represents not an oppositional figure but a hegemonic model of commodified sexuality in the postwar capitalist sociosexual marketplace” (157). But was she a role model? Jeanine Basinger confronts Landri’s argument by adding both Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe to the category of ‘unreal women’ ³

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1  These films include Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Trouble With Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, North By Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds
2  The title of this book inspired both the title of this paper and the title of the presentation.
3  According to Basinger, they are “fantasy figures of all types (these stars are dream images, mostly appealing to men)” (166).