Yesterday, for the first time this millennium, I had the privilege of opening up my list of Alfred Hitchcock creations and placing a check in a couple of boxes.  This is a great accomplishment, as this is one of the oldest and most difficult lists to complete.  I first acquired a list of Hitchcock’s directoral outings in 1990, and, nearly 20 years later, I still haven’t seen everything on the list.

By comparison – in 2004, I printed off a list of Sherlock Holmes stories (the ‘official’ ones – the ones written by Arthur Conan Doyle) and, within a year, I had read them all.  

But Hitchcock’s creations are a different beast.  He worked in Britain, Germany, France and America.  He began working in the film industry in the early 1920s.  Back then, there wasn’t quite the push to preserve films for posterity.  Then there was a little thing called World War II – Germany and Britain weren’t exactly great places to store works of art.

At any rate, between 1922 and 1980, Hitchcock directed 81 works of art.  But my list doesn’t have all 81.  For one thing, his first few films are lost; destroyed during war (did we need another reason to hate the Nazis?).  Second, the film Blackmail was initially released as both a silent and a talkie (this was when studios were making the transition); I’ve seen the sound version, but I see no need to see an identical version of the same film.  The same can be said of Mary, a German version of Murder! – I am not certain Mary still exists, but I’m not terribly concerned about seeing a shot-for-shot recreation of a film I’ve already seen (got that, Gus Van Savant?).  Lastly, his final film, A Short Night, never got past the screenplay stage because, well, Hitchcock exited the project in a manner fitting for the master of macabre: he died.

The breakdown is, then, as follows:

Feature-length films still in existence: 54

Short films: 2

Episodes of Alfred Hichcock Presents: 17

Episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: 1

Episodes of the radio program The Alfred Hitchcock Show: 1

Episodes of Suspicion: 1

Episodes of Ford Star Time Theater: 1

So you see my difficulty.  How does one go about finding ancient films of mediocre quality at the local video store?  How does one find two short films shot in France during the German occupation?  How does one find one particular episode of a low-rated TV series that was cancelled decades ago?  

It started easy.  My parents were going out one evening, and my Dad took me to the video store to get a movie for myself.  I couldn’t find anything I liked, so he suggested Rear Window.  I had only vaguely heard of that movie and its director.  But I loved what I saw, and, when I told my Dad, he suggested I next rent The Birds.  I stayed at my Aunt Debbie’s house one night, and she rented Lifeboat for us to watch.  Later, my Aunt Jodi had me over to watch Rope.  Since it seemed Hitchcock could do no wrong, I decided to see everything he ever directed.   I worked at the library, and so I just rented (for free!) all the Hitchcock I could.  My friend Ryan and I got together to watch all sorts of Hitchcock films.  By 1992, I had seen almost everything.

Almost.

For about 5 years, my list floundered.  Then we got cable, and TVLand begain playing all the episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.  I kept track of which ones were airing on which days, so that I could make sure to see the Hitch-directed episodes.  One day, TVLand had a marathon of episodes he directed, and my wife kindly taped them all.  That weekend, we watched them all, and by Sunday night, I had checked off 16 of the 17 episodes.

Then, one day, my wife and I ventured to a hole-in-the-wall video store, where I was shocked to find a couple of Hitchcock films I’d never seen.  We rented them.  The owner of that store gave me a catalogue of a specialty film store in California, and told me they might have some of what I was looking for.  I called that store, and, to my delight, they had 4 Hitchcock films – and those two episodes from random TV shows – I’d never seen.  When I told them I live in Minnesota, they laughed, saying they’d never had a customer from so far away.  Nevertheless, they agreed to ship me a box of VHS tapes.  In the days before Netflix, this was a rare treat.

I also had trouble finding those short French films.  I periodically checked Suncoast Video.  They never had them in stock, but an employee said they could special-order them for me.  The two boring, confusing short films set me back $44.

But I did more.  Dial ‘M’ for Murder was originally shot for 3-D viewing, so when Oak Street Cinema had a special presentation, Jennifer and I ventured to Minnecrapolis to see it.  I wrote to a radio archive organization asking for the radio program, they had it, and I bought a copy.  I read the screenplay to A Short Night.

By 1999, I had seen 52 of the 54 motion pictures, and 19 0f the 20 TV episodes.  

Then the Internet came.  I had hoped that such an information device would readily afford me the items I was missing, but I was unable to find them.  I checked every few months.  Recently, Hulu began uploading episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents to their site, and I waited with anticipation until the episode I hadn’t seenwas uploaded.  Finally, it was.  So, yesterday, I watched it.  In a rash of good luck, some good soul also uploaded Waltzes from Vienna to YouTube.  Despite being billed as a musical and as non-Hitchcockian, I still enjoyed it.  It told a good story, was in good condition, had some fun humor and great music.  

If anyone can find a copy (online, VHS, DVD, 8mm) of Downhill (also known as When Boys Leave Home), I’d appreciate it.  That’s probably an understatement.

Click here for a list of Hitchcock films.

Click here to see how many Hitchcock films you can name (can you beat my score?).

Click here to watch Waltzes from Vienna (it’s not a musical).

Click here to watch “Arthur”.  This is the episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents that I had not seen until yesterday.  It’s unremarkable, but fun.

I recently finished reading Ambitious Brew, by Maureen Ogle.

Ogle begins her book by claiming that the general consensus among beer aficionados is that domestic beer is driven, not by quality and taste, but by corporate greed and that the only American beer worth drinking is what can be found at microbreweries.  She spends the next 400+ pages trying to prove the opposite.  She doesn’t succeed.

Don’t get me wrong – this is a great read.  Ogle paints a mostly-chronological portrait of the history of brewing in the States; giving the majority of her attention to industry titans (or, rather, people who would become industry titans) like Philip Best, Frederick Pabst and the Uihlein and Busch clan.  How these men jockeyed for position in their markets makes for an interesting story.  Also fascinating is their quest for a mass-produced, inexpensive, quality brew.  Then there’s the whole problem of how to transport beer in a world with unreliable, slower transportation and limited refrigeration capabilities.  Ogle spends a large chunk of her book detailing the relationship between brewer and saloon.  She gives reasons for the differences between American and European brews (hint: different clientele in the cafes of Europe and the American Frontier) and explains the origins of Budweiser’s Clydesdales and Pabst’s blue ribbon (hint: they were popularized due to the  same event).

More enjoyable is the slow, subtle undercurrent of the Progressive movement.  Some brewers were confident their product would never be outlawed, but as the nineteenth century ended and the twentieth century began, more and more counties (and then states) went dry.  This, of course, precipitated the 1919 Constitutional amendment prohibiting the sale of alcohol throughout the company, and Ogle’s account of breweries’ struggle to survive those years makes an engaging tale.  Some breweries did not survive, others diversified into soft drinks.  When prohibition was repealed, brewers’ woes were not over: they now had to try selling to a population raised on soft drinks.  Ogle details the lasting ramifications that Prohibition had on breweries and the populace’s palate.

In the final quarter of Ambitious Brew, we learn more of the compromises made by breweries in an effort to remain competitive in a culture that now had many other beverage options.  Many drinkers were dissatisfied with the larger brewers’ offerings, and turned instead to imports.  This opened the market for many smaller breweries to try their hand at making a living.  In essence, then, Ogle’s initial argument is almost negated: I, for one, was left unimpressed by the titans of American beer.  The book left me in no hurry to go out and buy a 6-pack of Schlitz.

But please, don’t hold Ogle’s inability to argue her main point against the book: it’s still a fun tale to read.  It will make you, if anything, glad that there are more to choices than Budweiser and Pabst.  Like brewing your own.

Yesterday, I was playing some music for all the household to hear, and a Billie Holiday song came on.  My son looked up from his toy trucks and said: “Oh, this song is like Annie,” which was his way of saying the music he was hearing was of a similar style to much of the music in that favorite motion picture.  Later, the song “Star Trek Rhapsody”, which is a parody based on “Bohemian Rhapsody,” came on.  My son said, “This sounds like WALL-E”.  Again, he was right: the sound effects in that song are very reminiscent of the sound effects in his favorite film.

I think it’s great that someone so young is already able to spot similarities in unrelated bits of daily life.  Maybe it means he’s smart, or maybe it just means he’ll be a comedian one day.  Either way, I think such pattern recognition should be encouraged.

His nonchalant comments reminded me of one day, about 25 years ago, when I was in second grade.  My elementary school used to have these things called “Picture Day”.  I don’t mean the day when all the kids try to look their best and pose for a lousy keepsake photo.  No, I mean the day that volunteers actually came into our class with a painting.  The paintings were on loan from the library, and the volunteers were usually librarians (though, for some reason, I have this hazy feeling that some of the volunteers were mothers’ of the children).

I liked Picture Day.  The whole class would sit on the floor in a semi-circle and the volunteer would pull out a large reproduction of a famous painting and tell us the story of how this painting came to be and why it’s important.  I learned a lot about art and history thanks to Picture Day; one time a volunteer brought in Christina’s World.  Another time, a volunteer came in with a painting of Dan Patch (of significance because my elementary school was named after Marion Savage).

One day, a woman brought in two paintings.  When she pulled out the first painting, it was totally covered with tagboard.  She then opened up a flap that revealed a small portion of the painting.  In the flap, we could only darkness and some stars.  She asked if we had any guesses as to what time of day the painting was depicting.  Of course, we all shouted out “night time”.  Then she opened another flap, revealing what looked like a bright sun.  So then we were all confused.  Then she removed the whole piece of tagboard.  It was then that we saw Van Gogh’s Starry Night.  I was immediately drawn to the picture; it was undoubtedly my favorite painting that anyone had ever brought in for picture day.  

As she spoke to us about the painting, however, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had heard the words “starry night” somewhere before.  After much thinking, it finally occurred to me and, so, when she asked if we had any questions, my hand shot up into the air.  “Does this painting have anything to do with that song that goes ‘starry, starry night’?” I asked.  I was referring to the Don MacLean song, “Starry Starry Night”, of which my father owned the single.  She scrunched up her face and, looking really put out at the question, said: “Well, yes, but let’s focus on the painting, here.”

After fielding a few more questions from the class, she pulled out her next picture: a painting depicting a scene from the Battle of Greasy Grass Creek.  I had never heard of Little Bighorn, or of George Custer, but, again, by sheer coincidence, as she told the story of the battle and the painting, I recalled another song my Dad owned.  So, at question time, I again raised my hand, and asked if this painting bore any connection to the funny song “Mr. Custer”.  This time, my teacher shot me a cold glance, as if I was acting out of line, and the volunteer, who assumed I was just trying to be funny, said, “Well, we’re not gonna talk about that song, it’s very disrespectful to Custer”.

Here’s what I learned later in life: Custer was a supreme asshole who deserves no respect.  And even if he did, guess what?  I wasn’t talking about the actual historical event.  I was inquiring about the painting.  Maybe Larry Verne’s parody song was just a stupid parody song, but the painting was, well, just a painting.  And while I’m fully on board with the notion that Van Gogh’s contributions to the arts far exceeeds Don MacLean’s, guess what?  It’s still just a painting.  

Another thing I learned is that making connections like that helps the brain grow and stay alert.  Despite what I learned in school.