Saturdays with the Stars Season 3 Finale

Two of our stars, Shirley & Grace

With this past week's viewing of The Seduction fo Joe Tynan, we are officially done with our third season of "Saturdays with the Stars."  I really like to find a moment before I start the new season (which, unlike past seasons, I haven't told you the theme of & will be doing so in the coming days, as we will indeed do a fourth season starting on Saturday) to discuss the season, talking about what I learned, and also focusing on some of the best of the year's movies/performances.

When I decided to do this theme, I wanted to see how it would turn out picking twelve women who had really nothing in common other than Alfred Hitchcock.  You couldn't find stars as divergent in the way that cinematic history or even contemporary audiences treated them as, say, Maureen O'Hara & Barbara Harris or Shirley MacLaine & Margaret Lockwood.  Hitchcock wasn't always successful with his leading ladies, but it does show what a versatile director he was that he continually tried new things, occasionally making masterpieces but just as often strange curiosities.

It also showed, especially in our month devoted to Tippi Hedren, how Hitchcock's legacy is at once peerless in quality but blemished by the director himself.  Hitchcock was a complicated man, one who brought the downfall of a career or two (Hedren's career, as we discussed, never flourished the way it might have with a less authoritarian mentor), but who also clearly made some of the best films ever made.  What was great about this year was not just focusing on him, but getting to see unknown chapters in these twelve women's lives (I love that I stick to the rule of seeing only films I haven't seen before, because it means every week I get to see a new facet of an actor I thought I knew well, but frequently have my perceptions changed).  As I continue to watch deeper and deeper cuts from Old Hollywood (after three seasons devoted to it on the blog, it seems like watching fresh viewings demands getting into the rafters of these icons' IMDB pages), I am reminded once again how this period of Hollywood has countless movies & careers left to explore.  Thank you so much for playing along!

Favorite Performance from Each Star

January: Madeleine Carroll-The General Died at Dawn

February: Sylvia Sidney-Sabotage

March: Margaret Lockwood-Cast a Dark Shadow

April: Maureen O'Hara-Rio Grande

May: Carole Lombard-Twentieth Century

June: Anne Baxter-The Luck of the Irish

July: Ingrid Bergman-Autumn Sonata

August: Grace Kelly-Dial M for Murder

September: Shirley MacLaine-The Children's Hour

October: Julie Andrews-Thoroughly Modern Millie

November: Tippi Hedren-Marnie

December: Barbara Harris-Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?

5 Favorite Actresses of the Year (Alphabetical, and based solely on the films we watched as a collective & not on the rest of their careers)

Ingrid Bergman

Barbara Harris

Margaret Lockwood

Carole Lombard

Shirley MacLaine

5 (err-6, I couldn't corner down) Favorite Performances of the Year (Alphabetical)

Ingrid Bergman, Autumn Sonata

Ingrid Bergman, Journey to Italy

Margaret Lockwood, Cast a Dark Shadow

Margaret Lockwood, The Wicked Lady

Carole Lombard-Twentieth Century

Shirley MacLaine, The Children's Hour

10 Favorite Films of the Year (Alphabetical)

Autumn Sonata

Cast a Dark Shadow

The Children's Hour

Dead End

Dial M for Murder

Journey to Italy

The Lady Vanishes

The Trouble with Harry

Twentieth Century

The Wicked Lady

Top 10 Performances of the Year (Not By Our Leading Ladies)

Diane Baker, Marnie

John Barrymore, Twentieth Century

Dirk Bogarde, Cast a Dark Shadow

Humphrey Bogart, Dead End

Sean Connery, Marnie

Audrey Hepburn, The Children's Hour

George Sanders, Journey to Italy

Claire Trevor, Dead End

Liv Ullmann, Autumn Sonata

John Williams, Dial M for Murder

Citizen Ruth (1996)

Film: Citizen Ruth (1996)

Stars: Laura Dern, Swoosie Kurtz, Kurtwood Smith, Mary Kay Place, Kelly Preston, MC Gainey, Tippi Hedren, Burt Reynolds

Director: Alexander Payne

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Tippi Hedren-click here to learn more about Ms. Hedren (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

After Roar, Tippi Hedren occasionally made films, but largely settled into a world outside of proper stardom, working definitely but never in serious projects.  She made appearances on TV shows (including Hart to Hart and Chicago Hope), and worked alongside her daughter a couple of times.  She made a cameo in The Birds II, which she later regretted doing, and had a memorable role in David O. Russell's I Heart Huckabees.  She also had a small part in yet another significant director's career.  While with Chaplin, Hedren got a much-discussed (within the film) character who ends up a cameo in A Countess from Hong Kong, the director's final film, we saw the inverse in Citizen Ruth, where Hedren plays a much-discussed (within the film) character in the first movie of an Oscar-nominated director, Alexander Payne.  Today we're going to close out our month-long look at Tippi Hedren with a peak into this movie, which announced the career of the man who would make Election, Sideways, and Nebraska.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is the story of Ruth Stoops (Dern), a mother of four with substance abuse problems who becomes pregnant with a man she barely knows in the opening scenes of the movie.  After finding out she's pregnant, she's scolded by a judge, who recommends that she get an abortion to avoid jail time.  When Norm (Smith) & Gail (Place) find out about this, they tell their anti-abortion group & start to sponsor Ruth's life, insisting she have a baby.  Ruth initially doesn't like this, and nearly gets the abortion when it turns out one of the members of the group, Diane (Kurtz) is actually a pro-choice advocate in disguise, but when each group offers her $15,000 to go through with the decision, she is caught in a national firestorm over whether or not she should have the child, bringing in major leaders of both sides (played by Reynolds & Hedren).  When Ruth, in the middle of a drunken stupor, miscarries, she ends up tricking them into giving her the money, running away from the spotlight with little resolution as to what happens next.

Citizen Ruth is a biting commentary, and one that doesn't shy away from skewering both sides of this political hot button.  One would assume that the anti-abortion crowd would be rife for a politically liberal director like Payne, but he's just as ruthless in taking on the pro-choice group, particularly the way that neither side is particularly interested in what Ruth wants, seeing her as an easy pawn in this debate.  Dern plays Ruth perfectly so that the audience struggles to have sympathy for her.  It's clear from the onset that Ruth would make a horrible mother (she has far too many personal demons to responsibly take care of a child), and that she won't be able to carry this baby to term without doing drugs, putting the child at risk...but no one seems all that interested in that reality.  The film is perhaps too broad at times (Ruth doesn't show a lot of personal growth, and while that might be in-character, it hurts the script which is asking for some growth in her), but it's fascinating, pull-no-punches stuff from a debate that oftentimes feels like everyone is coming with no understanding for the other side's position.

Tippi Hedren, like many of her films post-Hitchcock, only gets a small part here.  She and Reynolds are both fun as late-breaking movie stars brought in to add a certain cache to the debate.  We don't need background from these figures, and Payne knows it-the audience understands that these genuine celebrities (in real life) translate their personas in this world onscreen.  As a result, though, I leave Hedren's month a bit melancholy.  The actress gave two incredible performances onscreen for Hitchcock, and while she worked with major directors afterward, it's fair to say she never really escaped his shadow, and certainly never made anything as good as The Birds and Marnie.  Considering the truly horrible nature of their relationship (based on Hedren's later statements), this is a pity for such a distinctive star.  Next month we will finish off our year devoted to Hitchcock with one last leading lady, one who would be something of an antithesis to many of the women we've discussed this season (and the Hitchcock prototype).

Roar (1981)

Film: Roar (1981)

Stars: Noel Marshall, Tippi Hedren, Melanie Griffith, John Marshall, Jerry Marshall

Director: Noel Marshall

Oscar History: No nominations...I honestly don't think it was eligible as this was a straight-to-video release in the United States initially despite Hedren as a star & the film's extravagant budget.

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Tippi Hedren-click here to learn more about Ms. Hedren (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Tippi Hedren would spend much of the late-1960's & early-1970's struggling to find a foothold in Hollywood.  After working with Hitchcock & Chaplin, she never again would get lead roles from directors of that caliber, and would talk later about how she was upset she couldn't make a lot of major movies as she moved into her early 40's.  This is where Roar comes into place for Hedren.  Filmed over a five-year period, Roar is maybe Hedren's best-known role outside of Hitchcock, and it certainly is a film she's well-associated with today.  Hedren and her husband Noel Marshall started living with an actual lion in the early 1970's, and when there were complaints from neighbors, they moved their family to a ranch where they raised myriad big cats.  This is the setting of Roar, our film today, and one of the most infamously troubled film shoots in Hollywood history.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is weirdly short on plot, but I'll try to ground you in what it attempts at least.  Hank (Marshall) lives in a giant "preserve" which is really a giant house filled with lions, tigers, panthers, cheetahs, & leopards.  He is trying to stop a local ordinance that would allow local hunters to kill these animals, as they are viewed as dangerous even though Hank believes in them.  While he's battling this, his family, including his estranged wife Madeleine (Hedren) and his precocious daughter Melanie (Griffith) show up, and are stunned to find a house filled with ferocious beasts, ones that they assume will kill them.  The remainder of the 98-minute film is largely just a litany of encounters between the animals and the real-life actors, fighting regularly with them (for those curious about the plot, the hunters are killed by the animals, and the family lives happily ever after).

The plot is not the point of Roar, even if it might've been for Hedren & Marshall at the time.  Roar is instead a truly bizarre film where we see dozens of big cats, each able to take down a grown man, maul at screen icon Tippi Hedren and her daughter Melanie, who within a few years would become one of the most famous actresses in America.  Watching this happen in real time is like watching a snuff film less than a horror film (it plays like a horror movie in my head, but it's meant to be a fun action-adventure movie as directed).  There's no real plot, just the family fighting these lions & tigers...before in the end deciding they love them despite them putting each other in mortal danger the whole film.

Roar was not a CGI fest like it would be today, nor is it a feat of a slew of well-trained animals creating grand illusions on set.  By most accounts at least 70 cast-and-crew were injured on the set of Roar, including Marshall, Hedren, & Griffith, all of whom had to have surgery done at some point to repair injuries.  This makes scenes like Tippi Hedren literally having honey licked off of her by a panther feel all the more shocking, knowing that she was doing this at great personal risk.  It also makes the film next-to-impossible to give a grade to-it's certainly entertaining in a morbid sense, but also you cringe the whole runtime.  I'll go with two stars as it's not a good movie even if it's an engaging one.

This film was not a success.  Self-funded and made with non-union crew (with the exception of cinematographer and future director Jan de Bont), Hedren & Marshall couldn't get it into theaters domestically, and it wouldn't be seen in theaters in the United States until 2015.  The movie did, however, spark a lifelong love of animals for Hedren, who would create the Roar Foundation/Shambala Preserve and is still the president of this animal sanctuary in California which is home to a number of large cats that are at least partially tame (discarded animals from circuses or private owners who no longer want to house animals, such as Michael Jackson's two Bengal tigers).  Hedren's legacy therefore is one of animals rights in the years that have followed, and outside of Hitchcock's films with her, this is what she's best known for today.  However, Hedren did keep working (almost exclusively in the decades that followed to fund her preserve), and we will get to one final performance from her next Saturday as we close out our Tippi Month.

A Countess from Hong Kong (1967)

Film: A Countess from Hong Kong (1967)

Stars: Marlon Brando, Sophia Loren, Sydney Chaplin, Tippi Hedren

Director: Charlie Chaplin

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Tippi Hedren-click here to learn more about Ms. Hedren (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week we talked about Tippi Hedren both in Marnie and in general her tumultuous relationship with our director-of-the-year Alfred Hitchcock.  Hedren's career after Marnie was rough, though, as she was under contract to Hitchcock (whom she refused to work with again), and who had final say in what films she was able to do, and he supposedly turned down several pictures that Hedren was interested in making.  She was finally released from her contract with Hitchcock & Universal in 1966, but her career has lost all of its momentum.  How do you follow up working with Hitchcock in two of his last great pictures?  Apparently, by appearing opposite the rare filmmaker who could rival Hitchcock's legend and track record on his final picture.  Yes, the first movie that Tippi Hedren made after working with her most iconic director was in the final film made by Silent Era genius Charlie Chaplin, A Countess from Hong Kong.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Ogden Mears (Brando), a wealthy man nominated to be the next US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, who visits a brothel that includes Natascha (Loren), a Russian countess who is now penniless after the Russian Revolution.  On his voyage back to America, he realizes that Natascha has stowed away on this ship in his cabin, with hopes of arriving in the United States and starting a new life.  Initially reluctant, he eventually acquiesces to hiding her, even marrying her off to his valet, who then becomes quite amorous toward his new fake bride.  When Ogden's wife Martha (Hedren) arrives on the ship in Hawaii, he must choose-will he stay with his wife, with whom he has an in-name-only marriage that is meant to further his political career, or will he chase after this new woman that he has fallen in love with (even if it could be the downfall of his career)?  Only someone watching their first movie wouldn't know where Ogden's allegiances end up.

A Countess from Hong Kong is regarded as more curiosity than actual discussed film today.  Chaplin hadn't directed a film in ten years at the time, and that movie had been a critical flop.  Countess would suffer the same fate, and though Chaplin would continue to tinker with scripts & ideas for the next year before his death in 1977, this was his his final film.  It's easy to see why critics & the public didn't respond to this.  While some of the comic bits play better with a bit of nostalgia (you can see the classic Chaplin eye for sight comedy in the way that Loren is continually stuffed into a bathroom every time someone comes to the door), he had not modernized his comic styling & it didn't play as well so far-removed from the Silent Era.  It didn't help that Brando & Loren have no chemistry together.  Both have very naturalistic acting styles, so I'm not saying this couldn't have worked, but Brando always struggled with comedy, and Loren doesn't have enough character to pick up the slack.  All-in-all, this is the kind of movie you'd forget pretty quickly if there weren't so many legends involved (Chaplin, for what it's worth, is only onscreen for a brief minute, as are his three daughters).

Hedren is also in the film for a short while.  According to Hedren, she later said that she felt Chaplin tricked her to say yes to the picture, promising a bigger part in the pitch, to which she said she would've done it just to say she'd have worked with Chaplin.  She's good in the movie, but it is indeed a cameo despite her high billing, and it would be a footnote of her filmmaking lexicon were it not for Chaplin, Brando, & Loren's involvement.  This would also be arguably the last time that Hedren would work with an "important" director for decades, and in terms of making a film with such prominent billing, it'd be the last time ever.  That didn't mean she didn't work though, and next week we're going to talk about a film that she spent the better part of a decade trying to make, whose subject would lead Hedren to her true passion-in-life.

Marnie (1964)

Film: Marnie (1964)

Stars: Tippi Hedren, Sean Connery, Diane Baker, Martin Gabel, Louise Latham

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Tippi Hedren-click here to learn more about Ms. Hedren (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As I mentioned on Monday, we are going to start Hedren's career not with The Birds, which would make her a household name, but with Marnie, as I only watch films I've never seen for this series & I've seen The Birds countless times.  In a year where we have profiled dozens of Hitchcock films, Marnie stands apart as a particularly important one, because depending on who you ask, it is either The Birds or Marnie that would be Hitchcock's last "great" picture.  Contemporary reviews tended to favor the theory that it was the former, but many retrospective reviews have salvaged Marnie's reputation, and as someone who adores The Birds, I was curious to see what would happen when I finally caught this, one of the most important movies in Hitchcock's filmography I hadn't seen prior to 2021.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie plays a bit like a riddle.  The beginning of the film involves Marnie (played by Hedren, she goes by multiple names in the picture but we're going to refer to her as Marnie to help continuity), who has recently stolen $10,000 from her employer Sidney Strutt (Gabel).  In her next job, she meets Mark Rutland (Connery), who recognizes her as the thief from before, but doesn't say anything initially.  He becomes fascinated with the beautiful woman, and curious as to why the color red & thunderstorms are emotional triggers for her.  When she tries to steal again, Mark blackmails her into marrying him, and she agrees despite the protestations of Mark's sister-in-law Lil (Baker), who is clearly in love with Mark.  On their honeymoon, they initially avoid physical intimacy, but at a crucial point Mark rapes Marnie, as he's become obsessed with her.  He slowly works to reimburse her victims to get the charges to go away, but while he's doing this Marnie is hating him more for trapping her.  In the films final moments, Mark decides to do something about the emotional instability of his wife, and he takes her to see her mother Bernice (Latham).  There, during a manic state, Marnie realizes that her mother was a prostitute, and one of her clients, after attempting to molest Marnie, was killed by Bernice, which is why the color red (blood) and thunderstorms (it was raining) are triggers for Marnie.  Afterward, Marnie & Mark decide they can make it work, now knowing where Marnie's troubles stem from.

The movie is marvelously shot & edited.  The opening scene of the film, which includes a raven-haired Hedren clutching a yellow purse (that looks, let's face it, a little bit like a vagina), while walking carefully down a train platform is so fascinating & brilliant, you'd honestly assume that the film wouldn't be able to follow it with anything as terrific, but you'd be wrong.  The first half of Marnie is a mystery, with us at first trying to understand this strange woman who clearly is suffering from psychological trauma, and then at the midpoint we are given a true twist when Mark ends up being a bit of a psychotic, raping Marnie & basically holding her captive, obsessed with finding out the truth about this woman he has basically tricked into marrying him.

The movie's ending feels like a letdown as a result.  For a modern audience (but I suspect considering the many discussions about whether it should be included in the film, contemporary ones as well), it's hard to imagine wanting to cheer on Mark after he assaults Marnie, and the film doesn't really know how to deal with this.  In a modern film, we'd end with Marnie getting revenge on Mark, but neither he nor the audience getting to know her in the process, leaving her a cool, unknowable figure-in that, we'd have gotten a great movie.  Here, we get them trying to rehabilitate Mark's image, and a relatively groundbreaking bit of psychoanalysis that goes nowhere.  Still, this is a brilliantly-acted movie.  Connery is vicious & is giving some of his best work as Mark, a complicated he-man figure who has never been told "no" before Marnie.  Diane Baker is excellent as his scheming, in-the-wings sister-in-law, and Latham stands out in her two big scenes.  And yes, Tippi Hedren can act, and does so wonderfully here, finding rich layers under a sheen of hardened plastic.

Marnie would be Hitchcock's last film with Hedren, and that appears to be more her choice than his.  Hedren has in the years since been quite adamant about how little she liked the director, and his predatory behavior on-set.  According to Hedren, he had her followed, and would tell cast-and-crew not to speak to her on set (her costar Baker would later confirm this to be the case).  He became sexually obsessed with her, making overt requests for sexual favors, and threatening to "ruin her career" if she didn't honor her contract after Marnie (as she said she didn't want to appear in any of his future movies).  As she was under contract, he knew he could bankrupt her because she couldn't support her aging parents or her daughter Melanie without her income from movies.  For three years after Marnie, Hedren did not, indeed, work, and she would never have the career that The Birds and Marnie would've insinuated she would.  As promised on Monday, though, we will take a look at the career she did have in the coming weeks, and next Saturday we'll discuss a film she made with a director who, believe-it-or-not, is as culturally significant as Hitchcock himself.

Saturdays with the Stars: Tippi Hedren

Each month of 2021 we will be taking a look at the leading ladies of some of Alfred Hitchcock's many celebrated classics; we'll be doing this series chronologically to when they first entered Hitchcock's filmography.  Last month we took a look at the unlikely lead of Torn Curtain, musical superstar Julie Andrews.  This month, we're going to go back a bit in time to one of Hitch's most well-known leading ladies, someone who was featured in two of his films, and has been the most outspoken in recent years about his abhorrent behavior toward her on set.  This month, our star is Tippi Hedren.

Nathalie Kay Hedren (her father nicknamed her "Tippi") was born in New Ulm, Minnesota, the daughter of the general store owner.  An incredible beauty, she left for New York City when she was 20 and quickly signed to a top modeling agency, and appeared on the front pages of dozens of major magazines, as well as in commercials when she moved to Los Angeles after her divorce to actor Peter Griffith (with whom she had her movie star daughter, Melanie).  It was in one of these commercials that she first caught Alfred Hitchcock's eye, and he signed her to a contract.  Hedren later claimed she had no idea that he intended to put her in the lead of one of his movies (assuming he wanted her for a role in his television series), but at the age of 33 she was headed to immortality as Melanie Daniels in The Birds.

I have seen The Birds many times through the years, and it is brilliant (and Hedren is brilliant in it).  I have never seen Marnie, probably the most famous Hitchcock movie I hadn't seen before this project, which is why I can include Hedren in this series that requires me to only watch movies I've never seen before.  But I also wanted really badly to include Hedren, more than any other actress (I wouldn't have done the series without her), because she has been the most outspoken in interviews in recent years about the way that Hitchcock treated her on set, harassing & controlling her in ways that even some of his other leading ladies have admitted they didn't have to go through with the director.  We'll get into some of the allegations, and what they mean for Hitchcock & his legacy when we talk about Marnie, but in a series that has focused on the incredible women, performances, and roles that Hitchcock's movies highlighted, I would be remiss if we hadn't devoted time to one of the women who found Hitchcock to be unacceptable in his methods.

This month, though, we're also going to get beyond Hedren's association with Hitchcock, and the unusual turns that her career took in the years following her association with the director, working immediately with a director just as famous as Hitchcock in her next picture, and eventually spending nearly a decade filming a movie that would lead to Hedren's true calling, nature conservation.  This month, we'll look not just at Hitchcock's last two great classic movies, but also at the woman who made it possible, and what happened when she escaped his shadow.

The 8 Living Women (and 2 Men) Who Have Starred in an Alfred Hitchcock Movie

In the past month, while prepping for NaNoWriMo, I was thinking a lot about my relationship with classic film, and in particular how few links we still have to the Golden Age of Hollywood.  It feels like at this point it's more of a scrounge to find living actors from this era rather than the multitudes that were still alive even only twenty years ago, and in the process, I began to wonder how many of Alfred Hitchcock's leading ladies were still alive.

Focusing on Hitchcock in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein allegations feels a bit seedy, considering that he had famously complicated relationships with his leading ladies, including allegedly sexually assaulting Tippi Hedren and exerting enormous control over women like Grace Kelly.  However, this isn't celebrating Hitch, but the women who made his films special, and specifically the eight leading ladies in his movies that are still with us.  Without further adieu (I'm imagining you're trying to guess in your head who they are anyway), here are the eight living women who have headlined an Alfred Hitchcock picture (listed chronologically by film):

Editor's Note: Since the publication of this Barbara Harris passed away on August 21, 2018.  I've maintained Ms. Harris's profile below, however.

Shirley MacLaine

Film: The Trouble with Harry (1955)

Age: 83 (Born April 24, 1934)

Career: This was actually MacLaine's screen debut, though she's not really known for her work with Hitchcock.  She'd get a Golden Globe nomination for Best Newcomer in the film, and would be an Oscar nominee three years later for Some Came Running (and soon a screen legend).

Doris Day

Film: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

Age: 95 (Born April 3, 1922)

Career: Day was enjoying the "dramatic" period of her film career when she partnered with Hitchcock (an odd pairing in hindsight, though her iconic "Que Sera, Sera" would become a signature tune).  She'd be getting her sole Oscar nomination a few years later when she made Pillow Talk and kicked off the most successful period of her career.

Vera Miles

Film: The Wrong Man (1956)

Age: 88 (Born August 23, 1929)

Career: Miles is a strange case of an actress that made a lot of classic films in a brief period of time (she also starred in the John Ford classic The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance), who is best remembered by modern audiences for her supporting work in Psycho.  She was originally intended to be Hitch's leading lady in Vertigo, but due to a pregnancy he had to replace her with...

Kim Novak

Film: Vertigo (1958)

Age: 84 (Born February 13, 1933)

Career: Novak's eternally known as Madeline in Vertigo, her most iconic role, but the reality is that the film was a turning point in her career, and not in the right direction.  Though considered today to be one of the greatest films ever made, Vertigo was a box office disappointment at the time, and Novak (coming off of hits like Picnic, Pal Joey, and Bell, Book, and Candle) watched her career dissipate after this, with her brief period as a leading woman soon over.

Eva Marie Saint

Film: North by Northwest (1959)

Age: 93 (Born July 4, 1924)

Career: Saint had made a name for herself at this point in her career playing downtrodden women in black-and-white dramas (winning an Oscar for On the Waterfront), so this was a very atypical movie for the actress, and one that sort of would signal the end of her short career as a leading woman.  Saint made surprisingly few pictures in her very long career, and would soon be playing third fiddle to Richard Burton & Elizabeth Taylor in The Sandpiper.

Tippi Hedren

Film: The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964)

Age: 87 (Born January 19, 1930)

Career: Hedren has the distinction on this list of being the only woman to headline two Hitchcock films (while Miles starred in multiple Hitch projects, she only got top billing in one).  Hedren's career  was, well, bizarre after Hitchcock with her most notable film being the troubled production Roar, and she famously hated her filming experiences on Hitch's pictures, but it cannot be denied that these aren't an iconic legacy for her as an actress.

Julie Andrews

Film: Torn Curtain (1966)

Age: 82 (Born October 1, 1935)

Career: Andrews had just two years earlier made her screen debut, but at this point was a major leading lady in Hollywood, and was enjoying what would be the biggest period of success in her career with back-to-back mammoth hits that scored her Oscar nominations (and her one win).  Still, she's hardly what you'd consider an obvious choice to headline a Hitchcock picture considering her well-noted warm and kind characters.

Barbara Harris

Film: Family Plot (1976)

Age: 82 (Born July 25, 1935)

Career: Despite being a decade after Andrews, she's slightly older than the Torn Curtain star, and appeared in the lead of Hitch's last picture.  She was enjoying a peak moment in her career at this point, having just been a part of the classic Nahsville and would receive TWO Golden Globe nominations this year, for her work here as well as in Freaky Friday (she'd lose to Barbra Streisand in A Star is Born).

Initially I thought that I'd do a sequel with the leading men of Hitchcock's career, but unfortunately only two of Hitch's leading men are still with us, so let's also list them right now...

Sean Connery

Film: Marnie (1964)

Age: 87 (August 25, 1930)

Career: Connery at this point had found his most iconic role at this point in his career, James Bond, and would later this same year give his best 007 performance in Goldfinger.  Still, Connery's debonair charm and sex appeal seem like a natural fit for a Hitchcockian film, and I'm surprised he didn't end up starring with him again later in his career.

Bruce Dern

Film: Family Plot (1976)

Age: 81 (June 4, 1936)

Career: Dern is the youngest-living person to have headlined an Alfred Hitchcock movie.  At this point in his career he'd been a character actor for over a decade, and had actually appeared in a small part in Marnie, but was most well-known for his villainous work in The Cowboys opposite John Wayne.  Two years after this he'd win his first of two Academy Award nominations for Coming Home.

There you have it-the eight women (and two men) who are still with us who have headlined a Hitchcock picture.  Share your favorite memories of these women and which of these nine performances are your favorites?