(Chronological, in the order they worked with Hitchcock)
Top: Joan Fontaine, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly
Middle: Doris Day, Vera Miles, Kim Novak
Bottom: Eva Marie Saint, Janet Leigh, Tippi Hedren
Alfred Hitchcock was known for the women he chose to star in his films. When people think of Hitchcock women today, they naturally gravitate to the ones he used the most, Grace Kelly and Ingrid Bergman, each appearing in three of his films. People also tend to associate him with the female he most famously killed, Janet Leigh, who ironically appeared only in one Hitchcock film and had the least screen time of any of his leading ladies. But many of his best films feature other actresses, each of whom contribute particular facets to what it means to be a Hitchcock woman.
Joan Fontaine was terrified and unsure of reality throughout both Rebecca and Suspicion. Ingrid Bergman was smart and stubborn in Spellbound, smart and defiant in Notorious, yet hopelessly lost in Under Capricorn. Grace Kelly was beautiful but a bit cold in Dial M for Murder before evolving into her role as the aggressive quintessential Hitchcock object of desire in Rear Window and To Catch a Thief. Doris Day showed the devoted maternal side of a Hitchcock female in The Man Who Knew Too Much, while Vera Miles showed two dark outcomes of female devotion: despair and loss in The Wrong Man and near-death in Psycho. Kim Novak played two forms of the ideal in Vertigo, both the unattainable ideal blonde and the attainable but less desirable brunette. Both had their issues. In North by Northwest, Eva Marie Saint at first appears to embody the same aggressive ideal as Kelly, until it turns out her motives are far darker. Or are they? In Psycho, Janet Leigh gives us the darkest Hitchcock woman yet, seductive and selfish, until out of nowhere the story makes a u-turn. And finally there's Tippi Hedren, the actress Hitchcock plucked from obscurity who played what seemed to be the perfect blonde in both The Birds and Marnie, until one realizes she has some fairly dark issues of her own.
Though they are all undeniably beautiful, the nine Hitchcock women above go beyond being sex objects, each playing central roles in their stories, in a genre typically dominated by strong male characters accompanied by one dimensional women. To be sure, they're all idealized incarnations of reality, but they're all still undeniably real.
It's my hope to write my impressions of each of them. All in good time.
- Richard