It's Vera Miles' birthday today

Happy Birthday indeed! I agree she's probably the most forgettable of Hitchcocks leading ladies but an absolutely brilliant actress.

I loved her in Autumn Leaves.

Is The Wrong Man worth checking out? You rarely see that movie mentioned anywhere and I've read it's supposed to be one of Hitchcock's darkest film.

R2 Speaking of Autumn Leaves, I believe Jean Rouverol, the blacklisted screenwriter who wrote that film, just died very recently. She was 101 or something like that.

How could we ever forget Vera?

She could have ended up being his most memorable actress. He touted her as the next Grace Kelly. In fact, she was supposed to star in Vertigo, but got pregnant. Hitchcock lost interest in her after that, though she appeared on his TV show several times.

The studio wanted me to be the NEW Vera Miles...

Problem was that no one knew who Vera Miles was.

Vera is most certainly not Hitchcock's most forgettable leading lady - I'd say that title belongs to leading chicks from Topaz and Foreign Correspondent (I don't even know their names), and that's not even counting Hitch's British period which was also full of actresses with dubious acting talent.

EVERYONE remembers Vera finding Norman's mother in the fruit cellar.

r7 “They were grooming me to be the new Vera Miles,” boasts Fonda. “The new who?” asks Bridges. Fonda is bemused: “I was supposed to replace somebody the audience didn’t even know was missing!”

Yeah, but what about SYLVIA Miles?

"I tell her you will show up and display your charm, or whatever is left of it, and what do you do? You call her a greasy, diesel dyke!"

"Why would I do that?"

"Because she IS one!"

- - Raul Julia and Jane Fonda, "The Morning After"

r10 She's not our Vera!

[quote] and that's not even counting Hitch's British period which was also full of actresses with dubious acting talent.

FUCK YOU! Madeleine Carroll was not only his first blonde leading lady but also one of the best, if you ask me. Too bad she left acting to become a nurse or something like that.

In which movies of Hitch's was Vera the lead?

She is certainly not "forgotten" from Psycho. It's her highest profile role. I wouldn't call her the lead, though.

R14 The Wrong Man.

She's so forgettable you remembered her birthday, OP.

Sorry, but I think she is excellent in The Wrong Man - as good as Fonda.

It's a wonderfully noirish & Kafkaesque story, and if someone else were cast and were to give a showy performance, it would have been all wrong and derailed the whole movie.

I've never seen The Wrong Man.

Now that I have the "Masterpiece collection" on blu ray, I'm realizing there are many other Hitchcock movies that I haven't seen—or only saw once more than 20 years ago—that aren't on that set, and I need seek out HD versions of them. I know Rebecca is coming to blu ray soon. But what about The Wrong Man, Strangers On A Train, To Catch a Thief, et al.?

She's brilliant in The Wrong Man, one of the most accurate and harrowing depictions of mental illness in film. There's nothing showy or melodramatic about her performance-- it is a relentless withdrawing into herself until she is no longer herself at all. She is incapable of recognizing her own husband by the end of the movie, a devastating twist on the theme of mistaken identity that fuels the plot.

Will be putting "The Wrong man" on my films I must watch soonish on DVD list.

Why not blu ray, R20? You should see these films as clearly as they can be seen!

R21 Sorry, can't fully agree with that. Sometimes grainy picture can really add to an older movie's charm.

Hitch had planned to give Miles a huge major star build up a la Grace Kelly with Vertigo. All of his expensive pre-production publicity had been based on her in the role. There is even a full length Carlotta portrait painted from her likeness He was furious when she dropped out because of her pregnancy, not because she got pregnant but because she refused to have an abortion.

I've always been astonished he worked again with her later. We know what he did to Teppi Hedren when she dared cross him.

[R21] I've only got a DVD player and I've always watched old classic movies on them going as far back as Barbara Stanwycks 1931 The Miracle Woman and they were perfectly fine in that format!

[R23] I find it incredibly shocking that any film director thinks it is reasonable to expect an actress to have an abortion because of a film role. I hope such attitudes are rare.

R23, there were actually delays on the the production for "Vertigo", so what's a woman to do, who is married to actor (Tarzan) Gordon Scott and wants another child (a son was born). She can't wait around much longer. And Vera is NEVER forgettable, a stunning, composed, reliable and compelling actress with a ton of credits.

R22, DVDs upscaled to a high definition ratio for an HDTV (which I hope you're using, as HDTV is now standard) don't look grainier. They make them look BLURRIER. The pixels just aren't there.

Blu ray will reveal the beautiful film grain that was present on the negative or whatever they used for the HD scan.

Such attitudes are of course rare,. r25, thankfully so. But we're talking about Hitchcock. Do a little research. He was a master of personal publicity but an incredibly perverse private person.

R26, you are right about the Vertigo delays. I didn't mean to suggest in any way that Miles was wrong to chose to have her baby over a starring role. My point was Hitch's perverse fury with her for not agreeing to have an abortion. It was an abhorrent demand he made of her. Full chops to her for standing up to him. He was an incredibly powerful person in Hollywood at the time and it was a brave thing to do. Ask Tippi Hedren about crossing him.

Many actresses have chosen abortion when a pregnancy occurred at an inopportune point in their careers. Miles is to be admired. If you know much about Hitchcock, it's amazing that he actually used her again later both in films and on his TV show. Again, ask Tippi about that.

Vera is 89 today. Happy birthday, you old cunt!

he tried to rape Tippi in her dressing room which was conveniently located down an alley from his, but she fought him off. he was probably spying through a peephole on her, too.

She was hilarious in Psycho II.

She will always be remembered as long as the U.S. doesn't switch to the metric system.