Let's be Vertigo (1958)

I'm the 1957 Jaguar MK VIII driven by Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak)...

I'm the grey suit

I'm the San Francisco backdrop!

I’m Marjorie Wood, and I don’t think Mozart's going to help at all.

I'm the do-hicky brassiere!

I’m Ellen Corby, manager of McKittrick Hotel, and I’ve been here all along putting olive oil on my rubber tree leaves.

I'm so dizzy, my head is spinnin'

Like a whirlpool, it never ends

I am the perfect recreation of Ernie's in SF.

I'm the grove of eucalyptus trees on highway 101. I'm still here.

I'm Madge, walking away from Scotty slowly and sadly.

I’m coy but sly Ellen Corby, “oiling the leaves of my rubber plant.”

And I’m the brilliant music score by Bernard Herrmann, the only film composer acknowledged by his peers to be a genius.

I’m the suspension of disbelief so audiences can accept that a hottie like Kim would ever think Jimmy Stewart was sexy.

I’m Pop Liebel, and I can tell you who shot who in the Embarcadero in August 1879.

I’m Judy and I’m quite unabashedly trashy. How could someone like me could perfectly act the part of a classy, demure, rich woman? I’m not the brightest - I even kept and wore that extremely guady incriminating necklace...in front of the person most likely to recognize it.

That said, I DO look fabulous as Madeleine.

I’m the nun who pops up in the bell tower. Oops, sorry!

I’m the sad, run down McKittrick Hotel. Don’t cry for me: Decades later I will re-open in a fabulous reincarnation on West 27th in NYC. My halls will be filled with that familiar tense and sweeping score.

I'm the posy that Madeleine tosses into the Potomac.

I’m Kim Novak’s big feet. She’s always been a bit embarrassed of us. She tries to hide us in scenes whenever possible.

I'm the praise lavished on this overrated Hitchcock film.

Rear Window is much better.

I'm Midge's hip, artsy studio in North Beach with a sweeping view of the city, that would probably rent for at least $4500/mo. today.

I'm Scotty's obsession with unavailable women (including undressing them when they're unconscious)...

I'm Vera Miles' impregnated uterus, preventing her from appearing in the film. Sir Alfred is not amused by me.

I'm the glaring age gap between Midge and Johnny-O, even though they supposedly went to college together.

I’m a very apt pupil, a very apt pupil.

I'm Grace Kelly who would have been cast if I hadn't decided to get married instead and leave the country.

^ I wonder how Grace would've handled the trashy Judy Barton role, thoug. I think Kim did a great job as both characters.

I'm the non-existent bell tower atop Mission San Juan Bautista that was added with trick photography.

I’m the magically available parking places in front of each and every destination a character drove to. If the movie were not a fantasy, they’d all still be circling the block, looking for me.

^ Haha, yes!

In one scene Jimmy Stewart parks in the middle of an alley to follow Kim Novak through the back door of the flower shop, and magically no other cars appear that want to drive through that alley.

The Redundant Thread Copycat is on another hypomaniacal tear and needs to be cancelled.

F&F!

I’m Ellen Corby and I was Hitchcock's first choice to play Norma Bates' mummified mother.

I'm James Mason who should have got the starring role as the tormented detective 'Scottie' Ferguson instead of that lame-brained, squeaky-voiced giant rabbit.

I'm Midge's portrait

I'm beautiful and sad

I'm all those gay guys who get sucked off on the beach just around from where one of those two Kim Novaks threw herself into the bay.

I'm the 'Liebestod' that Bernard Herman (R12) quotes to tell the audience that the hero and heroine are fornicating to the point of orgasm.

*Liebestod = Love death

I'm the scotch whiskey, readily available to offer any guest at home, the office or the club.

I am V.

I am the second most weird letter in the alphabet.

I'm the V for Vertigo. I'm the V in the surname of Marilyn Pauline (Kim) Novak who had the weird, exotic Polish strangeness which was appropriate for the role— instead of the dreary schoolmarmish, sexless V for Vera Miles.

I'm the sexual symbolism.

[quote] The Redundant Thread Copycat is on another hypomaniacal tear and needs to be cancelled. F&F! Related Datalounge Thread

Bitch, you need to be strangled and flung off a church bell tower.

I am Mozart! and my symphony no 34 is sweeping all the cobwebs away!

^. I'm the Mozart Ignoramus who enjoys his Prague Symphony and the Jupiter Symphony but doesn't know the 34th well enough to recognise it in Herrman's lush score.

I'm the single room in the shabby Tenderloin residence hotel, where Judy Barton lives.

Today I probably rent for about $2,000/mo. and am surrounded by homeless drug addicts.

^ I'm the disappointed look on Scotty's face when he sees Judy go inside said hotel.

I’m the shabby Empire Hotel, now the lovely Hotel Vertigo, where you can live out your own fantasy in Judy's room.

R43 --what? it is the 34th symphony. r42 is correct

Oh, I'm the IMDB page with says the Symphony No. 34 is used as 'cue 10B' in the psychiatric ward.

"with says" --R48

The Tristan leitmotif that Hermann quotes is from the Act II love music, not the Liebestod, r37.

Meanwhile, I'm Edith Head being driven to distraction because Kim Novak hates, hates, HATES the gray suit but Hitchcock won't allow it to be changed.

Hitch always had to find some way to torture his leading ladies.

No wonder Grace Kelly retired to live with the short fat Prince. Anything was better than another shoot with Hitchcock.

Grace retired because she was losing her figure.

But Grace was never a sex symbol like that slut Marilyn. Grace was a LADY!

I'm the Coit Tower, which serves as a not-so-subtle symbol for Scottie's newly found virility after he meets and beds Madeleine.

(The film makes a number of symbolic references to male impotence, and in one way you could say the entire film is about one man's obsession with his own penis.)

Scotty wasn't impotent. He just needed to kill his partner to get off.

What didn’t she like the gray suit? It was very flattering. Why wouldn’t a woman want to look that good?

Wasn’t Kim rumored to be intersexual?

Novak thought the gray suit made her look plain. Which was the point.

R59 I thought she looked very chic and glamorous...and sexy. The soft gray brought out the icy silvery shade of her blonde hair. Absolutely gorgeous and classy!

Her Judy clothes were ugly by comparison.

I wonder what costume she wanted??

I'm the gentlemanly manner in which John Ferguson undresses Madeline and tucks her into his bed while she's pretending to be passed out, then goes into his tasteful bachelor living room to enjoy a glass of scotch by the fire while waiting for her to wake up and watching her clothes dry.

I'm Harvey the Giant Rabbit.

I said to Jimmy Stewart that he belonged in comedy. I told him his high-pitched voice and lack of gravitas rendered him hopeless in dramatic films.

I'm a certain shade of blonde that reminds you of HER.

I’m the Elizabeth Arden cosmetologist eyeing Scottie with derision. "We know what you want, sir..."

I’m the Salvatore Dali dream sequence. Which is interesting but not that effective.

I love these.

I'm Salina, Kansas, where Judy Barton comes from.

I’m the big reveal scene 30 minutes before the end of the movie where the audience learns of Judy’s trick. The studio convinced Hitchcock to take out the scene, but only days before release, it’s believed his wife Alma told him the film needed it and the scene was reinserted (though it is lower quality image wise).

I’m the person who gets confused by plots and who's forgotten the big reveal scene.

I'm the blasé viewer who's seen this movie too many times on TV but could really only appreciate its swirling weirdness on the big screen last year at my city's art museum.

I'm Midge's self-admonishment when Johnny-O doesn't find her Carlotta portrait amusing.

Midge was a catch - Johnny was stupid.

I’m Judy’s chola brows.

I'm Madeline - you never saw me. Really, you didn't - I was just a a 2 second blur.

[quote] Midge was a catch - Johnny was stupid.

She was educated and witty, creative, knew lots of interesting people, and worst of all, had a career and was independent. None of that is very attractive to a man.

I'm Midge wearing glasses because Sex-kitten Kim didn't want competition.

Midge was a real person, and smart, warm and plain.

“Madeleine” was a gorgeous unknowable cipher. Of course he’d be obsessed.

Stewart was basically playing Hitchcock in this film. Novak was playing all the beautiful actresses that Hitch was obsessed with over the years. And Midge was a stand-in for poor Alma Hitchcock.

I'm the hideous green outfit that Judy wears when Scotty sees her for the first time. A Datalounger saw me in person at the Hollywood Costume Exhibit a couple of years ago, and was astonished to find that it looked even worse in person! The sweater, skirt, belt, and shirt are all green, but clashing shades of green.

I add yet another layer of WTF surrealistic mystery to the story, because my presence indicates that a woman who works at one of the Bay Area's more upscale clothing stores, and who spent months being carefully dressed in the most exquisite couture by my married lover, still knows shit nothing about clothes.

I'm Brian De Palma, carefully splicing the plot together with that of Rear Window to make the gloriously trashy Body Double, 26 years later.

I'm Agnes Moorehead and Carlotta Valdes looks a lot like me in the dream sequence...

[quote]a woman who works at one of the Bay Area's more upscale clothing stores, and who spent months being carefully dressed in the most exquisite couture by my married lover, still knows shit nothing about clothes.

R79 More, please.

More what, R82?

Judy mentions she "... works at Magnin's" (sorry, not Bullock's), which FYI was an extremely upscale department store, a more tasteful precursor to Nieman Marcus. A wealthy friend dragged me there a few time during the late seventies and eighties, and I remember racks of blouses that cost several hundred dollars each in seventies and eighties dollars, and exquisitely dressed salesladies. The place is gone now, or places as there were at least two, its market was taken over by Nordstroms and Needless Markup some years ago.

If a badly dressed, low-rent, ho like Judy Barton worked there, either she was fucking the manager, or she was working the cash register at the employee cafeteria. She sure as hell wasn't a saleswoman, not with a look like that.

That’s correct, sir at R83. Nor would we at Ransohoff's ever appear in public dressed like this common trailer park trash.

R83 I guess they had to make her look "cheap" but nothing about Judy Barton from Salina Kansas who isn't too bright makes sense, as R15 correctly pointed out. She should have been been played as a shrewd and talented grifter with a chic Beat look, like this image of Joan Collins in 1955. On second thought, Collins would have been great in this role.

I'm the garish beauty mark Judy pencils on the side of her face when she's a brunette.

I'm Judy's Groucho Marxian eyebrows.

I'm Cary Grant, who Hitchcock said he wished he'd cast instead of Jimmy Stewart. Hitch thought Stewart appeared too old in the movie and blamed him for the poor reviews and mediocre box office the film received.

Looking back, it's amazing many critics were hostile toward every damn Hitchcock film of the era. Jealousy.

Kim Novak was borderline fat in this movie. Barbara Bel Geddes was actually thinner than her.

R88 maybe they were critical because they saw what modern audiences see now- cheesy, boring movies with garish makeup and creepy old man/young woman fantasies

I’m my favorite line in the picture. When Stewart asks Bel Geddes, “How’s your love life, Midge?”

And she responds, “Oh, it’s following a train of thought.”

I’ve used that one more than once...

Scotty's projection of his own inability to let go of the past...

"You shouldn't keep souvenirs of a killing. You shouldn't have been that sentimental."

**I'm Scotty's... (keeping the convention of being the thing)

I'm old IMDB user, who had to explain at least once a year to the "Vertigo" board that no, Scotty wasn't driving on the wrong side of the road when he drove Madeline to San Juan Bautista, he was driving in the fast lane of a four-lane highway that had a thick, forested divider between the northbound and southbound lanes.

And that that particular stretch of highway doesn't actually lead to San Juan Bautista, it's not far away, but heads west from there to Castroville and Monterey. And that I have no idea why the fuck Hitchcock used that bit of hghway.

I'm another IMDB contributor, R94, who's finding them to be capricious and unhelpful lately.

They're punctilious on some things but sloppy on others (such as the Trivia section in the 'Bios' which are repetitive, undocumented and not in chronological order.

I'm the de Young museum, conveniently empty except for Scotty and Madeline, and Madeline STILL doesn't notice he's been following and watching her all day (of course, the audience doesn't know yet that Madeline is an imposter and KNOWS Scotty is following her).

I’m Madeleine’s coat and I’m absolutely stunning and fabulous!

I am Gavin Elster, suave and debonair, and I am scripting the entire plot.

I am common sense, asking Gavin why he didn't kill Judy.

I'm all the San Francisco filming locations, then and now.

Great video R100!

I'm the cross-section of the giant sequoia Madeline/Judy directly addresses.

I’m Judy when I recognize Scottie as I'm walking down the street with my friends. Notice how my foot hesitates for the briefest instant as I step over the curb, betraying my shock. Then see how I contrive to stop and talk with her friends for a moment, so Scottie can get a good look at me.

I'm the feeling of vague horror everyone gets when they see the movie for the first time and Scotty sees in his dream the real Carlota Valdes turning her head to look up at him as eerie castanets click and the lights flash orange.

I'm the the posy both Madelline and Elstir carry, and the swirling curl in both their hairdos.

Like the spinning Spirographs in the Saul Bass credits, we all represent the hypnotic quality of vaginas and narrative plots!

*Sorry, that should be "I'm the the posy both Madeline and Carlota carry,"!

I'm the hard fact viewers must allow by the end of the movie that Gavin Elstir got away with a very cruel murder (especially since Hitchcock always said that to his mind Scottie jumped off the tower to follow Judy a second after the film ended).

I'm the San Francisco florist's shop that for some reason puts a posy in its shop window every day designed to look exactly like one in a nineteenth-century portrait at the Palace of Fine Arts.

I'm Henry Jones, gratuitously humiliating Scottie at the inquest and making him feel even more emasculated.

I'm the basis detective work Scotty failed to do about Madeline Elster (and Gavin for that matter) before beginning the surveillance of her.

[quote] Gavin Elstir got away with a very cruel murder (especially since Hitchcock always said that to his mind Scottie jumped off the tower to follow Judy a second after the film ended).

I’m the alternate ending that reassures viewers the law will catch up with Elster and Scottie and Midge will be forever stuck with each other.

No one likes you R111

There is no direct evidence that the alternate ending, which was shot to assuage any disturbed censor boards, was ever used. But the running time of the film submitted to to the British censor board is two minutes longer than the the US release, which has led some film historians to suggest the film was submitted to them with it. The alternate ending was found tucked away and forgotten in a film vault when Robert Harris and James Katz restored the film in the 1990s and began searching for the best film elements they could find.

I am Kim Novak’s undescended testicle.

I'm another "then and now" video of San Francisco filming locations in Vertigo with the locations labeled and more time to examine the changed landscapes.

R115, that was excellent.

That was good, R115, but I preferred R100.

I thought R100 was interesting because the close-ups of Old Man Stewart made me think he's wearing the same soft orange pancake make-up as the current US president.

But MORE interesting is the extended use of Hermann's brilliantly hypnotic, sinuous music. I wish I was more knowledgeable about music so I could definitely say that Hermann has influenced Pedro Almodovar's soundtracks.

R117 You have a good ear. The film scores of Amaldovar's award-winning composer, Alberto Iglesias, have often been called "Herrmann-esque."

A mini-doco on Hitchcock's maestro...

I am 'Dean Flynn'

I have a slight resemblance to the old guy in 'Vertigo'. A similar physique but a better penis.

I’m Tommy Helmore. And don’t confuse me with Tom Conway!

I played in one homosexual film years ago and appeared in another Hitchcock film when I was almost as pretty as gorgeous Michael Redgrave—and Hitchcock gave a starring role to him!

I feel like Judy’s look is perfect. The garish makeup, the firm fitting sweater dress that says “notice me, please” like a modern day instaho. She is low rent and face it, just a shopgirl at I Magnin. She lives in a hotel/boarding house.

Joan Collins would have been all wrong for the part. Kim evokes sympathy, she’s not really a shrew or grifter. I love Kim in the role.

[quote]Kim evokes sympathy

Kim's 'Judy' also evokes plot holes you could drive a truck through, but that's on Hitch.

Some say the plot holes are sort of intentional since the whole movie plays out like a dream...

"Joan Collins would have been all wrong for the part."

Novak really puts over Judy's complete lack of self-esteem, something Joan Collins never brought to a role in her life.

If Collins had taken the role, we'd spend the whole movie waiting for her to get her revenge on Stewart AND Elster, or to reveal that she was the mastermind of the fiendish plot. But not Novak, she lets herself be used and abused by two men, and that there was nothing but using and abusing from a lot of men before she met either of them. That's why we don't hate her, even though some of her actions are despicable, she's really just a complete loser. And that's not something most glamour actresses could play, even if they wanted to.

I'm the alternative ending that should have been shot. It goes something like this.

JUDY and SCOTTIE kiss. JUDY turns to see a shadow appearing.in the bell tower. JUDY: No! No! NUN: I heard voices... JUDY screams and falls from the bell tower. SCOTTIE looks on, stunned. NUN: God have mercy! Not another one! Can you believe this is the second time this year?! Hey, wait ... aren't you the same guy who was here last time this happened? END

I'm the nuns who appear in so many Hitchcock films.

I'm Jimmy Stewart's stammering, blustering bravado as he ventures to stand on Midge's little bar stool.

I'm the unanswered mystery of how Scotty was rescued or escaped from hanging off the side of a building, after the other cop went tumbling to his death.

I'm Scotty's mysterious "independent means"!

[quote]I'm the unanswered mystery of how Scotty was rescued or escaped from hanging off the side of a building, after the other cop went tumbling to his death.

Was he rescued? Maybe he he couldn't hang on, fell, went into a permanent coma and the rest of the film is the dream he can't awaken from.

Why is there a flimsy rain gutter at the top of a four story building?

I'm some other problems with the rooftop scene...

In the opening rooftop chase scene the crook, officer and Scottie jump across buildings that appear to be no more than six feet apart, yet when the officer falls to the ground it appears the buildings are a full alley width apart.

When Scottie slides off the roof and hangs onto the rain gutter, the tiling changes from flat wooden tiling in the medium shots to half-cylindrical brick tiling in the close-up shots as the officer attempts to rescue him.

Before and after Scottie slides off the roof, there are two views of him shown 90 degrees apart, but in both cases the background view remains the same.

I'm Pop Liebel, an authority on the small stuff of San Francisco history, like people you never heard of in the gay old bohemian days of gay old San Francisco...

I am the very highly perverse, yet highly lush, dream that is Hitchcock's Vertigo.

Novak and Stewart are better in Bell, Book & Candle.

BB&C is another allegory. Although gay author John van Druten denied it, is so obviously an allegory about gay people living in Greenwich Village in the late 1950s.

I'm William Hitchcock who asked the local copper to take Alfred and put him in the lock-up in 1905.

He was there for five hours and it scarred him for life.

I'm the sleazy Hitch-thief

The subtext in BB&C is too huge to be denied.

Did you know that the Zodiac Club in BB&C is a stand-in for a gay club?

I'm the dummy who can't understand R137's use of the word 'another' in 'another allegory'.

I might see an incidental allusion in 'Bell, Book etc' but where's the allegory in Hitchcock's 'Vertigo'?

If there's an allegory in "Vertigo", it's about Hitchcock's personal history of making flawed real women into his ultra-glam "Hitchcock Blondes".

I'm aware that there's subtext along those lines in "Vertigo", but I've never wanted to think about it too much as it might spoil my enjoyment of the movie.

I'm the uncredited Paramount second-unit cameraman Irmin Roberts who invented the famous "zoom out and track in" shot (now sometimes called "dolly zoom," "contra-zoom" or "trombone shot") to convey the sense of vertigo to the audience. The view down the mission stairwell cost $19,000 for just a couple of seconds of screen time.

I'm the fastidious William Wyler.

That zooming, R144, may be permissible in 'Vertigo' which is all about obsessive madness but MUST be avoided in normal cinematic plays about normal people.

Luchino Visconti also used this cheap zooming technique and, I have to say, it is a sloppy, distracting method allowing the camera to intrude in on the characters telling their story.

What was the reason for bathing Judy in a green light? What did the color green represent?

I'm Green and I'm the symbol for Envy.

I'm the snob who'd disinterested in seeing Steve McQueen in 'Bullit'.

I want to know if the long car San Francisco car sequences in 'Vertigo' influenced McQueen ten years later.

R146 I'm Roger Ebert's review of Vertigo where I talk a lot about the color green...

[quote]But the thing I remember most about "Vertigo," the thing that imprinted itself indelibly on my brain, was something simple and powerful: the color green. Say "Vertigo" and I see green. For the color green is associated with Scottie Ferguson’s vertigo and, especially, its underlying cause: the dizzying fear of falling, and of falling precipitously, deliriously in love. In this manner Madeleine, and the color green, are introduced into Vertigo, and Scottie’s subconscious.

[quote]And so, green is associated with Madeleine, and with the romantic environs of San Francisco. Madeleine's car, which Scottie so obsessively tails, is green (and there's a spendid moment of disconcerting, schizophrenic foreshadowing when Scottie spies two identical green cars rounding a curve; we'll later be left wondering just how/where/if the paths of Madeleine and her look-alike Judy have diverged). And there's the green expanse of lawn in front of the Palace of the Legion of Honor art gallery, where she goes to sit in front of the portrait of Carlotta, the greenery of the florist's shop and its vibrant green boxes (also associated, in Scottie's thrillingly up-close surveillance of Madeleine, with her image in a mirror), the garden/graveyard where he follows her, and the deep green-blue waters of San Francisco Bay into which she plunges.

"What did the color green represent? "

I've heard some film geeks say that in Hitchcock films, and particularly in "Vertigo", the color green represents danger.

The heroine of "The Birds" wore a green suit for nearly the whole film, so maybe the theory held true for several films, although in "The Birds" it indicated a person who was in danger, rather than someone who was dangerous.

Judy's being bathed in green is supposedly the neon lights from across the street shining into the hotel room. But Hitch had the effect overdone. Plus, when the film was restored, that was one of the few moments were the original film negative was unusable and the best film element they could find was like 14 generations removed from the OCN so it looks really bad.

^ OCN = original camera negative

The green light was make her look ghostly, I thought. I think someone mentioned it up thread. Green lighting was used in the theatre to signify a ghost. And she is a ghost to Scotty.

In articles about Vertigo, they say Hitchcock deliberately used color to tell a story in his pictures, never more so than in Vertigo. He was insistent on the grey suit that Novak hated.

I'm San Francisco fog, seemingly absent from this movie.

It's not absent, r155. When Scotty visits Carlotta's grave the fog is rolling in, and I always feel like I can smell it. Yes, SF fog has a smell, like the smell of rain but not as earthy.

I'm Hitchcock's Perversity.

I made my name in the 30s by using fluid camera work and telling a story with visuals. Yet, I made the claustrophobic 'LIfeboat', 'Rope' and used the insane Ten-Minute-Take System.

I've always being obsessed by Transferred Identity.

Yet, sometimes I make big glossy movies with popular stars in big cars (like 'Vertigo' and 'North by Northwest'). Yet, on the other hand, I make a dreary, small black-and-white movie called 'The Wrong Man' which is classified as 'a documentary-drama' and a small black-and-white movie 'Psycho' which was original intended as an extended episode of the Hitchcock TV show.

I'm the books in the window display that change position between the time Scottie and Midge enter and leave the Argosy Book Shop to question Pop Leibel.

I stand corrected, r156.

For R155 & R156

I'm the due diligence Scott failed to do on his client.

[quote] What didn’t she like the gray suit? It was very flattering. Why wouldn’t a woman want to look that good?

Grey is not a good color for blondes.

He made blonde Doris Day wear one in The Man Who Knew Too Much remake also.

R12 I'm still curious to know what Lady Gag paid to sample said score in her "Born This Way" video.

R164 Miss Gag is a Transgressive Post-Modernist i.e. thief.

In this strange interview, Novak mentions the grey suit Hitchcock and Edith Head wanted her to wear, which she immediately disliked, but reluctantly agreed worked for the character.

I thought the color green represented fertility, and by association, female sexuality. It certainly did to other artists, like Picasso. See "Girl in a Mirror', for example.

I’m the boner for Kim Novak in Alfred Hitchcock’s pants.

I'm the mystery of how Judy Barton and Gavin Elstir exited the church tower unnoticed by ANYONE, after Mrs. Elstir was flung to her death.

[quote] I’m the Salvatore Dali dream sequence. Which is interesting but not that effective.

Oh, [italic]dear.[/italic]

I'm Salvador Dalí, and I had nothing whatsoever to do with this film or its dream sequence. I did help design the dream sequence for SPELLBOUND (1946), but that's a completely different Hitchcock movie.

The great dream sequence, with the creepy moment mentioned above when Scott sees Elstir and Carlotta in a clinch (the Primal Scene?), and Carlota slowly turns her head.

I'm the shot of Judy's feet as she's being dragged up the stairs of the bell tower; I was edited out as "nudity" in certain Muslim countries.

I am Madeleine‘s gray wool suit, auctioned in 2016 for $28,750.

[quote] The previous owner discovered the suit in an L.A. vintage store and bought it simply because she liked it, says Catherine Williamson, the L.A.-based director of Fine Books & Manuscripts and Entertainment Memorabilia for Bonhams Auctioneers. “Some time after that, she pulled it out of her closet and discovered it didn’t fit, and only then did she look at the label,” she adds. Both pieces feature a Paramount Pictures label; the skirt’s label also is inscribed with “Kim Novak” in black ink. “It was the owner’s husband who said, ‘I think that’s from Vertigo.’”

Of course, hubby’s not gay [italic]at all.

It's weird to me Kim Novak didn't like the suit, since it's so becoming. She looks fantastic in it.

[quote]What didn’t she like the gray suit? It was very flattering.

Gray doesn’t provide any contrast to Novak’s pale hair and coloring. It gives her a washed out, ghostly appearance… which is perfect for the character, like she’s stepped out of the mist, but it’s not a color many blondes would gravitate toward choosing for themselves. Gray on a blonde can create a sort of overall color "mush".

This has to do with color theory. When you take into consideration that a person’s hair is already establishing one color in their appearance, the colors you add through clothing have to work with that hair color in some way. Redheads generally look good in green, yellow and rusty, autumn hues. Brunettes often look particularly good in purples and violet shades (like Judy wears when she goes out to dinner with Scotty.) Blondes can look good in red, blue or white.

It’s not an exact science and there will always be exceptions, but you probably have experienced for yourself that people will compliment you when you’re wearing a shirt that works with your coloring.

I'm the manager of the McKittrick Hotel, later known as Grandma Walton...

I'm the little-known actor who was as pretty as Michael Redgrave.

I played for Hitchcock 22 years previously in 'Secret Agent', I understudied Rex Harrison in 'My Fair Lady' on Broadway and in this new film 'Vertigo' I play the sleazy man who asked the old detective to take on a very sordid assignment which would veery likely result in death.

I'm me as boy watching Vertigo and dreaming of living in a pad like Midge's at R21. Or a garret in Paris with a north facing conservatory glass roof. When I finally get to SF after college and I get the chic bourgeois bohemian flat, 1985 SF is a grim hellscape of AIDS with sick skeletal dying men walking around like zombies.

I'm the the art director named Henry Bumstead.

I asked Hitchcock why he was adamant that Coit Tower be seen from the apartment of old detective. He said, "It's a phallic symbol."

I'm the viewer with bad memory.

Didn't R177 die in the tower?

I am the collective hiss heard at the San Francisco's Castro Theatre, during a screening of, "Vertigo". Specifically, the collective hiss, when Midge says, "The Mission, isn't that skid row??"

I'm Hitchcock replying "Your salary." to an actress who demanded to know her motivation for a piece of business he gave her.

I'm the Hitchcock Self-Hate.

Veering from colourful, star-filled glossies to small, black and white gritties.

('Vertigo' to 'The Wrong Man')

I’m Bernard Herrmann’s scorn of Hitchcock’s choices in making this film. Benny thought the original novel’s setting of New Orleans was far more atmospheric. And Benny thought Jimmy Stewart was badly cast.

Curious, that Brian De Palma set his hommage to Hitchcock, “Obsession,” in New Orleans. He also hired Herrmann to score it. Although, I don’t think Cliff Robertson as the lead had any of the multilevel implications that Stewart brought to “Vertigo.”

[quote] I'm Scotty's mysterious "independent means"!

Workers Compensation

I'm Carlotta Valdes, and somewhere in here I was born, and there I died.

I'm Margaret Brayton and the gentleman seems to know what he wants, and I think I know the suit you mean, we had it some time ago; let me go and see, we may still have that model.